Ask the Passengers by A. S. King Read Free Book Online

asks.
    “No.”
    “Do you want to know?”
    “Not really,” I say. Jeff bounces his leg so much, I want to put my hand on it and make him stop. I want to tell him to relax.
    “I guess you’ll find out soon enough,” he says, acknowledging the band director giving the signal for the band to fade out.
    “Yeah.”
    Jeff has been staring at me for two months. Every day in third-period AP lit, I feel it as sure as I feel him shaking the whole room with his leg, making the heating unit jangle.
    “Astrid?” he says.
    “Yeah?”
    “You want to go out sometime? I mean, nothing big deal or anything, but you know—just you and me?”
    “I don’t know,” I say. “I mean, yeah, sure, maybe. I’m pretty busy at the moment, but I guess I’d like that.” I have no idea why I said that. I do not want to go out with Jeff. Not because of the leg thing, but because I’m—uh—
taken
already.
    “No pressure,” he says. “You can get back to me about it.”
    “Sure. I’ll get back to you,” I say.
    And hour later, all is right with the world—the football captain and cheer squad co-captain are crowned Homecomingking and queen. The cars drive the losers and winners out of the stadium while we applaud their collective greatness, and then we’re all sent back into school before final bell.

    Kristina calls me at seven because she already heard Jeff asked me out.
    They say:
Why would she snub a nice boy like Jeff Garnet? It’s not like she has other options.
    They say:
She’s just like her mother. Thinks she’s better than us.
    “Why didn’t you say yes?” she says. “You
do
want to get Claire off your case about dating, right?”
    “I didn’t
not
say yes. I said I’d get back to him. That I was—uh—busy for a while.”
    “Oh, sure. All that Plato and Aristotle.”
    “Seriously, Kristina. He’s not my type.”
    “You really should hook up with someone this year, Astrid. It’s depressing. Plus, I feel guilty. You spend so much time with me and Justin, I feel like it’s our fault.”
    “How’s it your fault?” I ask.
    “How can you date anyone if you’re so busy keeping our secrets?”
    She has a point. Except she’s missing the biggest piece of information in the equation. My secret is bigger than her secret, because nobody knows it yet.
    Not even me.

    At dinner, the subject comes up again. Me and Jeff Garnet—talk of the town.
    “I don’t know,” I say when Ellis asks me if I’m going to say yes.
    “I hear he’s a really sweet boy,” Mom says. “I hear he’s at the top of your class, too. Do you two share some classes?”
    “Just lit class. And lunch,” I say.
    Ellis says, “You know, if you don’t start dating again, people will think you’re still not over Huber. Or they’ll probably say you’re gay.”
    I smile at her and give her death-ray eyes. And anyway, I already had my gay rumor. Tenth grade, December. Right before Christmas vacation.
    I think if we kept a calendar of who gets called gay in high school, there would be a new person on every single day of the 180-day school year. Gay, dyke, fag, lesbo, homo, whatever. Every single one of us has heard it somewhere along the ride. It’s more common than the flu. More contagious, too. Nobody gossips about whether you have the flu or not.
    Then, as if on cue, Claire blurts out, “That reminds me. I was at the printer today, and Luanne said that there are only
lesbians
on the school hockey team, which I took to be an ignorant attempt to insult Ellis. What decade are these people living in? I mean, that might have been true back when I was in school, but in the twenty-first century, all kinds of girls play sports. Why do these small-town people have to have such small minds?”
    Ellis looks at Mom as if she’s reading from the wrong script.
    “I knew plenty of girls who played sports when we went to school who weren’t lesbians, Claire,” Dad says. “My sister, for one. Hell, my mother played sports in the fifties. Last