Openly Straight by Bill Konigsberg Read Free Book Online Page A

nothing,” Toby said, and he walked over to the windowsill, where a single, wilted rose drooped in a clear glass vase. Toby picked up the vase and poured the clear liquid — water, I supposed — into the Styrofoam bowls. The cereal pile got higher.
    “Ew,” I said, unable to suppress my disgust. As if Lucky Charms weren’t disgusting enough, adding flower water ?
    “Puts hair on your chest,” Toby said, grinning. “Want some?”
    “I’m afraid to ask,” I said.
    “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” he said.
    “Vodka?”
    Toby nodded bravely. “They kick you out for this,” he said. “Hence the vase.”
    “Lucky Charms with vodka?”
    “Frosted Russkie Charms. They’re Bolshevik delicious!” Toby sang. “Think of it like an after-dinner drink, a dessert wine.”
    “Actually, it’s more like an alcoholic dessert,” Albie said. “It’s not a drink.”
    “It’s more like an alcoholic’s dessert,” I said, and Toby giggled.
    I passed on a bowl. Albie shrugged and said, “More for us,” and we three sat there, a strange trio.
    “So what’s your thing, Rafe?” Toby said, rolling marshmallows around in his mouth before crunching on them.
    “My thing?” I asked.
    “Tweaker, womanizer, historical reenactments, poetry slams, model airplanes, VH1.” Toby listed these choices as if they were the only possibilities.
    “Um,” I said.
    “Weed whacking, porcelain doll collecting, Ferris wheels,” added Albie.
    I just stared at the guys, totally speechless.
    Albie looked at Toby, and for the first time since I’d met him, he dropped the aloof act, smiling.
    “He doesn’t know what to make of us,” he said.
    “Good,” Toby said, smirking. “I like to be a mystery.”
    In Boulder, I’d be friends with these guys, I realized. Maybe not the Survival Planet stuff, but they were funny. They said things that surprised me constantly. I decided to play along. What Steve and Zack didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them. Plus, it would be fun to go against the label they’d given me. Blow their minds a little.
    “I like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and taking photographs of nuns on Segways,” I said.
    I was thinking back to the time this summer when Claire Olivia and I had seen these three nuns riding on Segways in the Pearl Street Mall. The rest of the crowd was being very Boulder, very “nothing to see here” laid-back, so Claire Olivia and I followed the nuns and waited until they parked their Segways and sat down on a bench. Then we went and talked with them and found out they were an honest-to-God (no pun intended) group of local nuns who traveled on Segways. For fun. They liked us, and, of course, I got to snap several pictures of Claire Olivia riding on a Segway amidst a group of nuns. (A cloister of nuns, we later decided, when we got to talkingabout words meaning groups of things, like a gaggle of geese , a murder of crows .)
    “That’s two of the rules of comedy right there,” Albie said, picking up the bowl he’d emptied of cereal, lifting it to his mouth, and slurping the vodka. “One: Nuns are always funny. Two: Segways are always funny. That’s comedy gold.”
    “I’m a regular Tosh.0,” I deadpanned.
    Toby laughed. Albie frowned. “He relies on profanity and sex innuendo,” Albie said. “Very much in violation of the rules of comedy.”
    “Albie loves rules,” Toby said, rolling his eyes. “Rules and of course survival shows on television, and thinking up new ways to abuse and humiliate jocks. Present company excluded.”
    “I never get to use them, though,” Albie said. “I don’t like being killed.”
    I looked at Albie, who was not looking at me, and I realized he was nervous about being around me. His bravado and humor aside, here I was, this supposed jock he was rooming with. He had no way of knowing that I’d been anything other than a jock all my life. I felt bad for him, so I decided to say what the old Rafe would say. Pre-Natick Rafe.
    “I hear ya. In Boulder, my best