A High Five for Glenn Burke Read online

  I flip the hair off my face and wipe my eyes with my palms. That’s the part I didn’t share about Glenn Burke, the biggest part of all.

  8

  OUT

  “I need to tell you something,” I say to Zoey.

  “Never heard of that song,” she says. “Who sings it?”

  We’re in Zoey’s living room singing karaoke like we always do Wednesday after school. We’re here by ourselves—her mom’s at work, and Grace is at the Playhouse.

  “Can you sit for a sec?” I say.

  Zoey’s standing on the gray sectional sofa. I’m sitting on the floor next to the glass coffee table.

  “What are we singing next?” She points her mic at the song titles on the wall-mounted flat screen. “Some old-school Eminem? ‘Lose Yourself’?”

  “Can you sit?”

  “‘Hakuna Matata’!” She waves her mic like a wand. “It means no worries for the rest of your days.”

  “I know what it means,” I say.

  I’m not thinking about what we’re singing next. All I’m thinking about is what I promised myself I’d tell Zoey as soon as we set foot inside her house. But I didn’t, so now all I’m thinking about is what I promised myself I’d tell her as soon as we finished singing “Can’t Stop the Feeling!” But I didn’t, so now all I’m thinking about is what I promised myself I’d tell her as soon as we finished singing “All Night Long.”

  I put my mic on the sofa cushion and wipe my drenched forehead with my forearm. “Sit for a sec,” I say.

  “This really can’t wait?”

  My look tells her it can’t.

  “Grrrr,” she says. “This had better be good, Silas.” She plops down, crosses her legs, and puts her mic next to mine. “What?”

  I stare at the two pretend mics Zoey made for us a few weeks ago using tennis balls, gauze, silver spray paint, paper towel tubes, old phone chargers, and duct tape.

  “You’re just going to sit here and not say anything?” she says.

  I can feel my heart beating against the inside of my chest. This isn’t going as planned. This is going the opposite of planned. I can’t get myself to say the words. I’ve rehearsed this conversation thousands of times—lying in bed, in the shower, standing out in center field, talking to my stuffed animals, in the mirror in my parents’ closet, before the—

  “Fine, I’ll talk,” Zoey says. “I’m missing so much school these next few weeks because of the robotics tournament, and I’ve started telling my teachers, and the only one who’s been halfway cool about it is Ms. Washington. Everyone else is being so annoying. They’re saying I’m going to have to make up the work and—” She picks up her mic and twirls it. “Why are you sweating like you just—”

  “Glenn Burke was gay,” I say.

  She points the mic. “That’s what you had to tell me?”

  “He was … he was the first major league baseball player to come out as gay.”

  “We stopped karaoke so you could tell me Glenn Burke was gay? This is what couldn’t wait?”

  “He didn’t officially come out until after he stopped playing—”

  “Officially?” Zoey cuts me off and laughs. “Is that when he got his membership card?”

  “You know what I mean,” I say. I’m not laughing. I run my fingertip along the parquet wood floor. “People knew he was gay, but he didn’t openly admit it until he retired.”

  “Glenn Burke was gay.” Zoey twirls her mic again. “Great. Now can we get back to—”

  “I think I might be gay.”

  Zoey stares but doesn’t say anything.

  I stare back and wait, wait for her to say something, wait for her to say anything.

  “Oh,” she says.

  I swallow and nod.

  “Like … like Glenn Burke,” she says. “Really?”

  I nod again.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Kinda … I mean, yeah. Yeah, yes.”

  “Okay.”

  She smiles, but it’s not a real Zoey smile, because I know Zoey’s smiles. I wait for her to say something more, anything more.

  “Okay,” she says again. “Cool.”

  “Yeah?” My voice shakes.

  She smiles again, and it’s still not a real Zoey smile, but it’s closer.

  I breathe. “Thanks.”

  “So that’s why you did your report on him?”

  “I had to.”

  “But you didn’t say anything about his being gay.”

  “But I did my report on him. I did my report on a…” I close my eyes and cover my face with my hands.

  “What?” Zoey touches my leg. “What is it?”

  I shake my head but don’t answer.

  “Tell me,” she says. “What?”

  I keep shaking my head.

  “Silas, you know—”

  Suddenly, I reach for Zoey and hug her, and she hugs me back, and if ever there was a moment when I needed a hug, it is this moment right now. I start to cry, harder than I’ve cried in the longest time and harder than I’ve ever cried in front of Zoey. She keeps hugging me and doesn’t let go until I finally do.

  “Wow,” I say, wiping my eyes with my palms again. “That’s the first time … that’s the first time I’ve ever said it out loud … to anyone.”

  Zoey’s double-dimple grinning, and if ever there was a moment I needed Zoey to be double-dimple grinning, it is this moment right now.

  “I’m still shaking.” I hold out my trembling hands.

  “I see that.”

  “You have no idea…” I don’t finish the sentence. Zoey’s double-dimple smile is no longer a double-dimple smile. It’s a not real Zoey smile again. “What?”

  “Nothing,” she says.

  “What?”

  She picks up her mic and touches my cheek.

  I push it away.

  She touches my other cheek with it.

  “No,” I say. “Stop.”

  “Why were you so worried to tell me?”

  “I just was.” I flip the hair off my face.

  “There he is.” Zoey points the mic. “There’s the floppy-haired Silas Wade we know and love.”

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “You knew I’d be fine with it,” she says. “How could you think I wouldn’t be?”

  “I don’t know … I … this is just between us. Okay, Zoey?”

  “Okay.”

  “I mean it. No one else.”

  “Of course. I know.”

  “Promise, Zoey?”

  “Promise, Silas.” She taps my leg with the mic. “I need some ice cream.”

  9

  CALLING, NOT TEXTING

  My phone buzzes.

  Zoey: Hey!

  Zoey: Just got home.

  Me: hey. give me a sec.

  “I’m out,” I say to Haley. I drop Croc and Ally onto the pad of stickers in her lap and slide off Semaj’s bed. “I need to talk to Zoey.”

  “You mean your girlfriend?” Haley giggles.

  “Zo, Zo.” Semaj laughs.

  I ignore them.

  I didn’t think Zoey was going to text me back, even though Zoey always texts me back. I knew that she had robotics until late and that she was probably going to dinner with Grace right after. But we hadn’t spoken since yesterday, and since I didn’t see her in school and since she didn’t respond to my texts after school, I started thinking I might not hear from her.

  “Hey, Swade,” Dad says as I walk into the kitchen.

  He and Mom are sitting across the table from one another. Dad’s eating a bowl of the chili Mom brought home from the coffee shop. Mom’s thumbing her phone.

  “I’ll be out front,” I say.

  “What?” Mom looks up.

  “I need to talk to Zoey.” I wave my phone and head for the door. “I’ll be on the steps.”

  “It’s dark,” Mom says. “Why can’t you—”

  “It’s fine, Erica,” Dad says.

  I’m out the door before Mom
responds, and a few seconds later, I’m on the front steps leading up to the walkway of our building calling Zoey.

  “Why are you calling me?” she answers.

  “Hey, Zoey,” I say.

  “Why are you calling?”

  “Because I—”

  “Haven’t you ever heard of FaceTime?”

  “I’m outside,” I say. “No Wi-Fi.”

  “Gil and Erica let you go outside by yourself?”

  “I know, right?” I smile. “I didn’t want anyone barging in on our conversation.”

  “Barge, barge, barge!” Zoey says. “So why didn’t you text?”

  “I didn’t want to text this conversation.”

  “Oh.”

  “You understand, right?”

  She pauses. “Uh-huh.”

  “So how was robotics?” I ask.

  “Our robot finally looks like a robot,” she says. “It’s so good.”

  “You’re going to kick some bot butt!”

  “I hope so.”

  “I know so.”

  I reach down and flick away a pebble caught between my toes. I’m wearing my favorite flip-flops, the black-and-white pair I got for my birthday, the same ones Malik has. We always put on our flip-flops after games and practices. Malik has the hairiest toes, and for the last few weeks, his right big toenail has been all black and blue and yellow because he jammed it doing a backflip.

  “It’s so weird,” I say. “Now that I’ve told you, I feel so much lighter. More bouncy.”

  “You more bouncy?” Zoey laughs. “Impossible!”

  “I know!” I laugh, too. “But I do. I feel lighter and looser. It’s like I was holding my breath for all this time but didn’t realize it.”

  “Dolores says hey.”

  “She’s there?” I say. “Zoey, I don’t—”

  “Relax. She just walked in.”

  “I can’t relax. Where are you?”

  “The kitchen. Eating ice cream.”

  “Sea salt caramel?”

  Zoey laughs again. “I finished the sea salt caramel as soon as you left,” she says. “Strawberry cheesecake.”

  Suddenly, it’s yesterday afternoon, and I’m back at Zoey’s kitchen table, and we’re eating sea salt caramel ice cream, and she’s asking me questions. She wants to know when I first knew, and I tell her I always knew I was different. When she asks what I mean by different, I try to explain but can’t. I tell her I only started figuring out what different was last year, and when she asks me how I started figuring it out, we say “YouTube” at the same time.

  I tell her all about the videos I’ve been watching of kids sharing their coming-out stories, and how the videos have helped me so much because the kids in the videos are saying what I’m thinking and are feeling the same things I’m feeling, the exact same things. I tell her there are other kids out there just like me, lots of other kids out there just like me.

  “Can I ask you something?” Zoey says.

  “Sure,” I say.

  “How do you know?”

  “You asked me yesterday,” I say. “I told you.”

  “I know, but are you sure?”

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “Of course I believe you.”

  I rub my eye with my palm. “It’s not the kind of thing I’d make up, Zoey.”

  “I know.”

  “Please believe me.”

  “I do.”

  I let out a breath. “You think I’m overreacting.”

  “I know you’re not.”

  “I’m not overreacting. I don’t want kids to find out.”

  “No one’s going to find out, Silas.”

  I wipe both eyes with my palm. This is why I wasn’t sure Zoey was going to text me. Something felt weird yesterday between us. I know it’s not every day you tell your best friend you’re gay, so things probably should feel weird, but this was something more. I know Zoey. I’m not imagining it. I know she said she was fine with it—and she said that a bunch of times—but I know at least a part of her didn’t know what to do with what I was telling her.

  “Can I tell you something else?” I say.

  “Of course.”

  “Do you know what Dear Teen Me letters are?”

  “No.”

  “It’s when grown-ups write letters to their younger selves and give advice and stuff,” I say. “Some of the kids talk about them in their videos, so I started reading them. And once I did, I couldn’t stop, because some of them felt like they were written to me.”

  “Cool,” she says.

  “That’s when I started promising myself I was going to do something about this, that when I started middle school, I was going to tell someone. But every time I started to or wanted to, I couldn’t get myself to do it, because once you do, you can never go back. There are no backsies and—”

  “Backsies, backsies, backsies.” Zoey laughs.

  I breathe. “I couldn’t get myself to do it, and when—”

  The door to the building flies open, and Ms. Perkins and Rex, our upstairs neighbor and her chocolate Labrador retriever, come rushing out.

  “Someone’s gotta go!” Ms. Perkins says as Rex pulls her down the front walk. “Coming through, coming through.”

  I slide across the step out of their way.

  “Thank you, Silas. Thank you, Silas.”

  “No problem.” I wave.

  They charge past and head for the first tree at the end of the walk, the one with the small PLEASE DON’T PEE ON ME sign nailed to it.

  Ms. Perkins looks back and shrugs. “When you gotta go, you gotta go.”

  “What was that?” Zoey asks.

  “My neighbor and her dog,” I say. I take another breath. “So when Ms. Washington gave us the assignment, that was it. I was done making excuses. That’s why I did my presentation on Glenn Burke.”

  “But you didn’t say anything about him being gay.”

  “I did my presentation on a gay guy, Zoey. A gay baseball player!”

  “No, you did your presentation on the guy who invented the high five,” she says. “Nobody knew he was gay.”

  “But kids could find out.”

  “Right.” Zoey laughs. “As soon as you finished, everyone ran off to research Glenn Burke.”

  “Not funny,” I say.

  “Connor and Nolan are having a Googling Glenn Burke party at this very moment. Half the sixth grade is there.” She laughs again. “You understand middle schoolers so well, Silas.”

  “I do.” I wipe my eyes again. “Getting up there in front of everyone like that was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. You have no idea.”

  “I know,” she says. “Listen, Silas, I really need—”

  “Can I tell you one more thing?” I ask.

  Zoey pauses. “Sure.”

  “You know how I told you I always felt different?” I say. “Well, I feel even more different now. I really feel like one of the queer kids in those videos.”

  “Queer?” Zoey laughs.

  I don’t laugh. “Yeah, queer,” I say. “That’s the word a lot of the kids in the videos use to describe themselves.”

  “But you say the word gay. That’s the first time you’ve ever used that word.”

  “Queer means you’re not straight.”

  “Queer, queer, queer.”

  I close my eyes. I’m not imagining it. Zoey doesn’t know what to do with everything I’m telling her. I know it’s weird for her. It has to be. How can it not be? It’s weird for me, differently weird.

  “Listen, Silas,” Zoey says. “I really do need to finish my math homework.”

  “Yeah, I need to head back inside,” I say. “You promise you won’t say anything to anyone?”

  “You know I won’t.”

  “I know, but promise me again.”

  “Promise.”

  10

  LIGHTER AND LOOSER

  “Start us off, Silas,” Webb says, swinging his arms and clapping from the third-base c
oach’s box. “Show them how we do, Number Three.”

  I’m so amped up stepping to the plate right now that it feels like my feet are coming out of my cleats. I’m always pumped before the first pitch of a game, especially when I’m batting leadoff and especially when it’s the first game of a doubleheader. But it’s never felt like this. I’m feeling lighter and looser.

  I go through my batter’s box routine—brushing the number three on my sleeve, adjusting my left wristband, fixing my helmet, tugging the bottom of my jersey, rotating the bat twice, tapping the plate—outside corner, then inside corner to make sure my distance is correct—three half swings, and then bouncing the bat off my shoulder and bringing it about my head. And the whole time I’m going through my routine, I’m smiling at the Thunder’s pitcher. I’m never smiling like this, and I can see that he has no idea what to make of it.

  The pitcher’s a lefty, and I love facing lefties because I see the ball so much better leaving a lefty’s hand. It’s not that I don’t see the ball well leaving a righty pitcher’s hand, but when it comes to lefty pitchers, I own them.

  I know Thunder Pitcher’s starting me off with a fastball. He likes to start every batter with a fastball. I faced him once last year, and I also watched him throw an inning a couple of weeks ago before our games against the Fury. He thinks he can blow everyone away, but he can’t blow me away. If his first-pitch fastball is where I want it—low and over the outside corner of the plate—I’m swinging hard, making contact, and driving the ball.

  “Renegades are ready,” Webb says. “Renegades are ready.”

  I’m laser-locked, focused on the ball in Thunder Pitcher’s left hand as he winds up and delivers the pitch … right where I want it.

  I swing harder and faster than I ever have. When my bat meets ball, the ball takes off like a missile toward right field, and I take off for first like a Thoroughbred exploding from the starting gate. As I race down the line, I watch the right fielder run back and back and back as the ball keeps going farther and farther and farther than I’ve ever hit a ball.

  I’ve never led off a game with an over-the-fence home run, and I’ve never hit an opposite-field, over-the-fence home run … until now.

  “Pow!” I spring off first base. “Pow, pow!”