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Margins

Matt Koch

    “Everyone’s a little gay,” I scribbled toward the edge of my notebook paper beside world history notes. I was about to flip the page when the meaty hand of Bobby Masterson snatched the sheet straight out of my notepad.
    “Look,” he whispered, while passing the page to Daniel Richtfield. “Big Nose is admitting he’s gay!”
    “I told you!” said a snickering Daniel as he began circulating the torn paper around the room.
    Ms. Levine flashed her bespectacled eyes at our bustling corner of the classroom just in time to see me pop Bobby on the shoulder.
    This wasn’t my first visit to the principal’s office, but every other instance had been for cutting class after lunch—and once for writing a dirty limerick in English class. I slumped back into the enormity of the bonded leather chair and breathed in an amalgam of lavender and mildly acetic hand sanitizer that permeated Dr. Davidson’s sacred little space. For a minute or two he delicately fingered a ghost orchid that peeked in mocking repose over the rim of a Waterford crystal vase. Then, sighing, he hoisted the glass as if he were going to offer a toast and then clanked it down on a remote corner of his desk.
    “I do understand that those boys have been picking on you for some time,” said Principal Davidson. “So, I can’t really blame you too much for standing up for yourself. Unfortunately, this school does have a zero tolerance policy toward physical violence. Sam, I uh—” He rubbed together his recently manicured mocha fingers. “I’m afraid I have to place you in ISS for the rest of the week.” He returned to his shrugging orchid.

    Years later—after college, after moving north to a rust belt mining town, after a broken engagement to a part-time wedding planner, and after receiving an early morning text with the words “car crash” and “Bobby Masterson”—I thought back to high school. There was Samantha Higgins, who shaved her head sophomore year after dumping her final boyfriend. And what about Thomas White, who sported leather pants and shopped at the Coach store in the mall with Stacy Sanders and Amanda Cummings? Bobby and Daniel never picked on either of them, while I was shunned for a week in gym after praisingBrokeback Mountain. It’s funny, I thought, as I stared out of my midrise apartment window at the yellowing grass of the courtyard, how fast we all fled after high school. One season crushed another and colored the earth with erasable markers. Meanwhile, the washed pallor of the violet wisteria vines continued its menacing climb up the lattice next to the brick wall that led toward my open window. There I perched atop a tufted emerald side chair—forever crunching on the polystyrene barrel of the Bic tucked snuggly within my cheek and peering lecherously at the blank remaining space off to the side of a crowded sheet of paper.



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