CHAPTER 18: A BRO SHALT NOT USE THE L WORD-2

"I," Austin started, "ugh, this is hard." "Can't be as bad as when Jenny Martin dumped trash all over my car after we stuffed crickets in her locker, and you had to break the news to me." "Worse," he said, "I went too far with Eliza. In, like, the bad way." "Too far, like . . ." blood rushed to my ears, drowning out the humming from the fridge. I had to focus to hear him. "No. Not all the way." "In her pants, though?" "Yeah." Words clumped in my throat, unable to escape. This was starting to sound familiar. "Remember that party they had two years ago? The one that the cops came to and Ms. O'Connor had to call all her favors in so Carter wouldn't get in trouble?" I nodded. "It was during that. Jamal brought tequila. Eliza only took one shot, so I thought she was okay, but all of a sudden she wasn't. She must've drunk something before that too." The ceiling fan seemed to pulse, as lightheadedness came over me. I nodded. "Right," said Austin. "Jamal told that dumb story about that one time at band camp, you know about the . . ." he made a crude gesture. "Then I joked about being a little dry down there myself, we'd never done anything like that before, and someone suggested she do something about my situation, and we went up to her room." "That was two years ago? She was a freshman." "I know." "Geez." "Carter found us up there. Eliza was in tears from doing something she didn't really want to do, and to this day I don't know why I didn't stop. Carter swears she doesn't remember it, but we couldn't come back from that." Oh, she remembered it all right. "And Carter didn't kill you?" Austin shook his head. "No. That was the night of Sarah Rosen." "So?" "So," Austin said, "he was dealing with his own crying girl." "Oh, damn." Carter must have done exactly the same thing. Dizzy nausea threatened my every breath. My hands and feet felt hot, like an invisible fire fed off my extremities. "Where was I during all of this?" I asked. "No idea." The blood pounding in my mind grew louder, taking over my thoughts. "Why didn't anyone ever tell me? We've made fun of Sarah so many times, neither of you ever said it wasn't—" I stopped. What she wanted. We both knew the answer. Carter. It was something Carter would never talk about. And now I knew why. "I cannot believe Carter forgave you for that," I said. "That's what the Bro Code is," he said. "And that night fell under it. We had to stick together on this. No matter the circumstances." Bros before hoes. "This is fucked-up." "I know," he said. "Like, some guy made a sexist mandate because he was scared of ending up alone." "Blasphemy from Austin Banks? Never thought I'd hear anyone say that about the Bro Code, especially not you." "I literally got that from your AP psych outline." "What?" "Yeah, dude. When you had to take notes on whether Freud was legit or lonely. And how he didn't think being gay was normal because really he could've been struggling with being gay himself. All he actually had to do was accept himself and he would have been a lot nicer to the gays. Did you really forget that?" Of course he had to bring freaking Freud into it. "Look out, world," I said, "Austin Banks has learned something." He tapped the side of his head. "All in here." Wait. If Austin made that connection about Freud . . . and Austin basically makes infinite gay jokes, does that mean . . . ? Austin sipped his root beer while I digested our conversation. I gave a low whistle, shocked, my mind reeling to ask him. I didn't. He probably wasn't gay. It was just something he'd learned. Right? There were two kids at North Cassidy who had come out as being bisexual, and another two who'd come out as LGB . . . letters. Yeah, it's 2020 and I need to know the letters. I'll get there, okay? Here's why I've done a stupid job learning the letters and whatever so far: North Cassidy was 90 percent white, 8 percent Asian, and the last 2 percent anything else. The town liked to make up for that by having a "diversity day" at school every year, which was always awkward because, for that one day, everyone sucked up to the three black kids at our school, one of whom was Jamal. Shoot, I mean African American. I'll get there too. Diversity Day crammed an entire population's history into half-hour presentations about political correctness. And when you skip the presentations to go hook up with Madison Hayes in the student parking lot, well. Diversity Day obviously failed me. That, and I personally never needed to know the terms because I don't wake up every day having to get dressed with any other label than "white, straight, male." Neither do my friends. And neither do the majority of my classmates.