Read Online Sometimes Never, Sometimes Always by Elissa Janine Hoole - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Elissa Janine Hoole
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chest and binds my throat, my mouth and nose, until I have to labor to breathe. It’s not God, and it’s not the Spirit, smothering me with vengeance. It’s pity—pity and compassion for my mother. She and I may have our moments, but right now all I can think of is how she’s feeling as she watches her children careening off into the world, out of her reach. How it feels for her to be so powerless, and how comforting it must be to be able to hand it all to God in a prayer and trust that it will work out in the end.
Oh, Mom. It’s not going to work out the way you hope. And if I were a praying person, I’d ask God to give you the flexibility to bend under the new shape of things. Jesus, help my black-and-white, literal-minded mother to understand that righteousness is a rainbow of different shades of gray.
13. Describe your family …
Annika and Britney gossip the entire lunch period today about people I barely know, while I do exciting things like adjusting kerning and placing ads for community businesses in the margins of the sports section. I knew this newspaper was read by a lot of people, but I had no idea that there are companies all over town paying good money to get their little business-card-sized advertisements stuck in the side columns of The Gordon High Gazette . And somehow each and every one of those ads was created in a different program on a different platform, and for some inexplicable reason, they all look completely different on my computer screen from the way they look on the proof sheets the businesses send. This, apparently, is my (impossible) job—making the two match up.
So while Britney and Annika talk smack about the entire basketball team and more than half of the hockey team and discuss the sexual history of all the cheerleaders, I spend my lunch swearing and restarting and loading and reloading fonts. They hardly know I’m there.
Three things I did not know (or really need to know) about the jocks at my school:
1. Jack (“Off”) Fuller, the captain of the hockey team, allegedly got his nickname from an act performed in the presence of the entire hockey cheer squad. (And according to my sources, performed while the squad gave their own rousing performance of the cheer “Strike! Strike! Strike!” altered to “Stroke! Stroke! Stroke!”) Um, go Gordon Golden Gophers? So gross.
2. Felicity Forrest sat between twin senior forwards Cade and Connor Jacobsen on the basketball bus and is apparently equally talented with her right and left hands. So double gross.
3. That shadowy upper lip of Melissa Vigliotti, star athlete and top contender for valedictorian? Steroids , whispers Annika, not just Italian . So mean.
Okay, so this information seriously does not need to live in my brain. I feel dirty just knowing these details, like the knowledge of the used condom in my brother’s wastebasket. Ew. Take a trip from my conscious memory, please.
Hours later, and I’m still trying to banish these thoughts from my head. Down the hall, I can hear my mom nagging Dicey to finish her math homework and the sounds of Dad’s evening news filtering out from the den. I finish the dishes from tonight’s dinner, my fingers sweeping across the bottom of the sink, checking for stray silverware. Everyone’s home and getting ready for bed except for Eric, who’s still at the library with Gavin. The library, yeah right.
Eric, seriously. What was he thinking? And he wants to tell them—to tell everyone about Gavin and whatever. I don’t mind that Eric’s gay, but I wish we could skip the part where everyone finds out and gets shaken up and upset and … complicated. I hate that part. I wish sexual orientation could be something quiet and personal, not the kind of detail that compels perfect strangers to think about it or talk about it or have strong opinions about what my brother and his boyfriend might do when they’re alone.
There’s no question about the stance of the Joyful News Bible Church when
Oh, Mom. It’s not going to work out the way you hope. And if I were a praying person, I’d ask God to give you the flexibility to bend under the new shape of things. Jesus, help my black-and-white, literal-minded mother to understand that righteousness is a rainbow of different shades of gray.
13. Describe your family …
Annika and Britney gossip the entire lunch period today about people I barely know, while I do exciting things like adjusting kerning and placing ads for community businesses in the margins of the sports section. I knew this newspaper was read by a lot of people, but I had no idea that there are companies all over town paying good money to get their little business-card-sized advertisements stuck in the side columns of The Gordon High Gazette . And somehow each and every one of those ads was created in a different program on a different platform, and for some inexplicable reason, they all look completely different on my computer screen from the way they look on the proof sheets the businesses send. This, apparently, is my (impossible) job—making the two match up.
So while Britney and Annika talk smack about the entire basketball team and more than half of the hockey team and discuss the sexual history of all the cheerleaders, I spend my lunch swearing and restarting and loading and reloading fonts. They hardly know I’m there.
Three things I did not know (or really need to know) about the jocks at my school:
1. Jack (“Off”) Fuller, the captain of the hockey team, allegedly got his nickname from an act performed in the presence of the entire hockey cheer squad. (And according to my sources, performed while the squad gave their own rousing performance of the cheer “Strike! Strike! Strike!” altered to “Stroke! Stroke! Stroke!”) Um, go Gordon Golden Gophers? So gross.
2. Felicity Forrest sat between twin senior forwards Cade and Connor Jacobsen on the basketball bus and is apparently equally talented with her right and left hands. So double gross.
3. That shadowy upper lip of Melissa Vigliotti, star athlete and top contender for valedictorian? Steroids , whispers Annika, not just Italian . So mean.
Okay, so this information seriously does not need to live in my brain. I feel dirty just knowing these details, like the knowledge of the used condom in my brother’s wastebasket. Ew. Take a trip from my conscious memory, please.
Hours later, and I’m still trying to banish these thoughts from my head. Down the hall, I can hear my mom nagging Dicey to finish her math homework and the sounds of Dad’s evening news filtering out from the den. I finish the dishes from tonight’s dinner, my fingers sweeping across the bottom of the sink, checking for stray silverware. Everyone’s home and getting ready for bed except for Eric, who’s still at the library with Gavin. The library, yeah right.
Eric, seriously. What was he thinking? And he wants to tell them—to tell everyone about Gavin and whatever. I don’t mind that Eric’s gay, but I wish we could skip the part where everyone finds out and gets shaken up and upset and … complicated. I hate that part. I wish sexual orientation could be something quiet and personal, not the kind of detail that compels perfect strangers to think about it or talk about it or have strong opinions about what my brother and his boyfriend might do when they’re alone.
There’s no question about the stance of the Joyful News Bible Church when
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