Date: Thu, 02 Jan 2003 22:09:56 -0600 From: Karla Schulz Subject: Carrots and Celery Chapter Four Hi everyone! I'm back (you were gone?) And I'd first of all just like to apologize to all you great people out there who've sent me e-mails I haven't been able to respond to yet. See, here's my excuse, I boarded the grey hound bus on sunday believing I was destined for a place with the internet. I was wrong. Therefore, I was unable to send any e-mail. Or check it for that matter. But I want you all to know that I honestly treasure every single e-mail I get and that coming home to all your e-mails was a great late or possibly Ukrainian Christmas present. I'm posting chapter four now, in hopes that you'll all forgive me for being so late with my responces (cause I will be replying to all your e-mails, very soon I hope) if you have a chapter to read while you're waiting. I'll probably post five very shortly after four, so I hope you enjoy them. Thanks as always go to Nick, whose dilligence has now got some of you convinced I know about proper grammer and structure! Ha! Happy New Year! "Uh..." So I'm a wimp. Like you didn't already know that from the 10 plus years it took me to get around to telling Celery my feelings. He sits back down, looking like he's trying NOT to look defeated. "Cherrie, it's Celery. Celery is my boyfriend. And he's just about the most incredible person in the entire world. I love him very much. Feel free to tell as many of your gossip connections as you like about this," and then, for the sake of being dramatic, I hang up. I can look at him then. His face is expressionless in shock. I walk over and kneel down fitting myself in between his knees. "The adjustment process is starting to kick in," I kiss him hard. "I'm not there completely, but I'll do anything for you, so this wasn't very much. But now can you please banish Cherrie from your realm of worry forever? She's not a threat and never has been. I'd really like it if we could both put her behind us," "Consider it done." Well of course I panic that night once he's gone. I mean, come on! Panicking is what I do best! But Kyle, who apparently and quite mysteriously seems to know everything, comes into my room and gives me a pep talk which surprisingly enough (surprising considering it was sarcastic, not at all gentle and filled with stuff like 'stop being such an idiot'; so basically classic Kyle) makes me feel a lot better. My money's on it comforting me cause that's the way Kyle always treats me. By now, you should be familiar with my love of routine. Besides, it's not like I don't know he doesn't mean it the way it sounds, that's like 'his way'. He does it partly for my benefit anyway, just cause he knows about my routine fetish. He understands that about me, plus we share an unease about expressing feelings in the normal way. I pretty much get my sarcasm and jokes instead of real feelings from Kyle. Who knows where he got it from. Both my parents are freakish about sharing feelings. Maybe it skips a generation like well, all those diseases that skip a generation. What do you think I am? A doctor? But getting back to my original point. It's also a kind of older brother thing. Sigh. What's an older brother thing? Man, read like TWO sentences back, and figure it out for yourself. Give me a break. And he did give me what could have been interpreted as a loving pat on the back as he left, so it's cool. Celery shows up half way through my breakfast once again, surprising me less and I'm able to greet him properly. "Good morning," I say once we've unglued our lips. Kyle groans a little, but smiles faintly at the same time. "I protest," He says cheerfully. "It's the principal of the thing right?" He nods. "Exactly." Where's everyone else you say? This is something I've explained already isn't it? Haven't you been listening? Crazy parents that like the morning and have to go to work at insane hours, keener twins who go to school early and a little sister who has rocketed into teen-hood early and refuses to rise from her bed any earlier than 10 minutes before she needs to leave. Damn. You were right. I hadn't explained that. Well, not all of it anyway. Sorry. Really. I'm sorry. I mean that sincerely. "Are you hungry today?" I ask him, hoping to see the grin that will tell me the thing yesterday at breakfast is ancient someday-we'll-look-back-on-this-and-laugh history. I do. "No, I'm here for the same reason I was yesterday." "That's okay too," We kiss again. "Ga!" Kyle says covering his eyes and shuddering. "Do you realize what I'm going to do to you if you ever bring a girlfriend home now because of this?" I ask, shaking my head. He nods. "Absolutely," I stroke my chin thoughtfully a few times. "Of course, that'll probably never HAPPEN, so really, why worry?" Celery laughs, but mostly to show his support not cause it was all that funny. Isn't he cute to do something like that? And aren't I lucky? The correct answer here is DAMN RIGHT. "I love you," I tell him. He grins. "You better, I'm the best thing that ever happened to you," "You really are you know," I say seriously. "Right back at ya slick," He says sweetly. Kyle buries his head under his arms face down to the table, uttering 'why me?' over and over. No doubt about it, I love the guy. "Let's rock dude, before Kyle makes himself hoarse," We're rounding the corner of the last block before we reach school when I ask him, "So you know people are going to be talking right?" He shrugs. "If they aren't, I may just fall down from the shock. It's cool with me Care, like, screw them if they don't like it. We've been putting up with flack for years anyway, the only difference now is that we're admitting the rumours are true. Our true friends will stick by us regardless," He puts his arm around me, "Anyway, I already have what I need. I said I don't really care about anyone else, and I don't. If anyone chooses to drop me cause I love you, then they weren't even worth knowing. Okay?" "Yeah, okay. And I mean, I feel the same. It's just..." "Saying it isn't as hard as living it?" I smile and roll my eyes. "You know me too well man," "I love you, I've been paying attention," "Smooth operator," "I haven't said a thing I haven't meant," I grin up at him. "I know, that's what makes it so special," Before I know what's happening, he's kissing me. On the street! Like 25 meters away from school, and there are people EVERYWHERE!!! It's no gentle closed lipped kiss either. There's some serious tongue action going on here. I'm surprised people aren't hooting. I jerk my head away and take a few wobbly steps back. "Hey! Whoa, what do you think you were doing there?" I stammer boggling my head at him. "Kissing my boyfriend," Like this makes perfect sense and doesn't require further explanation or discussion. He's not self confident like me, EH Kyle? Oh yeah. That's true. Uh-huh. Sure. "Here?" "Here, wherever," he grins for a moment longer but then sighs, and is beginning to look less sure of himself. "But not if you don't want me too. I shouldn't have done that. I should have like asked or something, I, um, I'm," Oh terrific. He's starting to babble. Pretty soon he won't even be making real words anymore, just sad pathetic little sounds. And it's all my stupid ass fault. "No, hey, it's okay," I say trying to stem the flow. "Really. I shouldn't have reacted like that. There was absolutely no reason you shouldn't have done that. I said you should never feel like you couldn't kiss me when you wanted to and I meant it. I don't want us to do that anymore, we've had enough years of it. It's time for something new. And we're out at school now pretty much anyway, so... don't worry about it. Sorry for reacting so badly?" "Since we're both sorry and we've forgiven each other, can I kiss you again?" I laugh. You would too if you saw the cute little look on his face. You should see how big he can get those beautiful eyes, how much those sexy lips can fill out into a pout. "Yeah, you better," His second kiss is no more reserved than the first, but I throw my tongue more into the ring this time. "We have to go to school," I murmur into his mouth. "Yeah," He says, giving me a final kiss. "We should try and find the guys before they hear it from someone else don't you think?" "Which guys?" "Well, you can talk to whoever you think you need to, and there are some others I want to see, but I was thinking we could tell Alex, Brian and Jonas together?" He ruffles my hair. "From now on Care, we do everything together," Once I get over the sweetness of what he's said I reply haughtily, "And that's different from before... HOW?" He rolls his eyes. "Yeah, you're funny," "Wow! Sarcasm, I'm impressed," He shoves me gently, but I propel myself in slow motion until I careen into the wall of the school, rebounding and hitting it again, settling with a 'oomph!' against it. Celery drags me away by my back collar assuring me that I'm still not funny. To my great surprise and delight, when we go looking for them, we find Jonas, Alex and Brian all sitting together in the cafeteria having coffee. The school provides a breakfast program and like everyone has at least coffee or tea or something. It's kind of dumb, since we don't really have too many poor kids at our school and the funding should probably be used for some inner city school or something, but that's politics for you. And don't let the self righteous act fool you, I have stuff there myself sometimes. I'm just not usually much of an early bird. "Hey guys," I say. Alex says 'hi', Brian says 'yo' and Jonas just grins. We sit down. "We have something to tell you guys," Leave it to Celery to cut right to the chase. They turn their full attention to us, looking interested. "If you have a problem with it, then that sucks and stay the hell away from us, but we're gay," Their expressions don't change much. "When?" Jonas asks seeming interested in a weird way. Like, it's not so much he seems surprised as... I don't know, like he's fact checking. It's hard to explain. One of those 'you had to there' things I guess. "Uh, we've kind of always been gay," Jonas shrugs, almost impatiently. "Well yeah, I mean when did you two get together, like, you ARE together right?" Celery nods. I'm pretty much giving him this one. "So, since when?" Brian asks. "Saturday night," Jonas grins and rubs his hands together. "Yes! Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line," One of my favourite things about Jonas is that he loves 'The Princess Bride' almost as much and Celery and I do. I don't really understand his use of that quote here though. "Huh?" I ask. Alex smiles shyly. "Well don't be mad but we made a bet about when you guys would figure it out," "You KNEW?" Eventually, you'd think this would stop surprising me. Hasn't happened yet. His smile gets even more embarrassed. "No offence or anything, but you guys are pretty obvious about it. Like, anyone who pays attention and has a mind open enough to accept that kind of thing can see you're totally in love," "We are of course one hundred and ten percent behind y'all," Brian says quickly. "Yeah!" Alex adds almost right on top of Brian. "It doesn't matter at all. We're happy you've got it out in the open with each other though," The other two nod. "Oh and we will be teasing you," Jonas is quick to put in. "That's fine," I say with a chuckle. "We figured it wouldn't be a big deal, but you can never be completely sure about this kind of thing," I finish, speaking for only the second time. "You coming out at school?" Alex asks. "We already have sort of," I say and explain about Cherrie. They all wrinkle their noses. "Ew, super bitch. That's not cool," Jonas says with a grimace. "Yeah, but now that I've set her straight hopefully she'll stop stalking me," They all stare at me for a second, Celery not included, and then start laughing hysterically. "What?" Jonas is half choking on the coffee he was drinking a second before the laugh fest began, but in a few seconds he's able to put together a coherent sentence, "Dude, if you think that a little thing like that fact that you 'THINK' you're gay is going to change ANYTHING for a girl like Cherrie, you're seriously deluded." "What do you mean? She knows I'm gay, that means I like GUYS, how could she think she'd still have a chance?" I am at this point still assuming he's shitting me. "Man, girls like that don't care about such minor details. She thinks she can have whoever she wants, and you better believe that includes gay guys. She's under the impression that no man alive can resist her feminine charms. If anything, the fact that you're gay is just going to encourage her. Like, why was she even after you in the first place? My guess is because you so obviously don't dig her so that made you a challenge." I have to ignore Jonas for a second to tend to Celery, who's looking a little unwell. "Don't worry about her Cel, I think you know she means nothing to me but we're not going to let her make trouble either. I don't care what she does, what kind of shit she pulls, it doesn't matter. Only you do, okay?" For that moment, when he smiles, it's like none of the guys, or anyone else in the entire cafeteria for that matter, are even there. It's just us. "I'd love to whistle, but I'm afraid Celery would beat my ass," Jonas quips. He broke the moment but that's okay. "Anyway," he continues, "Cherrie might not be your only problem, like sorry to rain on your parade and shit, but Cel, isn't that chick Meghan hot for your totally unattainable bod?" Celery's sad pathetic look returns. "Yeah," "Damn, she's even worse!" I look at Jonas with a 'you're not helping' glare. He smiles sheepishly and shrugs, palms up, to me. "She doesn't matter either," I say running my finger along his jaw so he'll turn and look at me. He smiles again, a little less confidently this time, but it's something. "Shit, I've gotta go, detention," Alex blurts out of no where, grabbing his books, the remainder of his coffee and speedily getting up. "I'll talk to you guys later," Alex is nice. I don't really know much about him, but he's cool. I didn't figure him for the before school detention type though. Who was the smart person who said you learn something new everyday? I want to shake their hand. Brian's getting up too. "I've gotta go too, Mrs. Lynch said she was going to go over my last Chemistry test with me and if I can figure some of it out she'll give me a 50R," Do I have to explain what a 50R is? You've got to be kidding me. Okay, I did bite your head off by mistake about the breakfast thing, so I'll give you this one. It means 50 RAISE. As in you fail but the teacher bumps your mark up to a 50 so you pass. Now don't we all feel better? "What about you Jonas, you have somewhere to run off to too?" He shrugs. "I can take a hint if you want to be alone," "Oh no! Like stay, that was just one of my not-so-funny jokes," I explain with a 'alright so I'm a lame dope' smile. "I have news Carrots," Celery says sadly, "all of your jokes are of the not-so-funny variety," this time I just flip off his hat and let it land on the ground. He twists around behind his chair, picks the hat up, and then gets up himself and thrusts his hat in my direction like it's a sword, "Hallo, my name is Celery Schnider, you knocked my hat off, prepare to die!" Oh man, SERIOUSLY. Rent 'The Princess Bride' already. It'll makes things a lot easier on all of us. "Sit down you lunatic," I say disapprovingly with a grin. He doesn't. "Stupid me I sort of forgot there's somewhere I need to be right now too," "Where," He smiles. "The weight room," I groan. I forgot he has a spare first period today. That always means he works out. "That's me too then isn't it?" He nods. "I can't work out without my spotter," I snort. "Of course not. Some giant weight might fall on you and if I wasn't there to scream like a little girl until someone finally heard me and called for help, you could be seriously hurt," Jonas laughs. "I'm incredibly buff, I think I'll come along and wait in the wings in case someone needs to save the day," If anything he's smaller than me really, way smaller actually, never mind that 'if anything' business, but Celery and I welcome his company just the same. He's a funny guy. Jonas does come with us to the weight room but after about 5 minutes me and Celery start acting like the 'pump you up!' guys from the early 90's SNL (which is way better than the current stuff by the way) and I guess he found us kind of annoying or something cause Jonas leaves not long after that. I feel kind of bad about it but I can't exactly say I miss him. I do like Jonas, but Celery and I just get caught up in our own thing you know? In each other. It's just something that happens with us. It's like I already said, we have our different worlds, and then there's the 'real' world with everyone in it too I guess where we all co-exist, but most of the time we chill in the world we create together that's only for the two of us. Cherrie corners me for the second time this week as I'm walking out of my second period class. She hasn't lost the determined gleam in her eye. Shit. "Cherrie," I say evenly. "I didn't tell anyone about what you said on the phone yesterday," so that's why no one was paying any extra attention. So much for the 'everyone's just tolerant these days' dream. "Because I'm sure you didn't mean it. It was a joke right?" I take a step back in case she has any ideas about touching me again. "No, Cherrie, it was NOT a joke! I'm dating Celery, he's my boyfriend." I say emphatically. She laughs. "You have such a great sense of humour, that's one of the things I've always liked about you," "You're not listening to me, pay close attention to my words and the sound of my voice: I AM GAY." I said it loud enough that a few people turn and look. Cherrie's mask disappears for a second and her face turns panicky and mean. She grabs me by the arms and starts marching me down the hall. Apparently she's not big on being embarrassed in a hallway filled with her classmates. Finally. Something in common. I feel so close to her right now. "You shouldn't say stuff like that! Not everyone will know you're joking," "I'm not!" I yell ripping my arm away. She quickly concocts a tender look of concern, as fake as any smile. "You poor dear. Whatever made you think you had to be gay? You're very attractive, lots of girls would go for you," Celery damnit, where are you when I need you? I'm dealing with Crazy girl here! I need reinforcements! "That doesn't matter, I wouldn't go for them. I didn't choose to be gay or decide to settle for being gay since I couldn't get girls, I don't WANT girls. I want boys, well, one boy in particular actually. CELERY, you know, he's the guy I'm in love with," She shakes her head. "That's just crazy talk. For one thing, boys can't fall in love. For another, you're not gay. You just think you are," "GRAAA!" I shout clenching my fists, startling Cherrie in the process. Finally. Some results. "Leave me alone," I growl, and take advantage of her temporary paralysis to flee the scene. I run into Celery mid flee and I practically hurl myself into his arms. Taken aback, he laughs asking, "what's with you?" "Cherrie," I pant. "She's like totally insane." "Yeah I know," he says removing one arm but leaving the other around my shoulders. This is one of our classic poses, his arm draped over my shoulders and mine around his waist. It's pretty much a semi-constant when we're talking or standing. Maybe you've noticed that by now. You have? Good job. You get a gold star. "How's the Meghan front looking?" "All clear so far, I think she's sick or something. I haven't seen her all day." "Lucky," "For both of us. When she comes back, they'll probably team up," We shudder. "But they're no match for us, right?" I say boldly, confidence about 80% genuine. "Right," Celery says sounding about the same. "Fuck them," I say. He smiles. "Damn right, fuck the world!" 'Fuck the World,' if you want to know, and even if you don't, too bad you get to learn, is a Queers song. It's really awesome too. Who are the Queers? Sigh. I'd love to get mad at you, but like hardly anyone knows who they are. Have you heard of the Ramones at least? No? That's pretty sad. Anyway, the Ramones are one of the parents of the punk movement, and the Queers are another punk band, they started way later, but their sound is totally influenced by the Ramones. There's a little history lesson for you. There will be a pop quiz later today. More gold stars for everyone who gets the answers right. By lunch, it's clear the rumour mill has finally gotten ahold of the news. We get looks of all kinds, curious, disgusted, surprised, disgusted, pleased, disgusted... Mostly the public is kind to us though. There are comments - well of COURSE there are - but they're pretty tame and no one tries to fight us or anything. Not like I really expected them to, considering what a brick wall Celery can be. He's really ISN'T that huge, he's just super strong. And I guess height wise, the guy's practically a giant. Well, if you consider 6 ft 4 a giant anyway. I'm tall too, (extra special glittery gold stars for everyone who remembered that!) but only like 5 ft 10. Around Celery I feel short. We sit with Jonas, Alex, and Brian like always, and lunch actually passes normally. As does, to my great surprise, the rest of the day. We continue to get the staring treatment, a few people come up to us and ask if it's true, and predictably there's a hallway confrontation with Brendan, but that's hardly new. Before I know it another wonderful day of mandatory education is complete and I'm rifling through my locker with Celery beside me. "What do we have today?" I'm referring of course to the homework situation. "I have history questions you're going to help me with and you weren't really getting that new concept in Pre Calc," I still can't believe I let him talk me into that class, "but other than that nothing, unless you got homework in Bio or World Issues." He takes Physics when I have Bio and when I'm in World Issues he's in Calculus. I told you he was a freak about math. That wasn't one of those times I was being sarcastic. "No, I'm cool," "You'd like to think that wouldn't you," "Oh ha ha. Very funny." "You don't appreciate me anymore," he whines happily. "There's nothing to appreciate dumkopf," "Dumkopf?" "Yeah," he throws his arm over my shoulders and laughs. "Whatever you say Carrots,"