PANTHERS

chapter one

THE WARM GLOW of the afternoon sun on the outdoor dining pavilion captures his jaw and brings out the warmth in his brown hair. He wears the same thing as me, which is a Green Valley High Track Jersey, but where it hangs off my lean frame loosely, it hugs his muscles tight.

Ben Holloway is the golden boy of our senior class of '98, as well as the current front-runner in the votes to win Prom King in June, which is only a week away. It's impressive, to say the least, how many people genuinely adore him. I would say the opposite about myself. He has a natural charm and charisma that seems effortless to him. People gravitate towards him.

Ben forks the rice on his lunch tray and takes a bite while listening in to a conversation between two others at our table. Until now, I've been tuning out, focusing on admiring his beauty, but I decide to snap out of my daze before I get noticed.

"Do you know Coach Nicholson tried to do a backflip yesterday?" Says one of the sophomores who I can't remember the name of. It takes me a minute to realize he's speaking to Ben now instead of whoever he was speaking to before.

"No way! Did he nail it?" Ben asks, with giddy excitement in his eyes, his lips pulling back into a smile right out of an Abercrombie ad campaign.

The sophomore kid laughs. "Not even close, dude. He looked like a walrus trying to do gymnastics. I got second hand embarassment."

Everyone at the table erupts into laughter. I don't, but I force an amused grin anyway so that I can fit in with everyone else.

Today, the entire track team sits together during lunch. Usually, some are spread out with their respective friends and cliques, but today is different. Today is our championship meet, and for us seniors, the final meet of our high school careers. Everyone is wearing their jerseys, which are navy blue with gold emboldened letters across the chest, as well as the head of our school mascot, a panther, plastered beneath the words, mid-roar.

Though the air is full of anticipation, I am plagued with an inescapable and unexplainable feeling of dread that has settled in the pit of my stomach since I woke up this morning, that I carried through breakfast, first, second, and third period, and that I carry now. I've chalked it up to the uncomfortable nature of final goodbyes. In the fall, I'll be across the country at Berkeley, thousands of miles away from my hometown.

The conversation continues around me, and as I'm about to go back to losing myself in the sight of Ben's olive complexion in this lighting, someone from behind comes and takes a seat beside me.

From the smell of her expensive perfume I already know it's my best friend Andrea. Andrea and I have been close since my family moved to Green Valley in my freshman year. She and I have spent countless nights at either her house or mine watching reruns of our favorite show, 90210, while I usually listen to her vent about her hectic and complicated love life, and then she listens to me vent about my lack thereof.

Andrea is also the only person who knows I'm gay. It was hard to hide it from her. She told me the way she knew was because her Uncle Jim has a "roommate" that her and her siblings also call Uncle. I guess as she got older she was able to put two and two together and that's how she clocked me. Impressive gaydar.

I remember trying to hide it from her when we first met. It's not exactly something react well to finding out— I'm still worried about what my parents will think of me if and when I tell them. Andrea would probe me, asking me if I thought a girl was cute every time I had a minor interaction with one. She didn't care for my response, she wanted my reaction. I always stuttered and when I lie, as she'd figured out, so when I struggled to say "Yes," was when she figured it out for herself.

She asked me about it one night during yet another 90210 rerun marathon. It was out of the blue. She and I were sharing a big white bowl of popcorn and I remember feeling my face flush with heat. I hoped she didn't notice how red I'd gotten, but she did.