SOULMATE(s) - 1. Everyone Already Knew

By the beginning of tenth grade, Nick Anderson no longer had to wonder who at Saint Gabriel’s High School knew he was gay.

Everyone knew.

Some students probably remembered exactly how they had found out. Others had only heard the story after it traveled through classrooms, lunch tables, group chats, and whispered conversations in the hallways. By now, most people likely carried the information around as one more fact attached to his name, no more remarkable than his short black hair, his green eyes, or the headphones he nearly always kept tangled in one pocket of his backpack.

To them, it might have become ordinary.

To Nick, it never had.

That knowledge followed him as he stood at the edge of the school courtyard on the first morning of September, watching students stream toward the front entrance. The late-summer heat had already settled over the pavement, thick enough that he could feel it rising through the soles of his shoes. Sunlight flashed across windshields as cars pulled into the drop-off lane, and voices overlapped everywhere—students shouting greetings, parents calling reminders through open windows, freshmen asking one another whether they were standing near the correct building even though there was only one main entrance.

Three months had passed since Nick had last stood there, but Saint Gabriel’s looked exactly the same.

The school was a broad, three-story building of dark red brick, with white stone framing the entrance and a cross mounted high above the double doors. The front steps were wide enough for several dozen students to gather without blocking the way, though the football players somehow always managed to claim the center of them. Beyond the eastern wing, Nick could see the upper posts of the football field rising above the trees.

Nothing about the building itself was threatening. There were no narrow windows, no iron gates, no walls designed to keep people inside.

Even so, Nick’s feet remained rooted to the pavement.

“You’re doing it again,” Leah said beside him.

Nick turned slightly. “Doing what?”

“Staring at the school like it personally offended you.”

“I’m not staring. I’m preparing myself.”

“For what?”

“To go inside.”

Leah Croft folded her arms and studied him with the exaggerated seriousness she usually reserved for arguments she had already decided to win. Her long ginger hair was tied into a loose ponytail, though several strands had escaped and curled around her cheeks in the humidity. She was wearing a denim jacket despite the heat, the strap of her backpack decorated with three new enamel pins Nick had not seen before.

“We’re going to class,” she said. “We’re not storming an enemy fortress.”

Nick looked back at the entrance. “I’m not convinced there’s much difference.”

A quiet laugh came from his other side.

Will Henderson adjusted the strap of the battered guitar case hanging over his shoulder. He was stockier than the rest of them, with short brown hair that he had tried and failed to make stay flat that morning. The guitar had been brought at the request of the school’s music teacher, who had asked him to help organize the instruments before second period. Will had complained about the inconvenience for most of breakfast, but Nick knew he had arrived nearly forty minutes early because he was secretly pleased to have been asked.

“Technically,” Will said, “fortresses probably have fewer standardized tests.”

“Thank you,” Nick replied. “At least someone understands.”

Tobey Barton glanced up from the folded class schedule in his hands. His wavy dark-blond hair was still damp from a rushed shower, and his light-brown eyes moved from Nick to the school doors with their usual calm attentiveness.

“The first bell rings in six minutes,” he said. “So unless we’re planning a retreat, we should probably go inside.”

That was Tobey’s way. He rarely spoke first, and he almost never competed with Leah or Will for space in a conversation, but when he did say something, it was usually difficult to argue with.

Leah turned back to Nick.

“You ready?”

“No.”

“Good enough.”

Before he could protest, she hooked her arm through his and began pulling him toward the entrance. Will and Tobey followed close behind, and together they crossed the courtyard with the crowd.

Nick concentrated on the steady rhythm of his footsteps as they climbed the front stairs. He told himself not to look toward the groups of athletes gathered near the railing. He told himself that no one was paying attention to him, that most of the students around him were far too occupied with their own friends, schedules, and anxieties to care whether Nick Anderson had returned for another year.

The doors stood open, and a wash of cool air met them as they entered the building.

Inside, the lobby smelled of polished floors, paper, coffee, and the faint artificial lemon scent the custodians used in the bathrooms. Locker doors slammed along both adjoining corridors. Teachers stood outside their classrooms holding travel mugs and greeting students with a level of energy that seemed impossible before eight in the morning. A group of freshmen had stopped in the middle of the lobby to examine a printed school map, forcing everyone else to flow around them like water around a rock.

For one brief moment, the noise felt ordinary.

Then a group of boys laughed behind Nick.

The sound was sharp enough to pass straight through him. His shoulders tightened, and his body reacted before he could remind himself that the laughter might have nothing to do with him. The polished floor beneath his shoes seemed to blur, replaced by pale tiles slick with water. The cool lobby air became thick with steam, soap, and the damp heat of the freshman locker room.

He was fifteen again.

PE had ended ten minutes earlier, and the locker room had been crowded with boys hurrying to shower and dress before the bell. Water ran from Nick’s hair and down his back as he stood near the benches with a towel wrapped tightly around his waist. He had always felt uneasy in there, though at the time he had not fully understood why. He changed quickly, kept his eyes lowered, and tried to find empty showers whenever possible.

That afternoon, however, he had looked up at the wrong moment.

A boy across from him was pulling on his underwear, his skin still damp from the shower. Nick’s gaze had caught on him—not for long, perhaps only a second or two—but long enough for his body to react and for Jack Marson to notice.

“What are you looking at, Anderson?”

Jack’s voice had cut across the room, loud enough to rise above the showers, slamming lockers, and overlapping conversations.

Nick had looked away immediately. Heat flooded his face so violently that for an instant he thought everyone must be able to see the truth burning through his skin.

“Nothing.”

Jack had laughed, and several of the boys nearest him had turned to watch.

“You sprang a boner! That sure didn’t look like nothing.”

The memory pressed against Nick’s chest until breathing became difficult.

“Nick?”

Leah’s voice brought the lobby back into focus.

He blinked and realized he had slowed almost to a stop. The boys behind him were moving toward the stairs, still laughing about something involving a lost notebook. None of them had even looked in his direction.

Leah had released his arm, but her hand remained wrapped around his wrist.

“You okay?”

“Yeah.”

She watched him carefully. “Do you want me to punch someone?”

“It’s eight in the morning.”

“That wasn’t an answer.”

Will shifted the guitar case on his shoulder. “I think there should be a rule against punching people before first period.”

“There should be a rule against giving people reasons to deserve it before first period.”

Nick let out a breath that almost became a laugh.

“No one did anything,” he assured her. “I just thought— It doesn’t matter. I’m fine.”

Leah did not look convinced, but after another second she let go of his wrist. The four of them continued deeper into the school, moving together without discussing the way they had automatically closed around him.

They had developed that habit during freshman year.

No one had planned it. Will simply began walking beside Nick whenever they passed certain groups in the hallway. Leah found reasons to wait outside his classrooms even when her own classes were in another wing. Tobey, who noticed nearly everything, learned to recognize the moment Nick’s attention turned inward and quietly redirected the conversation before the memories could overwhelm him.

The strange part was that none of them had known Nick was gay before the locker-room incident.

Nick had always intended to tell them eventually. There had been nights when he lay awake rehearsing the words beneath the glow of his bedside lamp, testing different versions until every one of them sounded wrong.

I think I like boys.

I’m pretty sure I’m gay.

There’s something I need to tell you.

He had imagined speaking to Leah first because she was fearless and could make nearly anything seem manageable. Perhaps he would tell Will next, then Tobey, or perhaps he would gather all three of them together and say it quickly before he lost his nerve.

He had imagined choosing the place, the time, and the words.

He had never imagined Jack choosing them for him.

After the locker-room confrontation, Nick had avoided his friends for the rest of the school day. He left Leah’s messages unanswered, told Will he had a headache, and walked home alone rather than meeting Tobey by the school gate. By evening, his phone had vibrated so many times that he turned it off and buried it beneath his pillow.

Leah showed up at his house anyway.

Will and Tobey came with her.

Nick remembered opening the front door and finding the three of them standing on the porch, their faces carrying different versions of the same concern. His parents were in the kitchen, close enough to hear if anyone spoke too loudly. Even then, they had already begun treating Leah as though she were Nick’s girlfriend, interpreting every visit and phone call as evidence of a romance that existed only in their imagination.

He had hurried outside and pulled the door shut behind him.

The four of them sat along the curb at the edge of his front yard beneath the amber light of a streetlamp. The neighborhood was quiet, and somewhere beyond the houses a dog barked twice before falling silent. Nick sat with his elbows resting on his knees, unable to look at any of them.

For several minutes, no one forced him to speak.

When he finally did, the confession came out smaller than he had expected.

“I’m gay.”

The words remained between them for barely a second before Leah answered.

“Okay.”

Nick had looked at her in disbelief. “Okay?”

“Yes.”

“That’s all you’re going to say?”

Leah frowned. “What am I supposed to say?”

“I don’t know.”

Will leaned forward, his arms folded across his knees.

“You thought we’d stop being your friends?”

Nick could not answer. He had been prepared for surprise, awkwardness, questions, perhaps even silence. What he had not prepared for was the wounded expression that crossed Will’s face or the way Tobey looked down at his hands as though the possibility itself hurt him.

That was when Nick had almost cried.

Not in the locker room when Jack’s laughter spread through the steam. Not when someone shouted queer at him across the cafeteria two days later. Not even when he found a folded piece of paper pushed through the vent of his locker with FAG written across it in thick black marker.

He almost cried because his friends looked heartbroken that he had believed he might lose them.

The first bell rang through the present-day hallway, and the crowd around them began to move faster.

Tobey unfolded his schedule again as they reached the main staircase.

“Are we still meeting at the same table for lunch?”

“Obviously,” Leah said.

“What if someone else takes it?” Will asked.

“Then they’ll move.”

“Are you planning to ask?”

“I’ll start by asking.”

Will gave Nick a doubtful look. “That means no.”

Leah ignored him and leaned over Nick’s schedule instead.

“What do you have first?”

“Algebra Two.”

“Who’s the teacher?”

“Mr. Daley.”

Will’s eyebrows rose in sympathy. “I heard he gives surprise quizzes.”

Nick stared at him. “Why would you tell me that before I’ve even entered the classroom?”

“You deserve to understand the danger.”

“You’re enjoying this.”

“Only a little.”

Nick glanced over the remaining classes printed on his schedule. He shared English with Will during second period and world history with Tobey after lunch. Leah had chemistry with Will, an arrangement she had already described as an administrative failure.

His mother had made him examine the schedule three times at breakfast.

“You and Leah have lunch together, don’t you?” she had asked while placing a plate of toast on the table.

“I don’t know yet.”

“You should take her somewhere after school. Maybe get ice cream.”

Nick had stared at his plate. “Mom, Leah isn’t my girlfriend.”

His father lowered the morning newspaper just enough to look over the top of it.

“You spend an awful lot of time with her.”

“Because she’s my friend.”

His mother had smiled as though he were only being shy. “She’s a lovely girl.”

Nick had stopped arguing after that. His parents had a way of hearing only the version of his life they expected. Every denial became embarrassment. Every afternoon spent with Leah became a date he refused to admit was one. He sometimes wondered what would happen when the truth finally became too large for them to rearrange into something more comfortable.

He tried not to wonder for long.

At the foot of the staircase, the four of them had to separate.

Will was heading toward the music wing, while Leah had a class in the science corridor. Tobey needed to go upstairs, and Nick’s math classroom was at the opposite end of the first floor.

Leah caught the sleeve of Nick’s shirt before he could leave.

“Text us if anything happens.”

“Nothing is going to happen.”

“That isn’t what I said.”

“Leah.”

“I mean it.”

Nick saw the worry beneath her stubborn expression and softened.

The worst of the bullying had faded near the end of freshman year, though there had been no single moment when it stopped. No dramatic confrontation changed everyone’s minds. No teacher discovered the full extent of it and delivered a speech powerful enough to shame the school into kindness.

People simply grew bored.

The whispers became less frequent. The jokes lost their audience. Students found other scandals, other rumors, and other people to discuss. Jack still made comments when the opportunity presented itself, but even he seemed less interested once Nick stopped giving him visible reactions.

By spring, Nick could cross most hallways without hearing his name followed by laughter.

That did not mean Leah had forgotten.

Neither had Will or Tobey.

Neither had Nick.

“I’ll text you,” he promised.

Leah released him reluctantly. Will headed away with his guitar, Tobey disappeared into the crowd climbing the stairs, and Leah moved toward the science wing, glancing back once to make sure Nick had begun walking.

He waved her away and continued alone.

Without his friends beside him, the hallway seemed to widen. There were students everywhere, yet the space around Nick felt strangely exposed. He became aware of every group he approached, every voice that dropped as he passed, every laugh whose cause he could not immediately identify.

He hated the constant awareness almost as much as he hated the people who had created it.

Nick adjusted the strap of his backpack and continued toward the mathematics corridor. Along the way, he passed a row of glass trophy cases displaying photographs of former sports teams, debate champions, honor students, and clubs that no longer existed. Near the center of the largest case, a new football photograph had been added after the previous season.

Nick had seen it before, but his gaze found the familiar faces anyway.

Kit O’Connell stood in the front row with a football resting against one hip. His reddish-brown hair had been flattened by his helmet, and his blue eyes were narrowed slightly against the sun. Even surrounded by boys grinning and shoving one another for space, Kit looked composed. He had become the starting quarterback during his freshman year, and despite being only fifteen, he was already one of the team captains.

People talked about Kit often. Some admired his arm, others his grades, and more than a few girls discussed his face and body with a lack of subtlety Nick found both embarrassing and difficult to ignore. Kit was tall for their age, nearly five feet ten, and football had already given him broad shoulders and a strong chest. Yet he did not behave like most of the popular athletes Nick knew. He was quieter, more likely to listen than to interrupt, and rarely seemed interested in becoming the loudest person in a room.

Behind him stood Kent and Ken Nakamura.

The twins were nearly indistinguishable in the photograph. Both had short black hair, dark-brown eyes, and broad, muscular builds shaped by years of football. They played linebacker and had been Kit’s closest friends since seventh grade. Even though they were only sophomores, they were nearly six feet tall and already large enough that most students thought carefully before provoking them.

They had been the ones who stopped Jack in the locker room.

Nick remembered Ken stepping between them, barefoot and still dripping from the shower, anger tightening his normally friendly face.

“Back off.”

Jack had raised his hands as though nothing serious had happened.

“We’re just messing around.”

“No,” Kent said as he gathered Nick’s clothes from the wet floor. “You’re being an asshole.”

The laughter had died immediately.

The twins were well liked among the football players, and Jack had not expected either of them to challenge him. Perhaps no one had. Ken remained between Nick and the other boys while Kent handed over his clothes without looking at his body or asking what Jack had seen.

“Get dressed,” Kent told him quietly. “We’ve got you.”

Nick had barely spoken to them before that afternoon.

They protected him anyway.

His gaze traveled farther across the photograph and stopped at Luke Finley.

Luke stood at the end of the second row, seventeen years old now and entering his junior year. He was not as tall or heavily built as Kit, the twins, or some of the linemen. At five feet nine, Luke had the lean, defined body of someone trained for speed. His blond hair fell untidily across his forehead, and even in the formal team photograph, he appeared to be on the verge of laughing.

Nick knew more about Luke than he had any reason to.

Everyone did.

Luke was one of the team’s wide receivers, and during games he seemed to move faster than anyone else on the field. The previous fall, he had scored the winning touchdown against Westfield after Kit threw a pass that looked too long for anyone to catch. Luke had sprinted beneath the stadium lights with two defenders closing behind him, stretched both arms forward, and somehow caught the ball just inside the end zone.

For nearly a week, students replayed the video in the cafeteria.

Luke was the kind of boy people noticed even when he was not wearing a football uniform. With blond hair, blue eyes, and the easy features of an actor cast as the popular athlete in a high-school movie, he had what Leah once described as an all-American-boy face. She had rolled her eyes when she said it, but Nick had understood what she meant.

Luke smiled easily. He laughed loudly when surrounded by his friends and seemed capable of moving between groups without ever wondering whether he belonged there. He greeted teachers by name, joked with students from different grades, and regularly had girls waiting near his locker after school. His confidence did not appear forced or carefully constructed. It seemed to rise from the simple assumption that people would be glad to see him.

Nick could not imagine what that felt like.

Luke seemed friendly enough from a distance. Nick had never heard him directly insult anyone, and unlike Jack, he did not appear to enjoy making quieter students uncomfortable.

But he was still one of Jack’s friends.

In the photograph, Jack Marson stood beside him with one thick arm draped across Luke’s shoulders. Jack was taller and broader, his dark-blond hair already cut into the close buzz he still wore. As one of the team’s linemen, he had the kind of size that allowed him to block hallways without making it look deliberate.

Jack smiled straight into the camera.

Nick looked away from the photograph.

The warning bell would ring soon, and he still had half the corridor to cross.

He continued walking, though the sight of Jack’s face had already stirred another memory. Several months after the locker-room incident, Nick had been heading to English when Jack and two other boys stepped out from between the lockers and filled the path ahead of him.

Jack leaned one shoulder against a locker door, wearing the same amused expression he used whenever a teacher asked whether he had been bothering someone.

“Relax, Anderson. Nobody’s touching you.”

Nick tried to move around them, but Jack shifted just enough to stay in his way.

“We’re just talking.”

“You’re not talking.”

“Sure we are.” Jack lowered his voice, though not enough to keep the others from hearing. “You still checking everyone out in the locker room?”

Nick had stared at the floor and said nothing.

“Come on,” Jack continued. “You can tell us which one of us you like best.”

The boys beside him laughed. They did not touch Nick. They did not threaten him or call him anything a teacher could clearly punish. They simply used their bodies to keep him trapped while Jack turned his humiliation into entertainment.

A teacher appeared at the far end of the corridor before it could go further, and Jack stepped aside with a friendly smile, as though the entire exchange had been harmless.

That was how most of the bullying worked.

Nothing severe enough to leave bruises. Nothing clear enough to explain without sounding as though Nick were too sensitive. There were only words, laughter, bodies positioned in doorways, and questions asked loudly enough for other people to hear.

Jack called it banter.

Nick had learned that banter was often the word cruel people used when they wanted everyone else to pretend cruelty was a joke.

When he finally reached the Algebra Two classroom, less than a minute remained before the bell. Mr. Daley’s name was printed on a laminated card beside the door, and through the narrow window Nick could see that most of the desks were already occupied.

He paused with his hand near the handle.

His faint reflection stared back at him from the glass. His short black hair, which he had spent ten minutes trying to shape that morning, was already beginning to fall out of place. His green eyes looked more guarded than he wanted them to. Although people had called him handsome before, he had never understood what he was supposed to do with that knowledge. Before the rumors spread, girls sometimes flirted with him, and once an older student told Leah that Nick would be cute if he stopped dressing as though he wanted to disappear.

Perhaps there had been some truth in that.

Nick usually wore dark clothing and avoided anything that might attract attention. He rarely spoke in class unless he knew the answer, and he had spent most of freshman year learning how to move through the school without giving people new reasons to notice him.

He did not want to spend another year that way.

The thought sounded brave when he formed it in his head, but his hand still hesitated over the door handle.

Then the warning bell rang, leaving him no more time to prepare.

Nick opened the door and stepped inside.

The classroom was brighter than the corridor, with tall windows along one wall and rows of paired desks facing a wide whiteboard. Posters covered the cabinets and the empty spaces between shelves, most of them displaying mathematical jokes that had probably seemed amusing to Mr. Daley when he bought them. The air smelled faintly of dry-erase markers and newly printed paper.

Most of the students were already seated, their conversations crossing the room in overlapping waves. Nick recognized many of them, though the class was not limited to sophomores. Algebra Two placement depended on the courses students had taken previously, so a few advanced freshmen sat among the tenth graders, along with several juniors following a different mathematics sequence.

Nick moved down the first aisle, searching for an empty seat.

Two chairs near the windows appeared available until he noticed the backpacks resting beneath them. Farther back, a desk had been pulled away from its partner, but the girl beside it immediately placed her hand across the surface.

“Someone’s sitting there.”

Nick nodded and continued without answering.

He felt several students glance at him as he passed, though none held his gaze long enough for him to decide whether they were truly watching or whether he had only learned to expect it.

Near the center of the room, he found one remaining empty chair.

The desk beside it was occupied.

A blond boy leaned back in his seat, laughing with two students across the aisle. His long legs stretched beneath the desk, and the green Saint Gabriel’s football shirt he wore fitted closely over his lean chest and shoulders. Nick recognized the bright laugh before the boy turned his head.

Clear blue eyes met his.

Luke Finley stopped speaking.

For a moment, Nick remained in the aisle, staring first at Luke and then at the empty chair beside him. Of all the people in the room, Luke was the last person he had expected to share a class with. Juniors did not usually take Algebra Two, though it was hardly unusual, and there was no reason Nick should have known Luke’s course schedule.

Still, the sight of him there felt strangely significant.

Luke glanced at the empty seat and placed one hand along the edge of the desk. His expression held no sign of mockery or discomfort. If anything, he seemed curious.

Then his familiar smile appeared, easy and bright enough to soften his entire face.

“Hey,” he said. “You sitting here?”