Free 151 Days by John Goode Page A

it?”
    Charlotte raised her hand.
    “Any objections?” he asked.
    There were none.
    As quickly as the meeting began, it was over, Mr. Raymond said nothing as he stormed out of the auditorium. Most of the school board scuttled after him like a herd of lemmings looking for a place to practice swan dives.
    “What just happened?” Susan asked, looking around in confusion.
    “Progress,” I answered her as I smiled. That smile was the first real one I’d had since Kelly’s death.
    Charlotte walked over to us. Her expression—no, everything about her—was ecstatic. “I have a feeling you had something to do with that,” she said to me.
    I just smiled back at her. “It was long overdue. And because I know you won’t hear it from anyone else, I am so sorry for what happened.”
    She gave me a sad smile. “No, Dorothy, I’m the one who is sorry.”
    For some reason her saying it didn’t annoy me at all, most likely because I knew she was telling the truth.
    “You know, Kyle and the kids are outside waiting to hear what happened,” Linda reminded us.
    “Well, we shouldn’t keep them waiting,” Susan said, motioning us toward the door.
    “Tell Kyle hello for me, but I am going to pass,” I told them, pausing. “I have something else I need to do right now.”
    Susan gave me a concerned look. “Everything okay?”
    I took a deep breath and nodded. “It is now. But I need to go see Kelly. I think I’m finally ready.”
    There are things in life that you can never ready yourself for. People around you changing for the good is definitely one of them.
     

F EBRUARY 7: S OME N IGHTS
    But I still wake up, I still see your ghost.
    Oh Lord, I’m still not sure what I stand for.
    —Fun
     
    127 days left
     

 
     
    B RAD
     
    B ASEBALL SEEMED like a simple game when I was a kid. All a guy needed was a bat, a ball, a glove, maybe some good shoes, and he was set. I guess I’m not a kid anymore.
    We had spent the whole week going through tryouts, which at this point was a formality because a majority of the team would be the same as last year. The tryouts were for the few juniors and fewer sophomores who were going to be moved up to varsity this year. The rest of us were there because “we win and lose as a team.”
    That’s Coach Gunn-speak for, “If one guy is on the field, we are all on the field.”
    It’s a shitty rule, but let me tell you, there is motivation not to mess up when there are two dozen other guys suffering if you make a stupid mistake. It was Thursday afternoon, and the list was going to go up tomorrow, so this was the last chance to show the coach what you had in you. After four days of varsity drills, the answer from most of us was: there’s not much left. The air was still cool, thank God, because once the sun came up for real in Texas, anything physical instantly involved three to four times the effort.
    Most of us had been training all year, since we were varsity last year and planned on returning. Of course, up until last week it was unsure whether I was going to be able to play or not. I had broken two cardinal rules in high school baseball: I was gay, and I said I was gay out loud. Normally there wouldn’t even be the smallest doubt if I would play this year, but after the school board meeting and the passing of Kelly’s Laws—a name I know he would hate with an undying passion, by the way—the question went away. The school could no longer prevent students from playing sports based on their sexual orientation.
    I had Kyle look it up for me to make sure.
    On Thursday after practice, as we kind of crawled back into the locker room, I was more than a little shocked to hear Coach Gunn shout over the mumblings of the rest of the guys that I needed to come to his office once I was done showering. Well, this is where I get kicked off the team for good , I thought as I walked to my locker. The existence of Kelly’s Laws and the protection they provided evaporated the minute Coach