Free Totally Joe by James Howe Page A

always heat up what’s left over and have it for breakfast the next day. I even like it on school mornings, which probably sounds gross when you think about it being 7:00 A.M . and eating nuked chili, but it is so not.
    Next to chili, turkey is my favorite leftover. But not this year. This year, I hate everything about Thanksgiving—and leftovers. Because this year, it’s not just food leftovers I have to deal with, it’s people leftovers.
    (Oh, and I should probably mention that we have all this leftover tofurky, too, because Addie and herparents were here. Trust me that the tofurky is going to be left over for a loooooooong time.)
    Anyway, you’re probably wondering what I mean by “people leftovers.” What I mean is, the stuff people leave behind them after they’re gone. Aunt Pam moved out two days ago, and I keep finding her things all over the house. It’s like she packed so quickly she didn’t even notice how much she
wasn’t
packing. Or maybe she just didn’t care. Was she in
that
much of a hurry to get away from us? Like right now, I’ve got this hair-clip thing sitting on my desk. I found it in her room—her
leftover
room. I feel kind of bad about it because I gave it to her for her birthday a couple of years ago, and I know she liked wearing it. So why did she leave it out in plain sight on her dresser? Why didn’t it matter enough to take?
    She left tons of other stuff, too, mostly in her studio over the garage. She said she’s coming back for everything at Christmas. But what about the empty feeling she left behind? I don’t think she’ll be able to come back for that. That’s going to be around even longer than the tofurky.
    The reason I know this is because it’s been more than three weeks since Colin left the note in my locker, and the empty feeling I got after that hasn’t gotten any better in all this time. I guess I may as well tell you what he wrote:
    Joe
,
    The guys on the team gave me a really hard time at practice last night. They Kept asking me if the rumor was true, and some of them—even Justin, who’s my friend —were saying things like, You’d better not turn fag on us, Briggs. Then they started making jokes about not wanting to shower with me, except I’m not sure they were all joking. I told them Kevin and Jimmy had made the whole thing up. I don’t know if they believed me
.
    Joe, I feel really, really bad saying this, and I hope you won’t hate me, but I think maybe we shouldn’t hang out together anymore. I just can’t deal with what’s happening. Please don’t be mad at me
.
    colin
    P.S. I still wish I Could be like you. I can’t, and that’s the problem
.
    I’ve tried really hard to hate Colin, but it just doesn’t work. I miss him too much, and I guess I understandwhy he had to do it. I’ve never been on a team, but I know what it’s like for me in Phys Ed. When I first got his note, I was afraid he’d start making fun of me the way the other guys do. But that was stupid. Colin isn’t like that. I e-mailed him that night and told him it was okay, that we could just ignore each other in school. But he wrote back and said, “No way.” And he doesn’t ignore me. He always says hi when he sees me in the hall, and we even talk sometimes. We just don’t do Moonet and Pigasso in art class anymore. We don’t laugh or bump elbows.
    The hardest is lunchtime, sitting at the table with Kelsey and Bobby, and Addie and DuShawn, with them acting like couples, and hearing Colin’s voice from across the cafeteria. That’s the time I really do get mad. But then we’ll be leaving and I’ll see Colin on the way out and he’ll give me this little shy smile, like he’s saying, “I’m sorry.” Of course, it might not mean that. It might not mean anything. Maybe it never even meant anything that he told