The men all laughed. His grandfather took a swig from his Coke bottle, and Horace glanced back at him. Zeke wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and winked at Horace. “Boy, ain’t you missed a spot right there by the window, there?”

“Yes, sir, I reckon I did.”

“Well, get it then.”

“Yes, sir.”

All the men were looking at him and Lester. The fumes of the paint were making him giddy.

“Now, I remember the time . . .”

Horace stood and walked forwards toward the gym. It was not open, so he looked in through the windows, not seeing very well. He walked around the side of the building where the football bleachers sat and back around to the side of the gym where the football team exits onto the field. Those doors were also closed. Horace sat down, this time in the dirt, picking at the grass.

He began to think about the voice, wondering whether it had indeed left him. He wished it would return and take him away so he would not remember that day. Especially not here, especially not beneath those very windows where he had made the decision to fight this disease, as he had come to think of his sexuality.

He did not like football, nor did he think he could actually join the team that fall, especially since the team had been chosen in the middle of the summer. So he decided he would run track instead, and had no trouble joining the track team. He began running on his own, thinking that it would make a man of him if nothing else would. Horace decided to become a jock, to get rid of his bookworm image and finally go for broke in the social world of the high school.

It was not difficult. He became president of the Spanish Club, vice-president of the National Honor Society, associate editor of the newspaper, president-elect of the Science Club. Now there was no time to consider the problem that had propelled him into this frenzy of activity. He rarely spoke to Gideon, who was baffled by Horace’s new aloofness. And perhaps most peculiarly, Horace began to hang around those white students known as “the beautiful people”—the folks with the money, the looks, the brains, and the attitude to be successful, as they saw it. To them Horace was something of a curiosity; his high academic standing, his newfound activism and athleticism gave him a special token place in their number. He was criticized sorely by his fellow black students for getting an attitude, for being an Oreo, for joining this snobbish circle. But he did not dwell on it.