The YA LGBT Books - Reading is Its Own Reward Part 2 quiz

I closed my eyes and imagined him standing in front of me. Josh. That had been the name on the jacket. “He was different-”
“He was a ghost. An apparition.” She rubbed my back.
I turned my face so the wind would strike it. “Don't you wonder what it would have been like to kiss him?”
“Cold, probably.”

Time doesn't stop.
“Two sixty-three,” Noah tells me.
“?!???” I reply.
“My locker number,” he explains. “I'll see you after school.”
Now I don't want time to stop. I want it to fast-forward an hour. Noah has become my 'until.'
As we leave the gym, I can see Kyle shoot me a look. I don't care. Joni and Ted will no doubt be waiting under the bleachers for the full report.
I can sum it up in one word.
Joy.

Finally that bell rang and I was free. I made it for the hall. Just as I rounded the corner of the first corridor, I ran smack-dab, face-to-face with him: Brett. We collided. He really was unfazed, being of a much greater stature than I, but I landed flat on my butt. He stopped and looked down at me... “Oh, I'm sorry, Sport. Are you all right?” He reached his hand down to me to help me up.
I was fine. I was more than fine. I was wonderful. He had just called me our private name in public!

And only then did I realize that one of the best-looking guys in school had just been talking to me and was now walking away from me. I tried to calculate all of the different possibilities that would have made someone like him talk to someone like me. Was I getting cooler? Did he know I liked guys? Did he like guys? Did he like me? Was this a vain attempt to reach out and get me to understand that there was someone else in the world as lonely as me? Maybe he was trying to get across in code or something that he... This was when my brain screamed at me, "He needs help with his history homework, you retard!"

I'm shaken but still brazen. “Aren't you a tad old to be this close to me?”
“Never to old for that,” he says....
For some reason he thinks I'm into him. Thinking about kissing him gives me an icky feeling, like how you'd feel after swallowing a Band-Aid in a public pool.

“I'm not saying you should get a girlfriend or anything. Just... dial it back, know what I'm saying?”...
“Thanks... for looking out for me,” I told Shawn with a wan little smile.
He grinned dopily in reply. “It's all self-interest, Col. If someone hurts you then I have to kill them and go to jail, which would suck for me. So, you'll be doing me a favor.”
I smirked and punched him in the arm, which I knew he wouldn't even feel. He gave me an “oh no you didn't” look and shoved me hard enough that I fell off the bed.
“What was that?” he demanded. “That little girly punch? I taught you better than that,”...
“Say it” he demanded, pinning my bony shoulder to the hardwood floor.
“Bite me”
“Say it...”
“Your breath stinks.”
“Say it or I'll give you a wedgie so bad you'll need the jaws of life to get your shorts back out.”
I made one last valiant effort to wriggle free and then surrendered, huffing indignantly. “Fine. I am the Walrus, koo koo ka-choo.”

Dad sighed. “Tell me again.”
“He’s just thirteen. He showed up at the shelter and... God, Rob, you should have seen this kid. He’d been sleeping down under a bridge somewhere, until the rain last night washed him out. There he was, just this young, skinny, dirty boy with wild curls. And he walked up to Veronica and smiled and said, ‘I hear a guy like me can maybe get something to eat here, if I know the secret handshake.’ Like being on his own was nothing.”
“If he’s thirteen, don’t his parents have to take him back?”
“The cops went and talked to them. I guess they claimed he ran away; said he was uncontrollable and a danger to the younger boys in the house.”
“And you still want to bring him here?”
“It’s a damned lie!” Pops must have started pacing, because his voice began to fade in and out. “...not a danger, he’s just gay...don’t want him around, and don’t want to admit...in foster care now but...bullshit, they just...they shouldn’t call themselves parents.”

“Oh, Dad.” In the front foyer, Liam slipped an arm through the letter jacket he despised and rarely wore. “I talked to Coach Hewitt yesterday, the way you asked. He's going to start me on a weight training program next week.”
Dad's eyes bulged. So did mine. A grin creased Dad's face, ear to ear. “All right!” he cheered, punching the air. “Go get 'em, son.”
Liam trailed me out to the porch. “Don't say it,” he mumbled under his breath. “That even made me sick.”
“What are you doing?” I asked. “You're acting weird.” Then, like a high heel to the head, it struck me. Was this transitioning?
“Don't do it, Liam,”” I told him. “Not yet.” Not ever, I was thinking.
Liam looked at me. “Acting. That's all I ever do. I've been doing it so long, that's all I can do.” Unexpectedly, his eyes welled with tears.

I could have described those “baser” needs, how the energy would move through me like lightning bolts seeking the ground of Will's body, and how it felt afterward like heaven and hell had met and clashed and canceled each other out so we floated in a sea of calm. I could have said that I love Will so much that it seems like a window into the love God offers, as though I could follow this path to the source of all Love.
I could have. But I didn't. I took the other road. I took rebellion. It may have been a mistake. Guess I'll never know. But at least I didn't give Will to him.
“I haven't done anything ungodly.”

"You have my papers. Please." Calder rubbed his hands over his face, peered at Dallin with a look of raw appeal. "You said I was not a prisoner. I have answered your questions. I have told you everything I can tell you." Once again, he held his hands out. "Please. Either arrest me or let me go. I don't even care which anymore."
Of all the faces he'd seen this man don this morning, Dallin thought perhaps this was the true one: exhausted and miserable, saw-toothed terror blurring about the periphery. Pity rose, softened the hard edges of suspicion. He didn't believe for a moment that this man was Wilfred Calder from Lind. But he also didn't believe the man had enchanted anyone into murder.

“Well,” Zelda began, “since I'm going to be a doctor and all...”
It was at that point that I realized there were several other kids, mostly girls, but a few boys too, clustered around our table, as if they were all suddenly coming over to borrow a test tube or ask a question – but there were too many of them for that.
Zelda went right on talking as if they weren't there, but I could see she was very aware of them. “I just wondered,” she said smoothly, “if you could tell me, from a scientific standpoint, of course, just what it is that two girls do in bed...”

It did get better, although it took a while for some of the girls to sit next to me again in class. That was funny, in a way. At Foster, we didn't have assigned seats, and as I said, I didn't notice it in chemistry that first morning, but by afternoon it had become pretty obvious. When I realized what was going on, I purposely arrived a little late to my classes so I'd get to choose who to sit next to and could maybe show the other girls that I wasn't going to rape them in the middle of math or something. I don't know; I'm probably exaggerating, but it did seem a little grim at first.

As Carlos walked home from the bus stop, about a billion questions bounced around in his brain. Should he tell his friends the truth about his makeover idea? What if they laughed at him? Why had Sal changed his mind? Was he planning to try something funny? He'd better not; Carlos only wanted his help to get a girl, nothing more. And what had Sal meant by expenses? And one more thing: What was a Gay-Straight Alliance, anyway?

This boy had more Gifts than any five full Heralds – and all of them had come into full activity in less than a day.
To her horror, she could See that all the channels were as raw and sensitive as so many open wounds. The channels had not been “opened,” they'd been blasted open. It was a wonder the boy wasn't mad with the pain alone.

Afterward, Kita dropped me off at Sebastian's house. I arrived at the same moment as the pizza, but Sebastian was far more interested in me. He leaped around me like a puppy, begging for details.
"She kissed me" was all I said. What more was there to say? Did she like me? Did she feel sorry for me? Did she regret it two seconds after? I had no idea

“You know,” I said, picking up my cheeseburger. “all these anti-bullying policies should apply to teachers. I mean corporeal punishment is illegal.” I chomped into my burger and chewed. “Public humiliation,” I said with my mouth full, “is a form of psychological abuse.”
By their bobbing heads, I assumed they all agreed. What were we going to do about it? Nothing. Even though I was president of the student council, I felt powerless to effect change of any social significance in our school.
I take that back. We now had a pop machine in the hall.