Queen of the track

XX

I resist on telling Ryan that I didn't want an entire backstory on his friendship with them. I just want to know what was going on now.

"I've known I was gay for years, secretly I think I've always known, but...I tried to ignore it, tried to ignore all of the things I was feeling every time my best friend walked into the room, every time I heard his name, every time I spoke to him and hung out with him. It got worse the older we got, and the more attention AJ would get from girls. Especially when he was giving them his attention too. Raven cornered me one day in Sophmore year when we were drinking, to confront me about it. I don't know how or when she figured it out, I guess the same way you did."

I keep my face passive, of course Raven figured it out, she notices everything.

"She urged me to talk to her about it, about what I felt for AJ...and I did, and it made me feel so much better and also so much worse at the same time. Saying it out loud for the first time ever...I was terrified, but she was there for me. At some point last year, something between AJ and I changed, I can't pin point it exactly, but he started looking at me more, like he was...seeing me. It felt weird at first, like he knew what I was, what secret I hid, but he never said anything. I confronted Raven one day, asking if she told him, and she swore she hadn't.

One night, after we were all...out, we went back to crash at AJ and Raven's but we ended up raiding their dad's liquor supply and stayed up the rest of the night drinking. Everyone crashed one by one, until it was just AJ and I left, so we went out onto the back porch. We were talking about random shit and one thing led to another and...we kissed. We avoided each other the next day, and for weeks after, which the rest of the group noticed but just assumed we'd had an argument or something. Except Raven. She spoke with AJ to find out what happened, he refused to tell her and then they were the ones not talking, which I hated to see, because they'd been through a lot already by this point, and I didn't want to be the cause of that rift. So I told her, and then I cried, thinking I had severely screwed up everything. She comforted me, like she always has, and helped me get through it. I don't know what she said to AJ, but we talked and he admitted his feelings, not just for me, but in general about what he felt towards guys and his confusion and everything.

Anyway, we kind of got together at that point, but we kept it casual, so only our group knew. In public, we were just friends, but in private we got to be...us. It hurt--a lot. But it was easier that way for both of us, especially with all the fights and everything else AJ was doing at the time. In June, we were all out one night. At these..." Ryan shuffled awkwardly and sighed. "Race tracks," he said quietly. "Illegal ones. Just like the fighting ring. You might as well know everything...we've been going for years, it was where we were that night we first kissed."

I nod, understanding now what Alex meant that day in class when she told Raven she would miss Rissa's race.

"Anyway, we were all at the tracks one night, Raven had just won—"

Surprise lights up on my face at the fact Raven races, and she's good enough to win. With that bike of hers, I shouldn't be completely surprised.

"—But a few guys got into a fight. AJ, Raven's boyfriend at the time, and few others. I ended up losing my phone and had to catch a ride back with Alex and Rissa to avoid the cops. They dropped me off at home, and a few hours later AJ was knocking on my front door, loud enough to scare the crap out of my parents. He told me his dad had been arrested, he'd had a fight over at the ring—he had quite the rep, where do you think AJ and Raven get it from?" Ryan added when he saw the look on my face.

"Anyway, his dad had been arrested, and AJ was freaking out, Raven too because they had no idea what was going on. So, we went over to the police station, just the three of us, despite my parents' protests, to find out what happened. Surprise, surprise, they wouldn't talk to three teenagers, so we stayed in the waiting room for the rest of the night until their dad's lawyer came out to talk to us. He said that the cops got an anonymous tip about the fight going on and went to close the place down, but it turns out the guy who owns the ring had a tip off of his own, he makes people a lot of money you see, so it's no surprise that even a few bent cops turn a blind eye when it comes to them making a well marked bet. The owner managed to shut the fight down and clear the place out before the cops showed up, but the guy AJ's dad—Axel—was fighting, was losing, and clearly wanted to change that. He cornered Axel on his way home with his friends and it ended up being five against one.

Axel managed to hold his own, and he somehow picked up a crow bar from the ground, the ring was in an old industrial estate, so there's plenty of shit like that lying around if you know where to look. Axel beat the crap out of the guys for cornering him like that, cos they could've killed him, you know? And they would've too. Axel is one of the best fighters around here, he barely loses a fight and has a lot of enemies that think he cons them. It turns out that the cops got a second tip off that night, this one was that Axel was beating up a random guy—unprovoked—in the middle of the street. They picked him up on his way home, bloodied and bruised, and took him to the station."

Ryan takes a minute to himself and has some of his milkshake, whilst I frown down at the table, mulling over everything he has just told me.

"I don't understand," I say, "what any of this has to do with Raven and AJ's vendetta against you."

Ryan looks over at me with pain on his face. "Gray," he says to me, "they said the second anonymous tip they received came from my cell phone. Raven and AJ think that I got their dad arrested."