Drag Teen (15 page)

I was sitting in the dressing room with headphones, not actually listening to anything but wearing them just so that no one would try and talk to me. My phone lit up with a text message from Seth reading:
Come outside when you can. I have something to show you.

I snuck out the stage door into the alley behind the building. Seth was there with an enormous plastic shopping bag.

“Ta-da!” Seth exclaimed, handing over the bag. Inside was a pile of multicolored clothes and one super-cheap-looking pink wig.

“What is all this?” I asked.

“I know it’s nowhere near as nice as the stuff you lost, but it’s better than nothing.”

I pulled the wig out of the bag. It was one of those awful bright-colored bob wigs you buy at the drugstore during Halloween that are marked 100%
FLAMMABLE MATERIALS
.

If I kept going like this, that would end up being my drag name.

“Wow. Thanks.” I attempted to sound sincere, but with the sad excuse for hair in my hand, it wasn’t easy.

“Hey. You don’t have to pretend to like it. I know it sucks, but it was sorta the best I could afford.”

If I could have stepped outside my body in that moment, I might have seen just how lucky I was, with or without this pageant. However, stepping outside your body is impossible, and I was a moderately troubled seventeen-year-old boy freaking out about his missing wigs. This was not a time for introspection.

“JT, look. I’m not going to tell you not to worry. I can see how that’s not what you need right now. I get it. But while you’re worrying, let’s try to focus on what you still have. Because this contest isn’t about the outfit or the wig—it’s about you being the best drag teen you can be. And I have
no idea
what that means, but I know that you do, and that’s what will get you through. ”

I understood his point and he was absolutely right. The only problem was that to be the best drag teen I could be, I needed to actually
be
in drag.

“Where’s Heather?” I asked.

Seth sighed. “She was just getting in when I left this morning.”

“Was she okay?”

“I don’t know. She went straight to the bathroom and told me she was fine, that she’d had a good time, and that she’d see me later. I refused to leave for a while, wanting the full story, but she told me she wasn’t going to budge until I’d left her alone. So I left her alone. At least temporarily.”

“Is she still coming tonight?”

“Absolutely. She even said so before I left. Speaking of which—how’d your speech turn out?” Seth asked, pulling me out of my thoughts as he shoved the wig back into the plastic shopping bag. I stopped dead in my tracks. My speech. Crap times one million. With everything that had happened the night before, I had forgotten to write my speech. An entire three-to-five-minute speech that I had to perform in less than five hours and I still hadn’t written a single word. It felt like forgetting a math quiz, only worse, because I actually cared about this.

From my panicked expression, Seth knew exactly what had happened.

Before I could say anything, the stage door squeaked open and Miss Hedini, the drag-queen magician, poked her head out.

“Hey. You’re JT, aren’t you? Daryl’s got to approve everybody’s costumes. Hurry in here!”

The door shut behind him as Seth handed me the shopping bag.

“I am doomed,” I said.

Inside the dressing room, everyone had their outfits on display for Daryl and his assistant. He was going through the wardrobe to make sure everyone would be dressed within the guidelines of the pageant. I walked in as he was saying no to a few different looks for being too suggestive or risqué. I felt my stomach turn as I stared down at my plastic shopping bag.

The gowns these guys had were amazing, like the kind of thing Jennifer Lawrence would wear to the Oscars or, in some cases, the kind of thing Lady Gaga would wear to the grocery store. Their wigs were also perfect, the kind of expensive-looking wigs Tina had given me. At the other end of the long, narrow dressing room, I could see Tash nonchalantly combing one of her three stunning lace-front wigs that I reckoned were all actual human hair.

I waited with dread as Daryl and his assistant made their way over to my side of the dressing room. Daryl was gushing all over the outfits held by the guy next to me, the only contestant with facial hair, who’d introduced himself, aptly, as Katy Hairy.

I awaited my execution.

After he’d finished praising Katy, Daryl stood before me. “Hello there, JT. Great seeing you.”

As he smiled his big friendly smile, I didn’t want to disappoint him. It killed me to know that I absolutely would.

“You getting excited for tonight?” he added.

I nodded for what felt like thirty minutes as I built up the wherewithal to blatantly lie to this very kind man.

Finally, I let out a cheery “Yep!”

“Well, let’s see what you’ve got!”

The room fell silent in my ears as the crinkling of the plastic bag got way louder than seemed possible from me digging out the ugly prom dress. The horror immediately registered on Daryl’s face, but he was too sweet to mention it, and instead said, simply, “Uh-huh. And what else?” I pulled out whatever was next, a surprise even to me, and revealed a long pair of black bell bottoms and a blue sequined poncho. Daryl tried his hardest to seem delighted, but by the time I got to the following outfit, a terrible sailor-style dress that would cut off around my knees, he couldn’t hold back his disdain.

“Wow. Okay.” He cleared his throat, presumably because he had nothing else to say, and asked to see my wig. I could feel everyone’s eyes judging me as I pulled the pink wig out of my bag. Daryl’s face turned as white as a sheet. He just kept nodding and repeating the words, “Okay, great. Good.” Then moved on to the next guy.

I was very, very, very screwed.

Seth had stayed waiting in the alley for me, so when I finished with Daryl and had a fifteen-minute break, I went out to tell him how it had gone. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the horror people had shown on their faces was equal to what you’d see from people watching one of those Paranormal Activity movies or
Sex and the City 2
for the first time. I lied and said it had gone okay and that I was feeling not quite as freaked out.

Really, though, I had just resolved myself to defeat, and was quietly coming to terms with it.

One more run-through of the opening number, and then we were on our own until showtime. I was too nervous to eat food before the show. I was in a pretty calm, resolved place about the fact that I would be the worst-dressed person in the pageant, and on top of that, maybe even the worst overall. Strangely, however, I felt like I had nothing left to lose. If I humiliated myself, Seth and Heather (if she showed up) were the only people in my life who’d know. The rest of the people—I’d never see them again. I’d lost my admission ticket to this brave new world. I would go back to my parents. Back to their blank stares and TV dinners. Back to the nothingness of my life in Florida.

Tash and I passed each other in the hallway. I tried to ignore him, but he stopped me.

“Excited?” he said in the phoniest voice I’d heard since Ariana Grande’s last album. I kept walking, but he kept calling to me. “Hey. JT! Are you
excited
?”

I stopped, turned, plastered on a smile, and as bitchily as possible called back, “Oh, don’t you know it!”

Then I kept walking, as I was fairly certain the alternative would’ve been to strangle him.

I DIDN’T SMOKE. I’D TRIED a cigarette once, when I was fourteen. I’d stolen it from my mom’s purse, and smoking it had made me sick.

Still, that was what I found myself doing in the alley behind the building two hours before showtime. Smoking my second cigarette ever. It was nerves; it was peer pressure; it was the need for a fabulous gesturing prop.

Five of the other contestants and a few of the crew people were out there while I pretended not to want to vomit as I puffed the cigarette between my fingers. It was a necessary distraction from the panic I was feeling. I was an hour away from walking onstage looking like a homeless, bewildered showgirl in a sea of perfectly styled glamazons who knew exactly what the hell they were doing.

There was a bad traffic jam, not unlike the one I had caused on my first night in the city. People were honking and yelling, but we all ignored it as we discussed drag, our futures, and the awesomeness of New York City. That’s why it took me so long to notice the person shouting my name, but finally, I did.

“JT! JT BARNETT! You put that cigarette out or I’m coming over there and wringing your neck!”

Finally I bolted up. It was the ghost of Nana calling down at me, and she’d chosen a real bad time to do so. However, as I looked around and into the sky, I noticed the black Escalade stuck in the traffic jam and the burst of orange hair shouting at me from the backseat window.

It was none other than Tina Travis.

It was like a cartoon. I rubbed my eyes to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. Then I ran through the stopped traffic up to her window.

“Get in,” she said. “This shit ain’t going anywhere any time soon.” She shouted among the shouting and honking. I got in.

“What’re you doing in New York?!” I gasped.

She shrugged and told me she was a superstar and that New York was where she belonged. I couldn’t argue that. She grabbed my knee and pinched it hard enough to bruise.

“Well, now I guess I have to kill you,” she said, in the matter-of-fact way you’d say you need to water your plants or go pee, or kill two birds with one stone.

“Huh?”

“That thing you were smoking. I told you … with that voice of yours!”

I tried explaining it was only because I was super stressed and nervous, but she wouldn’t hear it.

“All you kids think you can just do whatever you want and that your voice won’t go away. Sure, we did too in my day, only difference is that we didn’t know any better. My generation was misinformed; yours is just plain stupid. You gotta choose one or the other, and, honey, I get it. Smoking might just beat out the singing BS.”

That’s when I decided to tell her everything.

“My costumes got stolen, Tina. And my wigs. Your stuff. This horrible person who I happen to be sharing an apartment with and who absolutely hates me, he stole them and he won’t give them back, and if I tell the pageant he’ll make it worse and I’m screwed. So I’m stressed, okay? I was having a cigarette and I know that’s wrong and gross and nasty. I don’t even like the taste, but everybody else seems to think they calm them down, so I was just hoping they might do the same for me. But even after I finished it, I was still just as screwed as I was before I started smoking it.”

Tina squinted her beautiful green eyes at me, either in thought or for dramatic effect. Judging from the short time I’d known her, I ventured to guess it was the latter.

“Somebody stole your stuff?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And you don’t think you’ll get it back?”

“Nope.”

I explained that Seth had, very sweetly, spent the last of our money on some outfits and a cheap wig. As she tapped her long red fingernail on her chin, I could see the wheels in her head turning.

“Are you actually in New York just for the hell of it?” I asked.

“Watch your mouth!” She locked eyes with me for a while, then finally let go with a shrug. “I’m here to see the pageant, dumbass.”

“How did you even figure out where it was?”

“You think I wouldn’t want to come see the first drag teen I’d ever met compete in
my
clothes and
my
wigs? I used to be famous. I’ve still got real powerful agents who can track down anything if I tell them to. Also, you left a pamphlet about the pageant in my garage apartment.”

“But …”

“I know. You screwed up and lost my clothes and wigs, and unfortunately you need to pay to replace them.”

I felt like I’d had the wind knocked out of me.

“I’m kidding! Lighten up, kid. Here. You need a dose of irony if you’re going to be a drag queen. Calm down. You aren’t even taking a second to appreciate the fact that I came all this way!”

“Oh. I’m sorry—you know how honored I am. I’m just distracted and worried about everything. It isn’t you.”

“Lord, you’re freaking out again, aren’t you?”

I nodded as she rolled her eyes, framed by fake eyelashes more ridiculous than those of any drag queen in the pageant.

“So, let’s look at the facts. The big problem here is you don’t have a good wig, huh?”

I shook my head, disappointed to have lost the incredible wigs she’d given me.

“And you don’t have costumes?”

“Nope.”

She reached into the backseat and grabbed a small suitcase, placing it in my lap.

“Here, wear these. That’s the emergency suitcase I bring in case I decide to go perform somewhere, spur of the moment.”

“Tina, I can’t take more of your stuff.”

“And take this.” She pulled the red bouffant off and handed it to me, her almost-bald head revealed underneath. “Wear it … but if you so much as
think
of taking a photo of me without it right now, I’ll make you wish you had never been born.”

She tied the silk scarf around her neck into a turban, like the one Nana had worn during chemo. I ran my fingers through the gorgeous wig in my hands while something inside became completely calm, telling me that everything was going to be okay.

I had gotten my chance back. And another killer wig to boot.

Now I had to take it. The chance, not the wig.

Well, actually, both.