When Everything Feels like the Movies (5 page)

I unravelled myself from Angela, crawling toward Abel. He was perfectly still, on his mark, in his light. He looked pretty and plastic, like a mannequin. I took the remote from between his fingers. His knuckles were white from clutching it so tightly. I threw the remote at the screen, at my own head, and it went static. It was like the static was prickling and humming in our veins.

When Angela wasn’t looking, I kissed Abel, and he came back to life. But he didn’t kiss me back, so it was like kissing a Madame Tussauds wax figure. It was so quiet that I could hear him start blinking again. Then Angela, rolling on the floor, put her hand to her forehead and said, “Sometimes, when I close my eyes, it feels like I’m dying.” I looked down at her. Even though everything was dark, the street lights outside were shining through the window, and I could make out her heart-shaped face. Sweat gleamed on her forehead as she rubbed her palms across the carpet. She closed her eyes and stopped moving.

“Is she dead?” Abel laughed, and everything felt so unreal.

I danced by myself while Abel rolled Angela onto her side so she wouldn’t choke on her own vomit. I took his hand and led him to the couch. His skin was sticky, but I thought that was sweet. He fell back into the cushions like he was falling through clouds. He looked over my shoulder to make sure Angela was still extinguished and then climbed his hands up the curve of my spine. I licked a tear rolling down his cheek.

He wasn’t blinking, like he was scared that if he did, we’d all drown.

6

Rehab

W
hen I woke up, my head was so heavy that I thought it was going to roll off my bed and crack on the floor. I never knew where the pills in Mrs Adams’ pharmacy would take me, but it was always a journey, and a long way back.

Stoned Hairspray was on the other side of my door, meowing incessantly because she wanted in. Faded light shone through my window, which had snow packed against it.

I don’t remember leaving Angela’s. It must’ve been snowing when I walked home because my hair was still wet and knotted. I had already missed first period at school, and I took it as a sign that I shouldn’t even bother with the rest of the day.

I let Stoned into my room and listened for any signs of life upstairs. The house was quiet. My mom was sleeping, Ray (he’d come back) was already at work for the day, and Keefer was at school. I climbed back into bed, kicking away my dusty sheets.

I hated the basement. I used to share a room with Keef until Ray decided it wasn’t a good idea anymore. He wanted to protect his precious offspring from my glitter corruption. Ray brought down a rug and a dresser, and my grandma made me curtains, which I think were from one of her old tablecloths. Under my window, I hung up a picture of Marilyn Monroe, which I found in a dumpster, to cover the cracks, but the grey walls just made her eyes seem even more lost.

Then Angela and I went to the Sally Ann, and she distracted the clerk while I walked out with pillows and a lamp. The Salvation Army is run by a bunch of homophobic religious freaks, so we figured they had it coming. We took anything bright to make my new room seem like less of a prison. It didn’t help; it still felt like there should be bars on the window.

I couldn’t sleep the first night I spent in the basement. I tried to find the stars through my window—if the stars are spotlights, I wanted the sun—but the sky was empty. I started pretending the basement was a trendy rehab, because that gave me hope that I might one day get out.

I missed sharing a room with Keef. It was too quiet without him. He was a noisy sleeper who tossed and turned a lot and sometimes talked to himself. It was kind of nice, in a way. His mumblings were a welcome distraction when I lay awake at night, thinking the same things over and over—thinking of insane things and wishing it was over.

Keefer was the only one who didn’t judge. Even when his friends at school teased him about me, he never brought it up. I wouldn’t have known if he hadn’t punched one of them once and gotten suspended. He wouldn’t tell me what the kid said. Whatever it was, it was bad enough to make him lose his cool, which wasn’t like him. He wasn’t like his dad. I always thought he was sort of like me. Or what I would’ve been like if I had been like him, if that makes any sense. When I kept asking him what the kid said, he started crying. Keefer never cried. He was too busy pretending to be an action hero.

When I moved downstairs, it was weird for him too. Sometimes, if he had a bad dream or my mom was working or Ray was AWOL, he’d come down and sleep in my bed. I wouldn’t have the heart to tell him to get lost.

One night, when I came home after sneaking out to meet Angela at the Day-n-Nite, he was there cuddled next to Stoned and drooling on my pillowcase. He woke up to the sound of my ripping shirt as I squeezed through the window.

“I didn’t think you were coming back,” he said, opening his crusty lashes.

This morning, my phone blew up with messages from Angela ranting about how she was in Bio and still feeling cross-faded from last night. I told her I was staying in bed for the rest of the morning, then went on Luke’s page. If only Facebook stalking were illegal, my dream of being a prison bitch would have come true.

He’d posted two new pictures taken at a family meal during the holidays. The description on the first read, “Before,” and it showed him with a huge plate of food—turkey, cranberry sauce, potatoes, gravy, veggies. In the next picture, “After,” his plate was empty. His eyes were rolled to the back of his head, and he was smirking. I almost died because it was exactly what I imagined his come face would look like.

When I was done jerking off, I picked up one of the Old Hollywood star biographies, which I collected. They were scattered all over my room because a bookshelf was too big for me to steal from the Salvation Army. I was always reading about the old stars; if only they had taught Tinseltown Glamour at school, I probably wouldn’t have needed Mrs Adams’ personal pharmacy to help get me through the day.

I wanted to be them all. Well, all the girls. The only male star I ever wanted to be was James Dean. But that’s just because he sucked so much dick.

I read for a bit and then tried to go back to sleep, but I wasn’t really tired. I just lay there, twitching under the covers from thoughts that were like spider bites. I hugged Stoned Hairspray and closed my eyes, imagining she was Luke. Stoned had a way of wrapping her paws around my arm like she was holding it, like she knew what role she was playing. I imagined that Luke was holding me back. I could feel his breath on the back of my neck.

And it felt so real, I didn’t know when I was dreaming.

When I woke up again, it was to the sound of creaking floorboards from my mom practicing her striptease.

I managed to crawl out of the window, shoving my way through the snow, and then I walked to the Day-n-Nite. I was supposed to meet Angela, but she texted to cancel because she was hooking up with some high school jock. “Just one?” I texted back, trying not to care that she was ditching me again. Everyone in Angela’s life had a switch. She turned you on and then shut you off.

I was eating fries at the back booth by myself when the bells on the door rang. Luke and Madison walked in. I ducked so they wouldn’t see me, watching as they slid into one of the black and pink leather booths. Luke put his arm around her, and I felt like I was going to throw up. I just wasn’t sure if it was from grease or jealousy.

Although I was crouched down, Luke still saw me. Our eyes met for a second, and then he looked away and leaned forward to block me from Madison. He knew she’d make a scene. She was a Movie Star, after all.

I paid my bill with singles because my allowance always came from my mom’s tips and then stood up and walked past them to make sure they saw me. Luke looked at the menu, and Madison called me a faggot. I loved the sound. Faggot is such a sexy word, it made me horny. That’s what I wanted Zac Efron to call me when he finally took my virginity.

I didn’t want to go home even though it was getting late. My mom would still be getting ready for work, and her stilettos would be cracking through the floorboards straight into my brain.

I never wanted to be home. It made me mental. But I never wanted to be anywhere, really. That was the problem; everywhere was the same. I was the same, no matter where I went. I put concealer on the dark circles under my eyes, but I was still a shadow.

I walked by the park to see if Abel was there, even though usually he was there only in the middle of the night; he was an insomniac. I started waking up to go sit with him. Looking up through the tree branches to the stars in the sky, I always felt an urgency to find the brightest one. Like if I found it first, it was mine.

The first time we met in the park, it was by chance. I walked past the entrance and saw his golden curls, the same colour as the dirty leaves stuck in the wet mud. I wouldn’t have gone in if he hadn’t been sitting on the graffitied park bench, staring out at the river. The park was creepy at night. The tree branches creaked like the devil on tiptoes, and the wind was like his breath over your shoulder. I liked Abel because he was easy to talk to and to not talk to. Sometimes we’d sit on the bench and not say a word, but it was okay.

I made it happen. Then, once it did, it was like there was no going back. It started near the beginning of the school year. I had gone to his house to see if Angela was home, but she was hanging out with one of her boyfriends. I’m not sure which one—number six on her list, I think. But it might’ve been number 666. Anyway, I was about to leave, but Abel called out to me halfway down the driveway and asked if I wanted to hang out. He put his hands in his pockets and shrugged from the door. His face was so red, I thought blood might spill out of his ears. I couldn’t tell if “hang out” meant play Nintendo, roll on molly, or make out. But secretly, I hoped for all three.

We were home alone because Mr Adams was working and Mrs Adams was at the casino. We went to the living room, and he rolled us a joint while I flipped through daytime TV. I settled on
The Ellen DeGeneres Show
while he sparked it. “I am not a second-class citizen,” Ellen said to the camera, tears in her eyes.

“Who died?” Abel asked, blowing a smoke ring that I popped with my accent nail. He passed me the joint, and after a few puffs, I already felt different. Like each time I batted my eyelashes, it was in slow motion. I looked at him through the smoke, lifting my hand to brush a curl out of his eyes. I took the lighter, which he’d dropped in his lap, and flicked the flame. He sucked on the joint so hard he must’ve got ashes at the back of his throat. His cough almost blew out the flame. He watched with watering, bloodshot eyes as I licked my finger and held it to the fire.

“It’s a lovely way to burn,” I told him, but he just stared at the commercials playing on the screen. I kept the flame burning and brought it closer to his face, so close it was like that time Angela tried to light the pipe for me and burned off some of my eyelashes. Abel didn’t even flinch. I blew out the flame, and when my breath hit his face, his eyes closed. I waited for them to reopen, but they didn’t. The roach burned out between his fingers as I placed the lighter back in his lap. He tensed, but I didn’t take my hand away.

As I undid his zipper, he slowly opened his eyes and said, “I’m not … ”

7

Casting Couch

T
obey Field lived next door to my grandma. When I was a kid, I’d play with him in my grandma’s basement on the weekends. My mom could only commit to five days of parenting a week. Tobey was the only boy who was ever my friend, not counting Abel, but I guess that’s different. I don’t know if Abel was my friend. I don’t really know what Abel was.

Tobey never made me feel weird like every other boy did. He didn’t care if I sounded like a girl and wore a tampon up my ass. I guess Tobey was different, too. But he didn’t seem different, so he got away with it in a way that I never could, being the male JonBenét Ramsey and all. Well, I always did walk around like there was a tiara on my head, and everyone wanted to choke me out …

My grandma spent all her time cooking in the kitchen, so Tobey and I would hang out in the basement and watch
Mean Girls,
which I kept playing on repeat just to give my grandma something to pray about. I knew each line by heart.

One day, right when the sales lady was all like, “You could try Sears,” Tobey looked over at me. I can’t remember exactly how it happened, I just remember being down to our underwear and humping on the couch while my grandma was upstairs baking pies of contrition for the church.

I was pretty much in love with Tobey because he was two years older than me and had pubic hair. I always wondered how he’d end up. I’d get depressed thinking about it, as depressed as I got when wishing I were a character in one of my mom’s Jackie Collins novels. I thought Tobey would probably end up getting a girl pregnant, and he’d work at the mine, same as everyone else.

Then, one weekend, I went to my grandma’s, and he was gone. He’d moved across town. I saw him around sometimes after that, but he always pretended like he didn’t know me. His face faded a few shades, and Tobey Field became a ghost. I thought about him a lot, though, I couldn’t help it. I hated the past, but sometimes I wanted to curl up in it because at least it was familiar and safe. Sometimes I wanted life to be like
Mean Girls
; I wanted to know exactly what was going to happen right before it did.