The Prettiest Star

by Carter Sickels

  Everyone laughs, and Josh does too, but then he holds up his hand like a politician, serious. “You’d be surprised. Totally normal people will fall into bad things. They go gay. Turn to drugs. Become prostitutes.” He tells us about a young woman he met when he was working at a soup kitchen. “She came from a good family. Then she started drinking, smoking pot. Pretty soon, she was selling herself.”

  Each week he tells us lurid stories about people who sinned, those who were redeemed and those who weren’t. He tells us about people he’s known who died or became alcoholics or had abortions. These stories are the best part of youth group.

  At the end of the meeting, we stand in a circle and stick our right arms into the center and close our eyes. Another one of Josh’s games designed to teach us trust and teamwork.

  “Get close,” he says. “Closer, closer.” He tells us to find and grab onto a hand with our right hand, and then do the same with our left. “Don’t peek,” he instructs. “Just take a hand. Okay, now open your eyes.”

  We look at the hands we’re holding. One of the ones around mine is small and sweaty; the other one squeezes too hard. My hands look too soft—fat girl hands. Our bodies squish up against each other, and the smells of various shampoos and deodorants and perfumes mingle, making me want to gag. We’re supposed to untangle ourselves without letting go. Everyone is laughing and directing each other: Go this way, turn to your left, walk over here. Queasy, I just want to break free and run out the door. Brian would think this is so stupid. We twist and turn, and finally, after many tries, we’ve untangled ourselves, we’re a circle again. Dainty, eager-to-please Missy Scott stands on one side of me, and Josh Clay is on the other, holding my hand in his. He doesn’t let go.

  “I haven’t been swimming in so long,” Brian says. “Sounds like a blast.”

  I worry he’ll want to come with me, but he already made plans to go shopping with Mamaw. “Watch out for sharks,” he calls.

  Brian used to go swimming all the time. He was the one who taught me. Fearless, he’d jump, all arms and legs, off the high-dive, doing crazy flips and spinning in the air. He used to be the kind of guy that people were drawn to—I knew, even when I was little, how cool he looked. Now I’m not sure what people would think.

  I lock my bike to the metal rack, next to bikes with banana seats, three-speeds, and beat up hand-me-downs. Mine is a cheap rusted blue ten-speed that my grandmother bought at a yard sale.

  After I pay the girl at the counter, I go in through the girls’ locker room, but I’m already wearing my suit underneath—nobody changes in the locker room, otherwise you’re a lezzie. The rubber soles of my white Keds slap the puddles forming on the slick tiles. The toes are grass-stained, like a little kid’s.

  My mother has been hounding me to go. “You love to swim,” she says, but that’s not why she wants me to go. She wants me to have friends, wishes I was popular, like she was, like Brian was. I used to spend just about every day of the summer here, but things have changed, that’s what she doesn’t understand. Girls my age don’t swim. They lay out and swelter in the sun, and wait to be noticed by boys.

  I miss the old days, when my grandmother would take me and Brandy White, and we’d stay for hours. Mamaw never wanted to waste money at the concession stand; she’d bring a cooler with pop and sandwiches, and we’d eat greasy Fritos from a plastic baggie with a green twist tie. Brandy White was also a good swimmer. We’d dive down to find coins at the bottom, or spin somersaults. Mamaw, who is scared of the water, would sit on the edge to wet her feet and gossip with friends and read the National Enquirer. When you’re a kid, you don’t have to worry as much about fitting in.

  This is the only swimming pool in the county. Fights sometimes break out between town kids and the kids from the hollers, and it’s always bad when football players from Fayetteville show up. But today it’s fairly peaceful. Young mothers wade in the baby pool and dip their fat babies in the water and complain to each other. Junior high brats and little kids line up at the concession stand, clutching damp dollar bills.

  Molly Williams and Carrie Driggs, two girls from the softball team, wave me over. They’re spread out on a blanket and wearing high-cut bikinis. Molly’s is light blue with white stripes; Carrie’s is pink with spaghetti strings that tie around her neck. I peel off my T-shirt and new pair of Jams, and I’m already embarrassed. My faded one-piece is from last year, the elastic around the shoulder straps frayed and loose, the material pilled. Even though I’m chunky, my chest, unlike Molly’s, who wears a C-cup, is flat as a kickboard. Carrie isn’t stacked, but at least she needs something more than an A-cup.

  “You been in?” I ask.

  They shake their heads, like why in the world would they do that.

  “The chlorine will dry out your hair,” Molly says.

  My hair is flat and stringy and it wouldn’t matter if I got it wet or not. Sometimes I try to take a curling iron to it, but it never looks right. My mother wants me to get a perm like hers, but the one I had last year made me look like Little Orphan Annie.

  “Guess who was here earlier?” Carrie asks in a teasing voice.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Josh Clay.” She licks her lips. “He’s hot.”

  Carrie’s family only goes to church on Christmas Eve, but now she comes to youth group meetings to flirt. Even Molly, a Catholic, wants to join.

  “I swear he was checking us out,” Molly says. Her silver braces shine in the sunlight.

  “He’s married,” I say.

  “Duh,” Carrie says.

  Carrie and Molly crunch carrot sticks and drink Diet Pepsi and look through Seventeen, their shoulders touching. I brought a book about a girl who gets addicted to drugs and starts hearing voices, but I can see that was a mistake—nobody’s reading except for a few old ladies with paperback romances propped on their wrinkled bent knees. I leave it in my bag.

  “I’m so tired,” Molly says dramatically.

  “Me too. We shouldn’t have stayed up so late.”

  “That movie freaked me out.” Molly adds, “Carrie spent the night,” as if I don’t get the hint. I wasn’t invited, but so what? The three of us hung out at school, but things have changed. Now it’s the two of them.

  “I need to go on a diet,” Molly says, and pinches a sliver of skin under her arm. Molly is a Tinker Bell with a blond bob and a sweet smile, and she doesn’t have a jiggle of fat anywhere on her.

  “Me too,” Carrie says, who is as just as skinny as Molly, but not as cute. Carrie has a flat face and no chin and razor thin lips. “I hate my thighs. Look at the dimples.”

  My own thighs spread and squish, loaves of uncooked dough. Plump, my Sunday school teacher said. My stomach growls, and I press my hands across it. I won’t eat a single carrot stick.

  They talk about their exercise routines and ask me what I’m going to do for the summer.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like, aerobics, or running, or what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You better do something, you don’t want to end up like Wendy the Walrus,” Carrie says, and Molly giggles. They’re talking about Wendy Rooper, the fattest girl in school. She sits by herself during lunch, and she’s always the last one to get picked for teams in gym class. She’s even worse than I am at sports. She has a baby-doll face and dimpled cheeks, and when she walks down the hallway, guys make mooing noises.

  Carrie and Molly go back to their magazine, critiquing hairstyles and outfits, and skipping over the pages with too much writing.

  I slather on suntan lotion and put on my sunglasses. Boys hurl themselves off the diving boards, trying to make the biggest cannonballs. “Faggot,” a boy yells, followed by laughter.

  Nearby, Brandy White sits on her towel like a queen on her throne, flanked by a group of girls with big fluffy hair they probably spent hours blow drying and sculpting with a brush or curling iron. Brandy used to do my hair for me—she’d braid it or feather it. You n
eed to do something with it, she’d say, sounding like my mother.

  “Check out her awesome earrings,” Molly says, talking about one of the models in the magazine.

  Molly and Carrie think they’re cool, but they’ll never be like Brandy White, who doesn’t even try. It just happened to her. We were best friends all through elementary, but when she was in eighth grade, she found a different set. Two years older than me, she’d look at me and shake her head, disappointed. I was a kid and she wasn’t.

  I wish I could go over and talk to her. We could get in the pool and make up a swim-ballet routine like we used to, or stand on our hands with our legs shooting up out of the water. I used to tell her stories about Brian. She never met him, but she drooled over his picture.

  “Hey.”

  Two boys our age or maybe older stand near us, dripping water all over my towel, until Molly and Carrie, nervous as hens, rearrange the blanket to make room for them. One has dark red hair and freckles all over his face and arms and legs. The other one is thin and gangly, with a long brown rattail that curls to the bottom of his neck. They talk and laugh and say stupid things, and I’m starting to wish I’d gone with my brother and grandmother to the mall. Maybe we could go to a movie. Not one of Brian’s weird ones, but a real movie.

  Brandy White walks by. Sunglasses pushed up on her head, she looks around, bored. Then one of the lifeguards calls her name, and her face opens up into a big smile as she turns, hand on hip. She makes flirting look so easy.

  The boys are from Fayetteville. They mostly just talk to each other, making inside jokes and saying, Fuck you, and laughing. Carrie and Molly giggle at every stupid thing they say. They tell us about a party this weekend, and the redhead writes down his phone number on a corner of the magazine. Rattail turns to me.

  “Are you deaf?”

  “What?”

  “You haven’t said a word.”

  “You mean mute,” I say.

  “Huh?”

  “I can talk. I just don’t have anything to say to you.”

  He makes a sour face. “What’s her problem?”

  Molly tries to laugh it off, shrugging like she has no idea who I am, and Carrie just ignores me. She asks the redhead about the party.

  “It’ll be cool,” he tells her. “You should come.”

  After a while, but not soon enough, the boys go back to the diving boards, cussing and shoving each other.

  “Jess,” Carrie says. “Why’d you act like such a bitch?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “You’re never going to get a boyfriend,” Molly says.

  “They weren’t even cute.”

  “Whatever,” Carrie says, rolling her eyes.

  The two of them start making plans about the party, how they’ll get there and what lies they’ll tell their parents. They’re acting like they do this all the time. The sun bakes the top of my head. I look out at the pool. Kids splashing and guys springing off the high-dive. There is no place to go.

  “I’ve got a headache,” I say, and start gathering up my things.

  “You’re leaving?”

  “I don’t feel good.”

  “Are you on the rag?” Carrie just started her period a few months ago and it’s all she wants to talk about. “I hate going swimming when I’m on the rag, it’s so gross.”

  “Yep,” I lie. “I’ve got PMS.”

  “That’s why you were such a bitch,” Carrie says, laughing. But they sympathize and forgive me for screwing up with the boys. PMS works every time.

  On the way home, I ride past all the same houses I see every day. Same lawns and same trees. Same tire swing. Same falling-down chicken coop. Same cars on blocks, same stupid lawn decorations. The wheels of my bike roll over the busted sidewalk, weeds shooting up from the cracks. Brian says that people in Chester don’t know how to dream. He left all of this. He went to live on another planet, one that’s burning bright, but now he’s back—faded, broken, frail—and no one will tell me why.

  Sharon

  There are moments when I hear him downstairs watching TV, talking on the phone, listening to records, and I feel startled, then joyful: my son is home. We are a family again. The sounds give me hope, and for those few seconds, my mind and body are consumed with a feeling as natural as breath. It never lasts. It can’t. Seconds later, a rush of sadness knocks me off my feet.

  He’s been home almost a month. We are figuring out how to be a family again. I hoped it would be easier, like he would simply step back into place. But I don’t even know what that place is anymore—too much time has passed, too much lurks in the unknown. I find myself studying him, wanting to ask how sick he is, but unable to speak. He takes vitamins and other pills (I don’t know what), and he doesn’t drink or smoke. He takes care of himself. But sometimes his face clenches in pain. He is often tired, or doesn’t want to eat. I don’t know what to do. I can’t take him to our family doctor.

  Some days, it’s like he’s come back from war or the dead. Like he’s missing a leg or an arm. I don’t know how to be around him. How to look at him, how not to. You can’t stop to think about it for too long, you have to keep going, because the moment you stop, you see the truth. There’s nothing you can do, or there is so much you should have already done.

  “Morning, Sharon.” Dave Green takes off his ivy cap and hangs it on the coat rack. He pats his thinning hair, adjusts his tie.

  “Morning, Dave.”

  Dave and I have been working together for eighteen years. I took time off when I was pregnant and switched to part-time when the kids were young, but I’ve never stopped completely. I’m good at my job. I keep the office organized and running smoothly. The surface of my desk shines, as do the keys on the electric typewriter. Files, stapler, paperclips. A cup of pencils and pens. Easy-listening Muzak pipes through the speakers to make the patients feel relaxed.

  “What do we have today?” Dave asks in a sing-songy voice. He is generally cheery, especially in the mornings. About a decade older than me, somewhere in his early fifties, he’s a trim, neat man with a receding hairline and a plain, average-looking face. There are never any surprises with Dave.

  “Mostly just cleanings. A couple of fillings, one crown.”

  “Easy peasy,” he says. “How is everything? How is Brian?”

  “Good.”

  “Must be nice having him back.” He reaches for a stack of files, smothering me in a cloud of Aqua Velva. After Brian left for New York, Dave didn’t ask many questions—like most people, he tiptoed around the topic.

  I want to bring Brian in to get his teeth looked at, but then I would have to tell Dave the truth. I’ve heard him and Marjorie, the technician, say how glad they are they don’t live in a big city where they could catch AIDS. Still, they wear latex gloves now. Marjorie laughs about it. “There could be somebody light in his loafers that we wouldn’t ever suspect, just like Rock Hudson had us all fooled,” she says.

  The door flies open, and Marjorie, breathing hard, comes in. “Lord, that coffee smells good.”

  A big woman with short hair angled like wings around her face, Marjorie is good-natured and nothing rattles her. But she couldn’t hide her shock when she found out Brian was back. “I didn’t even know that you had a son,” she exclaimed. I felt ashamed that I’d never mentioned Brian. I didn’t even have a picture of him at my desk.

  “Shew, those kids wear me out,” Marjorie says, talking about her twin six-year-olds. “Getting them out the door just about kills me. You’re lucky both of yours are old enough you don’t have to bother with that anymore, Sharon.”

  I took Brian’s picture down just before Marjorie started working here because I didn’t want to have to talk about him, I didn’t want to answer questions. But a few days ago, I put one back up, one of my favorites: he’s five years old, mop of blond curls, face scrunched up and mouth wide open with laughter. My son is happy. He looks at me with love and trust.

  “I wish my kids were still little,” I s
ay. “Things were easier then.”

  For three months, nothing. Then he sent postcards, made calls. Promised to come back for Thanksgiving, for Christmas. Never did. Sometimes I sent him cards with money or pictures of the family tucked inside. Maybe I should have been more demanding. Begged him. Gone after him. But I didn’t know how to swim across the river between us. He drifted further and further away, and I let him go.

  A few years after he’d been in New York, he sent a letter. In it, he said that he was gay. I wept. Before, he’d mentioned friends—mostly the names of men—but still, I never thought anything. Maybe I had a few suspicions, but Travis and I certainly never talked about it. I didn’t—still don’t—know any gay people, except the characters you see on TV, ridiculously feminine men. Brian didn’t act like that.

  I didn’t tell Travis right away. I knew the words would break him. But the secret became too heavy for me to bear, and so one morning I left the letter (but not the photograph of Brian and the other man—his friend) on the bed. When I got home, the letter was gone. Travis didn’t mention it. I finally asked if he read it.

  “We should have gotten him help,” he said.

  That was it. He didn’t want to talk about it. I knew he would never accept his son as gay and I couldn’t either. The wrongness of what he was doing and what he called himself sunk deep inside me like a rock in a lake that would never surface. It was against everything we’d taught him. The word itself left a bad taste in our mouths, so we didn’t say it, ever.

  A few months went by before I heard from Brian again. He asked if I’d read the letter. He sounded nervous—his voice high-pitched, the words clipped.

  “I read it,” I said. That was it. I didn’t tell Brian he couldn’t visit, that he couldn’t bring this man with him. But I refused to indulge. The anger was easier than the pain.

  Brian stopped calling. I hid the picture in my jewelry box, never showed it to Travis. Then one day, out of the blue, Brian called and told me his friend was dead. I’m sorry, I said. He said, You have no idea what’s going on.