The Prettiest Star

by Carter Sickels

  Then the phone rang, and Andrew excused himself. He touched my shoulder before he whirled away. I felt relieved to see him go. I can’t explain it, really, the sudden, sticky shame—it wasn’t about being queer, not exactly. I felt disappointed in myself. I left this town so I wouldn’t have to live this way, and now here I was, back in the closet, walking around in skin that’s not my own.

  What a nice fella, my grandmother says.

  Jess

  My parents think I’m an idiot.

  Like I never heard of Ryan White, the boy in Indiana not allowed to go to school. Or about Rock Hudson. I remember seeing the pictures of him in the National Enquirer, how old and skeletal and creepy he looked. Mamaw couldn’t get over it. She loved Rock Hudson, and was tickled pink when he joined the cast of Dynasty. I watched that episode with her, the one when Rock Hudson kisses Linda Evans. That was before people knew. After they found out, they worried over that kiss. And, of course, I’ve seen the news—the men in San Francisco and New York City. At school, kids joke with each other: Eww, don’t touch me, you’ll give me AIDS. Uncle Wayne:

  Do you know what gay stands for?

  What?

  Got AIDS yet?

  Nobody ever told me Brian was a homo. I just figured it out, even though he doesn’t act like the men you see flitting around on TV, not exactly. I guess Rock Hudson didn’t act like that either. Once I asked Aunt Carol if she thought Brian ran off to get married, and she and Aunt Liz just looked at each other trying to hide smiles. “Oh, I don’t think that’s the reason,” Carol said, her voice heavy with scandal. My cousins talk in code: Well, Brian was always different, ha, ha, ha.

  One time when I was little, I was with Mamaw at the beauty shop, and overheard one of the ladies talking about her cousin, a hairdresser living in the big city, Queer as a three dollar bill, and they all laughed, including my grandmother. Later I asked her what the word meant and she told me not to use such language. Then she said it meant “funny,” like Richard Simmons is funny.

  At school boys who aren’t good at sports are faggots. Boys joke with each other: Stop being such a fag. Wayne teases me about the fairies I listen to. Boy George, The Cure, Prince, Michael Jackson. Most of the time he’s laughing, but sometimes his voice goes thin and tight. Homos are sick, he says, and that’s why God’s getting rid of them.

  My parents let Brian come back, but they don’t want us to drink after him or eat off the same silverware. I’ve read you can’t catch it that way, but what if? What if people find out—my friends, my teammates, kids at school?

  My mother’s at the kitchen table clipping coupons.

  “Where’s Dad?”

  Snip, snip, snip. “Probably at the Refuge watching the Reds game.”

  He’d rather be anywhere but here, even sitting in a dark bar on a sunny day.

  I pour myself a Diet Pepsi. Outside Sadie relaxes in the grass, soaking in the sun, her head rested on her paws, looking a little sad.

  “Where’s Brian?”

  “Over at your grandmother’s.”

  I thumb through the coupons. Seventy-five cents off orange juice. Buy two get one free diet frozen dinners. Coupons for chicken, a gallon of milk, fat-free chocolate cookies. Before Brian came back, whenever I’d go into a public bathroom, Mamaw would tell me to line the seat with toilet paper. Don’t touch the seat, you could catch AIDS!

  “Mom.”

  “Hmm?”

  She’s distracted, she’s always distracted. She cuts a coupon for tropical punch-flavored Hi-C.

  “Nothing,” I say.

  Later, when I’m in my room, I hear my dad come in. He doesn’t sing oldies like he used to, doesn’t call out to us when he gets home. He moves quietly through the house. For a moment, I consider going downstairs to ask him what he thinks of all this, what he knows. But I hear the door slam, then the rumble of the lawn mower. I push open my window and crawl out on the roof. My father perches on the riding mower, a baseball hat shading his face. The air smells like cut grass and light and summer. He goes up and down the lawn, making perfectly straight lines. I watch him but he doesn’t see me. Metallic green swallows swoop down to eat up the bugs.

  Killer whale societies are matriarchal. The pods are led by mothers and grandmothers. My grandmother is the matriarch, but she doesn’t know the truth about her grandson. As she spoons out strawberries and Cool Whip, her doughy arms jiggle. It doesn’t matter how much you weigh when you’re old.

  “I don’t want any,” I say.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. I’m just not hungry.”

  She studies me, hand on her hip. I never get her to myself anymore. “Well, okay then. More for me and Brian.”

  My brother makes a big deal about how good the strawberry shortcake is, smacking his lips and making noises of delight. I’ve been avoiding him as much as possible. I thought this would be the missing puzzle piece snapping into place, but it doesn’t feel like that—I just have more questions and nowhere to turn. Sometimes I feel scared, like I’ve been left behind in a stranger’s house. Other times, I’m enraged—at him, the lies, the illness. The anger is better—sharper, like a barbed wire wrapped around my hands. I try to hold on because it makes me stronger. But then he starts talking to me, and everything in me gets twisted up and confused. I wish I didn’t feel anything at all.

  “You sure you don’t want just a little piece?” Mamaw asks.

  I won’t be tempted. When Days of Our Lives comes on, Mamaw and Brian hush up, then start gabbing at each other and at the TV. Mamaw says, “Look at her, that floozy’s up to something.” “I thought he was in a coma,” Brian says. They especially like when a character does something bad or a villain ruins a happy moment. I can’t keep track of who’s in love with who, who’s betrayed who.

  “I’m going on a jog,” I say.

  “A jog,” Mamaw says, like she’s hearing the word for the first time. “What in the world for?”

  “I just want to.”

  “Are you going to be back in time for our show?” she asks, talking about On Location With Naomi.

  My grandmother doesn’t have a clue. I run as hard as I can. It’s not enough.

  Nick passes me a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon he stole from his father’s supply. It’s a hot, sticky day. The treetops drum and whine with cicadas, but the birds remain quiet, nowhere to be seen. We’re sitting in what is left of the old concession stand, and the lean-to roof keeps the sun off our faces. Mud daubers bump stupidly into the rafters.

  When Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” comes on, Nick turns it up. The warm, bitter beer makes me shudder, but I drink it anyway. We see each other a few times a week now. Nick doesn’t have any friends in Chester, and I don’t either—I haven’t hung out with Carrie or Molly since that day at the pool.

  The song gets Nick thinking of death, and he asks if I know anyone who’s died.

  “My grandpa,” I say. “A couple of great-aunts, but I didn’t know them.”

  “My cousin Max died last year.” Nick lights a cigarette, hands me one. “He was six.”

  I’ve only known old people to die, but in the made-for-TV movies there is always some kid with ivory skin and feathery hair and big eyes like a Precious Moments figurine dying of leukemia. I ask Nick if that’s what his cousin had.

  “No. He was stung by bees. He was allergic.”

  “Do you know anyone who died from a disease?” I ask.

  “My grandpa had cancer.”

  I pick my fingernails. It would be so easy to tell him, but impossible at the same time.

  “What if you found out you were dying and you got one last wish?” I add, “It could be anything,” even though the dying kids I read about in Mamaw’s magazines only ever want to go to Disney World, or else some movie star nobody has ever heard of visits them in the hospital and gives the kid an autographed picture.

  “That’s bullshit,” Nick says. “Nobody gets a last wish.”

  “But, like, jus
t say you could. What would it be?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I’d ride across the country on a Harley.” Even in this heat, Nick wears jeans and a black T-shirt. I’ve never seen his bare legs. I tell him my uncle Wayne has a motorcycle. A Honda. Nick says if it’s not a Harley, he’s not interested.

  “What’s yours?” he asks.

  “I’d go out to the Antarctic Ocean to see pods of killer whales. Sometimes there are fifty of them together.”

  “They’d eat you.”

  “No, they wouldn’t. Anyway, who cares? If I was going to die anyway.”

  “True.” He spits. “Well, I don’t think we’re going to get a disease, so don’t get your hopes up.”

  “People get diseases all the time.” I hesitate. “Like AIDS.”

  “Only fags get that,” he says.

  I smoke my cigarette. I’ve said too much. One time I heard Mr. Trumble, the science teacher, talking to Mr. Michaels, our vice-principal, about AIDS, and he said it’s a part of God’s plan, to make homosexuals pay for their sins. I want someone to tell me differently. I don’t want my brother to burn in hell.

  The song gathers steam, all guitars and yelling. A staircase to heaven. Why do people always think heaven is in the sky? Why can’t it be in the ocean? Most of the ocean is still a mystery, like outer space. I’ve watched the videos of the bright, spindly stars of coral and the spikey fish and ghostly glowing deep sea creatures on NOVA, but there is so much that is invisible to our eyes, a world nobody has ever seen.

  Nick crushes the empty beer can and tosses it against what’s left of the old popcorn machine—most of the glass is busted out, cobwebs matted over the kettle. I don’t know if my brother has any last wishes. My mouth feels loose, I might say anything. But I can’t. Nobody can know. Or know that I know.

  Nick opens his notebook to show me his latest drawings, and we leaf through the pages, our heads bent close together. Monsters, spaceships, motorcycles. As I turn another page, Nick daintily strokes the top of my hand with his smudged fingertip. A yellow jacket buzzes around the crushed beer can. A tiny insect can kill a person.

  Nick moves closer. His lips are warm and thin and hard. I know about French kissing. Still, it’s a surprise when Nick’s tongue darts into my mouth. The soft thin hairs of his mustache tickle my skin. After a few more seconds of wiggling around, Nick pulls his tongue out, leaving my lips feeling giant and empty and exposed. Embarrassed, I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. My heart pounds hard and fast. What is naked to the eye can kill a person. Maybe the disease is inside me too, lingering in my saliva, poisoning me, and now poisoning Nick, who grins foolishly.

  When I take another drag off the cigarette, the ground softens, tilts underneath me. The beer and cigarettes have left me feeling wobbly and thick-headed. When I tell Nick I have to go, he doesn’t try to kiss me again. I walk away, carefully. The sun beats against my skull. One step at a time. When I’m far enough away that he can’t see or hear me, I huddle behind a line of scraggly bushes and throw up.

  “He has AIDS,” Josh Clay says.

  His tone is remorseful and hushed, but when he says the word, it’s like he’s let a rabid bat into the room, swooping and fluttering wildly over our heads. Collective groans, faces of disgust. “Gross,” someone says.

  This man, he explains, is someone he knows. “He left his family, went far away,” he says. “He lived a homosexual lifestyle.”

  I’m sitting as still as possible, trying not to breathe, but my muscles in my face still contract and expand. The hurt hits my eyes like I’m staring into a bright light bulb and can’t look away. The others in youth group are wide-eyed and innocent, as weightless as kites. I taste smoke in my mouth. Jesus loves you, Josh tells us. I want to be filled with the light Josh carries around. To feel safe. To be born again.

  “He’s in Chester,” Josh says. He stares at each of us, emphasizing how wrong this is. “He’s here, walking around with this disease.”

  The room spins. I hold very still. Josh never uses real names in his stories, but what if the others figure it out?

  After the meeting, he offers me a ride. I don’t want to go, but he insists.

  At first, he makes dumb jokes and talks like everything is normal, but when he pulls in front of my house, he turns off the engine, and my stomach twists into knots. I feel exposed, like he’s been in my room, touched all of my things, my underwear and bras. Josh opens a plastic container the size of a lighter and taps three Tic Tacs into my cupped hand. He pops one in his mouth, and for a second, I see it there, a bright green button on his tongue, and I wonder what it would be like to kiss him.

  He reaches his hand out and touches my knee, and it makes me anxious, his skin on my skin. Thank God I shaved this morning. I’ve lost weight, but still I don’t like how my legs look, too soft, wide. I crack my knuckles, then, embarrassed, shove my hands under my thighs. Josh’s cologne overpowers the air like an ad in a magazine, tickling my nose. I want to hear the voice of God. I want to tell Josh everything. I want to talk to him about whales. About Brian. Nick.

  “Jessie, are you okay?”

  Maybe he knows about the beer, the cigarette, the kiss. Puking in the bushes. I’m a sinner, like my brother. I’m a fake, a liar.

  “You know who I was talking about, right?” he asks.

  The knot in my throat expands, a hard lump, like I’ve swallowed a buckeye. Josh’s fingers tap softly on my knee.

  “Your brother’s sick, isn’t he?”

  One time I went with Molly to a Catholic mass, and felt swept up by the strangeness and mystery: the choir’s low chants, burning incense, all the kneeling. I wanted to be Catholic too—to go to the confession booth and talk into the little square window to a hidden priest, and click rosary beads between my fingers and make the sign of the cross, the way athletes do on TV. Be forgiven.

  “Jessie, look at me.”

  I feel him waiting—and his waiting, his expectation, is a ticking clock. The car feels too small. I raise my lowered eyes. Josh looking at me with concern.

  “Jessie, does Brian have AIDS?”

  I can’t look at him. I suddenly feel cold. My voice sounds very far away.

  “No. Who told you that?”

  Josh brings his face closer, like he’s going to kiss me, and this time I don’t look away. I can see the dirt-brown stubble on his cheeks and chin. His lips are thick and pouty. I want to scoot closer, to press my lips to his.

  “My wife heard it from someone in your family, I can’t say who.” His knowing eyes move over me, stop on mine. “People are talking. It’s true, Jessie, isn’t it?”

  I’m looking at Josh but thinking of Nick, the bump of his Adam’s apple, his smoker’s smell, and hard little mouth. We’re in the confession booth, no wall between us. It’s a relief to finally say the truth.

  “Yes,” I say. “Yes.”

  Josh puts his arm around me and draws me in, the softness of his shirt pressed to my face, his spicy, musky scent enveloping me. “It’s okay,” he keeps saying. I crunch the mint between my teeth, and it’s too clean and cool. I want my mouth to burn, to taste my own blood.

  I walk through the front door. My parents sit side by side on the love seat, and Brian perches on the edge of the armchair. Weirdos all looking at me.

  “What’s going on?”

  “You’re late,” my mother says.

  “Youth group ran over,” I say. The upstairs toilet flushes, the bathroom door opens. “Who’s here?”

  A woman wearing denim shorts, a black tank top with fringes, and anklet boots flounces down the stairs. Her hair is platinum-blond, like Madonna’s, and short—buzzed close to the nape and on the sides, but bigger on top, like a pile of stiff feathers. Thick black pencil outlines her eyes and peach eye shadow curves up to her dark eyebrows.

  “Jess! I’ve heard so much about you,” she exclaims, and before I can say anything, she pulls me into a bear hug. My brother’s friend. Annie.

  “I didn’t
know you were coming,” I say stupidly.

  “Nobody did, not even Brian. Surprise!” She talks fast, hurtling over her words, interrupting herself. “I have a car now—it’s so stupid, who needs a car in New York? But I have one. I took some time off—I’m an artist assistant for this tyrannical bitch—I mean, woman—and I never take time off. But I thought, it’s time. Why not get out of New York and visit Brian? The drive took forever. All those cows and cornfields. It’s another planet.”

  “Welcome to Ohio,” Brian says. I haven’t seen him look this happy since he’s been home. My mother forces a stiff smile—she hates surprises—and my father shifts, uncomfortable, looking around like he isn’t sure he’s in the right house.

  When Brian and Annie go downstairs, I follow them—I don’t want be stuck here with my zombie parents. I can still smell traces of Josh’s cologne. He held me for a while longer, then he turned the key. “You did the right thing,” he said, but the softness had left his voice.

  I stand in the doorway, a traitor, unsure if I’m invited in. Brian puts on a Diana Ross record as Annie wanders around the room touching things, not at all afraid of germs. She’s a little taller than me, probably around five seven, with more curves and powerful legs—not fat but strong, like she could walk a hundred miles without getting tired.

  “You didn’t tell me they put you in the basement,” she says, raising an eyebrow.

  “It’s not like that. It used to be my room.”

  Annie doesn’t look convinced, but she holds back her comments, tightening her lips. She picks up one of Brian’s baseball trophies and studies it like it’s some kind of ancient artifact. “God, you really were a jock,” she says. “I still find that hard to believe.”

  She stares at the wall of photographs, and touches one of Shawn. “I miss him.”

  “Me too,” Brian says.

  Annie sinks on the bed and Brian scoots over, fist propped under his chin, staring at her like he’s in love. But he was in love with Shawn.

  “Where’d you get the car?”

  “Donny. He left it to me, of all people. I don’t know why. I’m an awful driver.”