The State of Us

by Shaun David Hutchinson

  “You’ll go?”

  I had zero interest in going to the comic-con ball and watching a bunch of awkward dudes in Captain America costumes try to work up the nerve to talk to girls in anime costumes. But Mel needed me, and I couldn’t say no.

  “Sure.”

  Mel jumped up and down, clapping her hands. “You’re going to have the best time! I promise!”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It’ll be a blast.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  I did my best to shake off the mood that’d fallen over me. “Nothing.”

  Mel cocked her head to the side and planted her hands on her hips, giving me that look that told me I was a silly fool for thinking I could pretend nothing was the matter when something clearly was.

  “It’s just . . . I don’t know. It’s not fair that you’re flirting with two boys and I can’t even find one. And it’s not fair to you for me to think it’s not fair because it’s not like you should remain chaste just because I’m a hopeless troll who repels boys, but I can’t help feeling sorry for myself because I’m a selfish asshole.”

  “You’re not an asshole.”

  “Or selfish?”

  “You’re not an asshole.”

  I slapped Mel’s arm. “Thanks a lot.”

  “If you don’t wanna go, I’ll tell Andy and Tade we got other plans—”

  “No,” I said. “We’re going. One of us deserves to be happy.”

  “What about the guy you’ve been talking to?”

  I hadn’t heard from Dean since he’d answered my question about being ace. He hadn’t seemed upset about it, and his answer had felt so beautifully honest—like he’d peeled away all the artifice he surrounded himself with and showed me a tiny true piece of his soul—but the longer I went without hearing from him, the more worried I got that I’d pushed too hard on something sensitive. I hadn’t opened the app since we’d gotten to the convention because I was afraid I’d see in place of his username.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “There’s nothing there.”

  “It didn’t seem like nothing.”

  “We don’t even live in the same zip code, and there’s too much shit in the way.”

  Mel was giving me another look, but I couldn’t decipher it.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “I was just trying to figure out when you became such a sad, scared ball sack.”

  “Excuse me, what?”

  “Aren’t you the same Dre who literally crawled through garbage to sneak into a sold-out concert? And aren’t you the same Dre who stood up to a guy twice his size for picking on a freshman?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “But it turned out he wasn’t being picked on. They were rehearsing for a play.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Mel said. “You are weird, you are deranged, you are annoying, and you are persistent and fierce as fuck. If you want to make something happen, make it happen. Don’t let whatever’s hanging you up stand in the way.”

  I pulled Mel in and kissed the side of her head. “I love you, Mel.” And I did. But the problem was that I had no idea what, if anything, was happening between me and Dean, and it wasn’t something I could force. If Dean didn’t have any romantic feelings for me, I had to respect that, no matter how weird, deranged, annoying, persistent, and fierce Mel thought I was.

  Dean

  THIS WAS SUPPOSEDLY the best night of my life. That’s what everyone kept saying. Tamal stuck his head out the window and yelled it as I drove us to the dance; Astrid said it from the back seat as we pulled into the parking lot at school. Even Mr. Baxter clapped me on the shoulder and said “Welcome to the best night of your life” as I passed through the metal detectors at the entrance to the gym.

  But if they were right, then why was I so bored?

  I stood at the edges of the dance floor with my hands in my pockets as a song I didn’t like turned into a song I didn’t know, and the crowd went a little wild. They were still coming off the high of winning the game the night before, with a touchdown in the final ten seconds, surprising everyone, and we were at that stage of the dance where the homecoming royals had been crowned—Asa Ford and Devi Kapoor—and the need to keep shoes on or worry about hair had passed. The majority of the dancers had given into the Bacchanalian revelry and were, possibly, having the best night of their lives.

  I, on the other hand, was not.

  It wasn’t that I couldn’t dance. I had, in fact, proven I knew how to dance with Ellen when she’d had my mother and me on her show. I had actually taken dance lessons. Not to go on the show, of course. My mom had me take them so that I wouldn’t embarrass myself if I ever needed to dance at one of her fancy fundraisers or balls. They didn’t do the kinds of dancing at school dances that they did at my mom’s events, but I still would have enjoyed the opportunity to have semi-rhythmic seizures while surrounded by my friends set to music I probably wouldn’t have chosen to listen to if given another option. It was just . . . I don’t know. I wanted more than to spend another night pretending.

  There was nothing wrong with the concept of a dance; it was the expectations that went along with them that bothered me. If I could have danced without people assuming things about me because of it, I would have. But if I’d wanted to cut loose and dance with Tamal, people probably would have assumed I was gay. If I’d danced with any girl, she might think I was attracted to her and might feel led on when she realized I wasn’t. Not to mention that everyone in the gym—students and chaperones—had the potential to snap a picture covertly and ruin my life and my mother’s campaign. Maybe this could have been one of the best nights of my life if a dance could have been nothing more than a dance, but nothing in my life was that simple.

  Nothing except talking to Dre.

  I slipped into the restroom and locked myself in the farthest stall from the door. I sat on the toilet and pulled out my phone. Still no new messages from Dre. His reply to my attempted explanation about being ace had been sweet, but it had felt like a period rather than a question mark—a polite smile rather than an invitation to continue talking—and I didn’t want to be pushy by initiating another conversation if he wasn’t interested.

  But there was something about talking to Dre. Explaining my feelings to him about being demi had felt like the day the doctor had removed the cast from my wrist that I’d gotten when I broke it skiing. The moment the cool air hit my hot, itchy skin had been a revelation. I thought I’d never again feel anything so wonderful in my life. And then came Dre.

  I didn’t want to overshare, though. I could have filled the screen with my feelings, but I’m not sure that would have been fair to him. He had his own friends and his own life, and I didn’t know what I would have called us. Secret not-enemies? There were complications to our friendship that we would eventually have to confront if we continued talking. We didn’t have to confront them now, though, and I needed someone to talk to about things I couldn’t say to anyone else or I might explode, but I was afraid of scaring Dre away.

  I slipped my phone back into my pocket and was about to leave the stall when the door banged open. I froze.

  “Layla, huh?”

  “Seems like it.”

  “You guys going to Jack’s?”

  “For the party?”

  “No, to sit shiva. Yes, for the party!”

  “What’s shiva?”

  “Forget it. Are you coming to the party?”

  “Hell yeah.”

  “This is the best night of our lives.”

  I remained motionless, quietly listening to the boys as they peed and talked and did not wash their hands. One of the boys was definitely Avi Fleischmann, but I’m not sure who the other was. I couldn’t return to the dance this way. I just needed to talk to someone. It might have been a terrible idea, but as soon as the boys left the restroom, I got out my phone, opened Promethean, and began to type.

  PrezMamasBoy: Hi, Dre. It’s Dean.

  PrezMamasBoy: There must be more to b
eing seventeen than this, right? More than discussing who we find attractive and who we want to “get with.” More than dances in gymnasiums that still smell like sweaty jockstraps and overchlorinated water. More than the superficial relationships that we claim mean so much to us but that keep us from really knowing one another.

  PrezMamasBoy: More than . . . more than this. There must be more than this. Please tell me that there’s more than this. That this is not the best night of my life.

  PrezMamasBoy: ~Dean

  I typed furiously, my fingertips tapping against the screen, hitting send after each message. One second later, I began to regret it. I couldn’t believe I’d said all of that to Dre. What kind of person was he going to think I was? He was going to think I was a melancholy weirdo who fired off long-winded messages from the stall of a gym restroom instead of having fun with his friends. He was going to read my messages and delete my contact information and never speak to me again. I had to fix it. Or, at least, mitigate the damage.

  PrezMamasBoy: Hi, Dre. It’s Dean again.

  PrezMamasBoy: Forget what I said. I didn’t mean it. Okay, that’s not true; I did mean it. But you have to believe me when I say that this is no simple case of adolescent ennui.

  PrezMamasBoy: Which is, I suppose, how every teenager in the history of teenagers feels. Like their pain is real while everyone else’s is phony. Like the isolation they feel is incomparable to the isolation felt by anyone anywhere ever. I think it really is different for us, though.

  PrezMamasBoy: We can’t do anything without being watched and analyzed.

  PrezMamasBoy: Last year, when I had my wisdom teeth removed, a photographer took a picture of me taking one of the pain pills prescribed to me, and someone ran a story that I was addicted to opioids.

  PrezMamasBoy: I’m worried that by the time all this is over, I won’t know who I am anymore.

  PrezMamasBoy: You are very likely the only person in the world capable of understanding what I mean.

  PrezMamasBoy: Other than Sasha and Malia Obama, Chelsea Clinton, or maybe even the Bush twins, but I think there is a difference between remembering how something feels and feeling it in the moment.

  PrezMamasBoy: Besides, I doubt the Obamas would take my calls.

  PrezMamasBoy: They might take yours. You should try.

  I knew I should stop—a voice in the back of my mind was screaming for me to stop—but I couldn’t. I just kept typing. Sending the rawness of what I was feeling through my phone to Dre.

  PrezMamasBoy: I’m sorry for the barrage of messages. It’s just that I’m sitting alone in a toilet stall in the boys’ restroom in the gym, which has been decorated in school colors—yellow and blue; go, Lions!—but still has that depressing look of a gymnasium. It reminds me of my great-grandfather’s funeral. Even wearing makeup and dressed in his favorite suit, he looked like a corpse.

  PrezMamasBoy: I don’t know why I’m telling you all of this. You probably have friends to talk to about these feelings. I have friends.

  PrezMamasBoy: Okay, I have Tamal. He’s a friend. My best friend. But he and I don’t talk like this. We talk about baseball and college and I listen to him worry about girls.

  PrezMamasBoy: Are we friends, Dre?

  PrezMamasBoy: I feel like we could be friends, which is a bit surreal if you think about it, but I don’t want to assume a friendship where there isn’t one.

  PrezMamasBoy: I should go before I begin typing out the lyrics of maudlin songs that you would only ridicule me for listening to. I have a serious Troye Sivan addiction.

  PrezMamasBoy: Even if all you do is skim these messages, thank you for listening.

  I paused with my finger over the button, prepared to sign off, probably for the last time, seeing as I had essentially vomited my feelings all over the screen. It was horrifying, in a way, to see the wall of words on the screen that I couldn’t take back. They were like the path of devastation left by a tornado. Tornado Dean. They don’t name tornadoes, do they? Hurricane Dean, then. If there was any chance of Dre and I being friends, I’d probably ruined it.

  I sat on the edge of the toilet, reading and rereading what I’d written. Everything I’d said to Dre was true, but it was all so embarrassing. There was honesty and then there was what I’d done. The funny thing about honesty is that most people claim to want it until they actually get it. The truth is often ugly and unpleasant. It’s why most people, when asked how they are, respond with “Okay” rather than by dumping the truth of how they’re feeling on the person who asked. We might all be happier if we answered more honestly. Saying the things I’d said to Dre left me feeling vulnerable and a little sick to my stomach, but I also felt a bit . . . not better, but lighter. No matter how Dre responded, at least I’d told him the truth.

  When I turned back to my phone to type my goodbye, I saw three dots indicating that he was typing a reply. I waited, dread sucking a hole in my stomach, for Dre to ask me to stop bothering him, for Dre to tell me I was nothing more to him than the uptight son of his father’s political rival.

  And then the reply finally came.

  DreOfTheDead: of course we’re friends

  DreOfTheDead: dumbass

  Dre

  FIRST IMPRESSIONS ARE a bitch, and so was I. Especially when it came to my girl Mel. No one was good enough for her.

  “What do you think?” Mel had dragged me to a corner of the ballroom that was far enough from the music that I could actually hear her talk. Pulsing colored lights strobed the dance floor as cool costumed freaks danced to music from their favorite movies and TV shows. I kept looking over my shoulder, expecting a photographer or reporter to be lurking somewhere in the shadows, but the nice thing about the convention was that the costumes and sheer number of people afforded me a temporary cloak of anonymity. Tonight, I got to be Dre and not Tomás Rosario’s son.

  “Honest opinions?”

  Mel nodded emphatically.

  “Andy’s cute. He’s got a whole brooding Loki thing going on that I dig, and he’s got a sense of humor. Not sure it’s a good one, but it’s better than nothing. He doesn’t seem like the type to hang out with you at a protest; more like he might be willing to give you a ride to one and pick you up after. Overall, he was cool to talk to.”

  “What about Tade?”

  I tapped my chin like I had to think about it. “He’s got a sexy John Boyega vibe.”

  “Star Wars Boyega?”

  I shook my head. “Attack the Block Boyega.”

  Mel broke out in a grin. “My favorite Boyega.”

  “Is there a bad Boyega?”

  “Definitely not,” we both said at the same time, laughing.

  “But,” I said, “I couldn’t get him to talk about anything. Not even Saga, and he’s dressed like Marko!”

  Mel threw up her hands in frustration. “You’re not helping, Dre. What am I supposed to do?”

  I threw on my best How are you not seeing the solution to this problem when it’s so obviously clear to me and probably everyone else at this silly dance? look.

  “Dre!”

  “Hang out with Andy, make out with Tade. Problem solved.” I gave Mel a shove toward the dance floor, where the boys were waiting for her. “Begone. Make the pain and suffering I’m enduring by being here worth it.”

  Mel gave me the finger as she walked away, and I looked on like a proud mama sending her baby bird winging off into the wide world. Of course, I was probably sending her out there to get eaten by a bigger bird, but I couldn’t protect her forever.

  And then I was bored. I’d been a little bummed that I hadn’t even placed in the cosplay contest, but there had been a lot of outstanding costumes. And Mel and I had gotten some good exposure for Dreadful Dressup, so it hadn’t been a total bust. The ball, on the other hand . . . After fending off yet another girl who’d tried to pull me out to dance, I’d resigned myself to a lonely night waiting for Mel to tire of her boys so we could leave. I should have been putting myself out there. Lookin
g for a boy with that twinkle in his eye when I glanced his way, the kind of hidden smile that hinted he might be interested in a dance, but my heart wasn’t in it. What I really wanted to do was talk to Dean, which was ridiculous. This little crush of mine was getting out of control and I needed to stop thinking about him. Even if Dean had feelings for me, we couldn’t act on them. My father would disown me, and Mel would murder, dismember, and bury me where no one would ever find my body. When it came to politics, I was mostly ambivalent, but Mel was so passionate about her beliefs that she would’ve seen my growing feelings for Dean as nothing short of a betrayal.

  Not that it mattered. I hadn’t heard from Dean since the night before. I figured he was embarrassed about sharing being demi with me, and that I probably wouldn’t hear from him again. Which sucked. Even if Dean never reciprocated my feelings, whatever my feelings were, I still liked hearing from him.

  “Hey! Dreadful Dressup!” A guy in a Pikachu costume, with two friends dressed as Team Rocket, was running down the hall toward me, and before I knew it, I was pressed against the wall with nowhere to go. “Your dad’s running for president, right?”

  My cloak of invisibility had failed. “Uh, yeah. Look, I was just—”

  “Can we get a selfie?”

  Pikachu and Team Rocket crowded around me, their phones out snapping pictures. “I love your site. The video where you reimagined all the US presidents as gender-swapped werewolves was genius.”

  “That was Mel’s idea—”

  One of the members of Team Rocket got in my face. “Tell your dad he needs to get rid of college tuition. My loans are killing me.”

  “Uh, I’ll tell him.”

  More people were starting to shove in around me, and I was getting claustrophobic. Mel would’ve rescued me if she’d been there, but I was all alone, and I did the only thing I could think of.

  “I have to go to the bathroom!” I shouted, and shoved my way past Pikachu. I ignored the calls for me to come back and shook off the hands that tried to grab me. I would never understand people who felt entitled to touch me without permission. It’d been one thing when Dreadful Dressup had gotten popular and people at the conventions Mel and I went to would stop us for selfies or ask us questions, but everything had changed when Dad had won the nomination. People seemed to think they owned my time and that they could treat me however they wanted. It was bullshit, and I hated it. I wondered if it was the same for Dean.