The State of Us

by Shaun David Hutchinson

  He’d done it. Dean had actually told his parents the truth. I’d gotten a text message from him a couple of hours earlier that had simply read “I’m going to tell them,” but I hadn’t believed he would go through with it. I wondered how they’d taken it. Was Dean okay? The news was kind of blowing my mind.

  “Janice said you boys are being blackmailed? At first she accused us of doing it, but that’s ludicrous. Not only would I never do that to you, but I’m not sure voters would appreciate the idea of you and Janice Arnault’s son as a couple.”

  “We’re not a couple,” I said. “He broke up with me.”

  “You know what I mean. Are you being blackmailed?”

  Finally, I could tell my dad everything. I didn’t have to keep the secret anymore. I started with the lockdown and told him all the details that I knew, right up to Dean breaking my heart.

  “Nobody’s tried to blackmail me, and I don’t think they’re blackmailing Dean either. It sounded more like they’re just messing with him. Mel’s got this wild idea that it’s McMann.”

  My dad stopped me there. “We can’t accuse someone of wrongdoing without any evidence. Do you have evidence?”

  I shook my head.

  “Then for the moment, there’s not much we can do on that front.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  Dad’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “Janice, Doug, your mom, and I are going to hold a press conference. It will be better if we tell the media about your relationship rather than waiting for someone to leak it. We’ll remind everyone that you’re both minors and that you deserve your privacy and ask that you be left alone.”

  A press conference? My parents and Dean’s parents were going to hold a press conference about my failed relationship with Dean? I didn’t know whether to be terrified or humiliated. A mixture of both felt appropriate. “Why does anyone have to know anything? It’s my life.”

  Dad clapped his hand on my leg. “I know, Dre. I wish you weren’t caught up in this. We could involve Secret Service, try to investigate and find the person who messaged Dean about your relationship, but that would draw more attention to you.”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t want that.”

  “Neither do the Arnaults.”

  I bit off a caustic laugh. “I bet. How did she sound? Was she worried about Dean at all or only about how this would affect the election?”

  Instead of joining my “I hate Janice Arnault” party, Dad threw me a disapproving frown. “It’s tough for parents too, you know.”

  “What?”

  “Finding out your child is going to have to travel a more difficult road than you’d planned for them. I wouldn’t change a single thing about you, Dre, not even your smart mouth, but that doesn’t mean I don’t worry about you. Just like the Arnaults worry about Dean.”

  “But you accepted me,” I said. “I came out and you accepted it, and I never once felt like you didn’t love me. How do you think that conversation went at the Arnault house? How do you think Dean’s feeling right now?”

  “Give them time,” Dad said. “They’ll come around.”

  “What if they don’t?”

  The lines around Dad’s eyes and mouth deepened. I’d always known how lucky I was that my mom and dad had never tried to force me to be someone I wasn’t. That they’d let me explore who I was without limits, and that I’d never felt that they wouldn’t love me if the person I became didn’t match up with the person they’d thought I would be.

  “Janice and I have a lot of differences, but the one thing we have in common is that we both love our children more than anything in this world.” Dad paused a moment, then added, “And if things do go badly for him, just know that your mom and I will do what we can to help.”

  I hoped Dean was okay. I was worried about him, and I was proud of him, but mostly I hoped he was okay. He hadn’t wanted to tell anyone and now his mom was going to tell everyone. It didn’t matter that we were only seventeen; people were going to talk about us. They’d devour the juicy drama of our lives, and there wasn’t much we could do to stop it. And all I wanted to do was hold his hand and tell him we’d get through this together, but there was no “us” anymore.

  “You really cared about him, didn’t you, Dre?”

  I nodded. “I still do.”

  “While I don’t approve of the sneaking around, I’m glad you boys found each other, and I’m sorry that it ended.”

  “What do you think’s gonna happen?” I asked. “After the press conference?”

  “With what?”

  “The election?” My phone buzzed on my nightstand, but I ignored it. Probably just Mel.

  I had to change the subject so that I didn’t lose myself thinking about Dean. He’d made his decision to end us because he was scared of people finding out. Now that everyone was gonna know, he might reconsider. He’d already said he was sorry. But, no. I couldn’t think like that. He hadn’t even given me a chance to fight for us. He’d just broken up with me and that was it. I wasn’t giving him a second chance to hurt me.

  “I don’t know,” Dad said.

  “Do you think it’ll help McMann?”

  “People are strange, Dre. They don’t always do what’s in their own self-interest. They vote for the person they think is the most attractive or the person they think they’d most enjoy having a beer with, and not for the person who is the most prepared to do the job or who would keep them safe. I don’t think there’s any way to predict how voters are going to react.”

  “Did I cost you the election?”

  “If you being happy is the price of losing, then I’m happy to lose.”

  “But I’m not happy,” I said. “I miss him.”

  “I know you do.” Dad’s phone rang. His ringtone was still set to the default because he didn’t know how to change it and was useless when it came to that stuff. He looked at the screen. “I have to take this.”

  Even though I missed Dean and was about to have my life splashed all over everywhere, I felt better now that my parents knew. I wasn’t sure how I felt about everyone knowing, but there wasn’t a whole lot I could do to stop that.

  “What?!” my dad was saying into the phone, and my own phone was buzzing again. I was about to see what the hell Mel thought was so damn important when my mom showed up.

  “They’re all over Facebook and Twitter. They’re everywhere.”

  “What’s all over Facebook and Twitter?”

  I grabbed my phone and there were a million messages from Mel, but also some from Julian and Dhonielle and Caleb asking me if I was okay and why didn’t I tell them and wondering if it was even true.

  I clicked on one of the links Mel had sent me and there we were. Me and Dean. Kissing. I recognized the selfie we’d taken in his bedroom right before his friends had shown up. It’d only been up for an hour and it had already been shared over fifty thousand times.

  “Well,” I said. “So much for the press conference.”

  Dean

  I SPENT THE following day hiding. Wallowing would be more precise. Pictures of Dre and me and our personal conversations from Promethean had been posted and reposted all over the internet, seen and spread by millions. We had become an internet meme, the punch line of an SNL Weekend Update joke, and our official ship name was Drean, which sounded to me like a household cleaning product. My mother and Dre’s father had canceled their planned joint press conference and had instead issued separate statements confirming that Dre and I had been in a relationship, condemning the leak of our private conversations and photos, and asking that we be left alone.

  I made the unwise decision to read the comments. My relationship with Dre was “so effin’ adorable!!!!” or “a perversion of God’s word” or “kinda gross; that Dean guy is weird” or “unimportant . . . the election’s in 3 weeks . . . don’t we have better things to worry about????” Support for my mother among Republicans fell when she refused to issue a statement renouncing my new “lifest
yle.” I’d expected Mr. Rosario’s supporters to be more open-minded, but while they weren’t disgusted by Dre’s sexuality, they most certainly didn’t approve of him dating me. Mr. Rosario’s full-throated support of his son seemed to cost him almost as much as my mother’s silence regarding me had cost her.

  McMann, however, surged in popularity while he fanned the flames, slyly insinuating that my relationship with Dre had been a cover that had allowed our parents to work together to undermine him. It was the most ludicrous conspiracy theory I had ever heard, and I doubted many people believed it, but some did. Enough to ensure the vote would be split.

  “Dude, you reek.”

  I was lying in the sun on the patio when Tamal’s long shadow fell across me.

  “I’m wallowing,” I said.

  Tamal had been trying to reach me since the photos and messages had leaked, and I’d been ignoring him because I didn’t want to see him. I still didn’t. “Marinating is more like it.”

  I kept my sunglasses on, hoping Tamal would take the hint and leave, but he sat on the lounge chair beside me. “I’ve been calling you.”

  “And I haven’t been answering.”

  “Leaving me no choice but to drop by.”

  “I wish you hadn’t.”

  “Your dad called me,” Tamal said.

  “Whatever. Please just leave me alone.”

  Tamal huffed and then stood. I thought I had finally gotten through to him and that he was going to leave, but I was wrong. Tamal scooped me up like I weighed nothing. I flailed, my brain trying to catch up to what was happening, and then I was flying through the air. I was hitting the water. I was sinking to the bottom of the pool. My reflexes kicked in and I swam to the surface, gasping for breath.

  “What the heck, Tamal?” I tried to climb out of the pool, but Tamal pushed me back in.

  “I’m not letting you out until you quit this shit.”

  “Leave me alone!”

  Tamal pushed me away from the wall again. The shock of the cold water had cleared the fog from my head, and I’d lost my sunglasses somewhere in the water. “Why didn’t you tell me about you and Dre? I thought I was your best friend.”

  Every time I tried to swim to a place Tamal wasn’t so I could climb out of the pool, he ran around to where I was and pushed me back in. The chill was starting to make me shiver.

  “You are.”

  “Did you think I wouldn’t get it? That I’d quit being your friend?”

  “No.”

  “Then what, Dean?”

  “I was scared you’d tell someone. You kind of have a big mouth.”

  Tamal looked like he wanted to argue the point, but instead said, “Yeah, okay. Fair point. I just hate keeping secrets, you know?”

  “I know,” I said. “I wanted to tell you, though. I really did.”

  Tamal leaned over and offered me his hand. He helped me out of the pool, and I ran to where we kept the towels so that I could try to get warm.

  “So you and Dre are a thing?”

  “Were.”

  “Why were?”

  I didn’t even need to ask Tamal if he had read the leaked messages because I knew he hadn’t—that’s the kind of friend he was—so I explained everything. The difference between telling Tamal and telling my parents was that I felt no fear with Tamal.

  “Wow, you really messed up,” he said when I’d finished.

  “I know.”

  “How’re you planning on fixing it?”

  I shrugged because, maybe for the first time, I had no plan. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. I didn’t know what came next.

  “You’ve taken care of your phone, right?”

  “Not yet,” I said. “I meant to.”

  Tamal was staring at me like I’d grown a third eye. “Someone leaked all your personal messages and stuff. Either your phone or Dre’s was hacked.” He was shaking his head. “How was that not the first thing you did? I’m surprised your mom didn’t think of it.”

  “She’s been busy,” I said. “Mostly cleaning up my mess, but there’s also the debate tomorrow. And I’ve been—”

  “Wallowing.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good thing you got me, then.”

  Tamal and I went inside. He hooked up my phone to his computer and ran a program that I didn’t recognize. While we were waiting, he said, “You seen the newest Dreadful Dressup?”

  Dre hadn’t posted in a while, and I had stopped checking. “There’s a new one?”

  “It’s awesome.” While Tamal’s program did its work, he pulled up Dreadful Dressup. There was a new set of photos posted this morning. Dre and Mel must have worked all night. And Tamal was correct. It was awesome.

  The monster was Jackson McMann. From the front, anyway. The likeness was uncanny and a little creepy. Each subsequent photo moved around McMann until finally showing his back, which was torn open to reveal an impish, grinning, green-skinned monster in McMann’s torso pulling tendons in his arms and legs to control him. The inner monster also looked a little like McMann in a strange way. It was brilliant and horrifying.

  “Wow.”

  “Right? I bet McMann is pissed.”

  I was going through the pictures when something caught my eye. I zoomed in as best as I could on the background behind the monster’s leg. It was pixelated, but I knew what it was. I recognized the “Arnault/Portman 2020” slogan on the water bottle I’d given Dre. I’d assumed he had thrown it away at the first opportunity. But he’d kept it. He still had it. That had to mean something. I wanted so badly for it to mean something.

  A dialogue box popped up with an alert that the diagnostic had finished. I handed Tamal’s laptop back to him.

  “Bad news and bad news, Dean.”

  “Bad news first?”

  “Your phone definitely got hacked, which isn’t a surprise since this thing is older than you are. Seriously, when was the last time you updated the OS?”

  I shrugged and tried to appear penitent.

  “Well, whoever did it has had access to everything. Microphone, camera, pictures, GPS. They could’ve listened in anytime to any conversation you were near.”

  Hacking my cell phone explained how the leaker knew to release the photos and messages before my parents could hold their press conference. I’d blamed Dre for our problems when it had been my fault all along.

  “What about Dre’s phone?” I asked.

  “No way to know. If he’s updated his phone’s OS anytime in the last year”—Tamal glared at me—“then the exploit used to hack your phone would’ve been patched. I’m gonna update yours now and install some security software, but you really need to be more careful.”

  Knowing that I was responsible for the mess I was in woke me up. The time for self-pity was over. I needed to do something. “When you’re done, will I be able to talk to Dre?”

  Tamal looked uncertain. “Without knowing how your phone got hacked, I don’t know that I’d risk it. At the very least, I wouldn’t talk about anything important.”

  “I understand.” When Tamal just looked at me, I waved at him furiously. “Hurry up!”

  “Yeah,” Tamal said. “I’ll work on your phone while you go take a shower. You seriously reek, dude.”

  Dre

  ONE OF THE weirdest parts of my relationship with Dean going public was that I’d never gotten to be his boyfriend out in the open. By the time the press got the news, Dean had broken up with me. The media didn’t know that yet, but it was only a matter of time before they figured it out and discussed and dissected it until a juicier story fell out of the sky. No one was even wondering where the leak had come from or the impact this was having on my life or on Dean’s.

  All I wanted to do was talk to Dean, but he hadn’t messaged me since telling me he was going to come out to his parents. The irony was that now that I wanted to talk to him, I wasn’t sure if he wanted to talk to me.

  To keep my thoughts from continuing to circle endlessly aro
und Dean, I went online to moderate the Dreadful Dressup comments, which I was seriously considering shutting off until things calmed down. They were getting out of hand and were way more personal than ever before. Only a handful were even actually about the dressups. Luckily, it was easy to bulk-delete them. Still, I went through them because for every thousand comments telling me I was doomed to eternal damnation, there was one of support. One thanking me and Mel for the work we did. One saying how we’d inspired them to find and follow their own passion. One in a thousand may not seem like much, but it meant everything to me. That one was what kept me from totally falling apart.

  This time when I logged in, there were more comments than I’d expected. I was starting to go through them when I noticed I’d gotten the same comment over and over from the same username. The comment? Dre, you haven’t answered my messages, but we need to talk. Please call me. It was from a user named PatheticMamasBoy.

  It was Dean, it had to be. It also could’ve been a trick. A trap set by a journalist who wanted to score an interview. This seemed particularly likely, especially since my parents and the Arnaults had declared we would not, under any circumstances, be speaking to the press. It was a risk, but one I thought might be worth taking.

  But instead of immediately calling him, I stalled. I was scared of what he’d say, angry about the last thing he’d said to me, worried of what I’d say to him, and kind of proud of what he’d finally had the nerve to say to his parents. I checked the time stamps on the comments, and he’d been sending them every five minutes for almost two hours, which meant whatever was going on, he thought it was important. If I didn’t like what he had to say, I could always hang up. I was going to do it. I was going to call Dean. Right after I cleaned my room and washed the dishes.

  No. Right now.

  I dialed his number.

  Dean’s face appeared on the screen. His hair was wet and a mess, and his face was pink. As soon as it appeared, so did his smile. God, that smile. I had no defenses against it. It hit hard, and I crumpled.

  “Dean?”

  “Dre! You need to check your phone. Mine was hacked. That’s how they got all our texts and messages.” The words flew from his mouth so quickly that they ran together.