Beautiful Music for Ugly Children

by Kirstin Cronn-Mills

  “I don’t know!”

  She can see how freaked I am. “This has to feel a little surreal.”

  “You think?”

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to show you mine?” She unsnaps her pants.

  “I already have one of those, and I really, really wish you’d shut up about yours.” She has no idea how much I wish she’d shut up.

  “Let’s find a teen night in the Cities and try it out. You can pee at the urinals this time.”

  Paige turns around again, and I slip out of the Mango harness and tuck everything into my boy undies drawer. All of a sudden, relief pours over my head, shoulders, heart, like someone is drowning me with goodness. I don’t know if I believe in God, but there must be Somebody up there if there’s something like a Mango. I try to be quiet as I’m shuffling the boxers, but Paige hears me sniffle.

  “Gabe?” Her hand is on my back.

  I turn to her, and she can see I’m trying not to cry. But my nose is beginning to run.

  “I’m glad for you.”

  “Yeah.” And then I can’t help it. Paige holds me and pats me on the back as the tears gush, and I let myself be held. Finally I’m back to a runny nose.

  Paige pats me one more time. “That was a girly thing to do.” She reaches out and smoothes my eyebrows. “Not like these caterpillars. Why don’t you pluck?”

  I break away from her and punch her in the arm. “Don’t tell anybody you saw me do that.” I shut the drawer.

  “Who am I gonna tell?” Paige’s summer-blue eyes are wide and bright when I look at her. And kind. “Better now?”

  I smile at her. “Sometimes you’re really nice.”

  “What do you mean, sometimes?” She flops on my bed again. “We should see what Mara’s saying on Facebook.”

  “No thanks.”

  “Oh, come on.” Paige is still lying there, looking for all the world like one of those women in a really old painting, la la la and where is the house boy with my grapes, that kind of thing. “It’ll be fine. I think you’re pretty damn convincing as a man, especially lately.”

  “What if I was wearing a nametag that said BETTY ?”

  “Why the hell would you do that?”

  I laugh. “I’m MR. SNUFFLEUPAGUS on Mondays.”

  “You guys are off the chain.” She rolls her eyes. Paige thinks Chris is a loser druggie, which he used to be, but so what?

  Paige hops off the bed and picks up my iPod—my graduation present to myself, engraved with GABE 24/7 on the back. “Have you got ‘Flashdance’ on here?” She starts thumbing through and comes up with it on a playlist called ’80s crap that I made for her. “The eighties are not crap, and watch this. I memorized her moves so I can use them when we club.” She puts the iPod in its dock on my desk and points to the bed. “Go sit.”

  I do. Even though she looks like a cross between a butterfly and a spazzed-out sparrow, it works. Then the song’s done and she’s out of breath, looking at me like she doesn’t know whether I’m going to holler at her or laugh. “So?”

  I don’t know what to say, because she looks more beautiful at this moment than she’s ever looked. “Wow.”

  She’s annoyed. “That’s all you can say—‘wow’? I wasn’t better than ‘wow’?”

  “No! You were … fantastic. Amazing. Breathtaking. Gorgeous.” I stop, because I’m getting close to the truth.

  “That’s better.” Now she looks pleased, and she flounces over to the bed and sits next to me. “Maybe I can do it some night at Happiness.”

  I scoot away from her. “Maybe some night when I’m not there, so you don’t embarrass me.”

  She scoots next to me again, then pushes my shoulder down so I’m lying on my back with my legs dangling off the bed. Once I’m down, she snuggles up next to me. “We make good dance partners, don’t you think?”

  My BFF has just curled up to me like I’m a guy. Her guy.

  I sit up in a hurry. “What the hell are you doing?” She can’t just switch like that. I need some warning.

  She sits up, too, with wide eyes that are trying to look innocent, but she can’t quite pull it off. “What?”

  I get off the bed, casual as can be, and grab for my iPod in its dock. Nothing like changing the subject. “You’ve gotta hear the play list John made me.” It’s mostly Public Enemy, with a little Nas and OutKast, plus a dollop of Lil Wayne. I start it up and add a head bob, hoping she’ll follow my lead.

  “Okay.” I see the question in her eyes, but then she takes off again, shaking her ass and rippling her stomach like Beyoncé. It’s honestly not much better than lying on the bed next to her, because she’s sexy as the day is long.

  Then we stomp—literally—about a hundred times around the room to “Bring tha Noize.” Public Enemy and Anthrax, as unlikely a pair as me and Paige. But there it is, on a playlist. And here we are. At some point, I look at her face, and I would almost swear the invisible word on her forehead is POSSIBLE.

  My mom hollers up the stairs, so loud we hear her through the door. “What in God’s name are you doing? You’re shaking the light fixtures!”

  We open the door and yell back. “Sorry!”

  “And turn it down! I can hear that stuff all the way down here.”

  “We’ll quit. Sorry!” Paige is way more charming than I am. “Thanks, girls” is the response, so Paige has done her job.

  When Paige goes home, after supper and after my folks make us play Monopoly with them and Pete, I collapse. After the bed incident I made sure there was no chance for us to be alone, which is stupid, because why wouldn’t I want her to curl up to me? But it scared me. What if it went wrong?

  I can’t even contemplate it.

  I click into Facebook. Liz and her one friend. Pathetic. Then, when I look at the fan page for the Ugly Children Brigade, there’s a new post, by a guy named Jason SerialKiller, with a Jason mask as his profile picture.

  It’s not just a turntable issue—YOU NEED TO KNOW GABE IS REALLY LIZ WILLIAMS—not a guy. Thank you Mara for the clue. Liz is the IT who went to West. She lied. Now we’re going to fuck IT up. Nobody that sick should be allowed to live.

  I call Paige.

  “I just left!”

  “Look at the UCB page.”

  Silence while she turns on her computer.

  “Do you see it?” I try to keep the shake out of my voice.

  “Who is this asshole?”

  “He was in the parking lot at the station Friday, when I came out.”

  Instant anger. “Why didn’t you tell me? Did he hurt you?”

  “He just asked if I was Gabe. How was I supposed to know he wanted to kill me?”

  “We’ve got to go to the police.” Now she’s got her don’t mess with me voice on.

  “No.”

  “You are so fucking dense. This isn’t funny!”

  “The cops won’t care.”

  “Don’t be dumb! What if you get hurt?”

  “I’ll figure it out.”

  “Dammit, Gabe!” Now she’s almost crying.

  “Look.” I take a deep breath and scan the Facebook page again. “If there’s more, we’ll go to the cops. Next time he posts, him or his friend.” I’m brave. Brave, brave, brave. And I’m shaking so hard I can barely hold my phone.

  “There was more than one?”

  “A guy in a Scream mask.”

  “I’m coming over right now.”

  “No!” But she’s hung up.

  I meet her in the driveway before she’s had time to storm my house. She’s pissed. “You get in this car right now and let’s go.”

  “If something else happens, then yes. Right now, he’s just talking shit.” In the time it took her to get here, I’ve calmed down and thought it
over. That’s all it is. Just talking shit.

  “You are so fucking stubborn!” There’s a tear on her cheek, and she wipes it away.

  “Be happy about that, or I would’ve given up on you a long time ago.” I manage a grin, so she knows I’m not serious, but she hits me anyway.

  “For that, I’m leaving.”

  “Good.” Another smile.

  She backs out fast and burns away, but I know she’s not really mad. If she was mad, she would have erased my number from her phone. I’ve seen her do that before.

  One more time, she’s got my back. I love her for that.

  When I go back inside, my mom hollers at me. “Was that Paige again?”

  “She just came back to get her iPod.”

  “All right.” And that’s that.

  Suddenly I want to go to her and say, “Guess what, Mom? I got asked out by a girl, then she outed me, then I got threatened, and now I just want to quit. Okay? Can I quit? I don’t want to be Gabe anymore.” I want to hug her and put my head on her lap and cry. I want her to stroke my hair and say, “Shhhh, honey, it’s all right. It will be all right.” Because maybe then it would be.

  I watch the Facebook page. Six people write variations of the same question: Are you sure? Each time, Jason says Yup. Once a person named Scream GonnaGetCha says, We are definitely sure. His profile picture is a Scream mask.

  At three a.m. there are 57 members, down from 68. By five a.m., it’s 54.

  I go to bed. When I wake up at noon, it’s 42. I scan the friend list. Heather is still there, but Mara is gone.

  I can’t think what else to do, so I write it in the scrapbook—R.I.P. Ugly Children Brigade—on the page after the decorated cars. I take a screen shot of the page and print it off, so I can remember. I don’t know what happens when a page hits zero. Does Facebook take it down?

  If it’s in a scrapbook, I can say it happened. It was real once.

  Simon Cowell is the new Elvis

  because Simon Said So;

  Just Try and Argue With Him

  One a.m. Wednesday morning, in my room. I’ve spent four hours listening to the Vibe after work, wondering how I’m going to do that show. I’ve got a vision: five hundred people milling around, me on stage smiling and grooving along, playing every good song about radio. A serious outdoor dance party. Then Jason and Scream come tearing through the crowd and shoot me.

  They’re just douchebags, blowing off their mouths. Right? And there are still 39 UCB friends, so it’s not dead yet.

  Elvis, what do I do now?

  Viva Las Vegas.

  Wrong answer.

  It’s all right, Gabe. They’re just dicks.

  You sure about that?

  Silence.

  My bedroom window is open, and John is having a hoedown with Trace Adkins, of all people. I slip downstairs and sneak outside, quiet as can be, and knock on his door.

  He’s not surprised to see me, and he steps back to let me in. “Shouldn’t you be in bed?”

  “I came over to find out why the hell you like Trace Adkins.”

  “Trace Adkins, Joe Nichols, Blake Shelton, country stars are interchangeable these days.” He goes to turn down the stereo. “In my day, there were people worth listening to. George Jones. Merle Haggard. Even Hank Williams—not Junior, but the first one.” He seems personally offended by the whole situation. “This bland crap sounds like wallpaper paste.”

  “I didn’t know wallpaper paste had a sound.”

  “You know what I mean, smartass.”

  “So why are you even listening?”

  “I have no idea.” He switches Trace Adkins out for some Johnny Cash. “Much better. Forgive me for slipping in my musical judgment and exposing you to such bullshit. And what do you want, by the way?”

  I slump on the couch. “Have you seen the UCB page lately?”

  “No. Should I look?”

  “Probably.”

  John goes into a music bedroom to get his laptop, and he pulls up the page. “Hmm. Lots going on.” He reads some more, then puts the laptop away and comes back to sit down. “They’re just haters.”

  “Yeah, but what if they mean it?”

  “Then we’ll go to the cops. The end.”

  Not them again. “The cops will not give a flying shit about me.”

  “You don’t know that.” John is calm. “Everyone deserves to be safe.”

  “I’m not betting on it.” Macho cops plus trans person equals sketchy situation.

  I think he knows changing the subject is the best idea. “For now, though, you need help with your Vibe show. Do you have a list?”

  “Mostly.”

  “Let me hear it, then. How much time do you need to fill?”

  “Half an hour, so with talking in between, I figure I need five songs around four minutes long, plus my secret song: ‘WOLD,’ Chapin. ‘Nightfly,’ Fagen. ‘Mexican Radio,’ Wall of Voodoo. ‘Radio,’ Rancid. ‘Radio Free Europe,’ REM. ‘Radio Gaga,’ Queen. I want to be pretty broad.”

  “Maybe you should check out some country.”

  “I know.” I start picking at the frayed seams on his couch. I need to fidget. Then I try to pick a hole in the couch cushion. “That’s another thing.”

  “What’s another thing?”

  “Girls.”

  John laughs. “Topic switch. What makes you think I know anything about girls?”

  “You know more than me.” The couch is now resisting my efforts. “It’s Paige.”

  “Your too-smart friend? What about the other girl who asked you out? Called you at the station?”

  “She’s the one who outed me to the Ugly Children Brigade because she knew Liz from school.”

  He chuckles. “Of course you don’t have a turntable. You always come over here and borrow mine.”

  “Only a dinosaur like you would have one.”

  “Hey now, people are putting out vinyl again.”

  “Like who?”

  “Avenged Sevenfold. Tegan and Sara. And Warner Brothers just released a bunch of old stuff—Clapton, Fleetwood Mac, Tom Petty. Back to the original topic. Maybe people don’t care about your lack of a turntable.”

  “Since my new friends Jason and Scream posted, the UCB has lost 29 people.”

  “Well … ” John shrugs. “It’s their problem, not yours.”

  “Easy for you to say, because you don’t know.” It is so fucking easy for everyone else to talk about this like it’s not a big deal.

  “No, I don’t. But it’s true—it’s not you. It’s them.” He can see me gritting my teeth. “You don’t believe me, do you?”

  “Not right now.”

  “Well, maybe someday.”

  “Someday’s not soon enough.”

  “It’s all you’ve got, son. And someday might be tomorrow.” The look on his face tells me he’s been down the someday road before. “It’ll get better. Now tell me something happy.”

  So I go get the laptop again and show him the OH SHIT photos, which are now the only evidence it happened because we had a huge rain that washed all the chalk off both schools. He laughs so hard he chokes.

  Then he settles down in his chair while I put the laptop away again. “So anyway, back to your smart friend.”

  I go back to the couch. “She keeps giving me … signals. And I don’t know what they mean.”

  “Give me examples.”

  “Well, she likes to club with me, and she tells me I’m her boyfriend. And a few days ago she snuggled up to me in my bedroom.” Just thinking about it gives me shivers, from fear or pleasure I don’t know.

  “Maybe she likes Gabe more than she thinks she does.”

  “But we’ve been friends since kindergarten!” Now I’m su
re the shivers are from panic. “I can’t wreck it now! I mean … yeah, I’d love it, but … ” I bury my face in my hands.

  “You like her, all right. You might even love her.” He’s grinning.

  “You don’t know that.” My face stays in my hands, so he can’t see me blush.

  “Yes I do. Otherwise you wouldn’t be like this. Does she know you like her as a girlfriend?”

  “Hell no! And I don’t have what she wants.”

  John gets up to grab some Pepsi for each of us. “If you haven’t asked, you can’t know what she wants.”

  “Come on.”

  “What does it mean to ‘have what she wants’?” He brings me a glass, and I swig it down.

  “You know … having … well, not having a coochie snorcher.” I can’t tell him about the Mango. This is hard enough.

  John sips his Pepsi. “Being a man isn’t just about your dick.”

  “That’s because you actually have a dick. You don’t have to think about it.” I pause. “At least I assume you have a dick.”

  We have just opened another new door in this relationship.

  “I have a dick, yes.” John sips again. “Thank god for Viagra. But being a man is just being a person who happens to have a penis.” He gets up to refill my empty Pepsi glass. “If being a guy includes flirting with Paige, then flirt with her, and let her flirt with you. Or not. Your choice.”

  When John comes back from the kitchen, he hands me my glass, then waves me back into the music room. “Can we work on your radio show?”

  I check my watch. “Dude, it’s one thirty.” When we get going, we can goof around until the sun comes up. “I have to work tomorrow.”

  “What time?”

  “Noon.”

  He gives me his best oh come on, you know you want to look. “I’ll be good, I promise.” He’s the one who gets us in trouble, because he’s always showing me new stuff and new bands. “We can look for a secret song.”

  So we turn on the Vibe for a while to analyze what it’s playing, even though it’s the middle of the night and a night show isn’t like an evening show—different audiences and all that. Then we go back to the music rooms and start to dig. The next time I look at the clock, it’s 4:30 a.m.