Luckily, things don’t stay weird between us for long. Or they do, but in a good way. Things get really, really weird.
It was my idea to make a movie. I figured since I’m a filmmaker and Cole’s an actor, we could combine our powers to pull off something really badass. Then Cole had the even more brilliant idea to make not just any movie, but a biopic—a film about ourselves, a dramatization of the way we became friends, a post-modern meta-commentary on our own lives, starring us as us.
It’s been hilarious. I made the early request that we not film any scenes featuring the characters of Nikki or Allegra—I mean, why go there?—which has resulted in us tinkering with the narrative a bit. In the new plot, instead of getting rejected by Allegra, I turn down the sexual advances of Fat Isaac, played by Cole with pillows stuffed in his shirt. Instead of being called a pervert by Nikki, I get scolded in detention by the Bear, played by Cole as a furry. Cole also lends his acting talents to the roles of Miss Fawcett, Coach Dent, Scrotes, Neil, and the voice of my shirt wolf, who sings a soulful ballad to close the second act, “Hungry for a Friend.”
Today we were up on the roof, filming the pivotal scene, the one where Cole saves my life, in which he and I finally become best pals after circling each other for years. Naturally, we took our usual creative liberties. Everything we shot was a bit more, well, dramatic than what actually happened.
“Wiley! Don’t jump! I’ve fallen for you, my mustachioed prince!”
“Cut. Try again. I thought we said less erotic this time.”
“Wiley! Don’t do it! The insurance policy, it’s not worth it!”
“Cut. Cole, I thought we rewrote that plotline.”
“Wiley! Stop! The stone people, you’re the only one who can defeat them!”
“Cut. What?”
“Wiley! Noooo! Your dad . . . I’m sorry he didn’t make it to the big game.”
“CUT! Hey, I thought we were deleting any reference to him.”
“I just wanted to inject some emotional stakes.”
“Trust me, you’re doing plenty of that with your eyebrow acting alone.”
“Well, come on, Wiles, what real stuff are we allowed to delve into?”
“You’ll know when I tell you.”
“Shouldn’t I get a say?”
“No. You’re the talent. I’m the auteur.”
“You kidding me, homey?”
“This is my story. It’s not for you to tell.”
“I’m just trying to help you.”
“What do you mean? I don’t need any help.”
Cole stared me down. He lowered his voice. “You sure about that?”
“What do you mean?”
He gave me a look like I had the IQ of Forrest Gump.
“Wiley,” he said. “That day . . . when I saw you on the roof . . .”
“Dammit,” I said. “Stop trying to accuse me of being depressed. I’m not depressed.”
Cole nodded quickly. “Okay,” he said. “Fair enough. But, like, everything we’ve done these past couple months, all the laughs we’ve had, from that day until now . . . is any of it helping?”
I held up my hands. “I don’t know. . . . I guess yeah, doing the movie is fun. But, like, I don’t know, man. I don’t know.”
Cole paused for a moment. A gust of chilly wind blew right as he said the next thing.
“What if I told you there’s a better way?”
“What?”
“I know what you’ve been going through,” he said. “I’ve got my ear to the ground. I know why you won’t talk about them. I know Nikki made you feel like an abusive sex dog. I know Allie dumped you in order to hang out with a giant anthropomorphized egg with another, smaller egg on top that serves as a head. And jokey jokes aside, I know your pain, Wiley. I’ve been there before.”
“No, you haven’t,” I said.
“Sure I have. I’ve been excluded too. My whole life.”
“How?”
“Let’s see. My dream school rejected me. The theater community, none of them fought for me. I don’t have any friends, not a one, besides you. And my father? You know that guy you’ve suspiciously never met? Spoiler alert: He tried to take his own life rather than spend another single second with me.”
My mouth fell open. “Oh my God.”
“That’s right,” Cole said. “He left me. Just like yours did.”
“Oh God,” I said. “I had no idea. I am so sorr—”
Cole held up a finger. “But you don’t see me crying about it, do you?”
“Um . . . no?”
“That’s right,” Cole said. “We don’t cry. We never leak weakness. Whining is for bitches. There’s something else we can do. Something far more effective. And it ain’t making movies, but you’ll still be needing that thing.”
He pointed at my hands. He held up his. I tossed him my phone.
“We have a weapon at our disposal. The ultimate weapon. It’s how we turn the tables, how we get our lives back on track.”
He clicked into my phone and opened the Internet. He closed his eyes, and it was like he was choosing between two options; he mumbled a silent eeny-meeny-miny-moe.
“Wiley, my boy,” he said. “If you remember just one thing in this life, remember this: Don’t get sad. Get even.”
He tapped on a search browser and typed in three words: “Nikki Foxworth scandal.”
I tried to tell him that maybe the Nikki thing was my fault. Maybe I deserved the humiliation she gave me. Maybe this isn’t right. But Cole shushed me. He convinced me. Nikki sent me down the path I’m on now, he reminded me. She could have saved me, but she shamed me instead.
We didn’t work on the movie the rest of the afternoon. We’re suspending the shoot indefinitely. That was all fun and games, but it’s real life we’re concerned with now. It’s research we must do. Cole is absolutely right. We need to get even. It’s the only way. It’s our only chance to make things fair.
We remained atop the theater, glued to our phones, well into the night. We stayed there, through the wind and the cold, for hours and hours, until we were the only souls left on campus.
Before we left, we did one final thing:
We peed off the roof.
12. BRIAN MACK
I wish I never came back to school.
It’s boring. Special class is boring. The kids are dumb as rocks. Nico eats his hands. Austin throws things. Madison cries and runs outside. It’s, like, baby stuff. I mean we’re doing reading. It’s like kindergarten.
I feel bad for the kids in special class. They’ve been like this since they were little. I remember Madison in elementary school, having recess with a grown-up when we had normal recess. I remember Austin and Nico throwing sticks at each other in their special PE. Those kids have always been different. This is the only school they’ve been in. Cookies and stickers is all they know.
I’m too smart for this shit. I’m too smart for these kids. They’ve been in stupid school their whole lives. But I used to be regular. I used to have buddies. I used to have fans. Nikki wanted to bang me. I used to be awesome.
The doctors say I might be okay. At my last checkup they said I could get better. Like better for real. Not a lot of people have what I have. “Second-impact syndrome,” they said. It’s when football players get their bell rung twice. High school kids with brains that are still growing. Two concussions right in a row, wham bam. No one knows what happens next. You could get all the way healthy. You could be frozen forever. The doctors smile when they tell me the news. I could still get better.
But the way the doctors say it, it makes my parents cry.
Screw the doctors. I’m not some freaking idiot like the kids in my class. I still know stuff. I remember what I was. I know what I am. And I’m not dumb about the future. I know why my parents cry. I know what I’ll never be.
I’ll never be the Big Mack again.
I’m Brian now. Just Brian.
Too smart for special ed.
&n
bsp; Too slow for the real world.
• • •
“All right, gang. First dress run. Let’s make it count!
“Places for the top of ‘Oh, the Thinks You Can Think.’ Here we go.
“Margot, cheat out.
“Neil, great energy.
“Hey, pause for a sec . . .
“Where’s Brian?
“Has anyone seen Brian?
“Someone check backstage for Brian!”
I totally blanked.
I was sitting by myself, like on the side, and I was waiting. I was waiting for when Neil snaps his fingers, because that’s when Thing 2 runs on. I was by myself because Allie wasn’t there. She was at the hospital, helping her mom. She said she would try to meet me after rehearsal. And I’m stupid without her. I forget things, so I forgot to run onstage. Then I remembered, but way too late. I jumped off my butt and I ran to my spot. But my new costume is slippery, the footie part, so I got to the stage, but I was running too fast, too fast for my body. So I fell. Everyone was watching me and I fell friggin’ hard. I slipped off my feet and crashed to the stage like WHOMP.
“Brian?”
“Oh my gosh, is he all right?”
“His head—what about his head?”
“Is this the third time, or the fourth, or . . . ?”
“Oh no.”
“Oh God.”
“Someone text his parents.”
“Someone call an ambulance!”
I heard them. I heard all of it. All their words.
My head was ringing like it got thumped by a hammer. The world was all blurry. I could only see colors and shapes. The blood was drip-dripping out of my nose, making a puddle on the ground, like someone squeezed a big-ass strawberry.
But I didn’t care about any of that shit. I cared about the words.
And I couldn’t take it anymore.
So I exploded.
“I’M FINE! I’M FINE, DAMMIT! DON’T CALL MY PARENTS. DON’T CALL A DOCTOR. I’M FINE! YOU’RE ALL ASSHOLES. YOU’RE ALL IDIOTS. I’M GOOD AND I’M FINE! GODDAMMIT, GODDAMMIT, I’M FINE! CAN’T YOU SEE THAT I’M GREAT? CAN’T YOU SEE THAT I’M HAPPY? SHUT UP, YOU DUMBSHITS! GO TO HELL! LET ME BE! I’M FINE!”
• • •
“Are you okay?”
This was after I ran out the theater. Way after. I was sitting at school, in the very front, alone on my fat-guy lawn.
“Brian,” she said from inside her car. “I heard what happened. I’m so sorry.”
“Leave me alone,” I said. “I’m fine.”
Allie opened the door. She waved her hand, like, come in.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” she said.
“No, you’re not,” I said. “You don’t care.”
“What? Of course I do.”
“You just want to feel good about yourself.”
“That’s ludicrous.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“I’m sorry they babied you—”
“No, you’re not.”
“I’m sorry no one understands what you’re going through—”
“No, you’re not.”
“I’m sorry the world is so unfair—”
“No, you’re not.”
“Fine! I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry you’re . . .”
She made a face, like she couldn’t say it. She wouldn’t say it. She wouldn’t let anyone in the whole wide world say the truth out loud.
“I’m sorry you’re . . . retarded.”
I froze.
I stared at Allie. She stared back.
“Okay,” I said.
I got in the car.
• • •
We didn’t talk at first. Allie drove past the houses to my house. I bet she was thinking about the thing she just said. I wonder if she had regrets.
“How does it feel?” Allie said halfway through the drive. “You know . . . being in your brain?”
I looked around the car. I scratched my head.
“Do you feel sad, like, in a vacuum? That is to say, on your own? Or is it that everyone else makes you feel sad, the way they act toward you?”
I let it be quiet for a little longer. “Both.”
I waited, then added, “But mostly everyone else.”
Allie nodded. “Do they make you feel like you’re not good enough? Like it doesn’t matter if you try to get better? Because it’s as if they already don’t expect anything of you anyway?”
I put my finger on my nose. My nose was still a little bloody. My finger got red. “Yeah,” I said. “That.”
Allie pulled her car to the side. I looked out the window. We weren’t at my house yet. I wondered why she stopped. I wondered what she was about to say. Maybe it was important.
“What if I told you . . . that there’s nothing wrong with you?”
I shook my head. “No,” I said. “Everyone says that. But everyone’s lying.”
“There’s nothing wrong with you.”
“Shut up.”
“There’s nothing wrong with you.”
“I’m stupid.”
“Well, I think you’re smart, Mr. Big Mack. And kind. And resilient. And very, very cute.”
She said that with her momish smile, and it made me feel good, and I was just thinking how nice she was, and how pretty she looked, how much I liked her pretty gray eyes and her squishy little face, and I was thinking how much I liked all those things together when all randomly she shut her eyes hard, and she twisted her face weird, and she started making crazy monkey noises, and there were tears in her eyes.
“Oh my goodness,” she said. “Oh my goodness.”
“Allie,” I said. “Allie, are you crying?”
She put her hand over her face. Her whole body was shaking like a grandma’s hand.
“No,” she said. “I’m—I’m laughing! I’m laughing!”
I felt funny in my forehead. I scratched my chin. “Why?”
“I just . . . I just realized . . . you’re . . . you’re still in your onesie!”
I looked down at myself. She was right. I was still wearing my outfit, my big red Thing 2 costume. Red pajamas with footies and a butt flap. A curly blue Afro wig. My body looked like the Kool-Aid Man. My hair looked like the Cookie Monster’s pubes.
I grinned like a mofo too. “You’re right,” I said. “It is pretty funny.”
We laughed for the longest time, till our bodies hurt. At the end of our laugh, Allie put her hand on my back. She touched it like a massage for a while. She brought her fingers under my wig, to my head. She touched there forever too. It felt amazing. Like nothing I’ve ever felt before. It made me feel so awesome. So stoked to be alive. Goddamn. What a woman.
13. NIKKI FOXWORTH
Ugh,” Mona said late last night.
It was the final night of spring break. We were sitting and snacking on her bed. Mona’s mom had just taken the standard motherly five minutes to reprimand her daughter for her outfit choices, her recent grades, and her diet, and she’d taken all the good food out of the room with her, so we had to pull an emergency stash from the back of Mon’s closet.
“Every day she treats me like this. Every day. And she wonders why I don’t want to be a mom.”
“Plus you have to have sex in order to be a mom,” I said. “Is she aware of that?”
“No,” Mona said, dunking a peanut butter pretzel into hummus. “My mom thinks you get pregnant by closing your eyes and whispering the word ‘baby.’ ”
I shook my head. “I am so sorry, sweets.”
Mona eyed me. “How do you deal?”
“What do you mean?”
She washed her food down with a sip of secret, under-the-bed Lime-a-Rita. “You never let the judgment faze you. How?”
I lifted an eyebrow. “You mean like in the locker room, when I was so chill under pressure I turned into a homicidal lunatic and almost got myself expelled?”
Mona laughed. She handed me a Red Vine. “You know what I mean,” s
he said. “People come at you, wanting to bring you down, but you always hold it together.”
I thought about what I’ve dealt with this whole past year, from being dumped by DeSean, to being groped by Brian, to being propositioned and practically stalked by Wiley. I couldn’t believe Mona was right. But honestly, she kind of was.
“Well,” I said. “I guess you have to find a way to tune out the haters. Even if they call you things at school. Even if they live in your house. You’ve got to ignore all the BS and hold your head up high.”
“But other people listen to those haters. Everyone believes the bad stuff about me.”
“What about you, though?”
“Huh?”
“Do you believe the bad stuff?”
“Oh . . . I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know? It’s a simple question. Do you believe you’re a worthless sex monster or not?”
Mona shrugged her shoulders. She looked down at her hands. “I don’t know,” she said.
“You can’t give them that power,” I said. “You can’t let yourself care.”
“I know.”
“You look like you don’t trust me.”
“I want to.”
“But it’s easier to believe the bad stuff, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah,” I said. I thought about DeSean, about Brian, about Wiley, about Brooklyn and Channing in the locker room, about my mom every night at home.
“You are so awesome,” I started to say, but Mona flinched. I closed my mouth. She shook her head. She truly is amazing, but it’s like nothing in the world can convince her.
I looked around the room. I noticed Mona’s old spelling and music trophies. I noticed her cello case, another artifact from another time, back when her mother was proud of her. I saw a pair of pom-poms. A pair of toe shoes. An enormous, frilly tutu. I took a big bite of licorice.
It hit me.
“Well,” I said. “There is one other thing I do when I get low. . . .”
“What’s that?”
I flashed the jazziest hands I know how. “I dance.”
I hopped off the bed and over to Mona’s speakers. I plugged in my phone and pressed play on the first song I saw.
“Dancing Queen.”
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