Martin McLean, Middle School Queen

by Alyssa Zaczek

  “I thought we already figured out my routine,” I said, confused. “You know, all that walking and posing.”

  “Well, that’s a type of routine,” he said, “but at the very least, you need music to go with it. Or you could decide to really get dance-y, if you think that’s more Lottie’s style.”

  “I think Lottie is a lot like me, only . . . better. More confident, and louder,” I said. “I don’t think she’s a huge dancer. There’s no way I could pull off all that choreography,” I added, remembering Aida Lott.

  “Well, good! ’Cause I ain’t no choreographer!” Tío Billy gave a little hoot of laughter. Mom chuckled from her corner and waggled a paintbrush dripping with verdant green in Tío Billy’s direction.

  “I know that’s right!” she said, raising an eyebrow. “He talks a big game, but my little brother couldn’t dance his way out of a paper bag, mijo. You sure you don’t want me to teach you?”

  “Hey, you mind your business, ma’am,” Tío Billy shot back. “I’ve got videos of you at some quinceañeras way back when. I’m sure Martin would love to see those!” Mom stuck her tongue out at him, then winked at me and turned back to her painting. Tío Billy started clicking away on his laptop, making a playlist. “We’ll keep it to minimal choreo, with a lot of posing, spinning, and serving face.”

  “Serving face?” I asked.

  “It means giving a lot of attitude, a lot of gorgeousness, all in your face. You’re serving it.” Tío Billy demonstrated by shooting me a glamorous look. “Serving it up on a silver platter!”

  “I like that,” I giggled. I tried to pull a face of my own, but I’m pretty sure I ended up looking like a tropical fish. Tío Billy giggled too.

  “We’ll work on it!” he said, patting my arm. “So, do you have a song in mind? You’ll need something that gives you a lot of confidence and a lot of sparkle. Maybe some Bowie?”

  I mumbled in response. Tío Billy raised his eyebrows.

  “Uh, I’m sorry, qué dijiste?”

  “. . . What about Celia Cruz?”

  “Ay, a little louder for the people in the back?” He grinned and put his hand up to his ear. “C’mon, I know Miss Lottie León don’t whisper! You better own it!”

  “Celia Cruz, okay?” I crossed my arms over my chest, pretending to be more offended by his teasing than I actually was. “I like Celia Cruz. She’s fun to watch. And her music makes me feel like I can do anything.”

  “Ooh, yes, Celia!” Mom piped up. “You were listening to her in the womb, mijo.”

  “Well, that sounds like exactly what we need!” Tío Billy exclaimed. “There’s nothing wrong with a little reina Celia, you know? And salsa, that’s a genre that gives us a lot to work with.”

  “How about ‘Yo Viviré’?” I asked tentatively. Tío Billy nodded emphatically.

  “A classic!” he crooned, scrolling through YouTube until he found the track. Celia’s smooth voice began to play from the speakers, and I started to mimic the maraca players, shaking my fists from side to side. “Wait, wait!” Tío Billy leapt off the couch and went running for the hall closet. He pulled out a massive seafoam colored tutu, plus the box with my silver heels.

  “A tutu?” I asked dubiously. Celia warbled in the background as Tío Billy approached, holding the clothes out to me.

  “I saw it at the mall and fell in love. If you’re going to practice a routine, you better look the part,” he said. “Besides, tutus are super hot right now.”

  The tutu was made of slightly rigid tulle, layers and layers of it, frothing up around an elastic waistband like whipped cream on a B-Town shake.

  “Go on,” Tío Billy urged, “try it on!”

  I wrestled with the waistband a little, then pulled the whole monstrosity on over my pants. I struggled with my T-shirt; it looked boxy and silly hanging out over the tutu, but tucking it in made me look like a doofus. I’d never worn a skirt before, so how would I know how they worked?

  “Ay, let me help,” Mom said, wiping her hands on her overalls and leaping up to rescue me. “Tuck it in, then pull it out a little. It’ll look cool and disheveled, like you don’t care about how you look,” she advised, showing me how to make the shirt billow slightly at the waist. Mom’s helping, I thought. It’s funny—she invited Tío Billy to stay with us so I’d have a male influence, but now it’s a female influence I need. Mom stepped back to admire her work.

  “Does it look okay?” I asked anxiously.

  “Ay, que guapo, mi hijo!” Mom nodded. Tío Billy snapped his fingers in my direction, which I took as approval.

  “Perfect! Now give us some moves. Show me your walk, with the music,” Tío Billy said, restarting the song.

  I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, trying to feel the beat of the song. Every limb in my body suddenly felt heavy and awkward, and for more than a moment it was like I had never moved my arms or legs before.

  With my eyes shut tight, I tried to imagine what it would be like to be in the audience as Celia performed: the crowd around me constantly moving to the rhythm of the music as if they were a heartbeat personified, tha-RUMP tha-RUMP tha-RUMP. I guess my feet started moving of their own accord, because all of a sudden, I was busting out a salsa. A little step to the side, a little shifting of my weight—it couldn’t have looked very smooth or very cool, but I was just glad I hadn’t fallen over yet.

  “There you go!” Tío Billy exclaimed, clasping his hands together in encouragement. “Lottie León is in the house, y’all!” he called to Mom, and she clapped enthusiastically. I caught her eye and grinned, feeling like I was learning to ride a bike all over again: Look! Look what I can do!

  The music rose up in my chest, and for a second it was like it was me singing instead of Celia. I spun around, enjoying the way the skirt shifted and rose up around me like a cloud. Tío Billy snapped his fingers in the air. “Queen! Yaaas!” he cried.

  Celia sang her final notes and I struck a pose, one hand in the air and one on my hip, popped out to one side just like Tío Billy taught me. He jumped to his feet in thunderous applause, whistling and stomping his feet. Mom was hopping up and down, clapping and laughing, her curls bouncing and her smile wide.

  And that’s when I noticed Carmen.

  She was standing on the front stoop, fully visible though the living room window. And she was looking right at me.

  I froze.

  “Martin?” Mom asked, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from Carmen. I could feel my heart in my stomach, about to pull an Alien and burst right out of me.

  “What’s wrong?” Tío Billy asked. “You were fabulous!”

  “I—hold on, I—I have to—Carmen!” I yelled, but she had already turned on her heel and was making her way back down the sidewalk. I tried to shimmy out of the tutu as quickly as I could, but it got caught on my heels and I stumbled and fell. My face flushed hot against the floorboards. I raised myself up on my forearms and knees and kicked off the heels violently.

  “León?” I heard the concern in Tío Billy’s voice, but I didn’t stop. I wrenched open the door and yelled out to Carmen, but she was already at the bottom of the driveway, hopping onto her bike.

  “Carmen, wait!” I called and I skidded to a halt in front of her.

  “I was coming by to apologize,” she said stiffly. “It was going to be a grand gesture. A big, dramatic surprise. But it looks like you’ve got things covered in the surprise department.”

  “What you saw—it’s—it’s not what you think—” I said, gasping. I put my hands on my knees to catch my breath.

  “I don’t know what I think!” She flailed her arms in the air wildly. “I don’t know what this is! Is your uncle making you do this stuff?”

  “No!” I exclaimed, my eyes stinging. “It’s not like that!”

  “It’s not you, Martin! You were never into anything like this before he showed up.” She pointed accusatorily at the window. “You’ve been spending all your time with a relative you see, what, twice a year?
And he’s turned you into a totally different person! And what’s worse is that you didn’t feel like you could tell us about it!”

  “Well, maybe I would have, if you weren’t so busy marrying off Pickle and sucking up to Didi Esposito!” I shot back. I didn’t know where that came from, only that I felt totally defenseless. Carmen’s mouth dropped open in outrage. She fumbled to buckle her bike helmet under her chin, jamming the pieces together furiously.

  “Are you serious? We have always been there for you. When we were talking about you and your uncle the other night, you could have said something then. But instead you just kept on keeping secrets, and now you’re here, and you’re—you’re—you’re doing whatever this is!” she spat.

  “I didn’t know how to bring it up. I didn’t know what to say!”

  “You never know what to say!” she cried. A wave of sick, cold shock crashed down on me. There it was. My biggest fault, the thing I wished on the stars nightly to change—and she knew it.

  She knew it, and she said it anyway.

  “Say something! Say anything!” she shouted. “Don’t leave your best friends in the dark like that! All this time I thought something was the matter between us, but instead it was . . . whatever this is? God, I feel so—so—I don’t even know what I feel, Martin!”

  My ears were ringing, and it felt like my bones were vibrating. I shook my head, trying to clear away the fog of shock and hurt that had settled in my brain.

  “I know,” I said. “I’m sorry. It’s—I’m—it’s something I do for fun. Tío Billy showed me when he got here; sometimes he dresses up and lip syncs and, I don’t know, it looked like something I could do and maybe be good at.”

  “You know what you used to be good at? Being our friend,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “What about this is so much better than hanging out with us?”

  “It’s not,” I said, “it’s just different. I . . . I like how it makes me feel, okay?” I wanted so badly for her to understand, I was shaking. “It’s fun and exciting and sort of silly, and it makes me feel confident and . . . and happy.”

  Carmen’s big eyes softened as her hands steadied her handlebars.

  “And being around Pickle and me . . . we don’t make you feel that way?” she asked. I’d never heard Carmen’s voice so quiet, or so serious. It almost scared me. I stared at my feet.

  “I . . . it’s not like that . . .” But I couldn’t say anything, much less something that would make things right. All my words just disappeared, slipping away to leave my brain simultaneously blank and unbearably loud.

  Of course. Of course, this was always the way: Martin McLean with nothing to say. Martin McLean, silent and sheepish and super, super sorry.

  “Whatever, Martin,” Carmen said, pushing off the driveway and starting to pedal. “Have a nice life with your new best friend. And for the record,” she called over her shoulder as she made her way down the sidewalk, “seafoam green isn’t your color!”

  I would have laughed, if her words hadn’t knocked the wind from my lungs.

  My chest felt as though someone had punched me repeatedly. I don’t know at what point the tears started flowing, but the next thing I knew I was sobbing, bent over myself, about to be sick. The front door opened and Tío Billy’s hand was on my shoulder and Mom was saying something, but I couldn’t make any of it out. All I could hear was the rushing in my ears and my ugly gasps for air and Carmen’s voice echoing in my head.

  I felt them pull me up off the ground and help me inside, and then the awful white noise in my quiet-loud head drowned everything, everything out.

  8

  After I recovered—after waking up in my bed and crying some more, and after several mugs of Tío Billy’s magic hot chocolate—I knew what I had to do. So on Halloween morning, I pedaled my bike over to Carmen’s. It was extraordinarily cold for an October day, even for Indiana. The leaves had almost completely fallen, leaving the trees bare. I imagined them shivering in the blustery wind as I rode.

  Inside, I was shivering too. I felt as though I’d had a chill ever since that day in the driveway. It was Carmen’s voice that did it, so cold and so . . . hurt. It reminded me of Mom, when Dad used to yell at her. When I yelled at her. I knew that keeping secrets from Carmen and Pickle wasn’t right. It wasn’t, and yet . . . wasn’t Lottie my secret to keep or to tell?

  Nobody tells you how to know, you know? What parts of you to share, what parts of you to hide. I had to hope that Carmen would accept me—and Lottie—because I needed her to. If my friends couldn’t love all the different parts of me, even the ones that answered to a different name, that would be worse than a thousand terrible fights.

  I got to Carmen’s house and rang the doorbell. Then I waited, riddled with anxiety, until her face appeared in the window.

  “Hey,” I said weakly when she opened the door. I kept my icy hands planted firmly in my pockets.

  “Hi,” Carmen said, her eyes looking over me warily. She was already in full costume as Captain Hook, and she looked ridiculous, in the best way. She had a huge maroon hat done up in velvet with a big turquoise plume stuck in it, plus a thick, wavy wig that looked like something from a Renaissance painting. A bushy, curled black mustache was stuck above her upper lip, and peeking out from the lacy cuffs of her matching velvet coat was a silver hook.

  “You look great,” I said. She shrugged and was silent. I took a deep breath. “Carmen, I’m really sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “Everything,” I gushed. “So much. I’m sorry for freaking out at you at the diner, and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Lottie.”

  “Lottie?”

  My voice caught in my throat. Saying Lottie’s name aloud to someone other than Mom or Tío Billy . . . it made her real. And if Carmen rejected Lottie—rejected me—I might as well start looking for a new school. But I had to tell her. I had to, because she mattered to me. Carmen, and Lottie too.

  “That’s my stage name,” I said, trying to ignore how my voice shook. “My drag name. Well, sort of. It will be! Not yet, though. I’m sort of in training,” I said. Carmen’s mouth was hanging open, but she didn’t say anything. “I go by Lottie León. Or, I will, if I ever actually perform.”

  “So . . . you’re a drag queen?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “But . . . wait . . . does this mean . . . ?”

  Does this mean you’re gay?

  She didn’t have to say it. I knew what she was asking. I felt that familiar beating in my chest as my heart took off flying. I took a deep breath and remembered what Tío Billy said: it’s okay not to know.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “I just know I like being Lottie.”

  Carmen shifted uncomfortably, and I could see her thinking hard behind her gigantic hat. Then she sighed, and her eyes met mine.

  “I’m not going to lie,” she began, and my stomach dropped to my toes. “I’m still getting used to this new you, Martin. It’s just . . . this is a lot of new information.”

  “For me too,” I said. “I didn’t know anything about drag until Tío Billy took me to a show. But it was so amazing, Carmen; you would love it. It’s kind of like going to the theater! There’s so much color and music and glitter, and the outfits . . .” I trailed off, because Carmen was looking at me strangely. “What?”

  “If you think I’d like it so much,” she said, “why did you hide it from me?”

  “I guess . . . I love you a lot, Carmen. I know we don’t really say that stuff to each other, but it’s true. You and Pickle are the closest thing I have to real siblings. But now I love drag, too, and . . . I was scared that you would hate it, or hate me, or both. And that would hurt my heart too much.” I had never talked about my feelings in front of Carmen before. It felt like walking a tightrope over the Grand Canyon in my underpants—totally vulnerable and majorly scary. I braced myself for her response.

  “Well . . . it’s going to be a little weird to me for a while. But .
. .” Carmen’s big, earnest eyes met my gaze. “You’re my best friend, Martin, and if this is something you love, then I can learn to love it too.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. ” Carmen smiled. “It does sound like something I’d like. You’re talking to a girl in a mustache, after all.” I giggled. “And I’m really sorry for the awful things I said, Martin. I was surprised and confused, and it came out as anger. I didn’t mean to—”

  “I know,” I reassured her. “It’s okay.”

  Then Carmen let out a high-pitched little noise, so shrill it made Woofecito start barking up a storm, and pulled me into a hug.

  “Oh, Martin,” she said into my shoulder. “I’m so glad to have you back.” When we pulled apart, her fake mustache was a little wet with tears. “And I want you to know,” she said, wiping her nose, “I’m not going to bring up the ‘G’ word anymore, because it’s none of my business. Okay?”

  “Thanks, Carmen,” I said, suddenly sort of bashful.

  “Have you told Pickle yet?” she asked. “About Lottie?”

  “Not yet,” I said. “I was waiting for the right time.”

  “You know,” she said, toying with the hem of her pirate’s coat. “After you left B-Town the other night, we sort of talked about it.”

  “About what?”

  “About how we’d feel if you, you know . . . were. The ‘G’ word, I mean. I know, I’m sorry, I know I just said I wouldn’t bring it up, but listen! We both said, without hesitation, that we’d love you just the same. Well,” she stopped herself momentarily, “Pickle didn’t use the word ‘love,’ because he’s Pickle and he only ever says that to Violet, but the sentiment was the same. And I think that probably applies to you being a drag queen too.”

  “Wait,” I said, “Pickle told Violet he loves her?”

  Carmen looked horrified and clamped her non-hook hand over her mouth.

  “Oh nooo,” she cried. “I promised not to tell!”