by Raziel Reid
The Willows High cheer squad, led by Ken Roberts, does cartwheels onto the field. They’re the opening act for Sandy Hooker.
According to his latest status update, Ken Hilton, a.k.a. Sandy Hooker, is saying a pre-show prayer (muttering “ohm” as a minion sprinkles pink glitter over him) in his private tent positioned at the end of the field.
Tommy sits with Tutti and Allan on the bleachers waiting for the game to start.
“I saw a comment on SoFamous claiming that for Sandy Hooker’s encore she’s going to scan the crowd and randomly pick someone to give a lap dance to,” Tutti says. “Do you think it’s true?”
“I heard she resurrected Alexander McQueen to get him to design her costume,” Tommy says. He grabs a handful of popcorn from the bag Tutti’s holding and shoves the kernels in his mouth. The atmosphere on the bleachers is tense, like an Illuminati ritual is about to start.
Allan, wearing a graphic tee with an alien head that says “I Don’t Believe in Humans,” isn’t at all interested in Ken Carson’s majestic ass, Ken Roberts’s split legs or Ken Hilton’s latest stunt. Tommy wonders why he even came to the game. He’s reading a book called This Perfect Day. It must’ve been ordered online. There’s only one bookstore in Willows and it sells nothing but Valley of the Dolls and diet books.
Tommy spots Blaine on the stairs and waves him over. Allan finally looks up from his book.
“This is the weirdest football game I’ve ever been to,” Blaine says as he reaches them. “I saw Coach Summers behind the tent wearing latex shorts and a dog collar. Interesting way to rouse team spirit…”
“No, no.” Tommy shuffles over to make room. “He’s one of Sandy Hooker’s backup dancers!”
“Ah.” Blaine nods. “Glad that’s cleared up.”
“It’s not that far of a stretch if you’ve taken his sex ed class.” Tutti shrugs.
Tommy introduces her and Allan to Blaine.
“You have the best eyebrow arch I’ve ever seen,” Tutti tells him.
Allan rolls his eyes. And Sandy Hooker hasn’t even started performing yet.
The cheerleaders finish their routine with Ken Roberts spinning through the air. There are other guys on the squad, but he’s the only one who refuses to wear the male version of the uniform. He’s wearing tight flesh-colored underwear beneath his skirt, which makes it look like he’s not wearing any underwear at all, but creates an odd smoothness over his bulge.
Principal Elliot steps onto the stage holding a mic.
“Willows High welcomes you to the Crush Cream Soda homecoming game halftime show,” he shouts in his best announcer voice. “Now presenting San-dy Hooker!”
The crowd screams like they’re in a school shooting.
A rotating eight ball descends from the top of the stage and splits open to reveal Sandy Hooker. She’s wearing a string of bullets around her fake boobs, thigh-high pink latex boots with at least fifty-inch heels, and a sequined miniskirt that is about to burst at the seams. Her tuck is lit.
Sandy Hooker doesn’t do much—she lip-syncs about as well as Mariah Carey during Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve, and struts from one end of the stage to the other and back again, her ass implant slipping out from beneath the restraint of her sequins.
Tommy is mesmerized. Sandy Hooker is the most magnificent piece of trash he has ever seen.
“I feel like I need to be tested for gonorrhea,” Allan says.
When Tommy looks over at Blaine to see his reaction, he feels a stab of jealousy. Blaine is staring at Ken Hilton like everyone stares at Ken Hilton. Like he’s a rare solar eclipse you can’t resist looking at, even if it’s bad for you. He burns into your eyes, leaving you seeing white spots, he’s so radiant. Everything you look at afterward pales in comparison. Tommy self-consciously touches the scar on his cheek.
“Hunty” ends with a series of on-stage explosions. Sandy Hooker is left in a swirl of fog, a single spotlight cast down upon the set of fake eyelashes over her already fake eyelashes. Coach Summers crawls off the stage, red marks on his skin from where Sandy Hooker whipped him.
Sandy Hooker basks in the glory of her applause. As Tommy watches, it’s like she’s getting bigger and bigger. “Drink Me” is written on the waistband of her underwear.
The encore starts, a slow, sultry beat. The faces of the crowd flash on the screen of the Jumbotron above the stage. Sandy Hooker blocks the spotlight with her hand as she pretends to scan the crowd. Tommy can tell she already knows what comes next. Ken Hilton is a master manipulator.
“Are you bitches in my gang?” Sandy Hooker yells into the mic. Rapturous applause. “You wish!” Sandy Hooker laughs. “And for one of you, your wish is my command…”
The camera slowly moves across the bleachers.
“I knew it!” Tutti exclaims. “I wonder who she’s going to pick.”
Tommy feels like there’s something inside of him scratching to get out. Tutti places her hand on his knee as the image projected on the Jumbotron comes nearer to the spot where they’re sitting.
“Why be you when you can be me?” Sandy Hooker purrs into the mic.
The crowd has gone quiet. No one knows if it’s time for a sacrifice or a summoning.
The camera slowly moves through the crowd. It’s only two bleachers away from Tommy now. He feels the thrashing in him intensify.
“Threesomes are so over,” Sandy Hooker says. “Foursomes are everything now. Four is the magic number.”
Tutti’s grip on Tommy’s leg tightens.
“Did she just say…a fourth?” she asks.
When the camera reaches their bleacher, Allan is the first to appear on the screen. He doesn’t even notice. He has his nose back in This Perfect Day.
The camera moves over to Tutti. She steals a look at herself on the screen and flips her blue hair, blowing the crowd a kiss.
But the camera doesn’t hold on her. It keeps moving. When it lands on Tommy, his chest constricts and he stares down at his feet, expecting the camera to quickly move on. But when he looks up, it’s still frozen on his face. The people in the surrounding bleachers all turn from the Jumbotron to look directly at Tommy. The camera goes close-up on his face.
“I’d introduce myself,” Sandy Hooker says from the stage, “but I don’t speak Bark.”
The crowd laughs. Tommy wants to bury his face in his hands, to get up and run, to disappear. But he still hasn’t taken a breath.
Over the laughter, Sandy Hooker booms into the mic. “I’m going to kill you and bring you back to life a star!”
The crowd goes wild.
“Go get him, gurs,” Sandy Hooker tells Ken Roberts and Ken Carson, who hop across the field and up the stairs to where Tommy is sitting.
Tutti is practically jumping out of her seat. “I can’t believe it!” she screams over the cheering crowd. “You’re going to be a Ken!”
It all happens so fast. Ken Carson steps on Blaine’s toes to pull Tommy to a stand. The next thing Tommy knows, Ken Carson is lifting him onto his shoulders. Ken Roberts shakes his pom-poms as he skips in front of Ken Carson and Tommy back down the stairs. They bring Tommy to the stage.
When Ken Carson puts him down, Tommy’s knees buckle. He’s standing so close to Sandy Hooker he can smell the vodka on her breath.
“The face will have to be permanently contoured and the nose reconstructed before we can make our final decision,” Sandy Hooker says.
The crowd stops cheering and listens intently. Tommy realizes Sandy Hooker is talking about him.
“And while you’re under we’ll declaw you, give you cheek, ass and pec implants, new teeth, collagen in your lips and an arch on your left eyebrow so you can have permanent bih face too. It’ll just take a little Botox, and then, of course, it’ll be your responsibility to maintain. My father will suggest every three months, but he’s just a greedy bastard. Once every six months should suffice.”
Sandy Hooker pinches Tommy’s cheek.
“Well, maybe every
three for you. You have terrible elasticity!”
The crowd laughs. Sandy Hooker pans to them.
“But what do you think, Willows High? With the right packaging and a total rebrand, then maybe, um, what’s your name?” Sandy Hooker shoves the mic in front of Tommy’s mouth like they’ve never met.
“Tommy,” Tommy says with a trembling voice. “Tommy Rawlins.”
Sandy Hooker yanks the mic back.
“Then maybe Thomas could be marketable,” he says. “Let me hear it, Willows High! Would you buy a new Ken?”
The crowd cheers louder than ever, chanting, “Ken, Ken, Ken!”
“The people have spoken,” Sandy Hooker exclaims, turning back to Tommy with a wicked glimmer in her bloodshot eyes. “My father will see you at his clinic tomorrow morning. You’re in good hands. He’s rated the best plastic surgeon in the state.”
Ken Roberts can’t contain himself. He grabs Sandy Hooker’s mic.
“And he doesn’t have a license!” he squeals, sounding like Minnie Mouse after a crack binge.
Sandy Hooker looks like she might hit Ken Roberts with the mic.
“Did I click Send out of your mouth?” she asks.
The crowd “oohs.” Ken Roberts blushes with embarrassment, but with all the stage lights he just looks slightly more fake-baked than usual.
“Once the bandages come off, we’ll give you the blond tiara,” Sandy Hooker tells Tommy. “And if the selfie you take after the makeover is complete gets Liked by everyone who’s anyone at Willows High, we’ll put you on display.”
Sandy Hooker smiles at Tommy, a Matryoshka doll with a million equally deceiving smiles underneath.
“What do you think, Thomas?”
Sandy Hooker places the mic in front of Tommy’s mouth and quickly pulls it away.
“That was a trick question. Duh, thinking is for people with wrinkles!”
Laughter from the stands.
Sandy Hooker chants, “Chin up! Shoulders back! Heels on! Don’t look back!”
The crowd repeats after her, over and over, stomping their feet on the bleachers.
Tommy swallows a mouthful of creamy pink vomit.
“Don’t look so scared.” Sandy Hooker giggles. “It’s just playtime.”
DISCOUNT BIN
As the second half of the game starts, Tommy sneaks off with Allan by his side. Tommy’s in an absolute daze. The people in the bleachers stop cheering and go quiet as he ducks past. Phones lift and Tommy is blinded by flashing cameras.
Allan is talking a mile a minute next to him, but Tommy just smiles. He can’t stop smiling. It’s like it’s already painted on his face.
Tomorrow morning. Dr. Hilton will guide him into his light. From the light he came, and to the light he shall return! If you don’t drift into the afterlife from anesthesia during a late-in-life plastic surgery procedure, then you’ll never make Willows Daily’s obituaries section. They only run before-and-after photos.
Allan is listing the reasons why Tommy “cannot, under any circumstances, go through with this.”
Tommy nods his head absently. He hasn’t stopped trembling since his face appeared on the Jumbotron. When he stepped off the stage he almost fell flat onto the grass. His legs were like jelly. Allan and Tutti rushed down from the bleachers to reach him. The cheer squad all tried to take selfies with him at once. Tutti held them back while Tommy and Allan made a run for it. Blaine was lost in the crowd.
“Do you believe in the devil?” Tommy asks Allan, cutting him off mid-list. He’s at number thirty: because what happens when a gaping hole goes out of style?
“You are not evil.” Allan stops at his car. “Don’t let Ken Hilton make you one of his dolls!”
“You don’t think I can do it,” Tommy says. “Is that it?”
“What? No!”
“You don’t think that I can walk the walk, and talk that bitchy clipped-talk, and pout, and deep throat, and never eat again! You don’t think I can be popular. You think that I’m destined to be a loser forever.”
“No, Tommy, that’s not it. I just never thought you were a loser to begin with.”
“You’re right, I’m not a loser. If I were a loser, if I weighed two tons like Tutti, or wore Urban Outfitters–reject graphic tees like you, then at least I’d be written about on SoFamous. At least then I’d exist!”
Allan opens his car door, then slams it closed again. Tommy’s surprised it doesn’t fall right off.
“Is this about that stupid site?” Allan asks. “You should be thankful that you’ve never been on it!”
“Yeah, right.”
“I’m serious! Did you ever stop and think that the reason the Kens never put you on their Tumblr is because you’re different?”
“Every day.”
“And that they’re jealous? The Kens are so insecure that they all have to be exactly the same to feel powerful. You don’t need them, and that terrifies them.”
Allan pushes his glasses up his nose.
“You’re Tommy. Not Ken. You’re…sweet. You cry every time you have to kill a prostitute in a video game to move ahead; you laugh out loud in physics class when the teacher talks about Kundt’s tube…”
Tommy snickers.
“And you’re the only person I can hang out with and even if we don’t say a word it’s comfortable. It’s real.”
Allan gets into his car.
“I don’t want to lose that,” he says as Tommy slides into the passenger seat next to him.
It takes a few tries but the car finally starts. Tommy doesn’t know where his shaking and the car’s rattling start and end.
“Do you really trust Ken Hilton?” Allan asks as he backs out of the parking lot. “Why the sudden interest in you?”
“We were close once.”
“I know. And how’d that end?”
Tommy stares back at the field as they pull onto the street. He can see the Jumbotron in the distance. Ken Carson dashes across the field.
“Maybe he finally sees potential,” Tommy says.
“Overnight? And why such a public display? Ken Hilton treats everything like a game.”
“Don’t you get it? I want to play!”
“Think about what you’re saying. What it would mean! We’re talking about changing everything about you.”
“I know. Isn’t it great? But I won’t be able to recover from surgery at home. My parents will freak out.”
Allan grips the steering wheel so hard his knuckles go white. “I should hope so!”
“No, I mean my mom will assume I’m doing it to get on a reality show, and she’ll cry about how excited she is for me to have finally found a career I’m interested in. And my dad will live-tweet throughout my recovery. I cannot make them that happy. Please, Allan, can I crash at your place?”
“No way. I don’t want any part in this!”
“I’ll tell my parents we’re doing SAT prep or something. Or, will you tell them for me?” Tommy gives Allan his best puppy-dog eyes. That look will be so much more successful when his eyes are the shape and color of a Ken’s. But it does the trick on Allan as he glances over. It usually does.
“You want me to lie to your parents?”
“Well, I can’t. What if my new nose grows?”
“And what exactly do you expect me to tell my parents?”
“They’ll never know. I’ll stay in the pool house. Your mom is a housewife of Willows Hills—they only ever go in there to bang the pool boy!”
Margaret and George Rawlins don’t put up any resistance when Allan asks them, during dinner that night, if Tommy can stay over for a while. Tommy’s almost offended by their lack of involvement in the conversation. They barely look up from their phones. His parents have always been more in tune with the Willows frequency than he is. Tommy feels like an outcast everywhere, even at home. This is his chance to finally connect.
Allan shrugs at Tommy across the table.
“It’ll just be for a week,” Tommy says.
“We’ll be doing SAT prep.”
“Okay, son.” His father cuts into his kale.
“Just put the dates you’ll be away in the Google calendar, dear,” is all his mother says. She’s in a somber mood. She filed a missing person’s report when she realized Roomsy had come out of the closet and disappeared. She’d long suspected her of being lesbian. If it weren’t for the emotional support of Alexa, she’d be inconsolable.
“We won’t stay up too late, I promise,” Tommy says, desperate. “No wild parties…”
“Oh, you boys.” His mother winks.
“What do you mean, ‘you boys’?” Tommy asks.
“You don’t have to lie to us. We’re modern parents, Tommy. If you want to spend the week in The Hills with your lover we’re not going to stand in your way.”
“What are you talking about? Allan and I are just friends.”
“You mean you aren’t packing each other’s fudge?” his dad asks.
“No!” Tommy almost falls out of his chair. “Allan isn’t even gay. I mean, hello, look at what he’s wearing! And his hair’s messy! And he’s never stepped foot in a gym. He’s not even an ally. He doesn’t even watch RuPaul’s Drag Race!”
“You mean you’re actually going to stay at Allan’s house to study?” his mother asks, an even more wounded look on her face than the one on Allan’s, who is staring down at his plate. Her lips become a thin line and she gets up from the table. “I’ll get dessert,” she says, forcing a smile. “We’re having kale chips!”
Up in his room after dinner, Tommy sits on the edge of the bed trying to pack and mostly staring off at the glowing WILLOWSLAND sign through his window. A suitcase is open at his feet, but he’s not bringing much—none of his clothes will fit over his new implants. He drops a roll of socks into the suitcase.
“Sorry about my parents thinking we’re boyfriends,” he tells Allan, leaning against the doorway.
“I wasn’t offended.”