by Raziel Reid
“Half and half?” Blaine interrupts.
“No.” Allan shakes his head. “Two parts potassium perchlorate, one part aluminum powder. Then you fill the bottle one-third full with the powder. You want to detonate in an open field, obviously.”
“Obviously,” Blaine says.
SHOP TILL YOU DROP
The first photo Tommy posts as @KenRawlins blows up. He watches as the hundreds of Likers turn to thousands.
Tommy shows Allan the number as they lounge by the pool. Allan is prone to sunburn, and his nose is completely white with sunscreen. He’s so pale compared to Tommy, who looks like the sun did a lot more than just kiss him.
A new comment pops up on his post every second. Mostly, everyone’s voicing approval over his remodel.
“Someone called me the Ken hotter than Ken Hilton!”
Tommy stops scrolling when the comments turn trolling.
“They’re not living for my outfit, though,” he says. “#basic.”
“Hey, isn’t that one of my shirts?” Allan asks.
Tommy looks down at the graphic tee he’s wearing. It says, “You may not like me, but Jesus thinks I’m to die for.”
“Exactly.” He laughs.
As a Ken, Tommy will be expected to sit front row.
“What am I going to do, Allan? I don’t have the money for a new wardrobe!” He takes another selfie and looks down at it disdainfully. “Screw it, I’ll just steal. Why not? It’s a win-win. If I don’t get caught, I’ll have new clothes. If I do get caught, I’ll have a criminal record. Either way, I’m sure to officially be made a Ken.”
“Oh, come on! I’ll lend you my credit card.”
“Are you offering to be my sugar daddy?”
Allan chokes. “You really are a Ken now.”
Once Tommy gets the idea in his head, he’s determined. It’s the first time he’s seriously contemplated stealing. Tommy Rawlins could never steal—but maybe Ken Rawlins can. It’s the only way to find out if the transformation is complete.
Tommy is dying to know if he’s dead inside.
Allan begrudgingly takes Tommy along with him to Willows Mall for his next shift at Taco Accessory. Tommy goes directly to the designer department store, which features heavily on the Kens’ Instas. The sales associate doesn’t look up from his phone as Tommy enters.
Tommy swallowed a handful of pain medication before leaving the pool house, so he’s feeling chill. He pretends he really is a Ken and shops like it’s his divine right. Rule number one: never look at price tags. Tommy just grabs whatever catches his eye. He moves fast, making his way around the store. He picks up a Hermès belt like a magic wand and simply summons.
He’s about to be especially bold and ask the retail queen, who’s currently on his phone, for a dressing room, but decides it’s safer to sneak off unseen.
There are pliers in his backpack. Tommy came prepared, grabbing them from Allan’s science supplies before they left the pool house. He quickly snaps off all the electronic tags on the clothes, which he then shoves in his bag with shaking hands. So the transformation isn’t complete. A Ken’s hands would never shake from nerves! Withdrawal maybe, but not nerves.
Tommy pokes his head out of the dressing room. The sales associate is busy FaceTiming, so Tommy casually walks out of the dressing room, coming to an abrupt stop when he sees them.
Alexander McQueen black leather boots with three buckles. The same ones Ken Hilton put on his wish list for one of his many admirers to buy. (Ken Hilton shops, but he never buys anything—he just takes photos of what he wants and posts them as demands.) Tommy can’t believe his luck. The boots are in his size! Just imagine how jealous Ken Hilton will be.
His bag is stuffed, so Tommy slips off his old sneakers and puts them in the shoebox, unabashedly slipping the new boots on his feet.
Chin up! Shoulders back! Heels on! Don’t look back!
Tommy walks straight out of the store.
He isn’t expecting it when the alarm goes off. The boots! There must’ve been a security tag tucked inside.
“Excuse me, sir.” A security guard approaches him. “Do you mind if I have a look in your bag?”
Tommy is terrified. All those sedatives he took are no match for the adrenaline shooting through his body. He fearfully meets the security guard’s eyes, and realizes something’s different. Tommy has never been looked at this way before. It’s the look of a million fingers simultaneously swiping right on a dating app. So this is what it feels like to be devoured.
“Is there a problem?” Tommy asks, using a breathy voice he tried out in front of the mirror in Allan’s pool house. He may just have to get out of this Ken style: on his knees. He’s about to lure the security guard into the office, but then remembers a past scandal at Willows High when Ken Hilton leaked his underage sex tape on SoFamous. The post got so much attention that the Willows Police Department came to school to talk to Ken Hilton about the footage, which by then had been wiped off the net. No one had actually seen it. But everyone had commented on it.
Ken Hilton live-tweeted through his WPD interrogation. He even took a selfie with one of the police officers—Officer Simpson, as he later became known—posting it with the caption “pig play.”
Everyone was shocked that Ken Hilton would even joke about having sex with someone who makes less than six figures a year. The comments on SoFamous were full of calls for his abdication. He explained himself in a blog post, saying that while it was okay to exploit the uniformed peasants, no self-respecting queen would ever actually sleep with one.
Tommy knows that he’ll never be a Ken if he debases himself for a security guard. Only debase yourself for millionaires. That’s, like, the law of the universe. Tommy thinks fast. WWKD?
It’s like Ken Hilton is whispering in Tommy’s ear: Taser the bih.
Tommy sees the Taser in the security guard’s belt loop. He’s thinking fast. He’ll lead him to the office…get him on his knees…make him think he’s going to…then he’ll…and run out of the store, never looking back!
Kens only look back at the end of the year, when Facebook shows them their year in review.
Just then, Tommy hears a loud, shrill squeal.
The sales associate finally looks up from his phone, but he doesn’t lower it. “Oh. My. Baphomet.” He rushes up to Tommy and takes his photo. “You’re the New Edition, aren’t you?”
He excitedly poses next to Tommy for a selfie, then points at the security guard. “Is he bothering you?”
“Umm…” Tommy hesitates.
“You even talk like a Ken!” The sales associate wraps his arm around Tommy’s shoulders and leads him out of the store. The alarm goes off but he ignores it, and the security guard is too busy staring at Tommy’s ass to do anything. “Tell Ken Hilton I, like, worship Sandy Hooker,” the sales associate says, waving enthusiastically as Tommy walks off. “And come back any time,” he calls after him. “Kens get a 66.6 percent discount on everything!”
There’s a line-up at Taco Accessory when Tommy walks into the food court, so he decides to use the bathroom to try on some of his clothes.
When he strips off Allan’s graphic tee, Tommy brings it up to his nose and smells it. Maybe not the most stylish wardrobe, but Tommy liked wearing Allan’s clothes. They smell like Allan—comforting. Like fast-food grease and lab chemicals.
Tommy puts on a pink shirt and skinny jeans, stomping around the handicap bathroom in his McQueen boots.
When Tommy looks in the mirror, there’s something different about his reflection. Well, everything’s different. But something else. He doesn’t know if it’s from the severity of his blond hair, or the sharp point of his reconstructed nose, or the fact that he’s now a criminal—but there is a corrupted twist to Tommy’s face. His eyebrows are arched, and not just from the Botox, and his lips are permanently pursed with a glamorous superiority. Like he’s just rubbed cocaine along the inside of his gums and is about to sell everyone’s secrets to Radar
Online.
Tommy struts straight out of the bathroom. Allan spots him from across the food court. He’s in the middle of squirting sour cream onto a customer’s burrito. He squeezes so hard when he sees Tommy, walking as if in slow motion toward him, that the cap of the bottle pops off and sour cream explodes everywhere. He has to roll an entirely new burrito. He’s not the only one who’s distracted. Tommy loses count of how many people look at him as he walks past. The Kens only count zeros anyway.
“So?” Tommy asks Allan once the Taco Accessory counter is clear. He does a little spin. “What do you think?”
“Well,” Allan says. “You’ve sure mastered the look.”
“You like?”
Allan stares at Tommy, trying to decide how to answer.
“Just do me a favor,” he says. “Don’t wear the Kens’ contacts. Your eyes…they’re the last part of you. I don’t want to lose that.”
Tommy’s phone vibrates in the pocket of his bag. He pulls it out and reads a text message.
“Kiki at my place” is all it says.
WALL OF MIRRORS
The gate to Ken Hilton’s Beaux-Arts mansion opens automatically as Tommy approaches. He walks up the driveway through fog lifting off the verdant grounds. A demonic gold-leaf doorknocker stares menacingly as he approaches the entrance.
Tommy can’t believe he’s back. He hasn’t seen the Hilton house since he was seven years old, and it seems smaller than he remembers. He’d built it up in his memory as a palace, and with its French stone and marble pillars it isn’t far off, but it’s not exactly floating in the air.
Ken Hilton on the other hand…The maid opens the door and Ken Hilton descends the stairwell behind her looking like a GIF of a primetime soap opera from the ’80s.
“It’s everything,” Ken Hilton says, walking straight up to him and poking his filler with his finger. “You’re almost as pretty as me.” Ken Hilton notices the McQueen boots on Tommy’s feet and narrows his eyes. “Suh k’yut. Thanks for breaking them in for me, bih.”
He takes Tommy up to his bedroom, which looks like it was designed by William Haines: Hollywood Regency furniture, sweeping drapes, everything glass and gilt. Ken Roberts and Ken Carson are positioned on his bed like dolls Ken Hilton sleeps with. The walls are all mirrored. Above the dresser hangs a giant framed portrait of Ken Hilton made out of thousands of tiny photos of Ken Hilton.
“Dude, do I know you from somewhere?” Ken Carson grins at Tommy. “You look, like, so familiar.”
“I have one of those faces.” Tommy smirks.
Ken Hilton has ten teacup dogs (all wearing diamond collars that weigh more than they do). They rush up to Tommy’s legs as he enters the room, falling onto their side every time they bark.
“The blond is so much better than the brunette,” Ken Roberts says. His bulimia breakfast breath wafts through the air.
“Totally,” Ken Carson agrees, flexing his bronzed bicep. “Brunettes always look homeless.”
“Does it suit me?” Tommy asks, self-consciously touching his scalp and looking into one of the walls. He winces—his scalp still burns from the bleach.
“The grass is always blonder on the other side,” Ken Roberts says.
“Totally.” Ken Carson finally drops his arm. “Look at the Lannisters, bruh. If incest is what it takes to keep them natural blonds, so be it.”
Ken Hilton sits on the edge of his bed and his little dogs all try to jump on his lap at once. “These are my babies.” Ken Hilton introduces them to Tommy. “This is Queen Ken Hilton, Princess Ken Hilton, Duchess Ken Hilton, Marchioness Ken Hilton, Countess Ken Hilton, Viscountess Ken Hilton, Baroness Ken Hilton, Lady Ken Hilton, the Honorable Ken Hilton and Dame Ken Hilton, who doesn’t get to sit on the bed because she’s not a purebred!” Ken Hilton pushes the offending pup off his mattress. “Come,” he tells Tommy, patting the spot on the bed next to him like Tommy’s his newest pet.
They spend the rest of the day on Ken Hilton’s bed reading about celebrities. There’s little interaction, except the silent passing of lip gloss and the occasional smack of gushy pink lips.
After a while, Tommy gets restless and lifts his head from the blog he’s reading off his phone. He can’t help but be disappointed. He’s finally hanging out with the Kens, and the expectation was high. If he’s going to spend all day on Ken Hilton’s bed, he at least hoped the rumors of the satanic orgies were true.
Ken Hilton closes his magazine and makes Tommy stand up so he can give him another look-over. He pinches his body, looking for fat.
“You’ve almost perfected the look,” he says. “With a few minor adjustments you’ll be ready for full display.”
This is it! Tommy is finally being put on a shelf next to the Kens.
“Your selfie went viral,” Ken Hilton says. “The peasants are so obsessed with my latest creation.”
Ken Hilton turns to Ken Roberts and Ken Carson.
“What do you say, gurs?” he asks. “Is Thomas ready for his initiation?”
“He got Liked by the football team.” Ken Carson shrugs.
“And the cheer squad,” Ken Roberts adds. He drops his phone onto the bed with a dramatic sigh, turning to Tommy. “Make it good. I’m so bored. Leo’s been with the same model, like, all week.”
“I thought my selfie was the initiation?” Tommy asks.
“ ’Zif.” Ken Hilton looks at him incredulously. “Right now you’re just a thot with a bleach-out. You have to prove you’re made of our material.”
Tommy clutches his stomach full of nerves.
“Spill the tea.” Ken Hilton passes Tommy his pink-rhinestone-encased iPhone.
Before Tommy can grasp it, Ken Hilton yanks his hand away.
“Do you know what this is?”
“Your phone?”
“Yes, but do you know whose phone it was before it was mine?”
“You have a used phone?” Tommy asks, not because he’s a tech snob but because he’s surprised. The only secondhand Ken Hilton is usually interested in is around his dick.
“This phone is sacred,” Ken Hilton says. “It used to belong to Paris.”
“You have Paris Hilton’s old phone?”
“Don’t ask how it came into my possession. I can’t risk it getting out. Let’s just say it involves the Bling Ring and an eight ball.”
“I always thought you called yourself Ken Hilton because you’re elite,” Tommy says. “Do you really still care about Paris Hilton? It’s not 2004.”
Ken Roberts’s cheek implants spread into a smile. “And here I thought you didn’t have enough bitchiness in you to join the fam!”
“But be careful, newbie,” Ken Carson warns. “Ken Hilton likes Heiress so much he uses it as a dildo, so unless you want him to break his bottle and use it as a dildo on you, it’s probably best not to insult, like, the Hilton dynasty in his presence.”
“And that includes the Richards sisters, bitch,” Ken Hilton adds, dangling Paris Hilton’s glimmering pink iPhone in front of Tommy’s face. “So what do you say, Thomas? Are you ready to hold the Holy Grail?”
Tommy takes the phone with trembling hands.
“The initiation is a blog post on our Tumblr,” Ken Hilton says. “If it’s juicy enough, you can start posting on SoFamous regularly, using your Ken Rawlins account. For now, you can access through my phone. The password is 5150.”
“What should I post?”
“A sex tape always says, like, ‘I’ve arrived,’ ” Ken Carson suggests.
“You must have something on someone,” Ken Roberts says. “What secrets have your friends told you?”
“I don’t have a lot of friends.”
Ken Roberts takes a selfie. “Care is only a word because it’s in scare.”
“Why am I here?” Tommy asks, only realizing he has spoken aloud when the Kens turn their heads in unison to look at him. “I mean, why am I the New Edition?”
Ken Roberts and Ken Carson lower their eyes.
K
en Hilton just keeps smiling. He picks up Dame Ken Hilton and kisses her wet, pink nose.
“Because even a mutt deserves a chance at life,” he says.
The dog is dropped to the floor. It lands on its crooked tiara and yelps before scurrying away.
“But you’re acting like…we didn’t know each other before.”
“You don’t have a past,” Ken Hilton says. “You’re fresh out of the box.” His eyes widen. “I know! Why don’t you write a post about that geek you’re always with? The one with that gay disease.”
“You mean Allan Sherwood?” Tommy asks.
“Yeah, that freak. Do you have anything on him?”
“Wait,” Ken Roberts says. “Allan Sherwood has HIV?”
“What are you talking about?” Ken Hilton glares.
“You just said ‘the one with that gay disease.’ ”
“I meant gay as in lame. You are, like, so homophobic. HIV is not a gay disease, Ken Roberts. It’s a poor person’s disease.”
“Allan has a disease?” Tommy asks.
“Duh.” Ken Hilton rolls his eyes. “The ginger gene.”
“Allan’s my friend—”
“He’s a fire-crotch with a two-figure allowance.” Ken Hilton cuts Tommy off. “You’re lucky we rescued you from his impoverished inferno of loser. He works in a food court, for Baphomet’s sake!”
“Yeah, but Allan’s not poor. He actually lives in The Hills. He only drives that old car because he refuses to accept his parents’ money. He has integrity, or something.”
“Ew.” Ken Hilton reaches over and grabs his phone. “Let me see if there’s anything we can use in your phone,” he tells Tommy. “You’re obviously not ready for the zenith.”
Tommy passes Ken Hilton his phone, watching anxiously as Ken Hilton scrolls through it. He wracks his brain trying to think of what Ken Hilton is seeing, mostly just hundreds of practice selfies, and maybe some photos of him and Tutti and Allan…What kind of dirt is Ken Hilton expecting to find? But he obviously finds something. Tommy sees his blue eyes dilate with devilment. Ken Hilton shows Tommy and the Kens a photo of Tutti at her birthday party a few months earlier.