by Raziel Reid
“Morning, doll face,” Blaine says.
Ken Hilton looks from Tommy to Blaine. “What are you two doing here?”
“I brought your clothes back,” Tommy says.
“You can keep my puke-stained Céline, thanks.” Ken Hilton gets out of bed and puts on a pink housecoat with feathered trim. “Actually, I’m glad you’re here. I can finish the excommunication by shaving off your blond.”
“Good thing you didn’t let him dye your pubes, right Tommy?” Blaine laughs.
“You’ve seen his pubes?” Ken Hilton stares at Blaine. “I thought the Virgin Mary over here was afraid of a little cock.”
“Sorry I’m not enough of a whore for you,” Tommy says, finally gaining the courage to stand up to Ken Hilton. “I guess I’m not meant to be an A-gay.”
“No, you’re too much of a gay-gay.”
“Why are you so ripe, Ken?” Tommy’s voice is shaking with rage. “I don’t expect we can be friends but—”
“Friends?” Ken Hilton forces a laugh. “Facebook only lets you have five thousand friends.”
“Salty,” Blaine says. “Tommy here came to make amends. He even brought a peace offering.”
Blaine shows Ken Hilton the pill bottle. A carefully placed finger conceals the fuse.
“What are those?” Ken Hilton asks.
“They light you on fire,” Tommy says.
Ken Hilton rolls his eyes. “I don’t need your Tic Tacs.”
He turns to one of his mirrored walls and runs his hand through his hair.
“I knew he wouldn’t take one.” Blaine tilts his head at Tommy. “He probably just posts about being a pillhead for Likes.”
“Get fucked.” Ken Hilton pries himself away from his reflection. “Any vodka to chase them with?”
Tommy sees Blaine discreetly use a lighter on the bomb behind his back. The fuse sparks. Blaine passes Ken Hilton the bottle and grabs Tommy’s arm, quickly pulling him back to the far mirrored wall. Blaine covers their heads with his leather jacket.
By the time Ken Hilton realizes there’s a burning fuse attached to the lid, it’s too late.
“Ew” is his last word.
SUICIDE POST
The bottle explodes. A roar of hot wind slams against Blaine’s jacket. Ken Hilton’s face melts off. Smoke lifts from his burning hair. A teacup Pomeranian barks.
Ken Hilton is still clutching the bottle with a charred hand as he collapses to the floor.
Tommy comes out from underneath the jacket and clamps his hand over his mouth.
Blaine goes up to the body and stomps out the flames burning the feathered trim of Ken Hilton’s housecoat.
The bedroom reeks like burning plastic.
A chunk of Ken Hilton’s filler has glommed onto a mirrored wall. It falls to the floor, landing with a plop. One of the Pomeranians wobbles over in its heavy collar and eats it. Tommy feels faint.
“I thought you said it would be a small explosion?!”
“Didn’t take us down, did it?” Blaine says.
Tommy genuflects for Ken Hilton one last time—his knees buckle. It’s a good thing there’s nothing left in his stomach after last night or he’d be sick. What remains of Ken Hilton’s face looks like a pizza pie with no cheese.
“He doesn’t have a pulse,” Tommy says, lifting the limp wrist of Ken Hilton’s unburned hand. “But that doesn’t mean anything, right? Ken Hilton was always heartless.” Then, overcome by shock, he collapses against the side of the bed, clutching his knees to his chest.
“We killed Ken!”
“Trust me,” Blaine says, “guys like Ken Hilton are Hydras. You cut off one head and two more pop up in its place.”
“Murrica,” Tommy murmurs. He isn’t blinking, like a doll that only closes its eyes when it’s lying down.
Blaine starts pacing the room. “What are we going to tell the police?” he asks.
Tommy’s unblinking eyes widen.
“The police? Can’t we just report it to Facebook?”
“Maybe we don’t have to go to the police. When celebrities die there’s always a lot of talk, right? Was it murder? Was it an Illuminati assassination? Or…was it suicide?”
“Suicide?” Tommy stares at the dead body. “Like, what is life?”
“Don’t act like you aren’t thrilled.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Tommy shoots to a standing position. “I thought Willows High would be better off without Ken Hilton, but I never wanted him to die! I just wanted him to stop being retweeted, which he’d consider infinitely worse.”
Blaine walks over to Ken Hilton’s pink-rhinestone iPhone; it’s sitting on top of his nightstand, next to the alarm clock and bag of blow.
“You always wanted to post like Ken. Now’s your chance.” He passes Tommy the phone. “We could make it look like Ken Hilton sent himself to meet his maker.”
“The Pink Power Ranger and Darth Vader?” Tommy asks. “Maybe that is the best solution under the circumstances. It was an accident…”
“Do you know the password?”
“Fifty-one fifty,” Tommy says, flopping down on the bed. “Fifty-one fifty! Oh, think of all the things Ken Hilton will never get to do.”
Tommy types in the password and clicks the pink KKK app, opening a SoFamous template. It takes him a second to think of what to write, but once he starts it flows. Getting into Ken Hilton’s head isn’t difficult. There’s lots of room.
“I’m sure this will come as a shock, but I always did make you gag,” Tommy reads as he types. “I thought I’d join the twenty-seven club, but once again I’m ahead of the trend…”
“Motive,” Blaine says. “Why would Ken Hilton kill himself?”
“Well, he was just complaining about Brad Curtis cheating on him with Francie Fairchild…”
“When you’re bad you’re so good.” Blaine nods encouragingly. Tommy keeps typing.
“You may think that because I’m the most popular kid in school, gorgeous and rich, that I have it all. But too much of everything is never enough. Fans aren’t friends, old people all have pillow face, and you can’t pay to mend a broken heart. My boyfriend is in love with another woman. I’m melting.”
“I’d Like it,” Blaine says.
Tommy publishes the post before he loses his nerve, quickly tossing the phone across the bed. He’s anticipating another explosion.
Comments section about to blow.
FAKE HOLLYWOOD STORY
Willows High is abuzz when Tommy and Blaine pull up to the parking lot on Blaine’s motorcycle. The whole school is talking about Ken Hilton’s latest post. The rumor mill is out of control.
Ken Hilton didn’t commit suicide, Russia hacked SoFamous.
Ken Hilton faked his own death and will reappear as a woman after surgery. It’s so obviously a publicity stunt, like back when Ken Hilton posted a Snapchat wearing a brunette wig and everyone had a collective heart attack.
Ken Hilton will rise again, and only the blond will be saved.
Everyone reminisces about their favorite Ken Hilton memory. Like that time he spent $10,000 on the world’s smallest puppy, which he named Empress Ken Hilton. He tied it by a leash to the rearview mirror of his Corvette. All day long everyone kept going to the parking lot to take photos of the dog, even after it had died from heat stroke.
Or that time he drove over Principal Elliot and Principal Elliot apologized to him.
No one at Willows High can believe the queen is dead. The flag at the front of the school is lowered to half-mast. Everyone’s glued to their phone. There’s a storm of status updates, each more overly emotional and self-involved than the last. Ken Hilton’s STARmeter rises. You’re always a hotter topic in death, especially when you’re going to hell.
The Willows High student body mourns Ken Hilton by Sharing him. But no one is actually sad that he’s dead. Ken Hilton’s death doesn’t even really penetrate. It’s all surface level, the drama of the moment appearing on their feeds like a t
errorist attack or school shooting. Soon they’ll get bored and scroll past it, onto Taylor’s new video.
Tommy is in such a daze as he walks into the locker room for P.E. that he doesn’t even register Ken Roberts sitting on a bench eating McDonald’s nuggets.
“Dude, be careful,” Ken Carson tells Ken Roberts from his locker. “You’re ruining your chance of making the Guinness Book of World Records for not digesting anything but come for a whole year.”
“Oh, let Ken Hilton keep it.” Ken Roberts bites into a piece of chicken. “He always said he peaked in the fifth grade.”
Ken Carson closes his locker and notices Tommy.
“You’re lucky Ken Hilton is dead, bruh,” he says. “He wanted us to hang you from the flag pole by ramming it up your ass.”
Ken Roberts licks his fingers. “And I was, like, how is that a punishment?”
“Spill the tea, dude,” Ken Carson says. “Did you kill Ken Hilton?”
“What?” Tommy’s face turns white. “Why would you say that?”
“He was pretty upset after you left, bruh. He had to hate-fuck all the bartenders at Dreamhouse to calm himself down.”
“Hella pissed.” Ken Roberts bobbles, chewing with his mouth open. “And bendy.”
“Dude, he had high hopes that he could make you somebody,” Ken Carson says. “Maybe the disappointment drove him to suicide.”
“ ’Zif.” Ken Roberts burps. “Ken Hilton wouldn’t kill himself over some knock-off. He obviously just did it for attention.” He picks up his phone with sticky fingers. “It just isn’t fair! His stats are blowing up!” He throws the phone against the lockers.
“Ken, that’s, like, the tenth phone you’ve broken this year,” Ken Carson says.
“Ken, I can’t help it if all my personal assistants suck!”
Tommy leans his head against a locker, hitting it over and over. The Restylane prevents him from feeling a thing.
“Are you, like, breaking down, Ken?” Ken Carson asks.
“You just called him Ken, Ken,” Ken Roberts says.
“Well, Ken,” Ken Carson says, “with Ken being all, like, dead and shit, shouldn’t we consider keeping him a Ken?”
“Why would we do that, Ken?”
“Because there’s supposed to be three Kens, Ken. We can’t just leave an empty space on the shelf. What if it gets finessed?”
“You might be right, Ken.”
Ken Carson turns to Tommy. “Dude, you can still sit with us.”
“But put in your contacts, pronto!” Ken Roberts adds.
Tommy stops hitting his head.
“No,” he says.
The two Kens stare at him blankly. They’ve never heard that word before.
“Dude, what?” Ken Carson asks.
“I said no! The whole point was to end the Kens, to make Willows High a nicer school.” Tommy slams his mouth shut, worried he’s said too much. But his words don’t even register with the Kens. Nice stumps them almost as much as no.
“Don’t you want a fresh start?” Tommy asks. “A school without all the pressure of Ken?”
“Pressure is good,” Ken Roberts says. “It takes pressure to make diamonds.”
“This is our chance!” Tommy insists. “With Ken Hilton off the screen, we can transform Willows High.”
“Ken Hilton isn’t off the screen, bruh. My feed is wallpapered with posts about him.”
Ken Carson shows Tommy his phone.
“If Ken Hilton knew how famous he’d be after killing himself, he would’ve done it a long time ago.”
WILLOWS NEWS
Without Ken Hilton at the helm, no one knows at what speed to run laps around the gym. Ken Carson steps up to the plate and sets the pace. It’s faster than the class is used to. Ken Hilton just sort of floated around the gym, his feet never fully touching the floor, but Ken Carson runs like he’s surfing a fast-moving wave.
Tommy, Allan and Tutti can’t keep up. They slow to a walk. They’d come together at the start of gym class. Tommy thought they might blame him for the “Two-Ton Tutti Superstar” post, but in the wake of Ken Hilton’s death, that no longer seems to matter. None of them say a word. Tommy is afraid of speaking because he’s sure they know him well enough to tell by the sound of his voice that something is up; Tutti is totally stunned; and Allan is just being respectful of the dead. Everyone else can’t stop talking about Ken Hilton, and they hear bits and pieces of conversation as the class whizzes by.
“I like your shirt.” Tommy is the first to break the silence; he can’t stand it anymore. Allan is wearing a graphic tee that has an image of a hand holding up a middle finger. The text above it reads, “Accept that I don’t want to be like you.”
“You do?” Allan asks.
“And not just because I saw a photo in Star magazine of Sofia Richie wearing it,” Tommy says.
“Is this your way of saying you regret becoming a Ken?”
“We saw the eulogy post.” Tutti looks at him apologetically. “Ken Hilton’s last post. Wow.”
“I guess I never really got over Ken Hilton,” Tommy says. “He was the first friend I ever made, and after he ditched me, I just felt like there was something wrong with me. But there’s something wrong with the Kens—with this town made in their image—not me. I wanted to be a part of the beautiful sheeple because they’re beautiful, but I failed to realize they’re also sheep…”
Blaine comes out of the locker room and shares a quick look with Tommy across the gym before he starts running.
“And there are wolves out there, you know,” Tommy finishes.
He links arms with Tutti.
“I’m sorry about Weinergate. I knew the Kens were up to something, I just wasn’t sure what…but the truth is, even if I had known, I don’t know if I would’ve tried to stop them. It was like I just stopped caring. That was the scariest part. When I wasn’t totally dysfunctional as a Ken I felt this magical nothingness. It wasn’t exactly Zen. Well, kind of. But instead of a Buddha it would be the Louis Vuitton logo. It was like this long exhale over a pink, perfectly still body of water. All was okay in the world. I was pretty and popular.”
“It’s okay, Tommy. I don’t blame you. I’m the dolt who fell for Ken Carson.”
“But I’m the one who let it slip that you have a crush on him.”
“It’s old news. Ken Hilton’s suicide post has buried my little video for good.”
Ken Carson runs past with Ken Roberts by his side. Tommy catches Tutti staring after him.
“If it’s any consolation,” he tells her, “I got the feeling Ken Carson didn’t really want to go through with it.”
“Maybe the Kens aren’t as shallow as I thought,” Allan says. “I just assumed Ken Hilton was too consumed with his reflection for self-reflection, but even he realized how superficial his life was in the end. Is it true he used a pill bomb?”
“Where did you hear that?” Tommy asks, lowering his voice as Blaine passes.
“That’s what everyone’s saying,” Tutti says. “I just can’t believe it. It really felt like Ken Hilton would always be here. Like the WILLOWSLAND sign, towering over everyone.”
Ken Hilton’s fame continues to grow for the rest of the day. Stacie Skipper arrives on the Willows High campus. Stacie is a reporter for Willows News and a recurring meme on SoFamous over a leaked and subsequently viral behind-the-scenes video of her pouring herself a glass of wine from a cube she keeps under her news desk. She downed that baby during the countdown leading up to the five o’clock news. It has spawned countless memes.
Stacie and her crew are at the school to interview students about Ken Hilton’s suicide.
In death, Ken Hilton finally has depth. He’d been celebrated for his superficiality, but beneath his glossy veneer was a complicated and tormented soul. Suddenly, everyone’s talking about how deep and misunderstood he was. Even his haters have a newfound respect. The Stoner Conspiracy Theorists create a video about his secret life and pain.
Blaine switches on the TV as he and Tommy sit on the couch to watch Willows News. Stacie Skipper’s chipper voice fills the living room.
“I’m Stacie Skipper reporting for Willows News at Willows High School, which is reeling from the shock suicide of one of its most beloved students.”
Stacie Skipper walks up to Francie Fairchild, who is wearing her cheer uniform. She’s first in a line of students standing outside the front doors of school, thirsty for camera time.
“What’s your name, dear?” Stacie asks.
“Francie Fairchild, flyer.”
“Did you know Ken Hilton well?”
“Ken Hilton was the sweetest, like, nicest person ever. We were really close,” Francie says with a glottal fry. “We had similar taste in…well, a few things. He was really androgynous, so sometimes we’d share clothes…”
“Francie must be thrilled.” Tommy snorts. “Everyone thinks Ken Hilton killed himself because of her! Talk about a comeback.”
Stacie Skipper walks down the line to interview more students. She stops at one of the Barks.
“I can’t believe Ken’s gone,” he says. “He was always trying to make the world a better place. Like, he organized a blood-diamond drive all by himself.”
“I don’t know who’s more disgusting,” Blaine says, “Ken Hilton or the vermin who made him.”
“Look at the people lining up to sanctify him.” Tommy runs his hand through his hair; it’s brittle and lifeless without Dippity-Do. “Was I really that delusional?”
Tommy uses the remote to mute the TV. He turns to face Blaine.
“I think we should talk.”