by Raziel Reid
Famous Family is even more packed for Brad’s funeral than it was for Ken Hilton’s. Everyone who missed the first major social event of the season lines up outside the church doors all night for a seat to the second coming.
Father Dude takes to the podium in blackface.
“Brad Curtis is dead,” he begins his sermon, “and I blame the Oscars.”
Tommy zones out after that. He’s staring at Brad’s family in the front pew. Brad’s little brother is crying. Tommy closes his eyes and hears bullets in his head. As if he can sense Tommy is about to blow, Blaine takes his hand and gives it a squeeze. A little too tightly.
Ken Roberts’s party is at his house directly following the funeral. Everyone is wine drunk and totally feels like their parents. Tommy gets even drunker than he was at Dreamhouse. He’s afraid he’ll never be able to get the image of Brad being shot out of his head.
The light fixture in the middle of the living room ceiling has been replaced by a giant disco ball almost as shiny as the vintage Bob Mackie ensemble Ken Roberts is wearing, complete with a tiara.
Ken Roberts is floating on a giant inflatable unicorn in the pool, being pushed around by the Barks players.
The whole school is at the party. Tommy even spots Allan and Tutti in the crowd. They find him under the disco ball.
“Tutti dragged me,” Allan says. “She said we were going to a protest. I should’ve known.”
Tommy grabs a red plastic cup out of someone’s hand and chugs from it. It’s vodka and he hates the taste, but he doesn’t care. He pretends not to notice Allan and Tutti share a look.
“You okay?” Tutti asks.
“Yes, sir,” Tommy says.
The music fades and the Barks glide Ken Roberts’s unicorn to the edge of the pool. Ken Carson lifts Ken Roberts off the floating device. Midge passes him a microphone.
“Welcome to my realm, bitches,” Ken Roberts screams.
The partyers lift their cups and cheer.
“As your queen, I fully expect you to bend the knee,” Ken Roberts says. “And if you’re lucky, I’ll bend the knee for you!” He tickles Todd’s bare, wet chest before turning back to his people. “Now, a few rules of my reign. From now on, all common students must pay me a cut of their lunch money or I won’t just chop off your head, I’ll chop off your followers! Also, no one can sit at their desks or table in the caf until I’ve taken my seat, and, like, you have to wait to eat your lunch until I’ve finished mine. Oh, and…”
Allan snorts. “Is he serious?”
“At least he’s not bulimic anymore and will only be eating one helping,” Tutti says.
“Now let’s party!” Ken Roberts yells over the cheering crowd. The music goes back up and he starts dancing on a lounge chair.
Tommy drops his red plastic cup to the floor.
“I have to find Blaine,” he says, pushing his way through the crowd.
Tommy really thought that without Ken Hilton terrorizing the halls of Willows High, school would change. Was he totally wrong to think there was something sweet about Ken Roberts? He seemed so insecure, puking up his feelings. Ken Hilton pushed Ken Roberts down, and Tommy thought that if Ken Hilton was out of the picture, Ken Roberts might finally find the strength to become his own person. He should’ve known he’d find the strength to become Ken Hilton.
Tommy looks through the house, finally finding Blaine in Ken Roberts’s bedroom, which is modeled after Marie Antoinette’s bedroom in the Sofia Coppola movie. The lights are off. On top of a vanity is the pink-rhinestone iPhone Ken Roberts inherited from Ken Hilton. It glows in the dark.
The hallway light spills into the room and cuts across Blaine’s face, leaving half of him in shadow. “This thing’s more cursed than the Hope Diamond.” He points at the phone.
Music fades as Tommy shuts the bedroom door and leans against it. He tries to stop the room from spinning by closing his eyes. “It’s never going to end, is it?” he asks.
“The crown may be on a new head, but the head thinks the same,” Blaine says. “That is to say, not at all. It’s Animal Farm. The pigs are wearing designer.”
Tommy stumbles through the darkness over to Blaine, clinging to the arm of his leather jacket. “Why don’t we leave Willows?” he slurs. “Let’s take your bike and go! Away from the Kens…Somewhere over the plastic, where the Kens haven’t made being gay trendy. It’ll be like the olden days. Kind of romantic, when you think about it.”
Blaine pulls his arm away, leaving Tommy swaying.
“Running isn’t an option. We have two choices: live or let die.”
Tommy falls back on Ken Roberts’s canopy bed. His eyelids are drooping.
“Ken Roberts posted a photo earlier of that tiara he’s wearing in a Cartier box,” Blaine says. “Maybe we’ve been thinking too small. We need to cut off their supplier…Who funds the Kens?”
Tommy puts a hand to his clammy forehead. “You really don’t know, do you?”
“Know what?”
“Who do you think came up with a name like Plastic Place?” Tommy murmurs. “Ken Roberts is on your dad’s payroll.” He closes his eyes and fades out. “Duh.”
The party is over when Tommy comes to. His head is pounding and his throat is dry. He doesn’t know why he’s in Ken Roberts’s room. The last thing he remembers is a unicorn and parts of Ken Roberts’s speech. Everything after that is blank.
Tommy climbs off the bed and stumbles his way out into the hall. The house is empty. It has the eerie silence of an after-party’s last breath—a static coming from somewhere, in the floor maybe, buried underneath red plastic cups and glitter. Lights are flickering down the hallway. Tommy edges his way along the wall.
Myriad spots of light spin around the living room.
Ken Roberts is straddling the disco ball, going around and around with each rotation. There’s a bottle of champagne tucked under his arm. He takes a sip and the bottle slips out of his hand, smashing to the floor. Ken Roberts doesn’t even notice.
Plaster sprinkles down on his tiara.
The ceiling cracks around the pole that holds up the disco ball. A chunk of roof comes down, landing on Ken Roberts’s head and knocking him unconscious to the floor. The disco ball falls after him. Thousands of mirrored facets explode everywhere.
Tommy approaches slowly, the disco debris crunching under his feet.
Not again…
“Ken?” he whispers.
HAUNTED BEAUTY GHOST
Everyone’s hung over the day after Brad’s funeral and Ken Roberts’s epic party. Thankfully, classes are canceled. Principal Elliot calls an assembly to help the students of Willows High cope with the murder. He opens the gym floor to anyone who wants to share their feelings, and keeps saying “trigger warning,” which is maybe a manufacturing error.
Tommy is sitting between Allan and Blaine.
“Where’s Tutti?” he asks Allan.
“Haven’t seen her since this morning.”
Principal Elliot is interrupted by Ken Roberts’s late arrival. For a moment at the party, Tommy thought Ken Hilton 2.0 had dropped dead, beautiful. But Ken Roberts’s eyes had flung open and Tommy jumped back. He snuck out of Ken Roberts’s house, trying not to let himself feel disappointed.
Ken Roberts makes a grand entrance with Francie and Midge and the rest of his cheer squad trailing behind him. They strut right up to the middle of the bleachers, expecting everyone to shuffle over and make room for them.
“This is an open platform for anyone who needs it,” Principal Elliot is saying. “Willows High has been devastated by yet another tragic loss, but we will not be defeated! Is there anyone who would like to say a few words?”
Francie Fairchild stands up. The gym goes still and quiet. Even Ken Roberts is surprisingly respectful. He doesn’t pull out his phone to check Grindr until Francie has already started speaking.
“I just want to say the fight is real,” Francie says. “And, like, at winter formal when I had cornrows and everyone said I was appr
opriating black culture I was really offended because it’s, like, I’m black inside. Well, I’ve had black inside of me…”
Francie wipes away a tear that isn’t coming.
“We love you, Francie,” Todd yells from the bleachers.
Tommy can’t take it anymore. He gets up and storms out of the gym.
“Sometimes the grief is just too much to take,” Principal Elliot calls after him.
He glides down the empty hall, his eyes wide open but not really seeing anything, like Ken Roberts when he regained consciousness after falling off the disco ball.
At his locker he automatically puts in the combination. He still has a bottle of the pain meds Dr. Hilton prescribed after his surgeries.
In the bathroom, Tommy turns on the tap and throws some water on his face. When he looks up into the mirror, his old face is reflected back at him. He slowly raises his hand and touches the glass, jerking his hand away when his reflection is left with blood smeared across the cheek. He hits the glass, cracking it, to make the image disappear.
Tommy pulls the cap off the bottle and dumps the pills into the palm of his hand, shoving them in his mouth. But before he can swallow, the bathroom door swings open and Allan bursts in.
“Are you crazy?” He knocks the bottle out of Tommy’s hand.
Pastel pretties scatter across the floor. Allan wraps his arm around Tommy’s stomach and squeezes. Tommy coughs out pills into the sink.
“What’s gotten into you? Please tell me you’re not trying to kill yourself to stay on trend?”
“You don’t understand.” Tommy grips the sink. “I feel like it’s my fault.”
“What is?”
“All of it! Allan, I—”
They’re interrupted by the door swinging open. Ken Roberts enters and looks around.
“So this is the boys’ room,” he says.
“Can I help you?” Allan asks.
Ken Roberts picks up a pill off the floor, blows on it and pops it in his mouth.
“I saw you two run off.” He swallows effortlessly. “I assume you’ve heard?”
“Heard what?”
“There’s been a suicide. Well, attempted.”
Tommy’s heart lodges in his throat. Another one? Who has Blaine killed now? And without him? That bastard!
“Who?” Allan asks.
“Two-Ton Tutti. She slit her wrist this morning.”
“Tutti?” Allan looks at Tommy with disbelief.
“Is she okay?” Tommy asks.
“According to my sources she barely broke skin. Just another example of a loser trying to regram the cool kids.”
Allan can barely contain himself. “You’re a monster!” he screams.
“Yassss, Gaga. I just posted a scan of her suicide note on SoFamous. She wrote it in cursive! Can you believe that? No one can read it.”
Ken Roberts looks at his freshly manicured claws. “Face it, Tutti started tweeting @SuicidePrevention from her crib. It was only a matter of time.”
“I’m going to the hospital,” Allan says.
“I’ll come with you.”
Ken Roberts blocks Tommy. “Not so fast. We need to talk.”
Tommy glares at him. “Fine. Let’s end this.” He turns to Allan. “Tell Tutti I’m on my way?”
Allan glances at the pills in the sink.
“Are you sure you’re going to be okay?”
“I promise.” Tommy nods.
Ken Roberts nudges Tommy out of the way and takes over the mirror. A kaleidoscope of Kens is reflected in the cracked glass.
“You were a Ken and now you’re hanging out with him again?” he asks as the door swings shut.
“I’d rather hang out with Allan than you any day.”
“If I had feelings, they’d totally be hurt right now.”
“What do you want, Ken?”
Ken Roberts pulls out a tube of lip gloss and touches up. He smacks his lips together.
“Ken Hilton made you his son of God, and then killed you off. Well, I’m God now. And it’s time for your resurrection.”
“I’m no longer deluded enough to want to be a Ken.”
“You have to! Ken Carson has grown a conscience. It must be a defect.”
“What do you mean?”
“Tutti’s suicide attempt got to him. He thinks that just because she tried to kill herself we should stop being so mean.”
“Perish the thought,” Tommy says sarcastically.
“He just hasn’t been doing enough coke lately.”
“Why are you such a bitch?”
Ken Roberts holds up Ken Hilton’s sparkling pink-rhinestone iPhone. “Because it’s my divine right to rule.”
“Some rulers get their heads chopped off.”
“And some chop off everyone else’s. Oh, come on, Thomas. I need you.”
“Why?”
“I need a Ken on each side of my faces! I’m, like, giving you a second chance to be something here.”
“Be nothing, you mean.”
“Okay, so you’re basic and don’t know how to read. Big deal. Just shut up and look pretty. It’s not that hard.”
Tommy rolls his eyes. “Your reality check bounced.”
They hear chanting coming from outside. “Fight! Fight! Fight!” Through the window they see a crowd gathering around Ken Carson and Todd, who are wrestling on the field.
“What’s with those two?” Tommy asks.
“Ken Carson is defending Tutti’s honor or some shit. I’m really thinking of returning him.”
“Why are you so determined to follow Ken Hilton’s path? You have a chance to do something different. Willows High would change if you were a kind ruler.”
“What kind of ruler?”
“No, a kind ruler. As in good?”
Ken Roberts just blinks.
CURVY MODEL
Tutti is sitting up in her hospital bed completing a tabloid magazine crossword puzzle when Tommy enters carrying flowers. Yellow roses, definitely not pink.
“Killer countess who bathed in the blood of her servants for eternal youth?” Tutti asks. “Eleven letters.”
“Lady Báthory,” Tommy says. “Ken Hilton considered using it instead of Sandy Hooker as his drag name.”
“Báthory.” Tutti scribbles it in. “Thanks.”
She folds up the magazine and Tommy passes her the bouquet. She takes it with a bandaged wrist.
“You didn’t have to, but they’re beautiful.” She smells a rose. “You just missed Allan.”
“Poor Allan. He’s really going through it with us for friends.”
“What have I missed now? If only I could PVR the halls of Willows High!”
Tommy pulls up a chair next to Tutti’s bed.
“Why’d you do it, Toots? You didn’t seem depressed. You’re the most positive person I know.”
“I didn’t mean to actually kill myself. I didn’t cut that deep. My parents overreacted, like I knew they would. I just thought that if it looked like I had tried…then maybe Ken Roberts would back off.”
“What’d he do? I mean, what hasn’t he done? But you never let the Kens get to you before.”
“Because I thought Ken Hilton was the evil one, and Ken Roberts and Ken Carson weren’t actually cruel, they were just his followers. I could deal with that. Ken Hilton was the villain, the one we loved to hate. But now Ken Roberts has taken his place and I don’t love to hate him, I just plain hate him. He posted a photo of the vending machine to SoFamous and captioned it, ‘Tutti’s Locker.’ During first period Todd passed me chocolate bars and said I forgot my books.”
“So I guess that’s why Ken Carson was fighting him,” Tommy says.
“Ken Carson got in a fight with Todd over me?”
“He’s the only Ken with a soul. Ken Roberts is the hollow one. I actually felt sorry for Ken Roberts while I was briefly a Ken. Ken Hilton reeled him in and then cast him off as he pleased. Ken Roberts was never allowed to keep his platforms firmly on the gr
ound.”
“Well, they are now,” Tutti says. “And he’s walking over everyone with them.”
Tommy traces Tutti’s bandage. “Something tells me Ken Roberts was built to self-destruct.”
SHAVING FUN
The next morning, Tommy gets a text from Blaine telling him to come over before school.
When he arrives, the door to Blaine’s house is partially open. It creaks as Tommy pushes it all the way open and steps into the dark foyer.
“Blaine?” Tommy calls.
A gust of wind slams the door shut behind him.
None of the lights on the main floor of the house are on, so Tommy climbs the stairs thinking Blaine must be in his bedroom. The lights are off upstairs too, except for one at the end of the hallway. Tommy walks toward it, coming to an abrupt stop in the middle of the hall when he sees the barrel of a gun poking around the corner of a doorway. He feels a jolt of fear and is about to dive out of the way but stops himself. He smiles and strikes a pose. The trigger clicks.
“Shit,” he hears Blaine say. “I’m out of bullets.”
Blaine places the gun on the counter next to the sink. Tommy finds him standing in the bathroom, his face lathered up with shaving gel. Blaine runs a razor under the tap.
“Does it have batteries or a charger?” Tommy asks. He leans against the counter and picks up the camera gun, weighing it in his hand. “Heavier than I thought it would be.”
Tommy watches Blaine shaving in the reflection of the mirror. What a hunk.
“Why don’t we skip school?” Tommy asks. “Maybe we could go for another skinny dip…”
They hear the sound of the front door opening and closing downstairs, followed by crackling laughter.
“Great.” Tommy drops the camera gun. “The Donald’s home.”
Blaine’s dad barrels up the stairs and pokes his head through the bathroom doorway.
“Stopped by the courthouse early this morning and…we beat the SJWs!” He gives Tommy and Blaine a thumbs-up. “Did I say I was going to build a mall?” He punches Blaine’s arm. “I only wish I could find a way to make those terrorist-loving bitches pay for it.”
Snap, Crackle, Scott walks off.