Queeroes

by Steven Bereznai

  “I’m picking up everyone from the team,” he explained.

  “You don’t have to go to school today,” Troy’s dad started, but the jock had already grabbed his bag and was following the coach out.

  “Son!” Troy’s dad grabbed him. “It’s okay to cry. You know that, right?”

  “Sure,” Troy said, his face stony and without expression.

  “If you can’t talk about it, you can always write about it,” his dad added. “Make a list if you want, of your feelings, whatever… and it is okay to cry.”

  Troy recalled his dad’s words during the silent drive to school.

  When they got to Nuffim High, his teammates headed for their homerooms, but the coach held Troy back. “There’s someone in my office who wants to talk to you.” Troy followed numbly. He didn’t even react when he saw the two police officers waiting for him in the coach’s office. They sat him down.

  “You were Jesse’s best friend,” the officer on the right said.

  “Yes,” Troy replied.

  “Well then,” the officer on the left continued, “maybe you could explain this.”

  He flipped open a laptop and clicked play on a media window. The image was grainy and there was no sound, lending it a surreal quality, but it was clearly a video of Jesse in the school locker room, kissing Troy’s bare torso.

  There was a snap—the sound of the laptop popping shut—and only then did Troy realize the video was over. Everyone stared at him.

  Troy felt like he floated, not touched by any of it.

  “This video,” the officer on the right said, “was emailed to your best friend yesterday. By the end of the day, we had a dead teenager on our hands.”

  Troy waited. This was it. The officer put his hand on Troy’s shoulder.

  “We need you to come clean.”

  Troy opened his mouth, ready to tell them everything.

  “Do you know who the other person in the video is?” the officer continued.

  Troy blinked.

  “You…you don’t know?”

  “We can only make out Jesse’s face,” the first cop said. “Did Jesse tell you anything? Mention anyone?”

  Troy hesitated.

  “No. No one special.”

  The cops looked to each other in disappointment.

  “Do you have any idea who might have sent this?”

  Troy’s face grew hard.

  Mandy.

  “No,” he lied once more.

  The officers’ frustration and skepticism were clear. They kept jabbing Troy in the gut. He felt nauseous. He flexed the discomfort out. All he had to do was stay stony and hard. Just let everything bounce off.

  “Okay, but if there’s someone you’re protecting…”

  “There isn’t,” Troy insisted.

  Only me.

  The police packed up and left, leaving Troy alone with the coach. The big man came and sat next to him, worry in his eyes.

  “I didn’t want to say anything in front of the cops, but…it wasn’t Chad, was it?”

  “Chad?”

  “In the video, with Jesse. He didn’t…”

  “Do you really think he’s the only faggot in school?” Troy snapped.

  The coach pulled back. For just a moment, something had rippled across the serene waters holding Troy warm and safe. Troy hunched down in his chair. No textbook posture for him today. There was light stubble on his unshaven cheeks. His shirt and pants were rumpled.

  “Don’t say it like that,” the coach chided.

  “The guys in the locker room talk like that all the time.”

  Another ripple.

  Anger, he thought to himself, I’m feeling angry. It was as if he were a jeweler appraising a gem he’d heard of but never truly taken the time to examine.

  “Well, yeah,” the coach agreed, “but as an insult.”

  “Well maybe that’s the problem” Troy muttered.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Look, it wasn’t Chad, okay?”

  The coach nodded.

  “Okay.”

  Troy grabbed his bag.

  It was me.

  Mandy searched through her locker. She was certain she kept a bottle of Chanel here, quite certain in fact, but it was gone.

  “Chad, did you take my perfume?” she asked.

  He stood two lockers over.

  “No,” he replied.

  “It’s okay if you did,” Mandy said. “I just need it back.”

  “I’ve switched to Gaultier,” he replied.

  “Wow, you win one football game and now you’re all butch.”

  “Have you been in my locker?” he asked Mandy.

  “Probably,” she shrugged.

  “Did you take anything?”

  “Nothing worth taking,” she replied.

  “Oh, I guess I left it at home,” he said to himself, closing his locker.

  “Mandy, I need to talk with you.”

  It was Troy who spoke.

  “Troy,” she said, sadness in her voice. She wrapped her arms around him.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  He didn’t hug back.

  “Hi, Troy,” Chad added, hoping for a similar embrace.

  Troy didn’t even look at him. He grabbed Mandy’s wrists and roughly pulled her off of him.

  “Hey,” she said.

  His fingers dug into her.

  “You’re hurting me.”

  “Good.”

  Her force field popped on and broke his grip.

  “Just because Jesse died doesn’t mean…”

  “He saw the video,” Troy said.

  “What are you talking about?” Mandy asked.

  “You know exactly what I’m talking about. The one you took. Of Jesse, and me, in the locker room.” He said the last bit in a hushed whisper that Chad’s hearing had no problem picking up.

  “I deleted that,” Mandy hissed.

  “Then why were two cops showing it to me just now in the coach’s office? Someone sent that video to Jesse the day he killed himself.”

  “Oh God,” Mandy breathed, “I didn’t, Troy. I swear. I erased it. I didn’t show it to anyone, not even Chad. You have to believe me. You can sense it, right?”

  “Actually, I can’t,” he said, keeping his insides hard as granite. If he let go, let anything in, reached out, he knew he’d shatter. His gut tightened at the thought.

  “Please,” Mandy sobbed, “I would never try to hurt anyone like that.”

  “Just go,” he said.

  “Come on,” Chad said, taking her by the shoulders.

  He led her away, only once looking back.

  Troy didn’t bother watching them leave. He punched his locker, but instead of a satisfying metallic bang there was a muffled squelch. He pulled his fist back and stringy bits of clay-like material stuck to his knuckles. The strands looked to be melted bits of the locker door. He wiped it off, puzzled but not prepared to take on this mystery right now.

  Instead, he opened his lock and stared at his neatly arranged shelves of textbooks. His eyes scanned for the one thing that could help him keep his grip right now—just a little something to take off the edge. He didn’t see it. He moved books aside. His search grew frantic, but though he yanked out binders, and even his lucky football, it was no use.

  What he sought was not to be found.

  He banged his head against the locker next to his. He didn’t dare free a tear. If he did, he knew his shredded insides, which he was barely holding together, would forever fall apart.

  The morning started very differently for Devon and Liza.

  She hummed a tune that made Devon smile. He wore a decadent white bathrobe that Mrs. Dedarling had swiped from a boutique hotel in Dubai. He sat on a stool at the island in the middle of the kitchen, reading the headlines with satisfaction. There was a hiss from Liza’s direction as she poured homemade batter into a stainless steel waffle iron. Bacon and eggs sizzled in separate pans on the six-burner stove. Her hair w
as freshly washed and she smelled of lavender and rosemary.

  Mrs. Dedarling had been a big fan of Aveeda shampoo.

  With a bubbling joy Liza served up the eggs, bacon, and waffles. The toaster popped the freshly baked bread she’d picked up. The two teens sat side by side, eating the small feast. With the Creation dead there was actually time for normal domestic bliss. A bit, anyway. Liza snagged the comics section and when she giggled, Devon actually paid attention, leaning over with a smile.

  “What’s so funny?” he asked.

  “Oh, just Ziggy,” she said.

  “I like The Far Side,” he said with a smile, giving her a kiss on the forehead.

  “That felt nice,” Liza said, snapping the end off her bacon with her teeth.

  He nudged her shoulder with his, making her giggle some more. She kept eating, he kept reading, and her eyes wandered around the kitchen.

  “How are we going to keep paying for this place?”

  “Don’t ruin it,” Devon chided.

  “What?”

  “I’m happy, you’re happy, let’s just enjoy the moment.”

  “I am,” she insisted. “I’m just saying the future…”

  “…will happen with or without us worrying about the mortgage,” Devon cut in.

  “Okay, hon. I’m just glad that I don’t have to hang out with Mandy anymore.”

  “Well,” Devon corrected, “at least only for a bit longer.”

  She set down the syrup.

  “I thought things were going to be different.”

  “They are,” Devon said.

  “So why do I have to still pretend to be her friend, especially after last night?”

  “Here’s why.”

  He pulled up his knapsack and dumped the contents on the counter. She picked up Star Trek trading cards, a bottle of Chanel, a plastic prescription bottle with some anti-anxiety pills in it, and a bright pink Barbie journal.

  “I grabbed a few things from your friends’ lockers.”

  “They’re not my friends,” she said.

  “Soon, they won’t be anything”—he pointed to the journal— “thanks to that.”

  “Dear Diary,” she read from the tome of Barbie, “You had totally better be sitting down for this because you are NOT going to believe what happened after school today.”

  “Come on,” he said. “You can read that later. It’s the shiz, but we don’t want to be late for school.”

  She followed him out into the foyer. He was already putting his backpack on.

  “You’re going to school today?” she asked.

  He stared at what was left of Evan Mueller. He was stripped down to his football pants, his form melded to the statue of Apollo.

  “Liza, please,” the football jock rasped, though it came out a mumbled jumble, his lips partially fused with Apollo’s.

  Liza regarded him coldly. “You should’ve loved me when you had the chance. Now it’s too late. For all of you.”

  “Darling,” Devon said to Liza, “we have to get going. It’s time to take our art out into the world.”

  Chapter 26

  Devon and Liza had to run the gauntlet of journalists, photographers, and TV cameras piled in front of the school to get through the front doors that morning.

  “This is awesome,” he said to her.

  “Sign-up sheets for grief counseling are over there!” the principal shouted.

  “Yeah right,” Devon said, taking Liza’s hand and giving it a squeeze. She blushed like a virgin bride.

  “Like there’s such a shortage of jocks,” she said, pleased with his wink of approval. Her feelings for Evan were already a hazy memory in her mind, as if he were a painting and her brain had dumped turpentine all over it. Nor had he been reported missing. Liza had phoned his mom that morning, imitating his voice perfectly, explaining how he’d crashed at a bud’s after the game. And today at school, everyone was too busy with Jesse’s death to be bothered with a missing football player, who was probably at home grieving. Still, Devon didn’t want to be too obvious, and he pulled his hand away from Liza’s.

  “Don’t want to give us away,” he said.

  She nodded in reluctant agreement. His touch was still warm on her palm.

  This was real, not the fantasy she’d tried to engage in with a football dud. For a moment the blurry portrait of her boyfriend melded with Apollo grew sharp.

  He would’ve left me, she assured herself, if not for someone taller—he was an unashamed height-hunter—then for someone prettier. And he would’ve expected me to be grateful that he’d given me any time at all. With Devon, I have a future.

  The PA announcements that morning were all about “do not speak with the journalists outside unless you are comfortable doing so” and “group counseling will be available during lunch hour, and individual counseling throughout the day,” and, of course, “please support the bake sale. Proceeds will go towards the Jesse Truesden memorial.”

  “Liza?” Mandy asked from her seat behind the tall girl.

  “Yes?” Liza replied hesitantly, detecting a note of suspicion.

  “When I drove you home, and you sang me to sleep, how long was I out for?”

  “Like half-a-second,” Liza replied, and then, with a nervous laugh, “Relax, you didn’t snore.”

  Mandy nodded doubtfully, still wondering how that video got sent to Jesse. On a day when everyone else wore black, Liza’s color of choice was a bright pink shawl over a tight baby blue shirt that showed off her cleavage. There was a bit of glitter next to each eye.

  The final announcement distracted Mandy. “A commemoration assembly will be held tomorrow morning.”

  Devon slipped Liza a note. She read his scrawled handwriting.

  “The assembly.”

  It said no more because there was nothing more that needed to be said. Liza looked at her classmates—soon to be her former classmates—and slipped the note between her breasts, just as she’d once done with Evan’s number. The memorial truly would be memorable, for anyone who survived it.

  When the bell rang, Mandy waited while Liza got up.

  “Oh, you go ahead, girl,” Liza shooed. “I’m going to…go for one of those grief counseling thingies.”

  “Sure,” Mandy said. “Okay.”

  It was a busy day for Liza. Art required fresh material, and not just anyone would do. They were done with online losers and would-be football stars.

  “Hey Chad,” she said, walking up to the blond teen as the final bell rang, “I want to show you something.”

  “Okay,” he said trustingly.

  He followed her out to the parking lot, stopping next to her aunt’s rusty pickup truck. The whole time he was thinking about Troy, about the video sent to Jesse, trying to figure out who could’ve done it.

  If I can find the person responsible, maybe Troy will like me again.

  He pictured Troy’s look of gratitude, his strong arms hugging Chad tight, Troy saying, “You’re my queero.”

  And that’s when Chad noticed Liza’s scent.

  “Are you wearing Chanel?” he asked.

  The perfume wasn’t enough to hide her smell of nervousness. Liza began to sing and the lullaby made him sway drunkenly.

  “What’re you…”

  Devon got out of Liza’s aunt’s pickup. None of this was adding up. Only it finally was. Whether it was animal instinct or a simple leap of logic, Chad figured it out.

  “It was you who sent Jesse that video,” he said, his voice starting to slur.

  “Help me get him in the truck,” Devon ordered.

  Chad did not make it home that day.

  Chapter 27

  There was a certain justice to the next stage of Devon’s plan happening in the cafeteria, at least in Liza’s mind. The following morning she sat at the table that the group she infiltrated had co-opted, if only briefly, uniting a jock, a nerd, a loner and a couple of cheerleaders as even The Breakfast Club could not.

  Gibbie sat with h
er. He wore a dark suit that looked two sizes too big, accentuating his skinny frame.

  “Forget it,” he finally said, getting up to go.

  Liza grabbed him. “Wait!”

  “I hate Chad. I don’t even know how he talked me into this.”

  “But do you hate him, Gibbie, or are your feelings hurt because you actually really like him?” Liza countered.

  Gibbie hesitated. The truth was every time the phone rang, he hoped it was Chad calling. Last night he finally got what he wanted, and almost demanded to know what had taken the male cheerleader so long.

  And then Chad said the words Gibbie had been dying to hear.

  “I made a mistake.”

  So then why is Liza here, he wondered, and how do I get rid of her so Chad and I can be alone?

  “Here,” she said, “have some of my juice.”

  He drank it thirstily—he was rather parched after the salty crackers Liza had been feeding him to help appease his nervous stomach. He finished it off as Mandy stopped before them, slamming a Gucci bag onto the table. Her skintight black dress clung to her arms and ended just below her ass. Her round black hat had a gauzy veil over her eyes. She pulled out a compact to touch up her lips.

  “No offense, guys,” she said, “but Chad’s meeting me here this morning for a super important talk before the memorial, so I need the table. Vamoose.”

  She snapped the compact shut and made shooing motions with her hands.

  “What?” Gibbie demanded. “Chad called and said he wanted to talk with me.”

  Mandy glared at Liza.

  “I suppose he called you too?”

  “Not exactly,” she smirked, thinking about how fun it had been to imitate Chad’s voice on his cellphone, leading the pair on. “He has something he needs to tell you two, but he was too embarrassed. So he asked me to give you both this.”

  She handed them the Barbie diary, open to a very specific page.

  Gibbie and Mandy read quickly, eyes roving over words with the I’s dotted with hearts, and T’s crossed with happy faces. When they’d finished reading Gibbie closed it, a dark look on his face.

  “He really wants to talk with you guys about this,” Liza said.

  “Really?” Mandy asked tartly. “And where might we find him?”

  “Where else?” Liza smirked. “Girls’ locker room.”