The Brightsiders

by Jen Wilde

  My chest tightens. I shouldn’t be eavesdropping, but I want to hear what Kass has to say.

  “Alfie, calm down,” she says. “You can’t say anything—it will just make things worse. You all need to lie low until this blows over. Focus on being there for Em.”

  “I know, I know,” he says. “But I don’t know how to do that. I can’t tell her what to do with her life, you know? It’s not my place. And it’s not like her parents will do anything to help.”

  Alfie knows my parents; he’s seen them at their worst, and been there when I needed to run away for a night or two. But, god, I hope he’s wrong about this. I hope my parents see how much I need them right now. I hope coming back here will give us a chance to fix our relationship.

  “She shouldn’t be staying with them,” Kass says. I can hear the bitterness in her voice. “That house is toxic, especially right now.” There’s a pause, and then my cousin speaks again, so softly I almost miss it.

  “Alfie, can I tell you something?”

  “What?”

  She takes in a deep breath, and I lean forward. “I’m scared that if she keeps partying this hard, she’s going to end up just like them.”

  I sink to the cold bathroom floor. Pain radiates down my bruised nose as I cry. Am I that out of control? I try to pinpoint the moment I started down this road. I don’t remember seeing any signs, but it’s clear now that the people around me did. Oh, god. Is this how my parents ended up the way they are? They just kept partying and partying until suddenly they’re forty years old with wine-stained carpets and a house that reeks of cigarettes and regrets? This must be how the fighting started between my mom and her sister.

  When I was twelve and Kassidy was fourteen, her dad got a job in Boston and they moved from three blocks away to three thousand miles away. I hated them for leaving me. Aunt Jo and Uncle Ben were the glue holding my parents together. They were their therapists, drinking buddies, and friends. But then Jo got a DUI while driving Kass and me home from school. She and Uncle Ben started going to Alcoholics Anonymous and told my parents they weren’t drinking anymore. My mom thought it was ridiculous. She even laughed, saying they were being melodramatic. We started seeing them less and less, and then one day my mom’s resentment reached peak level and she unleashed on Aunt Jo. It was the biggest argument I’ve ever seen. Kass and I spent most of it up in her room, pretending we couldn’t hear it over the One Direction album we were listening to. But I heard everything my mom said: accusing her sister of being self-righteous, of thinking she was better than us, and of being a boring old woman now. Jo, Ben, and Kass moved to Boston two weeks later, and they haven’t spoken to my parents since.

  Within months, my parents went from backyard barbecues at Ben and Jo’s to throwing three or four parties a week. It was like living in a frat house. Mom and Dad were trying to prove to Ben and Jo that they didn’t need them, that they could have more fun without them.

  I don’t want to end up like that. Like them. I can’t.

  How did I go from being an unknown kid playing the drums in a garage to being the latest celebrity trainwreck?

  * * *

  Once the bathtub fills, I dab my tears on a towel and pull myself up to turn off the water.

  I pull my T-shirt over my head and unclip my bra, gasping when I catch a glimpse of my back in the mirror. Bruises cover the middle of my back, sides, and left hip.

  I don’t know what’s scarier: the fact that I’m covered in bruises, or the fact that I don’t remember how I got them. With trembling hands, I slowly peel the bandage off my nose, and swallow back more tears when I see my face. The bridge of my nose is twice its normal size, and my eyes are black and blue.

  I rest my hands on the dusty sink and try to breathe, then look myself square in the eyes.

  “I am not like them,” I say. “I am not like them, and I won’t ever be like them. I won’t, I won’t, I won’t.”

  I sink into the steaming hot bath, close my eyes, and try to think. All my dreams have come true. I have fame, money, friends … everything that’s supposed to make me happy. So why am I crying alone in my tub? Why the hell am I making headlines for all the wrong reasons?

  What is so fundamentally broken in me that I keep trying so hard to screw it all up?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I wake up to someone knocking on my bathroom door. I sit up in the cold bathwater, and shiver.

  “Emmy?” Alfie calls. “Are you okay?”

  “Fine,” I croak. “I’m fine. Fell asleep.”

  Teeth chattering, I lift myself out of the bath and wrap up in my old robe. When I walk out, Alfie is sitting on my bed and for the first time I notice how exhausted he looks. Dark circles hang under his eyes and his shoulders are hunched, like he’s the one the world hates right now.

  “Are you okay?” I ask as I sit next to him.

  “Me?” he says with wide eyes. “Forget me, I’m fine. You’re the one I’m worried about.”

  I try to give him a reassuring smile, but it hurts my nose and I end up grimacing. He reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a fresh bandage.

  “The nurse gave this to me,” he says, unwrapping it. “Here.” He touches his fingers under my chin and turns me to face him. I close my eyes and hold my breath, waiting for the pain to come. But he’s so careful, so gentle, that it hardly hurts at all. The pads of his thumbs slide over the edge of the bandage, smoothing it over my skin. When he’s done, I open my eyes to find him staring at me.

  Alfie tousles up his hair like he always does when he’s nervous. The first time I saw him do it was when we were around fourteen, when he came out to me as genderqueer. After he told me, I did a lot of Googling and reading and watching of YouTube videos to educate myself and unlearn all the gender binary bull I’d been programmed to believe. I held his hand while he told his parents and asked them to use he/him pronouns for him. About a year later, he changed his name to Alfie. I still remember sitting on his top bunk in his bedroom while he told me how he’d been feeling.

  “I just don’t feel like I fit,” he told me. “I’ve never felt 100 percent like a girl, but I’m not a guy, either. And I don’t see why I have to fit. Why should I try to change myself to suit someone else’s binary? It’s like trying to fit a galaxy into a glass jar. I don’t want to be poked and prodded into a glass jar. How am I supposed to breathe like that? Right now, I’m poking holes in the lid, letting the light and air in and freeing pieces of me star by star. And one day, I’m just going to shatter it.”

  He’s definitely done that. Being thrust onto the world stage last year turned him into a powerful ambassador for nonbinary teens like him. And as a result of his coming out and all the hours we spent trading videos, articles, and books by people in the LGBTQIAP+ community, I realized I’m totally, fantastically queer.

  I’m not officially out about that yet, though. I wanted to come out publicly the moment I heard our first song played on the radio, but I was worried about what the media would do. The media loves labels. I knew they’d demand one of me or slap one on me themselves, so I took some time to figure out what label felt right to me. And I did: I’m totally bisexual. So far, I’ve only come out to the people closest to me. Then I started dating people of different genders and let the gossip blogs figure it out on their own. Getting comfortable with my bisexuality has been liberating; I’ve never felt more myself. One day soon, I’ll be officially out to the world. I’ve just been waiting for the right moment. And okay, yeah, I’m scared. I’ve spent a lot time worrying that I’m not queer enough. I’m scared of being told I’m a poser or unwelcome or just trying to be on trend. I’m scared of screwing up and being called a “bad bisexual,” even though logically I know there’s no such thing. But fear isn’t logical.

  “I’m so sorry,” I whisper. “I keep screwing up, and I don’t know how to stop.” The tears come again, and he pulls me into his arms.

  “Hey, uh, Em?” Ry calls from downstairs. “I think your parents are
home. And they brought company.”

  I let out a long groan. Alfie’s shoulders tighten against me.

  “Just stay at my place,” he whispers. “You’ll be so much happier there.”

  I shake my head and pull away from him. “If I crash at yours, the media will target you, too. You’re in the center of town, so there’s no way either of us will be able to hide. I need to stay away from everyone for a little while.”

  Just then, I hear voices downstairs singing an old Pearl Jam song. My dad is doing his best Eddie Vedder impersonation while his friends cheer him on. I can tell just by listening to them that they are wasted even though it’s only five p.m.

  A moment later, Ryan barrels up the stairs like he’s running from a serial killer.

  “Whoa,” he says as he closes the door behind him. “There’s, like, twenty people down there. And they’re all singing.”

  I nod like it’s no big deal, because this is my life. “Wait till they get to the Michael Jackson portion of the evening. Twenty drunk people trying to moonwalk. It gets dangerous.” I smile, but I don’t want them to see this. It’s funny when my parents are characters in a story I tell to kill time on the tour bus, but seeing them up close … it’s just sad.

  “Stay here,” I say. “Don’t go down there without me.” I grab a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt from one of my suitcases and go into the bathroom to get dressed.

  When I’m ready, we carefully sneak downstairs. I successfully help Alfie and Ry out the front door so they don’t have to talk to my parents, but as I creep back up the stairs, I hear my mother laugh.

  “Well, well, well,” she says. “Look what the cat dragged in. David! Your daughter has decided to grace us with her presence!”

  I freeze. Maybe if I stay incredibly still, she’ll get bored and leave me alone. But then my dad appears, and I know I’m going to have to talk to them. “Uh, hey, guys.”

  My mom raises her mimosa in the air. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”

  Dad nudges her on the arm. “I know why she’s here. She needs a place to hide out after embarrassing herself last night.” He turns to follow his friends into the backyard, then calls out to me, “I’d be embarrassed, too, if the whole world knew it only took three drinks for me to black out! What a lightweight.”

  He looks back over his shoulder and winks at Mom, and she laughs.

  I wrap my arms around myself and lean against the wall. The only time I ever see my parents act like a married couple is when they’re ganging up on me. Normally, Dad spends most of his time pretending Mom doesn’t exist, while his mere existence seems to infuriate my mom. I sometimes think the only reason they constantly have friends and neighbors over to the house is so they don’t actually have to spend time alone together.

  Mom looks me up and down, then takes a sip of her drink. “I guess you can stay. But don’t expect us to drop everything now that you’re back. We have lives of our own, you know.”

  I just nod, then she wanders back to their guests. I drag myself to my room, close the door, and fall face-first onto my bed.

  Welcome home.

  * * *

  The party finally dies down around sunset. I can tell because the sound of my dad’s guitar fills the house, and he never plays in front of anyone anymore. Mom has probably gone to do her usual Saturday-night gig at one of the bars on the beachfront, so Dad is reliving his band days all alone.

  A few hours later, I wake up to tapping on my window. “Hello?”

  Tap, tap, tap.

  “Alfie? Is that you?” I slide out of bed and tug the window open.

  “Why would Alfie be sneaking into your room?” Jessie demands.

  I sit back on the bed, and she climbs inside.

  “Sorry,” I say. “I didn’t think anyone else knew I was here.”

  She stands over me, her silhouette tall and looming. “So? Why would he be at your window?”

  “I dunno,” I say. “I used to climb through his window, remember? I told you about that. I guess I just assumed.”

  She sits next to me on the bed, and even in the darkness I can tell she’s tense. Sometimes I wonder if she’s overprotective, or if she doesn’t trust me. Either way, it makes it hard to breathe.

  “I’ve been trying to reach you all day,” I say.

  “I couldn’t exactly answer my phone from a drunk tank.”

  I find her hand in the dark and hold it. “Are you okay? You wanna talk about it?”

  She softens, resting her head on my shoulder. “I don’t remember much from last night. Thank god for booze. But I woke up freezing my ass off in a corner, surrounded by strangers. Three women were throwing punches about some guy. Another girl puked on me. And I had to shit in front of all of them. It took hours for them to finally let me go. But I lost my license for a while.”

  I cringe. “I’m so sorry, baby.”

  “Then,” she continues, “the second I walked out of the precinct, paps attacked me like fucking zombies. I had to literally sprint away from them. Like, normally I don’t mind being photographed, but I was not having it today.” She throws her hand over her eyes. “I cannot believe you let me drive last night.”

  “Huh?” I must have misheard. “Me?”

  “Yeah,” she says, her voice steady, calm. “Why did you let me get behind the wheel? Didn’t you see how wasted I was?”

  Wait. Is she really saying this is my fault? I shift away from her in the bed. “I was too drunk to notice anything. I woke up in the hospital with no clue how I got there.”

  “I’d rather wake up in the hospital than a police station.”

  I don’t say anything. I’m pissed. But she’s so sure of what she’s saying, like it’s so clear that I should’ve stopped her and prevented all this. Maybe she’s right.

  My silence must tell her something’s wrong, so she snuggles closer.

  “Are you hurt bad? Any broken bones?” she asks sweetly.

  “My nose is busted. Hurts like hell.”

  She sucks a quick breath between her teeth. “Ouch.”

  I crawl farther under the covers, unsure of how I’m meant to be feeling. I don’t think it’s fair for her to act like the accident was my fault, but she’s being so cute and caring now. Anyway, I’m too tired to argue, and it really does sound like her day was much worse than mine.

  “I went to your apartment,” she says, and I slap my hand to my forehead.

  “Oh shit. I’m so sorry; I didn’t get a chance to tell you about that.”

  She lets out an exasperated sigh. “Did you at least pack up my stuff?”

  “Of course. It’s all here.”

  “Good. I guess we’re living here now.”

  I pause. I didn’t realize we were living together. But now isn’t the time to argue. “Guess so.”

  “With all the voicemails and texts you left me,” she says, “you could’ve mentioned that.”

  “Please,” I say, my last drop of energy drained. “Everyone in the world hates me right now. I can’t bear to have you hate me, too. Can we just forget everything for a few hours? Please?”

  Jessie wraps me in her arms. “Sorry. I’ve just had a day. Of course I don’t hate you.”

  “Thanks,” I say, wiping away my tears.

  She’s quiet for a few minutes, and I start to relax. But just as I’m drifting to sleep, I hear her whisper, “I still don’t see why Alfie would be at your window.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  The sound of Jessie’s laughter wakes me up the next morning. I pull on new sweatpants and a T-shirt, then go downstairs to find her eating breakfast with my parents, the smell of eggs and burnt toast in the air. Dad stands at the counter, pouring coffee into a mug. Mom sits at the kitchen table, a mimosa in one hand and her iPad in the other. Jessie laughs as my dad tells her a story about his rock-and-roll days—probably one I’ve heard a thousand times. I take a seat between Jessie and my mom and start scraping the singed crumbs off a piece of toast.

  “Emmy
,” Mom says, glancing up from her screen. “How long are you and Jessica planning on being guests in our home?”

  “Um … not long, hopefully. Just until everything blows over.”

  She purses her lips. “And when do you think everything will”—she puts her iPad and mimosa down just so she can do air-quotes with her fingers—“blow over?”

  She seems to think I actually want to be here.

  Dad and Jessie keep talking and laughing. I wish I had sat on the other side of the table.

  “Don’t worry,” I say dryly. “I’ll be out of here as soon as possible.”

  Mom shakes her head. “I don’t know why you think you can just run back here the moment trouble strikes. That’s not how the real world works. I really shouldn’t let you stay here, you know. I shouldn’t spoil you like that. But I am your mother, after all.”

  This is where I’m supposed to thank her. We play this game a lot. She acts like she’s Mother of the Century, and I’m supposed to grovel at her feet and beg forgiveness for being such a terrible daughter.

  I don’t say anything. I’m tired of this game.

  “Oh, Emmy, Emmy, Emmy,” Mom says, clicking her tongue. “When will you learn that you can’t live in a bubble surrounded by yes-men forever?”

  I furrow my brow. “What bubble? Which yes-men? You don’t know anything about my life.”

  As though she prepared evidence for this argument in advance, my mom turns her iPad to me, showing the latest headline on TMZ.

  IS EMMY KING HEADED FOR A BREAKDOWN?

  “Are they right?” Mom asks. “Are you heading for a breakdown?”

  Dad stifles more laughter. Jessie looks confused, like she’s not sure if they’re making a bad joke or just being assholes.

  I stay calm and look Mom in the eyes. “If I was, would you even care?”

  “Emmy.” Mom puts the iPad down and pinches the bridge of her nose between her thumb and index finger. “Must you be so dramatic?”

  Dad leans over the table and picks up the iPad. “What else is on here about you that we don’t know about?”