Damon could have walked away when he saw me crying in those woods. That’s what most other people would have done. That’s the kind of world we live in, filled with people looking the other way.
But Damon cared. He’d wanted to help.
That means something.
• • •
Saturday, my dad tells me Grandma Agnes wants me to visit.
I am not excited about this.
I don’t dislike Grandma Agnes, exactly. She’s my mom’s mother, and my only living grandparent. My dad’s parents died when I was little, so I never got to know them very well, and my mom’s father died before I was born.
Still, Grandma Agnes and I have never exactly been close—she used to come to my mom’s shows and to dinner sometimes, but it always seemed like there was this impossible distance between her and my mom, like they were just too different to connect in any real way. My mom never talked about it, but I got the sense that Grandma Agnes never quite understood why my mom wanted to be an artist.
Once at Thanksgiving I overheard them talking in the hallway, Grandma Agnes saying in that tone that didn’t allow for any dispute: Teaching is noble, Dana, but with Gary leaving accounting for the restaurant, you’re always struggling. You’re so sharp, you could—
Oh my God, Mom, I heard my mother say. Just give it a rest.
But if you did something practical—
My mom didn’t reply. She just walked away, passing me in the hallway but saying nothing, like she didn’t even see me.
That was the thing about my mom: To understand her, you had to understand her as an artist. It was so much a part of her, so much of what she loved and what she did and how she saw the world. She did art because she had to, because it was in her veins. Not just because she didn’t want to stop, but because she couldn’t.
These days Grandma Agnes is a little crazy, but that’s not her fault. She’s eighty years old, after all. At a certain age you’re allowed to get rid of all your filters and say whatever comes into your head with no regard for people’s feelings, and it’s not like she was ever that filtered to begin with.
“Please don’t argue with me about this,” my dad says. “Just go.”
“Are you not even going to come with?” I ask, and he shakes his head.
Great. He’s sending me in like a sacrificial lamb.
“That’s not fair—”
“Melly,” he says, and his whole body seems to deflate, “she wants to see you. I know this isn’t what you want to be doing with your Saturday, but she’s your grandmother and she loves you. Please just spend this one afternoon with her, okay?”
Thus in spite of my total lack of motivation to go, I end up spending my Saturday afternoon over at my grandmother’s in her warm, stuffy box of an apartment. The whole place is outfitted in various floral prints—floral couch, floral curtains, floral wallpaper, paintings of flowers on the walls. It is a bouquet of an apartment. You would think having so many floral patterns would make it cheerful, but it smells musty and stale and she keeps all the shades closed all the time, so it’s dark and gloomy. There are no actual flowers in the apartment.
She serves me a tuna fish sandwich. She’s wearing a sweater with giraffes on it, which is pretty much the way Grandma Agnes rolls.
“I wanted to see how you’re holding up,” she says.
I take a tentative bite of my sandwich. Grandma Agnes is not known for her culinary expertise, but this tastes like it probably won’t kill me.
“I’m okay,” I say.
She looks at me skeptically.
“You look tired,” she says. “Are you sleeping?”
I shrug.
She sighs.
“What is all this, Melanie?” she says, gesturing to what seems to be all of me.
“What?” I say.
“All of this,” she says. “A few months ago you were perfectly normal. Now you’ve got that hair, and all the jewelry in strange places, and you wear these clothes that look like they’ve been run over by a car.”
Today I’m wearing my less ripped-up jeans and a Smiths T-shirt I found in a thrift store a few weeks ago. This is about as presentable as I get these days.
“This is what I want to wear,” I say.
I think of the day I first dyed my hair red. It was the same day my mom had gone in for her last round of chemo. The doctors hadn’t said it was the last round, but the treatment was pretty much useless at that point—the cancer was spreading and none of the previous rounds had worked. This is my Hail Mary pass, my mom said, and shot me a smile that was jagged at the edges. I spent several hours sitting outside the bathroom door, listening to her throw up. Eventually I got her into bed and she fell asleep. I went upstairs and used the dye Tristan and I bought for Halloween last year to put in scarlet streaks. When I came downstairs she was awake. She looked at me and reached out and ran her hands through my hair. It looked so red against her fingers, her skin as white as I’d ever seen it.
I like it, she said. You know I used to have my hair like that when I was your age.
Really? I said. Was that during your punk rock phase?
I hear air quotes in your voice, she said. I resent those air quotes.
I would never, I said.
I will have you know, she said, somehow mustering superiority even in her exhausted state, that I have always been and will always be punk rock.
Mmm-hmm, I said.
It’s a state of mind, not a state of hair.
Mom, I said. A state of hair?
She made a dramatic motion with her hand. Now give me that wig with the green streaks so we can match.
During the last few months, my mom got paler and paler until she seemed like she was literally fading away, being erased off the page by an unforgiving piece of pink rubber. She faded and weakened and waned. The more she changed, the more I did. Pierced my ears, one hole for every day I came home to find her on her knees throwing up in the bathroom, body wracked with dry heaves. Ripped up my jeans until they were as shredded as my nerves. Bought T-shirts bearing the vulgar names of bands I’d never listened to under the guise of rebelling against the status quo. Watched the dirt collect under my fingernails and wondered what grave I was trying to climb out of.
Suddenly I was the sun: glaring, burning, too bright to look at directly. My mom was the moon: waning, waning crescent, gone.
“Is this some kind of teenage thing?” Grandma Agnes says. “I know sometimes teenagers want to rebel, but you were always so sensible.”
Sensible. Yes, that was me. Sensible, practical, quiet. Boring, boring, boring.
“It’s not a rebellion,” I say.
“Is this about your mother?” Grandma Agnes says.
That same day in the park that I met Damon, I sat there in the spot where we used to go sometimes to draw together and thought: I’ll never be with her here again. It felt like being stabbed. All those months I watched her die, and yet it never seemed real. Permanent. I was never raised religious, but all of a sudden it made sense why we have so many stories about the afterlife.
How can someone just be gone?
Maybe wearing these clothes and dyeing my hair and wearing jewelry in strange places is stupid. I know it won’t bring my mom back. It didn’t when she was sick, and it certainly won’t now.
But when I dress like this I feel safer, closer to her. More in a punk rock state of mind.
I feel more like I can handle this. More like I can live my life without her.
I can’t be quiet Melanie anymore, boring Melanie who slips under the radar, who makes things easier by never asking for anything.
The world is stuck with this Melanie now.
But I don’t think this is something that Grandma Agnes will understand.
“It’s not about my mom,” I say.
DAMON
/> You always said I was a wuss about talking to girls. Big plans, D, you’d say. Big plans and no game.
You were probably right about that.
But what did you know about girls, anyway? All those girls you messed around with, and none of them ever seemed to mean anything to you.
You never said: This one, man. This time it’s for real.
How come I never noticed that?
CHAPTER THREE
So I’m trying out for the play, because why not? If I get a part, it’ll get me out of the house, away from my parents. It’ll give me something to do. I think I need that: focus.
Before the first round of auditions, I immerse myself in Etta James. She drawls and growls in my earbuds, the melody a slow burn. It always feels like Etta’s putting on a private show for me when she sings, voice so intimate and dirty.
I glance around the dimly lit theater, watching people move soundlessly, laughing, shoving each other, gossiping with expressive hand gestures. I narrate a conversation in my head between two girls who are sitting on the edge of the stage in matching dark corduroy miniskirts and knee-high boots, legs dangling.
You don’t even know, girl. He is so stupid.
Stupid how?
Stupid like boys always are. Thinking with the wrong head.
I reach for the camera without thinking, hold it up and snap a picture. Neither girl seems to notice; they’re too involved in their deep discussion of who-knows-what and who cares.
A hand drops onto my shoulder. I tense, placing the camera down beside me. One of my earbuds falls out and now Etta’s only half-singing to me, the audio unbalanced. A boy with dark hair and light blue eyes is staring down at me and mouthing something. I take out the other earbud and lean forward, cupping my hand around my ear.
“What?” I ask.
“What’re you listening to?” the boy asks. “Must be something good. You looked like you were somewhere far away.”
I tilt my head. “Have I seen you before?”
The boy smiles, teeth glinting with his shiny metal braces. “I don’t know, have you? You know all us white boys look the same.”
I find myself smiling back.
“Etta James,” I say.
“Ohhh,” the boy exhales. “That woman—I get it. She was a goddess. If I were straight and she was alive, I’d totally do Etta James. Maybe anyway. I mean—not the dead part, but you know what I mean.”
“Good to know,” I say, suppressing a laugh.
“I’m Tristan,” the boy says. “I’ve never seen you before. I’d remember if I had.”
Oh man. I think Carlos has used that line before.
“Damon,” I say, holding out my hand. Tristan takes it and shakes it, his grip firm.
“So what’s a nice boy like you doing in a place like this?” Tristan continues.
“I’m trying out,” I say. “For the play.”
“Do you mean that in the . . .” Tristan says, then wrinkles his nose. “Actually, scratch that. I’m so rude, I’m just—you’re very cute, and—”
“I’m not gay,” I say. “I’m not even sure if I’m an actor.”
Tristan waves his hand. “Well, none of us knows that. But you are sure you’re not . . . ?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m sure.”
“People might think—”
“I don’t care what people think,” I say.
Tristan looks at me carefully, eyes scanning my face.
“Okay,” he says.
There’s a clatter at the front of the auditorium. A harried-looking woman appears, wearing an elaborately patterned multicolored scarf and earrings that I am fairly certain are small dogs, gesturing widely with her hands.
“Come, come,” she says. “Gather round if you’re here for the tryouts!”
I steel myself, already thinking as Othello:
My parts, my title, and my perfect soul shall manifest me rightly.
Tristan is called first. He’s confident and comfortable onstage, his articulation and voice projection demonstrating years of theater training. Tristan’s more than just well-trained, though; he’s good. In his hands Cassio gains a complexity I never thought of Cassio possessing, a remarkable feat for a character often written off as a one-dimensional pretty boy who serves as a convenient plot device.
“Reputation, reputation, reputation!” Tristan groans, head in his hands. “O, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial.”
It’s then that I realize where I recognize Tristan from. He’s Melanie’s friend. I saw them together outside school on the first day, talking and laughing. I’d almost taken their picture, but then I’d thought: No. Not again.
When I’m called, I feel nothing but relief. Onstage I forget everything but my lines, forget the audience, forget the way my bedroom still feels like a hotel room no matter how I decorate it. I forget I’m the new kid.
I forget Carlos, forget the scar on his upper lip, forget the way he sounded when he laughed or the way he pushed hair out of his eyes when he was being completely truthful and honest.
I’m not even lying, man, Carlos would say. Sounds fucking crazy, I know, but seriously. Seriously, yeah.
When I finish, I stride offstage with more confidence than I feel. In the wings I bend over and press my hands into my thighs, exhaling through my mouth in a long whoosh.
“You okay?”
I turn to see Tristan. He’s watching me with concern, arms crossed over his chest.
“You’re everywhere, man,” I say, letting out a nervous laugh.
“Get used to it,” Tristan says. “I think we’re going to be seeing a lot of each other, my friend.”
I wipe one hand across my forehead. I feel overheated, though my skin is cool. “Why do you say that?”
“Because you’re going to be Othello,” Tristan says.
There is no room in his voice for argument.
“Really?” I say.
“Yeah,” Tristan says. “She’d have to be crazy not to cast you, man.”
I feel my cheeks heat, jamming my hands into my pockets. “I don’t know about that.”
“Well, I do,” Tristan says.
There’s a moment of silence. I don’t know what to say.
“I didn’t mean anything by what I said before, by the way,” Tristan says. “I was just messing around.”
I can see it, the moment of fear, when Tristan wonders: Are you going to be like the others?
“I know,” I say, and give Tristan a small smile. “It’s cool, man.”
After auditions, I head toward the bus, earphones wedged firmly in my ears. A horn blasts so loudly, I hear it above the loud, thumping sounds of Otis Redding. I look up to see Prague leaning out of the passenger seat of a big black truck, shouting something at me.
“Hey, pretty boy!” Prague says. “You want some candy?”
“I’m good, thanks,” I say as the truck slows to a stop beside me.
“You need a ride?” Prague asks. “Me and Jackson, we want to give you a ride.”
My eyes dart back and forth between Prague and the driver of the truck, the same guy in the bandanna who kept giving me angry looks when I was watching them play ball.
“I can walk,” I say.
“Aw, c’mon, cuz,” Prague drawls. “Get in the truck.”
I figure it’s not worth fighting Prague on this, so I pull open the door and get in. Jackson still says nothing, just leans in and turns up the radio a little louder, magnifying the sound of Lil Wayne’s obnoxiously detailed description of some woman’s ass.
“Why you here so late?” Prague asks, twisting around in his seat to look at me. “We just got done with practice. Coach is fucking crazy, man. He made Jackson run suicides for no reason.”
I can see
Jackson’s hands tighten on the wheel.
Run suicides.
They call them suicides.
Seriously?
“I was auditioning for the play,” I say.
Prague’s mouth goes slack. “You were . . . what?”
In the driver’s seat, Jackson snorts.
“Auditioning for the play,” I repeat. “The fall play.”
Prague looks stumped. “Really? You don’t think that’s kind of—”
“—fucking gay?” Jackson finishes. It’s the first thing he’s contributed to the conversation.
“No, actually,” I say. “I don’t think it’s particularly homosexual that I’m participating in the play.”
“All the theater kids are straight-up fags,” Jackson states.
“Yeah, D, he’s not lying,” Prague says.
“Oh, really,” I say, leaning forward in my seat. “How do you know this, Jackson? You spend a lot of time hanging with the theater kids?”
Jackson may be an asshole, but he’s not an idiot. He catches the edge in my voice, and he gets what I’m implying.
“You know something, Lewis?” he says, voice low. “You can walk.”
“Happy to,” I say, and at the next light I get out of the truck without another word.
Carlos was certainly capable of being a macho jerk, but he’d never acted like being into theater was bad or wrong or stupid. Only once did he question my decision to do it, one quiet fall evening a year ago after play practice. We sat together on the comfy couch in my basement, watching some shitty movie starring Adam Sandler or Will Ferrell. Carlos was unusually quiet and distant, curled up with his knees pulled into his chest like he was trying to be as small and compact as possible. Carlos wasn’t a big guy to begin with—a little on the short side, broad across the shoulders but nowhere else. He practically disappeared into the cushions. I had asked him what was bothering him earlier, but Carlos brushed me off with a hasty Nada, hombre, shhh, and so we just sat silently in a room too small for silences.
I don’t know, man, Carlos said suddenly, as if we’d been in the middle of a conversation. Don’t you ever wonder—don’t you ever think about what people might say about you being into theater and shit?
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