After I dress, I step out of my room and find him pulling the suitcases down from the attic. “Morning, Dad. Doing some cleaning? Need any help?”
“I got a job,” he says between heavy breaths, descending the attic ladder.
“That’s amazing!” My enthusiasm wakes the hungover mess that is Abigail. She emerges, barely human, from her room before bitching:
“Why are you two making so much noise so early in the morning!?” The fumes of last night’s alcohol consumption swirl through the hall at ninety-nine miles per hour.
“It’s almost eleven a.m., sister,” I say. Abigail has largely abstained from the Adams family curse of chemical dependence. But I guess that was when she could indulge in her Cam dependence.
She flips me off as she cries out, “DAD! Can you please do whatever you’re doing later?”
“Dad got a job, Abigail. Isn’t that amazing?”
“Yes, because I need more clothes before school starts.”
I ignore her, say to my father, “Let me buy everyone an early dinner at Fridays to celebrate.”
He says, “No time, Art. We got a lot of work to do before we can go next week.”
“Go where?” This panicked mini-me starts hyperventilating inside my heart.
“Your brother got me a job at Progressive, so we got to move to Ohio.”
* * *
My father says this not looking at either Abigail or me. Casually, almost under his breath, as if it is no big deal. As if it is totally normal for us to move across the country. As if we haven’t spent our entire lives in Riverbend, Illinois. As if all our friends and loves and everything weren’t here. As if he did not just punch us both in the stomachs with his big, fat, hairy, selfish, heartless words.
* * *
Despite my soul being mortally wounded, I remain outwardly composed. Numb, silent, but composed.
Abigail?
“IF YOU THINK I’M MOVING TO FUCKING OHIO FOR MY SENIOR YEAR OF HIGH SCHOOL, YOU CAN FUCK YOURSELF, YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE!”
That shoots some life through my dad: He tosses one of the suitcases hard against the wall and outscreams Abigail’s best scream ever: “DON’T YOU EVER FUCKING TALK TO ME LIKE THAT!”
Abigail screams incoherently back, then slams her bedroom door in his face. Though I just stand there as witness, quiet, my dad still feels I need yelling at.
“ART, DON’T JUST FUCKING STAND THERE! START PACKING UP THE HOUSE!”
“Okay, Dad.” What else can I say? I’m just a tiny, stupid kid in a big, horrible world.
ZEE
For those first few hours trying to sleep alone in the motel room, I wake up every fucking five minutes. I’d keep hearing Art walk back in the door and I’d get excited that I’d get to kiss him. Or yell at him. Either would have done it for me.
* * *
When I finally do fall asleep for good, I end up sleeping late, until almost ten. When I wake up, I have maybe five seconds of thinking Art is next to me on the bed. I can feel him. I swear. Then I turn over and he’s not there and
fucking
pow
It hits me that he’s gone. That whatever we were is over. Then
fucking
pow
I remember my mom’s dead. For the first time since she died, the worst thing I think of when I wake up isn’t that she’s dead. It’s that Art’s gone. It makes me fucking hate Art for making me care more about him than her, even if it was only for five seconds.
* * *
I check my phone for a text from him anyway. Instead I find a group message from Pen that includes Iris. She asks if we’re free for lunch or dinner today. Iris has responded with a Can’t do lunch, but dinner! Yes! The exclamation mark is such a girl thing. I’ve always hated exclamation marks in texts. But I like that Iris did it. Never mind. I respond Sure—off work at 7 tonight. The girls then rocket a bunch of texts back and forth between each other deciding where we should go and I just type that I’m good for whatever they want.
I decide to look Iris up on Facebook, which I haven’t signed into in months but what the hell. I know who she is because we’ve been in school together since junior high but we were never close and I never thought of her … never thought of her as what? Am I really serious about this?
Don’t overthink this. I don’t. I find her pictures. She’s blond. I knew this. She’s pretty. I knew this too. She dresses preppy, in pinks and oranges and bright whites. You know who she looks like? You know all those movies about the nerdy teenage boy who pines after the beautiful popular cheerleader except the cheerleader doesn’t know he exists? (My mom’s favorite was Can’t Buy Me Love, which came out when she was a kid and she’d make me watch it with her every time she got dumped.) But then the nerdy boy proves himself worthy of her by doing her homework or beating up her mean boyfriend or something dumb like that and the movie ends up all happy and bullshitty with them an only-in-Hollywood couple. Well, anyway, that’s who she looks like. A beautiful popular cheerleader straight out of a movie.
Except she’s not a cheerleader and she doesn’t have a mean boyfriend. And if there are nerds pining after her, they are wasting their time because she likes girls. And if you like girls, you don’t like boys no matter how much of your homework they do.
Except I’m feeling like that nerdy boy right now. I fucking am. And I’m getting the urge to put my hands down between my legs for the first time since before my mom died. And it’s from looking at pictures of a pretty blond girl even though I dumped Art last night for being gay.
art
My dad has scheduled the movers and U-Haul truck for Monday, three days from today. We will pile into his car on Tuesday, leaving Riverbend forever and ever and ever. I attempt a few more questions about it, but he just yells, telling me I’m making things difficult, so I help him start packing in silence. Move whatever he wants to move, throw out whatever he wants to throw out.
Abigail doesn’t leave her room for hours, though she occasionally graces us with an “I FUCKING HATE YOU!” from behind her door. When we’re taking a break in the kitchen, I hear the front door slam. I run out and watch Abigail slip into a car I don’t recognize …
… but I do recognize the boy—or is he a man now?—behind the wheel. It’s Will Safire. Yes, that Will Safire, Abigail’s freshman-year boyfriend. Everyone remembers Will Safire for being the famous quarterback who took Riverbend within a touchdown thing of the state championship game three years ago. I remember him as the creepy senior dropping my fourteen-year-old sister off at two a.m. in clothes she hadn’t left the house in. He dumped my sister the second he got some big scholarship, and did I mention Will Safire got kicked off his college team last season after an assault charge? So he’s worse than just a creep. And my sister just ran off with him and three dudes that look exactly like him in his backseat. I sincerely think this might be the last I ever see of her. If she doesn’t somehow get herself killed, Abigail will find a way to stay in Riverbend, or with Mom somewhere, and I’ll be shipped off to Ohio with Dad and Alex. Two people I have nothing in common with besides our DNA. Yay.
* * *
The only person I want to tell I’m leaving is Zee, but then I think how dramatic it will be for her to show up to school and look for me without admitting she’s looking for me and then someone will tell her, Art moved to Ohio. And she’ll have to excuse herself, go to a bathroom stall, burst into tears, and yearn for me until the end of time. How great of a scene will that be in the movie about our great love story? Except there won’t be a movie because our great love story might have been just a few bizarre days in a motel room and then us never seeing each other again.
ZEE
So, yeah, masturbating while thinking about Iris makes me think about Art and what a hypocrite I am but I also start thinking about Iris and Art at the same time and then about Art, Iris, and that boy on his phone—Jayden—and I’m not sure if I’m getting more excited at all the images in my head or more disgusted at how royally
fucked-up I am.
So I give up before I orgasm, check out of the motel, and decide I’m never going back. That my week there with Art was this thing I needed to get out of me, this phase, this experiment, this I-fucking-don’t-know-what, but whatever it was, I’m never doing it again. Not with him, not with anyone.
* * *
Once I have my coffee, I have nothing to do except think about how I’m homeless again. So I text Michael because I need to unleash some venom:
ME
Need my money
He doesn’t respond right away and so I fire another:
ME
Or I’m telling my dad to get involved
That feels good. Yeah. Feels good to have an adult in my corner for the first time since my mom died. But then I get this:
MICHAEL
Have you met your father’s “boyfriend”?
My dad felt like the straightest of straight guys. Either way,
ME
I don’t care if he’s gay. Only bigots do.
MICHAEL
You should care and you should care
that your dad probably didn’t show you this
Attached beneath that is a picture of a document. After pulling over to the side of the road, I zoom in on the image:
It’s a birth certificate.
My birth certificate.
My birthday, my birth hospital, my mother’s name, Arshad’s name … and …
My birth name: Zhila Gholbani.
Zhila.
My real name.
Not Rebecca Kendrick, daughter of Katie Kendrick.
Zhila Gholbani, daughter of Arshad Gholbani, the man that never wanted me to exist.
I am not me.
art
While working the lunch shift at Fridays on a Friday, I gaze at every girl and boy I find even the slightest bit attractive and try to determine who I would want to be stranded on a deserted island with.
In the end, I decide I’ll refuse to be stranded on any island unless it’s with Zee.
(And I’ll need cell service on the island so Jayden can still send me pictures.)
I know this is not how this game is usually played but it’s how I’m playing so shhhhh.
On one of my breaks, I text Zee.
ME
I miss my not-very-platonic wife
I know this is not what you text someone you are super mad at! She went through my phone and said the most horrible, hurtful things in the history of horrible, hurtful things, but, ugh, I don’t care. I still love her. Even if I’m gay, I know she’ll be the only person I love until I die.
But by the time my shift ends, Zee still hasn’t texted me back. And suddenly I feel like I’ve been thrown into this vast dark ocean, and I’ll drown in it if I don’t find something, someone, to rescue me soon. So I text Carolina.
ME
Jayden
She would know.
CAROLINA
I knew it;)
ME
WHEN did you know?
CAROLINA
I always thought, but it wasn’t until we kissed
that I knew for sure.
Ugh. I like being more complex.
ME
What’s the latest on “As the Trevor World Turns”?
CAROLINA
He got back with Betsy. I hate him.
ME
Sorry:(I love you
CAROLINA
If only you were straight;)
I am. Was. Will be again? I’m a disaster. I’ll just confess:
ME
I had sex with Zee
CAROLINA
How??!?!
ME
Penis was inserted into vagina
I’m hilarious.
CAROLINA
Did you like it?
ME
I loved it …
I love her …
Wasn’t going to dive into all the kinky, weird stuff over text.
CAROLINA
You’re never boring, Art;)
I should ask Carolina if we could hang out, or go to a movie. Something safe with someone I have zero sexual chemistry with.
Instead,
ugggggggggggggh,
I text Jayden.
ZEE
Go to CrossFit because I need to sweat every memory of everyone I’ve ever met out of me. When I park, I notice two people making out in the car next to me. Weird but whatever. But then when I get out of my truck, I actually see their faces.
Taylor … and Bryan.
Jesus—IS EVERYONE IN MY LIFE GAY?!
They leap out of the car two seconds later, and Bryan runs up alongside me, saying, “Hey, Zee, let me tell Art about Taylor, is that okay?”
Don’t tell him I’ll probably never talk to Art again because it’s none of his fucking business. “Yeah,” I say, because I have to say something.
“And thanks for talking to Cam. He actually called me, and we had a long talk. He’s a good person. And you inspired me, so I’m going to play football. That’s so strange to say! Bryan Colucci, football player. But thank you. Taylor thinks I’ll be good, but it doesn’t even matter. I just think I need to do it and fuck being afraid of who I am.”
“Cool,” I say, and he can tell I’m in a bitchy mood and probably will be until the planet blows the fuck up.
* * *
After class, I get a text from Art.
That weird, nervous sweat flashes through me the second I see his name. For a moment, I think I’m excited, turned on, yeah, but then I think about the picture of that boy Jayden. That double life Art will lead. Somehow I decide that this means if I go back to Art, and whatever weirdness we did together, that I will have to lead a double life too. I’ll have to become Zhila Gholbani.
And sure-fucking-enough, Arshad texts me right then:
ARSHAD
Zee—talk to Michael?
ME
Don’t you mean Zhila?
ARSHAD
I didn’t know how to address it.
This is my failing.
But can we please talk so that I can explain?
Nope. Done with you.
But I need to text someone and it can’t be Arshad or Art or my mom—’cuz she’s fucking dead—so I text Cam:
ME
That was cool of you to talk to Bryan. Thanks.
CAM
When can I see you?
ME
I don’t know
CAM
Can we go to that Benedict dude’s party together?
No, but I say,
ME
Sure.
art
Just like last night, I pick up Jayden at his place in Winnetka. As he descends from his mansion, the moment his eyes find me, he projects this hypersexuality that tells my penis to tell my brain to do whatever Jayden says and whenever he says it forever.
“Good evening,” he says as he steps into me, and with a very confident, strong hand takes me by the back of the head and pulls me in for a kiss that destabilizes my footing on the earth below. As he pulls back, just a bit, his eyes still inches from mine, he uses this deep-throated whisper to say, “I need you to be so turned on that you never go more than ten minutes without thinking of me again.”
“Okay,” because yes, duh, never again.
ZEE
For our dinner, Pen and Iris eventually settle on a restaurant called The Unknown Artist, which is on the north side of Gladys Park, less than a block from The Forest Café.
The Unknown Artist is tiny and all random, tiny nooks with odd-shaped tables in each one. Framed handwritten poems and sketches on every inch of every wall. Pen and Iris are already there, and as I approach their table, I realize this is the first time I’ve ever gone and hung out with just girls. It’s always been me and my mom, or me and Cam, or me and the CrossFit crew. Yeah, I realize this is sort of a not-so-blind date, but that feels less new than me having actual friends who are girls.
“Hey,” I say as I sit down next to Pe
n. Had to choose one side and it would have been weird to presume I should sit next to Iris. Pen looks like she always looks—black clothes and black boots and black makeup and even a black nose ring today—but seeing her somewhere besides the pizzeria or school makes her feel like a three-dimensional person for the first time. Iris is wearing white pants—aren’t they called capris or something?—and I think the same frilly tank top that Art bought me. But hers is this light pink color and it looks good on her, natural, not like she’s playing dress-up. I’m wearing my cargos and hoodie because if I’m going to be into girls, she’s got to like me for who I am. That sounds stupid. Never mind. Iris is nervous, fidgety, and can’t look me in the eyes, so I try to be extra nice and say to her, “Thanks for asking me to hang out.” This type of thing usually feels super false coming out of my mouth but I don’t mind it today. Maybe, if I’m really a lesbian, I’ll be a better person.
“I’ve been telling Iris,” Pen starts, “that I want to hang out with more interesting people more often, and we both decided that you’re interesting.” Both of them giggle a bit, not fake but nothing I would ever do, and I feel like such a guy. Not just a guy, but a guy who has no idea how to speak girl. Art would know how to speak girl. I miss him. I hate him.
“Well … thanks, I think,” I say, because I want to talk instead of hate Art.
I can see Iris work up the nerve to speak, and then she says, “How have you been?” She says it in that way that you know she’s asking about my mom and, listen, I know she lost her mom and suddenly my heart is ten times the size, which means it hurts ten times as much. Am I gonna fucking cry in front of these girls ten seconds after I sit down? I am.
The Handsome Girl & Her Beautiful Boy Page 20