by Raziel Reid
When the bus came, we sat at the back near a homeless man and some boys who were a few years older than Keef and a few years short of a criminal record. They stared at me for the entire ride, like I was some exotic animal at the zoo. I didn’t know whether to growl or start signing autographs. Angela didn’t say anything about my nose. I don’t think she noticed. Angela didn’t notice anything except missed periods and how many Likes she was getting on Facebook.
We met Mikey K in the mall food court by the photo booths. He was wearing a baseball cap backward, and his jeans were so low on his hips that his ass was hanging out. He had on Bart Simpson boxers, and when I said, “Oh my God, are those Jeremy Scott?” he looked at me like I wasn’t speaking English. Angela hugged him, and he put his hand on her lower back. I tried to remember if his name was written under the table at our booth. He nodded his head at me, the way some guys do instead of actually speaking, and tried to shake my hand. But I couldn’t do the handshake—I could never do them. On the rare occasion that someone was willing to touch my hand, I’d always end up embarrassing myself. I don’t know why Mikey even tried. I guess because I was a client and everything, but he was still kind of awkward, like he was worried I wouldn’t let his hand go.
“So what do you have?” Angela asked.
“We’re thinking of trying K,” I said.
“I won’t have any K until career day.”
“But you’re Mikey K,” Angela whined, like she didn’t believe him, like she thought he was keeping it all to himself.
“So what do you have?” I asked.
“Just some bud and a couple hits of acid.”
“Acid!”
“Acid?”
“Five bucks a hit,” he said.
“I have twenty bucks,” Angela said, pulling her makeup and cigarettes out of her purse to find the bill.
They went into the photo booth to do the exchange and were in there for so long that I wondered what else they were doing. I stood awkwardly looking out at the food court until Mikey finally came out. “Later, mang,” he said as he passed me, his jeans even lower.
Angela and I went into the handicapped bathroom which we used to hot-box in all the time when Angela was being a monk or whatever and always wanted to get high and chant Hare Krishnas. She claimed the handicap bathroom at the mall had really good energy, at least when the pregnancy tests she took in it were negative.
“Sink or sin,” Angela said as we took the acid. We stuck out our tongues and stared at our reflections in the finger-smudged mirror. The stamps had pictures of an eternity symbol on them, and we each took two. I could feel them dissolving into my spit. Angela took out her iPhone and stuck out her tongue as the camera flashed.
It didn’t take long for everything to start to change. It was like the bathroom lights were flicking on and off by themselves. I turned on the tap, and the water was so hot that the skin on my hands turned red and peeled, but I couldn’t stop shivering. Angela spun around with both of her arms sticking out like fallen-angel wings, her feathers scraping against the wall and knocking off plaster. I picked up the crumblings and rubbed them on my face like they were mother-of-pearl.
We played music off Angela’s phone, and the bass felt like universes colliding. There was this pervasive boom coming from all around, or maybe from within. We both stood there looking at our reflections, stuck in the beat, our eyes slowly drooping and turning black. It was like we were purely animal. We had no souls.
When the song ended, the boom kept echoing. The colour returned to Angela’s eyes first, and she grabbed my arm, resurrecting me with a gasp. Angela pointed to the door, and I realized someone was knocking. “Mall cop,” she whispered.
The booming stopped, and we heard keys jingling like my mom’s bangles on my wrists, sliding across my scars and catching on my scabs. When the door opened, the mall cop’s moustache was turned up like horns.
“How many times do I have to tell you fucking kids?” He screamed. “It is rude to rave in the handicap bathroom!”
We rushed past him and ran, but for once, it wasn’t just like the movies—he didn’t chase us, and there wasn’t a frenzied sequence of running through the mall, jumping over strollers, pushing grannies off the escalator, and shoplifting along the way. He just stood there and watched us go, clutching the cellphone attached to his belt loop like a gun.
We ran into Wal-Mart where all the smiley faces jumped off the discount signs and bounced on the floor like rubber balls. Water spilled out of the candy aisle, followed by a tsunami of chocolate.
We swam past the cocked firearms, which had grown their own arms and were jerking their load. When they started to fire, we dove under the surface, but then everything started to dry up, and shoppers were getting shot, splitting like a two-for-one discount. The mirrors started to bleed. Someone had summoned Bloody Mary.
“Mommy,” Angela said, holding one of the cashiers at gunpoint with a rifle and emptying a cash register into her purse. The fluorescent lights flickered through my rapid blinks. The blood from the mirrors spilled onto the floor and made the candy water red.
I trudged through body parts to the meat freezer and picked up a package of steaks. My face was reflected in the light shining off the tight plastic wrap. I was suffocating. As I watched, my skin dissolved until I was just a skull. My mouth opened and I screamed, but no sound came out. The package filled with blood, which pushed against the plastic until it burst and spilled over my hands. Soon the freezer overflowed, and even the walls started to bleed. I tried to move, but the blood at my feet was so thick, it was like running in a slow-motion dream. I pinched myself but didn’t wake up.
When I opened my eyes, I was out of breath from running. We were in the schoolyard, and both of our wrists were bleeding. Angela was spinning around with her arms out, making red rain that stuck to my skin. When it dried, I felt like I had been dipped in candle wax.
We dropped to the ground and made snow angels with bloody wings. I rested my head on her shoulder and she held my hand. The sun shone through the cloud of smoke from the mine, shooting toxic rays of light.
“Darling,” she said, “we’re a train wreck.”
“Sweetheart,” I said, “train wrecks always make the front page.”
12
Sunset Boulevard
I woke up the next morning and rolled to my side, facing my tattered Marilyn picture. I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me, like I was still tripping or something, because there was a tear streaking down her face. It took me a minute to realize that I’d left my window open and melted snow had dripped onto the picture. The tear fit, somehow, like it had always been there. Like the photo was taken right after she’d been raped by a studio exec.
A glance in the mirror showed me that I looked like my mom when she came home from work, her makeup worn off with sweat and dark circles under her misty eyes. I used to wake up every morning when she came home. I’d hear the door creak open and slip out of bed to make sure that it was her. I knew that it would be, but I still had to check. She started to leave me alone some nights, before Ray moved in and Keef was born. Usually Ray would crash at our place, but if he pulled a Houdini, she’d have no choice. She never told me, but I’d wake up, and the house would be empty. I would get out of bed and make sure the door was locked and then crawl under my covers. It would take forever to fall back asleep because every noise would scare me. I usually just stayed awake until I heard her come home. As soon as she walked in, she would flop down on the couch, exhausted. I’d get out of bed and cuddle next to her. She’d run her acrylic nails through my hair, and I’d rest my head on her shoulder, which always smelled like beer and perfume.
“Did you hit the jackpot?” I’d ask, because sometimes we would pretend that she was a Vegas showgirl and we lived in the penthouse of The Mirage.
“They tip me like I’m Nomi Malone,” she said, resting her head against mine, “even when I try to be Martha Graham.”
As I was watching the
drop of water slide down Marilyn’s cheek, I remembered I had a joint somewhere and ransacked my nightstand drawer to find it. I got Stoned stoned with me by blowing smoke in her face. She could be so petulant when I didn’t share.
Once I was high, I showered and dragged myself to school for second period, which was gym. Angela wasn’t around (her Twitter said she was at Trey’s “consummating and watching Girls”), so I had to sit on the sidelines alone in gym.
When I started to feel too exposed to the paparazzi, I ducked into the change room. I checked out my reflection in one of the mirrors before finding a stall to hide out in. The swelling had gone down on my nose, but I was convinced that it was crooked and that I’d need a nose job, which I was kind of excited about because I was sure it’d get me tons of press.
I lit the roach of the joint I’d smoked earlier as the change room door opened and someone walked in, catching their breath. I looked through the crack in the stall and saw Luke go to one of the urinals. I dropped the roach into the toilet bowl, and he turned his head when it sizzled.
“Who’s blazing?” he asked, flushing and then walking over to the sink to wash his hands. He checked himself out in the mirror, his lips pouting like a reflex, then turned to look at the stalls. “Who’s in there?” he asked, drying his hands on his sweaty shirt. I didn’t answer, so he pushed all the stalls open one by one, and when he came to the one I was in, he flung it open because the lock was busted. “Oh,” he said when he saw me backed against the wall. “It’s just you.”
“Just me,” I nodded.
“Why didn’t you say something? Worried I’d mistake you for a chick?”
He didn’t wait for me to answer. He just shook his shaggy head and pulled out his phone from his gym bag. He knew I was watching him, and he held his phone so hard I thought it might break. He looked up at me like he was about to say something, but changed his mind. I wanted him to say something. Even if he just called me a fag, especially if he called me a fag. I wanted him to say it with spit flicking off his bottom lip straight onto my tongue.
“I like your shorts,” I said as he put his phone back. “Are they new?”
“Stop looking at my shorts,” he said, slamming the locker door shut.
“All I said was that I like them,” I shrugged. “Then again, maybe I just like what’s in them.”
“What’s your fucking problem?” he asked.
“That I’m not fucking you.”
He took a step forward like he was about to knock me out, and I bit my lip because I wanted him to. I wanted him to touch me, even if it meant that my nose would get more deformed. All the best celebrities have had at least three nose jobs. But he stopped himself, brushing past me.
“You never learn,” he said. “Do you?”
At lunch, I went to Mr Dawson’s class because Angela was still ditching and I wanted some company. Sometimes he seemed even lonelier than me. I could see it in his eyes. Mr Dawson was always looking at me. I’d be sitting at my desk, working on an essay or something, and I’d suddenly feel like I was trapped behind a screen only to look up and find Mr Dawson fogging it.
When I caught him staring, I was never sure if he was really looking at me. His eyes sort of glazed over, and he seemed a million miles away. When he snapped back to reality, he’d meet my eye and sometimes seem surprised to see me staring back at him. He usually gave me a little smile or wink, but sometimes he did neither. He was lost in the fog.
As we ate lunch, I told him all about how I was going to move to Hollywood and be a prostitute.
“I thought you want to be a movie star?” Mr Dawson asked.
“Same thing,” I shrugged.
“Well, you definitely have star quality,” he said, and then blushed from the underlying implication. I could tell he wanted to reach for his wallet to see if he could afford me.
“I do have star quality,” I told him, spreading my legs. “And everyone’s already always talking shit about me, so I might as well get paid for it.”
Mr Dawson laughed so hard that he choked on his coffee, spilling some on his tie. “I should run this under water before the stain sets,” he said, getting up from his desk and walking to the door, but he stopped as Luke walked passed in the hall. “Oh, Mr Morris,” Mr Dawson called out to him, “I’m still waiting for your Romeo and Juliet essay. You’re failing without it. I expect you in my classroom at the end of the day.”
“Can’t today, Mr D,” Luke said, not even glancing at me as I stared at him from behind Mr Dawson. “I’m going to the shooting range with my dad.”
“Then have it on my desk by tomorrow. If you can find time for target practice, you can find time to write a thousand words.” Luke nodded automatically, like Mr Dawson was some bitch telling him not to come inside her because she isn’t on the pill. “You could always ask Jude here for some tutoring,” Mr Dawson told Luke, who froze. I watched as his ears turned red and then stared at his crotch, waiting for a jiz stain to appear. “Not only did he hand his essay in on time, but he got an A.”
“Yeah, Luke,” I smiled at him from behind Mr Dawson. “I wouldn’t mind helping you. For a price.”
He looked right at me, but his expression was blank. The colour of his ears went back to normal and his cheeks didn’t blush, so I felt like a total failure. I was losing my charm. I thought he might say something, but he quickly looked away, like he was afraid if I got into his head he’d never be able to get me out.
I didn’t tell Mr Dawson that I had a crush on Luke, but he knew. Everyone did. Luke, Madison, and I were our school’s top celebrity love triangle. We were always trending, and everyone followed.
“You know, Jude,” Mr Dawson said once Luke had walked off, his voice suddenly softer as he faced me from the doorway, “there’s something I hope you always remember, especially when you’re trying to make it big in Tinseltown.”
“Always get the money first?”
“That it’s better to be hated for who you are than loved for who you’re not.”
By the time I left school at the end of the day, the sun was setting because I’d had to stay late for detention. I always got detention. I was touching up my makeup during biology and, one by one, everyone turned to stare. I think it made Mr Hudgens jealous. But, really, no one gives a fuck about how their Big Mac is digested.
As I walked home, I tried to turn the bungalows into Beverly Hills mansions, but I couldn’t. No matter how hard I tried, they remained houses with chipped and peeling paint, buried in snow. It really scared me that I couldn’t even dream it. But then there was a voice in my head. I heard it so clearly that I stopped in the middle of the street and looked behind me to see if anyone was there. But it was just the voice, like a prompter reminding me of my line from off stage.
Be it.
I walked through the parking lot of a Blockbuster that had closed down months before, but no new business had opened. Someone had spray-painted the sign so that it read Byebuster. I didn’t want it to go. I had walked through that parking lot so many times and seen the empty shelves and the fluorescent lights in the vacant store, which for some reason were always on, that I just got used to the emptiness. I started to get scared of what might take its place. The longer the Blockbuster contained only movie star ghosts, the more I started to believe that the emptiness was meant to last forever.
From the parking lot I ran the rest of the way home, not stopping until I walked through the front door of my house. I knew what I had to do, and I wasn’t going to wait because, if I did, eventually the emptiness wouldn’t scare me anymore. It would just be there like it always had been, like it was all there ever was.
Ray was working, Keefer was at a friend’s house, and my mom was in bed sleeping. I stood outside her bedroom door listening for the sounds of her snores, and when I was sure she was asleep, I slowly crept in. The door made noise, but didn’t wake her. Her shoes were bulging out of the closet and there were red lipstick notes on the mirror above her dresser for her hair
appointment, Keefer’s parent/teacher meeting, a list of groceries. She always wrote things on the mirror because she “never forgot to look in it.”
She was lying with her head on her arm, her long dark hair spilling over the side of the bed. She kept all her cash on top of her dresser tied with hair elastics, next to her bottles of nail polish and a framed picture of me and Keef.
I only had to take a couple steps into the bedroom to be able to reach the dresser. I kept my eyes on her face for any sign of consciousness as I glided across the floor. She didn’t budge. I picked up a stack of bills, rolled the elastic off, and pocketed a quarter of them.
When I got back down to the basement, I counted. I had twenty-seven bucks, all in singles. I put them in a shoebox and hid it under my bed. I was shaking like I was going through withdrawal, like it had been five minutes since someone had taken my picture. I was nervous and excited because for the first time, I had hope. It seemed possible, like I could do it. Maybe not with only twenty-seven bucks, but it was a start. Besides, I had read in a Madonna biography that she moved to New York with thirty-five dollars in her pocket and somehow, things worked out for her. And keep in mind, she had hairy armpits back then. If that doesn’t prove that anything is possible, I don’t know what does.
I couldn’t wait to not have to try to imagine that the defunct Blockbuster was the Paramount Pictures lot or that the “2 for 1” sign in the discount store on Main Street was a billboard on Rodeo Drive. I wouldn’t have to pretend that every time I sat in the park with Abel, I was having a lunch at The Ivy. I wouldn’t have to squint my eyes to fool myself into seeing the Hollywood sign on top of a mountain of snow. If I were there, it would be real. I would be real.
Finally.
13
Shoot-out
“I just don’t get it,” Angela said, flipping through a magazine and puffing on a cigarette as she sat on her parents’ bed with a box of their sex toys and porn. “Which one of them is into this stuff?”