Drag Teen (16 page)

“MR. HART?” I CHASED DARYL down the backstage hallway. He was in a tizzy with last-minute preparations.

“Yes, JT?”

“I wanted to see if it’s too late to change my costumes.”

Daryl frowned and started to say something, then stopped himself. Looking around to make sure no one was listening, he whispered, “I’m supposed to say no, according to the rules, but follow me.”

I followed him into one of the small dressing rooms off the stage, pulling Tina’s suitcase behind me. He shut the door.

“You can’t tell the others that I made an exception. Technically once your costumes have been approved, you’re not supposed to change them. But after seeing what you had, I think I can make an exception. Ultimately, I’m in charge and can alter the rules if need be.”

I unzipped the suitcase of Tina’s outfits. Daryl was visibly taken aback. So was I.

“Wow. JT. These are really nice pieces of clothing. Where did you get them?”

“A friend.” He pulled out a long aqua-colored beaded gown that looked to have been hand-stitched. It was extremely impressive, so impressive that I couldn’t imagine why Tina would have packed such a thing, even to maybe perform in. But if there was one thing I had learned about Tina Travis, it was that she didn’t need a reason to wear a floor-length evening gown. To be honest, that’s something I had learned about almost everyone I had met in the past week.

“Well, all I can say is wow. Of course you should wear them.”

“Thanks.”

I packed the bag back up. Daryl started to leave, then stopped.

“Did something happen?” he asked. “Why did you have such terrible costumes earlier?”

“What do you mean?”

“Those costumes I saw earlier. They were, well, I think we can both agree they were worlds different from these, right? Seemed like something you threw together in a hurry. I mean, they had thrift store price tags on them. Someone didn’t steal your original costumes, forcing you to have to piece together whatever you could find at the last minute, did they?”

With a tight smile, I shook my head. Daryl didn’t break eye contact with me as he let himself out, adding, as we went out the door:

“Don’t be afraid of Tash, okay? We all know that she’s a basic bitch. And while basic bitches sometimes win a contest or two, they rarely win at life.”

I carefully guarded the new costumes for dear life in my little section of the dressing room. I had texted Heather and Seth with the big news; it was hard to fit the entire story into one text message, but I told them I’d fill in all the missing details later. Heather had texted me back with a series of rainbows, smiles, and ear emojis. While I was not entirely clear as to what that meant, I figured we were okay.

I was doing my makeup at the mirror, attempting to re-create the steps Bambi had shown me. I kept screwing up and starting over, but with each restart, I was getting a little bit better. I had just gotten my eyebrows covered up and my base on when the stage manager popped in to notify us that we were an hour from beginning. Milton and Red walked over, their drag half-done. They looked like the strangest team in the Olympics, each wearing panty hose, gym shorts, tank tops, and wig caps.

“
Bonjour!
” Milton sang to the tune of that song from
Beauty and the Beast
. “Are you stoked or are you stoked?!”

Milton was bouncing off the walls with energy, likely owing to the fact that he was sipping the largest can of Red Bull that I’d ever seen through one of those twisty straws. I explained that I was, in fact, very stoked.

“Hold the phone!” Red gasped as he saw my new costumes hanging from the rack. “Who the heck is
your
fairy dragmother?”

Red very carefully ran his fingers across the beads, like someone touching a great thousand-year-old Egyptian artifact. I blushed, wanting to tell them all about Tina but too afraid of word getting out.

“A friend of mine loaned them to me.”

Milton and Red fawned all over the gowns, Red going so far as to Instagram a photo of them with the hashtag
#fashionheaven
, before going back to the mirror and finishing their makeup. Pip appeared, already in his first outfit, a flowing floral printed skirt with a fitted halter top made out of burlap or hemp or something else you could smoke. His straight blond wig went all the way down to his seemingly nonexistent butt.

“Salutations, dude. I have a gift for you.” He placed a small crystal in my hand. “It’s for good luck. It’s a crystal found in an ancient Tibetan cave where a group of monks have lived for forty years in a vow of silence. Or at least that’s what the girl at Urban Outfitters said.”

I told him I didn’t have anything for him, but he stopped me, launching into a long speech about how he didn’t give me something to receive something, but to put forth the positive energy he hopes to live in himself … or something else that Deepak Chopra, Angelina Jolie, and Elmo would have approved of.

“The whole reason we’re here, dude. Like, the whole thing … life or whatever … it’s to try and make it a little bit better for the next person.”

In the few days I’d known him, I had never heard him say a negative thing about anything or anyone. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d gone an entire day without bitching at least a dozen times. I knew that I would probably never manage to be as positive as Pip, but experiencing his kindness, and reflecting on all that others had done for me in the past few days, made me want to try a little harder.

He gave me a big hug, wished me luck, and walked back to his makeup station, but not before shouting back to me, “Party!”

I made a mental note to include this kindness I had experienced in my speech … which was when it dawned on me that I
still
hadn’t written it! I was just beginning to spiral into yet another wave of panic when there was a ridiculously loud crowing noise, followed by the unforgettably gruff guffaw of Lady Rooster.

She was standing in the doorway of the dressing room, decked out in the most stunning orange velvet gown, with the kind of enormous collar you’d see on a Count Dracula cape. Her wig was made entirely out of actual rooster feathers. She looked like Big Bird’s aunt from South Florida.

“Helloooooo, my ferocious drag teens! Mother has arrived!” Many of the other contestants clapped and cheered, excited to see Lady Rooster in person. “Who in here is ready to give these rich old gay people the best drag show they’ve ever seen?!”

We all cheered some more, the energy building and building with each moment. As I looked across the room at all these guys from so many different places, I thought about just how cool all of this was. We had all found one another, found our brothers in drag, our sisters in fierceness, even those we didn’t get along with—there was still a connection to celebrate. My eyes landed on Tash, in the corner of the room, looking uncharacteristically petrified. I saw, in his hand, the cause of his panic: a broken heel. My immediate reaction was a feeling of karma finally working correctly … but as I watched him spiral, I couldn’t help but feel bad for the guy, and see more than just a little bit of myself in him. Maybe Pip was rubbing off on me. I needed to be writing my speech, and beyond that, I had every right to hate Tash, but I couldn’t just stand there and watch as everyone ignored his hysteria. So I walked over.

“Tash?”

He looked up from his seat, where he was furiously attempting to glue the heel back to the bottom of his shoe, with no luck.

“What do you want?” he spat.

He was clearly in no mood to chat. So, the usual.

“Did you break your shoe?” I asked.

“What does it look like? Stupid, cheap things can’t handle even one day of rehearsal.”

I stood there quietly for a moment as he kept trying to fix it, getting progressively more frustrated by the second.

“I have extra shoes. Do you want to borrow them?”

He froze, staring down at the shoe for a minute or two, then looked up at me. “Why would you do that?”

I shrugged. “Because you need a shoe.”

“But why would you do that? Nobody here even likes me.”

He had a solid point there.

“Why do you think that is?” I asked.

“Because I’m a bitch.”

Again, a solid point.

“And why is that?”

“Why is what?” he asked, throwing the broken shoe down to the ground and standing up to face me, eye to eye.

“Why are you a bitch?”

He looked shocked by the question.

I pressed on. “I’ve been nothing but nice to you since I met you, and you’ve been nothing but a bully. At first I thought, okay, maybe it’s just me, but it’s not. You’re a bitch to everybody for no reason, and it’s like, why? What’s your problem?”

He nervously chewed his bottom lip, smudging his pink lipstick. After a while, he finally spoke, softer than ever before.

“The first time I ever dressed up in drag, I felt amazing. Right? I felt like a superstar—and I
was
. I dominated the night. I went to this party, right? And everybody wanted a photo with me because I looked really damn fine, and somebody posted a photo on Facebook. I didn’t mind, because it racked up so many likes. Then when I came home, my dad comes into my bedroom, and he has the picture opened up on his phone. He shoves it in my face and starts yelling, saying what the hell is wrong with you, calling me a freak, telling me I’m disgusting. And right there, before I could even defend myself, he asked if I was gay, and I said yeah, and he got so mad I thought he was going to kill me. But he just took his fist and punched me, really really hard, across my face. Then he left my room, and I could hear my mom crying, telling him to apologize, and I could hear him calling me these awful words. I got a Lean Cuisine out of the freezer and held it on my face and I cried. And then, when it got really late, my mom came into my room and told me I had to leave. She couldn’t stop crying, but she was just as scared of Dad as I was. So I left. I never saw them again. All because of some stupid wig I wanted to wear.” He shook his head with a bemused and heartbroken laugh. “Holy hell. Does it get any more clichéd than that?”

He focused his damp eyelids down at the broken shoe and, after a moment, kicked it angrily across the room.

“That night I made up my mind. I decided screw it … I’ll
be
a superstar, and nobody will stand in my way, ever. I’ll never let somebody pretend to care about me ever again because at the end of the day, they’re just another something between me and superstardom. And I’ve never forgotten it.”

It was quiet for a while, except for the sounds of hair dryers and iPod speakers playing pop music around the room.

“Half hour till curtain,” the stage manager announced on the sound system.

I handed Tash a pair of shoes. He didn’t look up as he took them; he just stayed staring down at the ground.

“Not everybody is pretending, Tash. Some of us actually mean it.”

He looked up at me, just a little bit, not all the way, and I could see that his mascara was creating long black squiggly lines as it ran down his cheeks, like the doodles in an algebra notebook. He mouthed the words “Thank you”—moved enough to acknowledge me, but not secure enough to let anyone else hear it.

“Hey, papi!” a contestant named Angel’s Beth called out amid a cacophony of
oooh
s and whistles. I looked up to discover that the object of these catcalls was none other than Seth. He looked beautiful, as usual, but especially so now, in a plaid skinny tie and gray suit jacket that was just the slightest bit too small for him. His hair was slicked back like some handsome movie star from the old movies I’d watched with Nana. As soon as he saw me, his face lit up.

“Wow,” he said. “JT, you look amazing.”

He handed me a big bouquet of flowers wrapped in plastic. He’d forgotten to peel off the price tag, so I saw they’d cost him twenty-six bucks.

“Seth, you didn’t have to do that.”

He pulled me toward him, his breath minty as always.

“Shhhhh,” he said. “This is the story of a boy about to win his own future. And in that story, the boy who loves him brings him flowers.” He paused, looking a little nervous. “Am I allowed to kiss you, or is that going to screw up your makeup?”