First Time for Everything (13 page)

Beautiful.
Beautiful
. The word banged around inside Dee’s head. That was what he wanted—he didn’t want to be handsome or dashing or charming or any of the other things his aunts said when they kissed his cheek at family reunions and pressed wrinkled-up old dollar bills into his hand. He wanted to be beautiful. He wanted to be Dee Dee.

“Do it now.”

Abby paused. “Do what now?”

“The dramatic thing. I want to see it.”

Abby was silent for so long that Dee had to crack open an eye to look at her. When he did, she was grinning so widely he thought her face would split open. “Seriously?”

Dee nodded. “Seriously.”

Abby whooped and plunged her hand back into her pile. “Oh man, this is awesome. I have ideas, Dee Dee. I have many ideas. Your face is perfect for makeup, you know. Those cheekbones, shit. Come here, come here, this is primer.”

“Primer? Like you put on a wall before you paint it?”

“Exactly like that,” Abby said. “Makes the colors truer, blah blah blah. Mostly it’ll keep everything where it’s supposed to be.” She smeared the primer over Dee’s eyelids, then came at him with a stick of black stuff. “Eyeliner. We’re doing a cat eye. Sit still and don’t even breathe.”

After the eyeliner came so many shades of eye shadow, Dee couldn’t even keep up. Abby moved like an unleashed puppy who had been offered up a sackful of her favorite treats. She was bouncing around so much Dee had a hard time not telling her to be still so she didn’t put her own eye out. But her enthusiasm was so infectious that he couldn’t mind too much.

“I wish I had some false eyelashes here,” Abby said eventually, spreading all her stuff out on the floor and rummaging through it.

“What’s wrong with my own eyelashes?”

“Nothing really,” Abby said. “But girls with red hair or blonde hair tend to have really pale lashes, so we have to use a lot of mascara or falsies. And this looks really awesome”—she nodded her head at Dee’s face—“and I want to set it off properly. Alas.” She grabbed a terrifying-looking contraption and waved it at Dee. “Eyelash curler. Make this face.” She opened her eyes wide and waved the eyelash curler again. But Dee couldn’t even make a move to obey her.

“Girls,” he said slowly. His heart was going to explode. “We have to use a lot of mascara.
We
do.”

Abby paused, sitting back on her heels and holding the curler in her hand. She tilted her head to one side. “Yes?” she said. “Isn’t that… aren’t…. Duncan?”

“I’ve never….” Duncan stopped talking and pressed his hand to his chest. “I’ve never actually…. It always felt more abstract than, like….”

“Oh shit,” Abby said, dropping the curler and scooping Dee up into her arms. “Shit, I’m so sorry. That’s, like, exactly what I’m not supposed to do. I’m so sorry. I’m supposed to allow you to set the tone of the conversation and follow your lead. I shouldn’t have just presumed….”

“What you’re supposed to do?” Dee said as he pulled back to peer into Abby’s face. “What do you mean, what you’re supposed to do?”

“That’s what they said in that pamphlet thing I have. That as the loved one of a person questioning their gender, I should—”

“Wait,” Dee said, holding up his hands. “You have a pamphlet about… about me? What did you, like, go to a meeting or something?”

“Obviously,” Abby said, frowning. “There’s this club at the community college in the city. I went ages ago.”

“Why?” Dee said wonderingly. “Why would you do that?”

“Because I’m your best friend, you dumbass. And you said you were, you know. You didn’t feel like a boy. And I thought if I was going to support you, I should know the best ways how.”

“You went to a meeting about how to change genders and yet you’re too chickenshit to tell Seth you have a crush on him.”

“Hey!” Abby punched Dee on the arm. “I do not have a crush on Seth, and I’m not chickenshit. You’re just, you know.” She shrugged, her cheeks going pink. “You’re my best friend. I love you.”

“Abby,” Duncan said. “You’re too much, you know that?”

Abby nodded. “I really am.”

“What else did you learn at your meeting?”

“Loads. You could come someday.”

“I could,” Dee said, though they both knew it wouldn’t be anytime soon. He just wasn’t ready. “Maybe one day.”

“Well, I learned that the LGBTQ group makes a mean chocolate chip cookie.”

Dee grinned and reached for the eyelash curler. “You can’t bribe me with cookies. Now come on, teach me how to do this.”

A few minutes later, Dee was convinced the eyelash curler was a medieval torture device created to prepare witches for the agony of being burned alive. But his eyelashes were curled and coated in mascara, and his makeup had been set with something called a finishing powder that Dee had accidentally inhaled a whole mouthful of.

“Tastes like chalk,” Dee coughed.

“’Cause you’re not supposed to eat it, dumbass. I’ll get you a glass of water.”

“I’ll get it,” Dee said. He pushed himself up and handed Abby the handheld mirror they’d been using. “You hungry?”

“I’ll take my first ice cream now, please.”

“Your teeth are going to fall out of your face.”

“Thanks for the advice, grandma.”

Dee took the caramel ice cream from the freezer and grabbed two spoons from the dishwasher. He dug around past the leftovers his parents had left for him—no way was he eating spinach salad for dinner when he and Abby could simply order a pizza—and found two bottles of water in the back of the fridge. Then he took the stairs two at a time and dropped his armful onto the ground next to Abby, who was examining her toes with a critical expression on her face.

“Thanks,” she said without looking up. “I need a pedicure.”

“You should teach me how to give you one.”

Abby grinned and reached for the spoons. “Done and done. Let’s have ice cream before we do your lipstick.”

They didn’t talk about much while they snacked. It was absurd how easy it was to sit on his bed beside Abby and share a pint of ice cream, like they had a million times before, kicking one another’s ankles and watching terrible television. Eventually they landed on a show about baby sloths in pajamas that was so cute Dee thought his entire chest region would cave in.

“I gotta get a sloth,” Abby said around her spoon. “Listen to that noise it’s making.”

“It doesn’t even look like a real thing.”

“It looks like a stuffed animal. Dee, will you buy me a sloth?”

“Real or stuffed?”

“Do they have real sloths in North Carolina?”

“Don’t think so.”

“Stuffed, then,” Abby said. “Ugh, speaking of.” She pushed the empty ice cream container at Dee. “Trash.”

“Yes, dear.”

He took the trash downstairs, then came back upstairs. When he pushed the door open to his room, he found Abby sitting on the bed, holding out a tube of lipstick.

“You want to do the honors?”

Dee reached for the tube, but his hand was shaking so badly he could hardly grasp it. “I don’t think I can,” he said.

“That’s okay,” Abby said. “I’ve got it. Come sit by me.”

She swept the lipstick over his lips slowly, her tongue caught between her teeth. When she was done, she cleaned the edge of it up with a fingernail and reached for a tissue. “Blot,” she said, holding it to Dee and miming pressing it between her lips.

Dee obeyed her. When he pulled the tissue away and saw the bright red kiss on it, he nearly toppled off the bed.

“You okay?”

“Fine,” Dee rasped out. “Just….” He looked away from the tissue and over at Abby. “How does it look?”

Abby’s mouth curved up into a grin. “Absolutely gorgeous,” she said. “You want to see?”

Half-terrified and half-longing, Dee reached for the mirror. For the longest time, he held it facedown, simply breathing in and out. Abby didn’t say anything, nor did she move off the bed or take her hand off Dee’s knee.

Dee took in a deep, steadying breath and tipped the mirror up. Her heart caught against her throat.

She was, just as Abby had promised, beautiful.

E
LLA
L
YONS
is a tea-drinking, cookie-loving yogi who lives on the outskirts of Atlanta, Georgia, with her husband, their son, and a retired racing greyhound. Her proudest achievement is mastering the command “Be my little spoon.” She loves reading, writing, hiking, traveling, quilting, and learning. You can find her on Twitter at @EditorJenn. She loves to make new friends, especially the kind who want to talk about books.

E
RIC
G
OBER

A.J.
TORE
open the packet, popped some peanuts into his mouth, and washed them down with Coke. It was his first time traveling alone, and he was glad to be away from everyone he knew, even if it was only for a couple of hours. He stared out the window and studied the way things looked from up here. The sky was cloudless in all directions and bright blue. He loved that color, especially when he saw it in the shimmering scales of tropical fish. But below, the colors were ugly. A dirty green snake of a river slithered through parched, craggy brown earth, separating Arizona from California—his mom’s world from his dad’s.

He settled back in his seat, closed his eyes, and remembered a time when their worlds were one. He’d been happy in Colorado. Centennial had trees and fresh air, cool two-story houses with basements, and awesome snowcapped mountains that looked close enough to touch. He’d had friends there. Tammy, Jessica, Dylan, and he had won medals when their high school competed at the state swimming championship. At practices, Tammy had cracked him up nonstop impersonating the Little Mermaid, Ursula the Sea Witch, and Dory from
Finding Nemo
. Jessica knew algebra better than his mom. She’d taught him how to factor polynomials in one sitting the night before a big test. Like him, Dylan dreamed of being a marine biologist and loved his tropical fish tank.

Dylan had once walked two miles with A.J. to Neptune’s Tropical Fish Palace and helped him pick out mollies, swordtails, tetras, and rainbowfish. On the walk home, they’d gazed at the colorful fish stirring the clear water inside a plastic bag and marveled at how wildly different species could exist together in peace. A.J. had been awed by the feelings Dylan stirred inside him. Wonderful feelings that day, not so wonderful on others. Like the night A.J. played wallflower at the only school dance he ever attended. He’d suffered through watching Penny Nichols cling to Dylan all evening and burned when he finally kissed her. He yearned to be the one in Dylan’s arms while Adele crooned “Someone Like You.” But he knew he never would. The most they’d ever be was friends. It didn’t seem enough at the time.

Now, he wished he had a friend to hang with on weekends, because the days of watching
Star Wars
and
Footloose
in his basement with his swim gang were behind him—thanks to his mom. While his dad was in Hong Kong on business, Bill Hanley had spotted her trotting cross country on her quarter horse, Rocky, at the Cottonwood Riding Club. The steely cowboy galloped his way right into her heart.

The divorce came lightning fast, and because A.J.’s dad traveled continually with his new job, he had no choice but to move with his mom to Bill’s horse ranch in dusty and desolate Bagdad, Arizona. He learned as he packed DVDs that there was no basement in Bill’s house. No swim team at his new school. No tropical fish store in town. As his mom Googled ways to transport Rocky to the desert, she told him to give his fish tank away.

He’d called Dylan.

After the two had transported the tank to Dylan’s bedroom, Dylan closed his door and turned on Coldplay, and they watched the colorful fish swim. They stood so close their shoulders almost touched. Dylan said, “I’m going to miss you.”

Their gazes met, and A.J. longed for the world to stop spinning. For time to freeze. No divorce. No move. No nothing but he and Dylan together right there. When Dylan smiled, A.J. yearned to feel his lips against his own. But as he leaned in for a kiss, Dylan’s eyes turned cold. The shove was so hard A.J. thudded on the carpet butt first.

“Homo,” Dylan hissed.

A.J. scrambled out of the room and staggered toward home. What a fool. He knew the world he lived in wasn’t some Hollywood TV show like
Glee
. There were consequences—bad ones—for kissing boys, especially straight boys, no matter how much you liked them. Dylan would tell everyone he knew, and haters would come looking for him. Luckily, he’d be gone. He kicked a rock down the road. He suddenly didn’t care he was moving to a barren outpost worse than Luke Skywalker’s on Tatooine, with no cable or Internet, smack in the middle of his sophomore year. All the better for keeping to himself and never making another stupid mistake like that again.

The drive to Bagdad had taken forever. A.J. slumped, silent in his mom’s passenger seat the whole way. Bill was waiting for them when they pulled into his rutted dirt driveway. He greeted A.J. with a hard clap on the back and put him to work. He had to unpack his mom’s overloaded Suburban and then meet up with him and her to tend horses.

He soon learned Bill and his horse ranch were an oddity in Bagdad—nearly everyone else in town was affiliated with copper mining. He felt like a lone rainbowfish dumped into a school of desert pupfish. No one in town really wanted much to do with him, which was fine until he grew lonely. Then listening intently in classes and stretching out his homework provided his only escapes from a humdrum life of no friends and working for room and board as Bill’s stable boy. While he mucked out box stalls and sweated in the desert heat, he daydreamed of graduating and returning to cool Colorado.

One morning near the end of his junior year, his mom appeared in the stable. He’d put on a rubber glove and was picking up horse dung. She placed her cell phone in his ungloved hand. “Mother of all miracles—it’s your dad.”

“No way.”

“Bring my phone back when you come in for breakfast,” she said and left.