Authors: Julie Anne Peters
Did that make Dad a hero in Liam’s eyes? There was another time, too. With Hoyt. I don’t know how Dad found out Hoyt was harassing Liam, but he stormed down the block to the Doucets’ house. A few minutes later he returned, red-faced and swearing. I think he almost got into a fight with Mr. Doucet.
Nothing changed with Hoyt; I’d see him lying in wait for Liam. What changed was, the whole rest of the year, Liam’s eighth grade year, Dad had driven Liam to school and picked him up afterward.
Liam worked so hard to please Dad, to earn his respect. Liam was right; it’d never be enough. The weird thing was, Liam didn’t emulate Dad; he didn’t want to be like him. He wanted to be Mom. If Dad was Liam’s hero, why was he so scared of him?
“Where are we going for lunch?” I turned to Liam as he exited the on ramp and merged into traffic.
“Taco Bell,” he answered. He swerved the Spyder to miss a chunk of ice that flew off the rear end of a garbage truck.
“Taco Bell? I got all dressed up for Taco Bell?”
Liam’s eyes flickered over me. “That’s dressed up? You’re lucky I want to be seen with you in public.”
I reached over and slugged him.
We were feeling proud of ourselves for slipping out under Dad’s nose. He was comatose on the couch, lulled asleep by a hockey game, comforted in the knowledge, no doubt, that Liam and I were safely locked away in our holding cells. Wake up, Dad.
It didn’t surprise me that Liam had an extra set of keys to the Spyder. What did shock me was that he’d so openly defy Dad by taking the car out after Dad had expressly forbidden him to drive it.
“I brought the fuchsia sweater and my black jeans,” Liam said. “How do you think that’ll look?”
“You wouldn’t catch me dead in fuchsia. But hey, that’s me.”
Liam said, “It wouldn’t hurt you to add a little color to your wardrobe, you know. Everything you own is so drab.”
“I had my colors done,” I informed him. “Drab matches my personality perfectly. Gray is so ultra, über me.”
He shook his head.
What? It was true.
We’d driven a mile or so in silence when the mood in the car changed. Liam’s face muscles clenched and he gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turned white.
“Which wig are you going to wear?” I asked, trying to distract him, engage Luna.
“The brunette pageboy,” he answered automatically.
“Good choice,” I said, even though I thought the pageboy made him look like a throwback to the twenties. Maybe that was the look he was going for. I remember staggering out of bed one night to go to the bathroom and finding Liam glued to the TV watching this silent movie:
Diary of a Lost Girl.
He’d seen it a hundred times. Still, he’d smiled dreamily at the screen, totally engrossed. He adored old movies, don’t ask me why. I thought they were hokey.
We exited at Washington Street and headed downtown. Downtown? I almost said what I was thinking: Why so public? We could find a Taco Bell at a strip mall. Minimize the risk; eat in the car. He seemed to know what he was doing, though. Typical Liam — he always measured every angle.
We pulled into an upscale Taco Bell beside a Virgin Records music store. The place was packed, people streaming in and out the door. Liam turned off the ignition and froze, his hands in a death grip on the steering wheel. If I had to talk him into it again, forget it.
“Okay,” he said. “Here’s the plan.”
I flinched at the command in his voice.
He reached over the seat back and retrieved a yellow placard with a link of chain attached. “You go in and check out the girls’ restroom. Make sure it’s empty, then give me a signal. Once I’m in, hang this sign on the door.”
It was a custodian’s warning notice: Temporarily Out of Order.
“Where’d you steal this?”
He grinned sheepishly.
I took the placard and opened my door. Liam grabbed his duffel and followed me as far as the front bumper. “Stay in the hall and guard the restroom until I’m done,” he said.
“Duh.” I widened my eyes at him. “Do you want me to wear this around my neck, too?”
He sneered. His expression sobered. “Thanks, Re. I know I owe you. I owe you so much I’ll never be able to pay it all back.”
My eyes dropped. “Just hurry,” I told him. “I’m starving.”
There were only six or eight tables free. It was noisy, chaotic. People were too busy eating to register a guy slipping into the girls’ restroom, I hoped. Nobody seemed suspicious of this drab queen either, loitering around the toilets for a day and a half. The smell of spicy hamburger made my stomach growl. I loved Taco Bell. Liam knew that.
I checked my watch. What was taking so long? If she was posing —
“Re. Hi. What are you doing here?”
I jettisoned through the ceiling.
Chris smiled at me. Chris? My bones disintegrated. “Uh, fine,” I said.
He made a face.
“Wait. What was the question?”
He laughed. “I never expected to see you clear down here.” He dumped his trash in the bin beside me and stacked his tray on top.
“Well, here I am.” My voice sounded wobbly. Same as my knees. “So. How are you? Traitor.”
He grimaced. “Yeah, I meant to talk to you about that.”
I shot him my best killer look. It was a half-hearted effort, since I was thrilled to see him. Or would’ve been if —
My eyes darted to the restroom door. No movement. I willed Chris to leave. No, stay. Leave.
He propped himself against the opposite wall, shoving his hands into his front pockets. “I didn’t mean to bail on you, Regan. But ...um...” He seemed uncertain, ready to bolt.
“That’s okay,” I said quickly. Don’t go.
“No, it’s not okay.” He held my eyes. “After that quiz, which I knew I bombed, I had to get out of there. I only took chemistry because I needed a science credit and figured, Hey, how hard can chemistry be? Mix A and B. Pour in C. Heat and serve.”
I snorted.
Chris cricked a lip at me. “Yeah, no one told me you had to be a math jock.” He crossed his eyes.
It made me laugh. He had a knack. He was cute.
“I suck at math. And I couldn’t fail the class. I’ve got to keep a C average to play ball. You know?”
I nodded, like I did.
Someone wrenched open the entrance door and stuck his head in. “What are ya doin’, man? We’re ready to go.”
“I’m coming. Don’t get your balls in a sling.”
The guy glanced over at me, then back at Chris. He rolled his eyes. “One minute, man.” The door swung shut behind him.
“I would’ve helped you with the math,” I told him. “You didn’t have to drop.”
“Yeah, I did, Regan.”
My name again. It made my stomach flutter.
“I knew the only way to pass that class would be to use you, and . . . okay.” He ground his shoe into a chunk of taco shell on the floor. “I confess that was sort of my plan. At first.” He raised his head and met my eyes. “I noticed you got A’s on the tests when we were memorizing elements and stuff the first couple weeks in class. But I just couldn’t do it. You were too cool. I liked you.”
My heart raced. What did that mean, he liked me?
“Oh, shit,” someone said in my face. A woman with a screaming toddler. She twisted around and whined to her friend, “It’s out of order.”
Shit was right. I checked my watch. What was Luna doing in there? It’d been forty minutes. The bigger question was, what if she made her grand entrance at this very moment? A horn honked out front, snagging Chris’s attention. “You better go,” I told him. I willed him away. Far away.
“They can wait.” Chris raked his fingers through his hair. Nice fingers, not slender and shaved like Liam’s. Guy fingers. “You never told me what you were doing here. Do you come downtown a lot? Because my sister has a loft right around the corner.” He thumbed over his shoulder. “We could maybe meet there. I could stay downtown today if —”
“No!” My bark echoed in the hallway. “I mean, I never come here. I’m just waiting for someone.”
He followed my eyes down the corridor. I felt his whole demeanor alter, shift. Same way it had before. A horn blared and, out of the passenger side window, Chris’s friend flipped him the bird. “You really should go,” I said.
Chris pushed off the wall. “I guess so.”
His tone of voice suggested . . .
The door slammed shut behind him. Out of order on the girls’ room. Me waiting for someone. Someone in the men’s room? Is that what he thought?
“No, Chris. Wait!”
I’d taken two steps toward the door when car tires squealed out of the lot and, at the same moment, Luna emerged from the restroom.
“What a rush. What a total rush.” She kept repeating it on the way home. “What a rush. A total rush.” She was like Mom on the phone with Handy Andy — yammering away a hundred miles a minute, faster than anyone could listen or re-spond. “No one read me. They didn’t know. They didn’t even blink.”
Luna was wrong. Several people did more than blink. After we got our orders at Taco Bell, the cashier grabbed one of the assembly goons and whispered to him, pointing at Luna. They both snickered, then alerted the other employees. Every hair on my body stood at attention, afraid one or more of them might come over to our table and make a scene. A guy in a jumpsuit across the room had spotted Luna and glommed onto her. He gawked at her the whole time we ate. When he finished his meal, he made a point of meandering through the aisles, taking the long route to the exit, deliberately passing our table. He slowed and stood for a moment, staring. The expression on his face — God. Disgust, loathing, I don’t know what it was, but it made me cower in fear.
I prayed he’d go away and he finally left.
Thank God Luna hadn’t noticed. She just kept eating her tostada and sipping from her straw. How could she not have noticed? She had to have noticed. She wasn’t blind.
After lunch we’d wandered around the renovated area of lower downtown. Luna was bolder this time out, leading me into Banana Republic, the Sharper Image, a leather store to look at purses. She bought a purse on sale for fifty-eight dollars. Last purse I got was a Wal-Mart special — $4.76, marked down from $5.53. The whole time we were out it felt as if people’s eyes were on us. Undressing us. Exposing her, and me. How could she not feel it? How could she miss the stares?
It was bizarre. Unreal. As if she knew what was happening and didn’t even care.
Liam’s whole life was caring what other people saw when they looked at him. What if, after he’d done his best to appear as Luna—to
be
her, the girl he pictured inside — all people saw was a boy in girls’ clothes?
When Liam talked about the cost of transitioning, is this what he meant? Because this was more than I could bear. This was costing him his dignity.
L
una didn’t wake me at two A.M.I was already awake. I couldn’t sleep. The scene with Chris in the hallway played out in my head like a tragic opera. The soprano and the baritone. She wins him. She loses him. She longs for him. At last they reunite, then she dies in his arms. In my opera, though, I wasn’t in his arms. I was alone at the end, a dying swan.
I must’ve made Chris think I was putting him off. The other time, too, when he asked me to the rave. Shopping with my sister — I’m sure. It had to make Chris feel diminished, rejected, unwanted. I couldn’t stand that. I had to talk to him. As soon as possible. Monday. I’d find him, explain how I was waiting for my brother at Taco Bell. The other time, too. My brother again.
It’s always about my brother.
My brother was a black hole in my universe. He was sucking the life right out of me. It seemed as if I was being pulled into this crater by a force I couldn’t fight. Liam was already down there. We were together at the bottom. The crater was deep and dark and closing in on us. We couldn’t move, couldn’t rise, couldn’t see to find our way out.
Chris had to know it wasn’t about him. It was me, and my duty to Liam. Chris didn’t have to know about Liam. I was interested, available. That’s all the information he was required to have.
Third period, during study hall, I set up surveillance at the gym. I figured Chris had to show up there eventually.
Bingo. Right after lunch he jogged past my stakeout behind the open door. Through the wired security window, I saw him drop his backpack on the floor and lope over to a couple of guys who were shooting hoops. He asked if he could join them.
Damn. I sank to the floor again. I couldn’t barge in there now like I was some love-starved groupie, stalking him. Which, in actuality, I was.
I cursed myself for not revising Act II of my tragic opera. It needed a climactic moment where the conniving diva figures out a way to lure the unsuspecting baritone into her lair.
Liam’s goddess must’ve been smiling down on me — for once. The bell for fifth period rang and the other two guys hustled off to class, leaving Chris alone, dribbling around the foul line and under the basket. He layed one up.
Whoosh.
The shot was beautiful, and so was he. Not in a movie star way, or a jockster way, or even a tall, dark, and hot kind of way. He wasn’t as tall as Liam, or even perfectly proportioned. His parts were all in place, for sure. But he needed a shave. His nose was crooked, like it’d been broken. He wore faded jeans and a crewneck sweater that he’d chopped off above the elbows. Sloppy, shabby even. But cool. I don’t know what it was about him. He was a regular guy. Nice. Ordinary. Maybe that was the attraction.
“Do it now,” I heard myself say.
My feet didn’t obey.
“Now!”
“Okay, don’t get your balls in a sling.” Was that me? Who was I talking to? There was no me. I was without matter, with-out form. I stood, walked around the open door, and took one step inside the gym. Then pivoted and skittered off down the hall like the spineless chicken I am and always will be because I’m such a coward and disgust myself for being so scared of everything and everyone that I’ll never have a life, ordinary or otherwise.
Dad’s crusty VW — the one he’d rebuilt himself — was parked in the driveway at home. He’s home early, I thought. Or did they change his schedule again at the Home Depot? His boss, who was like eighteen, was always doing that to him. Forcing him to work the graveyard shift so he could inventory the nails and wood screws. Or transferring him to Interior Design and Window Coverings, which Dad dreaded. He said he came off looking like a numbskull every time a customer had a question about how to measure miniblinds. For about a year after he got tanked at Sears, Dad had babbled on and on about how no one is indispensable and that loyalty means nothing anymore.