South of Sunshine (23 page)

“Let me ask you something, Kaycee,” Andrew says. Something about his sneering causes me to shiver. “How do you decide who’s the bitch between you and the dyke whore Bren. Huh?”

I freeze, terrified to say anything.

“If you see that half-bred lesbian again, ask her if she liked my Photoshop skills.” Andrew gets appreciative laughs from his plaid cows. “We ran one dyke out of town. No reason why we can’t do it again.”

My body grows ice cold. I can’t tell if it’s anger or fear or shock I feel from knowing that someone I’ve known most of my life could be this cruel. Or worse, that I allowed myself to ignore the tiny comments and actions over the years for fear I’d be found out. I’m at a loss for what to say or even do. If Bren were here, she’d know how to smooth things over, keep the peace, and make everything all right. But she’s not here. She’s never coming back thanks to this jackass. As much as I want to explode all my anger on him, I know it’s pointless. The loss of this night feels like the death of hope. Some people, no matter what anyone does, will never be able to see beyond their hate.

Behind me, I hear the office door open. “Why’d y’all turn the lights on? It’s bright as heck out there—” Sarabeth looks up from her phone and skids to a stop.

Andrew stands to full attention. The shock of seeing Sarabeth with us wipes the smug grin off his face. “Don’t tell me you’re helping these freaks, sugar. Don’t do this to us.” He makes a move to approach her, but she scoots next to me.

“These
freaks
are my friends. And there is no us. Not anymore.”

Andrew jabs a finger in the air. “That was your doing, not mine. What you and I had was good. Don’t tell me they converted you to that gay stuff too?”

“Did you get dropped on your head as a baby or something? Do you even realize how stupid you sound? Convert me to being gay,” says Sarabeth. “Yeah, that makes about as much sense as converting me to black. They’re born that way, you idiot.”

Words fly between them. Crappy parts of their relationship that have been a long time coming are flung back and forth. They argue a bit, and finally Andrew says, “Fine, ruin your life with these clowns. When your reputation goes down the toilet, don’t come crying to me for a good time. You, that dyke, and her faggot friend need to get your asses off my property.”

“What is all this yelling about? I can hear you all the way outside.” Chuck the Buck strolls in through the office door.

Crap!
I look to Van and shake my head. We are screwed now.

“Oh hey, Andrew. How’s it going?” Chuck’s eyes go big as he looks to Sarabeth, confused. Now I’m not so sure why he’s here.

“I thought we were friends.” Andrew seems shocked as well. “You picking their side now?”

“Come on, man. They just want to throw a little pink on it, spruce it up. Why not let them do their thing?”

He’s here for us? My heart goes pitter-patter for the big lug. Something always told me he was a softy under all that hayseed plowboy.

“And yeah, I guess I am on their side.” Chuck tugs proudly on his pink shirt.
Holton County Pig Catching Contest
is stamped on the front, and a pig’s rear end, complete with coiled tail, is on the back.

“Chuck, I said rainbow, not pink,” Sarabeth scolds. It’s a harsh whisper we all hear.

Chuck throws his hands out. “It’s the only gay shirt I’ve got.”

“Just because they’re gay, doesn’t mean they all wear pink.” Sarabeth turns to Van. “Do they, Van?”

“Why am I the expert on gay attire all of a sudden?”

“Are you girls done?” asks Andrew. He steps forward. “You pansies talk shopping somewhere else. If you think you can take this float all by yourself, Chuck my boy, then bring it on.” On cue, Andrew’s plaid buddies step up to the plate behind him. It’s a lot of USDA beef staring us down. Even though Chuck is a linebacker, I don’t think he can take them all on.

“Come on, man. It doesn’t have to be like this.” Chuck sidesteps over to the huge shed door. His hand pauses on the handle just before he rolls it up. A loud clickety-clack repeats until it’s completely open. Just outside, Terrance Carver and a few boys from the basketball team sit in the back of Chuck’s truck. From the passenger window I see LaShell; she gives me a small wave. The sight of more allies gives me the tiniest hope. I scan the faces of the few kids who came to help—a small group, but I’m grateful for their presence even if we don’t get the float.

“Ooh,” Van says, sucking in a mockingly painful gasp. “There’s like one, two, three, four … nine of us and three of them,” Van says to me, not so much a whisper. I nudge him in the ribs. Andrew gears his shoulders back, as if numbers don’t matter to him.

“He’s got a point,” I say. “What are the three of you going to do? Fight us all, girls included?” I make a shaky laugh and pray like the dickens that’s not what he’s planning. For a moment, Andrew’s boys waver, looking to one another as if deciding whether or not this is worth the fight. I seize the opportunity. “Chuck,” I call over my shoulder, “hook up the truck.”

Chuck the Buck doesn’t waste a second. He tells one of the guys to back his truck into the garage, and he readies the hitch.

“We’re taking the float. You can’t stop us all.” I hesitate only a moment before willing myself to move despite my fear. I toss my car keys to LaShell, tell her to follow Sarabeth, and drive my car back into town.

Terrance—like the pit bull he is—keeps a guard-dog watch on Andrew and his buddies while they have a whispering powwow on what they should do. Before they can make their minds up, Chuck and the guys have the trailer hitched and secured.

I look at Andrew. “I’m sorry.” I don’t know why I’m apologizing. Maybe I feel sorry for Andrew because no matter what, he’ll never see the wrong of his part in all of this. Van and I hop into the back of Chuck’s truck with a few guys from the basketball team. I know Van’s feeling the same need I am, to protect what is ours.

We tear off down the long country road back into town. Chuck the Buck leads the way with our Tennessee Treasures float trailing behind. Sheets of tinsel tatter in the breeze, and the backdrop of the Grand Ole Opry bends against the pressure of the wind.

I bang on the cab roof. “Slow down, Chuck. Or you’re gonna rip Elvis’s head right off.” He slows just enough to stop Elvis from being decapitated. The stapled-down tinsel sheets no longer flap madly.

A whooping “Yeehaw,” screams through the night. Chuck shakes a victory fist out the driver’s side window, honking his horn. Hell yeahs and high fives make the rounds in the back. Sarabeth honks her horn like a mad woman behind us. LaShell does the same.

The night sky sparkles with starlight. An exhilarating thrill runs up my spine when I think about what we are about to do. People who I never thought would support me now stand with me. They are taking my cause and making it their own. After this night, Sunshine will never be able to go back to being the same place it used to be, at least not with the youth. We’ll spend the rest of tonight converting this float into a thing of beauty. Tomorrow, our voices will be heard. Tonight has been just perfect.

Well, almost perfect.

If Bren were here to see me now, maybe she would forget all those awful things I said to her last. I face toward the side of the truck. The wind whips my hair into a bird’s nest around my head, hiding my tears. Van squeezes my hand. I can’t hide anything from him.

Who knows, maybe at the end of the school year I’ll make a road trip to Boston. See her again. Probably won’t ever happen, but I let myself believe for a moment that I would actually drive there … and that she would
want
to see me.

Chapter 23

My eyes zoom out of focus as I stare at the colorful spray paint on my hands. An entire night of no sleep is starting to mess with my consciousness. It’s in these moments of exhaustion that I’m weak and let my mind slip to thoughts of Bren. I can almost see her lifting my knuckles to her lips and kissing them. The pain of not having her is too strong. I shake the thought from my head. A vague awareness slowly lifts the fog; I wake out of my revelry. Sights and sounds snap to life like a rubber band.

“You all right?” asks Van.

“Yep, all good.” Voices of chatter and a flurry of activity buzz all around me. It takes a minute or two for my brain to get back online, and then I remember where I am: the auction warehouse off Bells highway. It’s a property owned by LaShell’s uncle. Someplace large enough to work on the float, but nowhere Andrew and his plaid cows would ever think to search.

“Here, drink this.”

I accept the Red Bull that Van shoves in my hand and guzzle down the sweet nectar.

“Your mother called a few minutes ago on Sarabeth’s phone to check in. You should call her back.”

“Thanks.” When I knew I wouldn’t be home by midnight, I called Mother from Sarabeth’s phone to tell her we were pulling an all-nighter to fix the float. Last-minute sabotages have been known to happen in the past. Technically, we were the ones sabotaging—minor details. I think she was so happy I had my friends back, she called off the so-called suicide watch—not that she really needed to worry about that to begin with.

“Good morning, sunshine,” Sarabeth says to me. She took off at two a.m. but looks like she’s had a full night’s rest—hair perfectly smooth, clothes crisp, and a face full of makeup. I don’t even want to know what my crow’s nest of hair looks like.

“Here. You might need these.” Sarabeth hands me a fresh set of clothes and a small tote with an arsenal of toiletries and makeup.

“You’re the best.” I make use of the unisex concrete bathroom. With cold water on my face and the Red Bull kicking in, I’m already starting to feel more alive.

A few minutes later, I emerge from the bathroom looking and feeling a little less homeless. And thanks to Sarabeth, I have clean, comfy jeans that feel like home. “So, how much more do we have to do?” I ask Van through a yawn.

“Float is done. We should clear everybody out. The parade will be starting soon.”

I turn around to see the final product. My breath catches. What took us weeks to prepare, we have redecorated, and rethemed in one night. We, as in my small core of friends, a couple of eccentric art students, a few sci-fi tech geeks, and an outcast redneck or two from the wrong side of the tracks—my new clan of nonconformists. Terrance’s basketball buddies helped with stealing the float, but they took off before we redecorated it. They didn’t want to be a part of the entire scandal. I guess I can understand that.

There was a decent group of people to help out, maybe fifteen of us. I owe every one of them my gratitude. Van and I stand back and admire our handiwork. Thanks to Sarabeth confiscating the leftover supplies from the past years’ school events, we had enough to change the float.

The red barn backdrop of the Grand Ole Opry now shimmers with a colorful hodge-podge of metallic tinsels. Elvis stands proud in the field of purple glitter irises—the only thing we didn’t change. His once infamous white suit the twins took home and fabric-dyed it in an array of colors. All the musical notes on the Graceland gates have been repainted in different colors with matching glitter trim. Then there’s the best part—the gold-painted homecoming king and queen thrones that Sarabeth and I painstakingly covered in clear rhinestones have been spray painted over in rainbow colors.

“Holy pot of gold, Van. It looks like a unicorn puked on the whole thing and made it a giant sparkly rainbow. We done good.” I loop my arms around him in a big fat hug.

Chuck the Buck walks up to check out all our hard work, a rainbow afro springing and swaying on top of his head. “More like the unicorn took a dump.”

“Ew, Chuck.”

“Really?” Van shakes his head.

“Come on, you big dope.” I smack him playfully.

“I’m just saying.” He shrugs, taking a bite of his doughnut.

“Guess we’ve got to get this thing moving.” I exhale a bundle of nerves.

“Not yet, Kaycee.” Chuck releases one of his sharp whistles. It gets everyone’s attention. “Any of you losers come through?” he asks the group.

“Sort of,” a squeaky voice calls. Pipsqueak Harry steps up in his mascot uniform, the giant wildcat head tucked under his arm. The colorful tie-dyed T-shirt over the uniform’s typical jersey is a nice touch. “I heard about what you were doing,” he says, glancing at Van—who obviously let the cat of the bag last week, “so I contacted some local business and told them the seniors were doing a service-learning project on equality to educate kiddos about bullying and hate crimes. And that we rethemed the homecoming parade to “Rainbow of Love” and asked for their Wildcat support. Not everybody was on board with the idea, but I think a couple might support us.” He shrugs with a smile.

I’m stunned into silence. Harry, who gets picked on all the time for his height—or lack thereof—went out of his way to do something for me? All I can do is nod my appreciation.

Misty speaks up, “And hey, we tried to get the school clubs to get with the rainbow program too.”

“But nobody really wanted to help out,” Melissa finishes. “Except for the Art Club. A girl named Kera? Kara? Keira?—something—said she’d do a banner for the Wildcat Wall uptown. Her parents own the pawnshop that it’s painted on. At least it’s something.”

They show me the posters they made for their vehicles:
Equality for All
,
Gay Pride Allies
, and
It’s Okay If You’re Gay
. A few show their support with colorful hair paint, rainbow balloon bouquets, and matching streamers on their trucks. Tawanda tells us how she contacted the primary schools and tried to coordinate a color-themed Equality Day, where each grade level represents a color of the rainbow, but it was too last minute for the school to consider.

“Wow, guys. I don’t even know what to say.” I look at Van, and even he seems a bit awestruck. All those faces stare back, expecting me to be epic or some shit. “I … I didn’t expect this. I don’t have the words to say how much it means to me that y’all—” My tears choke my voice.

“Aw. See that, guys, gay people have feelings too.” Van hugs me.

I shove him away and smile as I dry my eyes.

“Hey, let’s get this show rolling.” LaShell claps her hands, ready. “I told my little sisters to spread the word and vote for the seniors’ float. If they do, we’ll give them the most candy.”

“Oh my gosh … candy. Were you guys able to get candy?” Without candy, we have no chance at accomplishing our goal. We wouldn’t have the votes. It could make or break our win. We could have made our float out of toilet paper and chicken wire, and so long as we still rained down a thunderstorm of candy on the kids, we could’ve won this thing.

Chuck looks at Terrance. “Well?”

All eyes fall on Terrance. You could hear a pin drop for the silence that fills the room. It was a last-minute afterthought at ten thirty last night when we realized, in our thievery, that we forgot to steal the candy we had already purchased for the first float and had stored in Andrew’s shed.

It’s no longer about winning because we’re seniors and it’s our final year. Something bigger is at stake here. It’s hope. Hope that if we make a big enough statement, people in this town will have to start accepting Van and me and every other gay person here for who they are. They will no longer be able to sweep us under the rug.

Terrance sighs a long breath like a deflated tire. “I got four bags.”

I squeeze my eyes shut. “Please tell me you mean four giant black trash bags.”

“Nope.” He picks up the small grocery bags at his feet and drops them on the table.

Hands scramble for the bags, dumping the contents out. There are only a few handfuls of huge movie-theater-size candy boxes and oversized candy bars. I grab a king-size Almond Joy. “Dude, we can’t hurl this out into a crowd of children. We’re talking concussions here. What the heck? Did y’all go to Big Star? Wal-Mart?”

“Last night we went to Big Star, Wal-Mart, Parkman’s Grocery, and every Quick Stop and gas station in Sunshine. We even drove out to the beer store past the county line, and they were cleaned out. Something is up. There’s no way the other classes bought that much candy on such short notice.”

“Dang it,” Sarabeth bursts out, as she flings a candy bar across the table. “That son of a—”

“I was thinking the same thing, Sarabeth,” I say. Everyone looks at us for an explanation. “Andrew. I bet as soon as we left last night, Andrew and his buddies hit every store in town and bought up the last of their candy just to screw us over.” I plop down in the folding chair behind me, plant my elbows on my knees, and bury my face in my hands.

I hear somebody ask how Andrew could do this when he’s a senior too. There’s a brief discussion of what else we can toss to the kids since we don’t have candy. I cringe when someone suggests Mardi Gras beads.

I can’t help but feel that despite having come so far, it will always be like this. No matter where I go or what I do, there will always be naysayers waiting to spread their hate and stop progress. Sure, today we will still make our statement to the town, but winning would have made that statement just a little sweeter. Having to concede this round to Andrew and people like him knots my stomach.

“People,” Chuck the Buck says, banging a fist on the table, getting our attention. “We need to figure this out. We’re not going to win this thing unless we have candy.”

“Did somebody say candy?”

My heart skips a beat. For a second, I tell myself that my mind is playing tricks on me, that there is no way in the world I’ve heard correctly. But when gasps and cheery welcomes begin to spill out, I know it was not the voices in my head. I jump to my feet, but I don’t need to stand to see her. She towers over everyone else.

The few people left move out of the way, and Bren steps up to the table. Her muscles strain from the grocery bags of candy hanging on her arms. She dumps her loot. “There are, like, thirty more bags of the stuff in the trunk of my car.” She motions back over her shoulder with her thumb. Her eyes lift to meet mine. Her smile is reserved, something you might pass off to a stranger on the street.

I glance over at Van. He just shrugs. “I called for reinforcements.” I can’t believe he’s gone and done this. I don’t know if I should punch him or hug him. He and the others go out to Bren’s car to get the candy.

I tell my feet to move and my mouth to speak, but shock and awe keep me still. My heart runs the pony races, pounding my pulse in my ears. I’ve missed her so much, all I want to do is throw my arms around her. I can’t believe she’s standing here in the flesh. All those feelings for her come rushing back. They reaffirm exactly what I’m doing here. Thankfully I don’t need my brain to function because Bren walks up to me.

“Can we go outside and talk?” she asks, inclining her head toward the side door. There’s no warm and fuzzy smile. No soft lilt in her voice, just a straightforward you-and-me-and-words-need-to-be-had kind of tone.

I swallow the brick in my throat and nod my head. This is not going to be pretty. I guess I should be grateful she’s taking this outside, to chew me out in private. When I first saw her a moment ago, for a brief second I allowed myself to think she came back because of me, but no, she came back because Van asked her. And to give me a piece of her mind.

The morning sun blinds me. The metal door closes behind us. Bren stuffs her hands into her jeans pockets as if she needs to corral them before she ends up doing something stupid. The way I figure it, I should speak first before she has her say and leaves.

“I … I … I thought you were in Boston.”

That’s what I say? I haven’t seen Bren in weeks, and the last time I did, I totally dismissed her. This is the best I can do?

She opens her mouth to speak. “I’m sorry,” I blurt out, cutting her off. “I’m
so
sorry. For everything I said. I just didn’t know how to handle the situation. I didn’t know what to do or what to say. I acted like a little kid who didn’t want to get in trouble again, so crap flew out of my mouth before I could stop it and I—I’m just so, so sorry.”

Bren chews on her lip and stares off to the side. I’m just about to give up when she says, “At the time you said all those things to Sarabeth, I believed them. It hurt to hear it.” Her eyes meet mine. “Because you wouldn’t be the first straight girl to use me to ‘experiment.’”

“But I didn’t, I’m not—”

“Let me finish.”

This whole time she thought I was using her for some heterosexual game? Right now I feel like the lowest life-form on earth. I was too good at my own game of pretending to be something I wasn’t. When it came down to it, she believed my lie too.

“Then all that stuff happened to me and my family, and we left. Once we were settled, I tried to call you, left you messages. So when you never called me back, I assumed it was all true … until you called me this week. I didn’t want to listen to your message. I wanted to delete it, but I couldn’t.” She smiles at herself and shakes her head. “And when I heard your voice and listened to you bouncing all over the place with your apology, I could see you and your wavy hair. I realized how much I missed you.”

My heart stops beating, and I stand before her, grateful. She missed me. All this time, she missed me. The confession from her could not feel any sweeter.

“I should have known you were acting out of fear. I just wish you had called me back. Talked to me. I just needed to talk to you so bad. I don’t understand why you took so long to call me back.”

“Ugh,” I groan, exasperated. “My stupid phone. My stupid freaking phone. I’m such an idiot. I tossed it out the window—it’s a long, pathetic story. Your Instagram disappeared, and I thought you blocked me. Mother locked me off the computer. I had nothing. It doesn’t matter now. I’m glad to see you. I’m so glad you’re here.” The space between us feels like the size of a football field. I tuck my hands in my back pockets to keep from reaching out and touching her.