Ziggy, Stardust and Me

by James Brandon

  I drop the baskets and run, pushing through elbows and bellies to find him lost in another apocalyptic thunder of coughs.

  “Should we call a doctor?” someone else says.

  “Is that his kid?” another says.

  “Someone should help him,” a woman says.

  I kneel next to him, but he pushes me away. “I’m fine!” he coughs out. “Let . . . me be!” He slowly stands, wavers over to a net fence, trying to steady himself. It folds in and he smashes to the ground, tangling himself in a web of orange plastic and another quake of coughs. Jesus.

  The woman screams.

  “Someone call for a doctor!” another man yells.

  She starts running toward the tent, but somehow between a convulsing net and chest Dad yells, “STOP.”

  We do. And watch him lying there like a car wreck as he slowly catches his breath again. He heaves in and out. In and out. The redness in his face and eyes softens to a flushed pink. He reaches toward me. With the help of a big-bellied extra, I lift him up.

  “You sure you’re okay, mister?” he says, holding Dad’s other arm steady.

  Dad nods, waves absently in the air. “Fine, fine,” he says. He takes in a few deep breaths, lets out a few more deep coughs. “Good goddamn . . . Couldn’t catch . . . my breath . . . sorry . . . ’bout that, folks!”

  “You need us to call you a doctor or somethin’?”

  “No, no . . . I’m fine,” he says, undoing the man’s arm. “Man, I gotta . . . quit these things.” He pats the cigarettes in his pocket and forces a laugh. “Thank you all. Sorry again . . . I’m fine, really. Let’s go, son.”

  We push our way through the crowd. “Dad, seriously, you okay?”

  “Yeahyeah. How . . . goddamn embarrassing. Get me to . . . the car.”

  I plop him in the passenger seat.

  “You get the fireworks?” he wheezes.

  “Oh. No. We should go—”

  “No. Here.” He fishes through his pocket, hands me a wadded twenty. “Go get ’em. And tell the guy to . . . keep the rest . . . so he can . . . get the fence fixed.” He’s leaning over, propping himself up with one hand on the dash, the other on the door, trying to control his breathing again.

  I hand him PeterPaulandMary. “Here,” I say. “Maybe this’ll help.”

  He shoos me away.

  When I return a few minutes later hauling an overstuffed box, Dad’s sitting upright, eyes closed. His chest expands like a hot air balloon. “Take me to the market,” he says as I climb in.

  “Maybe we should go home, get you to—”

  “Drive.” I do.

  Along the way, he recites a list of things he’d promised to get Heather for the big Fourth of July pig roast tomorrow night. Damn. Forgot about that.

  I start scheming my way back across the lake . . .

  * * *

  —

  Everyone’s gone when we return.

  “I need to disappear,” Dad says when we climb back in the trailer. “And you’re stayin’ put, you hear me?”

  “Okay.”

  He guzzles cough syrup like he would a bottle of beer and within minutes he’s passed out.

  Yeah, Dad, I feel ya. I grab the bottle and glug a few gulps to fall asleep, too.

  Sometimes disappearing from yourself is the only cure.

  44.

  MY HEAD FEELS LIKE it’s stuck in a fishbowl. Like the one I wore with Aunt Luna at the moon landing.

  What time is it? No clue. Night-fifteen. I think I must have fallen through a black hole in my sleep: no dreams, it’s pitch-black inside and out, and dead silent. Except for the cicadas. Tonight they’re extra-loud.

  I peek my head through the curtain. No lights in Heather’s trailer. Her rusted Bug still sits in the driveway, but the Caddy’s gone. Maybe they went to DQ for dinner. Did he ask me if I wanted to go? Did he try and wake me? Not that I would have, obviously, but if he did, I don’t remember.

  I slap myself a few times, try to snap myself back to reality—

  “You should be kinder to yourself.”

  “SHIT.” I throw my body against the side of the trailer.

  Hal. Sitting in the shadows on the corner of Dad’s bed, like the Grim Reaper.

  “You scared me. What are you doing?” I gather the sheets around me. For protection, I guess, I don’t know. Every muscle instantly tightens.

  “Sorry, sorry,” he says. He’s smiling. I can hear it, but I can’t see it. “Everyone left and I thought we could make some barbecue or something, but you were asleep and I didn’t want to bother you. So. I waited.”

  My scar’s twitching. Wires are furiously being rewired within. My body’s paralyzed but my mind’s racing in some Olympian sprint. Because it knows.

  “Oh. Well. You could’ve maybe waited outside?” I say.

  “This is my fucking home.” Instant shift. From sugar sweet to serial killer. I can’t even begin to navigate whatever the hell this negative is.

  He laughs. “But you’re right. You are the guest. Just didn’t think you’d care on account we’re secret buds and all.” He’s slowly twisting a knife in my gut, pinning me against the trailer like a dead dung beetle. “I mean, you disappeared the other night, and . . . well . . . remember what I said . . . there’s eyes all over this lake . . . Anyway, I’ll go. If you want.”

  “That’d be great,” I say.

  He doesn’t move.

  Neither do I.

  Then he unfolds his hands, places them on Dad’s bed like he’s about to prop himself up. But instead: “Do I scare you, Jonathan?”

  I cannot see his face, masked by the shadows of the trailer, but I can picture it: a pockmarked rat with copper eyes slithering around me, and that crooked scar always smirking on his left cheek.

  “I don’t mean to if I do,” he says. “Just the opposite. I’d hoped we could be friends.”

  I inch across the trailer wall.

  “Or we could be each other’s secret-holder. Everyone needs a secret-holder in their life, right?”

  A spring creaks on his bed. I freeze.

  “Listen. It’s tough for us out here. You know what I mean . . . Hard to find others like us . . . and when I saw you that night with that Indian . . .”

  I creep to the end of my bed, flattening myself against the curve of the wall.

  “I really don’t want to have to hurt you. You’re so . . . what’s the word? Fragile . . . as it is . . . so, it’s simple really. We’ll help each other out: You do as I say; I don’t tell. How’s that sound?”

  Another spring creaks on his bed. He’s moving toward me, ready to pounce.

  “You’re drunk. I’ll tell my dad,” I quiver out.

  “Awwww, you’ll t-t-t-tell your d-d-d-dad? That’s sweet.” Bedspring creak, his hands lift and disappear in the darkness. “You think he’ll believe his faggot kid over me?” His voice drops a few octaves. “Hey, Robert. I was just gettin’ a beer from the fridge, man, and he came at me like some goddamned queer. I don’t know what to say, man, but I’m gonna have to call the cops.”

  He’s inches away. “Sound convincing enough?” Puffs of his breath slice through the darkness: soured beer and rotted meat. Finally, his face pierces the shadows and—

  NOW.

  I spring for the door. His hands clamp around my waist, throwing me back on the bed. My head slams against the steel wall.

  “Where you goin’?” His voice slows down like it’s a record player set on the wrong speed. His knees lock my legs down.

  “GETOFFME!”

  He slaps his hand over my face; it smells like fish guts. “You’re only making this harder on yourself.”

  I try to punch him but he grabs my hand with such force I think it’s broken now. I scream.

  “What the hell did I say?” He smacks
me. Hard. Smothers my mouth with his palm. “I know you want it. It’s okay. I seen the way you been lookin’ at me. I won’t tell—”

  I can’t move. I can’t breathe. I try telling him this. Try telling him I need PeterPaulandMary from my pocket. I can’t. I can’t open my mouth. I cough but it only sends a spasm through my body. Tears push against my eyelids even though I try to hold them back.

  Everything tightens: his knees against my legs, his hands against my arms, his breath against my neck.

  I float.

  Let go, I think. Give in, I think. Play dead, I think.

  “There you go. See, it’s not so bad, is it? We can help each other . . .”

  His grip loosens some.

  I don’t move. I wait. I breathe. I wait.

  His hand reaches for my shorts, and—KA-BAM—I throw my knee into his nuts so hard I swear I hear something shatter. He falls over, wailing some crazy high-pitched scream that disappears in the cicada rattles.

  I kick and fumble through the tangled sheets, hurdle over his body, which is wedged between the beds. He’s writhing back and forth in a ball of pain. Noises I’ve never heard. I grab my satchel, throw open the trailer door, and run.

  I run so fast I can’t feel the earth below me.

  I run to the only place I feel safe anymore. Even though I know it’s the most unsafe of them all. Web’s. I don’t care if they catch me. I don’t know what else to do.

  I cross to the other side of the lake in a matter of minutes, in between a thousand PeterPaulandMary poofs. Just keep going. When I reach the bottom of the steps, I stop.

  Breathe. Wipe my face, pat down my hair, tuck my shirt in my shorts, lift up my tube socks. Breathe.

  Muffled laughs.

  Knock knock knock on the closed screen door.

  Silence.

  A chair scoots; the door creeps open a few inches. His grandfather. He opens it wider with his growing smile. “Jonathan! To what do we owe this honor?”

  “Is Web here?” I say this like we’re neighbors and I just came by to see if he can play.

  “Of course! Come in!”

  Everyone sits at the table. Web jumps up, because he knows. “What’s happened? What’s wrong?”

  I burst into tears.

  He runs over, strokes my hair, and whispers, “Shhhh, shhhhh . . . you’re okay now,” before leading me to his room.

  We sit on his bed and he holds me and I’m sure I will be crying in his arms for the rest of my life.

  45.

  WHEN I WAKE, I am wrapped in a sheath of force fields from every superhero ever created since the dawn of man. Invincible from destruction. Safe from enemy peril. Protected from being touched or hurt or shamed ever again.

  Web.

  We’re lying on his bed, glued together.

  After I cried a monsoon, I curled up on his floor with a pillow and sheet, and when everyone went to bed, Web pulled me into his. “What if your family walks in,” I said. “They won’t,” he said. I was too tired to argue, and within minutes we fell asleep.

  His arms envelop me. His lips press against my neck. His hair sticks to my back. He is my life support. The electric pulses swimming from his body pierce my nerves, but they’re the only things keeping me alive right now . . .

  The soft glow of the slivered moonlight pricks through the boarded windows and patched walls. Everyone has long been asleep.

  I slow my breath to match his. So we become one.

  “You awake?” he asks. I swear it’s my own voice, so I do not answer.

  He kisses my neck, snuggles his nose in my nape.

  “Web?” I barely whisper.

  He lifts his head. “Yeah?”

  “You’re awake?”

  “I never fell asleep.”

  “You didn’t?”

  “No.”

  “Oh.”

  Each word follows the next like we’re talking for each other. Like I can hear his thoughts in my own brain, speak his words out of my own mouth.

  He buries his forehead back in my neck. “You were talking in your sleep,” he says.

  “I was?”

  “Yeah.”

  My eyes are closed, but I feel like we’re looking at each other, like we did on top of the cliff.

  “What was I saying?”

  He doesn’t answer.

  I open my eyes, stare at the tie-dyed sheet pulled down over his door.

  “Did he hurt you?” he asks.

  “Who?”

  “Hal.”

  His face flashes in the darkness: gnarled and maimed and hungry. He must know where I am. I wonder if he’s told Dad yet. I wonder if he’s on his way. No. He’s waiting. Or he would’ve been here by now. Maybe I really did hurt him. I close my eyes, shake my head to shake it all free.

  “No, why would you—”

  “You kept saying his name, telling him to stop—”

  “He didn’t hurt me. Not really. Not like that,” I say.

  “What did he do to you?”

  “Nothing. He’s just . . . trying to scare me is all.”

  “Why?”

  “Because . . . he saw us that night.”

  He’s silent. I cannot tell him what almost happened. And I will not. Ever. I’m too ashamed. But also, the Wrath of Web is sure to come torpedoing out and every ending I’ve thought of in that scenario does not end well.

  “So help me, if he so much as lays a finger on you—” See?

  I flip over to face him. His eyes spark with comet-fire. This close, they ignite my nerve endings. A shock flares through me. I do not flinch. “He didn’t. Okay? And can we not talk about him right now? Please?”

  He studies me. Hard. Then he kisses the spot between my eyebrows. “What do you want to talk about?” he asks, nuzzling back on the pillow.

  “I shouldn’t be in bed with you. What if they walk in? What if we get caught?”

  “We won’t. They sleep through tornadoes. Besides, they already know about me and they don’t—”

  I sit up. “They know?”

  “Yeah—”

  “When did you tell them? How’d they find out?”

  “Last year. The first guy I ever kissed . . . it didn’t end well. I ran home so angry I punched a few holes in the wall.”

  “Oh . . .”

  “That’s when I told them. Everything. They’ve known my whole life, I guess. To them it’s a good thing—”

  “A good thing?”

  “Let’s just lie here and—”

  “How is it a good thing, Web. Tell me. Please.”

  He sighs, brushes his fingers through my hair. “I don’t know, I guess my people revered people like me once. Like forever ago. Because they thought we had some special healing powers or something . . . like, we have these two spirits, male and female, dancing in us—”

  “Really?”

  “They see it as a gift.”

  “A gift?”

  “Yeah . . . Come here, lie back down with me.” He wraps his arms around my waist; I snuggle into him, ignoring the sting.

  A gift? It’s always been a curse in my world. A curse that can never be broken. The only other time I’ve seen the words gay and good together was in that Interview magazine Starla gave me, the day she told me she was leaving for the summer. But I never thought it was actually possible. Not in our world . . .

  Maybe . . . it is . . . I mean, I know I can’t be fixed, but maybe . . . that’s . . . a good thing . . .

  We stare at the ceiling. Our thoughtstrings float skyward, sucked into a water stain that looks like a black hole. I wonder if this is the entrance to elsewhen, a parallel universe . . . Because being with him here, in his arms . . . it feels . . .

  “Want me to tell you a story?” he whispers.

  “Ar
en’t you tired?”

  “Are you kiddin’, man? Sleep with you here, like this? Not a chance.”

  I curl into his chest. We’re forehead to forehead, smiling, and for a moment I’m so happy I feel like we just discovered a new planet. “Okay, then. Tell me a story.”

  “It’s a good one,” he says. “I think you’ll love it.” He wipes some sweat from his brow and without thinking I take his hand and wipe it on my cheek. I have no idea why I do this, but he doesn’t seem to notice.

  “Once there was an angry young boy who had a vision. And in this vision he floated in a lake shaped like a torn heart, looking up at the stars. And the stars started dropping from the sky.” He takes his fingers and slowly twiddles them down my cheeks. “And when they fell to earth, they turned into white spiders dancing all around him.” His fingers tickle my neck, my arms, my chest. “And as they danced, they spun their threads, until the boy was caught in a cocoon, trapped. He yelled for help, but no one came. Until—” With a poof, he explodes his hands over my face. “A star fell from the sky and turned into another boy. And this boy was covered in streaks of color and he smiled and said, ‘I’m here.’

  “And the color-streaked boy took the cocoon-wrapped boy to shore and carefully untied him thread by thread.” He’s fake-pulling thoughtstrings from my head into the wind. “And as he threw each thread in the water, it began mending the broken lake stitch by stitch, until the last little thread that set the boy free was thrown in the water and sealed the broken heart together. Forever.”

  His palm lands on my chest.

  We do not move.

  “Is that the end of the story?” I ask.

  “No. It’s only the beginning . . .”

  “Web?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Kiss me.”

  His lips fall into mine, and KABOOM, a flash of brilliant white light explodes out of us, so bright I am permanently blinded. And we tangle ourselves together . . .