Where I End and You Begin

by Preston Norton

  Okay, so neither Wynonna nor I was what you would call a good dancer. If anyone had been hoping for the finale of Dirty Dancing with Baby and Patrick Swayze, they would be sorely disappointed.

  Wynezra and I proceeded to move like we belonged to the light and thunder—jumping up and down, headbanging like Andrew W.K., taking turns clumsily twirling each other, etc. Our general strategy was to “move a lot”—to expend every ounce of energy afforded to our mortal vessels. To move until we died, or Pat Benatar stopped singing—whichever came first.

  When the crowd around us realized the staggering extent of our dancing inability—surpassed only by the deficit of fucks we had to give—the circle broke apart, disinterested and slightly annoyed.

  But we kept dancing. Coalescing.

  For three minutes and forty seconds, at least, until the song ended in a fade-out. We barely had a moment to stop when Wynonna leaned forward and hugged me. It wasn’t a brief hug. She just hugged me and didn’t let go.

  She didn’t say anything. I didn’t say anything. We didn’t need to.

  We both just knew.

  Wynonna, Holden gave me a high five and praised me for my “sick moves,” which was such a lie. Wynonna hugged me again. And then the next slow song started, and they were pulled into its current, lulled away.

  I wandered off as well, in a sort of dreamlike haze. Out of the gymnasium. Out of the building. I sat on the curb, leaned back, and looked at the stars—crystalline, sparkling against the black tarp of the sky.

  I wondered how much of me was up there. How many times I had disintegrated, dissolved into that infinite sea, become one with something so much bigger than myself.

  How many times had it saved me?

  “Hey,” said a voice.

  I arched my head back all the way. Imogen was looking down on me, upside down, but otherwise perfect.

  Then the blood started rushing to my head, and things got a little woozy.

  “Ugh,” I said, lurching forward. I mumbled a feeble “Sorry. Hey.”

  Imogen sat down beside me on the curb. Her long legs curled to the side, knees pointing at me, toes pointing away.

  “You kinda left me in there,” she said.

  “Sorry,” I said, again. “I just didn’t wanna crowd you and Kimiko.”

  “You do realize,” she said, “that I asked you to prom. Not Kimiko.”

  “I know, I just…I saw the way you were looking at her, and—”

  “Ezra…”

  “And I want you to have what you want, not what I want, because you deserve that, and I don’t want to just guilt you into dating me, just because everyone knows I’ve had a crush on you since the dawn of time—”

  “Ezra—”

  “And as much as I’d like to believe you’re bisexual, I don’t know that, and I just want to be realistic, because I know the only reason you asked me to prom is because Wynonna talked to you, and you felt bad about the past month, but you shouldn’t have to feel so bad that you have to pretend that you like me—”

  “Ezra!”

  I shut my mouth. Closed it airtight.

  “Wynonna didn’t coerce me into asking you to prom,” she said, clearly hurt. “She didn’t guilt me into it. I asked you because I wanted to ask you. That was my decision. All mine. You think I’m pretending to like you? Ezra, have you ever even thought to ask me if I’m bisexual?”

  I had certainly pondered the question about a billion times over the past month. But the thought of actually asking it was always a terrifying nonoption. I’d rather ask a reincarnated Nietzsche what the meaning of life was.

  “Are you?” I said.

  Imogen shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Oh.” I couldn’t help but sound a little disheartened.

  “But I’m not pretending that I like you. I like you! I just…” She sighed. “I was staring at Kimiko, and I’m sorry. But it’s not like that. I just get a little flustered and discombobulated when I’m around all”—she made an ambiguous gesture toward all of me—“this.”

  This?

  I glanced down at myself.

  Or, I should say, Wynonna’s self.

  Oh.

  “I like you,” she repeated, “but you’re also wearing my Kryptonite to prom. And I want to separate my feelings for you from my feelings for her because they’re two entirely different feelings. You deserve that much.”

  I suddenly felt very stupid. About everything.

  “I’ll admit,” said Imogen, “Wynonna is like an adrenaline shot, directly into my heart. She’s wild, and dangerous, and exhilarating. She’s like riding a roller coaster that’s not up to code. But you, Ezra…you’re someone I want to be like. You inspire me. You’re kind, and gentle, and so sincere it hurts. You make my heart melt slowly, like an ice-cream cone on a lazy summer day. And yeah, I don’t know if I’m into guys. But honestly—and I mean this as a humongous compliment, so please don’t take offense—I don’t feel like I’m with a guy when I’m around you. No matter which body you’re in. And I’m sorry for staring at Kimiko, but I promise, it was only because I was trying to get Wynonna out of my head, and I’m sorry you have to deal with this hot mess, but it’s just…it’s hard sometimes. You know?”

  I didn’t even know if there was a word in the English language capable of digging me out of the stupid, self-pitying hole I had dug myself into. So I continued not to speak. So far, it was my best tactic.

  “Can I just…get to know you?” she said. “The real you? Not the fake Cesario you?”

  Those words—“the real you”—caused something to click into place. They made me realize I was ready for something. Something that I had not been ready for in the entire history of my existence.

  I glanced down at myself—my lack of pockets and, particularly, my lack of a phone. I glanced at Imogen.

  She had a small white purse lying at her side.

  “Do you have your phone on you?” I asked.

  “Uh. Yeah?”

  “Can I see it?”

  Perplexed, Imogen unzipped her purse. Reached inside, pulled out her phone, handed it to me.

  I connected to her data and typed “Ezward Slevinhands” into the search engine. Then handed the phone back to her. Imogen accepted it awkwardly and squinted at the screen.

  “Ezward…Slevinhands?” said Imogen, confused.

  “It’s my YouTube channel,” I said. “I do Johnny Depp impersonations.”

  She leaned forward, trying to piece together what exactly she was looking at. Then her eyes bugged out of her face.

  “Oh my gosh,” she said, alarmed. “This says you have eleven thousand subscribers.”

  I nodded.

  Imogen glanced from me, to the screen, and back to me. “Ezra, you’re, like, a YouTube celebrity.”

  “‘Celebrity’ is a stretch,” I said. “I make enough money to buy more costumes and makeup, and that’s about it.”

  “You get paid…to make videos…on YouTube.”

  “It’s seriously not a lot. At my peak, it was, like, less than a part-time summer job making minimum wage in Georgia.”

  Imogen’s eyes were saturated with amazement. “Can I watch one?”

  “No.”

  “Oh…” Her entire countenance drooped.

  “Of course you can watch one! Seriously?”

  “Oh!” She lit up again, instantly. “Which one should I watch?”

  “Whichever one you want. Except Tonto. Please don’t watch Tonto. I feel a lot of moral regret about that one. I don’t know why I haven’t taken it down already.”

  Imogen scrolled briefly, then her finger hovered—excited and a little bit terrified—over Sweeney Todd. She pressed play, and my heart did a little cardiovascular fist-pump because I knew we were starting with our best foot forward.

  Sweeney Todd breathed with malice: “I had him…”

  He screamed: “I had him!”

  He sang: “His throat was bare beneath my hand. No! I had him! His throat was
there, and he’ll never come again!”

  Imogen turned and stared at me with her mouth all the way open. Her eyes were radiating gleeful mania.

  And then she whipped her head back because things were just getting good.

  “There’s a hole in the world like a great black pit. And it’s filled with people who are filled with shit. And the vermin of the world inhabit it. But not for looooooooong.”

  Imogen glanced down at her arm, then raised it for me, just so I could see that every tiny hair was standing on end.

  We watched it all the way to the end. Or rather, I watched Imogen watch it all the way to the end. Her reaction—fear, shock, elation—was far more priceless than anything I had ever uploaded to YouTube.

  The song ended with Sweeney at his most unhinged.

  “And my Lucy lies in ashes! And I’ll never see my girl again! But the work waits! I’m alive at last! And I’m full of JOOOOOOY!”

  That last note sounded like anything but joy. It was murderous rage spilling freely, pooling out into a halo of blood.

  The video ended abruptly, like death.

  “Oh. My. Freaking. Gosh.” Imogen had both hands pressed to her head to keep the contents from exploding out. “You can sing.”

  “I really can’t,” I said. “I literally just mimicked Depp’s whole thing.”

  “Your pitch is dead-on.”

  “Johnny’s pitch is dead-on.”

  “Aaaaaauuurrghhhh!” said Imogen, grabbing clumps of her perfect, straightened prom hair. “You are seriously not giving yourself nearly enough credit. People don’t just copy something this good. You and Johnny Depp don’t have the same vocal cords. You had to improvise to make those notes work, and you made them freaking work! You slayed them! Like all those poor people who are going to be baked into meat pies!”

  “So you liked it?”

  “Did I like it? Ezra, it was phenomenal! Does Wynonna know about this?”

  “Well, yeah, but—”

  “AND SHE DIDN’T TELL ME?” Imogen practically fell backward, reeling. “That traitor! She knows I would’ve eaten this up! I can’t believe she kept this to herself, that greedy little—”

  “Actually, I asked her not to.”

  Imogen blinked. “What? Why?”

  This was the part where it was difficult to put feelings into words. But I tried anyway.

  “Have you ever had something that was so special to you, that you were afraid no one would understand it? That somehow, their words would cheapen it? Or worse, someone you cared about just wouldn’t like it, and it would shatter you, because in a weird sense, it’s basically like they don’t like you?”

  I looked at Imogen for some hint that she understood. Instead, she just looked mind-blown.

  “Anyway,” I said, returning my attention to my heels, “it’s kinda like that.”

  “How many people have you shown this to?” she asked, softly.

  “Um. Well, Wynonna found it because she was snooping on my computer. So…I guess you’re the first?”

  A rush of emotion flooded Imogen’s face. She leaned toward me. Grabbed my hand on the concrete. Squeezed it.

  “Thank you, Ezra. You have no idea how much that means to me.”

  I was smiling so much, my face ached. I didn’t even need to look at myself to know I was glowing.

  Imogen blinked the emotion away, then glanced eagerly down at her phone. “Can we watch another one?”

  “As many as you can stomach,” I said.

  “Oh, goody,” said Imogen. She patted her stomach ravenously, and said, “Get in mah bellay!”

  • •

  We watched all of them. Every single video I had ever created. All in one sitting.

  The dinner-roll “dance scene” with Sam from Benny and Joon got the biggest reaction. It was literally just a pair of dinner rolls, stabbed with forks, tap-dancing. It was the picture of absurdity. And Imogen laughed so hard, she cried.

  She laughed so hard, her stomach started hurting.

  She laughed so hard, she thought she was going to be sick.

  “Should I call nine-one-one?” I said, only halfway joking.

  “It’s too…it’s too late!” she said, curled into the fetal position on the concrete, still laughing. “I’m already dead! Call my mom. Tell her I love her.”

  By the time we finished, Imogen was experiencing something of an existential crisis.

  “That’s it?” she said. “That’s all of them?”

  “Johnny Depp only has so many movies,” I said.

  Imogen leaned forward, grabbed me by my bare shoulders, and shook me. “You have to let me make one with you.”

  “What?” I said.

  It wasn’t a bad “what.” I was just completely shocked.

  But Imogen seemed to read it like a bad “what.”

  She backtracked. “I mean…I’m not asking to be in it, of course. I know this is something really special to you. I just…I would love to see your MO, your modus operandi. I would be honored. But, like, I understand if you don’t want me to—”

  “I would love that,” I said.

  Imogen looked like she had suddenly gone weightless, suspended in zero-g. “Really?”

  “So much. Seriously.”

  And that’s when I told her about my passion project: Ed Wood.

  I explained to her that this was my favorite Johnny Depp movie, my favorite Tim Burton movie, and probably just my favorite movie in general. And that was going up against the likes of Inception!

  I explained to her that it had to be perfect.

  I explained that—

  Flash.

  Okay, so I didn’t get through with the explanation, because suddenly, I was me, and I was in a dark classroom, on top of some poor teacher’s desk, and Holden was beneath me, and I was making out with his face. Actually, that was putting it lightly because his tongue was all the way down my throat. I gagged on it.

  “Sorry, sorry,” said Holden. “Too much tongue?”

  I was still gagging. I was pretty sure he licked my uvula.

  “Oh no,” said Holden, clutching his face. “Please don’t tell me—”

  Suddenly, the classroom door flung open. Imogen raced into the room with Wynonna falling leisurely behind her, crying with laughter.

  “Sorry, Holden, I’m stealing your boyfriend,” said Imogen. She grabbed me by the hand and practically whipped me off the desk. Towed me out the door behind her. “We’re taking the limo, but we’ll send it back for you. PS: You guys should get a hotel or something. That’s Mr. Gunther’s desk, and he has some scary-bad dandruff. Like, winter wonderland–themed.”

  She closed the classroom door behind us.

  “Where are we going?” I said.

  Imogen grinned. “We’re doing Ed Wood.”

  “Tonight?!”

  “It’s the most important night of the year for teenagekind! Of course we’re doing it tonight!”

  Her smile was infectious. I caught it.

  “Let’s go angora sweater shopping,” I said.

  • •

  We bought the outfit almost entirely at Marshalls—except for the angora sweater, which we snatched at Nordstrom Rack right before they closed, and a blond wig, which we found at a high-quality wig store and spent a small fortune on. Imogen had the gall to bring both the wig and the sweater into Marshalls but was sure to let her favorite cashier, Phoebe, know about it. She explained that I was going to walk out of this store looking like “a nineteen-fifties goddess.”

  “Mmm, girl, you better,” said Phoebe. “I’ll call security if you don’t.”

  “Question,” Imogen said to me. “If you did your own makeup in every single one of those videos, how are you with, like, makeup?”

  We decided to find out. I brought the necessary makeup items into the dressing room with me. (I was going to pay for them, relax!)

  Here were the facts:

  I had inherited the steady surgeon hand of Mark Slevin. This thing was as
steady as Willow’s relationship with My Chemical Romance.

  I knew the natural contours of my face like a fully indexed topographical map.

  I really wanted this.

  When I was done, I was wearing black pumps, a below-the-knee pleated skirt, and the most comfortable sweater I had ever worn. Or maybe it was just emotionally comfortable. All I knew was that I dug it. A lot. The blond wig was a little jarring against my eyebrows, but otherwise, it served its purpose well, framing my art like a divine architecture. Like the Sistine Chapel.

  I didn’t just feel beautiful. I was.

  Either that, or I was as deluded with myself as Ed Wood was with his god-awful filmmaking career.

  I had that sudden thought the moment I stepped out of the dressing room. Felt a spike of panic. Imogen was going to turn around, and she was going to let out a little snort of laughter, and tell me I looked “adorable,” and then I would be ruined. Ruined forever.

  That wasn’t what happened.

  Imogen looked a little startled when she saw me.

  “Damn,” she said.

  My jaw dropped. “Did you just swear?”

  “No,” she lied.

  “That was a swearword that came out of your mouth just now.”

  “No, it wasn’t.”

  “I’ve never heard you swear before. Not once.”

  “What? Whatever. I say swears all the time.”

  “Like what?!”

  “You know? Swears. Like…holy dicks!”

  Imogen had never said “holy dicks” once in her life either. I was pretty sure no one had. That was not a thing anyone had said, ever.

  “But you didn’t swear just now?” I said. “That wasn’t a swearword?”

  “Uh…” she said, panicking. “I’m confused.”

  I was smiling so hard, it was an unstoppable force, threatening to conquer my face forever.

  “Oh my god,” she groaned, like she had a stomachache. “Your smile is so goddamn pretty.”

  “YOU DID IT AGAIN.”

  Imogen started fanning herself with her hand. “It is hot in here, or is it just you? I mean, me. I mean…what? What are we talking about?”

  • •

  When we arrived at Slevin Manor, Willow and Dad were curled up on the couch watching Steven Universe. That was their thing—watching cartoons together. They lit up when they saw Imogen—aka Ezra’s date—and then looked suuuuper confused when they saw Miss Nineteen-Fifties walking in beside her.