by Tim Federle
It’s there, streaked with sweat: the form for that student filmmakers’ competition, which Mom never even knew we were thinking of applying to. The application feels like a bomb in my hand, ticking off all the things I was going to do but didn’t, until BOOM.
See, in order for us to even apply to the competition, I would’ve had to first finish a full-length screenplay. That was the plan: I’d finish my screenplay, Annabeth would shoot a few scenes, and what the hell, we’d apply to this competition thing. If we’d gotten in, it would have meant a real mentor and, better yet, a couple of weeks away in LA this summer. Nothing sounds better than “away” right now.
Tick-tick-tick . . . BOOM.
I take the application across my room. I open my closet. I jump up and slide it on top of the teetering stack of textbooks I haven’t touched since December twentieth.
“I’m happy to do your colors, too,” Mom calls from downstairs.
My lips taste like contact lens solution, like salt and saline and oyster brine. I’m still mad but I’m also not. “Okay.” I don’t understand how somebody as skinny as me is supposed to keep all of these conflicting emotions inside without bursting a few seams.
Entire seasons have shifted since the last time I did a proper load of laundry. I gather every last black sock and blue sweatshirt into my broken hamper and I walk them all down to the basement, where Mom is now leaning into the washing machine.
“Thanks,” I say. I kiss her on the cheek. My mouth descends a full inch into her face, like when you haven’t ridden your bike all year and the first time on you’re like, Dammit, Dad needs to fill up these tires. Mom’s cheeks have that kind of give to them.
It’s adorable.
I go upstairs. I find my earplugs. And now I’m lying on my bed, wondering how Geoff and I could have been so incredibly intent on getting me a new AC today and then have completely forgotten to install it after the party tonight. How it’s just sitting in the trunk of his brand-new Corolla while I broil.
The house shifts. Left to right. Left to right. Here she comes.
“Knock-knock,” Mom says, standing outside the threshold of my room. I love how she’s suddenly pretending to respect my privacy, even though she barged in here earlier and straightened my desk and did my whites and threw away my towering pizza box art. “I found something in the back pocket of your shorts.”
“Oh.” Earplugs: out. “You did?”
I am the least scandalous teen on earth, so I’m not sure why I’m instantly nervous. What do I think Mom might have found? Not a condom. Not a cigarette. A nothing. I have the secret life of a retired librarian. All I do is read screenplays and watch movies. I don’t even know if 7UP mixes with vodka, because I forgot to take a sip almost the moment I was handed the red cup tonight.
Mom makes her way across my room and hands me a tiny slip of paper.
“I lied, earlier,” Mom says. Red flag. Mom never lies. “I said I did your laundry because I’m tired of seeing you in that T-shirt.”
I cover myself up. I’m in my old robe, but it feels weird for Mom to see my bare legs on my bed, or something.
“Okay?” I go. “My feelings weren’t hurt, don’t worry. I’m tired of that shirt, too.”
She waves away my words. “No, I mean—I saw that you went into Daddy’s closet. You left it open after.”
“Oh.”
“And I won’t have you wearing that man’s clothes.”
Just in case he comes back, by the way. She hates him, but mostly she hates him for leaving, and so we’d better not disturb his stuff. She hates him and she wants him back, and her daughter, too, while you’re at it, God.
“Oh, yeah, of course, Mom. Yeah. I hate his clothes, too.”
She attempts a smile. False start. “Maybe when we get the next grocery delivery, we can add some new cologne to the order too. Because I won’t have you smelling like him either.” And she flips around and attempts to make a quick, witty exit.
When the last stairway step has stopped squeaking, I unfold the slip of paper Mom gave me, and I hear a gasp. And it’s me who’s gasping, and I taste humidity in the intake and I gasp again.
It’s just, I am so shocked by what I see that my writer mind takes over, as if I’m watching the movie of my life from overhead—a removed witness who still believes this screenplay has a chance of ending happily.
INT. QUINN’S BEDROOM – NIGHT
Quinn sits up straight on his twin bed. His maroon robe falls open, but he doesn’t adjust it. He is too distracted.
We see his eyes widen as he stares at a slip of paper in his hand.
Over his shoulder, we see it’s the exact same slip of paper on which the Celebrity name “Mario Lemieux” had been written earlier tonight -- only now, written above “Mario Lemieux,” in different handwriting, are the words “I had no idea who,” and underneath “Mario Lemieux” is written: “was either.”
QUINN
Oh my freaking God.
We tilt down to see what Quinn sees: that underneath “I had no idea who Mario Lemieux was either” is a name, and a phone number.
The name is “Amir.”
CUT TO:
EXT. QUINN’S ROOF – NIGHT
Quinn dances around in the rain, his robe fully open, his mouth filling with the holy water of redemption.
Except, hello—no. Because you can’t stand on our roof without falling off. And it’s not raining out.
Who cares, though? The first part of the scene is really happening. I couldn’t have written it better. Amir doesn’t know who a legendary hockey player is either. Amir is not majoring in Irony. Amir is not straight.
People: This is what we know so far.
INT. QUINN’S BEDROOM – NIGHT
Quinn paces, staring at the slip of paper and giggling. But there is fear on his face too. Or maybe just annoyance. . . .
Ugh. When Rory C. Lewis came out at school last year, the principal called a Diversity Assembly to honor him, which was the forty longest minutes of my life, and I’m including gym class in that tally. Rory gave a speech on the beauty and drama of being different, and got kind of an obligatory standing ovation.
But the truth is: Nobody ever made fun of Rory because he was gay, even before he was out, even though we could all tell he was gay. We didn’t care that he was gay. We made fun of Rory because he is annoying.
I’m still not out. It just seems like such a hassle to come out. I want to just be out.
I look at the sheet of paper. My hands are making it flutter. I wonder how Amir got this into my back pocket. Maybe when I backed up into him at the sink. I wonder if Mom knows what this piece of paper means. Maybe . . . not, actually.
You know how older gay guys always say their “moms knew,” when they finally came out to them. “I knew, I knew from the beginning,” these Hollywood-sensitive moms always seem to be saying. That’s not how it’ll go with my mom. Sorry. She is as old-fashioned as you can get. She was “shocked” when she found out I was a friggin’ vegetarian. She’s been dropping hints about me marrying Tiffany Devlin, the six-toed girl across the street, since the day they moved in. I was ten.
I get off my bed. I am suddenly hungry for lunch meat. (I am not a vegetarian anymore.) But there’s no lunch meat in my mini-fridge. Of course there isn’t. All I’ve got is a six-pack of Sprite, saved for special occasions.
I look at Amir’s handwriting again. It is so boyish and messy that I want to eat it.
In ten seconds I’ve torn everything off the corkboard above my desk, and when every last elementary school ribbon is fully cleared, I tack a pushpin through the “o” of Mario Lemieux.
But all I’m really looking at is Amir’s phone number.
And then I celebrate. For once, I celebrate. I drink two Sprites, back to back, until I get the biggest and greatest stomachache ever and forever amen, and I don’t even burp. I just hold it all in, and somehow my seams don’t burst.
CHAPTER EIGHT
See, this is
what I mean. Where’s your dad when you need him to fill your bike’s tires?
I’m in the garage after the most sleepless night in forever, starring sweat and boners. My old bike, covered in a veritable carpet of cobwebs, is straight out of an early-career Tim Burton movie. I hose it off and find our air pump, and after taking six minutes to figure out even how to fill up the tires, I mount the seat and bust out laughing. Man, this thing is set for a different Quinn. A younger one. A shorter one. The one who was a brother.
I adjust the seat and then I duck my head inside the house and go, “I’ll see you later, Mom. I’m off to solve the case of who broke into my room last night and made my clothes clean,” and I’m saying it in my uptight-detective voice that always makes her giggle, and so when the door shuts behind me and I hear Mom’s laughter fill the sunroom, that feels really great.
Five minutes down Morrow Road, a car from behind gives me this quick honk-honk, and I’m not sure if it’s a “sorry about your sister” honk or a “nice haircut, homo” honk or a “hey, you’re riding in the middle of the road and you’re going really slow” honk—but all three of those things are entirely possible, and so I pull over where the road forks and take a breath.
Is today the day to make a right, and coast by the school, and see the mural of my big sister looking like a big pug?
I lift my tires from the grass and face them left. Another day. And just before I take off again to find Geoff at Loco Mocha and get an iced something—because, oh my God, an iced anything will be delicious today, the first nutrition I’ve actually earned in, oh, half a year—I spot a firefly on a daisy.
“Hello, little firefly,” I say. “You’re not supposed to be outside in the daytime.”
Basically it is unbelievable how sweet I can be when nobody is watching.
EXT. HILL OUTSIDE QUINN’S NEIGHBORHOOD – DAY
Quinn wipes the sweat from his neck and kneels down to press his finger to a daisy. The firefly looks at him and smiles.
FIREFLY
Are you my friend?
Quinn is startled to hear the firefly speak -- especially since he generally hates animated films.
QUINN
Sure, if you’re willing to have a male friend named “Quinn.”
The firefly laughs. Her butt lights up.
FIREFLY
You’re funny.
QUINN
I am?
FIREFLY
You are.
QUINN
That’s nice. It’s been a while since anyone’s said that.
The firefly steps onto Quinn’s finger. It’s been a long time since anything has trusted him like this.
I wipe the sweat from my neck and kneel over. For two seconds I allow myself the possibility that the firefly might actually speak to me.
But when I press my finger to the flower, she just flies away.
• • •
“Hey, do you carry helmets?”
“Aisle six.”
I’m working on a new theory. The new theory is that every person gets corrupted at some point. That there is a moment that changes you forever, from this to that. Innocent to wary.
Example: Tiffany Devlin, across the street, was born with six toes on her left foot, and one day in the fourth grade she arrived as “the new girl” in school, and we all just instantly nicknamed her Toe-fanny, like it was Lord of the Flies. Now, it was not particularly original, as slurs go—this is coming from “Queen” Roberts—but you get the drift. You don’t want to be called Toe-fanny if you’re a kid with six toes.
That day was Tiffany’s corruption. Welcome to the neighborhood.
I bend over in this sports equipment place and hunt for the cheapest helmet. There are so many options here that I feel like I’m shopping for air conditioners again.
Anyway, the minute you get corrupted is the moment you understand what it feels like to lose something. Not when you lose a Little League game. Not when you lose a grandparent, even. That’s not a scandal—that’s nature. What’s everybody doing crying over their eighty-five-year-old Nana dropping dead in her nursing home in the middle of crafts day? What did you think was going to happen? That Nana was going to be the first person literally ever who bucked the trend known as the Life Cycle? Not a scandal. Roll the credits.
I walk this seventeen-dollar jet-black helmet to the cash register up front. See, I’m buying it because after the firefly flew away, I got back on my bike and this car whipped around the fork blasting country music (always trouble), and it nearly killed me flat. Like: I felt the hair on my face (I don’t really have to shave yet; it’s like a step up from peach fuzz) get literally grazed.
Now that I know what it’s like to lose something real—December twentieth was my corruption—everything is different. You start doing stuff like buying yourself helmets, even if you’re only sixteen. You start thinking: Maybe I ought to remember to buckle up right away from now on. It’s not that I particularly know what I’m living for anymore. I’m an extremely limited filmmaker without the vision and silent encouragement of my sister—the only person I ever read my first drafts out loud to. I just can’t stand the thought of Mom losing both her kids in a single year.
I mean, really. I love a good Terms of Endearment as much as the next guy, but not as my fucking life.
• • •
Geoff is working the coffee counter. I get in line and start to get really giggly that he hasn’t noticed me yet. He’s going to flip. He’s got the branded Loco Mocha hat on and everything. He looks cute, for Geoff. Something’s off, though.
“Quinn!” He spots me, finally, and flashes the goony grin. “How did you get here?”
“Your dad gave me a free Corolla.”
“Wait, what?”
“I’m kidding.”
Geoff comes out from behind the counter and gives me one of those straight-boy half hugs. I realize what’s off now. His mustache. Literally. Thank God.
“Jesus, you could have warned me,” he says, pulling away.
“Sorry.” My body is now where sweat goes to party.
“Can I get your order started?” he asks. He is so psyched, and runs back around behind the glass case.
“Yes, which size iced coffee is big enough for me to bathe in?”
This girl behind the counter kind of glares at Geoff. He nervous-laughs.
“Do you want a Caffeine Level Four?” he says. (There are four sizes at Loco Mocha. Even the Level One has enough jolt to fuel an overnight study binge.)
“Make it a Two.”
“Will the following guest please step down?” the girl says, and she scoots Geoff out of her way with her hip. He gives me the sorry grin.
“When’s your next break?” I ask him.
The girl rolls her eyes and doesn’t even look at Geoff. “You can take a five now, but you have to come back early from lunch.”
“Cool.” He whips off his hat like it’s a costume, and we walk to two large leather chairs across the store and plop down. The chair cushions hiss and wheeze and kind of burp, which makes us laugh, because we’re secretly still thirteen years old.
“You still have my AC,” I go.
“Yes,” he says, “I know. I literally got to the end of your street last night and pulled over and texted you a hundred times, but, you know—if you never turn your phone on, you can’t receive messages.”
I’m not turning the phone on again. “I’m anti-cell these days.” Nobody but the police and my therapist know why. Thank God it didn’t get out to the local press. I can barely live with myself as it is, without people knowing the full story.
“You are literally worse with technology than my Nana. My Nana sends me GIFs, Quinn. My Nana.”
I thought his Nana dropped dead during crafts day last year. I’ve gotta stop rewriting other people’s lives.
“You should stick around for my lunch break,” he says. “We’ll pop over to the Verizon store. It’s time to get a new phone.”
I wave him
away. “You could have just walked right back through our front door last night. That never stopped you before. I needed that air conditioner.”
Geoff is using his finger to doodle something invisible into the arm of his chair. His autograph, I think. He wants to be famous; he just doesn’t know what for, yet. I love him for this.
“I didn’t want to freak out your mom,” Geoff says. “The porch light was off.”
Boring scene. Change the stakes: “So, something happened last night,” I say to him. My heart plays hopscotch, and it isn’t just the caffeine.
This moment is the reason for the entire bike excursion, but here’s another theory: When you’ve got big news, don’t even think about how you’ll write it or you’ll choke. Same goes for standardized tests, by the way.
“Geoff,” the girl calls over, cocking an eyebrow from behind the counter. A line is forming.
“Okay, what?” he says to me. “Be quick.”
Perfect. That’s all I want this to be. But I feel my face close in on itself, like Mom’s does when she doesn’t get my humor. I’m not confused, though, just unsure about how to deliver this. Is this a comic scene? Where does this occur in the screenplay of my life, and is Geoff’s character going to be weirded out?
I’m in my head. Dammit. Don’t write, Quinn, just talk.
“Dude,” he says, but in a sweet way.
I look around to make sure we’re not being overheard. Some terrible jazz music plays overhead, and when the horns get loud, I get quiet.
“You know when we were little,” I say, “and I used to put your sister’s ballet tutus on my head, before we knew it was kind of strange for boys to do that?”
Geoff puts his palm up to my face and stands. “Quinn, is this about you being gay? I literally don’t care at all.”
Um, what? “Um.” He knows? Wait, Geoff knows. Wait, did somebody tell him? Wait, I’ve never told anyone.
“I have to get back to work,” he says. “Can we not make a big deal out of this? Unless, I mean, you want to.”
“Geoff, for real,” the girl goes. But I realize she’s not a girl. She’s a manager. She’s still training Geoff.
