A Very, Very Bad Thing

by Jeffery Self

  “It’s cool they hired a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown to supervise us,” I observed. “How are your painting skills?”

  Christopher shrugged. “I don’t know. I can’t even remember the last time I painted or drew something. Probably not since that time my parents took me out of second grade to help them make protest signs to hold outside an abortion clinic.”

  “Naturally.” I handed him a brush and grabbed one for myself, walking back toward where Mrs. Reichen was pacing around the canvas flats laid across the stage. Christopher grabbed my wrist.

  “Hey. Wait.”

  I turned to face him just as he planted a kiss right on my lips.

  “I’ve missed you,” he told me.

  My spine quite literally tingled.

  “I’ve missed you too,” I told him back.

  With the sound of the cast rehearsing “Children Will Listen” in the next room, the moment felt as close to perfect as moments could get.

  “Get a room,” a kid whose face looked like a thumb chuckled as he walked by us. I blushed and followed Christopher to the stage.

  We spent the next two hours of “crew” laughing at and teasing each other, while painting the canvas flats white. We were covering up the set from last year’s production of Fiddler on the Roof, and there was something slightly discomfiting about painting over a Jewish village after having watched it be invaded by Cossacks in the year prior.

  We wrote secret messages to each other—I like you and follow me into the woods and we might not be home before dark. Then our words would vanish to the naked eye as we painted over them. But we’d still know they were there.

  Eventually the rehearsal ended and the backdrops were as white as they needed to be. Mrs. Reichen dismissed the crew, which meant Christopher and I had to say our good-byes in the hallway outside the auditorium.

  “When do you get your phone back?” I asked, attempting to hide my desperation for an answer like “tomorrow.”

  He said he didn’t know.

  “This is so weird, isn’t it?” I added.

  “What? Not being able to talk to each other, or falling so massively, completely, and utterly for somebody?”

  He was so smooth, melting my heart before I even realized it. He grinned, knowing how smooth he was and how effective it was on me.

  “Well, both,” I sputtered.

  “Yeah. Both.” He pulled me into his chest. He smelled like detergent, sweat, and paint. “Hey. Want to go to the fall dance with me next weekend?”

  He gestured over to a stupid-looking poster where two leaves were dancing arm in arm, surrounded by music notes.

  “But you’re grounded. Will your parents let you?” I asked. I had never even been to a school dance, for many reasons.

  First, I’d always found group activities to be trite and exhausting.

  Second, I had never been invited.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “But I’ll figure something out. How many chances do you get to go to your high school fall dance?”

  I began to point out that the answer would be, quite simply, four … but I bit my tongue so I wouldn’t look like a dick and ruin the moment.

  “Well, four, I guess,” he added, and I beamed at this glint of sarcasm in the midst of his earnestness, which had quickly become one of my favorites of his traits. “What?”

  I shook my head, my grin stretched so wide it almost hurt.

  “I just like that we’re on the same page,” I said.

  His grin mirrored mine. “Me too. Which is how I’ll figure out a way to get there.” He squeezed my hand. “Okay?”

  “Yeah,” I breathed. “More than okay.”

  We kissed good-bye. Then I went back to my car and felt the Christopher-shaped absence in the seat next to me. I had no doubt it would follow wherever I went, until he and I could be in the same place again.

  IT WAS A LONG WEEKEND of not knowing what he was doing. Then I got to school on Monday and found a long letter waiting for me, telling me not only about his weekend but about his life before. This set the story line for the whole week—when we weren’t talking at lunch or cavorting over canvas backstage, we were writing down our lives for each other. Not texting. Not emailing. Actually writing it down, the handwriting as intimate as his voice in my ear. I learned how he first realized he was gay when watching Zac Efron in High School Musical 3 for the first time, a sincerely game-changing experience for any teenage boy or girl with an affection for boys. And how the first boy he liked turned out to be straight and made out with him in the school supply closet anyway but promptly punched him in the face a week later.

  We got to know each other. And we each got to know what it felt like to be known, and to want to be known.

  On Friday, he vowed that he’d make it to the fall dance. (I won’t leaf you stranded on the dance floor were his exact words.) As soon as I left school, I sent out a code red to Audrey regarding what the hell I was going to wear. She had a good eye for finding the hidden treasures in thrift shops and other places that fit my limited budget. Likely because “thrifting” had been Audrey’s favorite hobby since she was a pillbox-hat-wearing eleven-year-old.

  As long as I put my foot down when she tried to put me in ascots and smoking jackets, I could always count on Audrey to guide me through any fashion emergency.

  We’d made plans to meet at Second Time Around Thrift Shop at ten on Saturday morning, which, knowing Audrey, actually meant ten thirty, and by a little after ten forty-five she finally arrived with her usual giant Starbucks cup wearing a not-as-usual-yet-not-uncommon gold turban. (She’d stopped wearing said turban to school when the faculty had established a no-hats-of-any-kind policy. This policy came after Audrey took to showing up every day in an enormous hat she’d worn in a community theater production of My Fair Lady. The hat in question was so big people had to duck away from its path as she walked through the halls.)

  “This is the earliest I’ve been up on a Saturday since I stood in line for Idina Menzel concert tickets!” she shrieked from across the parking lot. “Christ knows, I hope this proves to be a better all-around experience than that.”

  She’d dragged me along to said Idina Menzel concert, which turned out to be a real disaster from the moment she walked onstage and announced she wouldn’t be singing any show tunes of any kind and instead her “original pop stuff.” I’ve honestly never seen an angrier mob of gay men in my life, and I saw that movie about Stonewall.

  “Good morning, darling.” Audrey greeted me with her usual kisses on both cheeks. “What are we thinking? Black tie and tails?”

  She was already pushing through the revolving door into the thrift shop before I could protest.

  “No! It’s the fall dance, not the Oscars, Audrey,” I said once I’d caught up with her. “It’s, like, not as dressy as prom but still dressy. What’s that called?”

  “Lazy,” she fired back, grabbing a tuxedo jacket the color of dried vomit and holding it up to my face. “If this were your color, it’d be fabulous.”

  “I don’t think that thing is anyone’s color.” I shuddered, hanging the jacket back on the rack, where it would probably stay until someone needed something to wear when they went as “pure garbage” for Halloween. “I’m thinking a nice dark jacket and a T-shirt. But a nice T-shirt.”

  Audrey rolled her eyes as she sorted through the rack of dark-colored sport coats. “I doubt Cary Grant ever even said the words nice and T-shirt in the same sentence,” she mumbled under her breath. This was one of her go-to arguments against a thing she didn’t approve of, comparing it to how a classic movie star would’ve felt about it. She’d once asked a completely boggled Subway employee if she thought Greta Garbo would’ve wanted “extra mayo” on her veggie sub.

  “How are you two even pulling this off?” she asked. “I thought he’d been grounded by baby Jesus or something.” She examined the label of a jacket, then put it back in horror as soon as she saw the word Sears.

  “I d
on’t know. I’m just supposed to meet him at seven in the gym. He said he would figure out how,” I told her. I was more than a little nervous that this entire plan would end in my pathetically standing in the gym at my first high school dance, waiting, unsuccessfully, for my date to show up.

  “While I might be shocked, I am rather proud of you for agreeing to go to something as ridiculous and frivolous as a school dance,” Audrey said, dumping a stack of jackets into my arms and leading me to the pants section.

  “Um. Thanks?”

  “No, no. I don’t mean for that to sound as backhanded as it does. I just mean it’s nice to see you excited about something. It’s very un-you.” She narrowed her eyes at me and smirked. “You really like him, don’t you?”

  I thought about his smile, his laugh, his smell, his chin, his nose, his eyes … and simply nodded. Just then Bernadette Peters began singing from inside Audrey’s purse.

  “Who would be calling me from Missouri?” she asked, fishing out her phone and skeptically staring at its screen.

  “Missouri?!” I fired back. “Christopher is from Missouri!”

  “Okay, well, I doubt very seriously your boyfriend is calling me at eleven on a Saturday morning.” But she went ahead and answered. “Hello?”

  Her eyes widened.

  “Hi.” She mouthed the words, You’re right.

  “Wait. It’s Christopher? What does he want?” I whispered. “Don’t tell him we’re buying me an outfit at a thrift store! He drives a Mercedes.”

  “Oh. Wow. That’s … I mean, I hadn’t planned on it.” She paced around the pants section. “But … okay. I think I’m picking up on what you mean and, fine, I’ll see you at seven.”

  She hung up.

  “That was Christopher?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “What did he want?”

  “To ask me to the dance.”

  I nearly dropped my stack of secondhand outerwear. “Wait. WHAT?”

  “It isn’t like that. Clearly. I could tell from the lilt in his voice. I can spot a terrible actor from miles away,” she explained, relishing in her solving of a mystery. “He said his parents had reconsidered his grounded status after he’d told them how much he wanted to take this girl Audrey to the dance. Don’t you see? I’m the decoy to get him to you. If it weren’t so Shakespearean, I’d be deeply offended.”

  I was impressed at his craftiness, let alone at his ability to track down Audrey’s number. Was it sad he had to lie in order to see someone he liked? Sure. But if it was the only way to get him to the dance, then it would have to do.

  “So you’re going to come?” I asked, hopefully and apologetically all at once.

  “Now, most importantly, what will I wear?” She was off to the rack of slightly stained evening gowns before I could even thank her.

  Audrey and I got ready together at her house over a bottle of room-temperature champagne she’d stolen from her father’s liquor cabinet. I didn’t know enough about champagne to know whether or not the fact that it tasted like soap meant it was good or bad.

  After what had turned into a three-hour shopping experience, Audrey had settled on a floor-length crushed-velvet sleeveless gown, which was already way more formal than anything anyone else would be wearing. Then she added satin gloves that went halfway up her arms.

  “Tell me the truth—would this tiara be too much?” She held a sparkly rhinestone tiara that was most definitely too much up to her head.

  “Yes,” I said as firmly as cement.

  She didn’t object and continued to apply her makeup, something between elegant and full-blown drag queen after too much chardonnay.

  “Can you tie this?” I asked, wrapping the tie Audrey had insisted I wear around my neck. We’d made a deal: I could wear jeans if I wore a tie, a peace treaty in accessories. My father had tried to teach me how to tie a tie on numerous occasions, but despite that and watching a few YouTube tutorials, I’d never mastered it.

  “Darling, we simply must get you sorted out someday,” she said, clenching her teeth for effect, and perfectly tying the stupid thing in no more than ten seconds. “Now. How do we look?” We both turned to look at ourselves in the mirror. We looked nice. Classic and borderline great.

  “You look beautiful,” I told her, and I meant it. Audrey was genuinely beautiful, but the kind of beautiful that wouldn’t be appreciated until she got out of a small town.

  “Oh stop,” she argued, pursing her lips together and snapping a selfie quicker than you could say “vanity.”

  “Hey. Thanks. I know this is gross,” I said to her reflection. She turned away from the mirror and faced me. Our reflections seamlessly shifted to genuine eye contact.

  “What is?” she asked.

  “This. You pretending to be my boyfriend’s date so we can go to the fall dance,” I explained. “It’s like one of those bad nineties gay movies we never watch on Netflix. I’m sorry it had to be this way, but I hope you know how much this means to me.”

  Audrey’s cartoonish red lips turned up into a caring smile. “Darling. You are my best friend. And I would lie down in traffic for you if it came to that. I mean, as long as I wasn’t in Chanel.”

  I laughed and grabbed her hands. We stood there, hand in hand, staring at each other like two people in love. Because we were in love and had been since the day we met. A different kind of love, but a definite and most certain love.

  “It’s just so cliché, the straight-girl best friend without a date going to the dance as a ruse for—”

  She held up her freshly manicured hand for me to stop. “It is cliché. But you know what, Marley? Some things are cliché for a reason. From Harper Lee and Truman Capote to Will and Grace to Andy Cohen and Sarah Jessica Parker. I’m proud to be your friend and fight for you, and if that makes us cliché then so be it,” she said with her glittering green eyes locked on mine. “And besides, I could have a date if I wanted one, but you know how much teenagers depress me. That said, look at what I’m wearing … something tells me that by the end of the night, I’ll have more than one.”

  I pulled her into me and hugged her tight.

  “I’m so lucky to be your friend,” I whispered into her overly perfumed neck.

  “Oh, calm down. You know I detest this sappy version of yourself that love is turning you into.” She pecked a small kiss on my cheek, small enough to not screw up her makeup. “Now shut up and latch these pearls.”

  THE PLANNING COMMITTEE HAD DECORATED the gym in an autumnal theme so tacky it was almost pretty. Bales of hay and pumpkins lined the walls, artificial leaves hung from the basketball nets, and the sweet smell of apple cider filled the air. September had always been the month they hosted the fall dance, which might have made sense before global warming but now only served as a grim reminder that the earth is on fire.

  We had arrived right on time, so Christopher wasn’t there yet and the place was half empty, giving us a chance to do what we did best: Scan the room and judge what everyone was wearing.

  “I will never understand poly-cotton, and the same can be said for gingham,” Audrey hissed as an extremely pretty girl in an extremely tacky dress walked by with her extremely handsome date. She continued. “That’s the thing about being beautiful and popular, though—if you’re not careful, it encourages you to be basic and unstylish.”

  The DJ was playing an assortment of parental-advisory-board-approved Top 40 songs, which limited the selection to more like Top 22. Only a handful of people were dancing; most were hanging to the sidelines with cider and the one-of-a-kind awkwardness of teenagers in formal wear.

  “This is going to be a long night. Get me half a cup of cider, will you?” Audrey asked.

  “Half?”

  “Sure. Need to leave room for this.” She revealed a flask hidden in her clutch.

  Before I could walk over, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around and was face-to-face with Christopher. His usually messy hair was slicked back like he was someone who
manages a bank, and he was wearing a slightly too big navy-blue blazer, a white button-up shirt, and a red, white, and blue tie. Forget the bank—he looked like he was ready to run for Senate.

  “Hi,” I said, flustered.

  “Well, hello,” he said, smooth.

  We must have looked pretty silly because Audrey rolled her eyes and growled, “Oh, forget it. I’ll help myself,” then proceeded to make her way over to the refreshments table.

  “You made it.” I hated the stupid smile I could feel across my face. “How did you even get Audrey’s number?”

  “The Into the Woods cast and crew contact list,” he said. “Duh.”

  Duh indeed.

  “And your parents bought it?”

  He grinned. “I should be starring in the school play, not painting the set. You should’ve seen my act. I sat them down, I fought back tears, I told them I needed to confess something, and then went into this whole monologue about how I had met a girl and thought I might be cured of my homosexual affliction. That’s their term, by the way—doesn’t that make being gay sound like a podiatry infection?”

  “Did you feel bad? Lying to them, I mean?” I asked, wondering to myself why I cared.

  “Are you kidding?” He scoffed. “After everything they’ve done to me? Besides, it’s a white lie. White lies are good sometimes.”

  “I can’t believe they just immediately bought it. How was it that easy?”

  “Because it’s what they wanted to believe. That’s the thing about people like my parents—they’re aspirational thinkers. Maybe everyone is. As long as it fits into the narrative they’re after, then it’s more than welcome. Isn’t that depressing?”

  “Very.”

  “Now, enough about my parents. Let me take a good look at you.”

  He stepped back, examining me up and down. His utmost attention turned me into a cheap imitation of Bashful from Snow White.

  “Stop. You’re making me feel stupid.” I playfully pushed him away.

  “You are the most handsome guy I’ve ever seen. Do you know that?” he whispered in my ear as he pulled me into him.