I pictured Will’s friends—girls like Meadow and guys from the basketball team who threw the word “faggot” around regularly, oblivious to the power it had to cut someone to his core. “Dicks,” I said under my breath.
He shook his head. “They’re not dicks. Actually, most of them are dicks. They don’t beat up on gay kids or anything, but they have this idea in their heads of who I am. You know—that’s Will, he’s a cool cat who would never hit on another dude. Everything would change if I told them.”
“You don’t think they’d get over it? Don’t you think having a gay friend might make them better people?”
“It took me years to come to terms with it, so I don’t expect any of them to get over it overnight. And anyone who didn’t care about the gay thing would still care about the Betsy thing. I know you probably think Meadow’s just a snooty bitch, but really, she’s terrifying. She’d go to the ends of the earth for Betsy.”
“You know you don’t have to be friends with those people. I have one friend—literally, one friend—and I’ve somehow managed to survive. There are other guys at our school who are out.”
“I know, and I’m just as scared of them as I am of my friends. They’d see me as another jock, indistinguishable from all the jocks who shoved them in the hall when we were in junior high and pretended it was an accident. Plus, I’m not into any of the stuff they’re into. EDM at high volumes gives me a headache, and I don’t have any plans to shave my body hair.”
I snorted. “Stereotypes make for poor excuses.”
“Believe me, I’m full of poor excuses.”
“Me too,” I mumbled. “Who else have you told?”
He looked me square in the face, his brown eyes wide. “No one. Literally, no one.
Not even my parents. The only person on earth who knows is a guy I hooked up with at summer camp a few years ago.”
“Would your parents be upset?”
He squinted at the dashboard. “That’s not it. Like, they’d both probably be shocked, and my dad might be a little disappointed that this grand vision he had for his son’s perfect little life wasn’t going to pan out quite as he’d expected. But he’d act like everything was fine. He does the same thing when he’s pissed at my mom, and it’s infuriating. Though he has a huge tell. He rubs his nose like he’s about to sneeze. You know, with rage.”
“And your mom?”
He shook his head. “My fucking mom. She’d be thrilled, but here’s the thing: She loves gay men, but they’re like works of art to her. Not actual people.”
Something strange hummed through my veins. Warm and icy at the same time, it took me a moment to realize it was power, but not the kind I wanted. This kind of power made me squirm and itch all over. I liked having the power to keep an audience on the edge of their seats. I didn’t like having the power to destroy someone’s life at the drop of a whisper.
“Who knows about your double life as an escape artist?” he asked.
“No one from school,” I said. “Not even Stella.”
“Your parents?”
I shook my head. “My brother doesn’t know either. Just people at the salon and my mentor, Miyu.” In my head, I laughed at myself for calling Miyu my mentor. The word didn’t really suit her. It made her sound wise and deeply sane instead of crotchety and agoraphobic.
“Why haven’t you told anyone?”
I tapped my fingers on the steering wheel while I tried to come up with a good answer. “First off, my parents would kill me and then have Miyu arrested for child endangerment. But that’s maybe a tenth of why. The real reason is kinda like you and your guy friends. No one would ever look at me the same way again.” I inhaled and exhaled a ragged breath. “And there’s . . . there’s something about sharing a thing you really, truly care about. I’m not talking about hearting stuff on LifeScape. When something’s so important that it becomes a piece of you, sharing it exposes you.”
He nodded and stared out the windshield at the darkened street. “Yeah. But you’re sharing it with a room full of complete strangers.”
“But that’s the thing. I’m just a stage persona to them. They know Ginger, not Mattie. And, until tonight, the salon felt like another dimension—I honestly couldn’t imagine anyone I knew showing up.”
“Never say never, I guess.” He raked his fingers through his dark hair. “Can I come see you perform, or will it still be like the end of a junior high dance?”
“Do you really want to see me perform, or do you just want to keep tabs on me now that I know your deepest, darkest secret?”
“Is ‘both’ an acceptable answer?”
I stepped out of the bathroom and threw the pee stick across the room. It bounced off the boy’s shoulder and landed on the carpet of our living room with a little thud.
The boy smirked and brushed his dark hair back. “Ew.”
“Ew? Look at it. There’s a plus sign. Do you know what that means, asshole?”
“Why are you freaking out?” A strand of his dark hair came loose and swung down over his eye. “This is the United States, not medieval Japan. We have ways of taking care of it.”
I had, of course, considered this as an option and was still considering it. But his nonchalance brought out something dark in me. I wanted to pick up the ashtray on the coffee table and smash it against his face, break his nose. All of his mysterious charms—his black leather jacket, his trademark smirk, the casual way he held his chopsticks—now seemed like a cruel joke.
“Get out of my apartment. And don’t ever come back.”
– Akiko Miyake, Providence, February 14, 1982
Will With Two Ls Answers
the Question of the Day
Why?
I know. I didn’t have to tell her. I easily could’ve said nighty-night, have a nice life! and hightailed it out of there, leaving Mattie to cry her little heart out into the steering wheel of Stella’s car. And I almost did. I had my hand on the door, and I was ready to run into the night and pretend I’d never been to Salone Postale or seen one of my classmates risk her own life for some seriously breathtaking art.
Yes, I said it. Art. The Houdini-knockoffs I’d seen on TV were cheesy as all get out. Laughable. Literally unbelievable, as in I didn’t believe the performers had pulled off their feats without crutches and camera tricks. But what Mattie had done rattled me to my very core. It pulled at heartstrings I didn’t even know I had. Because unlike the TV-Houdinis with their showboating and their ’80s leotards and their flashy misdirection, Mattie’s act was more raw than the bruised ego and flayed knee of a kid who trips on the stairs in front of everyone on the first day of junior high.
In those last few seconds before she burst out of the aquarium, when an expression of complete and total terror crossed her face, I stopped breathing. And not because I thought she might actually drown in front of a crowd of Providence hipsters and weirdos, but because it was obvious that fear had its sticky paws around her throat and she didn’t let it stop her. She pushed through the terror like a survivor clawing her way out of a hideous, burning car wreck.
When Mattie took her bow that night, my mom elbowed me, almost knocking the seltzer and lime I’d been ignoring out of my hand. “Wasn’t that outstanding, Willem? And she looks so young. Like a fresh-faced Marina Abramović, don’t you think?”
I blinked a few times before responding. “I know her.”
My mom’s face lit up so bright it practically caught fire. “You do? How?”
“From school.”
She cackled. “Well, my faith in the public school system has officially been renewed. You have to go congratulate her.”
I shook my head. “I know her, but I don’t really know her, you know?”
“Ah, the tedious intricacies of teenhood. Get over yourself and go talk to her. Monty will let you backstage.”
For the re
cord, arguing with my mother—not just about this but about anything—is pointless. So I stalked off, slipping through the crowd as they applauded for the gal who gave zero muskrat’s asses. But I didn’t go backstage. I needed fresh air to reset my lungs, which were still recovering from the seconds I spent too dumbfounded to breathe. I found a fire exit and headed into the night.
Stella’s unmistakable Volkswagen greeted me in the alley behind Salone Postale.
“Oh, hey, little jalopy,” I actually said out loud.
Then, of course, I laughed at the fact that I was too chickenshit to go say two words— hi and congrats—to a girl I sat only two feet away from almost every day in home room. What was the big deal? She had no idea I occasionally indulged in detailed daydreams frequented by a cast of offbeat characters that included her. With her, I could still be Cool Will. Cool Will who played basketball and had a hot girlfriend and didn’t mind going to parties where everyone got splifficated and engaged in mindless, meaningless conversation at nearly intolerable volumes.
So Cool Will leaned on the hood of that car and waited for the escapologist to emerge. And when she did, wet and shivering and as frizzy as ever, it became abundantly clear she didn’t cotton to Cool Will. In fact, Cool Will seemed to really piss her off. When she called him an arrogant piece of shit, he shrank like the pansy he truly was into the most dimly lit corner of my soul. He left me hanging out to dry on the asphalt with a gal who’d once been unreadable and now seemed to be posi-lute-ly spilling over with feels.
“Mattie.” I said her name because I couldn’t think of anything better to say. Though I didn’t know quite why, it snapped her out of her righteous hissy fit.
I knew she was going to cry, and I almost couldn’t take the juxtaposition between the intrepid orphan who’d flipped death the bird and this tearful mess whimpering in the driver’s seat of her best friend’s shitty car. I would’ve done almost anything to make it stop. So I got in the car and reached for her hand. She flinched a little, like she wanted to yank it away but didn’t want to be rude. I told her I wasn’t going to tell anyone about what I’d seen on that stage.
To my horror, my words brought on a rather hideous crying jag. Mattie, god bless her, is by no means a pretty crier. Her puffy face flushed a splotchy red, and snot oozed out of her crusty nose.
Eager to do anything I could to clean up the mess, I fished through the glove box and pulled out of wad of napkins.
She laughed the saddest little laugh as she wiped her face. It sounded so hollow, so unfunny, it broke the shit out of my already broken heart.
“I don’t even know you, and I’m counting on you to keep a secret for me,” she said.
When she said this, I almost took off. My sweaty fingers were poised on the door handle when an odd little itch, like a tickle deep in my chest, pulled me back. I wish I could say it was my altruistic need to soothe Mattie’s hysterics. I wish I could say I told her because I saw a bit of myself in her maudlin meltdown. I’d even settle for being able to say I saw our little conundrum as a prime opportunity to turn her from a fantasy friend into a real-life pal.
Sadly, the itch was none of those romantic things. It was, in fact, my own selfish need to push past the fear and let someone know who I really was. A real life someone, not some single-serving acquaintance I had a roll in the hay with at b-ball camp when I was fourteen. Someone who wouldn’t care because she had nothing whatsoever invested in me. And Mattie—all weepy and snotty and frizzy and apparently leading a double life—seemed like a safe bet.
So I scraped together my meager scraps of courage, took a shaky breath, and coughed it out.
I didn’t regret it right away. Maybe I was just hyperventilating, but I felt like I’d run a marathon and was ready to dust off my sneaks and run another. If Stella’s Volkswagen had a sunroof, I might have floated right up into the dark Rhode Island sky.
The lighter-than-air high didn’t last, of course. As soon as Stella’s jalopy was out of sight and I was left to my lonesome on a deserted stretch of cracked pavement, a text from Betsy knocked me right back down to the earth.
>Enjoying quality time with your fam? Miss you oodles, mostest adorbs boyfriend. XOXO.
I texted back:
>I’d be having more fun with you, I’m sure. Don’t get into too much trouble without me.
What I really wanted to say was, I’m not adorbs, I’m a two-faced asshole. Please, please get blotto and cheat on me so I don’t feel like such a dick.
“Well . . . I’ve got good news and bad,” the doctor said as he removed his slime-coated gloves. “The bad news is she’s comin’ out backwards.”
His efforts to turn her around had obviously failed. “Fucking hell,” I moaned. “I can’t have a C-section. I have a performance booked six weeks from now.”
“Don’t panic yet.” He scratched his salt and pepper beard. “The good news is I feel confident I can deliver this baby vaginally if you’re on board.”
“Is that safe?”
“It carries risks. But I consider myself a farmer first and a doctor second. I’ve delivered literally thousands of calves and piglets. A good third of those were breech.”
My first instinct was to tell this backwoods hick that my baby was not a farm animal, thank you very much. But something about his even tone and the scuffs on his work boots set me at ease. I’d expected a very no-nonsense doc with a stick up his ass when I arrived at the hospital. A doc with a sensible haircut who would go home afterward to a trophy wife and a few trophy kids and golden retriever. This man with a flannel shirt on under his white coat was an entirely different shade of medical professional.
“Okay. I trust you.”
The Hummingbird emerged ass-first at 7:34 p.m., a screaming, fluttering red bundle of life.
– Akiko Miyake, Providence, November 15, 1982
Mattie and the Myth of the Blank Slate
I found myself floating in an endless aquarium. A school of koi swam by, tickling my arms and legs with their slippery fins. I dove deeper and breast-stroked into a cozy sea cave. Waiting for me, I found a table set for a tea party. The octopus with the top hat—the one from the Mollusk Brigade poster—waved two of his eight arms toward an empty chair.
“Tea?” he asked when I took a seat.
“Why not? Thank you.”
He wrapped one of his arms around the teapot and poured. “Tell me your troubles, child.”
“Ugh. Where do I start?”
The cave shook and the sea floor rattled beneath our feet. Or arms, in the case of the octopus.
“What’s happening?” I asked.
He adjusted his monocle and opened his mouth to speak. Instead of words, he bleated an old-fashioned telephone ring.
I woke up to the sound of my phone ringing as it did the twist on my dresser.
I crawled out of bed. “Um, hello?”
“Ginger!” the person on the other end of the line shrieked with joy.
“Hey, Stella.”
“Oh, Ginge—I mean Mattie. Are you in one of your moods?”
I yawned. “No. Sorry. I was just out late.”
“Oh,” I could practically hear the smirk in her voice. “Doing what? Something with your mystery man?”
Oh fuck. “Uhhh . . .”
“Oh my god! Were you really out with a guy?”
“No! I mean, why does everyone think that? But, sort of?”
“Mmmmm’kay.”
Keeping everything from Stella would be like trying to hold back a flood with single grain of sand. It was too big. Better to lock myself into an inevitable reveal than wait for a worst-case scenario to happen. “Yeah, I’m sorry. I have some stuff to tell you, but not over the phone.”
“But I won’t see you for two more weeks,” she protested. “I won’t be able to stand it.”
“You’re one of the
most patient people I know, Stell. You’ll live. How’s St. Joe’s?”
“Do you actually care, or are you just trying to change the subject?”
I stole a line from Will Kane. “Is ‘both’ an acceptable answer?”
Stella laughed. “I can never stay mad at you. You’re too funny. It’s been super fun so far. The teachers are amazing.”
“Has Marlon Blando been bugging you nonstop?”
“Who?”
“That guy from your Honors English class.”
Stella paused and then exploded with laughter. “Holy crap, is that what you call him?”
“In my mind,” I admitted. “I guess I never said it out loud before.”
“Wow.” Another long, suspicious pause. “You know who’s actually really cool?”
Yes, I’m just dying to know what fascinating, Ivy-League-bound go-getter will be replacing me.
“Hrmph. Who?”
“Frankie Campos.”
“Hm.”
“You know who I’m talking about, right? He goes to our school. He’s that fourteen-year-old prodigy who skipped two grades.”
For college app resume: Excels at being ditched by best friend for nerdy pubescent boys.
“I think you need to work on your definition of cool, Stell. I had an art class with that kid, and he spent most of it sitting in the corner like a creeper, reading H. P. Lovecraft and making sculptures that looked like swords and guns.”
“Ugh, don’t be so judgy, Ginger. Someone can be into antique weapons and still be cool.”
“I do like antiques,” I admitted.
“Awesome. Once summer session is done, we’re going to hang out with him.”
“Whoa. My love of antiques will only get you so far. You mean, like, hang out hang out with him? Like, outside of school?”
“Yes, outside of school. We get out of St. Joe’s the Friday after next. Plan something fun for us! Seriously, I expect the Friday night to end all Friday nights.”
The Art of Escaping Page 10
