Lonely Hearts

by Heidi Cullinan

  She shrugged. “I feel like people treat me differently, but it might be in my head. I can butch up, and they still whisper and give me side eye. Which sometimes I think, fuck, I’ll whip Lejla out and be done with it, but I always get cold feet.”

  Giles texted to call them back because results were going up, and as Elijah watched his friend walk to the music building, he thought he might have some insight on why everyone was able to see through Lewis in a way they hadn’t been able to before. The feminine movements Lejla had let herself indulge in at the White House had crept into her on-campus persona. The way she walked, the way she moved, the way she, well, was. It wasn’t like the deliberate Lolita stuff that had brought on the beets. He would bet money none of this was intentional. This was Lejla’s new version of subconscious takeover. The more she let herself be authentic, the harder it was to stop.

  As Elijah moved with her through the herd of hopeful choir auditioners to get a peek at the printout on the wall outside the practice room, he realized he was having the same problem. She was right. It was a big deal for him to get into choir. He wanted it, and it would hurt if it didn’t happen. He wanted a lot of things now, and the hope that he might actually get them was a cancer he couldn’t eradicate. It twisted his gut as he moved toward the announcement sheets. It burned his heart, promising pain if hope turned out to be a lie. Which it would. He knew better than this, why had he—

  He stopped, the burning in his heart pinching before blooming as he stared at the listing of tenors. Specifically at the sixth name down.

  Elijah Prince.

  That was his name. On the choir sheet. He was in the Saint Timothy Chorale.

  He was in.

  As Lejla hugged him tight, more hands fell on him. Mina, Giles, Aaron—they were all around him, beaming.

  “I’m in the choir,” he whispered, still staring at the paper.

  The thought kept ringing as they led him away, congratulating him. This time it was Elijah waltzing across the skywalk out of the music building surrounded by the cool kids. He was one of the cool kids. Hope hadn’t let him down. It was a moment of victory, of joy, of normality, of rightness, a world where good people were rewarded and good things did come to those who wait and people did live happily ever after. The joy inside Elijah practically vibrated, ready to explode like a goddamned rainbow over his life.

  As they rounded the corner by the student union lounge, someone called out, “Freak.”

  Elijah could almost hear the record scratch. The call was little more than a murmur rising above a din, but it shafted their happy moment, a sharp edge leaching out the air. Giles tripped. Aaron hunched his shoulders, moving closer to Lejla. Lejla herself seemed the least affected—her smile dimmed, her head dipped, but she soldiered on. She put a hand on Giles’s shoulder, and Elijah could hear her whisper, “It’s all right.”

  It wasn’t. It wasn’t fucking all right.

  The rest of them kept walking, but Elijah stuttered to a stop. The football assholes were across the lounge, and the beet-dumping fucker looked smug. Elijah admitted he couldn’t know the comment had been directed at Lejla, or any of them. And yet in his bones he knew they addressed her—or at the least, they could be addressing her. They would be. He’d been too absorbed in freaking out over singing in front of people to notice in line for auditions, but Lejla had probably fielded some glances. She would absolutely get some more.

  It wasn’t like Elijah hadn’t gotten the well-placed accidental elbow in the hall, either, or hate glances from the Bible group he’d attended as cover last year until he gave up his charade of gay converted. Through the window of the lounge, Elijah could see the street where he’d stood with members of the choir, where Howard Prince had tried to gun down his own son, would have succeeded if Baz didn’t have a hero complex as part of his luggage. Somewhere at the edge of campus, or possibly on campus, reporters scoured Sebastian Acker’s backstory, hunting for dirt. They might be trying to tie the umbilical cord of that story to Elijah’s family scandal. At any second they could leap out of the bushes, figuratively or literally, to make his life a circus.

  Laughter trilled in the distance as Elijah remained frozen in place. He felt cracked open and vulnerable.

  Giles pulled him close while he whispered, “Don’t make a mountain out of this. Lejla is fine. She’s not letting it wreck her day. Don’t you, either.”

  Elijah wanted to say it was so much more than a freak comment, that he was barely holding it together on his best day, but he nodded instead. He pushed his panic aside as best he could, papered over it with a fake smile and did his best to be happy.

  But the bad feelings didn’t go away. He was starting to think they never would.

  Baz thought a lot about what Kelly had said as September wore on. He started his internship September fifteenth, Walter’s birthday, and he went with Elijah afterward to Pizza Lucé to celebrate with the gang—everyone from the White House, Walter, Kelly, Marius, Damien, Rose. While Elijah and Lejla talked about how much they loved their English classes, Damien talked about his first days on his job as a music therapist with Giles, and Marius and Walter gave grisly tales of graduate school, Baz shared stories about some of the kids he’d worked with on the first day at Halcyon Center. He felt like he’d begun to find his place. Maybe he didn’t have all the answers, maybe he still had things to figure out, but for the first time he believed he could figure it out.

  At the end of the month, he got a text from Giselle saying a car would take him the next afternoon to the Saint Paul Hotel, where his mother would be waiting for him.

  It annoyed Baz, this royal summons, because it meant he had to call Ed and apologize for bailing at the last minute on a presentation. He was pretty sure he’d miss therapy too, and choir practice. He went to the meeting, though, because his mom never called him unless it was important. He missed seeing her, and found he looked forward to it despite the hassle.

  When he got to the hotel, he found out how important it was. His dad was there.

  Baz did a double take in the doorway when he saw the two of them seated together on the couch, and he stumbled when he saw they were holding hands. When Gloria saw Baz, she let go of Sean and rushed to embrace him. Hugged him, not exactly hard, but like he’d come home from war.

  That’s when the flashbulbs started going off.

  “The taping got bumped up at the last minute. So sorry to spring this on you,” she whispered in Baz’s ear. When she pulled back, she had her political smile on as she touched his face with exaggerated gestures. “Good to see you, sweetheart. Thanks for making the time to come by.” She kept a hand on his shoulder as she turned to the room. “Stephan? Can you find someone to put Baz in makeup?”

  Makeup? Taping? Baz opened his mouth to protest, but Stephan had already grabbed his elbow and pulled him into an adjoining room of the suite.

  “We have a few suits picked out for you, but I can tell you now you should choose the gray. It’ll go best with what your parents are wearing.” Stephan gestured to a young blonde woman hovering by the wall. “Giselle’s assistant Bess will take you through the layout. I have to go finish seeing what I can get out of the interviewer.”

  Baz grabbed Stephan’s arm before he could escape. “What interviewer? I thought I was coming here to talk to my mom, not sit down with a reporter. What the fuck is going on?”

  “Bess will take you through it,” Stephan repeated. He cast a cold glare at the assistant. “You have to get him ready, in every way, in fifteen minutes tops. Understand?”

  Bess nodded, and Stephan left.

  The assistant smiled at Baz and gestured to a small stool before a makeshift makeup counter. She was no Erika, whom Baz couldn’t help notice was nowhere in sight. “If you wouldn’t mind, I’ll give you a bit of color and powder for the lights.”

  Baz wanted to shake her and demand answers, not sit patiently and let
her remove the shine from his forehead, but he sat anyway. “Please tell me what’s going on because I honestly have no clue.”

  “They’ve been trying to get airtime for a week, and today out of the blue they find out Rachel Maddow is doing some special tour in the Cities. Stephan got the word an hour ago that they were interested in an exclusive. So the rest of the day is run-throughs, a few local spots, and at six we go to the theater.”

  They were going on Rachel Fucking Maddow? Tonight? After other interviews? Baz felt dizzy, and it wasn’t from all the powder Bess was making him inhale. “Why am I going on Rachel Maddow?”

  “Because your mom’s approval rating isn’t great. The focus group determined she needs to increase her family appeal, so your dad is doing lots of events with her now. They’d originally planned the photo shoot this afternoon and the interview with the Star Tribune and the Chicago and Hill reporters we brought with us, but now it’s all gone crazy. You’re a draw for Maddow because…well, you know.”

  Because we’re both gay. Christ, Baz already had a headache. “Nobody told me I was getting interviewed. Or photographed. I thought I was having lunch and a lecture.”

  He got both those things, but not with his parents. Some new person, a slick advisor who appeared to have been peeled from Uncle Paul’s campaign, gave Baz a sandwich and a PowerPoint presentation.

  “We need to work on your backstory.” The advisor pushed a button for a new slide. “We’re assuming Rachel will ask you about your past, about the attack on you when you were sixteen. We’d like you to draw attention to the fact it happened as an attack on your uncle. The focus groups have responded positively to the martyr angle.”

  “The fuck I’m saying that.”

  The advisor pursed his lips. “I have it all written out on these slides. We can have someone coach you through it. It’s okay if you don’t get it verbatim, and if you stammer a little, we think it will go over especially well.”

  Baz had skimmed enough of the canned crap in front of him to know he’d offer his ass to the football team before he’d give so much as a summary of that shit. “I need to talk to my mom. Right now.”

  His mom had gone off for an interview, the advisor said, but she’d return in time for the photo shoot and the Chicago Tribune reporter. So Baz spent the three hours refusing over and over again to memorize shit about his tragic past, and eventually they gave up and moved on to the next talking point.

  They wanted him to downplay Elijah.

  Baz clenched his hands at his sides and forced himself to speak as calmly as possible. “I’m sorry. I don’t think I heard you right.”

  The advisor pointed to the infernal PowerPoint. “We’re not telling you to say you’re single. But if asked about your relationship with Mr. Prince, deflect to your mother. The young man isn’t exactly on trial, I know, but that business with his father is grisly and not the kind of image we’re after. Project a more, shall we say, carefree image and maybe make a joke about how you’re not ready to settle down. Because you track wonderfully as an eligible bachelor. We might be able to get you a spread in Out or The Advocate.”

  Behind the safety of his glasses, Baz shut his eyes as he drew a breath. Looking the man squarely in the eye, he smiled and shut the laptop. “Go. Fuck. Yourself.”

  He rose from the sofa, grabbed his jacket from the closet and beat it the hell out of the suite.

  They chased him, of course. The aides, advisors, Stephan—there were a few lower-grade reporters lurking in the lobby of the hotel too, and when they saw Gloria Barnett Acker’s son fleeing the hotel with the potential senator’s entourage chasing him, the press descended like locusts. “Mr. Acker, Sebastian—where are you going?”

  He had no idea. He had absolutely no fucking idea.

  He thumbed through his phone with a shaking hand, but it was the middle of a Thursday afternoon, and nobody was around. Elijah was in class, same with the rest of the White House residents. Even if they weren’t, he couldn’t subject them to this.

  His phone buzzed with calls and texts—Stephan, his mom, his dad. Baz turned it off, stuffed it into his pocket and hailed a cab, all but jumping in front of it. It felt like a movie chase as he shut the door and the mob following him threatened to swallow the car.

  “What the hell?” the cabbie said, as faces pressed to all the windows, most of them angry, all of them hungry.

  Baz ignored them and thrust a hundred-dollar bill at the front seat. “Just drive. Please. Go. Please.”

  The man did. Slowly at first, but as the people on the car moved away, the driver sped up, until they were clear of the hotel and the crush.

  “You some kind of celebrity?”

  Baz’s head hurt. His hip killed him from running. He wanted to go home, but they’d look for him there. He wanted to punch somebody, and cry, and curl in a ball in the back of a closet. All at once.

  He wanted Elijah—who his mom’s advisors wanted him to disavow.

  “You okay, kid? Where do you want me to take you?”

  He couldn’t bring this circus to the White House. He could go to Pastor, or Liz. He almost gave the cabbie those directions. But as they passed a billboard, a new idea hit him. He did have somewhere else to go, somewhere nobody would ever find him.

  Staring at the smiling children on the billboard, he said, “Take me to Halcyon Center.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Baz found Ed in the weight room. When he saw Baz’s face, Ed paused long enough to tell the kids to remember to spot each other and pulled Baz into an office. “What’s wrong? What happened? Did something happen to you? Do I need to call the police? Take you to a hospital?”

  Baz’s laugh cracked in the middle, and he reached under his glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose. This was so fucked up. So fucking, fucking fucked up.

  It took him five minutes, but he was able to spew out the overall gist. It was hard because Ed had absolutely zero context. He hadn’t known Baz’s mother was the possible senate candidate he’d vaguely heard about on the news. He knew his family was well off, but no, Ed hadn’t realized Baz was part of those Barnetts. Baz fumbled most trying to explain the summons and what they’d asked of him.

  Ed was furious. “So you’re telling me they demanded you show up in the middle of the school day, didn’t give you any advance warning what it was about, tossed you to a bunch of handlers, and told you how to spin one of the most personal, painful events of your life? To add insult to injury, they told you your boyfriend didn’t fit their tidy profile so you should pretend he didn’t exist? Jesus. I can’t believe you didn’t deck them.”

  “Escape seemed the better part of valor. I’m pissed at my parents, but I don’t want to tank Mom’s campaign.”

  “I’m sorry, kid, but fuck your mom’s campaign.” Perching on the edge of a desk, Ed wiped a grimace away. “Christ, is it true, about you getting attacked, your boyfriend killed because of your uncle’s stance on LGBT issues?”

  Baz nodded, gaze on the floor. “The attacker was fringe, but yeah.”

  “That’s all kinds of awful. What a fucking shit deal, going out on your damn birthday and getting disabled for life because your uncle took a stand. But it’s your shit deal, man. You get to decide if and when and how you talk about it. Not some slimy political advisor. And as for Elijah—I haven’t met him yet, but you seem pretty serious about him.”

  “I love him. I haven’t told him, but I do.” Baz hunched forward in the chair, elbows on his knees. “My attack is one thing. My reluctance to address it is mostly pride and not wanting to go to a bad place. But Elijah’s the only reason I made it through this summer alive. He’s everything, Ed. I would give up every other thing in my life to keep him. And they wanted me to toss him aside.”

  Baz shut his eyes as the fury and sick sensation that request inspired rolled through him again. “Fuck, what if he finds out about
this? There’s all this crap with his dad’s trial, a bunch of right-wing fuckheads writing blogs about how Elijah is a manipulative asshole who essentially deserved to be shot. He doesn’t ever come out and say it, but sometimes I know he believes that shit. Then my fucking mother’s Storm-the-Senate team basically says they want me to join in.” He pushed his fingers into his hair and tugged. “Fucking hell, I want to scream. My head hurts, and my shoulder and hip are on fire—and I have no meds, no TENS unit, nothing. I don’t know where I’m supposed to go now. They’ll be all over the house. I should go, help diffuse it—”

  “Hey. Slow down. Relax. You’re going to be okay. We’re going to figure out who needs to be called, and I’m calling them, and you’re coming to my place and resting until you’re calm and don’t hurt so badly.”

  “I can’t, they—”

  “They can fuck off. I’ll get word to your friends, but if any of your parents’ handlers try to come over and muscle you home, I’m calling for backup. A line of semipro football players ought to do the trick.” He rubbed gentle circles between Baz’s shoulder blades. “Come on. We’ve got to walk over to the studio to get my car and tell Laurie what’s up, and then it’s a big fat narcotic, a sedative if I can scare one up, an ice pack and some measured electrical pulses. Because I bet you and I have the same set of painkillers, or close enough to count, and my TENS unit is in fighting shape. I’ll toss in a couple Jucy Lucys if you’re feeling like molten cheeseburgers, and beer if that doesn’t fuck you up while you’re on narcotics.”

  Baz should have protested, but he was so sore, so exhausted and so lost it was too hard to fight Ed. He let Ed escort him across the street to a small building of painted white brick. Inside kids laughed as they followed the instructions of a male dancer slightly older than Ed, doing ballet at the front of the room before a row of mirrors. When the instructor saw Ed, he smiled, told the class to take a five-minute break and came over to kiss Ed on the lips.

  “Hey, hon.” Ed gestured to Baz. “This is the kid for the internship I’ve been telling you about. Baz, this is Laurie. Laurie, this is Baz.”