Ellen was nice. I liked her face and her smile. She was patient with Neil, and when she found out he only answered questions with lyrics to “Try Everything” but that Amanda and I could translate them, she acted as though this was an awesome skill he had.
She treated it like a superpower.
She asked me questions too, and of course she asked me about The Roosevelt Project. It was the first time I’d spoken about it since talking with Neil, though I had let Kaya coach me on answers I should give since I was representing the foundation. Except here on the stage with Ellen, with Neil beside me, with the ocean still washing over my heart, I ended up saying different things.
“It was difficult to lose the vote.” I rocked in place as I told her this, and I couldn’t help flapping my hands. Neil flapped with me, an echo. “We had worked so hard. It made me sad to know we could put so much work into trying to change things and find out we couldn’t change anything.”
This time when Ellen smiled at me I couldn’t figure out what her smile meant. It was tricky. “Well, Emmet, it’s funny you should bring that up. I have something I want to show you. In fact, it’s something several people want to show you, including your friends and family. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but there’s a great deal of video on the Internet about you. Many, many people have made videos for you. And that’s part of why you’re here today, because we wanted to show you those videos, and we here at the show have done a little something extra with them. Will you let me show you something right now? Here on the show?”
‘“Try everything,”’ Neil whispered, flapping enthusiastically.
I nodded. “Yes. I’ll watch it.”
And on the screen between us, on the wall behind us, a video began to play.
It was the one of me, the one I made for Neil in the restaurant. Or, it was at first. The audio stayed, but there was also a pop song underneath it, something about the future looking good. The video also changed, to one of Neil, and then to another boy, and another.
And another. And another. And another. And another.
There were girls too, and older boys and girls, and adults, and groups of people. Then there were large groups of people. There were famous people, and sometimes people who spoke in foreign languages. The clips went by fast, and sometimes they were only pictures.
Everyone was always dressed up in a Roosevelt Blues Brothers suit. Everyone had a sign that read, “I am a Roosevelt Blues Brother.”
Sometimes, if it was a video, not a still, the people said it too. “I am a Roosevelt Blues Brother.” Some of the girls said, “I am a Roosevelt Blues Sister,” but most of them said Brother even if they were female. It kept going and going, and the song had to be on some kind of loop, because it was an exceptionally long video.
The video changed. It still had people dressed up as Roosevelt Blues Brothers, but now there were words at the bottom. I realized they were tallies. Tallies of money people had raised for The Roosevelt Foundation, or for foundations like ours. It was a lot of money. Whenever famous people came on screen and said they were Roosevelt Blues Brothers, there was a tally too. It always went to our foundation.
Dan Aykroyd was one of the famous people, and he winked at me. “Good job, Emmet. I’m proud to be a Roosevelt Blues Brother too.”
I hummed and flapped hard.
The video kept going, and going, and going. It had gone on for at least ten minutes, I realized. More, maybe. They wouldn’t ever be able to have that much go into the show.
This meant they had shown this long version just for me.
When it was done, I turned to Ellen, who was looking at me with another tricky smile, and tears in her eyes. “I think you changed quite a bit, Emmet Washington.”
I let the ocean wash away the last bit of sadness on my heart. “I think you might be right.”
The audience started to clap, forgetting they weren’t supposed to, but Neil was okay. He’d done well, and I think he wanted to watch our performance, which was the next part of the show.
But Ellen wasn’t done with surprises for us.
She gave us a big cardboard check donation of her own, but then she said she’d heard Jeremey and I were getting married, and she gave us matching fancy tuxedoes and a gift package to get married on the beach in Santa Monica. She told us there was no rush, we could get married anytime we were ready, but she hoped we’d send her an invitation if we had a spare one.
I don’t know how she found out about it, since we only decided we wanted to get married there the night before, and we hadn’t told anyone. I was starting to think Ellen was magic.
She had one more surprise, though. When Darren and David came onstage to join us, we had already known Ellen would get in a Blues Brothers suit and dance with us too, and we had a space for her in our routine, but she stopped us and said we had to make room for one more person too. We were confused, and then who do you think came onto the stage?
Shakira, the one who actually sings “Try Everything.”
So that’s how we ended up on the Ellen show, dancing with Ellen while Shakira sang for us. While Neil danced in the audience until I motioned for him to come forward and dance beside me on the stage. And as he smiled up at me, big and awkward and beautiful, I realized this was what it would have been like for me if Dan Aykroyd would have invited me up to dance with him when I was little.
Our routine was a bit off while we performed, but they were all new mistakes, so it was okay.
I sang with Shakira a couple of times on the chorus. She smiled at me as we danced together, as I did my Elwood Blues moves with her. Ellen was good too, doing her silly Ellen dance with me, with Darren, with David, with Jeremey, even for a while with Neil until he got overwhelmed and had to go sit with Amanda again.
The best, though, was when I danced with Jeremey. When I spun him in my arms, when the world went away and it was only the two of us inside the space. There were lights and cameras on us, and once this show aired, more people would recognize us in airports. We were going to be celebrities like Ellen.
We were going to keep fighting. We’d keep falling down, and sometimes it would hurt a lot. But I reminded myself Jeremey would always be here with me, inside this dance and outside of it. So would Darren and David and everyone else, even Ellen. Everyone in the video she’d played for me.
I’d had it wrong all along. I didn’t have to shelter the sea. I had to find the way to let the sea shelter me. And as the audience’s roar washed over me in a wave, as I let the video and everything we’d accomplished sink into my heart, I acknowledged my sea was quite wonderful indeed.
About the Author
Heidi Cullinan has always enjoyed a good love story, provided it has a happy ending. Proud to be from the first Midwestern state with full marriage equality, Heidi is a vocal advocate for LGBT rights. She writes positive-outcome romances for LGBT characters struggling against insurmountable odds because she believes there’s no such thing as too much happy ever after. When Heidi isn’t writing, she enjoys cooking, reading, playing with her cats, and watching anime, with or without her family. Find out more about Heidi at heidicullinan.com.
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MORE BOOKS IN THE ROOSEVELT SERIES
Book One: Carry the Ocean
Jeremey doesn’t judge Emmet for his autism. He’s too busy judging himself, as are his parents, who don’t believe in clinical depression. When his illness reaches a breaking point, Emmet rescues him and brings him to The Roosevelt, a quirky assisted living facility. As Jeremey settles in, Emmet slowly begins to believe he can be loved for the man he is inside. But before he can trust enough to fall head over heels, he must trust his own conviction that friendship is a healing force, and love can
overcome any obstacle.
Book Three: Unleash the Earth (David’s story) – OR – Shatter the Sky (Darren’s story) 2018 (not sure which is first yet)
Other books by Heidi Cullinan
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LOVE LESSONS SERIES
Love Lessons (also available in German)
Frozen Heart (coming soon)
Fever Pitch (also available in German)
Lonely Hearts (also available in German)
Short Stay
Rebel Heart (coming July 2017)
THE DANCING SERIES
Dance With Me (Ed and Laurie)
also available in French, Italian coming soon
Enjoy the Dance (Tomás and Spenser)
Burn the Floor (coming soon)
MINNESOTA CHRISTMAS SERIES
Let It Snow
Sleigh Ride
Winter Wonderland
Santa Baby
More adventures in Logan, Minnesota, coming soon…
CLOCKWORK LOVE SERIES
Clockwork Heart
Clockwork Pirate (coming soon)
Clockwork Princess (coming soon)
SPECIAL DELIVERY SERIES
Special Delivery (also available in German)
Hooch and Cake (coming soon)
Double Blind (also available in German)
The Twelve Days of Randy (coming soon)
Tough Love
TUCKER SPRINGS SERIES
Second Hand (written with Marie Sexton) (available in French)
Dirty Laundry (available in French)
(more titles in this series by other authors)
SINGLE TITLES
Antisocial (coming August 2017)
Nowhere Ranch (available in Italian)
Family Man (written with Marie Sexton)
A Private Gentleman
The Devil Will Do
Hero
Miles and the Magic Flute
NONFICTION
Your A Game: Winning Promo for Genre Fiction (written with Damon Suede)
Many titles are also available in audio and more are in production. Check the listings wherever you purchase audiobooks to see which titles are available.
Shelter the Sea Page 21
