The Importance of Being Kevin

by Steven Harper

  I scuffed the tarmac again with my shoe. “I… just thought it might be a good idea.”

  Lame lame lame!

  “Well, I’m glad you came in.” Iris sketched a wave and headed back for the theater door. “See you tonight at seven sharp.”

  Peter turned to me. “You sure you don’t want that ride? It’s getting hotter by the minute.”

  I looked at his green eyes, cooler than autumn water, and nearly shouted yes. Algy would have. But that would have been stupid. I grabbed my handlebars. “No, thanks. I gotta go.”

  “Okay, sure. See you tonight.” He chirped open a brand-new blue Mustang and peeled out of the lot without even looking back. That made me feel weird and hollow, and I didn’t like it.

  To get home I had to pedal past the Genevieve Morse Memorial Library and down what looked like a gentle country lane, even though it was in the middle of west-side Ringdale. Lush trees stood around perfect lawns like giants having tea. Houses straight out of Killionaires Magazine were sprinkled among them. See, Ringdale is home to Morse Plastic and the Morse family. No one outside of Ringdale had ever heard of either one, even though Morse made like a third of all plastic used in the country. Toss a spork in the trash, and chances were Morse created the raw material. All that plastic in your computer and your pop bottles and your car? Morse, Morse, Morse. And Morse Plastic put a lot of rich people in Ringdale. Hell, that Mustang Peter drove probably meant Peter’s dad or mom—or maybe both—were Morse higher-ups.

  I passed a wooded area and a big rustic-looking sign that said Morse Nature Center at the beginning of a wide trail with wood chips on it. Morse Plastic contaminates the water, pollutes the air, and poisons the ground, so the family bribes the city with stuff like nature trails, a huge library, big parks, school grants, and summer programs for teenagers.

  But there’s still the stink. Some days it’s rotten-egg sulfur. Other days it’s oil and diesel fumes that hang on the air in greasy droplets. Sometimes it’s the sharp smell of burned plastic. There’s always something. But no one complains about the smell because the wind carries it to the east-siders, and who gives a shit about them?

  I crossed an old one-lane bridge over the Hellburger River and coasted onto a narrow road that wove between a golf course and yet another park. Guys in weird pants and half gloves whacked white balls and buzzed after them on electric carts. I climbed a little hill and emerged onto the sidewalk next to M-127, a busy road that tries to be a highway. I had crossed out of the west side into the east side.

  The farther I rode, the smaller and shabbier the houses became. Out here, the roads crossing M-127 don’t even have numbers. They have names—Two Mile, Three Mile, Four Mile. No one cared enough about the people even to give the streets nice names like Whisperwood Lane or No Bankruptcy Drive. Today’s east-side stink featured toasted tin foil with a hint of lighter fluid.

  Was Peter a west-sider? Had to be, with a car like that. He probably didn’t even know where the east side was.

  I pushed harder on the pedals. Cars rushed by, leaving exhaust behind. I could still feel the heat of his touch despite the hot sun above me. God help me, I wanted to jump in his car, and not because it probably had AC. Stupid. Sure, take me home, I’d say. Or just take me! Wonder how he’d react to that?

  I turned down Six Mile, a badly-paved road with ruts in it. The houses down here flop in their yards like old dogs. Dirty, broken toys litter old grass, and a couple-three always have Realtors signs out front with Price Reduced printed hopefully across them. The one saving grace is that it’s a lot of old woods and farmland between the houses, so if you look in the right direction, it’s kind of pretty, especially when fall turns the trees into a fireworks show.

  My bike found the driveway by itself—dirt and ruts, just like the road. A bunch of trees made a dark space over my house. Well, it wasn’t really a house. Yeah, I lived in a single-wide, and if that made me trailer trash, then fuck you too. At least me and my dad kept the place up, and better than some of the real houses up the road. The lawn might have been patchy because of all the trees, but there was no junk anywhere, and we painted last year. We didn’t do flowers and shit because, you know, that was girly, but the grass was raked and mowed, and Dad built a decent little wood porch for the front. Dad’s truck was old and rusty like my bike, but there was nothing we could do about that.

  Still, there was no way in nine kinds of hell I was going to let Peter see it. I’d rather ride naked through a poison ivy farm.

  I always got a little mad when I came home, especially when I got home after riding my POS past all those huge houses. It was beyond unfair that me and my dad were struggling in a rattrap trailer while only a few miles away, rich people thought the world was unjust because the champagne on their last Bahama cruise wasn’t chilled right. The anger leaped up like a tiger and grabbed me. It was worse now that I was living After.

  I divided my life into Before and After. Before was before all the shit that landed me in front of the judge. After had only been the few weeks since then, but it felt like half my life. Sometimes I thought the anger had finally gone away, but then it roared out of the grass growing around my soul and ate me alive. The play was good news, and I had fun with it, and there was Peter, so yet again I thought it had gone, but when I got home and thought about Peter’s car and the house he probably lived in, the anger rumbled again, and my hands went white around my handlebars.

  It was cooler under the trees, at least. I parked my bike and climbed up the short flight of steps to go inside. The living room, like everything in the trailer, was tiny but clean. Dad was kind of a neat freak. We only had a couch and a beanbag chair—both used—and an old TV on a milk crate. Our AC was a box fan in the window.

  But the thing that was truly weird about my place was the books. They were everywhere, in simple stacks and tidy piles, shelved two and three deep on bookcases made of bricks and boards. There was no system to them. Harry Potter nudged against Charles Dickens, nonfiction leaned against a mound of manga. Bestsellers, romances, science fiction, thrillers, poetry collections, even graphic novels—all of them used, scammed from library or garage sales, or even snatched from the dumpster behind the bookstore downtown. Usually I barely noticed the books, but that day, they made me mad. Why did we have to live in a fucking library instead of a normal house?

  Dad was reading on the couch. He’s kind of an older version of me, or maybe I’m a younger version of him. We have the same plain brown hair and blue eyes and the same long nose, though Dad keeps his hair short and his arms are thicker than mine. His bare feet were propped up on the old trunk we used as a coffee table, but he sat up when I came in.

  “Hey, kiddo,” he said. “How’d the interview at the library go? Good news?”

  Pissed without knowing why, I went into the kitchen—like everything else, it was narrow but neat—and drew a glass of water. “Bad,” I said slowly. “They wanted somebody older.”

  He got up and came to the kitchen doorway. “Did you show them the recommendation your teacher wrote?”

  “Yeah. They didn’t care.”

  “Your probation officer called,” he said, also slowly. “She wanted to know what to tell the judge. Kev….”

  “It’ll be okay, Dad.” I was suddenly reluctant to say anything. It was dumb, but the play felt like a cool secret, like I’d found a doorway into another world or something, and I didn’t want to wreck it by telling someone else. And I was kind of mad he was asking.

  “The terms of your probation said you have to get a summer job, Kev. You want to go to juvenile?” Dad folded his arms. He was still holding his book. “Besides, we could use the money.”

  I opened the refrigerator. “We got anything to eat? I missed lunch, and I’m starving.”

  “Sandwiches—your favorite.”

  “Yay,” I said. “What about your job situation? Any drywall stuff come up?”

  His face hardened. “Nothing. No one wants to hire an ex-con. That’s why I�
��m so worried about your situation. If you turn out like me—”

  “You were released from jail years ago.” I plopped jelly on a slice of bread. “Who cares now?”

  “In this economy? Too many people.” He sighed, and I could see he was struggling not to get mad too. I sort of wanted to fight, but not really. “You’re changing the subject. Kevin, Ms. Blake gave you two extensions to find something already. I don’t know if she’ll give us another one. What are you going to tell her?”

  I sat down at the chipped table with my sandwich and a glass of Kool-Aid. No milk for the wicked. “I actually kind of… found something.”

  “You did? Holy god, why didn’t you say so? What is it?” Dad’s expression was still tense.

  Here we go. “I tried out for the Teen Scenes program at the Art Center. I was cast in a play.”

  “A play?” Dad dropped into the other kitchen chair. “What do you mean, a play? What play? Why a play?”

  “Because I wanted to, Dad. Because I thought it might be fun. It’s called The Importance of Being Earnest, and it’s about two guys who create a fake friend named Earnest to get girlfriends.” I took a bite to cover my mixed-up feelings. The audition and Peter and the hot ride home were all pissing off the tiger that paced inside my rib cage. “The director said I was really good too. I got a big part. Not the lead role, but a big part.”

  “Kevin.” Dad’s voice was dangerous now. “Your PO said you have to get a job this summer to show that you’re not—”

  “The rehearsals are in the evening,” I interrupted. The tiger was growling. Why couldn’t he just be glad I’d found something I liked? “I can still look for work during the day. Besides, Ms. Blake told me that getting involved in a summer program is just as good as getting a job as far as she’s concerned.”

  “But you aren’t earning any money,” Dad said.

  “Neither are you!” I roared.

  Silence slammed across the table. Dad looked down at the book in his hands. The tiger fled, leaving a trail of black guilt.

  “You’re right.” Dad got up. “Fine, then. You’re in the play. That’s good. Glad things worked out, son.”

  “Dad, wait,” I said.

  But he was gone. His bedroom door clicked shut, leaving me with two bites out of a jelly sandwich.

  ACT I: SCENE II

  KEVIN

  I DID call Ms. Blake to tell her what was going on. At least she was glad for me. No juvie.

  That was a relief. I paced around the trailer after that, not sure what to do with myself. Dad stayed in his room. I went down the short hall and raised my hand to knock on his door. I felt guilty because I’d made him feel bad about not finding work. Then I got angry that he was making me feel guilty. Then I felt unhappy that I was angry at him. And finally I felt angry that I didn’t know what the hell was going on. I stalked into my own room and flung myself on the bed. It sucked living After.

  My room had nothing in it. I mean, there was some stuff—my bed and an old dresser and my clothes. My school backpack was shoved in the back of the closet, and a digital clock reported regimented time on a warped table next to my bed. But nothing real—no posters on the walls, no souvenirs of trips to Florida, no old toys from when I was little—just four walls and me. The only nongeneric thing in my room was a framed photo next to the clock. It was a school picture of a kid about fourteen years old. He had red-brown hair with a curl in it and a few zits, and he was smiling at the camera. His name was Robbie, and before I went to sleep at night, I tapped his picture three times, hoping he’d forgive me, hoping he’d take away the nightmares about what I’d done. It never worked, but I kept trying. I didn’t know what else to do.

  I lay back and thought about taking a nap, but that would risk a nightmare, and I didn’t want to do that. Besides, Peter’s face kept swimming around inside my head, and who could sleep through that?

  Okay, look—this is the twenty-first century, and I’m not stupid. It’s not like I’ve never heard about men who are attracted to other men. Shit, you can’t turn on the TV anymore without seeing a couple guys smooching it up. But Ringdale is a really conservative town, run by conservative people. I mean, a couple years ago, a teacher at the high school let one of her kids show an internet music video that said it was okay to be gay, and the school board fired her ass. People around here aren’t good with that kind of stuff. I hadn’t been… still wasn’t… either. Ringdale kind of does that to you. The factory warps people along with the plastic. So I kept my damn mouth shut.

  And there was other shit too. Now that I was living After, I didn’t deserve someone like Peter. I didn’t deserve anyone. So I needed to keep it all inside. Besides, I told myself, Peter was nice and freakin’ amazing, but he wasn’t interested in me. He was rich and good-looking and had a dozen girlfriends lining up to blow him and another dozen begging to marry him. Even if he swung in the same direction I did—huge, Jupiter-class, nova-size if—he wouldn’t be attracted to me and my shitty shoes and my POS bike. So why even let him inside my head?

  Which was why he spent the rest of the afternoon living there in all his starlight grinning glory. Why couldn’t the tiger just eat him?

  That evening I biked all the way back to the theater. It occurred to me I was going to have legs of steel by opening night. The back door was propped open, and I threaded my way through the maze of hallways and dressing rooms and storage areas to the stage. The other cast members were there, some of them talking among themselves, others standing around, looking uneasy because they didn’t know anybody. I searched for Peter but didn’t find him. Was he coming? Then I shrugged to myself. It didn’t matter.

  The theater was big and echoey, a space that might swallow you up. I hunched into myself at the edge of the stage and tried to call up confident, funny Algy, without luck.

  A guy with longish blond hair and a lean swimmer’s build came up to me. He looked about twenty or twenty-one. “Hey, buddy. You’re Kevin Devereaux, yeah?”

  “That’s me,” I said.

  He handed me a script for The Importance of Being Earnest from a bag he was carrying. “I’m Les Madigan. Don’t lose this—we don’t have the money to give you another one—but you can highlight your lines and write blocking in it.”

  “Blocking?” It sounded like combat.

  “You know—stage directions. Where you move and when.”

  “Oh. Got it.”

  “You were pretty good at the audition.” Les held out a hand. “Welcome to the show.”

  “Thanks.” I shook. He gripped hard for a long second and then let go, gave me a tight smile, and moved on to someone else.

  Peter came in at that moment. He was talking with Iris and pointing to his own copy of the script. My heart gave another stupid flutter when I saw him, and I remembered how it felt when I grabbed him in a hug when we saw the cast list. I tried to shut it all down, but how does anyone shut down feelings?

  “Let’s get started, everyone,” Iris called. “Circle up on the stage floor, please.”

  We all scooted into a circle and sat like kindergartners with our legs crossed and an air of anticipation. I don’t know if I was trying for it or if he was trying for it, but Peter and I ended up next to each other, and I was excited and relieved and scared all at once. He gave me an ironic salute, and a smile crept across my face.

  “You all have your scripts,” Iris continued, “and we’ll do a read-through in a minute. But first, a few rules.”

  I made myself look around the circle. There were nine of us in the cast—five boys and four girls—along with Iris and that guy Les, who I remembered seeing at the auditions sitting next to Iris with a clipboard.

  “Rehearsals start onstage at seven sharp, so you need to be here ten minutes before then. Early is on time and on time is late. After two tardies, you’ll be replaced.” She gestured at Les. “Les Madigan is our stage manager. Once the performances start, my job ends and he becomes god. Good stage managers are hard to find, so don’t
piss him off.”

  Les tapped his clipboard with playful menace, and everyone made dutiful laughing sounds. I glanced sideways at Peter. He was flipping through his script, not really paying attention. I guessed he had heard this stuff a dozen times already.

  “Last rule—remember that we’re all volunteers. The only payment we get is experience and a whole lot of fun.” Iris pushed her glasses up on her nose. “So let’s start with an icebreaker.”

  I wasn’t sure about this part. I’d done so-called icebreakers in school, stuff where someone wrote a label on your back and you had to guess what it was based on how people treated you. I hated shit like that because I always got something like East-Sider or Delinquent, and everyone treated me like dog crap in a bag even after the game ended. I looked around to see how the others were handling the idea. All the other members of the cast were strangers to me, though I thought the blonde girl with the round body might be named Melissa. They seemed relaxed with the whole icebreaker thing, but they probably all knew each other anyway.

  “This is called Two Truths and a Lie,” Iris said. “Everyone has to introduce themselves, then tell two truths and one lie. The rest of us have to guess which one is the lie. I’ll go first.” She cleared her throat. “I’m Iris Kaylo, the director. One—I’m studying to be a teacher.”

  Peter shifted, and his knee brushed mine, light as a dragonfly. It stayed there. I had another deer-in-the-headlights moment. The contact was casual, could be accidental. Maybe he hadn’t noticed.

  “Two—I listen to a lot of reggae music.”

  Or was it on purpose? I didn’t move, and neither did he. My knee turned into a hot coal. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Peter’s face. He was looking at Iris, and he was smiling just a little, as though he was into the lie/truth thing.

  “Three—I once worked as a roadie for the Grateful Dead,” Iris finished. “Which one’s the lie?”

  “Three!”

  “Two!”