The next morning, as I was getting ready for school, I suddenly found myself spending twice as much time in the shower as I normally would—scrubbing myself off, thank you—even though I wasn't particularly dirty. And I was suddenly choosier about the clothes I was going to wear to school than normal. I even slunk into my dad's study to use his cologne, because I didn't own cologne and I suddenly felt like I needed to wear some.
I had a hunch my irrational behavior had to do with Wes, but the weird thing is, we didn't even have any classes together that day. Still, I found my thoughts drifting to him during the day more often than warranted, more often than I cared to admit, frankly, which was weird because it never happened to me before. Suddenly, I had to go back to reading the same paragraph twice in class, because my focus was elsewhere. None of it was about studies anymore—it was all about Wes. Suddenly, he was all I could think of.
"You okay, child?" Nia asked at lunch, unintentionally jolting me awake from all my thinking about Wes and daydreaming. She startled me, and I startled her in return with my inadequate reaction, and I dropped my fork, and spilled her juice, and suddenly it was this whole thing . . .
When emotions settled down, she asked, "What in God's name . . . ?" with her hands on her chest and her eyes bulging. "You well?"
"I'm fine, it's fine. I'm fine!" I tried. But naturally, she didn't believe me. She narrowed her eyes at me.
"Uh-huh . . ." she intoned.
"It's nothing," I said, "Everything's fine," though not very convincingly. "You never believe me. I always tell you the truth, but you just . . . Never believe me."
Now she was convinced I wasn't fine. I kept my eyes down and my mouth shut to avoid spewing any more nonsense.
For a moment, she considered my behavior quietly. And then she gasped, shook by sudden realization, and jabbed her index finger at me. "You had that thing with Weston Brooks yesterday, didn't you? Is that why you're like this? Did something happen? Did he hurt you?"
I shook my head vehemently.
"No! It's nothing. It wasn't a thing. Nothing happened! He didn't hurt me," I gushed.
Nia looked confused. And then her worry was suddenly replaced with a sort of amusement, her expression softened, and she said, "Oh!" with a widening smile.
"No, oh!" I said. "Nothing happened. Let's just drop it, all right?"
She huffed irritably but turned away from me, giving me space. I knew there was more to come, though, now that she knew Weston Brooks was a thing.
We never actually discussed my being gay with her. Not in so many words. But I think she had an inkling. The amount of times she caught me looking at boys. Or us watching romcoms together. Or some of the mannerisms I wasn't trying to conceal as hard when it was just the two of us. And just in general, the sheer amount of time we spent together since childhood—she knew me better than anyone. I think she would have been okay if I told her. But every god-damned time I thought of bringing it up, I chickened out.
The way that she was grinning ear to ear right now, though—she knew!
Another sudden gasp escaped her mouth, and she turned to face me again, this time leaning closer, conspiratorially close.
"Guess who came up and started talking to me today?" she said. I could tell she was bursting with excitement to tell me.
I shook my head. How would I know?
"Trevon Malone," she said, with emphasis on both his first and his last name.
I grimaced. "Trevon Malone? What did he want?"
She shrugged, raising her arms theatrically, and shook her head as if to say 'Beats me!' Trevon Malone, Tré for short (although everyone in school just called him Trey), was one of Eureka Springs Defenders' quarterbacks. And as of yesterday, I've learned that that was the name of our school's football team. I heard it before, probably, but it didn't stick. Now, thanks to Wes, it was planted in my head firmly. Speaking of, Trey was Wes's best friend, coincidentally, and the realization just hit me. Judging by Nia's Cheshire cat expression, she knew that I made the connection, too. She made a show of returning to her lunch and dropping the subject, not very convincingly, though. I knew she was just playing coy. She wasn't going to give it to me this easily. She wanted me to actually open my mouth and ask her.
"Come on, Nee, spill! What did Trey want?" I asked, leaning closer. There was no way I was gonna not ask. Even to try to convince her that I didn't care about Wes. Which she wouldn't believe me. She only brought up Trey because she knew I was gonna be interested.
She grinned victoriously and looked at me sideways.
"Nothing," she intoned, toying with me some more. "He was just asking if he could join our deco team for the prom, that's all. Apparently, participating in prom decorations was all he ever dreamed of. I told him he could come if he wanted. It's a free country. Who am I to stop him?" she said with a sassy tone, and then leaned closer and whispered earnestly, "Besides, we could really use an extra pair of hands. We're like majorly understaffed." She learned back and took a sip of her apple juice. "He seemed really happy when I told him. Um . . . but let's see if he actually shows up."
"Do you think—" I tried carefully, but Nia was already ahead of me.
"That it was Weston Brooks who asked him to ask me? Because it was he who actually wanted to come?"
I opened and closed my mouth several times trying to come up with something, but I had no idea what I wanted to say. Obviously, it would have been way too presumptuous of me to assume he did that. Yes, he said we had fun. But it was not like he was gonna join the deco team the very next day just because we had fun yesterday and he wanted to hang out with me today too. Would he? It would have been preposterous for him to actually ask Trey to ask Nia for them to come to our after-school deco team meetup, what—to see me?
Even if I allowed myself to believe it, the probability of it actually being the case was low. Extremely low, I would say. But not impossible. I exhaled deeply as Nia watched me with a grin.
I mean, I wanted to hang out with him more; I was thinking about him all day. But there was no way the feeling was mutual. My face contorted with a painful expression as I tried to dismiss the infinitesimal possibility of it happening mathematically. It wasn't zero, though. Nia continued watching me with extreme bemusement, sipping her juice and not commenting. I had to snap out of it. The chances were, Trey asking Nia to join our deco team had nothing to do with either Nia or me. The simplest explanation is usually true. The one requiring the fewest assumptions is most likely to be accurate. And we made a lot of assumptions just now, between me and Nia. Which meant we were probably deluding ourselves. Letting go of the idea of Wes wanting to see me was hard—the sweet fantasy—but it had to be done, in the name of science.
Nia could read my mind, it seemed, because she asked, "Exactly what happened between the two of you yesterday?"
"Nothing! We jogged, we worked on the assignment, we talked a little," I said, truthfully. "Nothing . . ."
"You jogged?" Nia asked, incredulous.
"I jogged. I have two legs. I'm quite capable of jogging as far as physiology is concerned, all right?" I said, defensively.
"Sweetie, just because you have two legs doesn't mean that you're a jogger. If you ask me, you're not the jogging type."
Her smile suddenly faded, and she looked at me seriously.
"So he got you to jog, dress up, and wear cologne, didn't he? You must have really liked him."
So she noticed the cologne, huh? I lowered my gaze, unable to look at her.
"I liked him the regular amount," I offered. "He's nice. We had fun. He said he liked spending time with me. I think I did too . . . It's all good."
Nia smiled at me sadly. The verdict was in—I must have misread the signals, misread his friendliness for . . . what? Interest? Sympathy? Affection? Him feeling what I felt?
He was just a buddy-buddy guy who was congenial with everybody.
"You gotta be careful, Torrence," Nia said. She reserved 'Torrence' for serious situations like this. I hung my head. My heart sank.
"I'm not saying he doesn't like you," she hurried to explain. "I wasn't there, I don't know what happened. But even if he does, like you, you know. Even if he genuinely wants to be your . . . friend."
She let the word 'friend' hang there as if it were a code for 'more than a friend'.
"You still gotta be careful. They're not like us, Tor. They're a different kind of people."
I looked up at her. I think she meant they were both rich, Trey and Wes. And in our town, there just as well could have been a line cutting it in two, so undeniable was the partition. And they were both from the rich part of town, and Nia and I were from the opposite. And even in my most deluded state, I couldn't have not agreed with her, not agreed that that was a problem.
It'd been like this for almost a decade now, ever since the Zenith factory shut down, back in 1992, Zenith having been the leading manufacturer of audio cassette tapes and portable cassette players in the nation. But due to the rise of digital audio technology, CDs and the invention of digital players, and the subsequent plummeting of analog tech sales, Zenith was forced to file for bankruptcy and shut down, having failed to keep up with the times. About half the town got laid off, mine and Nia's parents included, having gone from upper middle class to near poverty in a heartbeat. The crisis affected those who were already vulnerable the most, making them either leave town or stay and take minimum-wage jobs just to be able to feed their families. And the rich turned a blind eye to this, having survived the hard times on the buoyancy of their other investments. Truth be told, the crisis barely affected them at all, and this exaggerated the already well-pronounced polarization among the locals even further, drawing an invisible line between the "rich" and the "poor" parts of town.
"If you wanna be friends with him, it's fine. But you gotta be careful, all right?" Nia said. "Promise me."
That word again, 'friend'. I nodded obediently, though I don't think I quite understood at the time the dangers of befriending someone like Weston Brooks. He seemed like such a sweet guy. As far as biology was concerned, we were all the same, rich or poor—just human. And I really wasn't experienced with matters that went beyond that. Nia, on the other hand, a more experienced one of the bunch, could already see the trouble brewing.
Later, when our deco team gathered in Gymnasium B to start decorating for prom (Gymnasium A and Gymnasium C being used for basketball and volleyball practices, and Gymnasium D being used as an auxiliary space), both Trey and Wes showed up.
It was weird to see two jocks among all the theater and arts&crafts kids, so to say that they looked out of place would have been an understatement. The two of them seemed eager to be there, though, even if it wasn't exactly their crowd.
Our theme this year was going to be Rapture—officially. Unofficially, though—it was the End of Days. It being 1999, the year already marked by the widespread anxiety over the new millennium, fueled by Y2K and other apocalyptic fears, and sprinkled on top with condemning astrological predictions and doomsday UFO theories. So—surely, we wanted to make it our theme. Our principal, of course, would have never allowed it, unless it was wrapped into something as deeply rooted in Christian eschatology as Rapture, with underlying irony and our tongue-in-cheek nod to the millennium's doomsday hype going straight over her head. She had her sights set on celestial motifs, a.k.a. clouds, cherubs, and angels. But we managed to convince her in the end to change her mind in favor of a more dramatic decor.
So, whether or not the world was actually going to end before the year was out—we were going to have our end-of-the-world party.
Cardboard cutouts from here to eternity littered the floor of the gymnasium, making it look like we were in the middle of a cardboard trainwreck, or a cardboard spaceship crash site, or a cardboard battlefield (or what have you), there were so many. And our job today was to paint them all so that they could be used for decoration later. Every extra pair of hands was going to count. Nobody was going to mind Trey and Wes helping us. The small folk were mostly friendly if a little baffled by their presence.
Being our class president, Nia called the shots. Everyone looked to her for directives and explanations.
"Listen up, y'all," she shouted, calling for attention. "We have these cutouts thanks to Lisa's dad, who has a CNC machine in his office. We have paint buckets thanks to Olivia's parents, who own the one and only Main Street Brushes and Paint Emporium. And today we're gonna be having two extra pairs of hands, thanks to our football team volunteers." She acknowledged the two with a curt nod. "We have all the ingredients to make this project a success. This is our prom, people. Let's make it fancy! Now pair up, and let's paint these suckers."
There was a commotion in the crowd; people took pairing up very seriously. I could relate. Trey literally jumped in front of Nia, before anyone else could take his place, with such gusto that he nearly startled her. But he did manage to secure a spot closest to her in like 0.5 seconds (no wonder he was on the football team).
"I wanna do it with you, honeybun," he proclaimed, with his usual offhanded delivery. "I'll die of sadness shall you turn me down, I warn you."
Trey was known around school for his buffoonery. None of it was mean, though. Some of it was fun. So nobody discouraged it.
Nia stared him down. He stared back, holding his own. People around were beginning to stare too, curious about her reaction.
"Now hold on for just a minute, hotshot. You wanna do it with me, I have to know you're actually good with your brush," she said. A few kids in the crowd giggled, catching the double-entendre.
"I'm terribly inexperienced, I'll cop to that. My brush's been all over the place lately," Trey said, without missing a beat. "But I feel like you're exactly the type of girl to show me what I've been doing wrong with it. I submit myself to your teachings, if you'll have me."
I cocked my head to the side. If he was saying what I think he was saying, it was as much of a compliment as it was an insult, and I wasn't sure how Nia was going to react. Everyone's eyes were on the two of them now. It got so silent in the room, you could have heard a pin drop.
She narrowed her eyes at him slowly, considering what he just said. He adopted the most innocent-looking expression he could master, I think, as he waited for the verdict.
A moment later, she jabbed her index finger at him, "You, behave! Or you'll be replaced."
Trey bowed his head graciously and then beamed at her, flashing his pearly whites, seemingly pleased with her decision. Well, good for him! Nia was big and beautiful. I think she was a catch. But I was really not an expert on the matter.
As the two of them sauntered away (Trey trailing closely behind Nia), I realized I lost my usual partner, again . . . and was now left alone. Everyone else had already partnered up, apparently. But, luckily, that was when Wes showed up.
"You cool if we worked together?" he asked. And he actually looked as if he was legitimately afraid I was gonna say no.
I gave him a half smile. "I didn't expect we were gonna be working on another project together . . . But we might as well, I guess."
"Awesome!" he said and beamed. He actually seemed as pleased with me saying yes as Trey was just now with Nia. I didn't know what to think of that.
"As a matter of fact, I didn't expect to see you here at all."
His smile faded, and he shrugged sort of apologetically. "I know. It wasn't my idea. Trey wanted to come, and he made me tag along."
I looked at him questioningly, and he hurried to explain, "He has a thing for her! Honestly, he'd been pining over her for weeks now, looking for an opportunity to hang out with her. It was all he could talk about. And it was very annoying."
I chuckled. It must have been. Trey seemed like a good guy. If he really liked Nia, I guess I was okay with that. And what a lucky coincidence, Wes was his best friend.
"So, what are we painting?" Wes asked when a lull in the conversation seemed a little too long.
"All of this," I said, making a sweeping gesture around me. Cardboard flame cutouts, each about a foot and a half tall and a foot wide, numbering in the hundreds, lay strewn across the floor. Nia had already painted one to serve as an example, so we could copy her style and paint the rest. She, meanwhile, was going to tackle a large Lucifer cutout (eight by four feet), since, out of all of us, she was the most experienced artist. With Trey's help, hopefully. And us underqualified folk were going to paint the flames.
"This is gonna take hours, isn't it?" Wes asked, sizing up the scope of the task.
I nodded, absolutely positive. "Looking on the bright side, whoever paints the most cutouts at the end gets a Main Street Sweets and Treats gift card," I said. It was a twenty-dollar gift card. Still, it was something.
"A competition, huh? I like that. I like to compete," Wes said, brightening up.
I looked him up and down. "Yeah, I can tell," I said, adopting a mock diminutive tone. He punched me in the shoulder jokingly.
"Let's get cracking," I said. "We've got our work cut out for us."
Wes laughed at the pun. He had a beautiful, soft-ish laugh. Then he flexed his biceps and pretended to roar, indicating the game was on. "Let's get jiggy with it!"
Having found a spot for ourselves that seemed comfortable (and less crowded), we proceeded with the job. It really wasn't rocket science. With Nia's already finished sample, we just had to try our best monkey-see-monkey-do of it.
We worked in silence at first, both of us focused on painting. Then Wes started talking about games again, as per his usual, getting me involved in yet another sports conversation. I complied, just to make him feel good. To his credit, he really tried to seem grateful.
"You're like super into sports, did anyone ever tell you that?" I asked. "This is not healthy."
Obviously, being into sports did good for him. I mean, just look at him. But he smiled at the joke, thank God. Then his forehead creased as he seemed to ponder over it, for real this time. This puzzled me. If someone joked that I was super into science, nothing about it would have troubled me. Because I was. Wes, though, seemed to have reacted to it differently.
"I just . . . seem to be good at it. And I'd like to make a career out of it. Make a name for myself in sports, you know? I want to be somebody," he said, sounding very serious suddenly.
"What are you talking about? You're Weston Brooks! Your parents are ones of the richest people in town. You are somebody," I countered.
He frowned. This seemed to have made him even more upset. "I want nothing to do with their money. I want to have my own," he said, getting defensive suddenly. "It's not even my parents' money. It's my brother's."
I was surprised to hear this. I didn't know.
"Zenith shutting down would have wrecked us, same as everyone else, if it wasn't for my brother. He scored big time that year with his invention, some microchip component, I never understood what it was exactly. But he got rich in the blink of an eye. He's the reason my family's wealthy. It's all his money."
This sparked recognition in my head suddenly. "Wait, what's brother's name again?" I asked.
"Danny. Daniel. He's my parents' pride and joy. Always have been, even before the invention."
"Your brother is Daniel Brooks? The hardware engineer I read about in Wired? The one who invented the high-efficiency texture mapping unit and licensed it to ATI?" I asked, unable to believe this. Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined it was Wes's brother. I aspired to be like that man. Make an incredible invention or discovery. Make a name for myself in the world of science. Get the recognition I thought I deserved. Get the hell out of Eureka Springs and make a life for myself somewhere decent.
"Yep, that's the one," Wes said, casting his eyes down. He suddenly seemed very miserable. I bit my tongue not to ask him any more questions, even though I really wanted to. But I felt like he'd clam up even more if I pushed too hard. I suppose my admiration for his brother was written on my face. And it must have hurt him when people looked at him that way, not as interested in him as they were in his brother.
He wouldn't look at me. My smile faded. I realized that his entire life, Wes must have lived in the shadow of his older brother, a big shadow, too. It must have sucked so much. Suddenly, I felt really bad for him.
Realizing he must have been coming off bitter and jealous, Wes started, "I mean, don't get me wrong, he's my brother, and I love him and everything." He still wasn't looking up, his eyes on the brush in his hand, swirling over the surface of the cutout. "He got me this top-of-the-line BMW for my birthday. And it's really cool, but . . . Sometimes I just wish—"
"That you weren't living in your brother's shadow?" I tried. "I can definitely see why. People must be comparing the two of you all the time. This totally blows, I'm sorry."
Now he looked up at me. He looked surprised. Was it something I said? I thought I was making a rather obvious observation. But somehow, he looked at me as though I was the only one who got him. Must have been hard for him—being misunderstood like that—despite the perks money can bring.
He nodded lightly, keeping eye contact.
"I mean, yeah, but it's fine, I'll survive," he said. "Don't feel sorry for the poor rich kid. I just want to do something with my life, prove that I'm not just a discount version of my brother. Make my parents proud, you know?"
I nodded, though I really didn't. I was the only child. And to make my parents proud, I'd have to become a lawyer, because that was where their aspirations for me lay. They were both Zenith lawyers, before 1992. Before, they were almost privy to the rich kind of life. After, it was destitute-ville all the way for both of them, their aspirations and dreams forgotten. They had to take menial jobs, and I don't think they ever recovered. Now they were placing their adjudicative hopes on me, imagining me as a successful lawyer, which I'd rather die, honestly. And I told them so. But they kept pestering me.
I got used to it, I think. I didn't mind being a disappointment. As long as they left me alone and let me do my own thing. But I suppose it was different for Wes. He actually cared about what his parents thought of his life choices.
I let him talk as we painted and tell me his life story. He actually liked to talk, unlike me. I think you could go as far as to say that he needed it, for someone to listen and approve of him. There was a lot on his mind, too (besides sports). And as we painted and talked, I felt the bond starting to form between us, strengthening what we had. And I didn't know if it was good or bad—because I didn't think I could accept him being just a friend any longer.
"We won! I can't believe we actually won," Wes yelped, gamboling up and down excitedly.
Nia just handed us our Sweets & Treats gift card. He almost hugged me, too, he was so happy. It was just twenty bucks, but it didn't matter to him. He was just happy he won. We won. Somehow, we managed to paint over fifty cutouts altogether, almost double what every other team had done. And it blew my mind that we ended up being this efficient. I was just having a good time. With all the talking, I barely noticed we'd done some painting too. But apparently, we had, and the gift card proved that.
It wasn't long before everyone vacated the gymnasium, and soon it was just Nia, Trey, Weston, and me left.
Wes and Trey were about to leave, too, but before they did, Wes fist-bumped me and said, "See you later, buddy!" Giving me a playful wink. Trey took Nia's hand in his and planted a very theatrical smooch on it.
"My princess!" he said.
"Keep it down, Mack Daddy. I never said I agreed to be your princess, ya know," Nia shot back. "You haven't earned any of this yet." She made a sweeping gesture at herself.
"Then I shall do my best to earn it," he said just as Wes started pulling him away.
"Whatever," Nia said, turning away from him, feigning indifference. Trey's eyes remained glued to her until Wes finally dragged him out the door.
I puffed, grinning. "What was that all about?"
Nia turned to me and rolled her eyes. "He's convinced he's in love with me, can you believe it? Claims he's been watching me for months. Like I'm a girl of his dreams or something. Everything he ever wanted. I didn't believe a single word he said, of course." Her tone was rather dreamy. It didn't exactly sound like she didn't believe him. I refrained from pointing it out. "But he was helpful," she continued. "Wouldn't you say Lucifer turned out great? I think this is my best work ever!"
We both feasted our eyes on Lucifer for a moment.
"Impressive!" I said. "So are you gonna let him follow you around now or what?" And I didn't mean Lucifer.
"Can't stop him!" she said, a tad too defensively. "It's a free country. He can do whatever he wants. If he's so keen on trying to win me over, and if he's willing to do a good job with it—who am I to say no?"
"Do you . . ." I paused dramatically. "Like him?" I smirked, looking at her from under my very lifted eyebrows.
Nia turned away from me, pretending to examine the finished cutouts. They all looked more or less the same.
"He's a rich kid," she said after a pause, in a tone that suggested that she liked him, but she didn't approve of him. "What would I be doing getting involved with someone like him?" She sounded pensive now. "You never know what one of them is up to."
I nodded. I wasn't sure what Trey really wanted with Nia, and if his love talk was actually true. But I was sure it was nothing like what was happening between Wes and me. No matter which part of town each of us lived in, no matter if one of us was rich and another was poor, no matter if one of us was into sports and another into science—it was real. I could feel it. And I might not have been too experienced with feelings, but I could tell we were attracted to each other. It was like the force of gravity, pulling us closer together. It was drawing me closer toward him, for sure. And, I was beginning to think Wes experienced the same thing.