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"Bravery is the capacity to perform properly even when scared half to death." -Omar N. Bradley
83 days sober
“Dad. Dad, hang on. Pay attention to me. Dad.”
“We’ve been waiting on the same bench for fifteen minutes now, Garen. You are literally the only thing I can pay attention to, other than a copy of O Magazine from three years ago. What?”
I reach over and pinch my dad’s wrist until he puts down the battered magazine and looks at me. I frown down at my hands and say, “So, it’s been like, a month since you talked to Doc Howard, right?”
“Yes,” he says slowly, waiting for the catch.
“Well, she just… she kind of likes to give me a hard time, I think. And she gives me shit, because she always wants me to push myself harder, and do better, and be more self-aware, bullshit like that. She sometimes says stuff that makes it sound like I’m not really putting that much effort into recovery, because she really wants me to do my best. So, before we go in there, I just want to let you know that I really am trying. And like, I’ve been so good, Dad. I’m still clean, I have been for months now. I’m at eighty days now, just like it says on my board, so don’t… you know, don’t get mad at me, or think that I’m screwing around just because Doc is a hardass.”
The door to Doc’s office opens and a woman steps out—she must be one of the eating disorder patients from the other wing, because she’s five and a half feet tall, but no more than eighty-five or ninety pounds soaking wet. If I get off the bench too quickly, the shifting of air molecules in the hallway might knock her over. She shoots me a nervous glance, then scuttles off down the hall. A moment later, Doc pokes her head out of the office and says, “Garen, Bill. Come on in.”
I stand and take a step towards the door, but Dad grabs my arm, saying in a low tone, “I know you’re trying, Garen. Watching you go through this process has been hell for your mother and I, because you’re our only child, and we love you more than anything. But no matter how hard it’s been for us, I know it’s been even more difficult for you. You’ve been incredibly brave, and incredibly dedicated to your recovery. I know that, okay?”
Face red, I nod and duck into Doc’s office. It’s nice to know that Dad appreciates the severity of my particular circumstances, but it’s still embarrassing as hell that I even have to go through this. It’s absolutely humiliating that people think I’m strong now that I have to get over these addictions, when I should have just stopped myself from being weak enough to give in to them in the first place. I flop down in my usual seat and say, “Hello there, Doctor. How are you on this fine morning?”
“I’m just peachy, Garen, how are you?”
“Tired. Preemptively bored. Can I have my machine?” I ask. Her eyebrows shoot towards her hairline, and I amend, “Can I have the machine?”
The fact that Doc owns the coffee machine is a mere technicality, in my opinion. I know for a fact that I’m the only person who uses it, because it’s one of those single-serve numbers with the pods of grounds, and sometimes I leave them in the machine even though she tells me not to, just to see if someone will take them out before my next appointment. No one ever does. I turn them in weird directions, or rip off the foil on top once they’re done brewing, just to be one hundred percent positive, but seriously, nothing ever happens. And she only bought it after I came to LRC. It’s mine.
She unearths it from the big drawer in her desk and hands me a water bottle. I plug the machine into the power strip along the side of her desk and fill the reservoir with water from the bottle. The coffee sets to brewing into the chipped Daily Grind mug I appropriated from Travis during my one and only trip to the old house after rehab, where I nervously sifted through some of the remaining contents of my old room and the den I had been living in while I was too injured to go upstairs. Evelyn had followed me around the entire time, making these disapproving little clicks with her tongue every time I touched anything, until I had finally burst out, “For Christ’s sake, Ev, I’m not contagious. You can’t catch fuck-up, alright?” She had stormed back downstairs to scream at my dad, and I had taken the opportunity to sneak into Travis’ room and steal something lame, just to see if he’d notice. So far, he doesn’t seem to miss the old coffee mug he’d been using as a pen-holder on his desk, which is weird, considering I had just dumped the pens out on the floor and walked out. It sits on the shelf in Doc’s office now.
Doc flips to a fresh page in her yellow legal pad and sets it down on the desk, though this is more of a matter of habit than anything else; she rarely takes notes during our sessions, opting instead for a normal conversation peppered with some prying questions. I like that—the normal part, not the questions. It makes me feel less like I’m talking to a psychiatrist. She says, “How’s school going?”
I shrug. “Fine. I’ve only had one day of it, so far, but I guess that went okay. Some of my classes are cool—I’ve got this one film class that seems like it’ll be interesting, and the teacher’s nice enough. And my old music teacher got me this… I don’t know, internship thing? I’m assisting with his class for credit. I listened to you, too, about branching out with my activities or whatever. I’m auditioning for the school play later today.”
“That’s great,” Doc says. “Have you made any attempts to branch out socially yet?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because all my classmates are assholes,” I say earnestly.
She flicks her eyes upward for a half-second, as though praying for patience, but at least she doesn’t scoff. It’s taken a lot of practice and sixty-four sessions—sixty-five, now, I guess—but we’ve moved past scoffing, and we’re mostly past eye-rolling, on both our parts. She asks, “Did something specific happen to prompt that particular sentiment?” I shrug again. “Alright, I’m assuming that’s a yes. What happened?”
I slouch down in my seat and kick my boots up onto the edge of her desk. She hates that, but I must look unreasonably miserable, because she doesn’t tell me to put them down. After a minute, it becomes clear that I’m not getting out of answering this, so I say, “Someone may have made a comment during the welcome address yesterday morning, before they gave us our schedules. There’s a club on campus, apparently. They call it ‘S.A.D.D.,’ which changes meaning, based on who you ask. Students Against Destructive Decisions. Students Against Drunk Driving. Students Against Drugs and Drinking. That kind of thing. Some chick was presenting about it during the clubs and activities part of the assembly, and some guy yelled out a comment. About me. By name.”
“What did he say?” Dad asks.
I don’t want to meet his eyes, because I can tell from his tone that he’s not pleased that I didn’t mention this last night when he asked me about my day. And I can tell that if he knows what people are saying about me, he’ll be ashamed to have such a magnificent screw-up for a son. Any father would be. But Doc never lets me out of answering questions, even the really shitty ones, so I say, “He said they would never need to hire speakers to come present about the effects of drug use, because everybody could just ask me, instead. And then he made a noise like—you know. Like, he was doing coke, or whatever. Like he was doing a bump.” I’m not sure if they know what I mean, not sure if that’s a common noise to be aware of, so I reach up, press my thumb to the side of my nose and give a quick snort, then let my hand fall again. “That.”
“Little shit,” Dad mutters.
Doc frowns, but for once, I’m pretty sure it’s not because of what I’ve done. Take that, Jack Thorne; the woman I pay to listen to me complain thinks you’re a dickbag. She says, “What did you do when this person did that?”
“Nothing,” I say, then amend, “I didn’t have to do anything. Travis did. He knows the guy, they do track together. He grabbed him, threatened to beat the shit out of him. It was kinda cool.”
“Hmm,” Doc says, because that’s what she says every time I mention Travis.
“Shut up,” I say, because that’s what I say every time she does that. “Jesus, Doc, it wasn’t a thing. He was just helping me out. Defending me, or whatever. Don’t make it weird.”
She leans back in her chair, uncrosses her legs and recrosses them in the other direction. “I’m not making it weird, Garen. The fact that you’re getting defensive before I’ve even had a chance to say anything is pretty telling, though. It’s been a while since you’ve mentioned Travis during one of our sessions, and I think that’s great. It means you’re moving on.” She pauses, then addresses Dad, “One of the worst things that an addict can do for his sobriety is get involved with someone before he’s ready. Oftentimes, people who are in the beginning stages of recovery can start substituting addictions; instead of obsessing over going to bars and clubs, he’ll obsess over going to meetings and therapy sessions. Instead of being addicted to drugs, he can become addicted to people and relationships. Garen has already shown a predilection for relationships that are unhealthy or destructive. I’m very worried that he might start dating before he has learned how to process his emotions without the aid of drugs or alcohol.”
It’s a valid concern; I know that, which only makes me dislike hearing it more. If I get involved with someone and things start to go badly, how will I deal with it now? How do normal people wake up every morning and know how to function without putting some sort of controlled substance in their body to make this world more bearable?
Doc has less to worry about than she thinks she does, because my capacity to get involved, in any way, with anyone is kind of limited right now. It has been since before rehab, since the afternoon I blew some guy in a truck stop parking lot for drugs. Something shut off in me when that happened, and I trust Doc not to judge me for it, but I haven’t found the right words to explain it to her. It’s humiliating to be eighteen years old and be so unbelievably disinterested in letting anyone touch me, to be a high school senior who has That Problem, as I have cautiously begun to refer to it in my own head. And if I can’t tell it to Doc in the confines of our weekly sessions, I sure as hell can’t tell it to her now, with my father sitting next to me.
I sit up a little straighter in my seat, finally taking my feet off Doc’s desk. “But that’s the thing: I’m not trying to get involved with anyone, including Travis. We’re just friends. We talk sometimes. We’re not even hooking up anymore, haven’t been since last winter. I’m telling you, it’s not a big deal. It’s just… I don’t know. I thought it was cool that he stood up for me, is all. He didn’t have to, especially not after all the shit I’ve put him through in the past year.”
“I know that. I’m not accusing you of anything, Garen. I only bring it up because I want to make sure that you’re still in line with your goals. We’ve agreed in past sessions, it would be—”
“—unwise for me to get into a relationship before I’ve been sober for a year,” I finish. “I know. ‘Emotional and psychological dependency can be as damaging as chemical dependency.’ I get it. Can we move on?”
For a nice change of pace, she allows my deflection and turns her attention towards my dad. They discuss my recovery, my sessions, how they’re both oh-so-thrilled with how much progress I’ve made. Doc tells him that, after almost three months of regular sessions, she thinks we can be secure in my diagnosis of borderline personality disorder, but she also thinks we can be secure with the fact that I don’t—as of right now—need anti-depressants or anti-psychotics or anything to keep me functioning. They’re both just thrilled about that. Like I should be proud of myself for being able to make it through a day without needing to stuff my body full of drugs to make me normal. Like that’s not a basic human skill.
When Doc dismisses me at quarter to eleven, she hands me a sheet of paper. “Your homework for Tuesday.”
“You already gave me homework for Tuesday, last week,” I protest. “Besides, I have actual homework, you know, from school?”
“You can add this to the pile, then,” she says. I glance down at the assignment—it’s a bulleted list of things, but I don’t have time to read it now, before the audition I’m already late to. I fold it into quarters and stick it in my back pocket.
Only once we’re outside and climbing into the Benz does Dad chance a sideways glance at me and say, “Do you talk to Travis much, then?”
“No,” I say, buckling my seatbelt and turning to scowl out the window.
Dad presses, “How often, would you say?”
“I don’t know, Dad,” I exhale. “I talked to him yesterday at school, and he called me Thursday night, but other than that, we haven’t really spoken much for the past week or so. He’s busy with school, and I’ve been mostly hanging with Alex and Ben. Speaking of, you don’t need to pick me up after the audition. Alex’s dad wants him to move his drum kit out of the basement because he says it takes up too much space, so I said he could keep it downstairs at our place. We’ve got room for it, and my room’s soundproofed, so he could come over and play whenever he wanted without bugging anybody. He and Ben are picking me up at four o’clock, ‘cause Ben’s CR-V is obviously going to hold way more than my car.” I flick my eyes towards him, then add, “Is that okay?”
The question hangs heavily between us. For the past three weeks, we’ve been treading lightly around the idea of me being an adult, but still asking permission to go out or have people over or whatever. Every time I ask, I can see an instinctive no forming in Dad’s mind, but today, as every other day, he swallows it and says, “Of course. That’s fine.”
Everyone keeps telling me that building trust is important. They neglect to mention that it’s also uncomfortable.
When I finally arrive at school, a few taped-up papers lead me down to the auditorium. There, I find forty or so people, some on the stage, some in the chairs, some just wandering around chatting to each other. Like something out of a cheesy teen movie, they all look over at me when the auditorium door creaks shut behind me. They blink at me; I blink back from behind my sunglasses and shift the strap of my guitar case from one shoulder to the other. Then, on stage, Nate, the overenthusiastic kid, waves at me and says, “Hi, Garen! Glad you could make it. You can join this last group on stage, we’re about to get started.”
I set my case on a seat in the fourth row, where I’ll be able to keep an eye on it during the dancing part. When I’m halfway down the aisle, someone says, “I didn’t realize you were planning to audition today, Garen.”
Ms. Markland, my film and lit teacher, is hanging out in a seat in the middle of the front row, a clipboard balanced on her lap.
“Yeah. Kid on stage found me at lunch yesterday and convinced me to try out. Are you um… the director, or whatever?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “No, Nathan Holliday—the boy on stage, the one who you say convinced you? He’s taking the lead on this whole production. He wrote the script and made all the changes, he’s directing the show, he’ll be helping me with casting. Now, it’s Anderson, right? Garen Anderson?” I nod, and she pencils my name into the list on her clipboard. “If you don’t have a speech prepared for your spoken audition later, take one of the papers from the edge of the stage. They’re just stock audition monologues.” She smiles politely as she gestures towards the stage.
I grab a paper from the stage, hoist myself up onto it and hover awkwardly at the edge of the group. Most of the other people seem to be friends, or at least know each other; I wonder if they’ve all been in the club together for years now. Maybe I’m intruding, just by existing. Maybe this’ll turn into some Showgirls shit, and I’ll get thrown down a flight of stairs by a chorus-girl. Maybe it’ll be more like Drop Dead Gorgeous, and someone will drop a stage light on my head. Or maybe I shouldn’t have spent half my junior year smoking pot and watching Bravo with Jamie.
Nate moves to the front of the stage and claps his hands for attention. Once we’re all looking, he assumes what I can only consider to be his default position, with one leg locked out to the side and his hip cocked. I look away; it’s always so weird when I meet other gay guys who actually fall into the stereotypes that people are constantly criticizing me for, because none of the other guys I’m friends with are like this. Even the bottoms I’ve fucked have just been… well, regular dudes. Travis is a varsity athlete who seems as baffled by fashion or whatever as any other guy I know. Ben wears skinny jeans and eye makeup, sure, but I’ve also seen him both giving and taking a beating in the middle of the gen-ad section of hardcore shows. I mean, Jamie loves dick more than almost anyone else I know, but after he graduates from college, he’s joining the Marines, for fuck’s sake. Regardless of sexual orientation, I don’t know anyone who stands with anything like the effeminate tilt in Nate’s hips.
Oblivious to my evaluation of him, Nate says, “Now, for everybody who’s seen the movie version of Grease, I’m sure you remember that there’s a school dance scene where everybody does something called the hand jive. It’s a really simple move, so that’s what we’re going to start with.”
Next to him, a pretty girl with a dark red ponytail says, “With both hands, you’re going to slap the tops of your legs two times, then clap your hands twice. Next, you criss-cross your hands over each other twice, first with the right hand on top, then another two times with the left on top. Now, make two fists, and hit them on top of each other twice, first right on top, then left on top. Then you’re going to do this—” Nate and the girl both make a double thumbs-up gesture, “—and you’re going to jerk your thumb over your shoulder, first on the right, then on the left. And that’s it!”
They lead us through the steps again, slowly, and I’m frowning the whole time. The dance seems familiar, but I can’t place it. It’s gnawing at the back of my mind, a memory that’s trying to rise to the surface. Have I done this before? Is this another of the stupid things my friends and I used to get drunk and make fun of in the dorm rooms? I know I’ve seen Grease before, I can remember catching it on TV once with Andrew when we were sort-of-together-but-not-really-together, during the first semester of sophomore year, right before I ended things with him to date Dave. There are some half-remembered flashes of it beyond that, though; split-second images of being high off my ass in the Whitman Hall common room, dancing on a coffee table while Jamie shouts, “No, you ass-clown! It’s hand over hand, then fist over fist. You’re fucking it up so bad!”
I haven’t blacked out in months, but I still always feel like I’m losing time. The truth is that for the first time in years, I’m actually sober enough to start remembering nights that I thought I’d lost years ago. I’m not sure I like it.
“Okay, guys. Thanks, that was great,” Nate announces, and I start. I’ve been going through the motions, but only the sound of his too-high voice brings my mind back to the task at hand. He says to the redhead, “Annabelle, do you want to take the lead on the swing?”
“Yeah, sure. But um… are you sure you’re going to be able to dance in those shoes?” the redhead, Annabelle, asks me, nodding to my boots. “I mean… they don’t have laces and there’s a lot of footwork in swing. So, they might, you know. Come off. Or something.”
I glance towards the wings and see a toolkit sitting near an electrical box. I walk over, flip it open, and unearth a handful of cable ties. Twine would probably be less trailer trash, but three cable ties through the empty hooks manages to secure each of my boots to my feet. I return to my place in line, between two girls wearing little high-heeled dance shoes. I’m apparently the only idiot here who thought this was a fucking high school play, not a Broadway audition. Silly me.
Annabelle begins to talk us through our next dance, a series of basic swing steps. Basic must be a pretty relative term, because the rest of us are dancing like we’ve got nerve damage. When John, a guy a few place down from me, trips over his own shoes—shiny dance shoes didn’t save him from that, the little show-off—and almost pitches off the stage, Nate sighs and turns to Annabelle. “Divide and conquer?”
The group is split by gender at that point. Nate stands with his back to us and exaggerates the footwork very slowly until we’re all able to shuffle along in an acceptable way. The girls are making way more progress than we are, and occasionally, someone turns to glare at me for the clomping of my boots. Every time, I just sneer back. After a few minutes, I look up to find that Annabelle is watching me, her head cocked to the side. Immediately, I halt and say, “What am I fucking up?”
“No, I’m actually… well, Nate,” she says, turning to call across the stage to him. He looks over, and she points at me. “I’m wondering if maybe he could handle doing a belt flip.”
Flips? I never bargained for doing flips. I tried one once during junior year, while hammered; I almost broke my collarbone. I’m opening my mouth to protest, but Nate says, “Maybe. He looks like he has really great upper body strength.” He’s staring at my arms. I snort. He snaps out of it to add, “I don’t know. Try it?”
Annabelle takes me by the wrist and tows me towards the middle of the stage. She stands on my right so that we’re facing the same direction, though I’m about half a step behind her. “Turn towards me like, thirty degrees, and put your right foot behind both of mine. No, perpendicular. Right. Okay, now, lean forward a little and put your right arm around my front.”
“Like this?” I say, settling my right arm across her stomach and wrapping it just enough to press my forearm and palm to the small of her back.
“Yep. Left hand behind my knees. Good. Now, I’m going to count—five, six, seven, eight—and after eight, I’m going to bend my knees a little, then pop up. Move with me, and when I’m up, I’m going to flip my legs back over my head at the same time that you’re straightening up and pushing my legs, to help me. Whatever you do, do not let go of me until my feet are back on the ground, okay?”
“Okay,” I say, even though everyone is watching, and I’m pretty sure I’m about to accidentally snap her neck. God, they’re going to be so mad at me if I kill the choreographer.
But Annabelle must have more faith in me, because she gets into position and says, “Five, six, seven, eight, down-UP!”
The flip is over faster then I expect it to be. One second, she’s crouching down a little, then suddenly her full weight is on my bicep as we both swing her feet back over her head. I hear the soft thump of her feet hitting the stage again, but I still check to make sure she’s stable before I release her. She’s stable, she’s alive, everything is fine. No snapped necks, no sir, not today. I’m so busy celebrating my ability to not kill a woman that I almost miss the gleeful smiles that she and Nate are exchanging.
From the front row, where she is sitting with her arms crossed, Ms. Markland says, “Can you do that again?” We do, a little more smoothly. “How about an angel?”
“What the fuck is an angel?” I ask.
Annabelle says, “Once I’ve completed enough of the flip that my legs are over and I’m facing the ground, you hold me in place on your shoulder. I keep my torso and legs parallel to the floor, and put my arms out and back. Then, instead of completing the flip behind you, you turn me back down the way I came up. Think you can manage that?”
No. “Yes.”
Turns out, I can. They spend the better part of the next quarter hour forcing me and my apparently rippling biceps through a series of flips and turns and twirls—a bunch of stupid shit they keep calling “aerials.” Once satisfied with my ability to not murder someone as talented as Annabelle, they begin to partner the rest of the cast off so that I end up with a girl named Miranda. She’s the same height as Annabelle, but weighs about thirty pounds more, and she keeps shooting me these apologetic looks. Finally, she steps close and whispers, “I’m sorry. I know I’m fatter than the other girls, and if you don’t want to lift me—”
“Come on. I haven’t had any trouble lifting you yet, have I?” I say. Neither of us points out that this might be due to what Nate so lustily referred to as my “great upper body strength.” She still looks embarrassed, so I add, “Also, shut up, you’re not fat. You’re beautiful.”
For half a second, she looks like she’s going to cry, and then she’s breaking into a blinding smile. Girls are so weird. Rather than voice my confusion, however, I take her hand and return to our dance. We work well together, right up until the middle of some move called an “around the world,” in which she jumps into my arms bridal-style, then swings her legs to the right around the back of my body to hook them around my left arm. With her knees locked around my bent elbow, I’m supposed to then swing the rest of her body around until she can grab my right arm and flip over it to dismount. It’s a complete pain in the ass, and I spend the entire movement tensed and terrified of not locking my arms enough and dropping her.
Halfway through our fourth execution of it, she miscalculates where my right arm will be and, instead of grabbing it, her left hand smacks hard into my jaw. I’m left scrambling to catch her, and it’s only by sheer dumb luck that she doesn’t eat hardwood in front of everyone. I straighten up, lower her to the ground, and rub my mouth, saying, “Dude, you just punched me in the face, what the fuck.”
“I’m really sorry,” she says quickly, but she looks a little too amused to really mean it. I stick my tongue out at her, and she mirrors it.
No one wants to dance much more after that, so the rest of the group begins to filter off the stage. I take a seat next to where I left my guitar. Annabelle and Nate are already chatting excitedly about how aerials will make the school dance scene more dynamic, but Ms. Markland clears her throat and says, “It depends who the cast includes. We’ll have to wait and see how the rest of the auditions turn out.”
She barely spares me a glance, but there’s a private smile on her face, and I feel a small spark of hope. I might actually have a chance at this, provided that Miranda doesn’t crack me in the face again.
When it’s time for us to move into the monologues and songs, I’m so used to Anderson being the first name called that I’m already sitting up when Ms. Markland calls out, “Gabe Alberti?”
Right. The anti-drug douche who barely acknowledged me. He’s annoyingly good—he uses a monologue that he pulls from his pocket, and actually manages to make a few people laugh. He follows it up by singing some soaring Broadway number. It’s a great audition, overall, save one note of pitchiness on the song. When he finishes, he exits to stage to applause and resumes his seat in the front row, along with the rest of the drama club main players.
“Garen Anderson,” Ms. Markland calls, and I stand.
On my way past the group in the front row, Gabe snags my arm. “Hey, Garen. What reading are you going to do?”
I shrug. “Just one of the standards they handed out earlier. Why?”
“Oh, I was just wondering if you’d treat us to a rendition of some coke-fueled rant from Requiem for a Dream,” he says, returning my shrug. Some of the people in the group snicker, but most look around at him in bemusement. Even that uptight bitch Joss turns her head sharply towards him and digs an elbow into his side.
It’s hard not to be embarrassed, especially since most of them know exactly where I was this morning, but it’s even harder not to be pissed. And I am a man of many faults, so I don’t feel any guilt for snorting in derision and saying, “First of all, Requiem for a Dream is about heroin, you moron, not cocaine, so your little quip falls kind of flat. Second of all, keep laughing, kid. Haven’t you been doing this theater bullshit for years, trying to work your way up to leading man? This is my first audition ever, and between the moves they had me doing with Annabelle on stage earlier and the song I’m going to be singing in about two minutes, I’m about to put your punk ass back in the chorus. So, shut the fuck up, and maybe you’ll learn something.”
My last experience interacting with drama club kids was maybe in my sophomore year of high school, so I’m rusty. I have no idea what constitutes an insult with these people; fuck, I’m half-expecting some sort of finger-snapping, jazz-hands rumble, straight out of West Side Story. But I must get it at least most of the way right, because even the rest of his friends are roaring with gleeful abandon, grinning at me and ruffling Gabe’s sandy-blond hair. I continue up the side stairs to the stage, feeling just a little bit braver.
“Hi, Garen. Are you ready?” Ms. Markland says. I nod. “Great. I see you’ve got one of our sample soliloquies. Is that what you’ll be—”
“Nope, changed my mind,” I say, crumpling the paper and tossing it off the edge of the stage. “I’m suddenly feeling a bit more Shakespearean. Henry the Fifth, act four, scene three.”
I launch into the St. Crispen’s Day Speech with such gusto that a few of the idiots in the front row can only stare, their mouths gaping open. They don’t know how many times I’ve heard this stupid speech, how Sergeant Smitth used to torment us during PT by reading it into a megaphone to either motivate us, teach us about the military’s “band of brothers,” or drive us insane with Old English. These people don’t know about the countless times everyone in my squad would get completely shitfaced and recite it at each other in increasingly elaborate accents. I know the speech by heart, even if it might come out a little smoother with a fifth of scotch in me.
Once I have finished, there is a brief, stunned silence, during which I can’t help but turn to Gabe and throw my arms out to the sides in what can only be interpreted as a what now, bitch? sort of gesture. He turns purple. Ms. Markland clears her throat, but when I roll my eyes back in her direction, she’s warring between amusement and disapproval. I get that face a lot, especially from teachers. She folds her hands together and says, “That was lovely, thank you. Have you prepared a song?”
“Yeah,” I say, even though I haven’t actually given it much thought. I jerk my head upstage, towards the carefully staggered musical instruments. “I was going to just play along on guitar as my own accompaniment. It cool if I use one of those, so I don’t have to bother grabbing mine?”
“Dad. Dad, hang on. Pay attention to me. Dad.”
“We’ve been waiting on the same bench for fifteen minutes now, Garen. You are literally the only thing I can pay attention to, other than a copy of O Magazine from three years ago. What?”
I reach over and pinch my dad’s wrist until he puts down the battered magazine and looks at me. I frown down at my hands and say, “So, it’s been like, a month since you talked to Doc Howard, right?”
“Yes,” he says slowly, waiting for the catch.
“Well, she just… she kind of likes to give me a hard time, I think. And she gives me shit, because she always wants me to push myself harder, and do better, and be more self-aware, bullshit like that. She sometimes says stuff that makes it sound like I’m not really putting that much effort into recovery, because she really wants me to do my best. So, before we go in there, I just want to let you know that I really am trying. And like, I’ve been so good, Dad. I’m still clean, I have been for months now. I’m at eighty days now, just like it says on my board, so don’t… you know, don’t get mad at me, or think that I’m screwing around just because Doc is a hardass.”
The door to Doc’s office opens and a woman steps out—she must be one of the eating disorder patients from the other wing, because she’s five and a half feet tall, but no more than eighty-five or ninety pounds soaking wet. If I get off the bench too quickly, the shifting of air molecules in the hallway might knock her over. She shoots me a nervous glance, then scuttles off down the hall. A moment later, Doc pokes her head out of the office and says, “Garen, Bill. Come on in.”
I stand and take a step towards the door, but Dad grabs my arm, saying in a low tone, “I know you’re trying, Garen. Watching you go through this process has been hell for your mother and I, because you’re our only child, and we love you more than anything. But no matter how hard it’s been for us, I know it’s been even more difficult for you. You’ve been incredibly brave, and incredibly dedicated to your recovery. I know that, okay?”
Face red, I nod and duck into Doc’s office. It’s nice to know that Dad appreciates the severity of my particular circumstances, but it’s still embarrassing as hell that I even have to go through this. It’s absolutely humiliating that people think I’m strong now that I have to get over these addictions, when I should have just stopped myself from being weak enough to give in to them in the first place. I flop down in my usual seat and say, “Hello there, Doctor. How are you on this fine morning?”
“I’m just peachy, Garen, how are you?”
“Tired. Preemptively bored. Can I have my machine?” I ask. Her eyebrows shoot towards her hairline, and I amend, “Can I have the machine?”
The fact that Doc owns the coffee machine is a mere technicality, in my opinion. I know for a fact that I’m the only person who uses it, because it’s one of those single-serve numbers with the pods of grounds, and sometimes I leave them in the machine even though she tells me not to, just to see if someone will take them out before my next appointment. No one ever does. I turn them in weird directions, or rip off the foil on top once they’re done brewing, just to be one hundred percent positive, but seriously, nothing ever happens. And she only bought it after I came to LRC. It’s mine.
She unearths it from the big drawer in her desk and hands me a water bottle. I plug the machine into the power strip along the side of her desk and fill the reservoir with water from the bottle. The coffee sets to brewing into the chipped Daily Grind mug I appropriated from Travis during my one and only trip to the old house after rehab, where I nervously sifted through some of the remaining contents of my old room and the den I had been living in while I was too injured to go upstairs. Evelyn had followed me around the entire time, making these disapproving little clicks with her tongue every time I touched anything, until I had finally burst out, “For Christ’s sake, Ev, I’m not contagious. You can’t catch fuck-up, alright?” She had stormed back downstairs to scream at my dad, and I had taken the opportunity to sneak into Travis’ room and steal something lame, just to see if he’d notice. So far, he doesn’t seem to miss the old coffee mug he’d been using as a pen-holder on his desk, which is weird, considering I had just dumped the pens out on the floor and walked out. It sits on the shelf in Doc’s office now.
Doc flips to a fresh page in her yellow legal pad and sets it down on the desk, though this is more of a matter of habit than anything else; she rarely takes notes during our sessions, opting instead for a normal conversation peppered with some prying questions. I like that—the normal part, not the questions. It makes me feel less like I’m talking to a psychiatrist. She says, “How’s school going?”
I shrug. “Fine. I’ve only had one day of it, so far, but I guess that went okay. Some of my classes are cool—I’ve got this one film class that seems like it’ll be interesting, and the teacher’s nice enough. And my old music teacher got me this… I don’t know, internship thing? I’m assisting with his class for credit. I listened to you, too, about branching out with my activities or whatever. I’m auditioning for the school play later today.”
“That’s great,” Doc says. “Have you made any attempts to branch out socially yet?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because all my classmates are assholes,” I say earnestly.
She flicks her eyes upward for a half-second, as though praying for patience, but at least she doesn’t scoff. It’s taken a lot of practice and sixty-four sessions—sixty-five, now, I guess—but we’ve moved past scoffing, and we’re mostly past eye-rolling, on both our parts. She asks, “Did something specific happen to prompt that particular sentiment?” I shrug again. “Alright, I’m assuming that’s a yes. What happened?”
I slouch down in my seat and kick my boots up onto the edge of her desk. She hates that, but I must look unreasonably miserable, because she doesn’t tell me to put them down. After a minute, it becomes clear that I’m not getting out of answering this, so I say, “Someone may have made a comment during the welcome address yesterday morning, before they gave us our schedules. There’s a club on campus, apparently. They call it ‘S.A.D.D.,’ which changes meaning, based on who you ask. Students Against Destructive Decisions. Students Against Drunk Driving. Students Against Drugs and Drinking. That kind of thing. Some chick was presenting about it during the clubs and activities part of the assembly, and some guy yelled out a comment. About me. By name.”
“What did he say?” Dad asks.
I don’t want to meet his eyes, because I can tell from his tone that he’s not pleased that I didn’t mention this last night when he asked me about my day. And I can tell that if he knows what people are saying about me, he’ll be ashamed to have such a magnificent screw-up for a son. Any father would be. But Doc never lets me out of answering questions, even the really shitty ones, so I say, “He said they would never need to hire speakers to come present about the effects of drug use, because everybody could just ask me, instead. And then he made a noise like—you know. Like, he was doing coke, or whatever. Like he was doing a bump.” I’m not sure if they know what I mean, not sure if that’s a common noise to be aware of, so I reach up, press my thumb to the side of my nose and give a quick snort, then let my hand fall again. “That.”
“Little shit,” Dad mutters.
Doc frowns, but for once, I’m pretty sure it’s not because of what I’ve done. Take that, Jack Thorne; the woman I pay to listen to me complain thinks you’re a dickbag. She says, “What did you do when this person did that?”
“Nothing,” I say, then amend, “I didn’t have to do anything. Travis did. He knows the guy, they do track together. He grabbed him, threatened to beat the shit out of him. It was kinda cool.”
“Hmm,” Doc says, because that’s what she says every time I mention Travis.
“Shut up,” I say, because that’s what I say every time she does that. “Jesus, Doc, it wasn’t a thing. He was just helping me out. Defending me, or whatever. Don’t make it weird.”
She leans back in her chair, uncrosses her legs and recrosses them in the other direction. “I’m not making it weird, Garen. The fact that you’re getting defensive before I’ve even had a chance to say anything is pretty telling, though. It’s been a while since you’ve mentioned Travis during one of our sessions, and I think that’s great. It means you’re moving on.” She pauses, then addresses Dad, “One of the worst things that an addict can do for his sobriety is get involved with someone before he’s ready. Oftentimes, people who are in the beginning stages of recovery can start substituting addictions; instead of obsessing over going to bars and clubs, he’ll obsess over going to meetings and therapy sessions. Instead of being addicted to drugs, he can become addicted to people and relationships. Garen has already shown a predilection for relationships that are unhealthy or destructive. I’m very worried that he might start dating before he has learned how to process his emotions without the aid of drugs or alcohol.”
It’s a valid concern; I know that, which only makes me dislike hearing it more. If I get involved with someone and things start to go badly, how will I deal with it now? How do normal people wake up every morning and know how to function without putting some sort of controlled substance in their body to make this world more bearable?
Doc has less to worry about than she thinks she does, because my capacity to get involved, in any way, with anyone is kind of limited right now. It has been since before rehab, since the afternoon I blew some guy in a truck stop parking lot for drugs. Something shut off in me when that happened, and I trust Doc not to judge me for it, but I haven’t found the right words to explain it to her. It’s humiliating to be eighteen years old and be so unbelievably disinterested in letting anyone touch me, to be a high school senior who has That Problem, as I have cautiously begun to refer to it in my own head. And if I can’t tell it to Doc in the confines of our weekly sessions, I sure as hell can’t tell it to her now, with my father sitting next to me.
I sit up a little straighter in my seat, finally taking my feet off Doc’s desk. “But that’s the thing: I’m not trying to get involved with anyone, including Travis. We’re just friends. We talk sometimes. We’re not even hooking up anymore, haven’t been since last winter. I’m telling you, it’s not a big deal. It’s just… I don’t know. I thought it was cool that he stood up for me, is all. He didn’t have to, especially not after all the shit I’ve put him through in the past year.”
“I know that. I’m not accusing you of anything, Garen. I only bring it up because I want to make sure that you’re still in line with your goals. We’ve agreed in past sessions, it would be—”
“—unwise for me to get into a relationship before I’ve been sober for a year,” I finish. “I know. ‘Emotional and psychological dependency can be as damaging as chemical dependency.’ I get it. Can we move on?”
For a nice change of pace, she allows my deflection and turns her attention towards my dad. They discuss my recovery, my sessions, how they’re both oh-so-thrilled with how much progress I’ve made. Doc tells him that, after almost three months of regular sessions, she thinks we can be secure in my diagnosis of borderline personality disorder, but she also thinks we can be secure with the fact that I don’t—as of right now—need anti-depressants or anti-psychotics or anything to keep me functioning. They’re both just thrilled about that. Like I should be proud of myself for being able to make it through a day without needing to stuff my body full of drugs to make me normal. Like that’s not a basic human skill.
When Doc dismisses me at quarter to eleven, she hands me a sheet of paper. “Your homework for Tuesday.”
“You already gave me homework for Tuesday, last week,” I protest. “Besides, I have actual homework, you know, from school?”
“You can add this to the pile, then,” she says. I glance down at the assignment—it’s a bulleted list of things, but I don’t have time to read it now, before the audition I’m already late to. I fold it into quarters and stick it in my back pocket.
Only once we’re outside and climbing into the Benz does Dad chance a sideways glance at me and say, “Do you talk to Travis much, then?”
“No,” I say, buckling my seatbelt and turning to scowl out the window.
Dad presses, “How often, would you say?”
“I don’t know, Dad,” I exhale. “I talked to him yesterday at school, and he called me Thursday night, but other than that, we haven’t really spoken much for the past week or so. He’s busy with school, and I’ve been mostly hanging with Alex and Ben. Speaking of, you don’t need to pick me up after the audition. Alex’s dad wants him to move his drum kit out of the basement because he says it takes up too much space, so I said he could keep it downstairs at our place. We’ve got room for it, and my room’s soundproofed, so he could come over and play whenever he wanted without bugging anybody. He and Ben are picking me up at four o’clock, ‘cause Ben’s CR-V is obviously going to hold way more than my car.” I flick my eyes towards him, then add, “Is that okay?”
The question hangs heavily between us. For the past three weeks, we’ve been treading lightly around the idea of me being an adult, but still asking permission to go out or have people over or whatever. Every time I ask, I can see an instinctive no forming in Dad’s mind, but today, as every other day, he swallows it and says, “Of course. That’s fine.”
Everyone keeps telling me that building trust is important. They neglect to mention that it’s also uncomfortable.
When I finally arrive at school, a few taped-up papers lead me down to the auditorium. There, I find forty or so people, some on the stage, some in the chairs, some just wandering around chatting to each other. Like something out of a cheesy teen movie, they all look over at me when the auditorium door creaks shut behind me. They blink at me; I blink back from behind my sunglasses and shift the strap of my guitar case from one shoulder to the other. Then, on stage, Nate, the overenthusiastic kid, waves at me and says, “Hi, Garen! Glad you could make it. You can join this last group on stage, we’re about to get started.”
I set my case on a seat in the fourth row, where I’ll be able to keep an eye on it during the dancing part. When I’m halfway down the aisle, someone says, “I didn’t realize you were planning to audition today, Garen.”
Ms. Markland, my film and lit teacher, is hanging out in a seat in the middle of the front row, a clipboard balanced on her lap.
“Yeah. Kid on stage found me at lunch yesterday and convinced me to try out. Are you um… the director, or whatever?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “No, Nathan Holliday—the boy on stage, the one who you say convinced you? He’s taking the lead on this whole production. He wrote the script and made all the changes, he’s directing the show, he’ll be helping me with casting. Now, it’s Anderson, right? Garen Anderson?” I nod, and she pencils my name into the list on her clipboard. “If you don’t have a speech prepared for your spoken audition later, take one of the papers from the edge of the stage. They’re just stock audition monologues.” She smiles politely as she gestures towards the stage.
I grab a paper from the stage, hoist myself up onto it and hover awkwardly at the edge of the group. Most of the other people seem to be friends, or at least know each other; I wonder if they’ve all been in the club together for years now. Maybe I’m intruding, just by existing. Maybe this’ll turn into some Showgirls shit, and I’ll get thrown down a flight of stairs by a chorus-girl. Maybe it’ll be more like Drop Dead Gorgeous, and someone will drop a stage light on my head. Or maybe I shouldn’t have spent half my junior year smoking pot and watching Bravo with Jamie.
Nate moves to the front of the stage and claps his hands for attention. Once we’re all looking, he assumes what I can only consider to be his default position, with one leg locked out to the side and his hip cocked. I look away; it’s always so weird when I meet other gay guys who actually fall into the stereotypes that people are constantly criticizing me for, because none of the other guys I’m friends with are like this. Even the bottoms I’ve fucked have just been… well, regular dudes. Travis is a varsity athlete who seems as baffled by fashion or whatever as any other guy I know. Ben wears skinny jeans and eye makeup, sure, but I’ve also seen him both giving and taking a beating in the middle of the gen-ad section of hardcore shows. I mean, Jamie loves dick more than almost anyone else I know, but after he graduates from college, he’s joining the Marines, for fuck’s sake. Regardless of sexual orientation, I don’t know anyone who stands with anything like the effeminate tilt in Nate’s hips.
Oblivious to my evaluation of him, Nate says, “Now, for everybody who’s seen the movie version of Grease, I’m sure you remember that there’s a school dance scene where everybody does something called the hand jive. It’s a really simple move, so that’s what we’re going to start with.”
Next to him, a pretty girl with a dark red ponytail says, “With both hands, you’re going to slap the tops of your legs two times, then clap your hands twice. Next, you criss-cross your hands over each other twice, first with the right hand on top, then another two times with the left on top. Now, make two fists, and hit them on top of each other twice, first right on top, then left on top. Then you’re going to do this—” Nate and the girl both make a double thumbs-up gesture, “—and you’re going to jerk your thumb over your shoulder, first on the right, then on the left. And that’s it!”
They lead us through the steps again, slowly, and I’m frowning the whole time. The dance seems familiar, but I can’t place it. It’s gnawing at the back of my mind, a memory that’s trying to rise to the surface. Have I done this before? Is this another of the stupid things my friends and I used to get drunk and make fun of in the dorm rooms? I know I’ve seen Grease before, I can remember catching it on TV once with Andrew when we were sort-of-together-but-not-really-together, during the first semester of sophomore year, right before I ended things with him to date Dave. There are some half-remembered flashes of it beyond that, though; split-second images of being high off my ass in the Whitman Hall common room, dancing on a coffee table while Jamie shouts, “No, you ass-clown! It’s hand over hand, then fist over fist. You’re fucking it up so bad!”
I haven’t blacked out in months, but I still always feel like I’m losing time. The truth is that for the first time in years, I’m actually sober enough to start remembering nights that I thought I’d lost years ago. I’m not sure I like it.
“Okay, guys. Thanks, that was great,” Nate announces, and I start. I’ve been going through the motions, but only the sound of his too-high voice brings my mind back to the task at hand. He says to the redhead, “Annabelle, do you want to take the lead on the swing?”
“Yeah, sure. But um… are you sure you’re going to be able to dance in those shoes?” the redhead, Annabelle, asks me, nodding to my boots. “I mean… they don’t have laces and there’s a lot of footwork in swing. So, they might, you know. Come off. Or something.”
I glance towards the wings and see a toolkit sitting near an electrical box. I walk over, flip it open, and unearth a handful of cable ties. Twine would probably be less trailer trash, but three cable ties through the empty hooks manages to secure each of my boots to my feet. I return to my place in line, between two girls wearing little high-heeled dance shoes. I’m apparently the only idiot here who thought this was a fucking high school play, not a Broadway audition. Silly me.
Annabelle begins to talk us through our next dance, a series of basic swing steps. Basic must be a pretty relative term, because the rest of us are dancing like we’ve got nerve damage. When John, a guy a few place down from me, trips over his own shoes—shiny dance shoes didn’t save him from that, the little show-off—and almost pitches off the stage, Nate sighs and turns to Annabelle. “Divide and conquer?”
The group is split by gender at that point. Nate stands with his back to us and exaggerates the footwork very slowly until we’re all able to shuffle along in an acceptable way. The girls are making way more progress than we are, and occasionally, someone turns to glare at me for the clomping of my boots. Every time, I just sneer back. After a few minutes, I look up to find that Annabelle is watching me, her head cocked to the side. Immediately, I halt and say, “What am I fucking up?”
“No, I’m actually… well, Nate,” she says, turning to call across the stage to him. He looks over, and she points at me. “I’m wondering if maybe he could handle doing a belt flip.”
Flips? I never bargained for doing flips. I tried one once during junior year, while hammered; I almost broke my collarbone. I’m opening my mouth to protest, but Nate says, “Maybe. He looks like he has really great upper body strength.” He’s staring at my arms. I snort. He snaps out of it to add, “I don’t know. Try it?”
Annabelle takes me by the wrist and tows me towards the middle of the stage. She stands on my right so that we’re facing the same direction, though I’m about half a step behind her. “Turn towards me like, thirty degrees, and put your right foot behind both of mine. No, perpendicular. Right. Okay, now, lean forward a little and put your right arm around my front.”
“Like this?” I say, settling my right arm across her stomach and wrapping it just enough to press my forearm and palm to the small of her back.
“Yep. Left hand behind my knees. Good. Now, I’m going to count—five, six, seven, eight—and after eight, I’m going to bend my knees a little, then pop up. Move with me, and when I’m up, I’m going to flip my legs back over my head at the same time that you’re straightening up and pushing my legs, to help me. Whatever you do, do not let go of me until my feet are back on the ground, okay?”
“Okay,” I say, even though everyone is watching, and I’m pretty sure I’m about to accidentally snap her neck. God, they’re going to be so mad at me if I kill the choreographer.
But Annabelle must have more faith in me, because she gets into position and says, “Five, six, seven, eight, down-UP!”
The flip is over faster then I expect it to be. One second, she’s crouching down a little, then suddenly her full weight is on my bicep as we both swing her feet back over her head. I hear the soft thump of her feet hitting the stage again, but I still check to make sure she’s stable before I release her. She’s stable, she’s alive, everything is fine. No snapped necks, no sir, not today. I’m so busy celebrating my ability to not kill a woman that I almost miss the gleeful smiles that she and Nate are exchanging.
From the front row, where she is sitting with her arms crossed, Ms. Markland says, “Can you do that again?” We do, a little more smoothly. “How about an angel?”
“What the fuck is an angel?” I ask.
Annabelle says, “Once I’ve completed enough of the flip that my legs are over and I’m facing the ground, you hold me in place on your shoulder. I keep my torso and legs parallel to the floor, and put my arms out and back. Then, instead of completing the flip behind you, you turn me back down the way I came up. Think you can manage that?”
No. “Yes.”
Turns out, I can. They spend the better part of the next quarter hour forcing me and my apparently rippling biceps through a series of flips and turns and twirls—a bunch of stupid shit they keep calling “aerials.” Once satisfied with my ability to not murder someone as talented as Annabelle, they begin to partner the rest of the cast off so that I end up with a girl named Miranda. She’s the same height as Annabelle, but weighs about thirty pounds more, and she keeps shooting me these apologetic looks. Finally, she steps close and whispers, “I’m sorry. I know I’m fatter than the other girls, and if you don’t want to lift me—”
“Come on. I haven’t had any trouble lifting you yet, have I?” I say. Neither of us points out that this might be due to what Nate so lustily referred to as my “great upper body strength.” She still looks embarrassed, so I add, “Also, shut up, you’re not fat. You’re beautiful.”
For half a second, she looks like she’s going to cry, and then she’s breaking into a blinding smile. Girls are so weird. Rather than voice my confusion, however, I take her hand and return to our dance. We work well together, right up until the middle of some move called an “around the world,” in which she jumps into my arms bridal-style, then swings her legs to the right around the back of my body to hook them around my left arm. With her knees locked around my bent elbow, I’m supposed to then swing the rest of her body around until she can grab my right arm and flip over it to dismount. It’s a complete pain in the ass, and I spend the entire movement tensed and terrified of not locking my arms enough and dropping her.
Halfway through our fourth execution of it, she miscalculates where my right arm will be and, instead of grabbing it, her left hand smacks hard into my jaw. I’m left scrambling to catch her, and it’s only by sheer dumb luck that she doesn’t eat hardwood in front of everyone. I straighten up, lower her to the ground, and rub my mouth, saying, “Dude, you just punched me in the face, what the fuck.”
“I’m really sorry,” she says quickly, but she looks a little too amused to really mean it. I stick my tongue out at her, and she mirrors it.
No one wants to dance much more after that, so the rest of the group begins to filter off the stage. I take a seat next to where I left my guitar. Annabelle and Nate are already chatting excitedly about how aerials will make the school dance scene more dynamic, but Ms. Markland clears her throat and says, “It depends who the cast includes. We’ll have to wait and see how the rest of the auditions turn out.”
She barely spares me a glance, but there’s a private smile on her face, and I feel a small spark of hope. I might actually have a chance at this, provided that Miranda doesn’t crack me in the face again.
When it’s time for us to move into the monologues and songs, I’m so used to Anderson being the first name called that I’m already sitting up when Ms. Markland calls out, “Gabe Alberti?”
Right. The anti-drug douche who barely acknowledged me. He’s annoyingly good—he uses a monologue that he pulls from his pocket, and actually manages to make a few people laugh. He follows it up by singing some soaring Broadway number. It’s a great audition, overall, save one note of pitchiness on the song. When he finishes, he exits to stage to applause and resumes his seat in the front row, along with the rest of the drama club main players.
“Garen Anderson,” Ms. Markland calls, and I stand.
On my way past the group in the front row, Gabe snags my arm. “Hey, Garen. What reading are you going to do?”
I shrug. “Just one of the standards they handed out earlier. Why?”
“Oh, I was just wondering if you’d treat us to a rendition of some coke-fueled rant from Requiem for a Dream,” he says, returning my shrug. Some of the people in the group snicker, but most look around at him in bemusement. Even that uptight bitch Joss turns her head sharply towards him and digs an elbow into his side.
It’s hard not to be embarrassed, especially since most of them know exactly where I was this morning, but it’s even harder not to be pissed. And I am a man of many faults, so I don’t feel any guilt for snorting in derision and saying, “First of all, Requiem for a Dream is about heroin, you moron, not cocaine, so your little quip falls kind of flat. Second of all, keep laughing, kid. Haven’t you been doing this theater bullshit for years, trying to work your way up to leading man? This is my first audition ever, and between the moves they had me doing with Annabelle on stage earlier and the song I’m going to be singing in about two minutes, I’m about to put your punk ass back in the chorus. So, shut the fuck up, and maybe you’ll learn something.”
My last experience interacting with drama club kids was maybe in my sophomore year of high school, so I’m rusty. I have no idea what constitutes an insult with these people; fuck, I’m half-expecting some sort of finger-snapping, jazz-hands rumble, straight out of West Side Story. But I must get it at least most of the way right, because even the rest of his friends are roaring with gleeful abandon, grinning at me and ruffling Gabe’s sandy-blond hair. I continue up the side stairs to the stage, feeling just a little bit braver.
“Hi, Garen. Are you ready?” Ms. Markland says. I nod. “Great. I see you’ve got one of our sample soliloquies. Is that what you’ll be—”
“Nope, changed my mind,” I say, crumpling the paper and tossing it off the edge of the stage. “I’m suddenly feeling a bit more Shakespearean. Henry the Fifth, act four, scene three.”
I launch into the St. Crispen’s Day Speech with such gusto that a few of the idiots in the front row can only stare, their mouths gaping open. They don’t know how many times I’ve heard this stupid speech, how Sergeant Smitth used to torment us during PT by reading it into a megaphone to either motivate us, teach us about the military’s “band of brothers,” or drive us insane with Old English. These people don’t know about the countless times everyone in my squad would get completely shitfaced and recite it at each other in increasingly elaborate accents. I know the speech by heart, even if it might come out a little smoother with a fifth of scotch in me.
Once I have finished, there is a brief, stunned silence, during which I can’t help but turn to Gabe and throw my arms out to the sides in what can only be interpreted as a what now, bitch? sort of gesture. He turns purple. Ms. Markland clears her throat, but when I roll my eyes back in her direction, she’s warring between amusement and disapproval. I get that face a lot, especially from teachers. She folds her hands together and says, “That was lovely, thank you. Have you prepared a song?”
“Yeah,” I say, even though I haven’t actually given it much thought. I jerk my head upstage, towards the carefully staggered musical instruments. “I was going to just play along on guitar as my own accompaniment. It cool if I use one of those, so I don’t have to bother grabbing mine?”
She nods her head once and gestures towards them, indicating that I should help myself. I slip the strap of the black, beat-to-shit Les Paul Standard over my head, take about ten seconds to tune it, then launch into the first song that comes to mind, some punk-pop band’s cover of an old Don Henley song. It’s good with just the guitar, but it’d be better if I had thought to ask Alex along to play the drums for me. Ben would work, too, that obnoxious little prodigy with his six-instrument-playing self—piano, guitar, drums, bass, clarinet, and mentioned casually the other day that he taught himself the basics of violin over the summer because he got bored, what the fuck—but Alex is the best drummer I know, way better than the Patton dipshit I’ve been “in a band with” since freshman year, even though I barely see them anymore. Al and I could fucking kill this song.
In my defense, I’m kind of killing it on my own. That’s not a surprise—to me, having a good voice or being able to shred the shit out of the guitar is pretty much on par with having green eyes or spending way too much time flat-ironing my hair every morning. Parts of who I am, things I don’t even think about anymore. Right now, I’m more concerned that I’m putting on too much of a show. I’m a musician, not an actor, and I know I should probably be performing this in that stock-still, occasional-arm-lifting way that all Gabe performed his song, but that’s not me. When I play guitar, I rock out, throwing my whole arm and shoulder into every chord I bang out, sometimes bouncing or rocking a little on boots planted two feet apart, face full of expression, jerking my head in an occasional semi-head-bang. It’s more fun that way, for me, the band, and whoever’s watching, but I know it’s not how I’m supposed to be doing this in a theater audition.
I wrap up the song and, without waiting for any acknowledgment, return the guitar to its stand and scuff across the stage back towards the stairs, hands stuffed in my pockets. I’m belatedly aware of applause, and of Gabe glaring daggers at me, and of Ms. Markland calling after me, “That was great, Garen, thank you!”
At the base of the stage stairs, I spin to give her a salute, then head back towards my seat in the fourth row to watch the rest of the auditions. It takes about fifteen seconds before Miranda, my dance partner, scrambles out of her seat in the front row and bolts back to where I’m sitting, sinking into the seat next to me and saying, “That was awesome.”
“Thanks,” I say, genuinely surprised that she’s admitting that.
She rakes her hair back and casts a somewhat mournful look at the stage. “Man, I wish I had your balls. Basically nobody auditions with songs that aren’t Broadway. I told my mom I wanted to audition with Joan Jett, but she was like, ‘fuck that, you’re doing something from Les Mis.’ So, here I am.” She wrinkles her nose and shrugs.
I raise my eyebrows at her. “So? Unless your mom is Ms. Markland or the Holliday kid, I really don’t think her opinion matters much right now. If you wanna do a Joan Jett song, do it.”
“I brought the music for the Broadway number, not the rock one,” she says, shrugging. I stare at her; she stares back. I incline my head towards the guitar case on my other side; a slow smile spreads across her face. “I couldn’t.”
“Oh, but you could,” I press.
She shakes her head, but she’s still smiling. A beat. Then, “Do you know ‘I Love Rock ‘n Roll’?”
I snort. “What are you, new?”
When her name is called almost a full hour later, I follow her up the aisle with my case and sit down on the edge of the stage while she performs her monologue. A few people seem distracted by my presence; even though he’s supposed to be watching Miranda, I can feel Nate’s eyes flicking towards me every few seconds. It’s starting to get annoying. I turn to face him properly, and when his eyes land on me again a moment later, I wink at him. He turns an unholy shade of red, but his attention returns to Miranda for the rest of her speech.
“Lovely,” Ms. Markland says after a moment. “Do you have a song?”
“Y-Yes,” Miranda says, shooting me a nervous look. I’m not surprised; the most rocking thing anyone has auditioned with since me was something from Rent. Before she can change her mind, I stand, cross the stage to the amp, plug my guitar into it, and start to play.
In my defense, I’m kind of killing it on my own. That’s not a surprise—to me, having a good voice or being able to shred the shit out of the guitar is pretty much on par with having green eyes or spending way too much time flat-ironing my hair every morning. Parts of who I am, things I don’t even think about anymore. Right now, I’m more concerned that I’m putting on too much of a show. I’m a musician, not an actor, and I know I should probably be performing this in that stock-still, occasional-arm-lifting way that all Gabe performed his song, but that’s not me. When I play guitar, I rock out, throwing my whole arm and shoulder into every chord I bang out, sometimes bouncing or rocking a little on boots planted two feet apart, face full of expression, jerking my head in an occasional semi-head-bang. It’s more fun that way, for me, the band, and whoever’s watching, but I know it’s not how I’m supposed to be doing this in a theater audition.
I wrap up the song and, without waiting for any acknowledgment, return the guitar to its stand and scuff across the stage back towards the stairs, hands stuffed in my pockets. I’m belatedly aware of applause, and of Gabe glaring daggers at me, and of Ms. Markland calling after me, “That was great, Garen, thank you!”
At the base of the stage stairs, I spin to give her a salute, then head back towards my seat in the fourth row to watch the rest of the auditions. It takes about fifteen seconds before Miranda, my dance partner, scrambles out of her seat in the front row and bolts back to where I’m sitting, sinking into the seat next to me and saying, “That was awesome.”
“Thanks,” I say, genuinely surprised that she’s admitting that.
She rakes her hair back and casts a somewhat mournful look at the stage. “Man, I wish I had your balls. Basically nobody auditions with songs that aren’t Broadway. I told my mom I wanted to audition with Joan Jett, but she was like, ‘fuck that, you’re doing something from Les Mis.’ So, here I am.” She wrinkles her nose and shrugs.
I raise my eyebrows at her. “So? Unless your mom is Ms. Markland or the Holliday kid, I really don’t think her opinion matters much right now. If you wanna do a Joan Jett song, do it.”
“I brought the music for the Broadway number, not the rock one,” she says, shrugging. I stare at her; she stares back. I incline my head towards the guitar case on my other side; a slow smile spreads across her face. “I couldn’t.”
“Oh, but you could,” I press.
She shakes her head, but she’s still smiling. A beat. Then, “Do you know ‘I Love Rock ‘n Roll’?”
I snort. “What are you, new?”
When her name is called almost a full hour later, I follow her up the aisle with my case and sit down on the edge of the stage while she performs her monologue. A few people seem distracted by my presence; even though he’s supposed to be watching Miranda, I can feel Nate’s eyes flicking towards me every few seconds. It’s starting to get annoying. I turn to face him properly, and when his eyes land on me again a moment later, I wink at him. He turns an unholy shade of red, but his attention returns to Miranda for the rest of her speech.
“Lovely,” Ms. Markland says after a moment. “Do you have a song?”
“Y-Yes,” Miranda says, shooting me a nervous look. I’m not surprised; the most rocking thing anyone has auditioned with since me was something from Rent. Before she can change her mind, I stand, cross the stage to the amp, plug my guitar into it, and start to play.
Miranda doesn’t let me down. She fucking wails on that song, absolutely slaughters it. It’s fantastic, and by the time she’s done, I’m grinning like a little kid. The applause she receives is significantly more than I got, but hey, they’re her friends, not mine. I pack up my guitar and head back to my seat, though Miranda stretches out a hand to ruffle my hair as I pass her.
The rest of the afternoon passes in something much like silence. I’m not mocked by anyone, but I’m… not exactly spoken to at all. Just like yesterday during my classes, I’m ignored, and I hate it. When I was growing up in Cleveland, most of my classmates were constantly terrified of me blowing something up, but at least that meant they noticed me. At Patton, half the guys in the grade wanted to either be me or bed me. Last year, I had Ben, and Alex, and the rest of the guys, and Travis. Now, it’s just me. I’m alone.
It’s quarter after four by the time everyone has auditioned, and Ben and Alex are both sending me impatient texts from the parking lot. I send one to both of them that says, am finishing up now. jerk each other off for 5 minutes or something, i'm not gonna be THAT ASSHOLE who leaves right before we’re dismissed.
But it appears that we are not being dismissed. Nate and Ms. Markland are arguing in hushed tones while the rest of us just sit around doing nothing, and after a few too many minutes of that, she sighs and says, “Can I have John Nielson and Garen Anderson back on stage, please?”
The touch of alarm that I feel at that is standard; anytime someone calls me by my first and last name, a lecture usually follows. But I haven’t done anything wrong in forever, so it is with great trepidation that I approach the stage. John, the guy who almost face-planted during the dancing but followed it up with a serious ass-kicking on the spoken and sung auditions, gives me a polite smile as I join him onstage.
Ms. Markland says, “Alright, we’d like each of you to do one more song, at a different tempo. John, you need to speed it up, and Garen, you need to slow it down. Do you think you can do that?”
“Of course,” John says, then turns to me and says, “Do you mind if I go first?”
“Knock yourself out, man,” I say, dropping down to sit on the edge of the stage.
The rest of the afternoon passes in something much like silence. I’m not mocked by anyone, but I’m… not exactly spoken to at all. Just like yesterday during my classes, I’m ignored, and I hate it. When I was growing up in Cleveland, most of my classmates were constantly terrified of me blowing something up, but at least that meant they noticed me. At Patton, half the guys in the grade wanted to either be me or bed me. Last year, I had Ben, and Alex, and the rest of the guys, and Travis. Now, it’s just me. I’m alone.
It’s quarter after four by the time everyone has auditioned, and Ben and Alex are both sending me impatient texts from the parking lot. I send one to both of them that says, am finishing up now. jerk each other off for 5 minutes or something, i'm not gonna be THAT ASSHOLE who leaves right before we’re dismissed.
But it appears that we are not being dismissed. Nate and Ms. Markland are arguing in hushed tones while the rest of us just sit around doing nothing, and after a few too many minutes of that, she sighs and says, “Can I have John Nielson and Garen Anderson back on stage, please?”
The touch of alarm that I feel at that is standard; anytime someone calls me by my first and last name, a lecture usually follows. But I haven’t done anything wrong in forever, so it is with great trepidation that I approach the stage. John, the guy who almost face-planted during the dancing but followed it up with a serious ass-kicking on the spoken and sung auditions, gives me a polite smile as I join him onstage.
Ms. Markland says, “Alright, we’d like each of you to do one more song, at a different tempo. John, you need to speed it up, and Garen, you need to slow it down. Do you think you can do that?”
“Of course,” John says, then turns to me and says, “Do you mind if I go first?”
“Knock yourself out, man,” I say, dropping down to sit on the edge of the stage.
He launches into an a cappella rendition of some other Broadway song that sounds like it might be from the sixties. I must be the only person who doesn’t know this song, because most of the other audience members are clapping along or bopping around in their seats.
Okaaaay…
When he finishes, he is treated to a heavy round of applause as he sits down at the edge of the stage near me. Everybody looks over at me, and I’m suddenly, bizarrely uncomfortable. I shrug at my teacher and say, “I mean, I can do a slower song, for sure, but I… musical theatre’s not my thing. I don’t actually know any Broadway stuff, if that’s what you’re going for.”
There’s a general tittering of disapproval, and I roll my eyes. Jesus, it’s like being surrounded by a bunch of church ladies in the House of the Holy Showtune.
“That’s fine,” Nate says, though his eyes make it clear that it is not nearly as fine as he’d like me to believe. “Just use any slow song you know well enough to play on the spot.”
I’m not John; I don’t sing a cappella. I stand and walk back over to the instruments, select an acoustic guitar, and sit back down on the edge of the stage. After a brief hesitation, I start to play an old Nine Inch Nails song, in the way it had been covered by Johnny Cash. I don’t care if the song was by NIN; only the Man in Black has made me ache with it, so that’s how I play it.
Okaaaay…
When he finishes, he is treated to a heavy round of applause as he sits down at the edge of the stage near me. Everybody looks over at me, and I’m suddenly, bizarrely uncomfortable. I shrug at my teacher and say, “I mean, I can do a slower song, for sure, but I… musical theatre’s not my thing. I don’t actually know any Broadway stuff, if that’s what you’re going for.”
There’s a general tittering of disapproval, and I roll my eyes. Jesus, it’s like being surrounded by a bunch of church ladies in the House of the Holy Showtune.
“That’s fine,” Nate says, though his eyes make it clear that it is not nearly as fine as he’d like me to believe. “Just use any slow song you know well enough to play on the spot.”
I’m not John; I don’t sing a cappella. I stand and walk back over to the instruments, select an acoustic guitar, and sit back down on the edge of the stage. After a brief hesitation, I start to play an old Nine Inch Nails song, in the way it had been covered by Johnny Cash. I don’t care if the song was by NIN; only the Man in Black has made me ache with it, so that’s how I play it.
Almost immediately after beginning to sing, I wish I’d picked any other song. This one leaves me feeling exposed, like I’m sitting naked on the stage in front of everyone. In truth, I might actually be more comfortable being naked than singing a song about pain and addiction. There is certainly no clapping along, no seat-dancing, no smiling from the audience, and when I finish and return the guitar to its stand, there is silence. I hop off the stage, and the sound of my boots on the ground must trigger a reaction, because people are clapping politely after that. I’ve taken two steps when John grabs my sleeve and says, “Hey, good job. And don’t worry about being asked to perform again. Usually, that just means they’re considering us both for the same part, but wanted to see how we’d interpret it different. It’s a theatre thing, I guess.”
His smile is encouraging, and I try to imitate it before I slink back to my seat alone.
“Those were some really great auditions, you guys,” Nate says, beaming around at us all. “It’s left us with a lot to think about, but we’ll be making our decisions this weekend. The cast list will be posted on the announcement board by the main office on Monday, before first period. Everyone have a good weekend!” I’m halfway up the aisle when he catches up to me. “Garen! Garen, wait.”
I rotate slowly in place, and he seems surprised, but pleased, like he had half-expected me to book it out of the auditorium and leave him hanging. I peer at him over the top of my sunglasses, now back in place. “What’s up?”
“I just um, wanted to say that I thought you were really good,” he says, already turning red. “Obviously it’s not just up to me, I mean, Ms. Markland gets a major say in casting, too? But I think you did really well. And you shouldn’t worry about not getting a part, because you’re definitely going to be in the cast.”
Was I ever this much of a virgin? The kid told me yesterday that he’s fifteen, but I was already fucking Jamie by the time I was his age. I can’t help but ask, “What grade are you in?”
“I-I’m a junior.”
I blink. “You’re one grade below me but three years younger? I know I’m repeating my senior year, but that’s kind of weird. I thought you said you were—”
“Fifteen, yeah, I know,” he says, gritting his teeth. “I’m about to turn sixteen, though. My birthday is in October. And then, I’ll be, you know… legally allowed to, um.” I raise my eyebrows. He clears his throat. “Drive. And stuff.”
“And stuff,” I echo, cocking my head to the side. No human being has ever blushed as much as this guy is blushing right now. If he’s not bullshitting me when he says I’m going to be in the cast, this little crush is going to get old quick, but for now, I flash him a brief smile and head for the auditorium door, saying over my shoulder, “Be sure and let me know when that birthday arrives. Maybe I’ll teach you how to drive stick.”
Outside, Ben’s car is idling in the fire lane near the front doors. Alex, sitting shotgun, is the first to see me, and rolls down his window to ask, “How’d it go? You get a part?”
“Director says yeah, but it’s probably not going to be a good one. It was so weird, dude, there were people there who like, actually gave a shit. I didn’t realize any people actually gave a shit about drama club, I thought that was just a TV thing. The cast list goes up on Monday, though, so I’ll find out then,” I say. I hitch my chin at Ben. “Pop the trunk, I need to put my guitar in there.”
He obeys. After I have safely stored my guitar case, I climb into the trunk and shut it behind myself, crawling over the back of the bench into the backseat rather than walking around. Ben scowls at me in the rearview mirror. “I hate it when you do things like that. You’re going to ruin my seats if you don’t stop manhandling the leather.”
“Weird, because you never complained about me ‘manhandling the leather’ when I used to screw you in this very backseat,” I say, stretching my legs out sideways across the seat and leaning back against the closed door. I reach up to pinch Alex’s shoulder. “Hey, is your dad going to be home when we get there?”
Alex’s dad is kind of a dick. He’s a gigantic dick, actually; he’s nice enough to me, but that’s even worse than if he were mean to me, because after three visits to the house, I realized that I’m actually the only one of Alex’s friends who Mr. Baker doesn’t treat like shit. He’ll sneer at Ben—tiny, adorable Ben, with his eyeliner and too-tight jeans—but I’m always greeted with a genial smile and a “Garen, kid, how’re you doing?” Shortly before last New Year’s, I made the mistake of asking Alex why his dad seemed to only like me. His reply had been a tight smile and the words, “Because you’re the only one he thinks is straight. He’s never even met Mason or Jer, but he fucking hates Ben, he’s been giving me shit about him since we were fourteen. Every time he gets drunk, he comes up to my room to give me his big ‘you better not be fucking that faggot kid in the makeup’ lecture. He likes you because you went to military school and you have a deep voice and you’re built like a fucking Marine. He likes you because he thinks you fuck girls.” I kind of started avoiding Mr. Baker after that.
In the front seat, Alex shrugs. “He’s not supposed to be, but I can’t be sure. It’s not a big deal, we’re just going around back to the basement anyway.”
If either Ben or I had wanted to take Alex’s word for it, we’re both sorely disappointed when we pull into the driveway. Mr. Baker is camped out on the back patio, sitting on a deck chair halfway between a box of Corona bottles and the pool that Alex has yet to let me swim in. When he sees us all getting out of the car, he waves and says loudly, “Garen, buddy! How’ve you been?”
“Fine,” I say, waving back. It’s almost impossible to ignore the fact that has acknowledged neither Ben nor his own son. When it becomes clear that he doesn’t intend to remedy that matter, I add, “How are you?”
“Can’t complain, can’t complain. What are you boys doing here?”
Steadying himself a little for the interaction, Alex takes a deep breath and says, “We’re packing up my drum set and moving it to Garen’s house. He has a music space in his basement, and I thought you might like having it out of the way.”
Mr. Baker snorts. “You thought I might like having it out of the way, yeah? Only been asking you to clear that shit out of my basement for a month now. I should’ve sold it the first time you ignored me, that would’ve taught you a—”
“Alright, Mr. Baker, we’re going to go handle that now,” I speak over him, grabbing Alex and dragging him towards the basement door. “It was nice seeing you again.”
The basement door has barely shut behind us before Alex is saying, “Don’t do that, Garen. Don’t fucking be nice to him. He’s an asshole.”
“He’s your dad, what the fuck am I supposed to do?” I say.
Whether he consciously intends to separate us or not, Ben moves to stand between us and says, “Can we just do this? Seriously, the last thing we need to do is have you two pick a loud enough fight with each other that he comes down here to intervene. Because I have a feeling he’d blame it all on me, and his ‘conflict resolution’ would probably involve taking a bat to my skull.”
“Fine,” Alex says, stalking over to the shelving unit where he stores all of his drum cases. Over his shoulder, he says, “Ben, remove all the cymbals and put them in the bag, with the dividers between them. Make sure you don’t lose the wingnuts for them, alright? Once you’re done with that, collapse the stands and put them in the duffel I left by the door.”
I bounce lights on the balls of my feet. “Can I help?”
“Not with the cymbals, no. Ben plays, and he’s packed my kit before, so he knows how to handle the pieces. And I don’t trust you not to drop them and scratch the shit out of them, because you’re a complete spazz. Seriously, I swear you had less energy when you were still doing coke all the time.”
“Am I here for any reason other than to eventually let you guys into my house, then?” I demand.
Alex grins. “Yes, Garen, calm down. Right now, gather up all my sticks and brushes and shit, and put them in a bag to bring out to the car. Then put my pedals in their cases, the ones right here. Put all that in the front seat. Can I trust you to not fuck that up?”
“Can I trust you to not be a dick?”
“Probably not, to both of those questions,” Ben says.
I glare at both of them, but they’re too busy working to pay attention. Collecting the sticks and packing the pedals takes about five minutes, and then my job involves a lot of sitting around, bored, while the guys pack up the rest of the kit and line the cases up by the door. Slave labor is apparently a job I’m qualified for, because Alex graciously allows me to assist in moving the cases from the basement to the car. Once my guitar is moved from the trunk to the backseat, the two bass drums fit nicely in the trunk. Al gets bitchy when I ask if we can stack any of the cases, so most of the rest end up in the backseat.
When we’re finally done, the only free space is the very front of the car. For several long minutes, we survey it from the back steps. Alex frowns. “We maybe should have brought two cars. Or less people.”
“It’s fine, Al. You and I will go drop this off at Garen’s house, and he can hang out here for a while we unpack. I’m sure he and your dad would love a chance to get some bonding done,” Ben says, clapping me on the shoulder.
I shrug him off and say, “Or we can just tie me to the roof of the car, and I’ll ride along that way. Or underneath it. Or, all else failing, I’ll just hide underneath it, and then you can back over me? I’m sure literally any of those things would be on par with hanging out here and getting treated to another talk like, ‘Garen, son, you must be a real hit with the girls at that school of yours. I bet you get more ass than a toilet seat.’”
Alex makes a strangled noise in his throat and covers his face with both hands. “Dude, please tell me that my dad has never actually said that to you.”
“I passionately wish I could tell you that, Alex. I really do.”
“Looks like everything’s packed in there pretty good,” Mr. Baker booms from a few feet away. I jump; I hadn’t realized he’d come closer on the deck. Alex stands, presumably so we can go find some way to shove me into the backseat underneath a snare drum, but his dad barks, “Alexander, where are your goddamn manners? You don’t have to chase your friends off the second they get here. Why don’t you bring them inside, stay for a while? How ‘bout you, Garen? Wanna come upstairs, watch the game, have a beer?”
“No, thank you,” I say, though it’s hard to force the words out around my stiff smile. “I don’t drink.”
Mr. Baker booms out a laugh. “Oh, come on. You’re a teenager, of course you do. It’s just a beer, kid. What kind of man doesn’t drink?”
“The kind of man who got out of rehab three weeks ago,” I say.
For a very long moment, there is nothing but silence. Then Ben settles his palm between my shoulder blades and pushes me towards the car. “We should get going.”
Seeing Ben touch me in such a familiar way seems to piss Mr. Baker off, and I can hear him stomping along behind us on the way back to the car. There are too many cases in the car for me to fit in the backseat, where I was on the way over. Wordlessly, Alex opens the front passenger door and shoves me into the seat, wedging himself in next to me and slamming the door shut again. One of us could maybe be comfortable if Ben was here instead of driving, but I’m six foot one and Alex is six foot three, and the seat just isn’t built to be shared by two full-grown, adult men. Alex is halfway on top of me, and I just know that that’s the worst possible thing right now.
“You know, maybe I should’ve taken some more time to get to know you before I decided I was alright with my son spending so much time with you,” Mr. Baker says evenly. “That way, I might not have mistaken you for a man. I might’ve noticed you’re just as much of a faggot as that mascara-wearing little bitch in the driver’s seat.”
Pure, unadulterated rage flares up in my chest, and before I can think better of it, I’m crawling over Alex, leaning out the window and snarling, “Don’t talk about Ben like that, and don’t assume for a second that you know more about what makes a man than I do. I’m a faggot because I fuck guys, not because I don’t drink, and I don’t drink because it recently came to my attention that I’m an addict. It’s called ‘recognizing that you have a problem’ and ‘sobering up.’ Maybe you should fucking try it sometime, you homophobic, alcoholic piece of shit.”
Ben throws the car into reverse and peels out of the driveway before I can say anything else. Only once we’re rounding the corner at the end of the block do I realize the immense awfulness of what I’ve just done. I reach over and grip Ben’s shoulder. “Pull over.”
“No,” he says.
“Ben, pull the fucking car over right now,” I order. He doesn’t obey until we’re two streets over, like he thinks I want him to pull over so that I can run back to Alex’s house and scream at Mr. Baker some more. When the car rolls to a stop at the curb, I twist around in place so that my ass is on the dashboard, my boots are braced on the seat on either side of Alex’s knees, and my head is pressed to the ceiling, but at least I’m facing him, at least I can look at him. Even if he won’t look at me. I crowd into his space so he can’t ignore me, even though he looks furious. I grab the sleeve of his shirt and say, “I’m sorry. Alex, I swear, I am so fucking sorry, I shouldn’t have said all that shit to your dad. I can’t believe I—”
“I’m mad because I didn’t say it, not because you did,” Alex says, now glaring down at his hands. “I can’t stand up to my own dad when he insults my best friend right in front of me. What the actual fuck.”
“It’s fine, Al. I don’t care,” Ben says quietly, reaching for Alex’s wrist.
Alex shakes him off. “It’s not fine, and you should care. Can we… I don’t know. Can we just go to Garen’s house now? I wanna get this set-up over with so we don’t have to worry about it anymore.”
The rest of the ride to my house takes place in silence. Ben drives, Alex stares out the window, and I try desperately to think of something I can do that will make up for screaming at his dad. Doc says I have to stop doing that—the outburst thing, not the remorse part. I have to figure something out; Ben and Alex are the only real friends I have left, besides Jamie, and I can’t lose them, too. Not over something like this.
The first step of my apology is dead silence. When we get to my house, I let them in, clear out some space in the music half of my room, and begin to carry the drum cases downstairs, all in silence. Once we switch from bringing the drums in to setting them up, I sit down on my bed and wait like a punished child as they rebuild the kit.
It’s almost seven o’clock by the time they finish, and then Ben is saying, “That should be good, right?”
“Yeah,” Alex says, examining the kit. He seems to be in better humor as he adds, “This will be fine. I can change anything that needs to be changed later, after I play it.”
Sensing the opportunity to present the rest of my apology, I quickly say, “You can play it now, if you want. I’ve been practicing some metal stuff for you, in case you wanted a chance to like, really bang on that shit.”
My friends are a lot of things, but they’re not stupid. They know what I’m doing. They know that, in my mind, the only two forms of conflict resolution are sex and music; I think they’re both just sort of grateful I’m not trying to initiate the world’s most remorseful threesome right now.
“Alright. We’ll try it out,” Alex says, smiling at me.
I don’t smile back, just slip the strap of my guitar over my head and start to play.
His smile is encouraging, and I try to imitate it before I slink back to my seat alone.
“Those were some really great auditions, you guys,” Nate says, beaming around at us all. “It’s left us with a lot to think about, but we’ll be making our decisions this weekend. The cast list will be posted on the announcement board by the main office on Monday, before first period. Everyone have a good weekend!” I’m halfway up the aisle when he catches up to me. “Garen! Garen, wait.”
I rotate slowly in place, and he seems surprised, but pleased, like he had half-expected me to book it out of the auditorium and leave him hanging. I peer at him over the top of my sunglasses, now back in place. “What’s up?”
“I just um, wanted to say that I thought you were really good,” he says, already turning red. “Obviously it’s not just up to me, I mean, Ms. Markland gets a major say in casting, too? But I think you did really well. And you shouldn’t worry about not getting a part, because you’re definitely going to be in the cast.”
Was I ever this much of a virgin? The kid told me yesterday that he’s fifteen, but I was already fucking Jamie by the time I was his age. I can’t help but ask, “What grade are you in?”
“I-I’m a junior.”
I blink. “You’re one grade below me but three years younger? I know I’m repeating my senior year, but that’s kind of weird. I thought you said you were—”
“Fifteen, yeah, I know,” he says, gritting his teeth. “I’m about to turn sixteen, though. My birthday is in October. And then, I’ll be, you know… legally allowed to, um.” I raise my eyebrows. He clears his throat. “Drive. And stuff.”
“And stuff,” I echo, cocking my head to the side. No human being has ever blushed as much as this guy is blushing right now. If he’s not bullshitting me when he says I’m going to be in the cast, this little crush is going to get old quick, but for now, I flash him a brief smile and head for the auditorium door, saying over my shoulder, “Be sure and let me know when that birthday arrives. Maybe I’ll teach you how to drive stick.”
Outside, Ben’s car is idling in the fire lane near the front doors. Alex, sitting shotgun, is the first to see me, and rolls down his window to ask, “How’d it go? You get a part?”
“Director says yeah, but it’s probably not going to be a good one. It was so weird, dude, there were people there who like, actually gave a shit. I didn’t realize any people actually gave a shit about drama club, I thought that was just a TV thing. The cast list goes up on Monday, though, so I’ll find out then,” I say. I hitch my chin at Ben. “Pop the trunk, I need to put my guitar in there.”
He obeys. After I have safely stored my guitar case, I climb into the trunk and shut it behind myself, crawling over the back of the bench into the backseat rather than walking around. Ben scowls at me in the rearview mirror. “I hate it when you do things like that. You’re going to ruin my seats if you don’t stop manhandling the leather.”
“Weird, because you never complained about me ‘manhandling the leather’ when I used to screw you in this very backseat,” I say, stretching my legs out sideways across the seat and leaning back against the closed door. I reach up to pinch Alex’s shoulder. “Hey, is your dad going to be home when we get there?”
Alex’s dad is kind of a dick. He’s a gigantic dick, actually; he’s nice enough to me, but that’s even worse than if he were mean to me, because after three visits to the house, I realized that I’m actually the only one of Alex’s friends who Mr. Baker doesn’t treat like shit. He’ll sneer at Ben—tiny, adorable Ben, with his eyeliner and too-tight jeans—but I’m always greeted with a genial smile and a “Garen, kid, how’re you doing?” Shortly before last New Year’s, I made the mistake of asking Alex why his dad seemed to only like me. His reply had been a tight smile and the words, “Because you’re the only one he thinks is straight. He’s never even met Mason or Jer, but he fucking hates Ben, he’s been giving me shit about him since we were fourteen. Every time he gets drunk, he comes up to my room to give me his big ‘you better not be fucking that faggot kid in the makeup’ lecture. He likes you because you went to military school and you have a deep voice and you’re built like a fucking Marine. He likes you because he thinks you fuck girls.” I kind of started avoiding Mr. Baker after that.
In the front seat, Alex shrugs. “He’s not supposed to be, but I can’t be sure. It’s not a big deal, we’re just going around back to the basement anyway.”
If either Ben or I had wanted to take Alex’s word for it, we’re both sorely disappointed when we pull into the driveway. Mr. Baker is camped out on the back patio, sitting on a deck chair halfway between a box of Corona bottles and the pool that Alex has yet to let me swim in. When he sees us all getting out of the car, he waves and says loudly, “Garen, buddy! How’ve you been?”
“Fine,” I say, waving back. It’s almost impossible to ignore the fact that has acknowledged neither Ben nor his own son. When it becomes clear that he doesn’t intend to remedy that matter, I add, “How are you?”
“Can’t complain, can’t complain. What are you boys doing here?”
Steadying himself a little for the interaction, Alex takes a deep breath and says, “We’re packing up my drum set and moving it to Garen’s house. He has a music space in his basement, and I thought you might like having it out of the way.”
Mr. Baker snorts. “You thought I might like having it out of the way, yeah? Only been asking you to clear that shit out of my basement for a month now. I should’ve sold it the first time you ignored me, that would’ve taught you a—”
“Alright, Mr. Baker, we’re going to go handle that now,” I speak over him, grabbing Alex and dragging him towards the basement door. “It was nice seeing you again.”
The basement door has barely shut behind us before Alex is saying, “Don’t do that, Garen. Don’t fucking be nice to him. He’s an asshole.”
“He’s your dad, what the fuck am I supposed to do?” I say.
Whether he consciously intends to separate us or not, Ben moves to stand between us and says, “Can we just do this? Seriously, the last thing we need to do is have you two pick a loud enough fight with each other that he comes down here to intervene. Because I have a feeling he’d blame it all on me, and his ‘conflict resolution’ would probably involve taking a bat to my skull.”
“Fine,” Alex says, stalking over to the shelving unit where he stores all of his drum cases. Over his shoulder, he says, “Ben, remove all the cymbals and put them in the bag, with the dividers between them. Make sure you don’t lose the wingnuts for them, alright? Once you’re done with that, collapse the stands and put them in the duffel I left by the door.”
I bounce lights on the balls of my feet. “Can I help?”
“Not with the cymbals, no. Ben plays, and he’s packed my kit before, so he knows how to handle the pieces. And I don’t trust you not to drop them and scratch the shit out of them, because you’re a complete spazz. Seriously, I swear you had less energy when you were still doing coke all the time.”
“Am I here for any reason other than to eventually let you guys into my house, then?” I demand.
Alex grins. “Yes, Garen, calm down. Right now, gather up all my sticks and brushes and shit, and put them in a bag to bring out to the car. Then put my pedals in their cases, the ones right here. Put all that in the front seat. Can I trust you to not fuck that up?”
“Can I trust you to not be a dick?”
“Probably not, to both of those questions,” Ben says.
I glare at both of them, but they’re too busy working to pay attention. Collecting the sticks and packing the pedals takes about five minutes, and then my job involves a lot of sitting around, bored, while the guys pack up the rest of the kit and line the cases up by the door. Slave labor is apparently a job I’m qualified for, because Alex graciously allows me to assist in moving the cases from the basement to the car. Once my guitar is moved from the trunk to the backseat, the two bass drums fit nicely in the trunk. Al gets bitchy when I ask if we can stack any of the cases, so most of the rest end up in the backseat.
When we’re finally done, the only free space is the very front of the car. For several long minutes, we survey it from the back steps. Alex frowns. “We maybe should have brought two cars. Or less people.”
“It’s fine, Al. You and I will go drop this off at Garen’s house, and he can hang out here for a while we unpack. I’m sure he and your dad would love a chance to get some bonding done,” Ben says, clapping me on the shoulder.
I shrug him off and say, “Or we can just tie me to the roof of the car, and I’ll ride along that way. Or underneath it. Or, all else failing, I’ll just hide underneath it, and then you can back over me? I’m sure literally any of those things would be on par with hanging out here and getting treated to another talk like, ‘Garen, son, you must be a real hit with the girls at that school of yours. I bet you get more ass than a toilet seat.’”
Alex makes a strangled noise in his throat and covers his face with both hands. “Dude, please tell me that my dad has never actually said that to you.”
“I passionately wish I could tell you that, Alex. I really do.”
“Looks like everything’s packed in there pretty good,” Mr. Baker booms from a few feet away. I jump; I hadn’t realized he’d come closer on the deck. Alex stands, presumably so we can go find some way to shove me into the backseat underneath a snare drum, but his dad barks, “Alexander, where are your goddamn manners? You don’t have to chase your friends off the second they get here. Why don’t you bring them inside, stay for a while? How ‘bout you, Garen? Wanna come upstairs, watch the game, have a beer?”
“No, thank you,” I say, though it’s hard to force the words out around my stiff smile. “I don’t drink.”
Mr. Baker booms out a laugh. “Oh, come on. You’re a teenager, of course you do. It’s just a beer, kid. What kind of man doesn’t drink?”
“The kind of man who got out of rehab three weeks ago,” I say.
For a very long moment, there is nothing but silence. Then Ben settles his palm between my shoulder blades and pushes me towards the car. “We should get going.”
Seeing Ben touch me in such a familiar way seems to piss Mr. Baker off, and I can hear him stomping along behind us on the way back to the car. There are too many cases in the car for me to fit in the backseat, where I was on the way over. Wordlessly, Alex opens the front passenger door and shoves me into the seat, wedging himself in next to me and slamming the door shut again. One of us could maybe be comfortable if Ben was here instead of driving, but I’m six foot one and Alex is six foot three, and the seat just isn’t built to be shared by two full-grown, adult men. Alex is halfway on top of me, and I just know that that’s the worst possible thing right now.
“You know, maybe I should’ve taken some more time to get to know you before I decided I was alright with my son spending so much time with you,” Mr. Baker says evenly. “That way, I might not have mistaken you for a man. I might’ve noticed you’re just as much of a faggot as that mascara-wearing little bitch in the driver’s seat.”
Pure, unadulterated rage flares up in my chest, and before I can think better of it, I’m crawling over Alex, leaning out the window and snarling, “Don’t talk about Ben like that, and don’t assume for a second that you know more about what makes a man than I do. I’m a faggot because I fuck guys, not because I don’t drink, and I don’t drink because it recently came to my attention that I’m an addict. It’s called ‘recognizing that you have a problem’ and ‘sobering up.’ Maybe you should fucking try it sometime, you homophobic, alcoholic piece of shit.”
Ben throws the car into reverse and peels out of the driveway before I can say anything else. Only once we’re rounding the corner at the end of the block do I realize the immense awfulness of what I’ve just done. I reach over and grip Ben’s shoulder. “Pull over.”
“No,” he says.
“Ben, pull the fucking car over right now,” I order. He doesn’t obey until we’re two streets over, like he thinks I want him to pull over so that I can run back to Alex’s house and scream at Mr. Baker some more. When the car rolls to a stop at the curb, I twist around in place so that my ass is on the dashboard, my boots are braced on the seat on either side of Alex’s knees, and my head is pressed to the ceiling, but at least I’m facing him, at least I can look at him. Even if he won’t look at me. I crowd into his space so he can’t ignore me, even though he looks furious. I grab the sleeve of his shirt and say, “I’m sorry. Alex, I swear, I am so fucking sorry, I shouldn’t have said all that shit to your dad. I can’t believe I—”
“I’m mad because I didn’t say it, not because you did,” Alex says, now glaring down at his hands. “I can’t stand up to my own dad when he insults my best friend right in front of me. What the actual fuck.”
“It’s fine, Al. I don’t care,” Ben says quietly, reaching for Alex’s wrist.
Alex shakes him off. “It’s not fine, and you should care. Can we… I don’t know. Can we just go to Garen’s house now? I wanna get this set-up over with so we don’t have to worry about it anymore.”
The rest of the ride to my house takes place in silence. Ben drives, Alex stares out the window, and I try desperately to think of something I can do that will make up for screaming at his dad. Doc says I have to stop doing that—the outburst thing, not the remorse part. I have to figure something out; Ben and Alex are the only real friends I have left, besides Jamie, and I can’t lose them, too. Not over something like this.
The first step of my apology is dead silence. When we get to my house, I let them in, clear out some space in the music half of my room, and begin to carry the drum cases downstairs, all in silence. Once we switch from bringing the drums in to setting them up, I sit down on my bed and wait like a punished child as they rebuild the kit.
It’s almost seven o’clock by the time they finish, and then Ben is saying, “That should be good, right?”
“Yeah,” Alex says, examining the kit. He seems to be in better humor as he adds, “This will be fine. I can change anything that needs to be changed later, after I play it.”
Sensing the opportunity to present the rest of my apology, I quickly say, “You can play it now, if you want. I’ve been practicing some metal stuff for you, in case you wanted a chance to like, really bang on that shit.”
My friends are a lot of things, but they’re not stupid. They know what I’m doing. They know that, in my mind, the only two forms of conflict resolution are sex and music; I think they’re both just sort of grateful I’m not trying to initiate the world’s most remorseful threesome right now.
“Alright. We’ll try it out,” Alex says, smiling at me.
I don’t smile back, just slip the strap of my guitar over my head and start to play.