Chapter Two
Hilarina Ballerina
Hilary’s costume didn’t end up looking as bad as it should have, but it was still bad.
The Yeti-corn had been his mother’s idea.
She had a jacket of fake fur he could wear, even if it was a bit short in the wrists, and for the horn they’d fashioned something out of tinfoil and painted over it.
They’d done the same for the hooves, though Hilary was sure they wouldn’t last the night.
He was also sure Varda was going to accuse him of ruining the effect of her much nicer costume, but she only gave him a look of vague disapproval and told him to help fold her into the car.
The vampire-mermaid ensemble was magnificent, though of course everyone had expected it to be.
Varda was the queen of costume parties, though why she bothered pulling out all the stops for the school’s lame school party Hilary didn’t know.
“How do I look?” she asked as she checked over her makeup in the car’s overhead mirror.
“Really good.” And Hilary wasn’t even lying or using the other Hilary’s voice. “Sexy.”
She snorted. “What would you know about sexy?”
That hit closer to home than Hilary thought it would.
It was something he’d been nervous about (really nervous about) and his main impediment to getting a girlfriend—even a fake one.
Sex was something he thought he’d grow into wanting.
Delayed, like his puberty had been. But the desire had never manifested.
If anything, he’d grown more resolute against it.
There had been a kind of fascination with the act at first that might have been mistaken for interest, but that had faded, leaving only the distaste—even repulsion—when he thought about the topic for too long.
He wasn’t scared of sex; he just didn’t want to do it.
Thankfully, Varda didn’t either. It wasn’t that she was repulsed the way he was; she just wasn’t attracted to him.
Hilary hadn’t told her about hating sex, but she seemed to know, and whatever else he could say against her, she didn’t mock him for it.
She snapped the mirror back up. “Let’s go.”
Hilary was surprised once he saw the gymnasium.
He’d been expecting crepe paper streamers and maybe a couple of plastic cauldrons, but the place had been transformed.
Someone (a lot of someones) had put significant effort into the space.
Giant murals covered the walls, while painted plywood created distinct photo areas.
Fog machines had also been strategically placed to add to the ambiance as well, and even the lighting was doing its best to be ‘spooky.’ Hilary was impressed.
“Of course,” Varda said to his look of amazement. “Dad sponsors it every year.”
That helped explain the food too. No way did the $10 tickets afford anything like what was on offer. But Hilary couldn’t so much as glance at the spread before he was being tugged over to the first of the photo areas, drafted for picture-taking duties.
It was a role he was well familiar with, since he knew Varda’s angles better than her friends did.
Or maybe her friends were sabotaging the photos on purpose.
Either way, he was stuck taking photos—a lot of photos.
He didn’t know why she needed so many, considering Varda was the most photogenic person he’d ever met, but his job was to play photographer, not to voice comments.
Varda did eventually give him license to eat, citing the need for a makeup touch-up. “Keep your phone ringer on,” she warned him. “I might need your help adjusting my dress.”
Hilary made whatever promises he needed to, not even waiting until she was through the door to begin overloading his plate.
He was nowhere near done when he spotted the boy.
Most of the other tables were swarmed, but that one, tucked behind the plywood forest, housed only Trenton, textbook open in front of him and his phone flashlight propped up to better light the page.
Without quite meaning to, Hilary found himself before him.
“Real social butterfly, aren’t you?”
Trenton looked up. “Are you done with pictures, then?”
So Trenton had been watching him. That ought to have creeped him out, but Hilary was too hungry. “Saved by some makeup emergency for now, but I’ll be called back in eventually for the second costume. Speaking of, where’s yours?”
Trenton pointed to his head where a cheap pair of elf-ears had been clipped over his real ones.
“Elves aren’t monsters,” Hilary said.
“They’re imaginary, aren’t they?”
That felt like cheating. “The monsters are supposed to be frightening.”
“You’re a unicorn,” Trenton pointed out.
“I’m sure unicorns gore people all the time,” Hilary said. “And anyway, I’m a Yeti-corn. What’s the other half of your monster mix?”
Trenton paused, clearly considering the idea for the first time. “Ogre,” he decided after a couple of long moments.
“You only have the elf ears.”
But Trenton wasn’t tripped up. “I’m big, aren’t I? And ugly.”
“Not that big.” And not that ugly either, though Hilary didn’t care enough to say so. “Is that our Calc book?”
“Yes.”
Trenton also had a notebook with him, with examples worked out in neat and blocky squares.
Hilary pulled out a chair and sat. “I don’t think this chapter is on the test.”
But he didn’t just think it; he knew it. They were only at the start of the school year, but Trenton was nearly at the back of the book.
“I like to get the learning over with,” Trenton said. “Then I don’t need to remember things like which chapters for tests.”
“You a genius or something?”
“No.”
Hilary wasn’t sure about that. He’d never seen Trenton participate in class, yet the kid got top grades and was rumored to have gotten a perfect score on the SATs.
“You do any pro-bono tutoring?” Hilary asked. “I’m screwed for the test.”
The exam was Monday, and he’d spent the week doing idiot party shit. Well, he might have been screwed regardless. The algebra at his previous school had been taught by a ninny, so every time he opened the textbook it set off his fight-or-flight response.
“I can do a trade,” Hilary quickly added. It wasn’t easy begging for handouts, even if it was from a pariah. “I don’t know what I can exchange for it though.”
Things were even tighter since the move, and cash simply wasn’t an option.
“Then would you—” Trenton paused. He seemed to be even worse at the asking thing, and was already looking back down at the textbook. “If you could help me in the studio, that would be good. Like you did before.”
Before? When he’d told the boy to fuck off? Hilary had never seen a real-life humiliation kink at work before. “If you want.”
Trenton pushed the book his way. “What were you having trouble with?”
What didn’t he have trouble with? “I can’t even make it to the calc. I screw up the basic steps. The algebra parts.”
“The hard part is the algebra,” Trenton said.” The calculus is easy.”
Easy for the genius, maybe, but Trenton was already printing out a problem at the top of the notebook. “Here,” the boy said, handing over the pen. “Where would you start with this one?”
Two hours later, Varda found them, and she was pissed. “Really? You’re hiding?”
Hilary blinked, confused for a second. He dropped the pen. “No, I was—”
“I told you to keep your ringer on. Do you know how many times I called you? My zipper jammed.”
“Sorry. I’ll—”
“Forget it. Steph got it out.” She pulled on his arm, dragging him up. She was strong when she was pissed. “They’ve already started the last dance.”
Self-preservation kicked in after that. Hilary took as many pictures as Varda wanted, but it was too little, too late.
It wasn’t only him she was pissed at. She’d gotten lipstick on her costume getting it on, and she blamed the fog machines for making her hair wilt.
Hilary tried to bear being the punching bag with good grace, but he was cranky too.
The flashing lights had given him a headache, and he was tired, and antsy, and done with being around so many people.
When she tried to start something in the car, he cut her off with, “Enough.” It came out sharp, and what followed was an angry silence and a lot of cigarette smoke.
He preferred that though, and was finally beginning to unclench his jaw when she said, “You like fatties or something?”
“Huh?”
“You ditched the party to make-out with the Whale.”
This time, Hilary didn’t manage to stop the eye-roll. “We were doing math. I have an exam on Monday.”
“So he tutors you and you blow him afterward?”
She was trying to rile him up. It was what she always did when she was pissed, like she couldn’t let things go until he was more miserable than she was.
Hilary’s jaw hurt, and he knew he was clenching again.
He had divots in his molars because of the clenching.
The dentist liked to point them out to him.
“That’s right,” he said, heavy on the sarcasm. “I love cock.”
She blew some more smoke into the car—a thing that was sure to trigger another of Albert’s smoking-kills talks. Hilary opened his mouth to tell her to hang her stupid head out the window when he noticed her eyes were wet.
She was trying to hide it by acting like a bitch, but emotional manipulation wasn’t her calling card. Hilary had only seen her cry once before, and she’d tried to hide it then too. He took a smoke-filled breath and forced himself to count to ten.
“I’m sorry I disappeared,” he said. “I thought my ringer was on, but I guess it wasn’t. I didn’t mean to stress you out.”
She said nothing, just lit another cigarette.
“Mom’s really good at stain-treating clothes,” he continued. “I’m sure she’ll help get the lipstick out.”
Varda flicked ash out the window. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t wear the same costume twice.”
Hilary reminded himself that this was important. It may have been just a stupid party, but it was different for her. She loved Halloween. Was almost sweet with how her eyes would light up when she spoke about it, actually.