Chapter 2
Chapter Two
CASH ELLIS
March
I hum, my feet kicking lazily behind me as I pick up the white colored pencil to highlight some of the lines and adjust the shine of the lighting. Hmm.
Setting the pencil down, I start rifling through my folder of kept scraps. Things that I feel inspired by. Scraps of paper. Stickers. Pictures. Magazine articles or words or something…
“Okay, I’m back.”
I glance at my phone and yawn. “What happened?” I ask through my yawn.
“Making sure my mom left. What else is new?” Lie says.
I smile absently as I thumb through my binder. “She been a jerk this morning?”
“Of course. My nails are painted, and that’s for girls.” I can hear his eye roll.
Lie has a strange relationship with his mother, Miranda.
She loves Lie. But I swear, it’s one of those situations that make us all cringe—hate the sin but love the sinner.
Not because she’s religious or even because she’s a bigot.
She puts on amazing pride events at the school every year for the students.
But it’s like, once her kid said he’s gay, it’s okay for everyone else. Not for Lie. What had once been cute—painting his nails and wearing headbands—was now too feminine. She asks about a female partner, conveniently misspeaking about the gender of his partner at every turn.
Lie’s dad, Nason, and Nason’s best friend, Laiken, are constantly yelling at her. She gets this big-eyed look as if she’s shocked that the words even came out of her mouth. She didn’t mean them. Of course, she didn’t.
I sigh. “I think you should dye your hair pink.”
Lie laughs. “Oh my god, can you imagine? She’d have a heart attack every time she looked at me.”
A grin splits my face as I find a sticker that I like. I take my scissors and cut away the thin white border around it so that it’s just the sticker itself, and it’ll blend more seamlessly into my picture. Okay, better, but still doesn’t quite feel like it’s finished.
“What are you humming?” Lie asks, and I pause in my flipping through the binder again.
“I didn’t realize I was humming.”
He laughs. “Another Whiskey Horizons’ song?”
“Oh, probably. They were practicing one last night, and the words kinda resonated. Although I doubt I was actually humming the tune. Their tune doesn’t match the song.”
“For real.”
“Hey, aren’t you supposed to be at work?” I ask.
“Oh god, am I?” Lie says, and I can hear his panic. I laugh as his phone crashes to the ground. He comes back a minute later and huffs. “No. I think I quit. Two days ago. Maybe three.”
“Another one bites the dust.”
He snorts. “I’m just not cut out for menial tasks. I have an interview at one of the hotels on Ceto, though. As a concierge. Can you see me dragging luggage up to people’s rooms?”
“I mean, not by hand. They have carts and stuff.”
Lie huffs. “I can only imagine how well that’s going to go.”
“Think about it. You can probably hook up around every corner. You get to see the guys as they arrive. First pick!”
His considering hum makes me grin. I arrange a couple strings of words on my paper, determining whether it’s what’s missing.
“I don’t know. What about you?”
“I have another interview at the experiences office. I’m hoping to get on the boats.” My gaze drifts to the boat on my sheet. It’s a big catamaran that I ripped out of a magazine. Part of the wall is missing from the bottom, and we can see inside the hull at all the rooms and the layout.
“That’s cool. You think you’re going to get it?”
“They keep trying to get me to take jobs at other expeditions. It’s not like all the boat tour positions are taken. There are like three empty right now. One is captain, so I’m immediately disqualified, but I’m not for the other two.”
“Why won’t they give you one of the open spots?”
“You know how hiring works. You can tell them where you’re interested in being, but they’ll try to have you take the spot that’s needed more urgently. I keep telling them no, so then I have to keep interviewing until they maybe offer me the position I want.”
“Yeah, I know how that goes.”
I laugh because if anyone knows the hiring process, it’s Lie. He’s had so many jobs since he came home from college in the States a few months ago, I couldn’t even name them all.
The Isle of Kala is unlike anywhere else in the world. Not that I’ve been out in the world, but Lie has, and I’m scarred second hand by his stories. His might be the most extreme and closest to home, but our older residents primarily came from other places. They all have stories to tell.
The island chain is made up of six islands.
All six are owned by a single family—the Calloways.
Four of the six islands make up a gay resort.
I say gay because it’s primarily men who vacation here.
Really, it’s an LGBTQIA+ resort. This isn’t a place where our community is tolerated.
Here, it’s the opposite. The straights are tolerated, but only until the first time that they say something bigoted or gross or whatever.
Then their stay is cut short, and they’re banished.
The other two islands are residential. I live eight houses away from Lie, and we reside on Bane Island.
Because the islands and nearly every single business on them are owned by the Calloways, it’s not exactly run the way other places in the world are run.
For instance—job openings. You interview with a department, not necessarily for a position.
If you’re offered a position, it’s not necessarily going to be the one that you want.
It’ll be the vacancy that needs to be filled the most.
Which is why I end up being offered stupid shit I don’t want to do and why I keep refusing and then reapplying. I think I’ve had three interviews at this point. If they’d just give me the job I want, we could stop wasting time.
“Ohhh! Did you hear about Sandy Jutt?”
I pick up my blue oil pastel and begin coloring in the sides and then smudge with my finger while I try to remember who that is. “No.”
“She’s adopting the Perkinson’s kid.”
My eyebrows knit together. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” Lie says. “My dad says that the paperwork is legitimately happening. The Perkinsons aren’t going anywhere either.”
I’m still trying to remember who Sandy is, but this is kind of weird. We’re a small, tight-knit community. Everyone knows everyone. Everyone grew up with everyone. Gossip is like the daily mail. It travels faster than you can walk down the road to report something you witnessed.
There are simply no secrets on Kala.
Which is why the strange adoption is headlining Lie’s gossip train right now.
“He’s not a… how do I say this without sounding like an ass?”
Lie laughs. “No. I think he’s a good kid. I mean, he’s only three, so maybe he’s a handful, but still. It’s weird that they’re giving up their kid, right?”
“What do you want to bet there’s more to it than that?”
“Probably. That’s all I know right now. Maybe Dad will know more when he gets home.”
I love Lie’s relationship with his father.
I’ve always wished I was as close to my dads as he is to his.
Not that my dads are bad parents. Not at all.
I think they’re really good parents. But Nason and Lie are best friends.
They hang out all the time. They share secrets. They have their own inside jokes.
My dads and I are just that—parents and child.
We’re close as far as families go, I guess.
Although now that Benson and I are adults, they work all the time.
Their presence was once constant. Someone was always home for us.
To take us somewhere or make us snacks. Help us with homework. Take us on adventures.
But since I turned eighteen, they began picking up more hours. In their absence, I feel like Benson has been nose-diving into darker and darker waters. They’re not here to bring balance. To settle arguments. To see his descent into mindless anger.
Instead, we hear, ‘You’re adults. You need to stop fighting like children.’ They’ve yet to understand that we’re not fighting. I never seek my brother out. Whatever confrontation we have is because Benson initiated it.
I miss childhood. I miss when Ben and I were friends. I miss when our parents were home, and we’d have dinner together and then have movie nights. Or game nights.
“You get the newsletter yet?” Lie asks.
I shake my head, though he can’t see that. “I haven’t checked the mail.”
“Ben home?”
“Nah. At least, I don’t think so. The house has been quiet since my dads left for work.”
“I think your dads are leading a secret life,” Lie says. I can practically hear the conspiratory tone, and it makes me laugh.
“Oh, yeah?”
“Come on. They obviously don’t need to work all these hours.
They’ve survived on far less while raising two kids, right?
Now that you’re adults and your financial burden is arguably less, they’re working like three times the number of hours they used to.
Both of them. What do they need all the money for? ”
“Maybe they’re paying off debt now that we’re not kids,” I suggest.
“You think that’s it?” he asks, unconvinced.
“I don’t know. What kind of secret life do you think they’re living?”
Lie hums, and I can only imagine he’s thinking of the most outlandish thing possible.
“Before you answer, I want to remind you that they’re my parents, so I don’t want to hear anything too… sexy. Also, I want to know on what premise you’re suggesting it. What evidence makes you think that it’s a possibility?”
“This isn’t an essay, Cash,” he gripes, and I laugh. “I think they’re into swinging.”
“Swinging?” I picture my fathers on the playground in the park, swinging on the swings. “Okay, sure.”
Lie laughs. “You’re so fucking cute.”
I scowl at the phone. That means my vanilla existence is going to be shattered here in the next moment.
“Swinging is when couples change partners for a while.”
“You mean like that show? Where the wives change houses and try to live under new house rules and stuff?”
Lie laughs, and I scowl. No, that’s not what he means.
“Oh, Cash. How have I not made you into a kinky slut like me?”
There are a lot of answers I could give. I don’t offer any of them. Instead, I press my lips together and wait to be educated, though since we’re talking about my parents, I don’t think I necessarily want to know.
“You change partners for sex.”
I scrunch my nose. “Why?”
Lie’s laughter is offensive at this point. “It’s a kink, Cash.”
“Swapping partners is a kink?”
“Yes. Having sex with other people is a kink. Like orgies and gang bangs and swinging.”
“Why in the world would you think my parents would enjoy having sex with other people?”
“Why not?”
“No. I said you need to back up your outlandish ideas with solid evidence as to why you’re suggesting it.”
“Okay, fine. Get ready for my list of reasons. One—I saw your dad Leon flirting with Bruce at the butcher’s a few months ago. He had Bruce blushing like a virgin. Two—I think both your dads are unnaturally touchy with the couple across the street from you.”
“The Greens?” I ask, eyebrows knitting together.
“Yes! Like, I seriously see them innocently touching all the time. A hand on an arm as they laugh. Gripping a wrist at an intense moment in conversation. Shoving playfully.”
“I think you’re reading too much into it.”
“Three,” Lie says, as if I didn’t speak. “Gabriel told Milner, who told Cassie, who I overheard telling Robbie that Gabriel’s father thought he saw both your dads kissing a guy they were dancing with on Ceto.”
“They don’t go to Ceto.”
“Says who?” Lie asks.
I frown as I continue to color my picture. “I don’t know. They work.”
“No. You just think they work. Who says they’re not spending their evenings partying on Ceto? Or strolling around the nude beaches of Makara, like Linny and Lizbet say they’ve seen your fathers doing on more than one occasion.”
“I don’t think any of this is true,” I say.
“Maybe they’re starting a gang and recruiting the guests.”
My hand pauses over my picture. “Lie!”
He laughs. “Or! Maybe they’re starting a new spiritual movement to turn the straights on the mainland gay!”
Okay, he’s now just going off on random tangents.
A door closing outside has me picking my head up. I peek out my window in time to hear the garage door opening. Benson’s home.
Knowing that my brother will take whatever excuse he needs to pick a fight, I get up to lock my door. Then I pull the curtains over my window. When I return to my spot on the floor, Lie is still going on about the random things my parents could get up to.
Honestly, I think the swinging thing is the most plausible at this point.
And I’m still not in the least bit convinced that it’s actually possible.
Not that I think there’s anything wrong with an open relationship.
There are just as many people who live on the islands in open relationships as there are in monogamous relationships.
There are quite a few polyamorous households, too.
I just don’t think my parents are one of them.
As I stare at my picture, I wonder if I don’t think my parents are one of them because I can’t imagine being with multiple people at once, or because I truly don’t think my parents are into it.
Is there a reason I think they’re of the monogamous kind?
Something I’m unconsciously thinking, or maybe it’s my own feelings I’m projecting onto my parents.
When Lie suggests that my parents are secretly running an underground penis peddling business—and no, I don’t know what that means—I laugh and let my head fall back.
Through my cracked open window, I hear Onyx’s drums but not either of the string instruments. When I hear his voice as he begins to sing, I realize Benson isn’t home at all. Onyx is here. My heart races as his spellbinding voice fills my head and drowns out my best friend and his outlandish claims.