Day 0 Kutztown, PA — The Day Before
Max
“MAKE SURE YOU GET IT EVEN, OKAY?” Sam looks down at his hands, picking at his chipped blue nail polish. “If I can only have my hair like this over the summer, I want to make it count.”
“Dude, how many times have I dyed your hair? You know I’ve got you.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s just —”
He waves a hand, and I know what just means, because I’m pretty sure Sam and I can read each other’s minds.
It’s nursing school and packing for tour and keeping the lights on in our shitty apartment and Sam’s parents and my parents and all the people who ever told us there was something wrong with us.
All those voices that say I’m too dumb and Sam is too queer, that we’re never gonna fit in anywhere.
I know what he means, but I play dumb anyway. “Hey, you never know. Maybe we’ll get signed to Lookout Records and by this time next month we’ll be getting ready to play Warped Tour. Then you can do whatever the fuck you want with your hair.”
Sam snorts. “Keep dreaming, asshole.”
He settles his shoulders against the hard back of the rickety kitchen chair, and I brush a bit more of the hot pink Manic Panic onto his hair, which is currently bleached as blond as a baby chick.
We’ve been coloring each other’s hair since we were fifteen, bright blue or green or red, buzzing it all off whenever we need to look respectable, like Sam will have to do for his nursing clinicals in the fall.
Now we’re twenty-one and about to head out on tour for three weeks with our indie punk band, Clever Girl.
Sam did my hair last night, raven black and shaggy, just how I like it, and this afternoon I’m returning the favor.
Maybe I should back up here. Sam Dove has been my best friend since we were both routinely shitting our diapers.
Neither one of us remembers the day we met, but our moms tell us it was in one of those Mommy and Me music classes.
I guess it was something at first sight, because from the way my mom tells it, I crawled right across the floor and snatched Sam’s tambourine out of his hands.
When he started bawling, I gave it back — so I wasn’t a completely irredeemable little shit.
And even though our moms didn’t have a lot in common — my mom, the high school dropout just trying to keep her crappy marriage together, and Sam’s mom, the hyper-Christian school librarian — they lived in the same neighborhood, and they were both bored, so they set up playdates for Sam and me.
They barely talk anymore, but Sam — he’s just my person, and that’s all there is to it.
I lay the brush aside and begin to massage the dye into Sam’s hair, taking care to drag my fingers across his scalp as I do. I know he’s stressed as fuck about leaving tomorrow, so it does something to me when he makes a noise like a cat, relaxing into my touch.
“You like that, huh?” I can’t help teasing him a little.
“Fuck off,” he groans, but I can hear him grinning. “Was just thinking — did you call Sage?”
“Talked to her last night. She says that everything is all set with the tour dates she set up for us, but we can call her from the road if anything goes wrong.”
Sage is my sister. She’s nine years older than I am and pretty much the coolest human I’ve ever met.
She left town when I was ten to try making it on her own as a folk punk solo artist, and she did pretty well for a while.
I guess she had enough of the nomad life, because she married some grizzled old Commie and settled down on a farm in Burlington, Vermont.
And last year, she popped out a kid, so I figure she’s pretty much going to stay where she is.
But she’s still my fucking hero and I don’t think I ever would have had the balls to try touring if it weren’t for her.
“That’s good news,” Sam sighs.
“More good news — you’re all set.” I tie a plastic grocery bag over Sam’s hair, and then strip off my rubber gloves. “You good for now? I gotta go clean my room because Krista is coming over tonight.”
“Ugh, why?” Sam stretches his arms up over his head, leaning back to look at me.
“Because she’s my girlfriend and I’m leaving for three weeks? I need to give her something to remember me by.”
Sam wrinkles his nose. “Gross. I’ll stay out of your way.”
Back in my room, I pile dirty clothes up in the hamper and collect all the plates and cups that I’ve left on my desk. I definitely need to go downstairs and do laundry before we leave tomorrow. After about a half hour, I hear Sam turn on the shower, and then the sound of the blow dryer.
“Um, Max?” he calls, and he sounds a little uncertain.
“What’s up?” I take the short trip down the hall and poke my head in the bathroom door.
Sam is standing in front of the cracked mirror, stripped naked to the waist, a towel slung around his neck.
You can tell how different he is from me, because while I have bits of metal everywhere and arms covered in stick and poke tattoos, he’s saved his energy for a couple of things that really matter — one set of holes in his ears, nipple piercings, and a shoulder tattoo of a gnarled tree, its branches wrapping around to his chest and back.
He’s lean but strong, and he looks fucking good.
But at the moment, he’s leaning against the sink, scrunching up his face and tugging at the front of his hair, which is now a shocking highlighter pink. When I hesitate at the doorframe, he turns to face me, his eyes full of anguish.
“Give it to me straight — it’s too fucking bright, right?”
“I don’t think it’s bad.” I cross the room to stand in front of him, and he tilts his chin up to meet my gaze. This close, I can track the gold flecks in his hazel eyes and count every one of his freckles, and there’s a weird swoop in my belly. “Just give it a couple days. You’ll get used to it.”
“Well, that’s a ringing fucking endorsement if ever I’ve heard one.” Sam huffs, turning his head away from me to study his reflection in the mirror once more.
“Dude, that’s not what I meant. Look —” I grab his upper arms and turn him to face the mirror, hooking my chin over his shoulder.
“You’ve done this a million times before, and you always have buyer’s remorse.
Just wash it a few times and it’ll calm down.
And you know your roots will be showing in a week anyway, and it’s gonna look cool. You’ll be fine.”
“You sure?” He chews on his lip.
“Pretty fucking sure.” I drop a kiss on his cheek, and he shrieks, pushing my face away before we both dissolve into giggles. Being around Sam — it’s as easy as breathing.
SAM
I can’t fucking stand Krista.
And look, I know it’s time to address the elephant in the room. I am hopelessly, irrevocably head over my fucking heels in love with my best friend.
My completely straight best friend. I’m such a fucking cliche.
I can’t help it, okay? I’ve certainly fucking tried.
I’ve told myself over and over that all of his shirts are three sizes too big, that he leaves his socks on the coffee table and his dishes in the sink, that he’s farted in front of me more times than I can count, that he always ends up screwing mean girls who want me to pour them a cosmo and listen while they bitch about their friends to my face, and then talk shit about me behind my back.
I tell myself that it’s time to give the Sam and Max show a rest, that maybe after college I should move to a city, a place where there are lots of guys like me, where I might finally gain the fucking clarity to find something real, something other than a blowjob in the woods behind the grocery store.
But then we’re sitting on my bed playing our guitars, and he catches my eye and grins at me.
And I see the boy I grew up with. The boy who always accepted me for who I was, who never asked questions, who just took one look at me and ran with it.
The boy who stuffed an Ariel doll down his pants at the local drugstore when we were nine after my parents wouldn’t buy me one.
Who watched me paint my nails for the first time and asked me to do his, too.
Since the day we met, Max has always stood up for me.
When we were in high school, Jason Whitney called me a fag in the hallway one day, and Max challenged him to a fight after school.
I swear that half the sophomore class was there, and they all watched Jason beat Max to a pulp, because he was twice Max’s size and of course Max wasn’t going to win.
But somehow — I don’t know if the other kids were impressed, or if they just felt sorry for him, but nobody bothered me after that.
And I told Max he was a stupid fuck for doing it, but he said it was worth it.
So I stay, because I guess that’s worth it too, even if it’s my heart that’s getting beaten to a pulp every fucking day.
And when I leave my room a little after eight o’clock to find Krista straddling Max’s lap on the beaten-down couch that we pulled out of the garbage three streets over, I swallow the hot ash in my throat and grit my teeth and smile. “Hey, Krista.”
She takes one look at my hair and snorts. “Wow, did you lose a fight with a care bear?”
Not gonna tell her to fuck off not gonna tell her to fuck off not gonna — “Something like that.”
As I cross the small living room to head into the kitchen, I hear Max sigh behind me. “Not cool, babe.”
“Ugh, you guys are too sensitive,” Krista replies.
I rummage around in the freezer. Because we’re leaving, pickings are slim, so I grab a box of Hot Pockets and plop two onto a plate, praying they’ll leave me the fuck alone for the next three minutes and thirty seconds until I can escape to my room.
No such fucking luck.
“Oh my god, bitch, are you excited about the tour?” Her voice is like fingernails on a chalkboard. “Bet you’re going to hook up with a different cute boy every night.”
I close my eyes and count to five, then open the refrigerator door, hunting for a can of Mountain Dew. “Maybe. We’ll see.”