35. Emory
Emory
Standing at the back of the multipurpose room where Halloween had wiped its gnarled, bloody hands all over every wall and table, Emory bit his anxiety off at the head and spat it out in a display of dominance.
Gerard’s swoony, full-bodied singing voice had his heart fluttering for entirely new reasons that he refused to let old wounds interfere with.
Watching the pop star in his theatrical, sexy costume pluck at the dulcimer and command the crowd was worth the mental mayhem he endured to make it there.
Upon waking up, Emory mistook the cloak on its hanger on the rack by the door for an invisible intruder. Through sleep-crusted eyes and first-wake haze, he panicked with the recurring thought that Anderson had decoded his research and broken in to gloat.
As soon as his rational mind came back online, he got out of bed to inspect and discovered the note.
Immediately, he understood why fans would get Gerard’s autograph tattooed in special places on their bodies.
As soon as his eyes grazed the word love in Gerard’s tiny scrawl, he knew he needed to preserve the note in any way possible.
He also knew, without a doubt, that he’d need to be brave and show up to the Halloween party.
Sharing the story of his mother abandoning him had taken away some of its power. When he thought of that night while running his hands over the downy fabric of the cloak, it didn’t debilitate him. The hurt came, he acknowledged it, and it passed on without protest.
It took a full day of pep talks, but he did it.
He donned the costume, turned the front doorknob in his gloved hand, and stepped out under the autumn sky that was choked with gray.
On his trek, the air souped up with humidity.
Cracks of lightning zigzagged across the ceiling of clouds.
When he was feet away from the school, a deluge of rain broke through.
For a fraction of a second, he contemplated turning back. Instead, he sprinted inside for cover.
The reward had been well worth the risk.
In the fourth and final verse, the choir members behind Gerard lent their voices to mmms and oohs that swelled the sound, growing rounder and fuller as the song reached its conclusion.
At the end, Gerard ceded the microphone to Regina, and Angie passed him a stack of lyric sheets to hand out to the onlookers.
They brought up the houselights, and Emory anticipated Gerard’s pleased surprise when he reached the back of the room.
Of course, it was then he registered how soaked-through his velvety cloak was, clinging to his form and making the islanders look at him funny.
Thankfully, the mask did its job of hiding his invisible visage.
Heart flailing about, Emory outstretched his gloved hand to take the lyric sheet as Gerard reached him.
“Cousin Cameron, you came!” Gerard exclaimed dramatically as if he were doing a scene in a bad movie. “I didn’t think any ferries were coming out today. It’s so good to see you.”
“I couldn’t miss it,” he replied, confusion crackling in his voice.
Gerard came in for a hug. His words poured out in an urgent whisper. “Don’t draw any extra attention to yourself. As soon as I finish, we’re leaving.” He pulled back with a broad smile, then skipped back onto the stage as if nothing were wrong.
Unease clanked low in Emory’s gut as the people—some on pitch, others caterwauling—sang around him. “When the Saints Go Marching In” took on an ominous resonance as he tried to make sense of Gerard’s unexpected demeanor.
At the end of the performances, the teenaged DJ cranked up the tunes.
By the time Gerard came to find Emory, a slow jam about the beast inside was playing.
Presumably before anyone else could pull Gerard aside and tell him how good he was, he grabbed Emory by the hand and brought him over to the snack table. “You didn’t get my message?”
“What message?” Emory asked.
“Keep your voice down. Pick up a plate and some snacks. Act like you’re here to have a good time.” The visible part of Gerard’s face was bright red.
“I am here to have a good time,” Emory said, perplexed.
“Not if they realize who you are.”
“Why would they—”
Gerard brightened his voice again, speaking as if to an amphitheater of hundreds of thousands. “Let me show you where the bathrooms are!”
They hustled out of the room and down the hallway, past the first restroom and toward one down a dimmer corridor.
Once they pushed inside, Gerard took the trash can overflowing with used paper towels and tucked it beneath the door’s handle.
“They found the sunglasses you ditched by the beach. Sergeant Adye is certain you’re on the island. ”
His heart almost stopped, and his limbs went numb. “Are you positive?”
“I overheard Sergeant Adye discussing it earlier. I tried to get you on the walkie, but you must’ve already left.” Seemingly frustrated, Gerard pulled off his mask and splashed some water on his face to cool down.
Emory creatively cursed aloud. He knew this had been a bad idea. Why hadn’t he listened to his intuition? Raindrops pelted against the windows. “Guess I have no choice but to strip out of this and make a run for it.”
“I think that would be best.” Gerard leaned in and hugged him, regardless of how gross and slimy Emory’s cloak had gotten in the torrential downpour.
“It means a lot to me that you made it. What with … all the rain…” Gerard’s words were soft and echoey in the tan-tiled room that smelled strongly of bleach.
He turned away, perhaps to give Emory some privacy.
“It’s not like I was going to melt.” Emory forced out a small laugh that did nothing to abate his anxiety. “You were incredible.”
“Thank you.” Emory swore he heard the upturning of Gerard’s lips as he spoke.
“How did it feel to perform again?” Emory asked as he peeled off the sopping cloak and slung it over a stall door. The conversational distraction would do him good.
“Surprisingly nice. I mean, other than the worry about you coming, I enjoyed myself. There was something scrappy and supportive about this. Nothing at all like the well-oiled machine of a We the Wells show,” he said.
“I think the context and the people are what made it. My heart’s just not in performing anymore, you know?
At least not to sell albums and T-shirts.
I craved that kind of attention for a while; now I think my priorities are different. ”
Emory glowed to hear this. “I’m glad I made it in time.”
“Me, too. Just, yeah, I appreciate you coming.”
“How could I not after that note?” Emory said, removing his shirt and pants.
“The note I left with the costume?” Audible confusion peppered the space.
“Yeah…” A new apprehension sprouted in Emory’s stomach.
“What about it?” Gerard asked.
Emory wondered if his mind had played a mean trick on him.
But no. Shoved into the back pocket of his pants, the note was there for him to fish out.
When he did, the paper was waterlogged, causing some of the ink to bleed, but the salutation was there still, albeit slightly smudged. “The way you signed it?”
Wind smacked up against the building, causing them both to tense.
The lights above the row of porcelain sinks flickered once and then twice, but they came back to full blast right away.
Emory breathed a sigh of relief, then realized he couldn’t streak through town in a storm like that.
He’d catch his death. Though death might’ve been his sentence either way.
Who knew how the islanders would react to his sudden reappearance?
Invisibility had been fun for a time but had grown steadily tiresome. Before, he lived in fear of never being noticed; now he lived in fear of the slightest slip of a glove. Both were equally dreadful. He wished he could go back and undo everything.
Everything except Gerard.
“It’s okay if you didn’t mean it,” Emory said. Of course it wasn’t actually okay. His heart might’ve piledriven his stomach right out of his body if Gerard rescinded the declaration. But some bravery remained inside him, so he used it up. “It was probably force of habit.”
“No. Emory, I…” Gerard turned slowly toward him. “I … I can see you.”
Certain he hadn’t heard Gerard right, Emory pawed at his ears.
Gerard’s expression was 110 percent shock.
“What?” Emory looked down at himself.
Where he expected to see nothing, he saw feet and legs, arms and hands. When he moved toward the nearest mirror, he expected to see empty space reflected in the glass. Instead, his slender torso, his long, thick neck, and his angular face stared back at him.
At first, he had this uncanny sensation that the person in the mirror was a stranger he’d known long ago that hijacked his spirit and was taking it for a spin. There was no way that pale-skinned man was him. But shortly, his brain caught up to the moment.
An elated smile crested over his face when it dawned on him that he would now be able to properly calculate the duration of his serum.
That elated smile squashed itself when, as he turned to the door, in a rush to get back to the apartment and document this fact, he remembered where he was.
That he was in only his underwear. That just beyond the bathroom there was a whole island of people waiting to lock him up and throw away the key.
He whipped back to the mirror to make absolutely certain he wasn’t hallucinating all of this.
A second figure appeared in the mirror reflection.
Gerard stood behind him, eyes roving like a gentle caress over his skin.
He might not have said it aloud, but Emory affirmed there was love in that gaze.
Even if Gerard had written the salutation without thinking, some part of his subconscious must’ve meant it.
“Do I look like you imagined I would?” Emory asked, aware how loaded the question was. In some ways, even he hadn’t looked the way he expected to. Since memory was only ever a recall of a recall—never static or perfect—even one’s appearance could be distorted over time spent without seeing it.
Before the invisibility, Emory had tolerated his body. He fed it enough to keep its energy up and slept enough to keep its facilities sharp, but his physical appearance was a complete and total afterthought.
“I never could’ve imagined you,” Gerard said in a way that made Emory certain it was a compliment.
A tentative, warm hand skimmed the outside of his arm.
Tenderness broke his fears into a thousand pieces.
“Emory, I meant what I wrote on the note. I … I do love you.” Gerard bowed his head, and his lips planted a kiss on the summit of Emory’s right shoulder, which was sprinkled with freckles despite his disaffinity for the sun.
“I love you, and I’m going to get you out of here. ”
Emory’s eyes welled up as he spun around to face Gerard. He pulled him in for a tear-dewed kiss that solidified everything that had come to pass over the previous four weeks. “I love you, too, Gerard,” he said, voice breaking without a note of embarrassment.
Gerard cried then, too, as he brought Emory’s hand up to his mouth and planted several reverent kisses on his overworked knuckles.
All of it felt unreal and dreamlike. To confirm he wasn’t making this up, with his heart speeding, Emory turned back to the mirror so he could see the two of them together again. Before he could soak in the sight, an ear-splitting thud came from outside, and the room flooded with darkness.