Chapter 16
“T
his won thirteen Tony Awards?” Felix asks me, flipping through the script, which, admittedly, is a little hammy. My mind is blown that I'm actually in the show, though I'm still disappointed that I didn't beat Byron for the role of Captain Hook.
“Think of it this way: You're the monster,” Felix says. “You get to be like the Bill Skarsg?rd of the show.” Putting it like this doesn't hurt.
To celebrate, Felix offered to buy me a slice of pizza at lunch. Except my newfound happiness lasts as quickly as a crawfish in a boil. BAN PANSGENDER posters are all over the cafeteria. I grab one hanging over Felix and me in the lunch line and crumple it into a ball.
“Don't let them ruin your day,” Felix says. “You got cast! I wish my dad would let me do something fun for once.”
“There's not going to be a show if those assholes cancel it,” I say.
“Think of something else,” he tells me. “I made a new photo of Pierre Hardón at the gym. He's less googly-eyed in this one. I'll send it to you so you can post it to his account. Distract yourself with that.”
I watch the weather radar closely on my phone. A storm is about to hit, and I can already hear thunder in the distance. If the line would move a little bit faster, I could grab a slice of pizza and take shelter in the bathroom.
Sutter walks past me and flicks me off. At the same time, the thunder grows louder. The redder our location gets on radar, the whiter my knuckles.
“Why don't you go, and I'll meet you there with the food?” Felix suggests.
My favorite bathroom is behind the art room. There's a stall in the corner that has perfect privacy. I open it, and Travis Bauer, a tiny, freckly freshman with green glasses, is there hiding out.
“Find your own hiding spot, freshman. This has been mine for three years. When I graduate, you can take it.”
He sighs and picks up his backpack and violin case.
I give him a little shove in the back before I sit on the toilet lid and play Tetris. The rain pounds the building so hard that I can hear it through the walls.
Once Felix joins me, I play Tetris with one hand and eat with the other. The storm passes quickly, but not before knocking the power out. I can hear a collective groan across the school. The emergency lights turn on in the bathroom.
“Don't forget the Pierre photo,” Felix says. I log in to our account and post it. The pictures make me laugh so hard. I generate a new one of Pierre splayed out shirtless on a yacht in the Mediterranean.
Just as I peek out of the stall to show Felix, Roland enters the bathroom looking like he's headed straight for the other stall. He notices us and pauses awkwardly before looking at the sink and washing his hands there.
As soon as he leaves, we laugh. He is so weird.
“Have you seen his photos? He's so thirsty for people to like him,” Felix says.
I pull up his profile and it's a bunch of photos of him working out and with Aubrey. Felix takes my phone out of my hand to look.
As he scrolls through the photos, he accidentally likes one.
“Felix! Fuck! Unlike it now!”
“Sorry, sorry,” he says. “But at least it wasn't on your personal account.”
“But now somebody else knows about Pierre,” I say.
“Maybe unliking a photo reverses the notification the other person gets.”
A notification beeps on my phone, and I see a request to connect.
Except it's from Roland. Crap. This guy's fast.
I groan. “I'll just ignore it.”
Unfortunately, Felix accidentally clicks accept.
“Dammit, Felix!” I swipe the phone from his hands.
“Maybe it's not a bad thing, actually.” Felix paces, in thinking mode. “Maybe you could use him for intelligence and find out what his big plan is about Pansgender! and stop him?”
“What would he say? ‘Hi, I'm Roland! Also, here are my plans to cancel my school's musical!'”
“No, but if we get him to trust us, maybe?” he says.
In Texas History, Mrs. Wetherly is quietly but furiously trying to swat a fly that orbits around her, probably because flies are attracted to evil.
I'm only paying half attention as I doodle her as Count Orlok, replete with a bald head and the two decapitated heads of children hanging from her claws.
Sutter turns and sees what I'm drawing and scowls at me.
Roland is in the room, too. We're watching an animated video on the Texas Revolution, narrated by that stupid eagle mascot.
“Did you know that Texas was once part of Mexico?
The Mexican government allowed Americans to settle in Texas with their slaves—who got free room and board in exchange for the work they did.
But we mustn't be quick to criticize these brave pioneers. After all, it had been common in all of history to own slaves!”
Daisha, asleep at her desk, wakes up with a loud “What the f—” and rubs her eyes.
“But when the power-hungry ruler of Mexico, Santa Anna, wanted to enforce tyrannical Mexican law, make the settlers integrate into Mexican culture, and raise taxes and ban slavery, the settlers decided Texas should become independent.”
To absolutely nobody's surprise, Scout the Eagle is voiced by none other than Brandon Barton Buckley himself.
“Years of bloody battles between the Mexicans and those who called themselves the ‘Texians' came to an end at the Battle of San Jacinto, where Santa Anna was camped out with his soldiers. Let's fly over Santa Anna's camp and see what he's up to now!”
Scout lands next to a tent and peels open the entrance flap, revealing Santa Anna under a blanket with a naked woman covering her breasts.
“Oh-ho-ho-ho, looks like he's busy with something more important! You see, kids, Santa Anna spent the night in his tent with a beautiful lady they called the Yellow Rose of Texas, and when the Texian soldiers took his camp by surprise, he was quite literally caught with his pants down! That, my friends, is how Texas won its independence!”
My phone vibrates. I pull it out swiftly like a knife and hide it under my desk, muting it. My eyes almost spontaneously combust when I see a DM from Roland.
Hey
Behold my fate.
I turn to Felix and show him. He almost laughs as I mouth “what the fuck?”
He steals the phone out of my hands to type something and hands it back to me.
He wrote “Hi!” back. I throw a scrunched-up paper ball at Felix, but he blocks it with his right arm and snickers.
On the other side of the room, Roland is typing on his phone, eyeing Mrs. Wetherly carefully every few seconds until I get a new DM.
Do I know you from somewhere?
I show Felix the new text and roll my eyes. He tries to grab the phone again, and I slap his hand away. Somebody clears their throat, and when we look up, the whole class, including Mrs. Wetherly, is staring at us.
“Wade and Felix, wait for me outside the door,” she says curtly.
We do the walk of shame, and Felix closes the door behind us.
“Why'd you do that?” I shout at him in a whisper.
“What if you used him for intelligence? You could find out what he's planning on doing about the show and stay one step ahead of him.”
“What is he gonna say? ‘Derp-derp-derp, I'm such a loser, we're gonna do another protest'?”
“If we get him to trust us, maybe he'll say anything! Give me the phone,” Felix says, and repeats himself when I stare at him blankly. I comply, and he starts typing.
The door opens, and it's Roland.
“You wait out here with them, Mr. Greenway. I told you no phones during the videos,” Mrs. Wetherly commands.
I kick Felix in the foot and he walks away, still typing.
Roland's phone pings. When he looks at it, his face brightens.
I snatch my phone back from Felix and see what he wrote.
No you don't, but I'm in your district. I'm a part of the IntegriTruth Student Council over at McMurtry HS.
We heard about your school trying to perform Pansgender!
and we're concerned our theater department might do the same thing.
I'd love to chat about how you're dealing with this and get any advice you might have to offer.
As a fit, straight bro, I'm really concerned.
This might actually be pretty genius. We stare back at Roland, who's typing away and sends me a new DM.
That's awesome that you're on IntegriTruth Students over there.
As for the musical, get proactive. Start with your principal.
Do you think you'd have their support? Our principal is useless and obviously politically biased against us.
We already have a private meeting set up next Tuesday with the CEO of IntegriTruth.
We know he'll be on our side. If you want, I can also mention that your school is planning on doing it.
So that's what he's up to. I've got to tell Daisha.
Mrs. Wetherly comes out of the room and goes full Rosferatu on us, her crusty old lady talons pointed in our faces, giving the three of us a stern lecture about paying attention in class and being respectful to the people around us.
She forces Felix and Roland to swap seats because Felix and I are now a distraction to her.
Before we reenter the classroom, I slip my Count Orlok drawing of Mrs. Wetherly under a magnetic clip on her door.
___________
At home, Dinah is on the couch looking unusually peppy as she watches a movie.
“I'm watching Mannequin,” she gloats.
“Is that why you've got that big grin?” I ask.
“I'm quitting my job.” She smirks proudly.
I give the thousand-yard stare. Nothing good ever comes when she makes impulsive decisions like this.
I already had to walk her off the brink when she was ready to quit her job to audition for America's Got Talent with a rendition of Britney Spears's “Toxic” that would have torn a hole in the space-time continuum.
“You haven't even started your podcast, though,” I say.
“I know. But I have such a good feeling about this. I think the universe is sending me signs that this is the right path, especially now that Clint is on board. Last night I had a dream that I finally had the money to remove the dolphin tattoo on my navel,” she says.
“So I'm putting in my two weeks' today!”
I don't need to say anything. She's in a good mood right now. If I say anything logical in response, she'll explode. With Dinah, I need to walk on—how does the expression go? Glass? Eggshells? It feels like both.
I won't do it.
But damn it, I can't help myself. I let out a quick, disappointed sigh. Instant regret needles through my heart.
Her head rotates slowly toward me like a scary doll that's come to life, her glare accompanied by a tightened fist pressed into her hip. I'm about to really get it now. I look down and start to head out of the room.
“Excuse me?” she says. I stop. “I've been at that hellhole for six years, cleaning up shit and dodging horndog zombie grandpas straight out of The Walking Dead.
You couldn't even last a full hour serving the common sheep a pot of coffee.
Clint's right. You're so negative. Especially when I'm happy!”
“Sometimes your decisions can be a little spur-of-the-moment, you know? You did lose all the money Grandma left us at those casinos in Louisiana.”
“If I wasn't stuck in a house with you all day long, maybe I wouldn't be so desperate for a better life! Do you see that sign?” She points to the Good Vibes Only!
sign. “You are such a downer. Must be all those sick horror movies you're always watching.
Well, you're not going to bring me down to your level. I'm quitting that shitfest of a job.”
“Sorry. You're right. It's the horror flicks. Gotta work on that.”
She tears away from the couch. “Now you ruined my movie! I can't wait to sign the resignation letter and staple it to your stupid fucking forehead.” She storms down the hallway while she rants. “Always trying to talk down to me like you're a therapist. You're sixteen!”
“Seventeen,” I mutter, not expecting her to hear.
“NEGATIVE!” Her bedroom door slams shut.
I go to my room and get started on my English homework.
Five minutes in, I take a much-needed doomscrolling break on my phone when I get a surprise DM from Roloserbitch.
How'd your day go?
I don't understand what this dork wants.
I'm not interested in sustaining a written correspondence with this asshole, especially now that I know what he's planning to do.
I disable notifications so I can ignore him for now.
At the same time, this is hilarious. Mr. AP Calculus thinks our obviously AI-generated French exchange student is a real person. I send a screenshot to Felix.
Felix sends me a voice message: “You can't stop now! He obviously feels a connection with Pierre. He might be planning more stuff to try to cancel the show, so you should find out.”
It's a choice between this, writing an essay for Rosferatu's class, or running into Dinah again outside my room. Like choosing between a knife, a gun, or arsenic.
Me:
Good, thanks! Yours?
Him:
Great! Are you from France?
Oh, shit. I never thought about this.
Me:
Oui oui!
Him:J'aimerais visiter la France un jour! J'adore sa culture, même si elle est trop libérale. D'où viens-tu en France?
No way. I'm not doing this.
Me:Wow, your French is soooooo good. But I am here in America to speak English
Him:
Where do you work out?
I don't know where any gyms are, so I make one up.
Me:
The gym by the movie theater
Him:
Me too! Maybe I've seen you there
Dammit.
Me:
Gotta look good for the gf
Him:
You have a gf? Why no pics of her?
Me:
She doesn't like to be on social media
Him:lol my gf likes social media almost too much
This conversation goes on until midnight.
We say a million things, but it's like we're not saying anything at all.
Every other DM I get from him is a smiley emoji.
I don't know why he's dragging this conversation on.
I'm too tired to keep inventing lies for Pierre.
I finally tell him I have to go sleep now and turn off my phone.
I barely even scratched the surface of my homework.
Oh well. At least I can tell Daisha what Roland and Aubrey are up to, and she's smart enough to figure out a way to sabotage their plan.
I guess there's one good thing about this, because I refuse to let this try-hard cancel the show and screw up my future.