Chapter 45
It's been two weeks since I saw them together, and neither of them have said a thing.
Felix has become so busy with his “project” that I had to guilt-trip him into carving time for apartment searching.
It's a lot harder than I thought it would be.
We did the actual calculations and the five grand that Felix's grandfather left him would run out in a month between both of us in LA.
“God. That's like two or three months of rent in Houston,” I say.
My eyes ache from scrolling through the endless reservoir of apartment listings. One ad finally catches my eye. It's got a sunny-looking model type holding a camera with a group, and a colorful house behind him.
“Filmmakers' co-op in need of roommates in Koreatown, starting in June. Fifteen hundred a month plus house and kitchen duties. That looks cool! The only thing is we'd need a guarantor to sign off with us since we've never rented before.”
“That seems too good to be true. Probably a cult,” Felix says, but he's probably just finding reasons to be picky.
“You don't know that. I'll email them. It's worth a shot, right? Anyway, the new Cannibal Cave sequel comes out this Friday. We could see the first showing in Dolby Cinema at five thirty.”
“Uhhh…” Felix says. Great. I already know he's going to bail.
“Uhhh what?” I ask.
“I don't know where to begin because you'll think I'm full of shit. Don't judge me, but at Byron's party, while you were passed out…” he says, but stops.
I lean in closer.
“I kinda sorta hooked up with Roland,” he says.
“You HOOKED UP?” I ask.
“Not like sex. Just… we made out.”
“In front of people? I thought you were staying down-low.”
“Nobody saw us,” he says, obviously unaware. “Besides, you made it clear that everybody already knows about you and me anyway.”
“Why didn't you tell me about this?” I ask.
“I didn't know if you'd judge me after all the stuff I said about him.”
“So the two of you are together?”
He wavers like he's about to say no, then stops himself.
“I don't know. Maybe yes?” he says. “Roland was all messed up after his date dumped him and abandoned him at the party. You were passed out and Byron was flitting about in a rage all night, so I felt like I had to do something. We found a room to hang out in for a few hours and just talked. I realized we had a lot more in common than I thought.”
I tap the ground like a jackhammer with the tip of my shoe. “Like what?”
“I talked about how I was trying to think of an app for my UIL project.
He said there's a weather app he's always wanted to create, so we're going to work on it together.
It's like our brains came alive when we put them together… and we kept talking about our lives and about our parents, and it felt like I knew him,” he says.
“It was midnight and the fireworks went off, and then our lips kind of… found each other.”
“What if your dad found out?” I ask.
“Here's the thing: I came out to him that night.”
I stare into an imaginary void, not sure how to begin processing this. Felix actually gathered the courage to tell his dad.
“And he was… happy. He was happy that I trusted him so much to tell him that. And he and my mom told me they will always love me. I couldn't believe it.”
“Do they know about Roland?”
Felix hesitates before answering.
“Yes,” he says. I feel my heart crawl out of my chest, slither across the ground, and have a stroke in a corner. Not only is he out to his parents, but now they know where Roland fits into the equation, which means they probably already like him more than me.
“Oh. And what you're trying to say is you can't go to the movies on Friday because you want to be with him instead?” I ask.
“It's not like I don't want to go to the movie with you. I just asked him first,” he says.
“Oh. The same one?”
“No. It's some sports drama flick getting a lot of awards buzz. It's called Golf Clap.”
I search my phone for the synopsis: A golf player overcomes a life-altering STD to find love and win the Masters Tournament championship.
“You hate stuffy dramas,” I say.
“I'm cool with trying new things,” he says. “Honestly, this is like the seventh or eighth Cannibal Cave movie. It looks like a bad retread of the other sequels. I don't know if we'd miss much by skipping it.”
“But we love those movies. They're supposed to be bad. That's what makes it so fun. We're not like all the clapping seals who go to ‘serious' movies, right?”
Felix doesn't respond to that. I feel a flicker of dread.
“Anyway, maybe we can catch it when it's streaming,” he says.
“Yeah, sure,” I respond unenthusiastically, and drop the subject altogether.
It's like a different kind of Sasquatch got to him, except this Sasquatch makes people boring.
___________
I walk to rehearsal in a daze. Any hope that New Year's Eve was a horny nothingburger between two gay guys has been shot down.
There is a genuine connection between Roland and Felix.
The fact that it happened so quickly when I've been in front of Felix all these years makes it all the more haunting.
We graduate in four months. If I get my shit together and steal the show in Pansgender!, I could get that agent, and Felix and I will be in California. In that case, this is a temporary distraction for him.
At the same time, he's taking us into dangerous territory. I need to think of a way for him to see that so he doesn't risk our future. Hmm.
I'm trying to do some deep thinking here when one of those stupid IntegriDrones starts following me.
They've been on every street ever since the Grabadook started selling them.
I can't get out of this stupid place soon enough.
It hovers above me like a mosquito buzzing around my ears, and the human urge to squash it with a giant sledgehammer is physically unbearable.
I shoot my middle finger. “I'm trying to think, damn you.” Still, it keeps following.
I take a quick turn to the right and hide under a tree nestled next to a power line.
The drone attempts to descend so it can find me, but instead it runs into the power line.
Sparks leap out from the cables until the drone explodes into a ball of fire and falls to the ground.
“Welp.” I wipe my hands and move on.
Rehearsal starts late because the power in the neighborhood went out.
The theater smells of fresh sawdust and the panic of a short-staffed set crew, but it's a special day because we all get our costumes.
I look like an amusement park mascot in my rainbow-colored crocodile suit.
There's a hole in the throat where my head sticks out, which is a relief because I thought I was going to be blind.
Once the power gets turned back on, Ms. Easterling has us work on the scene where Twinker Bell joins forces with Smee and Captain Hook to make Peter Pan jealous. I sit next to Sweet Mike and Naz in the front row.
Byron steps out in a glamorous sequined red coat with a feathered pirate cap. He's got on a ridiculous fake beard. He climbs up the pirate ship ladder and spins around.
“Voilà, mermaids and mermen! It's Captain Hewk serving lewks!”
Darren, muscles desperately squeezing out of his short fairy dress, follows behind with one hand over his tiara and another holding a magic wand.
“Look at my battery-operated animatronic wings!” He circles around like a model, showing us how the silver-glazed pink wings flap on their own. Sita grabs the harness on his hips and attaches a cable to it.
Finally, Meg Dunnstock scuttles out in her Smee costume. Meg is taller and more built than Byron, making him look like Napoleon in his regal captain suit.
“Hark! Here comes that Twinker Bell! Why do you come here to our ship today, or have you from your beloved Pan run astray?” Byron sings proudly from the bow of the pirate ship, raising his hook in welcome.
“I have, indeed, Captain! I refuse to be misused by Peter any longer,” Darren says. There's a long, awkward silence onstage. Darren looks up.
“Where's our flyman?” Sita, the stage manager, yells from backstage.
The cable jerks Darren into the air, pulling him too quickly, and he swings back and forth chaotically.
“On the ship, you idiot,” Darren barks at the fly operator. He's hung over the ship and dropped briskly. “Do that again and I'll piss in your drink!”
Ms. Easterling shakes her head as she writes on her notepad. “We're going to need to work on that.”
The cable pulls Darren up again. He takes out a bag of fairy dust and scatters it across Meg and Byron.
“It's a trap, Captain!” Meg yells.
“Have a sparkling sleep, hatemongers!” Darren says with a coy giggle.
“Blast you, little Twinker Bell! You vile gay insect straight from hell!” Byron scream-sings, shaking his hook at Darren as he falls to the ground in a trance. “I'll slice you in half with my hook, then put you in a pot to cook! My face the last thing you'll ever see, you mook!”
This show really won thirteen Tonys.
“Fantastic,” Ms. Easterling says, and gathers them around for notes.
It's an effective ruse. I couldn't blame Twinker Bell even if she did want to team up with Captain Hook. The way I feel right now, I'd team up with Captain Hook.
Hmm. Byron got his heart torn into pieces by his boyfriend. My heart is tipping over the edge of a cliff.
What if, despite our complete, unadulterated hate for each other, we worked together for a good cause?
After rehearsal, I approach him in the dressing room while he's removing his makeup. He takes one bored glance at me and goes back to looking at himself in the mirror.
“You're killing it as Captain Hook!”
“Mmmm” is his only response.
“I've always admired your bravery in being yourself and not hiding who you are. I mean, being openly gay. The truth is… I am, too,” I say.
Byron blows a raspberry. “Can you please bore somebody else with your coming out celebration? It's trite.”
“And I am in love with Felix. But he's dating somebody else now. I also think Carsten was a dirtbag to dump you at your own party.”
Byron stops what he's doing and shoots a warning glare at me. “Nobody dumped me.”
“I have a proposal. You and I can both act. Let's pretend we're together in order to make Felix and Carsten jealous.”
Byron laughs. “I knew you and Felix had something going on.”
“I'll do anything you want. All I need is for you to come to the movies with me next Friday night and pretend you're my boyfriend so Felix and his date can see us.”
“You're adorable. Really,” he says with a pinch to my cheek, then strolls to the exit.
I pull out my phone. “I didn't want to show you this, but…”
Byron stops at the door and turns. I show him the photo of Darren and Carsten in Houston, walking into the club. His face stays blank, but it doesn't take a genius to detect the inferno raging within him.
He marches out of the dressing room and right toward Darren, who's at the edge of the stage next to Meg. He grabs Darren's wand and jabs him in the chest.
“Did you go to the club with Carsten?”
It's obvious from the terrified, slack-jawed gape that Darren is giving right now that he's been caught red-handed. His knee starts to shake. “What… are you… talking… about?”
“Someone took a picture of you two together downtown. Did you steal my boyfriend?”
“Who?” Darren asks.
Byron slaps him lightly against the ear with his wand and he yelps.
“None of your business. Think smartly now, Darren Lam,” Byron says.
“Maybe it's none of your business,” Darren says, rubbing his ear. “Maybe you're not the emperor of the world that you think you are.”
Meg slowly backs away from the two of them, then makes a panicked beeline for stage right. Byron's arm limpens, and the wand slips through his fingers and bounces on the ground with a series of clacks.
“Oh my god. It's true, isn't it?”
Darren's eyes suddenly light up with a playful kind of confidence. “What if it is? What are you going to do about it, Captain?”
Byron's fingers wiggle like he's trying to reach for a response caked in the venom he's renown for, but he stares on helplessly before turning to the rest of us like we've all betrayed him.
“THIS THEATER IS CURSED!”
He leaps off the stage and flees to the exit door, pushing through it with his whole body. Even after the door shuts, we can hear him screaming.
“Looks like that smudge stick he lit didn't work,” Sweet Mike says in the awkward silence that follows.