My Invented Life (20 page)

Is she referring to my secret date with Bryan? Or snagging the lead in the play maybe? But I thought Eva had broken up with him, and I can’t be blamed for acting well. Oh, there’s that other little thing—coming out as a lesbian at school.

“No,” I say.

Mom gives me a look. She’s been using that ESP of hers again. “An apology is worth a thousand words,” she says. “You should talk to her. She’s not contagious anymore.”

“Fine. But you’ll have to make her let me in first,” I say. “Her door is barricaded.”

Mom goes to Eva’s room and taps lightly. When there’s no answer, I say, “See?”

“It’s Mom. Roz has something she’d like to say to you.”

Eva opens the door right away.

“All you had to do was knock,” Gethsemane says.

“I have a surprise for you,” I say. “Just wait here.” I dash to my room, retrieve a certain something, and return with it tucked under my shirt. Mom has retreated to give us privacy. I lock Eva’s door behind me just in case.

“You’re pregnant?” Eva asks.

“Ta da!” I whip it out. “A Bryan voodoo doll. You can work out your aggressions on it.”

Eva studies the lumpy socks and patchy hair. “Looks like someone worked him over pretty well already.”

Now comes the hard part, the part where years of acting can be nifty because I don’t exactly mean what I’m about to say. I adjust an earring and nibble delicately on my pinkie nail. “I’m sorry I flirted with your boyfriend.” I stare at a spot on the wall before shifting my gaze to the floor.

Eva laughs, a startling sound to be sure. “You were crushing on him first. I knew that before we hooked up.”

I drop the act. “You did?” Who knew the depths of her depravity?

“It was pretty obvious.”

“Did you even like him?”

“Of course. He’s a sexy beast. Just the right sort of devil to help me get over my breakup with Brad Pitt.”

I tackle her and pin her to the bed. “
Folly-fallen scullion
,” I say, trying to get my fingers around her neck.

She slides out of my grip. “It started out as payback, Chub. You know, for Marcus and John and—”

“Stop,” I say. According to my memory banks, I pursued only TWO of her ex-boyfriends. If there were more, I don’t want to know. “And don’t call me Chub.”

“What
should
I call you?”

“Slim,” I say. I pick up the Bryan doll from the floor. I might have future use for it. “Since you don’t want him . . . may I?”

Eva laughs so hard it’s contagious, and we run around her room shrieking and throwing things like we used to. Soon I’m lying on the floor covered in socks, pillows, and stray sweaters trying to catch my breath. As the last convulsive giggle leaves my chest, I look at Eva sitting next to me. Her hair is tousled, and she looks twelve years old.

“Why did you lie to me when you got your period?” I ask.

“I lied?”

“I found tampons in your room, and you said they were for cleaning your ears.”

“Oh, that. I guess I thought it would mean a lot to you to be first.”

I go a tad gooey when she says that. The days when she looked out for me were sweet. Maybe if I give her what she wants most, I can bring them back. “Are you still mad I got the lead?” I say.

“Obviously you bribed Sapphire for the role. But what I want to know is how you got your hands on a million dollars.”

“Ha! I earned it fair and square,” I say. “But you can have it. It’s yours.” My offer comes out through gritted teeth and doesn’t sound as gracious as I planned.

“Roz?” Eva says. She folds me into a long hug. “You
really do love me.” When she lets go, her eyes are wet. “I can’t believe what you just said. But that’s not what I want.”

“I don’t understand. I heard you rehearsing my lines in here.”

She wipes her face on her sleeve. “I wasn’t rehearsing for the play.”

“What were you rehearsing for?”

“Nothing.”

“This nothing that you so plentifully give me,” I say. Translation? She will never open up to me. They say you learn more from your failures than your successes. Well, I learned something today. Failure sucks.

I pace her room, stopping to fluff a pom-pom here and straighten a trophy there. “Okay, okay! I’m sorry,” I say, not acting this time, except to control the excesses of my jumpy body parts. “I’m sorry I came out at school.”

Like superglue, she hardens in seconds. “What were you thinking?”

What WAS I thinking?

“I didn’t mean to offend anyone,” I say. “I wanted to join a cool club, I guess. And to show you that people are more tolerant than you think.”

“Tolerant? Like you?” She picks up her foot behind her back and stretches her quad.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Who wants to be tolerated, anyway?” She holds her arms out and rotates them in small circles. “I want to be accepted. People who can’t accept others don’t love themselves.”

“I love myself,” I say. With a few reservations. I can see
it now, the worst-selling self-help book of all time—
I Love Myself . . . Almost
.

“Good for you.” She bends over to stretch her hamstrings, resting her palms on the floor and making it look easy. “Only it’s not always about you.”

What are we talking about exactly?

Eva’s cell phone rings, Pachelbel’s Sappiest Canon. She pushes me out the door before answering it.

E
va skips yet another
day of school. I envy my sister her strange powers over Gethsemane and Elmo. Now that I have friends, though, I look forward to going to school. And I wouldn’t miss today in exchange for a future Emmy. Jonathan will be back, and I mean to drag him off into a corner of the Barn to lavish him with love (Platonic, of course). Our new friendship means a lot to me.

At rehearsal Carmen foils my plan by whisking him onto the stage to work through the scenes we postponed during his abduction. Despite his haunted look, he moves across the stage without stumbling over wires or half-remembered lines. I should get his autograph before he becomes famous. Not to sell, either, but as proof that he knew me before he had a shelf lined with Tony Awards.

When Sapphire comes in, I intercept her. “Watch Carmen a minute before you go up there,” I whisper.

As we observe together, Carmen listens to suggestions from the other players and makes decisions with quiet authority, so unlike her usual bossy mode. She maneuvers the scene off its lazy backside and ratchets the tension into high gear.

“Oh, my,” Sapphire says.

“Yes,” I say. “You should let her finish out the week.” It feels good to put my slithery serpent mind to a less selfish use for once.

“Good idea.”

Sapphire seems cheerful about this, so I risk a second good deed. “How did it go?”

“How did what go?”

“Will Jonathan’s parents take him back?” I ask.

“He told you about his parents?”

“I think they’re horrible,” I say.

Sapphire crosses her arms tight and scrunches her shoulders. “That’s my sister you’re talking about,” she says.

At that moment, I remember how Sapphire called Jonathan confused, and the piranha inside me slips her leash. “That’s no excuse to treat him like a criminal.”

“Don’t be so dramatic. They didn’t lock him up,” she says. “But he’s making a choice that hurts them.”

I have trouble keeping my voice down. “What about hurting him? Why would he CHOOSE to be gay if it’s so much easier not to be? How can you believe that?”

“Teens are often self-destructive, and feelings aren’t always logical,” she says. “You’ll understand when you’re a mother.”

My anger builds to violence, the hair-pulling, nail-scratching, and shin-kicking kind. I storm off to stew behind the speaker. When I have a daughter a million years from now, I will accept her for who she is. More than that, I will encourage her to follow her heart, to embrace herself. I hope she turns out to be even crazier than I am.

During the break, Sapphire talks to Carmen. When Andie drags Nico behind the props, I ask Jonathan to take a breath of air with me.

“You still remember your lines,” I say.

“Pretty much. But I can’t stop thinking about my mom. She wants me back, but Dad says no. And she’s going along with it. It’s insane.”

“Since you go both ways, couldn’t you . . . you know . . . ?” As soon as the idea takes shape in my head and right before the last few words enter the air in front of my mouth, I know how wrong I am. I should sell my big mouth on eBay under Blooper Collectibles. “Forget I said that.” I clap a hand over my mouth to emphasize the point. “To thine own self be true.”

“Huh, what?” he asks from Jonathan Land. He gently pulls my hand away from my mouth. It appears that he missed my faux pas. Thank the goddess for small blessings. He squeezes my hand so that the bones crunch into each other. “Thanks.”

“You’re way ahead of all the gays in the closet,” I say. “It’s good to be out and proud. Strength in numbers.”

“Tell that to Matthew Shepard.”

I try to wriggle my fingers. “Who?”

“Don’t give me that shit,” he says.

When I get home, Dad surprises me in the kitchen. We make tomato-garlic soup with heaps of onion and squash, performing each task as if for an haute cuisine show on TV. I use a fake Italian accent as a foil to his fake French accent. For a while I can pretend that everything is back to normal, that Sierra still lives in Yolo Bluffs, Eva still
loves me, and everyone takes my obsession with boys for granted. Ah, the simple life.

“Zee squash shood be tendair,” he says, holding out his pinkie finger as he jabs at the zucchini with a fork.

“Coat da garlick wit da oil olivo. Perfetto,” I say, drizzling the yellow-green oil into the pan. We kiss our fingertips after each step. Just when I’m feeling especially happy, Elmo fixes me with one of those long, uncomfortable stares of his.

“What?” I say, drilling him back with my cyborg eye.

“I love both my daughters, whatever happens.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” I say in a tough voice—though I’m going all squishy inside—“when I embark on my new career.”

“Which career is that?”

“Serial ax murderer.”

After dinner I hit the Google. Matthew Shepard was a gay college student living in Laramie, Wyoming. One night he was hanging out in a bar when two young guys offered him a ride home. They drove him to a remote spot, tied him to a fence, and beat him. He wasn’t found until the next day. A few days after that, he died while still in a coma. Later in court, the young men claimed he was hitting on them. No wonder I spend so much time in my invented life. Nothing that horrible ever happens there. Sometimes reality sucks more than I can handle.

I make an altar to Matthew using a photo printed off the Net and illuminating it with a scented candle Sierra gave me. I write his name on the skin near my heart. I
download an uplifting coming-out story to cheer myself up, reading it through a haze of sandalwood.

My name is Jay. Like a lot of boys in the third grade, I had a crush on my teacher. Only my teacher was a man. I kept it to myself. Then the whole story poured out of me unexpectedly at my fifteenth birthday party. My friends were upset with me, but not because I was gay. They were mad I hadn’t trusted them to support me. Though it was the happiest day of my life, I couldn’t stop crying.

I visit a Christian Web site that says God won’t punish gays unless they consummate their love with physical acts. So gays are supposed to remain celibate? Like that could ever work for anyone with hormones. Except for the no-sexuals, I guess. I forward Jay’s coming-out story to them and to Sapphire while I’m at it.

Tuesday morning Andie shows up in homeroom for the first time in many days sans pet. The combination of white makeup and a red-streaked scarf wrapped around her neck like a blood-soaked bandage gives her a positively ghoulish look. If I kiss her cheek, will her head topple and roll across the floor?

“Where’s Nico?” I ask.

She sets a stack of date-stamped photos on the table in front of me. As I leaf through them, a pattern emerges—Bryan holding hands with a girl, Bryan kissing a girl, and Bryan fondling the butt of a girl. The theme of each picture is the same, but the girl is not. All the while that Bryan has been giving me the woo, he’s been hooking up with two freshman girls on the side.
Eye-offending, wenching
rampallion
. The girls are shorter and skinnier than I am. But let’s not forget what we have in common. Stupidity.

Andie offers me a tissue from her funereal black purse.

“Yesterday’s news,” I say. “Who took the pictures?”

“Nico.”

“Why?” I ask.

“Do I have to spell out everything for you? You’re not in kindergarten anymore.”

“He’s
your
boyfriend.”

She rolls her eyes so vigorously, it’s a wonder they don’t fall out of their sockets.

The afternoon of our first dress rehearsal, we sift through gowns and petticoats in a curtained-off dressing area called the Mosh Pit. I turn toward the wall when I take off my shirt, but despite the evasion, Andie spots the ballpoint tattoo on my clavicle.

“That’s passion.” She traces the name with her finger. “New boyfriend?”

By her smile I can tell she knows about Matthew Shepard. “We met at a séance,” I say. “He’s perfect for me. He doesn’t fool around with other girls, and he always compliments me on what I’m wearing.”

She zips my dress, and we both stare at the vision I make in the mirror. Now that she doesn’t want to get physical with me, I can enjoy her appreciative looks with palpitations minus the panic. I straighten my shoulders from their usual slump that helps me feel shorter.

“I hear him paying you a compliment right now,” she says.

Mirrors don’t lie. The fitted bodice, puffed sleeves, and
A-line skirt transform me from giantess to goddess. I could slay the heart of Zeus himself. And Juno’s, too.

After rehearsal, I add a dried red rose and a Lindor truffle to Matthew’s altar. Who knew he’d become my closest confidant? Not really, but I’ve talked to him more than anybody else today. Ever since I offered Eva the world, apologized for everything, even the parts that weren’t my fault, she’s blown frosty air my way. She doesn’t want Bryan anymore. She doesn’t want the lead in the play. There must be an explanation for why she’s hibernating in her room.
It’s not always about you
, she said.