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Kylie looks up at me. “‘Oh my God, Karen, you can’t just ask people why they’re white,’” she says.
Mean Girls. We know the script by heart. That movie and about a million others. The number of hours we’ve logged together watching films is appalling. There have been times when we’ve watched the same film four times in a row. There have been lost weekends when we’ve barely come up for air. I would say this is because we are ardent film lovers, but I know it’s more than that. Both of us, for our own reasons, would prefer to live embedded in the silver screen than in the real world of high school. At least, that’s what my therapist says. Kylie is going to be a screenwriter and I’m going to be a…who knows? I’ve got time and money, so I’m not particularly concerned, unlike Kylie.
Kylie keeps walking. I rush to catch up with her. A few stray curls poke out from her signature ponytail. Girlfriend wears her gorgeous fro so tightly slicked back it looks like a helmet. She needs to embrace those kinky Latina curls. With her bronze skin, her golden eyes, and those massively long black lashes, she could look like a movie star. Sister is hot even in an outfit that could make Marilyn Monroe look neutered. Sadly, she doesn’t have a clue. She thinks she’s ugly. It kills me.
“You’ve totally outdone yourself today,” Kylie tells me, giving my ensemble the once-over. “Are you trying to push Alvarez over the edge?”
“You know he secretly lives for it.”
I’m driving the headmaster crazy. Freiburg is a straight-ass school in a straight-ass town, and my dresses and skirts do not please Headmaster Alvarez. He talked to my parents last year, but he’s kind of given up at this point. Just like my parents.
“Hot or not?” I ask Kylie as I spin around in my vintage platform black patent heels (purchased on eBay). I am wearing lime-green ski
I’m not an idiot; I’m aware of what people say about me. I know they think I’m a screaming queen, which, oddly enough, I’m not. I’m just a regular gay boy. I’m not insatiably drawn to women’s clothes or anything, but this is one way to distinguish myself at Freiburg. I don’t have many other marketable skills. I mean, I tried the volleyball team, at my dad’s insistence, and it was…a freaking nightmare. Large, hard balls coming at me from every direction at high velocity.
But this cross-dressing thing has been kind of a boon for me, a solid extracurricular, with all the Internet shopping, studying of fashion blogs, and even learning to sew. It’s been a good distraction and a résumé builder. People still tease me about my voice and my boy crushes, but it’s died down as I’ve amped up the fabulousity quotient. My outrageous outfits allow me to take center stage in character, which is far better than being the lone gay guy in the corner.
“Yeah. You’re rocking it. Even in this hideous fluorescent light,” Kylie says. Kylie is the one person who has always accepted me just as I am.
“I have a gift. Speaking of which, I’ve got a little something for Charlie Peters. A graduation present. I just need you to help me get him into the boys’ room.”
Kylie and I always call Charlie Peters, Charlie Peters. We could just call him Charlie, but it’s another one of those things that stitches our friendship together.
“Shut up. You are all talk. Besides, Charlie Peters is so not gay,” Kylie says. “You think everyone’s gay.”
“Most people are. They just don’t know it yet.”
“Okay. Whatever. Listen, Will, I’m kinda in a hurry. I’ve got to get to the library.”
She’s not in the mood to play.
“The library? We’re done, baby. Stick a fork in us.”
Kylie is such a grind, it worries me. Who’s going to make her kick back and watch Modern Family and Fringe at NYU? I may have to fly in from Berkeley and physically force her to chillax.
“Mistress Murphy gave us one last assignment.”
“Please tell me you’re not going to do it. It will build character not to do it. I promise.”
“I am going to do it. And I’m doing Max Langston’s as well. We’re partners.”
“Kylie, Kylie, Kylie.”
“He won’t do it if I don’t do it for him. I can’t not do it. I can’t. I’ll be better at NYU. I promise,” Kylie offers.
“Doubt it.” Maybe New York City has the answers for her. God knows San Diego only had questions.
“Yeah. You’re probably right. I need to get to the library. I’m meeting Max there.”
“Oh, we get to meet Max Langston at the library?” Mortals like us don’t normally interact with the Max Langstons of the world.
“We?” Kylie says, shooting me a warning glance.
“I’m coming with.” No better view than staring at Max from a neighboring carrel.
“Will, don’t you have anything better to do?”
“Sadly, no.”
“C’mon, this is only going to make things more difficult.”
“You’ll barely notice me.”
“Impossible.” Kylie sticks her tongue out at me.
I stick my tongue out at her. It’s an interchange we have about seven hundred times a day. I love her. I would give her a lung and a leg if I had to. Hopefully, I won’t have to.
“Okay. Here’s the plan. You have sex with Max over in biographies, and then I can go down on him by the microfiche,” I suggest.
“Gross. I wouldn’t touch Max with a ten-foot pole. I have no interest in sex with Max, at all.”
“Um, hello…you have no interest in sex whatsoever. It’s a problem.”
“Not everyone thinks about sex twenty-four seven,” Kylie says.
“I beg to differ, darling. Most seventeen-year-olds are not only thinking about sex, they’re actually having it, unlike us.”
I think about sex every single minute of every day. Not that it’s getting me anywhere. Kylie and I are both virgins, but for very different reasons. It’s not normal for a seventeen-year-old girl to turn that whole part of herself off. She’s going to explode one day. I just hope I’m there to pick up the pieces.
We take a seat at a table in the library to wait for Max. I reach into my pocket, pull out a fabulous pair of long, gold chandelier earrings, and offer them up to Kylie.
“You have to wear these for graduation. You need something that’s going to stand out on the podium. These will look major with your hair all wild, and—”
“Will, you promised me you wouldn’t steal any more of your sisters’ stuff.”
“You’re the valedictorian, darling. You need some kind of something. A
“The thought is sweet, and I love you for it, but I won’t take your stolen goods. I’m sorry.”
Damn Kylie and that moral compass she wears around her neck. My sisters have so much stuff, it’s embarrassing. I’m just trying to share the wealth.
“At least let me buy you a dress for graduation.”
“Will, seriously, drop it.”
I do drop it. But I vow to pick it up again before Friday. Kylie deserves a slamming dress when she stands up there at the podium and blows us all away with her speech. Of course, no one will see it under her gown, but it’s the principle of the thing that counts.
Kylie and I are an unlikely pair. I’m one of the richest kids in a school filled with La Jolla’s most moneyed families, while Kylie is one of five scholarship students. We met on the first day of seventh grade, in the far north corner of the cafeteria, having both been pushed out of all the prime real estate. Kylie was new and I was, well, me. We ended up at the same empty table, along with Justin Wang, who just sat there, in a trance, communing with his Nintendo.