Today is the first day of LaserCon: the day we win a thousand dollars.
We rendezvous at Molly the Corn Dolly at seven a.m. Then we pile into Woods’s mom’s Suburban.
In every other yard we pass, there is a promotional sign for the Harvest Festival. Woods has outdone himself. I’ve stolen him for moral support. I’ve stolen them all. Woods and Fifty in the front. Janie Lee and Mash in the middle. Davey and me in the back. Belle and Beast in the cargo hold.
When we decided to skip school as a group, Woods had Doc Robbins write Janie Lee an excuse.
“But what about you all?” she asks, accepting a powdered doughnut from Mash.
“Hell.” Fifty giggles, steals the doughnut from her hand. “We can’t all have heavy menstrual problems.”
“It does not say that.” She unfolds the doctor’s note, reads for herself, and crams it into a pocket of her backpack.
Woods is turning onto the interstate, admitting he suffered from an unfortunate loss of imagination when he spoke with Doc Robbins last night. Janie Lee is as red as a channel bass, and we’re all ripping with laughter. Sounds about right to me. Sounds much better than the awkwardness of this past week.
I am not worried about my excuse to Otters Holt High School. One for Dad? Well . . . that could be a problem. He can always be a problem. Especially right now, when he is eagle-eyeing my life for signs of Janie Lee. I could have told Mom, should have after she helped me with the costumes, but no one else told their mom. Which meant I stole a piece of bacon from the plate this morning and said I’d see her later. She’d told me she was excited about KickFall tomorrow, and I’d said, “Me too.” All truths.
Pastureland becomes fast food exits become Nashville. The Music City Center wows from the interstate. The wavy roof sits low on the skyline, well beneath the Batman building, just as imposing. It is two, no, three blocks wide. Woods exits.
I am unprepared for the overflow of LaserCon attendees. Inhabitants of Middle-earth, post-apocalyptic Georgia, Asgard, and many more crowd the sidewalk. Three stormtroopers and a herd of guys and girls dressed as characters from 300 draw the attention of every vehicle on the road.
They are all a thing of beauty. A world apart from Otters Holt and Nashville.
“Crazy-ass people,” Fifty mutters.
“What a wonderment,” Woods says.
“These are my people,” Davey comments quietly.
Janie Lee steals a glance in my direction. I wink. She winks back. All week long we have been attempting normalcy. Not postkiss us. Not kiss us. The us that has existed from the moment I hauled her ass out of Kentucky Lake. It’s been a bit like climbing Everest, but the dual winks are a good sign we’re coming back.
Police barricades block the front of the convention center. “I think, children, I’ll have to drop you off and park,” Woods announces. “Can I trust you not to get into too much trouble?”
Horns blare, urging him to pull away from the curb. Everyone hops out. I shoulder two duffel bags of accessories and Davey balances Belle and Beast on the sidewalk. “Text us,” I say to Woods.
He’s already pulling away from the curb, driving as if he knows where he’s going when he most certainly does not.
Gerry and Thom’s last text swears they are heading our way. This convergence excites me. We are in a hive of superheroes. People who must meet here every year are hugging and dueling and drinking and striking poses. Three Dragon Ball Z friends chat about attending a manga session. A gang of Marvel characters talking up Stan Lee, who is rumored to be attending. Every third or fourth person is a Potterhead. There are no ages, no genders. Bodies are hidden completely, or totally exploited. That’s the peculiar thing that happens when you pretend to be someone else: you are someone else.
I get to be Elizabeth McCaffrey, born 1999—d. ? R.I.P.: Princess. Who the hell saw that coming? But I think I can do it. And it will not be like Billie Wears a Dress to School Day. I’m doing this because I want to. Not because I feel obligated. And I made this costume myself.
A deep, booming voice calls out, “Hey, McCaffrey, who you gonna call?” The yelling Ghostbuster is Thom. Gerry’s dressed as Lara Croft, and damn. She’s dyed her green hair as black as Janie Lee’s. I make the introductions.
Davey is easy today. Relaxed. He has none of the pensive energy from the time when we didn’t know how to navigate each other. We are in his playground, and he is confident.
Thom puts Beast under his arm, chides me with mock-worry. “I’m not sure you’ve done enough work on these.”
We all laugh. I want to thank Thom for saying this. For making Davey smile so broadly.
There’s so much concrete. So much gray. Even though I am happy to be among the mill of humanity, I can’t imagine living here in all this noise. Davey will probably live here again soon, and I’ll return to the trees and the majesty of Kentucky Lake. I hope.
“You okay?” Davey asks.
“Yes,” I say. “I’m excited.”
“Belle and Beast are amazing,” he says for the millionth time.
We follow Thom, juggling the duffel bags while Thom calls over his shoulder for Davey to come along and be useless inside the convention center. Woods knocks into me—he’s just joined us without needing a text—and says, “I like him.” So I say, “Who doesn’t?” Because it’s true. With their combined forces, Thom and Woods could take over a small country by lunch.
We check in and register for the costume contest. Fairly simple rules of engagement. Davey and I are assigned a photo booth time when we will strike a pose. The photo will be judged. Fifty candidates will be chosen to appear in the ballroom. Showdown at high noon. Our assigned photo booth time is 10:45. Twenty-five minutes from now. There is no time to waste.
We get cracking, taking over a family bathroom on the second floor to assemble our twosome. Gerry tells me, “You’re gonna be so effing hot in this. You’re like one of those exploding stars.” I like to watch Woods watching her, analyzing how she became the creature she is. Janie Lee nudges his arm so he’ll stop staring, and Gerry tells them both that she is taking my boots while I’m wearing Mom’s terrible yellow high heels. And then she says, “Shall I kiss them, Billie?”
“It is your standard greeting,” I say, knowing she is trolling the boys.
Fifty says, “Well, I’d like that.”
It was a very Fifty thing to say until Mash says, “Uh, yeah, me too,” as quiet as a confession. Thom gives Mash a little fist bump.
Davey catches my eye in the mirror. He’s pleased our friends are getting along so smashingly. He’s excited about LaserCon. He says, “When you said you’d help, I had no idea you’d pull this off. I should have. I mean . . . you’re you.”
“Don’t thank me yet. We’ve only got one shot at putting them on,” I say.
After some maneuvering and strategizing, Thom picks Davey up at the waist and sets him neatly inside the Beast’s pants. Fifty does this for me, telling me I am never allowed to make papier-mâché clothes again and to eat more lettuce.
Janie Lee and Gerry help me into the top of Belle’s dress. Gerry handles my zipper, her cold fingers raking up my back. I give Davey the fur pieces for his legs, face, and arms, envying that he will be warm. Makeup time.
My face becomes the property of Janie Lee. She is nearly as close as she was when we kissed. I close my eyes so I am not tempted to make this moment more than it is. Davey turns his face over to Gerry. When they finish, we have three minutes to get to the photo booth.
We hurry on papier-mâchéd legs, take a regal picture, and then set about the arduous task of waiting. Thom and Gerry are off like the cat and mouse of their namesakes, seeing panels they do not have tickets to and promising to meet us later. Fifty, Mash, Woods, and Janie Lee leave us in search of pancakes. Davey and I remain standing near the ballroom because the flaw in this design is that there’s no sitting of any kind.
“What do you usually do with the money?” I ask Davey.
“What money?”
“The winnings?”
“Oh, I put it in savings. Dad always insists. Nice to think we’ll give it away this time, though.”
“Did you make a decision about Waylan?”
“Yep,” he says. “I’m staying in Otters Holt.”
I ask what changed his mind and if he has told his dad.
After a pause, he begins. “The other night in your garage. We were all working on the costumes, and the clock was ticking, and I was thinking, I’m really happy here.” He gives a full smile. “You’re a part of that, you know?”
“I like being part of that,” I say.
“It’s pretty cool that we’ve come full circle.”
“What do you mean?”
“We met when we were kids. It was at a Harvest Festival. Maybe 2007 or 2008. You were playing Wiffle ball with Big T in a Batman mask.”
I have a vague memory of Wiffle ball. And an even vaguer one of Batman. I’d gone around for a week or so in a costume. “At the elementary school?” I ask.
“Yep. And I hate to tell you this, but superheroes suck at Wiffle ball.”
I want to punch him, but if I do, I would put a hole in Beast’s jacket.
His fingers are slim and busy, drumming the wall as he continues. “I assumed you were a boy until you took your mask off. And then you said something about being able to be anything you wanted. I can’t remember the exact words, but it left an impression.”
I don’t remember him. I remember hitting a home run. Memories are lopsided sometimes.
“That’s what started me on costumes,” he says. “You. Batman. It was like I found a piece of myself in Otters Holt then, and another piece of myself there this fall. Waylan is fine. Thom and Gerry are . . . well, they’re Thom and Gerry, we won’t change no matter where we live.”
“Your relationship amazes me. You move so easily around feelings.”
He laughs a raucous laugh. “Not always,” he says.
He tells me their story. A story that changes and rearranges the pieces.
How freshman year, some guys at Waylan started calling Thom and him the Oxford Homos, among other titles. So when Woods put me on the guys’ side of the Hexagon, he didn’t have to imagine my confusion; he’d felt it. He spent hours dissecting what made his peers, even some faculty at Waylan, ship them. They both had girlfriends when it started. They never experimented with clothes or makeup, apart from LaserCon. As far as he could tell, they existed outside stereotypes.
“Maybe it’s because we never shied away from physical contact. Thom’s dad is a counselor, his mom a kindergarten teacher; he was raised on a diet of hugs and kisses,” he says, and then goes on to tell me that he has never been naturally touchy-feely. That Thom was his only friend for so long that he grew to enjoy his brotherly affection. “He has a way of disarming everyone.”
I nod at that.
“Looking back, I think people were jealous. Thom was just coming into his charisma, and everyone else was years away from having a personality. He could have lavished his affection on them, but he’d chosen me and they hated me for it.”
To shut up the barrage of voices, Thom, who has since decided he is demisexual, kissed him. No asks. No buildup. They were playing video games one minute, kissing the next. That could not have been easy to do at thirteen. Even for Thom.
“After that when someone yelled, ‘Hey homos,’ I heard them, but I knew I wasn’t gay. I’d . . . well, I’d given it my best go, and I still liked girls. He liked girls too. And boys. And anyone who made him feel deeply. Which I did. So I get why he kissed me. And he gets why I didn’t want us to be that to each other. Most people want puddles to splash around in; Thom wants souls where scuba diving is encouraged.”
That was about the best description I’d heard of Thom. And it made sense why he fit so well with Gerry. They are creatures of equal depth for different reasons. If I knew Gerry for a thousand years, she would tell me a story about herself I’d never heard before.
“You thought we were together,” he says. “That’s why you asked me if I was jealous of Gerry?”
“I . . . yeah,” I admit. “I was trying to get you to tell me in the car.”
“And I was trying to not confuse you. You’d kissed Woods. You were considering Janie Lee. I thought throwing myself in the mix was douche and insensitive.”
“So you let me believe you were gay?”
“I only tried to let you believe that I love Thom. And I do.”
That makes sense. I still wish I’d known. It would have made my attraction to him not feel so ridiculous.
He explains that after their experimenting he stopped caring about everyone else’s opinions and listened when Thom assured him, “They’re shallow, bro,” and “We know who we are.”
“Billie, this shit is murky and personal. You had to be able to explore,” he says as a conclusion.
I tell myself he has a special Billie Edition Telescope that allows him this view. He is sure Janie Lee will be fine, whatever we decide. He is also sure we will win a thousand dollars.
“I mean, look at us,” he says.
Look at us, I think.
Our cell phones buzz with news. We’ve made the LaserCon costume cut.
We kill the next half hour making up things we’d do with a thousand dollars if we weren’t giving it to the Harvest Festival. Buy seeds for Mr. Nix? Get Thom some better rims? Purchase Gerry a shitty car so she doesn’t have to ride the bus to Denny’s when Thom’s at school? Dozens of footballs for the Spandex Junkwagons? Canvases for Mom? A new concordance for Dad? (He’d personally like a complete set of expensive dictionaries.) A couch more comfortable than the Daily Sit?
Davey offers another spontaneous option. “We could give it to the church. For the fire damages.”
“That would be nice,” I say. I’d love for my dad to know that even though I look different than him on the outside, we have similar insides.
“Assuming we win.”
“Don’t go doubting us now,” I say. “I like assuming we’ll win.”
One hour later, we have walked, paraded, posed, twirled, been examined and celebrated by a ballroom full of attendees and judges. This is a competition for nerds. Bonus points for special effects.
Fifty contestants are cut to ten. Ten are cut to two. Gerry and Thom and the Hexagon cheer as we make progress. Our remaining competition stands on stilts, towering over us, and is covered in actual bark from top to bottom. I’m not sure which character he intends to be—I am woefully bad at fandom—but his height alone is extraordinary. We’ve been lamenting our inability to bend and stretch; this dude has to balance.
Regardless, we have made it this far, and I am ready to collect my money and save Molly the Corn Dolly from being a cliché.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” an announcer says. “The judges of the 2017 LaserCon Costume Contest have selected a winner. It is my pleasure to award this check of one thousand dollars”—he reveals a big cardboard check from behind the podium—“to . . .”
The announcer then transforms into a masochistic bastard who allows the audience to pant with anticipation. My heart is on fire.
“A tale as old as time! David Winters and Elizabeth McCaffrey in their reimagining of Beauty and the Beast,” he yells into the microphone.
In the front aisle, Woods waves his arms like a conductor.
Fifty screams, “We’re walking the beam, bitches.”
Janie Lee blows me a kiss.