Brian’s leaving tomorrow morning to go back to boarding school for the fall, and tonight I’m in the underworld looking for him. I’ve never been to a party before, didn’t know it was like being miles and miles underground, where demons walk around with their hair on fire. I’m pretty certain no one here can see me. It must be because I’m too young or skinny or something. Courtney’s parents are out of town and she decided we’d use her older sister’s party as a going away bash for Brian. I don’t want to be at a going away party for Brian. I want to be going away with Brian, like on a plane to the Serengeti to watch the blue wildebeests migrate.
I head down a smoky crowded hall, where everyone’s pressed to the walls in clumps like people-sculptures. No one’s face is arranged right. In the next room, it’s their bodies. People are dancing, and after I make sure Brian’s not here yet, I lean against the wall and take in the whole mob of sweating gleaming people with their piercings and plumage and windmilling arms as they jump and sway and spin and lift off into the air. I’m staring and staring, getting eaten by the music, getting new eyes—when I feel a hand, or maybe it’s a bird talon clawing into my shoulder. I turn to see an older girl with tons of springy red hair. She’s wearing a short shimmery brown dress and is way taller than me. Winding around her entire arm is an off-the-hook tattoo of a red-and-orange fire-breathing dragon. “Lost?” she asks loudly over the music, like she’s talking to a five-year-old.
I guess I’m not invisible after all. Her whole face is sparkling, especially the emerald-green wings around her icy blue eyes. Her pupils are huge black caves where bats live. “You’re so cute,” she shouts into my ear. She has a strange accent, kind of like Dracula’s, and looks like one of the ladies Klimt paints. “Your hair.” She pulls one of my curls until it’s perfectly straight. I can’t look away from her because that’s what happens with demons. “Such big, dark, soulful eyes,” she says slowly in her thick accent, like she’s making a meal of each word. The music has quieted down and thankfully so has her voice. “Bet all the little girls are after you.” I shake my head. “They will be, trust me.” She smiles and there’s a gash of red lipstick on one of her fangs. “Ever kiss a girl?” I shake my head again. I can’t seem to lie to her or break the demon spell in any way. And then with no warning, her crackly lips are pushing against mine, in between mine, and I can taste her, all smoky and the gross kind of too sweet like an orange that’s been in the sun all day. My eyes are open, so I can see the black spidery eyelashes sleeping on her cheeks. She’s really kissing me! Why? She pulls back, opens her eyes, and laughs when she sees the expression on my face. Putting one of her talons on my shoulder again, she leans in and whispers in my ear, “See you in a few years.” Then she turns and walks away on long bare legs, her devil tail swishing back and forth. I watch the fire-breathing dragon tattoo on her arm slither all the way up her shoulder and wrap around her neck.
Did that really just happen to me? Did I imagine it? Um, don’t think so, because I certainly wouldn’t have picked her if my imagination were in charge. I bring my hand to my mouth and wipe my lips. Red comes off on my fingers, her lipstick. It did happen. Do all people taste like sun-rancid oranges on the inside? Do I? Does Brian?
Brian.
I start toward the front door. I’ll wait for him outside and convince him to go up to the roof instead for his last night, like I wanted to anyway, so all the stars can fall on our heads one final time, so maybe what hasn’t happened all summer might finally happen, but as I enter the front hallway, I spot him following Courtney up a staircase, watch him as he razors through the crowd, nodding his head to guys, returning the smiles of girls, like he belongs. How is it he belongs everywhere?
(PORTRAIT: The Boy with All the Keys in the World with All the Locks)
When he reaches the top of the stairs, he turns around. His hands are on the banister and he’s leaning forward, surveying the room—is he looking for me? Yes, I know he is and it shape-shifts me into a waterfall. Can you die of this feeling? I’m thinking yes. I can’t even draw or paint it out of me anymore. When it comes on, and it comes on all the time now, I just have to lie down on my back and let it wash me away.
Courtney tugs on his arm and he slips off behind her without having found me and so I turn back into a person.
I squeeze up the steps after them with my head down. I don’t want to make eye contact, don’t want anyone talking to me, kissing me! Do people at parties just kiss other people for no reason? I know nothing. When I’ve almost reached the top of the stairs, I feel a hand on my arm. Not again. A small girl who looks like a gothed-out chipmunk hands me a red plastic cup full of beer. “Here,” she says, smiling. “You seem like you need one.” I say thanks and continue up. Maybe I do need one. I hear her say, “Isn’t he a little hottie?” to someone who replies, “Cradle robber.” God. So much for my secret garage workouts with Dad’s weights. Everyone here thinks I’m in kindergarten. But am I hot? It’s not possible, is it? I always assume girls look at me because they think I’m strange, not because they think I’m cute. Mom tells me I’m so handsomeadorablegorgeous, but that’s her job. How do you know if you’re hot? The redheaded kissing demon did say that my eyes were soulful.
Does Brian think I’m hot?
The idea goes straight to my groin and jerks me awake. He grabbed my hand under the armrest at the movie. More than awake. I stop, breathe, try to get under control, take a sip of the beer, well more like a giant gulp. It’s not horrible. I continue up the stairs.
The second floor is the opposite of the first, as it’s in heaven. I’m standing in a long, white-carpeted, white-walled cloud of a hallway with a bunch of closed doors on either side.
Which room did Brian and Courtney go into? What if they’re alone? What if they’re kissing? Or worse? Maybe she already has her shirt off. I take another drink of beer. What if he’s licking her boobs? Guys are really into that. He told me not to worry. He told me not to worry. He told me not to worry. Which was code, wasn’t it? Code for: I will not lick Courtney Barrett’s boobs, right? I take a huge gulp of the beer, worrying a real real lot.
In movies, terrible haywire things always happen on people’s last night places.
I go left down the hall, where it looks like some of the doors might be open a crack. In an alcove, I spot two people in a frenzy of red-hot making out. I slip back to watch. The guy has an incredible back that narrows just so into his jeans and the girl’s sandwiched between his body and the wall. His head’s moving like he can’t kiss her hard enough or fast enough. I tell myself to move on already, but then something catches my eye. The girl’s hands reaching around the guy’s back aren’t girls’ hands at all—no, there’s no way in hell those hands are anything but another guy’s. My chest starts to vibrate. I lean to the left and then I see flashes of both faces, strong-boned male faces, eyes closed like moons, smashed noses, mouths crushing together, their bodies climbing up each other and falling down each other at the same time. My legs start to shake, every part of me starts to shake. (SELF-PORTRAIT: Earthquake) I’ve never seen two guys kiss like this, like the world’s ending, except in my own head and it wasn’t half this good. Not even close. They’re so hungry.
I step back and steady myself against the wall out of sight.
I’m not sad, far far from it, so I don’t know why tears are busting out of my eyes.
Then I hear the squeak of a door opening on the other side of the hall. I wipe my face with the back of my hand and turn in the direction of the sound. Heather’s stepping out of a room—everything in me stills. It’s horrible to see her, like walking out of the best movie ever into some same old afternoon.
“Oh!” she cries, her face beaming. “I was coming to look for you.” I give my head a shake so hair curtains my face as much as possible. She’s walking toward me, getting closer and closer to the three of us. I kick into gear, rushing to intercept her. Her smile grows bigger and more welcoming and I realize she’s misinterpreted my leap across the hall as excitement to see her when all I want is to protect the kissing guys from her, from the whole world.
(PORTRAIT: Adam and Adam in the Garden)
When I reach her, I try to turn my mouth into a smile. It’s hard. I hear a hushed gruff laugh behind me, muffled words. Heather peers over my shoulder.
“Where is everyone?” I ask to get her attention back. I realize I’m still shaking. I bury my free hand deep in my pocket.
“You okay?” she asks, tilting her head. “You seem strange.” Her steady gray eyes are studying me. “More so than usual, I should say.” She smiles warmly and I relax a little. Heather and I have a secret but I have no idea what it is.
I wish I could tell her what just happened to me because even though I wasn’t technically part of that kiss, I feel like it happened to me, unlike the demon kiss downstairs, which technically happened to me but feels like it didn’t. But what would I tell her anyway? When I draw it, I’m going to make my skin see-through and what you’ll see is that all the animals in the zoo of me have broken out of their cages.
“Maybe it’s the beer,” I say.
She giggles, lifts a red plastic cup and taps mine. “Me too.”
Her giggling takes me aback. There’s nothing giggly about Heather usually. She’s the opposite; hanging out with her is like sitting in an empty church. That’s why I like her. She’s quiet and serious and a thousand years old and seems like she can talk to the wind. I always draw her with arms up like she’s about to take flight or with her hands together like she’s praying. She’s not a giggler.
“C’mon,” she says. “Everyone’s in here already.” She points toward the door. “We’ve been waiting for you. Well, I have.” She giggles again, then blushes like a geyser went off inside her. I have a supremely bad feeling.
We walk into some kind of den. I see Brian right away across the room talking to Courtney. All I want is to blink us into the bodies of the guys in the alcove. I try to, just in case. Then I think how many fingers I’d give up for one minute like that with him and decide seven. Or eight even. I could totally still draw with two fingers if one was a thumb.
I look around. It’s the same crew of hornets and surftards that hang out at The Spot, minus the older guys like Fry and Zephyr and Big Foot, who’re probably downstairs. I’m used to these people by now, and them me. There’s also a bunch of kids I don’t recognize that must go to Courtney’s private school. Everyone’s standing around in awkward shuffling bunches like they’re waiting for something. The air is full of breathing. The air’s full of Jude too. She’s leaning on a windowsill talking to like five hundred guys at once, wearing the tight red ruffly dress she made that Mom forbade her from ever wearing out of the house. I’m totally surprised to see her. She’s been giving me a wide angry berth all summer and knew I’d be here. I wonder what she told Mom. I just said I was going to say good-bye to Brian. We’re definitely not allowed to be at a party like this.
I catch her eye as Heather and I cross the room. She throws me a look that says: Nothing, not even a world where it rains light, where snow is purple, where frogs talk, where sunsets last a full year—could make up for the fact that you’re the worst mother-stealing, friend-pillaging twin brother on earth, and resumes her conversation with her harem.
My bad feeling is compounding.
I return my attention to Brian, who’s leaning against a bookcase, still talking to Courtney. About what? I try to hear as we approach them, then realize Heather’s speaking to me.
“It’s totally stupid. We haven’t played this kind of game since fifth grade, but whatever. We’re playing with a sense of irony, right?” Has she been talking this whole time?
“What game?” I ask.
Courtney turns around at the sound of our voices. “Oh, good.” She nudges Heather, who giggles again. Courtney turns to me. “It’s your lucky night, Picasso. You like games?”
“Not really,” I say. “Not at all, actually.”
“You’ll like this one. Promise. It’s a blast from the past. Heather and Jude and I were talking the other day about the parties we used to go to. Simple premise. Put two people of the opposite sex in a closet for seven minutes. See what happens.” Brian won’t meet my eyes. “Don’t worry, Picasso,” she says. “It’s fixed, of course.” Heather’s ears go red at this. They lock arms and then burst out laughing. My stomach goes watery. “Face it, dude,” Courtney says to me. “You could use a little help.”
I sure could.
I sure could because suddenly coils and coils of Jude’s hair are slithering in my direction like an army of serpents. Jude was there, Courtney said. Was this Jude’s idea, then? Because she knows I threw out that note she left for Mom? Because she knows how I feel about Brian?
(PORTRAIT, SELF-PORTRAIT: Twins: Jude with Rattlesnake Hair, Noah with Rattlesnake Arms)
I’m getting a metal taste in my mouth. Brian’s reading the titles on the spines of books on the shelves like he’s going to be tested on it.
“I love you,” I say to him, only it comes out, “Hey.”
“So damn much,” he says back, only it comes out, “Dude.”
He still won’t meet my eyes.
Courtney picks up Brian’s hat, which has been resting on a small table. It’s full of folded-up pieces of paper. “All the guys’ names are already in, including yours,” she says to me. “Girls pick.”
She and Heather walk away. As soon as they’re out of earshot, I say to Brian, “Let’s go.” He doesn’t respond, so I say it again. “Let’s get out of here. Let’s climb out this window.” I’m checking the one beside us and there’s a landing that leads to a supremely climbable tree. We could totally make it. “C’mon,” I say. “Brian.”
“I don’t want to go, okay?” There’s irritation in his voice. “It’s just a stupid game. Whatever. No big deal.”
I study him. Does he want to play? He does. He must.
He wants to be with Courtney because if it’s fixed and Courtney’s doing the fixing, that’s what’s going to happen. That’s why he won’t meet my eyes. The realization drains the blood out of me. But why did he tell me not to worry? Why did he grab my hand? Why everything?
All the empty cages begin to rattle inside me.
I stumble over to an ugly beige chair in the middle of this ugly beige room. I fall onto it, only to discover it’s hard as stone and it breaks my spine in two. I sit there, broken in half, chugging the rest of my beer like it’s orange juice, remembering the English guy downing the gin that day. Then I grab another cup of beer that someone left and drink what’s in that one too. Purgatory, I think. If hell is downstairs and heaven is the hallway, then this must be purgatory—what happens in purgatory again? I’ve seen paintings of it but can’t remember. I feel supremely woozy. Am I drunk?
The lights start flashing on and off. Courtney’s at the switch, Heather by her side. “Ladies and gentlemen, the moment you’ve all been waiting for.”
Clementine reaches in first and chooses a guy named Dexter. Some tall kid I’ve never seen before with a cool haircut and clothes ten times too big for him. Everyone jeers and cheers and generally acts lame as they get up and walk into the closet with we-are-so-beyond-this looks on their faces. Courtney makes a display of setting the egg-timer. All I can think about is how much I hate her, how much I want her to get stampeded by a herd of pissed-off snapping turtles before she can get in that closet with Brian.
I stand with the help of the armrest, then bushwhack through an impossible thicket of Jude’s blond hair to a bathroom, where I splash cold water on my face. Beer sucks. I lift my head. It’s still me in the mirror. It’s still me in me, right? I’m not sure. And I’m certainly not hot, I can see that. I look like a skinny pathetic coward too afraid to jump off his dad’s shoulder into the water. It’s a sink-or-swim world, Noah.
The second I walk back into the room, I’m assaulted by, “You’ve been chosen, dude,” and “Heather picked you,” and “Your turn, Picasso.”
I swallow. Brian’s still studying those spines of books, his back to me as Heather takes my hand and leads me toward the closet, her arm pulled tight as if forcing an unwilling dog on a leash.
What I notice right away about the walk-in closet is that there are tons of dark suits hanging everywhere, looking like rows of men at a funeral.
Heather switches off the light, then says softly, shyly, “Help me find you, okay?” I think about escaping into the hanging suits, joining the men in mourning until the egg-timer goes off, but then Heather bumps into me and laughs. Her hands quickly find my arms. Her touch is so light, like two leaves have fallen on me.
“We don’t have to,” she whispers. Then, “Do you want to?”
I can feel her breath on my face. Her hair smells like sad flowers.
“Okay,” I say, but don’t move a muscle.
Time passes. It feels like lots and lots of it, so much that when we walk out of this closet, it’ll be time for us to go to college or die even. Except, because I’m counting in my head, I know that not even seven seconds of the seven minutes have passed. I’m calculating how many seconds are in seven minutes when I feel her small cool hands leave my arms and land on my cheeks, then feel her lips brush across mine, once, then again, the second time staying there. It’s like being kissed by a feather, no, smoother, a petal. So soft. Too soft. We’re petal people. I think about the earthquake kiss in the alcove and want to cry again. This time because I am sad. And scared. And because my skin has never fit this badly before.
(SELF-PORTRAIT: Boy in a Blender)
I realize my arms are lying limp at my sides. I should do something with them, shouldn’t I? I rest a hand on her waist, which totally feels like the wrong place for it, so I move it to her back, which also feels entirely wrong, but before I can reposition it, her lips open, so I open my mine too—it’s not disgusting. She doesn’t taste like a rancid orange but like mint, like she had a mint right before. I’m wondering what I taste like as her tongue slips into my mouth. It shocks me how wet it is. And warm. And tongue-y. My tongue’s going nowhere. I’m telling it to move and enter her mouth, but it won’t listen to me. I figure it out: There’s 420 seconds in seven minutes. Maybe twenty seconds have passed, which means we still have 400 seconds left of this. Oh fucking fuck.
And then it happens. Brian rises out of the darkness of my mind and takes my hand like he did in the movie theater and pulls me to him. I can smell his sweat, can hear his voice. Noah, he says in that bone-melting way and my hands are in Heather’s hair, and I’m pressing my body against hers hard, drawing her closer to me, pushing my tongue deep inside her mouth . . .
We must not hear the ding of the timer, because all of a sudden the light switches on and the mourning men are all around us again, not to mention Courtney in the doorway tapping an invisible watch on her wrist. “C’mon, lovebirds. Time’s up.” I blink a few hundred times at the invasion of light. At the invasion of the truth. Heather looks dizzy, dreamy. Heather looks one hundred percent like Heather. I’ve done a bad thing. To her, to me. To Brian, even if he doesn’t care, it still feels that way. Maybe the girl downstairs turned me into a demon like her with that kiss.
“Wow,” Heather whispers. “I’ve never . . . No one’s ever . . . Wow. That was incredible.”
She can barely walk. I look down to make sure I don’t have a tent in my pants as she takes my hand and we emerge from the closet like two unsteady cubs from a hibernation den. Everyone starts whistling and saying lame things like, “Bedroom’s down the hall.”
I scan the room for Brian, expecting him to be examining the spines of books still, but he’s not. His face is like I’ve seen it only once before, all bricked up with fury, like he wants to hurl a meteorite at my head and he’s not going to miss.
But?
Heather runs off to join the hornets. The whole room’s been engulfed by Jude’s hair. The whole universe has. I fall into a recliner. Nothing makes sense. It’s just a stupid game, he said. No big deal. But then, he said it was No big deal when his mother’s friend (boyfriend?) came on to him too and that seemed like it was a big deal to him. Maybe No big deal is code for: This is Supernaturally Screwed Up. I’m sorry, I tell him in my mind. It was you, I tell him. I kissed you.
I drop my head in my hands, start involuntarily eavesdropping on a group of guys behind me, who must be having a contest to see how many times they can say how gay this or that is in one conversation, when someone touches my shoulder. It’s Heather.
I nod at her, then try to hide in my hair and mind-control her to go away, like to the Amazon . . . I feel her stiffening beside me, probably not understanding why I’ve sent her six thousand miles away to the jungle after a kiss like that. I hate being like this to her, but I don’t know what else to do. When I peek up through my hair moments later, she’s gone. I hadn’t realized I’d been holding my breath. I’m mid-exhale when I see Brian being escorted into the closet, not by Courtney, but by my sister.
My sister.