“Uh . . . yeah?”
I pointed at the X on his hand. “If you have a fake ID, why not make yourself twenty-one?”
Calvin shrugged. “Do I look twenty-one to you?”
“You barely look sixteen,” I said. “Are you really here for the show?”
“What?” he shouted.
The music made conversation practically impossible, and I was torn between watching Lua play the best show of her life and wanting to know why Calvin had invaded my club. “In the Future We All Eat Bugs” ended, and I recognized the opening notes to Lua’s cover of “Ziggy Stardust.” I made up my mind and tugged Calvin’s sleeve. “Let’s go outside.”
“Why?”
“Glitter cannon,” I said. “Lua always brings out the glitter cannon for ‘Ziggy Stardust.’?”
Calvin nodded. We slid and shoved our way to the back of the club, outside through a door that opened onto a walled patio surrounded by palm trees. The graffiti decorating the walls changed constantly. Last time, a spray-painted anthropomorphic banana had adorned the bricks. Tonight the cast of The Muppet Show—gruesome and zombified—loomed menacingly over us.
Though we hadn’t completely escaped the music, I could at least hear myself think again. Most everyone was inside, but a few people had migrated to the patio, probably to escape the heat of over two hundred bodies packed together. They relaxed on benches, smoking and chatting. An enthusiastic and oblivious couple pawed at each other shamelessly in a corner.
I perched on the edge of the large circular planter that dominated the patio, and in which grew no actual plants.
“Do they really fire a glitter cannon?” Calvin asked. He sat beside me and folded his hands in his lap.
“They do,” I said. “And it’s awesome until you spend the next month picking glitter off your skin and out of your hair.”
“Oh.”
“Why are you really here?” I asked.
“Why do you care?”
Under different circumstances I wouldn’t have given Calvin’s presence much thought. But we’d hardly spoken during the last three-and-a-half years of high school, and now not only had Ms. Fuentes thrown us together to work on a project, but Trent had specifically warned me about him, and then he’d shown up at my club, none of which I believed were coincidences.
“It’s just . . . it’s weird.”
Calvin fidgeted with his hands. “I guess I thought we should discuss our physics project.”
“At a gay club? How’d you even know I’d be here?”
“I didn’t.” Calvin spoke tentatively, like I was a teacher calling on him to answer a question he was unprepared for. “Lua posted the show’s details on SnowFlake, and she’s your friend, so . . .”
“So you’re a stalker?”
Calvin inhaled deeply through his nose and exhaled through his mouth. A vast-ocean sigh I couldn’t tell whether he was swimming or drowning in. “I know you don’t like me.”
“I don’t know you well enough to not like you.”
“Then we should get to know each other.”
The door banged open, releasing a pent-up cheer. The audience’s lusty voices surged into the starry night.
There goes the glitter cannon.
Before Calvin’s transformation from most-likely-to-succeed-at-everything to most-likely-to-spend-the-weekends-writing-bad-poetry, I’d admired him. According to my journals—the ones written by the me who’d never known Tommy—I’d even crushed on Calvin in tenth grade. But I didn’t know him, and getting to know him would distract me from finding Tommy.
“We don’t have to become best friends to work on the roller coaster,” I said.
“Oh,” he said, and maybe I was reading something that didn’t exist, but his eyes drooped and I swear he looked disappointed.
“I’m not trying to be mean, but do you even care about the project? You don’t seem to care about anything lately.”
“I care,” Calvin said. “It’s just . . . stuff.”
“Ah, yes. Stuff does suck.” My attempt at a joke fell flat, and I didn’t want to miss the end of Lua’s show, so I said, “Look, we can work on our project, and I can’t stop you from stalking me, but you don’t need to pretend to want to be my friend.”
“I’m not pretending,” Calvin said. “Whatever. You’re right. And it’s not like the project matters anyway.”
“Of course it matters.”
“Not if you’re going to waste your life waiting around Cloud Lake for Tommy.” Calvin stared at me like I alone existed. Like the club and Cloud Lake and the whole of the universe had melted away, leaving us floating together in an empty void.
It took me a moment to process Calvin’s words. When my brain caught up, I said, “Wait, what? Do you remember Tommy?”
Calvin stood. I was used to being taller than other kids my age except Tommy, but right then I’d never felt smaller. “I shouldn’t have come.” He took off inside.
I leaped up and caught the door before it slammed shut. Calvin Frye couldn’t just come to my club under the pretense of watching Lua’s show, drop Tommy’s name, and run away. If he remembered Tommy, I needed to know, and I’d yank out his fingernails for the information if necessary.
Onstage, Lua launched into her customary closing song, “Caligula’s Horse Was a Senator, Of Course.” The heat in the club choked me, and the stage lights cast dancing shadows on the floor and walls, making it difficult to locate Calvin.
I climbed on top of a chair and scanned the crowd until I spotted him near the front door. I shoved and pushed my way toward him, ignoring the curses and grabby hands, and ran into the night. I stood on the sidewalk, looking east and then west, but Calvin had vanished.
I turned to the bouncer, a tall drag queen who used the stage name Bella Donna but whose real name was Adonis, and said, “Did you see a guy leave? Black hoodie, blond hair?”
Bella Donna smiled, her ruby-painted lips revealing glossy white teeth. She laid her hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “Oh, baby. Chasing boys is amateur hour. If he’s worth it, he’ll find you.”
“It’s not . . . he stole something from me.”
Bella shook her head, looking at me like I was some pathetic, horny kid. “Sorry, baby. I didn’t see him.”
I missed Tommy so badly that nothing else mattered. I tried to hold on to hope, I told myself I’d find him or he’d return, but my life was crumbling—Warren had joined the army, my parents had fallen out of love, and the future was rushing toward me with ruthless inevitability. I could’ve handled those things with Tommy to share the burden. Without him, I collapsed under their weight. I crouched on the sidewalk in front of a/s/l and cried. I shook and sobbed, and I couldn’t stop.
“Grow up, dude,” said a faceless passerby.
“You want me to mess up that pretty face of yours, boy?” Bella said, her voice fierce and protective.
“Faggots,” the other voice said, but it sounded farther away.
Bella knelt beside me and wrapped her arm around my shoulders. I got snot on her sequined dress. “It’s all right, baby. No boy’s worth crying over. Trust me.”