“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-maché 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-machéd 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.