“WAKE UP, SUNSHINE. You’re supposed to be my party tonight.”
I’m bouncing. Why am I bouncing? My eyes flutter open to see Joe’s face and his multitone, spiky hair. “For someone so paranoid about cacti overtaking the world, I wonder why you make your hair look like one.”
Joe is hovering inches above me, staring down with his gap-toothed grin. Except for the twinkle lights, the room is dim with blue dusk. I clamp my hands on Joe’s cheeks and slowly pull his face to mine, reveling in the terrified look in his eyes right before I bite his bottom lip hard. Laughing, I roll out from under him.
“Ow! Rawr,” he says, with his fingers on his lips.
“I made you nervous. Don’t lie,” I say, still giggling.
Joe sits pretzel-style on my bed. “Noooo.” His face admits defeat. “Okay, yes. You have just enough man energy about you to tempt me.”
“That’s because I’m in touch with my masculine side.” I cross my legs opposite him, knee to knee, like we used to do when we were in our “summoning the spirits” phase of life. “Was your mom mad at you for ditching her dinner party?”
“Marginally. It’s a five Hershey’s Kisses infraction.”
“You should own stock. I wish I could buy my parents off with chocolate. Do they sell Kisses the size of a Buick?”
“What’d you do now?”
I wave him off. “Why don’t you want to at least meet the guy?”
“Because I’m pretty certain that my mother’s taste in men is not my taste in men. Exhibit A: my dad.”
“Most gay kids are worried their parents won’t even accept them being gay, and she’s trying to hook you up? That’s pretty cool. It could be way worse.”
He throws up his hands. “Yeah, well there are different kinds of narrow-mindedness. She’s been psycho lately. She even signed me up for a Jewish LGBT mixer. My mom wants me to go because, as she puts it, ‘I don’t care if you date boys. But you’d better date a nice Jewish boy.’”
My phone buzzes next to the bed. A picture of Dom pops up. I ignore it. I also try to ignore Joe’s raised eyebrow. “Blowing off his call? Might I hope that you and Testosterone Tom—”
“Dom.”
“Whatever. Are you fighting?” he asks with too hopeful a tone.
“Don’t be a Dom-o-phobe. He just pissed me off earlier.”
Joe’s not one for evasions or half stories. His blue eyes fix me with that look that means I have to tell him the story of my big crap-ass day. Except for the part about wigging out in the motor home. How can I explain that someone else’s haunted eyes were looking into mine from the mirror? Bumps erupt on my arms, because just thinking of the eyes makes me feel like they’re watching me now.
After I tell Joe about my dad, the business failing, my risky jump, and the subsequent fight, Joe picks at his nails with a grave expression.
“What?”
“I don’t get the things you do sometimes. When we were younger, you were my hero. It was you who showed me how to be unapologetically me. Full disclosure—I totally thought you were nuts, but your bravery made me want to be more brave. You’re the reason I had the guts to come out. I wanted to live as out loud as you did.”
“Thanks?” My jaw clenches.
“You used to thrill me, Ryan. Now . . . now you scare me.”
I swallow hard. “Stop being overdramatic. So I did something risky. Everyone takes risks now and then, especially when they want something.”
“Your idea of risk is very different from most people’s. Why do you have to up the ante all the time? I’d hate for you to find out the hard way that there’s a limit.”
Do I have an answer to this? I’m not sure I’ve ever thought about it. “I need extra stimulus, Joe—”
“There’s a joke in there.”
I ignore that. “I need it or I feel numb. Like there’s an on/off switch in me, and adrenaline flips that switch. It’s how I was made. How can that be wrong? You say I scare you, and the truth is, I like your fear. It tells me I’m different from the rest. Special.” That last word falls as a whisper.
Joe twirls his finger in the air around his ear. “Maybe crazy is another word for special.”
“Crazy is something flatliners call people like me,” I say. “It makes them feel better about being boring.”
“I’ll ignore the fact that you just insinuated that I’m a boring flatliner. So, it’s not about getting attention?”
Ouch. The way he asks this, I know he thinks it is. I crawl into his chest. Through his T-shirt, his nipple ring pushes against my cheek as his arms wrap around me. It’s easier to talk real when I don’t have to look in his eyes. “Sometimes, with my dad especially, I feel invisible. I think the worst thing in life is to be invisible,” I admit.
He doesn’t give an answer just to give one. And he never judges. I love that about him. It’s how he gets me to confess things to him I’d hardly admit to myself.
I sigh. “When you knock and no one seems to hear, you knock louder.”
Joe starts to touch my hair and then stops himself like a good and proper best friend. My hair does not like being touched. “Honey, you could never be invisible. Not you. You’re trumpets and neon and hot sauce.”
“You say the sweetest things,” I tell him, rolling up to primp in the mirror, trying to smooth down my wild mane of ringlets. Dizziness overtakes me as if I’ve stood too quickly. I grasp the edge of my dresser, bow my head, and take a deep breath until it passes. Once it does, I inhale at my image in the mirror. A ghostly hand appears to be touching my hair. I look down at my own hands, still clenched on the wood in front of me.
When I look up again, the hazy outline of a face presses forward at me like ice rising from the bottom of a glass. Spectral eyes bore into mine, staring with the curious but grim expression of someone watching a nature show, knowing they’re going to see the death of the brave animal whose panicked run for its life is about to end.