SHOP TILL YOU DROP

The first photo Tommy posts as @KenRawlins blows up. He watches as the hundreds of Likers turn to thousands.

Tommy shows Allan the number as they lounge by the pool. Allan is prone to sunburn, and his nose is completely white with sunscreen. He’s so pale compared to Tommy, who looks like the sun did a lot more than just kiss him.

A new comment pops up on his post every second. Mostly, everyone’s voicing approval over his remodel.

“Someone called me the Ken hotter than Ken Hilton!”

Tommy stops scrolling when the comments turn trolling.

“They’re not living for my outfit, though,” he says. “#basic.”

“Hey, isn’t that one of my shirts?” Allan asks.

Tommy looks down at the graphic tee he’s wearing. It says, “You may not like me, but Jesus thinks I’m to die for.”

“Exactly.” He laughs.

As a Ken, Tommy will be expected to sit front row.

“What am I going to do, Allan? I don’t have the money for a new wardrobe!” He takes another selfie and looks down at it disdainfully. “Screw it, I’ll just steal. Why not? It’s a win-win. If I don’t get caught, I’ll have new clothes. If I do get caught, I’ll have a criminal record. Either way, I’m sure to officially be made a Ken.”

“Oh, come on! I’ll lend you my credit card.”

“Are you offering to be my sugar daddy?”

Allan chokes. “You really are a Ken now.”

Once Tommy gets the idea in his head, he’s determined. It’s the first time he’s seriously contemplated stealing. Tommy Rawlins could never steal—but maybe Ken Rawlins can. It’s the only way to find out if the transformation is complete.

Tommy is dying to know if he’s dead inside.

Allan begrudgingly takes Tommy along with him to Willows Mall for his next shift at Taco Accessory. Tommy goes directly to the designer department store, which features heavily on the Kens’ Instas. The sales associate doesn’t look up from his phone as Tommy enters.

Tommy swallowed a handful of pain medication before leaving the pool house, so he’s feeling chill. He pretends he really is a Ken and shops like it’s his divine right. Rule number one: never look at price tags. Tommy just grabs whatever catches his eye. He moves fast, making his way around the store. He picks up a Hermès belt like a magic wand and simply summons.

He’s about to be especially bold and ask the retail queen, who’s currently on his phone, for a dressing room, but decides it’s safer to sneak off unseen.

There are pliers in his backpack. Tommy came prepared, grabbing them from Allan’s science supplies before they left the pool house. He quickly snaps off all the electronic tags on the clothes, which he then shoves in his bag with shaking hands. So the transformation isn’t complete. A Ken’s hands would never shake from nerves! Withdrawal maybe, but not nerves.

Tommy pokes his head out of the dressing room. The sales associate is busy FaceTiming, so Tommy casually walks out of the dressing room, coming to an abrupt stop when he sees them.

Alexander McQueen black leather boots with three buckles. The same ones Ken Hilton put on his wish list for one of his many admirers to buy. (Ken Hilton shops, but he never buys anything—he just takes photos of what he wants and posts them as demands.) Tommy can’t believe his luck. The boots are in his size! Just imagine how jealous Ken Hilton will be.

His bag is stuffed, so Tommy slips off his old sneakers and puts them in the shoebox, unabashedly slipping the new boots on his feet.

Chin up! Shoulders back! Heels on! Don’t look back!

Tommy walks straight out of the store.

He isn’t expecting it when the alarm goes off. The boots! There must’ve been a security tag tucked inside.

“Excuse me, sir.” A security guard approaches him. “Do you mind if I have a look in your bag?”

Tommy is terrified. All those sedatives he took are no match for the adrenaline shooting through his body. He fearfully meets the security guard’s eyes, and realizes something’s different. Tommy has never been looked at this way before. It’s the look of a million fingers simultaneously swiping right on a dating app. So this is what it feels like to be devoured.

“Is there a problem?” Tommy asks, using a breathy voice he tried out in front of the mirror in Allan’s pool house. He may just have to get out of this Ken style: on his knees. He’s about to lure the security guard into the office, but then remembers a past scandal at Willows High when Ken Hilton leaked his underage sex tape on SoFamous. The post got so much attention that the Willows Police Department came to school to talk to Ken Hilton about the footage, which by then had been wiped off the net. No one had actually seen it. But everyone had commented on it.

Ken Hilton live-tweeted through his WPD interrogation. He even took a selfie with one of the police officers—Officer Simpson, as he later became known—posting it with the caption “pig play.”

Everyone was shocked that Ken Hilton would even joke about having sex with someone who makes less than six figures a year. The comments on SoFamous were full of calls for his abdication. He explained himself in a blog post, saying that while it was okay to exploit the uniformed peasants, no self-respecting queen would ever actually sleep with one.

Tommy knows that he’ll never be a Ken if he debases himself for a security guard. Only debase yourself for millionaires. That’s, like, the law of the universe. Tommy thinks fast. WWKD?

It’s like Ken Hilton is whispering in Tommy’s ear: Taser the bih.

Tommy sees the Taser in the security guard’s belt loop. He’s thinking fast. He’ll lead him to the office…get him on his knees…make him think he’s going to…then he’ll…and run out of the store, never looking back!

Kens only look back at the end of the year, when Facebook shows them their year in review.

Just then, Tommy hears a loud, shrill squeal.

The sales associate finally looks up from his phone, but he doesn’t lower it. “Oh. My. Baphomet.” He rushes up to Tommy and takes his photo. “You’re the New Edition, aren’t you?”

He excitedly poses next to Tommy for a selfie, then points at the security guard. “Is he bothering you?”

“Umm…” Tommy hesitates.

“You even talk like a Ken!” The sales associate wraps his arm around Tommy’s shoulders and leads him out of the store. The alarm goes off but he ignores it, and the security guard is too busy staring at Tommy’s ass to do anything. “Tell Ken Hilton I, like, worship Sandy Hooker,” the sales associate says, waving enthusiastically as Tommy walks off. “And come back any time,” he calls after him. “Kens get a 66.6 percent discount on everything!”

There’s a line-up at Taco Accessory when Tommy walks into the food court, so he decides to use the bathroom to try on some of his clothes.

When he strips off Allan’s graphic tee, Tommy brings it up to his nose and smells it. Maybe not the most stylish wardrobe, but Tommy liked wearing Allan’s clothes. They smell like Allan—comforting. Like fast-food grease and lab chemicals.

Tommy puts on a pink shirt and skinny jeans, stomping around the handicap bathroom in his McQueen boots.

When Tommy looks in the mirror, there’s something different about his reflection. Well, everything’s different. But something else. He doesn’t know if it’s from the severity of his blond hair, or the sharp point of his reconstructed nose, or the fact that he’s now a criminal—but there is a corrupted twist to Tommy’s face. His eyebrows are arched, and not just from the Botox, and his lips are permanently pursed with a glamorous superiority. Like he’s just rubbed cocaine along the inside of his gums and is about to sell everyone’s secrets to Radar Online.

Tommy struts straight out of the bathroom. Allan spots him from across the food court. He’s in the middle of squirting sour cream onto a customer’s burrito. He squeezes so hard when he sees Tommy, walking as if in slow motion toward him, that the cap of the bottle pops off and sour cream explodes everywhere. He has to roll an entirely new burrito. He’s not the only one who’s distracted. Tommy loses count of how many people look at him as he walks past. The Kens only count zeros anyway.

“So?” Tommy asks Allan once the Taco Accessory counter is clear. He does a little spin. “What do you think?”

“Well,” Allan says. “You’ve sure mastered the look.”

“You like?”

Allan stares at Tommy, trying to decide how to answer.

“Just do me a favor,” he says. “Don’t wear the Kens’ contacts. Your eyes…they’re the last part of you. I don’t want to lose that.”

Tommy’s phone vibrates in the pocket of his bag. He pulls it out and reads a text message.

“Kiki at my place” is all it says.