This is Drama King Gavin: life of the party, the guy who takes nothing and no one seriously. Especially himself. Band Gavin is more like the real Gavin I’ll be getting to know: broody, moods shifting like tectonic plates. Vulnerable.
Despite the smile on your face and the magnetism that crackles around you whenever you’re onstage, I can feel the apprehension in the room. Everyone leans forward in their seats. I can almost see the neon sign blinking above your head: SUICIDE SUICIDE SUICIDE.
You sing “One Song Glory” from Rent and I wonder if this is the song you’d originally planned to sing, or your way of telling us, I’m okay now. It’s definitely not the kind of jazzy song everyone else is doing and not your band’s brand of angst rock. It’s … beautiful. Delicate and raw, laced with gritty elegance. I want to make out with you so bad right now.
One song, he had the world at his feet,
Glory, in the eyes of a young girl, a young girl …
I’m that young girl.
I just don’t know it yet.
FIVE
All my guy friends at school are horny. Their favorite thing to do is figure out what each of us girls’ porn names would be. I guess a lot of people in porn use their middle name as their first name and the street they live on as their last name. This would make me Marie Laye.
Unfortunate (or perfect), I know.
You, Kyle, Peter, and Ryan think it’s the most hilarious thing in the world that I live on Laye Avenue. It’s a pretty perfect name for a porn star. It cracks you up and seeing you laugh makes me happy, so I don’t care that the four of you are plotting my side career in adult films. I guess if directing doesn’t work out, I’ll have something to fall back on.
Gavin Davis.
I can’t get you out of my head. The air around you is changed, weighted somehow, by what happened. You look older, like you’ve really been through something. You don’t even try to hide your scars. You almost wear them like a badge of honor. Battle scars. I like that. You seem wise somehow. Like you found the answer to a question you’ve been asking for a long time. I want to know the answer.
The words I wrote you two weeks ago make my fingers burn. I hold them to my lips now and suddenly think, I wonder what it would be like to kiss him. Summer has moved from fear and sadness to seriously pissed off at you—she doesn’t hang around with us anymore. Lys, who plans to be a psychologist someday like her parents, says that Summer is moving through the stages of grief.
Summer says you’re controlling, that you didn’t like her having guy friends. I mean, I guess that’s not cool but she is pretty flirty with other guys. Even I’ve noticed that. He wanted to be with me all the time, she says. He wanted to be the most important thing. Sorry, but I don’t see what’s so bad about that. I mean, if you were my boyfriend, I can’t imagine not wanting to hang out with you every second of every day. If that’s crazy, sign me up. Attach me to your hip.
The bell at the end of my last class rings, jolting me out of my thoughts, bringing me back to Now, which is not a happy place. I’d like to pass Go and collect my two hundred dollars, but college feels like a long way off. So the bell rings and my heart sinks. I hate this part of the day, when I know I have to go home.
There’s a collective happy sigh as Mr. Denson says, “Do your homework or you’ll end up homeless. Say it with me: Trigonometry is good.”
We all groan out, “Trigonometry is good.”
I realize I haven’t heard a thing Mr. Denson has been saying for the past hour. This happens to me all the time. I get lost in my thoughts, daydream whole classes away.
Get your head out of the clouds, Mom says.
My house is only a few blocks from campus, so I’m home pretty quick. Pro: I don’t have a long-ass walk. Con: I get home before I want to, which is never. You know that bummed-out feeling you get on Sundays—the Sunday blues? That’s how coming home is. That’s how I feel every second I’m in my family’s house.
I’m not really sure why my mom had me. By that I mean that I wasn’t a mistake baby, like an oh-shit-I-got-knocked-up baby. My mom wanted me. Which is why it’s so weird that she doesn’t seem to want me now. I feel like I’ve somehow intruded on her, like she and The Giant have a big No Trespassing sign and an electric fence around them and Sam. I am constantly bumping into the goddamn fence.
They don’t want me here. In some of our worse arguments, when I threaten to go live with my drug addict of a dad, my mom says, Fine, see how you like it there. And I don’t know what she means by that. Like, Fine, I don’t care? Or does she mean the life she gives me is so much better? And if she does mean that, isn’t it, like, not really impressive that she’s giving me a better life than a drug addict? The bar is set pretty low, is what I’m saying.
To my mom and The Giant, I’m a nuisance first, a servant second, and a person a distant third. My life at home is an endless list of chores. To name a few: scrubbing between the tiles in the shower, organizing the recycling (crushing every individual can first), watering the lawn, dusting, vacuuming, folding laundry, prepping dinner, washing the windows (God forbid I leave a streak), making beds that aren’t mine, doing dishes, and babysitting. My mother, she can’t stand dirt. Everything has to be spotless, in its right place, and it is my job to do that regardless of my pile of homework or the friends who want to see a movie, hang out. The Giant gets in on this action, too. For example, it’s my job to wash his car every week and I’m often stuck doing his laundry.
My friends and I secretly dubbed him The Giant because he has a very fee fi fo fum personality. He drinks vodka tonics and has a voice that throws goose bumps over your arms. His word is law. Our house is full of yelling and tears, walls that hide the truth from our neighbors. The Giant can be very charming, you see. When he’s outside our house, he’s an ogre in disguise, morphing into Friendly Neighbor or Dedicated Parent. He’s an accountant with a business that costs more than it makes, but his true calling, I think, is acting: he’s so very talented at pretending to be a good person.
We live in a one-story with three bedrooms. I used to share my room with my older sister, Beth, which is why I have a bunk bed. I claimed the bottom one because it feels like a cocoon, like I can hide there when things get too hard.