Black Iris (18 page)

No one died from eating them. I considered the possibility that Luke North had a brain tumor pressing on his empathy center, stimulating it for the first time in his life.

Then came Friday.

Let’s get something straight. High school’s not like musicals or the fucking CW. There are cliques, yeah, but in reality it’s much less organized. People drift between groups, not quite fitting in fully, gravitating toward individuals and finding bits of their identity scattered in jumbled constellations, the ghostly lines between stars. My brother was emo but his best friend was a jock. Zoeller was a jock who hung out with weirdo loners like me. No one showed much solidarity.

Except when they had a common enemy.

Last period was canceled for assembly. I tried to ditch, but Mr. Radzen caught me in the hall and gave me a furrily meaningful look. His mustache hypnotized me.

“Very important message today,” he said. “Not going to miss it, are we, Del?”

I mumbled something that appeased him.

“That’s my girl.”

I sat with Donnie up in the gym bleachers, as far from everyone else as we could get. His eyes had that baked glaze of mellowness. He smelled like weed.

“Bastard,” I said.

We zoned out through the speeches. Blah blah cheerleading blah blah student government. No one cared about this shit. People only did it to pad out their résumés. It all fell beneath the Shadow—the meaningless mundanity, the paralysis of pointlessness. To my horror, when I tuned out their voices I heard my mother.

Let the sheep bleat. Their own noises soothe them.

I spotted Kelsey on the other side of the gym, next to Zoeller. Maybe it was my imagination but I swear she looked right at me.

I’d kissed the girl I was in love with. I’d slept with her. And she wanted to forget it ever happened.

“And now,” the vice principal said, “a special message from the Rainbow Alliance.”

You could tell what kind of message it was when Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful” started playing. The lights dimmed, a golden cone spotlighting Luke and company. I fingered the Xanax in my pocket.

“Bullying is a very serious problem at Naperville South,” Luke began, devoid of all irony. “This school year alone, disciplinary warnings for bullying have almost doubled.”

Christina said I was beautiful.

“Bullying is especially hard on students who identify as gay, lesbian, bi, or trans. Every year, we hear about teens who take their own lives because they can’t stand the hate anymore. The Rainbow Alliance has pledged that we’re not going to let one of our friends become the next statistic.”

Christina said words couldn’t bring me down.

“That’s why we’ve joined forces with student government to make Naperville South a Hate-Free Zone. Starting now, any speech or behavior that discriminates against a student because of sexual orientation or gender identity will be evaluated by an arbitration team. Severe transgressions may count as an academic violation that will go on your transcript.”

Gasps and murmurs. I sat up.

“To protect those who need support and safe spaces the most, we’re taking it one step further. We’re inviting all LGBT students to join the Rainbow Alliance. When you register, you’ll get assigned to a special guidance counselor who’ll be available for extracurricular counseling. Any incidences of bullying that you report will be escalated through the arbitration process. Alliance partners like me will be deputized with special monitoring status—so when we see bullying happen on campus, we’ll stop it on the spot. Basically, you won’t have to be afraid of being yourself anymore.” Luke beamed righteously at the crowd. “We’re saying no to the culture of fear here at NSHS. No more hiding. No more shame. But in order to make this work, we need your cooperation, too. It’s time for our queer brothers and sisters to step forward and join the Alliance. Don’t let the bullies keep you in the closet. Don’t hide that rose in your bag anymore. Come out and stand proud.”

Titters broke through the crowd. Kids side-eyed me.

“To show your support for this brave new initiative,” Luke
said, ominously Huxleyan, “we’ve got some awesome T-shirts and buttons for sale . . .”

I climbed over legs to get out of the stands. Donnie followed, calling my name. People stared. I saw only Luke. Luke North standing like Jesus Christ in his heavenly ray of yellow gel light, soulful and sincere.

“Are you serious?” I reached the gym floor, wild with adrenaline. “Are you
fucking
serious?”

Heads turned. Mr. Radzen stood up from the guidance table.

I was already halfway to the mic in the center of the court. “Is this some massive joke, or are you all actually this clueless?”

The gym hushed. A thousand pairs of eyes on me. The same thousand that had watched “DYKE GET’S SHOT DOWN.” The same kids who had laughed. Ignored. Isolated. Condoned.

“Does anyone believe a word he just said?” My voice surprised me with its volume. “He’s the guy who made the video. You think he’s going to ‘protect’ people with a registry of gay kids? Is this a George Orwell novel?”

Brian Sabano, Rainbow Alliance president, joined Luke in the spotlight. “We’ll take questions from the audience after—”

“Shut the fuck up,” I said, grabbing the mic. Brian Sabano was the darling of the cheerleading squad. The perfect straightwashed gay boy, clean-cut, urbane, witty. A cyborg, as Mom would say. Straight girls loved him because he was cute and they could flirt without threat. No one flirted with the creepy dyke. “You’ve never been discriminated against in your life, Brian. Just shut up.”

Radzen looked at the VP. The VP looked at Radzen. They seemed confused as to which one should stop me.

“You fucking hypocrites,” I said, turning to the crowd. My tiny voice coming out of the PA sounded surreal. I didn’t see faces. I didn’t see Donnie at my side, urging me to stop. I saw the blank smear of pale skin, the glassy eyes untroubled by
pain. I saw the rest of my life, never relating to people, always outside, apart. Even my supposed allies had sided with the Gender Gestapo. “This doesn’t ‘protect’ anyone. This registry is a hit list. It puts targets on people’s backs. And you idiots made a bully your poster boy.” I laughed but it came out a croak. “You don’t really give a shit when bad stuff happens to people like me. You only care about
looking
tolerant. Buying a cookie, signing a petition. But all of you watched that video, and all of you would do it again. You pretend to care while you laugh behind my back. While you make my life a fucking nightmare. You’re despicable. All of you. Someone should shoot this school up. You deserve it.”

Radzen yanked the mic from my hand.

Time to run.

I crashed through the gym doors as a riot erupted behind me.

The hall was empty and dim, my footsteps slapping like someone beating at a face. I’d almost made it to the exit when hands caught me. I spun, crazed, clawing, and slashed Donnie’s arm before I realized.

“Laney,” he said in that soft, boyish voice.

I burst into tears.

He pulled me to his chest. “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”

It was not going to be okay. My bullies had infiltrated the power structure. They were institutionalizing their terror.

“I love you,” Donnie murmured into my hair. “And I’ve got your back, Rainbow Brite. No matter what.”

I wrenched away from him. My hands made fists and my fists trembled, clutching air, wanting to warp it, twist it inside out. “This is all about me. Luke did this to get to me. Zoeller stopped them but they found another way.”

“What?”

“I’m a fucking fag, okay? I fucked Kelsey.”

Donnie’s eyes widened.

“I fucked her and she doesn’t want anything to do with me. She only did it because we were high. I’m so messed up, Donnie. I was lonely and so was she and now the entire school knows I’m a freak and I just want to know why she—”

“Lane, stop talking.”

“No. I’m sick of pretending. I don’t care what they—”

Donnie turned me around.

In the hall behind us stood Luke and company, Zoeller, and Kelsey. Of course. Because high school actually
is
the CW, and six of your closest enemies will appear spontaneously when you blurt out life-wrecking confessions in a seemingly empty hallway.

This video never got posted to YouTube. Zoeller prevented that. But Nolan managed to capture “I’m a fucking fag” onward, including everyone’s reaction—Luke slapping a hand over his cap as if the hilarity would blow it off, and Kelsey covering her mouth, horrified, or sickened, turning away, and Zoeller watching it all with his vacant sociopath stare.

Then the camera turned back to me, and the last thing you can see is my small fist flying at the lens.

———

Takeout for dinner = emergency family meeting.

Fried chicken. Finger food. Mom didn’t want me handling sharp implements.

Dad nibbled on a drumstick, worriedly watching Mom. Donnie rearranged his potato wedges, worriedly watching me. The Keatings: sweet nervous boys and cold crazy girls.

I didn’t eat. I wanted an empty stomach to take oxy on. Mom, however, tore into a breast and let the grease run down her chin. She was an uptight elitist bitch who considered fast food unworthy of being fed to dogs, but when she did something she did it wholeheartedly, with perverse gusto, as
if to show she was so far beyond irony she’d circled back to authenticity.

Before her illness progressed, she’d been executive chef at a glitzy restaurant downtown. Her mania worked to her advantage, then—she ran the kitchen tirelessly, flogging the lesser mortals who toiled under her. The
Sun-Times
food critic called her “a mad maestra,” which pleased her. Sometimes she wouldn’t come home for days, sleeping in hotels, living out of her car. While she was off cooking four-star dishes for foreign diplomats, we were scraping burned mac-’n’-cheese from a pot at home. She had affairs that Dad accepted in his quiet, resigned way as “the Illness.” As if it excused everything. The Illness made her unable to resist impulses. The Illness was the bitch, not Caitlin.

Mania inevitably cycled to depression, and the depressions lasted longer and longer, and she lost her job. Now she was a lowly part-time sous chef at a “suburban feeding trough,” as she called it. And she’d decided that if she was suffering, we were all going to suffer with her.

“How was school?” she said.

They’d made me sit in Guidance till she picked me up. Two-week suspension. They also barred me from joining any extracurricular clubs, including the Rainbow Alliance. I could no longer register to be “protected” by Luke North from . . . Luke North.

Mom knew, of course. She just wanted to make me say it.

“May I be excused?” I said.

“You may not.” She ripped a strip of meat with her teeth. Her face had the pallor and tautness of skin pressed by a thumb, the blood squeezed to the margins. As if there was something too intense inside her, something that pushed everything in her to the edge.

Dad gave me a sympathetic, ineffectual look.

I smacked a palm on the table. “Let’s get it over with, then.”

Emergency family meeting = emergency Laney meeting.

“Delaney disrupted a school assembly,” Mom told Dad.

“What happened, sweetheart?”

“Your daughter has taken a stance against sexual fascism,” she said.

I gritted my teeth. “That’s not what happened.”

“That factory farm”—Mom always referred to school in terms of mass production—“has instituted some sort of sex offender registry for students who don’t fit the heteronormative template.”

“What?” Dad said.

“They want kids who aren’t straight to register with the Rainbow Alliance,” Donnie said. “For their own ‘protection.’ ”

“It’s supposed to stop bullying,” I said, “by painting a huge target on someone’s back.”

Dad wore a small frown that made my insides curl. “Honey, what does that have to do with you?”

Everyone looked at me. I looked down at my plate.

“It’s just wrong,” Donnie piped up. “No one should have to. And the guys behind it are the biggest jerks at school. They’re taking over.”

“Not if I can help it.” Mom dabbed languidly at her mouth with the linen. “I haven’t been to a PTA meeting in years. What fun it’ll be to see the breeding stock who produced these
enfants terribles
.”

A strange flare of warmth lit my chest. She was actually taking my side.

Dad’s gaze never left my face. Troubling things were happening in it, things that looked like realizations. Not his little girl anymore, etc.

“Laney,” he said in the voice that used to soothe me to sleep, “sweetheart, are you . . .”

I couldn’t look at him.

“It’s okay, Lane,” Donnie said encouragingly.

I looked at my brother but he went blurry, a bunch of bokeh circles overlapping. So much for coldness. A tear rolled over my lip, salting my mouth.

“For Christ’s sake,” Mom said. “Our daughter is a lesbian.”

“No I’m not,” I blurted.

“Oh, honestly. As if I haven’t known for years. Were you under the illusion this would come as a shock?”

“You don’t know anything about me.”

Her eyes burned. “I know everything about you. I made you.”

I stood.

“Sit down,” Mom said.

“Go to hell.”

“Sit down or I’ll call Dr. Patel.”

She never raised her voice. I sat, cowed. Hateful.

“So.” She ran a fingertip along the rim of her glass. “We have a daughter who denies her sexual identity crisis, a clueless father who is stunned, blindsided, et cetera, and a son who conspired to hide his sister’s drug addiction.”

Donnie’s eyes bugged. Dad looked at my brother, then me, as if he’d never seen us before.

“What is going on, kids?”

“Mom,” Donnie said, pleading, “it’s not like that, I swear. They were my pills and they sucked. We’ll never do it again. I’m sorry.”

My baby brother, taking the blame.

Mom couldn’t face him without softening, so she focused on me. “When you move out, you can self-medicate all you want. You can self-medicate yourself straight into oblivion if that’s what you truly desire. Trust me, I understand the urge. But as long as you live under my roof, you will
not
abuse yourself this way. Do I make myself clear? This nonsense ends now.”