Double Feature: Attack of the Soul-Sucking Brain Zombies/Bride of the Soul-Sucking Brain Zombies (The Russel Middlebrook Series Book 3) (4 page)

"But?"

"But I can't stay with someone out of guilt or obligation. I'd just end up resenting him in the long run, and that's not doing anyone any favors. And if I'm making excuses to get together with Kevin, maybe that's because I
want
to get together with Kevin."

Gunnar fell silent. Sometimes—very rarely, but sometimes—he knew when to stop talking.

"Maybe you'll see things more clearly when Otto visits next week," Gunnar said at last.

"This is true," I said.

"And Kevin might not come out at all. He said he would, but who knows if he will? If he doesn't, you don't have a problem. You don't have to choose."

"I know," I said. I'd already thought about this. In fact, I put the odds of Kevin actually coming out at less than fifty-fifty.

"But if he does?" Gunnar said. "What are you going to do? Who are you going to pick?"

"Gunnar," I said, "if this were a book, I just might skip ahead to the end. Because right now, I have absolutely no idea."

*   *   *

That afternoon after school, I tried doing the sneak-in-the-back-door thing again, but my parents were waiting for me in the living room (again). My dad got home from work at sixty-forty every night. I had never known him to come home early, not even when our washing machine overflowed. So I knew this was a very big deal.

Great, I thought. This was
just
what I needed.

"What," I said. Notice there is no question mark.

"Russel," my dad said. "We need to talk."

They needed to talk? Well, I sure hoped they were going to start by apologizing for calling me disgusting! Even so, I wasn't going to sit down on the love seat across from them. For one thing, I felt no love whatsoever. So if they wanted to talk, I would do it standing up.

"We want to understand," my dad said. "This is hard for us. It's a shock."

I guess this made sense. I'd had my whole life to get used to the idea. They'd barely had twenty-four hours.

I stared at my parents, trying to figure out what to say. I couldn't help but notice that there was dirt under my mom's fingernails. She'd probably been out back fiddling with her bonsai trees—her way to work out stress.

"This is just who I am," I said at last. "I know it's upsetting to you. But most of what you hear about gay people, the stereotypes you see on television, that isn't true. Most of us are just normal people."

"Homosexuality is a sin," my mom said.

Oh, so now I was a sinner too? This was their idea of "talking," of trying to understand? By calling me a sinner?

"Russel," my dad said, "we know that adolescence is a very confusing time."

Yes, I thought to myself. And my dad had gone through a "gay" phase. We'd covered this yesterday.

"I'm not confused," I said. "I'm really not. I know this is new for you, but it's not for me. I've thought about it a lot. I know what I feel. I've known for years." I'd said all this to them once before, but maybe they needed to hear it twice.

"We still think you should talk to someone," my dad said.

"What?" I said. "Why?"

"Because homosexuality is a
sin
!" my mom shouted.

"To help you sort out your feelings," my dad quickly interjected. "To help you make sense of it."

Apparently when my parents said "talk," they meant they wanted to talk
to
me, but not listen to a single word I said in response. Did they really think that would work? If so, well, in a nutshell, they were nuts.

"I told you before," I said. "My feelings don't need sorting out." Well, okay, maybe they did, but about Kevin and Otto, and how to deal with my parents not listening to me. But not about being gay.

"Just talk to him," my dad said. "Is that too much to ask?"

"Who?" I said.

"Father Franklin."

"Our priest?" My family was Catholic. We went to mass every Sunday. But to tell the truth, the whole "religion" thing had never really worked for me. I considered myself spiritual, and hopefully somewhat moral. But being moral because someone gives you a list of rules to follow (and warns you you'll be punished if you don't), well, that always seemed to me to kind of miss the point. And how can anyone honestly believe that their religion is the "right" one when 99 percent of people just adopt the religion of their parents? But I knew the Catholic thing was important to my parents, so I had always played along.

Still, I wondered where this talk of sinning and religion was coming from all of a sudden. My parents hadn't mentioned any of this when they'd first found out about me. Then they'd just been worried about what people would think. It's like they were upset because of the way it made them feel, but now they were retroactively applying religion to it, to justify their preexisting feelings.

I'm not saying my parents were hypocrites. I'm just putting it out there, okay?

"Russel, you
can't
be gay!" my mom said, erupting again with a regularity that was suddenly not unlike Old Faithful. "What would our friends say?"

I give up: it's true, my parents
were
hypocrites.

"He'll
help
you," my dad interjected. "Father Franklin? He's good at this kind of thing."

"I don't need help," I repeated. "You guys sound like you're the ones who need the help. Why don't you talk to Father Franklin?"

"We can all talk to him together if you'd like."

That was all I needed. Three against one!

"No, that's okay," I said.

"So you'll talk to him?" my dad asked me.

At that point, it seemed like there was only one thing I could say to get my parents to shut up. Besides, they were my parents. What could I do?

"Yeah," I said. "I'll talk to the damn priest."

That Saturday, we had our first day of extra work on
Attack of the Soul-Sucking Brain Zombies
. We had a wardrobe-and-makeup call at eight in the morning, so Gunnar and Em picked me up at seven-thirty. Min wasn't with us—she had her own car and lived on the opposite side of town anyway.

I felt like crap on a cracker. I am so not a morning person.

As we drove to the shoot, Gunnar enlightened us on another aspect of moviemaking.

"That board they knock together before every scene?" he said. "That's called a clapper board. They use it to keep track of each take in postproduction. They record the sound and the film image on two different machines, you know? So they need some way to make sure that the image matches up with the right sound track."

"I thought they rerecorded all the dialogue anyway," Em said.

"Not always," he said. "Sometimes they try to keep the on-set dialogue, because it looks and sounds more natural."

We drove into the school parking lot, and I spotted Min and Kevin over by his car. It looked like they were talking. I wondered what they were talking
about
.

We pulled up next to them, and I climbed out of the car.

"Hey," I said.

"Morning!" Kevin said.

Min just rolled her eyes. I wasn't sure what that was about. Had they been talking about me?

We walked toward the school as a group.

"Why do we need makeup anyway?" Kevin said, a little too loudly. "They're not turning us into zombies yet. Aren't we just normal teenagers today?"

"It's so our faces don't shine in the movie lights," Gunnar said. "It won't be full makeup."

"Well, what about wardrobe?" Kevin said. "Don't we already dress like normal teenagers? We
are
normal teenagers."

Even Gunnar didn't have an answer for that one.

Soon I found myself walking side by side with Kevin. "Isn't it funny?" he said, talking too loudly again. "We get up this early every morning. But today it seems early. Is it just because it's Saturday?"

"Probably," I said. But to myself, I was wondering why I hadn't ever noticed before how Kevin's voice got louder when he got nervous. What exactly was he nervous about?

Just inside the school, there were a couple of production assistants waiting for us at a table. They took our parental release forms (I had told my dad it was "a school project," which it sort of was). Then they gave us each a plastic number, and said they'd call when it was our turn to be made pretty. I was number two.

Finally, a production assistant led us to the school cafeteria, which she referred to as the "hospitality suite." There was only one other person waiting inside, a girl.

Min immediately dropped her plastic number.

I bent down to pick it up for her. "Oops," I said, giving it back. "You dropped this."

She didn't answer.

The producers had set out some food—doughnuts, bagels, fruit, and juice—on one of the cafeteria tables. Min headed over to check it out. Maybe it was early morning hunger that was distracting her.

Meanwhile, Gunnar was still talking. "I bet they story-boarded this whole movie," he said. "That's when they illustrate the film, like in a giant comic book. They show all the angles, and how the camera is going to move. It's especially important on a film like this one, one with lots of action."

"I made a comic book once," Kevin said. "In the sixth grade. Problem was, my teacher wanted it to be about Jamestown, and I wanted it to be about Batman
.
"

"Sometimes they storyboard the whole movie," Gunnar was saying. "And sometimes they only do it for the action scenes. It depends on the director."

"I did the whole story of Jamestown," Kevin said. "But if you look in the background in some of the panels, you can see Batman in the distance."

My head throbbed. It was only eight fifteen in the morning, but between Kevin's nervous prattle and Gunnar's ongoing film seminar, I was almost ready to call it a day.

*   *   *

It was true what they say about making movies: it's mostly just a lot of sitting around. But for a newbie like me, just watching them arrange the lights and position the cameras was interesting.

For Gunnar, meanwhile, it was like a spaceship had descended from the sky in the shape of a gigantic electric birthday cake, and aliens had emerged in the form of naked women with enormous breasts.

They had made us extras up as members of various high school cliques (which is why we couldn't just wear our own clothes). They'd dressed Gunnar and me as computer nerds, and Kevin as a jock—both arguably decent casting choices. They'd also given us all green socks. I wondered what the socks were about, but being a lowly extra, mine was not to question why….

As for the girls, they'd pegged Em as a goth girl and Min as a cheerleader. (And for the record, just seeing Min dressed up as a cheerleader made this whole moviemaking experience worthwhile, no matter what happened next. She looked completely stunned by her costume assignment, like a cat who'd just fallen into the bathtub.)

According to Gunnar, the scenes of most movies are not shot in the order in which you watch them. But in our case, the first scene they shot really was one of the very first scenes in the movie. It was the scene where the main character, a new kid in a small town, comes to his new high school for the first time.

We extras were just supposed to mill around in the hallway, acting like members of our various cliques. Meanwhile, to play the jocks and cheerleaders in the foreground, the ones with speaking parts, the producers had hired real actors (who, incidentally, looked nothing whatsoever like real high school students; I doubt any of them were under the age of twenty-five or had even a single zit).

The production assistants got everything set up for the scene, with all the extras and "real" actors in place.

Then the star of the movie walked onto the set.

Declan McDonnell.

Yes,
that
Declan McDonnell! The one who played the womanizing best friend of the star of that big sitcom a few years back? He'd also done a few movies, but nothing breakout.

He was
totally
dreamy. He had straight black hair that he parted in the middle, a crooked smile, and blue-green eyes that were supposedly the color of the ocean. (Full disclosure: I had a picture of him, shirtless, on my computer.)

I desperately wanted to meet him. Thing is, I knew that could never happen, even if he wasn't an internationally famous movie star and I wasn't a complete nobody. After all, they had specifically told us that we couldn't talk to the stars.

I pulled Gunnar aside. "That's Declan McDonnell!" I said breathlessly.

"Who?" he said.

It figured he would know nothing about movies that had anything to do with actual human beings.

"He's famous," I said, deliberately dialing it down. "He's been in movies."

"Oh," Gunnar said. "Huh."

Right then, the director called "Rolling!", which meant that we extras were supposed to start doing our "extra" thing, acting like high school students. The "jocks" started strutting around like jocks, the "cheerleaders" twirled and flitted like cheerleaders, and the "nerds" like Gunnar and me crept back and forth like antisocial computer nerds.

The director called "Action!", which meant the real actors were supposed to start acting.

Out of the corner of my eye, I watched the scene in the foreground unfold. Declan McDonnell entered through the front doors. The "real" jocks and cheerleaders, the ones played by actors, all laughed at him for wearing white socks, not green ones.

A few minutes later, the director yelled, "Cut!"

Then we had to do it all over again.

But this time, one of the "extra" jocks, probably taking a cue from what was going on in the foreground, decided it would be more realistic if he started picking on the nerds—namely, Gunnar and me.

He deliberately bumped up against me in the hallway—roughly, I might add. "Outta my way, dork!" he said.

Kevin, who was standing with him, hesitated a second. Then he added, "Yeah, outta our way, dorks."

I couldn't help but remember the time that Kevin had done almost this exact same thing to me for real, joining in with his jock friends and teasing me, not because I was a nerd, but because I was gay. I'd learned then what was obviously still true now: Kevin just did what those around him did. Despite his muscles, he was fundamentally weak.

"Good!" the director called to us. "Jock extras? Keep teasing the nerds! That's perfect!"

After the first couple of takes, the camera jammed (or something), and we were told it would be a few minutes before filming resumed.

Kevin immediately stepped up next to me. "Can you believe that's really
Declan McDonnell
?" he said, as breathless as I had been before. "Damn, he's hot!"

Of course it took another gay boy to see the obviousness of such things. But I wasn't breathless anymore. I was irritated that Kevin had been so quick to tease me just because someone else had first. Frankly, I was annoyed that Kevin was even at this movie shoot at all.

I turned to face him. "Kevin, why are you doing this?"

"What?" he said. "You mean the teasing? Sorry about that. But it's what the director wanted."

Yeah, I wanted to point out, but you started teasing us
before
the director had said he liked it!

"It's not about the teasing," I said, because it mostly wasn't. "Why are you here at all? This isn't your thing. You're a jock—for real, I mean. You should be out doing jumping jacks somewhere."

"Whaddaya mean? I wanted to be in a movie."

"Admit it, Kevin. You're here because of me."

"That's not true!" But I could tell I was right because he was suddenly talking louder than before.

"Kevin," I said. "I'm really flattered that you want to get back together with me, but it can't work. I have a boyfriend. So that's that. We're not getting back together, okay?"

There, I thought. I had nipped this thing in the bud. I'd stopped him in his tracks and cut him off at the pass. How much clearer could I be?

"Sure," he said. The weird thing is, suddenly he wasn't talking loudly anymore. And then he flashed me a grin that was even more impish than usual.

*   *   *

Sunday night was when I had to go see Father Franklin—specifically, to the rectory, which is what they call the place where the priest lives. His housekeeper met me and led me to his office, where he was working at his desk. Father Franklin was an old man with a rotund body and a boyish face. Imagine a gigantic baby, and you won't be far off.

His office smelled like incense—but not just any incense. The funeral kind, thick and serious. It made the whole office smell like a crypt.

He stood up when he saw me. He was dressed all in black with the white collar and everything. "Russel!" he said. "Come in, come in. It's good to see you again."

"Ah," I said. It wasn't good to see him again, and I wasn't going to lie and say it was.

We shook hands, which still made me feel like an idiot whenever I did it with an adult.

"Your parents said we should talk," he said.

"Yeah, they did," I said.

By now, the housekeeper had left, but she hadn't closed the door behind us. Neither did Father Franklin. My first thought was, Is this church policy? Could priests no longer be alone with teenage boys? But then I felt bad for thinking this. How tough would it be to have the whole world wondering if you're a child molester?

"Have a seat!" Father Franklin said. "Have a seat."

I sat in the leather chair across from his desk.

"I can't believe how you've grown," he said. "Seems like just last week you were a boy."

This, of course, is just what every teenager loves to hear.

"So." The priest cleared his throat. "Your parents said you're having some questions about your sexuality."

I shook my head. "No, I don't have any questions. I've known that I'm gay for a long time. But my parents just found out about it, so they sent me here."

"I see." Father Franklin looked thoughtful. "Why do you think you're gay?"

"Why does anyone think they're anything? I just do."

Father Franklin nodded. "Right. But Russel, adolescence is a very confusing time. I'm sure I don't need to tell you that. It's common for boys to go through different phases."

Oh, God, not Father Franklin too. Had every adult gone through a "gay" phase? Or were they just telling me this so I'd think they had some "street cred" on the issue?

"I'm not confused," I said. "This is actually one of the things in my life that I'm least confused about. That and the fact that there are too many superhero movies."