“Mushrooms,” Star said.
That was stating the obvious. On a decorative dinner plate were a
handful of dried mushrooms that looked like they’d fallen behind the
refrigerator a few months back.
“I thought you were getting acid,” Victor said.
“So did I,” Star replied. “This was all the guy had. Any idea how we
eat them?”
Victor shrugged, grabbed one, and popped it in his mouth.
“How do they taste?” Jace asked.
“Mushroomy.”
“I’m putting sauce on mine,” Star said, turning to the fridge. “I have
got the best thing in the world in here.”
Behind her back, Victor mouthed the words “honey mustard.”
“Honey mustard,” Star said. “Oh, shut up,” she added when Victor
started laughing.
“You put that on everything,” he said.
“Now I’m putting it on magic mushrooms, and if you want to eat
anymore, they’ll be slathered in sauce.”
Jace grinned along with them, but really he felt apprehensive.
Smoking pot was one thing, but tripping sounded scary. He pictured
himself prancing through swirls of multicolored clouds until flying off
one of the balconies to his death. Then again, the anti-drug films shown
in school were hardly reliable. He’d seen one where a stoned girl went
into a fit, screaming at her family, when in reality, she’d probably just
calmly ask them to pass the Doritos.
“Oh, that came for you,” Star said, nodding toward an envelope
while dribbling honey mustard over the mushrooms.
Victor picked it up with disinterest, Jace casually craning his neck to
see who it was from. He only saw that it was addressed to Victor
Hemmingway. Why would he get his mail sent to Star’s place? Did he
live here sometimes?
“What is it?” Jace asked.
“Identification,” Victor said with distaste.
“It’s more than that,” Star said. “Besides, it’s about time you become
a real boy.”
“I can’t believe you talked me into this.” Victor shook his head and
shoved the envelope into his front pocket. “I’ll never use it.”
“Then I’m so glad I paid for it,” Star muttered under her breath. She
lifted up the plate of mushrooms, presenting it to them. “Anyway, dinner
is served!”
Jace gobbled down his share of the shrooms, bracing himself to be
transported to a magical cartoon world. Instead, nothing much happened.
Star mentioned a leaky pipe in the downstairs bathroom, Victor doing his
best to tighten the connection without a wrench. Thrilling. It wasn’t until
they were outside smoking that Jace noticed the tracers left by Victor’s
cigarette. Every time he moved his arm to take another drag, the orange
light from the embers would remain in the air as a solid line that faded
slowly.
And Jace found he was cool with it. The effect wasn’t terrifying. He
wasn’t losing his mind.
That came later.
* * * * *
Jace stared at the open dictionary with something nearing devout
affection. Never before had he realized how beautifully the words were
arranged, how they blended together in progressive measurements. Mute,
muted, mutilate, mutinous. Perfection! Each word faded into the next—
like shades of colors in the spectrum. In a way, letters were just as
orderly as numbers. Jace read each word aloud, savoring it before
moving on to the next. Mutter, mutton, mutual, muzzle.
Farther away, Star was sitting on the couch, rubbing her hands on the
cushions to each side of her and nearly drooling. Victor was on his back,
head near one of the stereo speakers. The music made him smile, but to
Jace, the lyrics were all gibberish. Were the vocals in English? Was the
singer male or female? He couldn’t tell.
There were a lot of things he couldn’t understand anymore, and that
tiny little kernel inside that represented the sober Jace from before had
one message for him: You’ve gone insane. And he had! Jace paused from
his recital to laugh. He’d gone completely, irreversibly insane. This was
his world from now on. Miniscule details had become overwhelmingly
important. The fabric of reality had unraveled, allowing him to examine
the threads. The experience was terrifying and wonderful, and he might
have freaked out, but anytime he came close, he sought out Victor’s
eyes. Green and brown, like the colors in a forest. Earthy. Grounding.
And so huge Jace felt they could swallow him up.
“Come feel this,” Star said, reaching out a hand to him. “When I
bought this couch, I had no idea. How could I not know?”
Jace went to her, plopping down on the soft cushion. Star took his
hand, placing his palm flat on the fabric.
“Rub,” she said, with a crooked smile.
Jace did so. What was this material? Suede? Frosting? “Oh! It gets
warm! My hand is warm!”
Star burst out laughing, Jace joining her. They laughed so hard they
clutched at their stomachs, tears in their eyes. Insane, but not alone.
“Look at you!” Victor stood over them, beaming until exaggerated
worry marred his features. “Timberrrrrr!”
Jace and Star shrieked and giggled as Victor tumbled down on top of
them. Jace began rubbing the recently buzzed sides of Victor’s dark hair.
One look at Star encouraged her to do the same.
“Stop it!” Victor said, pushing their hands away. His grin was
impossibly wide as he looked back and forth between them. “Look at
you two,” he said again, shaking his head. “Right here, together. You’re
both so beautiful.”
Jace snorted and Star tittered.
“Seriously,” Victor said. “I love you guys so much.”
Love. That distant sane part of Jace reacted to this word. He’d
wanted to hear it, of course, even considered saying it, but he thought it
might scare Victor away. Now Victor had said it first, but not in the way
Jace had sometimes imagined. Not solely to him.
“We love you too,” Star said, sighing like she was in a dream.
“So beautiful,” Victor repeated. “I want to see you kiss.”
“What?” Star shrieked, giggling like a child, but when her head
stopped shaking back and forth, it was facing Jace.
She was beautiful. Victor was right. Women had always been
mysterious to Jace, like an alien species, but not in a monstrous way.
They were almost angelic, too good, a miracle that shouldn’t be touched
by mere mortal hands. He admired them, found their appearance alluring,
their strange ways fascinating. They just weren’t meant for him.
Victor came nearer, kissed Star on the forehead, pulled Jace over to
do the same. Now he and Star were even closer. Her eyes were innocent,
the pink gloss on her lips like candy. Jace wanted to taste it. He leaned
forward and closed his eyes.
The kiss was soft, gentle, but not entirely innocent. He wasn’t sure if
it lasted a long time, or who decided that tongues were acceptable, but he
didn’t mind. Only when he pulled away and saw that Star’s eyes had
changed, were looking at him in a new light—reassessing him—did he
feel uncomfortable.
“I love you guys so much,” Victor repeated.
Star kept her gaze fixed on Jace a moment longer. Then she turned to
Victor with a smile. “Yeah, yeah. We know. Now put on some better
music.”
Later, when the sky began to grow light, and the insanity seemed
more like pretend than an effect of the mushrooms, they were forced to
admit that the party was over. Jace struggled to remember much of the
night, such as how they escaped the strangeness of the couch and ended
up coloring pictures on the downstairs balcony—but he vividly
remembered that kiss.
“Do you want to crash here?” Victor asked him.
“No. Michelle needs the car. I promised her I’d be back in the
morning.”
“Okay. Think you can drive?”
“Yeah.” Jace nodded. “I feel pretty normal now. Are you coming
with me?”
Victor shrugged. “Do you want me to?”
“Yes. Please.”
“Okay.”
Star seemed sleepy as she saw them to the door, but nothing felt
awkward. Only when they were saying goodbye did Jace notice her
curious gaze return. He had the slightly uncomfortable impression that,
for the first time, Star now took him seriously.
* * * * *
Victor was in high spirits on the drive home. Cruising down a rural
road, they raced to meet the sun as it rose, farmland and forests glowing
tangerine in the early light. Jace was a twisted mess of emotions inside,
but Victor chatted happily, as if nothing had happened.
“Star is a good girl, but she lies through her teeth. She doesn’t have a
boyfriend. At least not one who pays for her apartment. It’s her father
who keeps her in a gilded cage. When we first met she flaunted me in
front of him just to piss him off, but when it comes down to it, she never
pushes hard enough to lose his support.”
Jace tightened his grip on the wheel. “Why are you friends if she
uses you like that?”
Victor looked sidelong at him, picking up on Jace’s tone. “Because
we’re the same. We both find ourselves running in hamster wheels, and
we both want to break free. We just haven’t figured out how yet.”
Jace didn’t think they were the same. Victor went to extremes to
buck the system, while Star was living in the lap of luxury. Maybe she
didn’t want to be her father’s little princess, but she still intended to
inherit the kingdom. Jace bit his lip, tasting lip gloss even though he had
scrubbed it off in the bathroom. Maybe it was all in his head or some
after-effect of the mushrooms. Regardless, he wished it would stop
because he wanted to forget that kiss, erase what it meant and the
potential it had to ruin everything.
“I’m sorry,” he blurted out. “Star and I— We shouldn’t have—” Jace
wiped at his eyes. The car swerved, causing Victor to grab the wheel.
“Pull over,” he said.
Jace did—not due to a few tears, but because his heart was pounding
with panic, his mind swarming with questions, implications, and fears. “I
shouldn’t have kissed her,” he said. “I only want you. Maybe it was the
drugs or something, I don’t know, but I swear to God that I only want to
be with you!”
Victor studied him a moment, then reached for the door handle.
“Let’s get some fresh air.”
Jace checked the road, deserted this early on a Sunday morning,
before leaving the car and joining Victor on the hood. Ahead of them, on
a stretch of farmland soggy with melted snow, was an old barn. Next to it
sat a church—little more than a rectangle of weather-worn boards
hammered together—topped by a steeple shaped like an outhouse.
Considering the broken windows and sunken roof, a Sunday service was
extremely unlikely.
“I feel like I cheated on you,” Jace said.
Next to him, Victor shrugged. “You can’t break a commitment that
hasn’t been made.”
Jace felt his face flush. “But I have. Maybe you don’t like titles, or
the idea of us being special to each other, but in my mind, we’re all of
those things. In my mind, we’re committed!”
Victor sighed. “You are special to me. I can still feel, you know. I’m
not scared of emotion. But this is exactly why I despise the modern
concept of a relationship.”
“Don’t!” Jace said. “Don’t make this one of your political lectures.
This is about you and me and nobody else!”
“It’s about Star too!” Victor shot back. “In case you’re forgetting,
I’m the one who suggested you two kiss. And before you fly off the
handle about that, answer me one thing, but think about it first. Set aside
any point you want to make right now and tell me, honestly, just one
thing.”
Jace looked up. “What?”
“Did you want to kiss her?”
Jace remembered the sparkle in her eyes, how it felt like kids playing
a game. Harmless. Innocent. Only afterwards, when he saw her strange
expression, had he considered the implications and let it become a
problem. “I’m gay,” Jace said, voice strained. “I fought and fought to
accept that. What the hell does this mean? Why would I want to kiss
her?”
“Because we’re not gay or straight, good or bad, single or married.
We’re human, and that means we’re all sorts of things, and I know you
don’t want to hear one of my stupid ideas right now, but think about how
often we’re told to choose. Our whole lives we’re asked to. Which side
are you on? What are you? Which team, which army, which political
party? Even when that choice is hard, goes against what the majority
considers acceptable, we still fail ourselves by letting it define us.”
“It’s not a choice,” Jace said. A car zoomed past them, blowing his
hair into his eyes. “If it was a choice, I would have taken the easy road
and let Greg hook me up with some girl.”
“Fine. So you like guys. But in the right circumstances, you’re open
to more. Maybe it’s not what you usually want or look for, but it’s
possible. Why limit yourself? What if I had done the same? Do you think
I would be with you now? What if I started falling in love with you and
refused to acknowledge it, just because I tell myself ‘No, no! I’m
straight! That’s not what I do!’”
“I would hate that,” Jace whispered.
“What if I wasn’t around and you fell in love with a woman?”
“I wouldn’t.”
“But what if you did? Seriously! This world is one crazy-ass place.
Anything is possible and that’s fucking wonderful. Why go through life
and limit what you can experience and what you can feel?” Victor
shrugged off his jacket, pulled up his T-shirt sleeve to reveal his tattoo
and pointed to the words. “No limits. That’s what I told myself, and
yeah, I know it’s scary as hell to let go of our titles because we start
asking who we are without them. But I didn’t let fear take me for a ride,
and look what I got out of it.”
Jace brushed the hair out of his face, saw Victor’s eyes wide and
pleading.
“Does love cease to exist the second you kiss another person? Is love
that fickle?”
“No,” Jace answered, refusing to believe his feelings were so weak.
“Kissing Star, did it change what you feel for me? Did wanting her,
no matter how briefly, stop you from still wanting me?”
“No,” Jace said. “It didn’t.”
“Good. No one can change how we feel for each other except us.
There was a kiss I wanted to see, and that you wanted to feel. We can
