It was like you’d been feeding your body Big Macs three times a day and suddenly—a vegetable!
Tic-tacking is when you use your entire body to turn the board from one side to the other. It’s a game of lower body strength, but also a game of knowing your weight and knowing your board. You are not a tic-tac kind of girl.
You are not a girl at all. You are just...you.
That.
That one’s sticking forever. You know it all the way through to your gut.
You make one more attempt, which probably isn’t super wise because you are so close to the spot where she’s sitting that not only will she see you bite the dust, but she’ll hear that nasty grunt you make when you meet the ground.
You coast by.
The friction vibrates up through your bearings and you know you’re going too fast because you start to feel a little bit of a speed-wobble, that lovely, untimely, oscillatory behavior that means bro, you are about to lose control.
And you hate that word. Control. You hate that word because it is so very rare that you have any. Over your life, your sexuality, your gender, your pronouns, your heartbeat when you’re around your beautiful girl.
But then you do.
You gain control. And you nail that Caballerial.
And the three guys who’ve been watching you make an ass of yourself all afternoon pop their boards up, hold them over their heads and let out wolf shouts.
And you’re smiling so hard. You get like that when you nail a particularly difficult one. You’re smiling so hard you don’t notice the someone standing behind you.
Beautiful girl. You don’t even want to control your smile here.
“You did it,” she says.
* * *
WHAT HAPPENS IN THE CLOSET
by
Caleb Roehrig
Vampires might be unpopular these days, but apparently nobody told them that. They keep showing up at our parties anyway.
Orchard Bay isn’t even that big of a place, but the bloodthirsty jerks can’t seem to leave us alone. Monsters: They’re real, and they’re annoying.
You’d think that at some point, after the third or fourth serious attack by the undead, the city council would get its act together and pass some sort of public safety ordinance. But our local political scene is a “complete nightmare,” (according to my dad) and the mayor “has her head up her ass,” (according to my mom, after two glasses of red wine).
When the recession hit, the municipal government had the bright idea to create jobs by hiring and training a volunteer squad of vampire hunters. Spoiler alert: It was a lousy idea. And if you know anything about the Salem Witch Trials, you can maybe guess what happened when they gave paranoid, desperate townsfolk a bunch of weapons and a blanket directive to destroy human-faced monsters.
The truth is, vampires aren’t a constant, terrifying scourge. The smart ones rarely Turn anyone. It’s in their best interests to lie low, so they’re mostly a nuisance. They mesmerize people, drink a little blood, and move on. But once in a while, some vamp comes to town looking to raise an army and take over—like four years ago, when a group of newly Turned undead swarmed the senior prom at Orchard East and ate a dozen people.
But four years is four years, and about the only thing shorter than the span of an Orchard Bay resident’s life is the span of their memory. So this year, instead of holding our homecoming dance at the school—which is actually equipped for lockdown procedures—they’re having it at a country club.
“What could possibly happen?” My best friend Taisha scoffs as we show our tickets at the door. She’s a lesbian, but she’s my date tonight because neither of us has a lot of options. Besides me, there are only two other out gay guys at Orchard East, and they’re together. And they’ve been together since eighth grade. “There are vampire emergency kits all over the place, and you’ve got your crucifix, right?”
I shoot her a dirty look as I hold out my hand to get it stamped. “Did you seriously just ask, ‘What could possibly happen?’ Why not read aloud from the Necronomicon if you want to jinx everybody!”
She rolls her eyes. “Don’t be so dramatic, Austin.”
“He has a point, Taisha,” sniffs Julie Whitmer—senior class president, chair of the homecoming committee, and royal pain in the ass—who happens to be holding the stamp. “This is a vampire town. You should take jinxes more seriously.”
This time, Taisha and I both roll our eyes, because Julie. She’s one of those people that makes you want to argue against stuff you believe in, just so you won’t be on the same side.
Once we’re inside, we wander the dance floor, looking for our friends.
The Harbor Haven Club is gorgeous. Big and modern, it’s got a whole wall of windows that look out over the water. We’re not members here—“on principle,” (my mom again, three glasses of wine). I’ve come with Julie’s family once or twice, because the Whitmers live next door to us and Julie doesn’t exactly know that we’re enemies. Anyway, it feels very sophisticated, even if the DJ for the dance tonight is talking to us all like we’re fifth-graders.
We find Katie and Joshua right away, and then Miyu arrives with a hip flask she managed to sneak past Julie. Taisha really wants to find Gabi, because they kissed after rehearsal last weekend, and my best friend is hoping for an encore. Only, when we track Gabi down, the night takes an immediate nosedive, because she’s dancing with none other than Lucas Coronado—my sworn rival.
Here’s the thing about Lucas: He’s one of those guys who’s funny and nice (to everyone except me), a super talented actor (I say I don’t see it, even though of course I do), and he’s, like, unfairly hot. Nobody as obnoxious as Lucas has any right to be that attractive on the outside. Oh, and he and Gabi take dance together, so they’re doing this complicated salsa thing when we find them, and the way he moves is unreal. Even though I hate him, it turns me on.
When they’re done, Taisha is fanning herself theatrically. “Ohmygaw, you guys, that was sexy as hell!”
“Hey, Taisha!” Lucas greets her with this huge, megawatt smile. Then he glances at me and his tone gets, like, fifty degrees colder. “Klein.”
“Coronado,” I reply, so frigidly my tongue almost gets frostbite.
Here’s the other thing about Lucas: He says he’s not gay. I can’t believe it, because the signs are all right there. His skin is flawless, his eyebrows are perfectly shaped, and when he starts talking to Taisha and Gabi, his hands wave everywhere like he’s conducting a symphony, but if you so much as hint he’s gay, he gets all furious and offended. When we first met freshman year, I thought he was cute and tried to flirt with him. He gave me a look like I was covered in diarrhea and snapped, “I’m not like you.”