Absolute Brightness by James Lecesne Page B

was not the reason she got beat up.
    â€œNo,” I told him. “The reason they beat her up was because they thought she was a sissy boy.”
    Leonard blinked at me as though he were determined to send me an encoded message by opening and closing his eyelids. I didn’t know the code, however, so it had no effect on me.
    â€œThank you for getting my money clip back,” he said.
    I felt that it was important to tell him the rest of the story; he needed to know that following the beating-up incident Winona’s parents took her out of school, gave her home study, and enrolled her in the prestigious American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, where she was later discovered and given a screen test for the role of Jon Voight’s daughter in Desert Bloom . And even though she didn’t get the part, it did lead to her being cast as a poetry-loving teen in Lucas (a movie I’ve seen seven times).
    But telling Leonard this was obviously a big mistake, because he smiled too brightly and said, “Wait. Are you saying I should take acting classes?”
    â€œNo,” I said, because in fact I was not saying that and he was totally missing the point. “I’m saying that you can’t go around looking like a big sissy or you’ll get the shit beat out of you just like Winona did.”
    â€œBut it turned out okay for Winona Ryder, didn’t it?”
    â€œLook,” I said to him, lowering my voice and trying a different tack, “I don’t care one way or the other if you’re gay or if you’re not gay. I’m just saying do you have to be so obvious about it all the time?”
    â€œObvious? How do you mean?”
    â€œThe shoes? The beret? The pants? I mean, just for starters.”
    â€œBut I like the way they look. They make me feel good.”
    â€œGood?” I asked. “How can they make you feel good? You look ridiculous and everybody’s laughing at you.”
    He glanced down at himself—his pants, his shoes, and the parts of himself that he could see. Maybe he was trying to get an idea of how he looked from someone else’s point of view. He shook his head.
    â€œI’m just being myself. I mean, obviously.”
    That was pretty much the end of our discussion. I left him sitting there and went inside the house to do something that at the time I considered important but now can’t even remember. About an hour later, when Mom called up the stairs to tell us it was snowing, I looked out my bedroom window to see for myself. That’s when I noticed Leonard; he was still sitting there on the trash bin, leaning back, dangling his stupid platform sneakers and singing like a girl in a high soprano voice.
    â€œGirls in white dresses with blue satin sashes,
    Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes,
    Silver-white winters that melt into springs—
    These are a few of my favorite things.”
    I couldn’t believe my eyes—or my ears. And I remember thinking, If he doesn’t understand that being himself in the world is a complete and total liability, then he deserves whatever comes down the pike to bite him on the ass. The kid’s an idiot. Obviously.

 
    five
    MY BEST FRIEND , Electra Wheeler, had her hands around Leonard’s throat and she was pressing her two big thumbs into the hollow areas on either side of his Adam’s apple. His wind was cut off, which would explain why his face had gone bright red, his lips were turning blue, and his eyes were bugging out of his skull. He was gagging.
    â€œCareful you don’t kill him,” I warned from my place on the sideline.
    My job was to stand next to Electra and hold her dreads behind her neck. We didn’t want them to swing down in Leonard’s face and distract her from the business at hand. I refused to be the one who actually did the choking. I couldn’t trust myself to not go too far and accidentally murder Leonard.
    Ever since school