Chapter Text
Jonas was kissing Carmen Ramirez.
She had taken his hand, led him up the stairs to her Pinterest-y bedroom and pushed him onto the bed. She had Polaroids too, Jonas felt queasy looking at them. He wasn’t sure what he expected, she wanted to show him something, bitterly he wondered if this was another homework request. Would he sit and do geography homework while the party bellowed below him? Did he have anything better to do? It’s not like anyone was talking to him, Lewis wasn’t here, Maddie definitely wasn’t here and Sidney was swept away in a flurry of her much more popular friends. He had seen Mitch and pretended not to. The sight of him after a week of radio silence sent a hot flush through his body—affection and shame swirled in his gut like puke in a toilet bowl. Green and pink lights jumped up from his shoulders. He should go back to his empty house, one that was crawling with investigators, one that smelled like charred wood, one that Sue sat on her former martial bed and cried in. There was still blood on the grass.
Carmen had found Jonah sitting on the bottom of the steps, successfully creating a barrier between the party and the couples using her upstairs to fuck in. Which oh my god gross—go inflict your teen pregnancy epidemic somewhere her abuelita’s picture isn’t staring down at you. Not her though, she could have sex, it was her house.
“He’s totally gay,” Sasha said, checking to make sure she still had all her press-ons.
“Him and Mitch, right?” Abby wiggled out of her tube top to try on another shirt, boobs out, Carmen bowed her head to re-tie her ponytail. “That’s what I’ve heard, the little nerdy guy and Mitch Mueller.”
“There’s no way Mitch is gay,” Trilby reapplied her lip gloss, “I’ve got a gay cousin. He just doesn’t look it.”
Carmen looked past Trilby in the mirror, adjusting her bangs. She didn’t like to get too close to Mitch, she had no reason to. Neil had money, Jonah had brains, Mitch had a criminal record. He also had a little rainbow pin, Carmen remembered, small and shiney of the front of his grungy jean vest, so out of place on such a bruised up guy. But in a way it was fascinating, he didn’t have to ‘look it’ to ‘be it’.
“You should kiss him and find out,” Sasha bumped Carmen’s hip, “single and ready to mingle right?”
“Kiss Mitch Mueller?” Carmen scoffed. “As if.”
“Maybe he’ll turn into a prince,” Trilby wiggled her fingers as Abby ‘ooooohhhed’ next to her.
“Yeah, or you might pull away with no lips,” Sasha flicked her hair. “His weirdo friend bit me in middle school. Do you remember that? Do you think she was flirting? Yuck!”
“Another unsolved Sellwood mystery.” Secretly Carmen wondered why the lives of these two guys was of such importance. She had never cared this much about a guy. There was nothing to gain, honestly she barely remembered their names. “So what do we think about—“
“I know!” Abby had on one of Carmen’s low neckline shirts, showing off the mole above her right breast. She grabbed Carmen’s hands, absolutely giddy. “Kiss the cute one! The guy who wears the yellow hat, see if he’s gay! Then we’ll know for sure.”
Carmen tasted like lipgloss, and maybe a lip plumper because Jonas’s lips were burning. He was scared to touch her, but rested a hand on her rib cage, safely between her waist and her boobs. She was warm, but there were no lights pulsating from him. Pink, yellow, nothing. Jonas wasn’t sure why he was kissing her at all. His crush on her was gone, washed away by the swim at the cove, a baptism. Was he so emboldened by his singular sexual experience? Or maybe it was the sip of alcohol he had at the beginning of the night, or his recent break-up with not only Mitch, but Mitch’s friends. Being disavowed by the Park n’ Wreck crew was a scalding pain, a blister of loneliness. They were upfront with their disdain of him, they wished him ill but would enact no harm, nor would they allow harm to befall him. Mitch’s orders. Jonas felt this rejection in his bones, it made him nauseous. But what could he expect? Mitch took the fall for them, Mitch was their go-down-with-the-ship captain, Mitch was their buddy. Jonas had betrayed Mitch, he had betrayed them, and—
Carmen reached for the hem of his shirt, pulling it up. He wore a lot of layers. Jonah was actually pretty cute. Neil was a hand-job-in-the-dark guy, and not even that if she could help it. The fairy lights and various light-up Hobby Lobby trinkets stayed on and Carmen still didn’t mind looking at him. Pretty eyes, soft hair, he smelled like pomegranates. And he was kissing her, so…not gay? Maybe this was what she needed. A palate cleanser. She giggled at the irony of fucking the guy Neil hated so so much for literally no reason. She put her hand up his shirt.
—and Jonas was doing it again.
“Wait,” Jonas pulled back, bringing his hands in front his chest in sort of a surrender/step-back gesture. Carmen crawled off of him, sitting on the edge of her bed, looking at him like she was wondering how he got there but was trying to be polite about it. Jonas sat up, his lips still tingled, but not in the way they did after Mitch kissed him. When Mitch pulled away from a kiss there was the itch of his stubble and the feeling of needing just one more. Jonas would follow his mouth, the space between them a vast desert. Mitch would laugh, but never deny him another kiss. This was a lip product, chemical, artificial. Jonas felt like tearing up. “Wait, I—I can’t.”
“Oh…sorry,” Carmen apologized, glossing over the panic Jonas seemed to be in. She pointed at her vanity, “I have, like, some school-issued condoms, from that sex-ed thing. If that’s what you’re worried about.”
“Oh,” Jonas blushed, looking between her and the vanity with a framed photo of her and her friends on it. He remembered the condoms Mitch had in his wallet with his fake ID. Did he seriously sit through a voluntary sex-ed meeting to score rubbers? “No, it’s not that. I just—why did you even kiss me? Are you drunk?”
“What? No, silly! You’re cute,” Carmen flapped her hand dismissively, raising her voice an octave higher than before and Jonas realized this was how she always talked to him. He pinched his brow together, something was off, this was a joke, this had to be a prank of some kind. Carmen’s job was to get him undressed and someone would break in with a camera or something. Did she lock the door? Didn’t matter, he was in no mood.
“Gee, thanks,” Jonas stood up and marched to the door. Locked, ok, this still spelled bad news. Was this a solo mission? Was she planning on laughing at his stomach? His dick? Would she use the sight of these things to blackmail him into doing her homework since he had been giving her requests to ‘study’ less and less attention?
“Jonah, wait,” Carmen stood up to follow him as he opened the door. She watched Jonah freeze and then shut the door gently. But when he turned to look at her his face was hardened.
“It’s Jonas,” he said, running a hand through his hair, “my name is Jonas.”
“Jonas,” Carmen corrected, “sorry, I’m bad with names.”
“You kissed me and you don’t even know my name,” Jonas turned around fully.
“Hey, it’s not like you corrected me,” Carmen crossed her arms, “like ever.”
“Is this a joke?”
“No! I, well,” she looked at Jonas and quickly averted his gaze, “it was a dare. My friends were trying to figure out if you were gay.”
“Why—“
“I dunno,” Carmen answered hurriedly. “They were like: ‘there’s no way Mitch is gay’ and ‘you should find out if the boy he hangs out with all the time is gay’. I don’t know, it was stupid.”
“No, why is that any of your business?” Jonas puffed up like a small, angry bird.
“It’s not. You’re right, I just—“ she sighed, plopping down on the bed and looking again at the little mirror in her room, “thought it would be different.”
“Different than…what??”
“Kissing Neil,” Carmen rubbed her arm. “I wanted to try kissing someone that’s not Neil. He’s kind of my first?”
“Oh, that…sucks.”
“It did,” she scoffed. She pinched her fingers together, a size indicator. Jonas snickered.
“Wait, are you…cheating on…Neil,” Jonas looked around like math formulas were appearing behind his eyes, “with me?”
“No,” Carmen rested her arms behind her, lolling her head and ponytail off to the side, “we broke up. He’s pissed though.”
“I didn’t look like you two were ever dating,” Jonas, much to her surprise, approached and sat down next to her on the bed.
“I went on his family cruise trip for the past three years,” she shrugged.
“Do…did you like him?” Jonas envisioned this exact moment a thousand times, usually at some nameless place at school or in his bedroom or in an abstract, dreamy and romantic setting. Carmen Ramirez, Helen of Troy reincarnated, kissing him in the mouth and telling him she had broken up with Neil (Jonas hadn’t imagined her telling him Neil’s dick was small but hey, sometimes fiction just can’t top reality). But now that he was here, in the girl of his dream’s bedroom, licking her lipgloss residue away, he couldn’t stop thinking about Mitch. How he longed to join them downstairs, to be accepted like none of this ever happened, to curl up under Mitch’s arm and let him say filthy and sweet, sort of drunk and sort of high things in his ear because the music was loud enough that only Jonas got to hear it. Maybe he would let Mitch push him into a corner and kiss him, or take him into a different room and lift his shirt like Carmen had.
Jonas wished he had drank more. He laid on his back, staring up at the outline of those little glow-stars that had been torn from the ceiling. He remembered Carmen when she wore her glasses all the time, and before her front teeth had presumably been cosmetically filed down. He may have liked her then, a little, though maybe he was too preoccupied going to the arcade with Mitch and exploring the woods with him and playing ‘which would win in a fight ‘ games at to give her much thought.
“To be honest,” Carmen laid with him, arm brushing his. It was nice, warm. But there were no lights, contact with Mitch was always heated with the pink lights and the thrum of energy from his telekinesis. “I’ve never really liked anyone. He was just easy. And rich.”
“What did you guys even talk about?”
“He actually talked about you a lot,” Carmen huffed.
“All good things, I hope,” Jonas said dryly.
“It was so annoying, like why does he even care?” Carmen groaned.
“I dunno,” Jonas shrugged, “why do you care that I’m gay?”
“I don’t,” Carmen turned her head to him, “if anything, I was more curious about Mitch.”
“He’s gay,” Jonas said flatly.
“Oh,” Carmen said.
Anticlimactic much?
“I can tell you that,” Jonas turned to her, “because he’s out of the closet. Mitch doesn’t broadcast it, but he doesn’t hide it either. So there you go, he’s gay.”
Carmen remembered the little rainbow pin.
“But I also know people who aren’t out,” Jonas elaborated, “and they don’t want to be. You can’t go around trying to ‘figure it out’. That’s their thing.”
“I’ll tell my friends to fuck off,” she decided. “That’s so shitty of us. Of me.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry I kissed you,” she added.
“Well…I kissed you back,” Jonas chewed on the words, he smiled a dried-out smile, “think of it as compensating a younger Jonas for all his hard work.”
They laugh, and there it is, Jonas feels a yellow band. There’s twinges of blue. He doesn’t think the hurt of Mitch will ever leave him, he missed him before and he missed him more knowing he was the one to deal the damaging blow with his silence. Maybe he’ll be ok, if Carmen can be alone, so can he, right? Carmen didn’t love Neil, though. That train of thought squeezed his heart like a stress ball. Oh, he loved Mitch, didn’t he?
“What changed?”
“A lot.” Jonas thought about the superpowers and Dean and…he hesitated. All the things he couldn’t tell her. God, he missed talking to Mitch. Talking to Mitch was even easier than talking to Sidney. He looked back up at the sticky outline of the stars, paler than the rest of the ceiling, mourning.
“Mitch?” Carmen probed. Jonas responded with another damning silence. “Are you guys ok? You’re like, dating, right?”
“I don’t think so,” Jonas swallowed thickly. “Not anymore.”
“Oh,” Carmen said softly, pitifully. Jonas couldn’t help but resent it. “If you don’t mind me asking…”
Carmen didn’t actually ask anything.
Jonas remembered all the texts he sent Mitch. He didn’t physically see Mitch leave school that day, he just walked into the principal's office with the jacket Jonas had folded up for him and didn’t come back out. Vanished, a ghost. Except Mitch Mueller never went down quietly, rage,rage, against the dying of the light, so throughout the day Jonas clung to the hope he was still there, making his case to Principal Greene. Did he walk? Did Scratch cut class to drive him home? Was his aunt told? Did she care? He wanted to graduate for his mom. Did he tell her Jonas got him expelled in their bi-weekly phone call? Did he have the heart? Either way Mitch never answered his series of double texts. My, my, how the tables turn. Now Jonas was the one ostracized, no bullies dared touch him with Mitch’s gang floating around, ready to tear into their throats. The kids, interviewed to hell and back, were cleared to stay under Sue’s care for now, but Jonas had never seen such a shell of a woman, she might surrender them willingly. Sidney was the one to play with the kids, Operation, checkers, duck-duck-goose, she even showed them skateboard tricks while the investigators talked to Sue. Jonas avoided them, he had failed them as he failed Mitch. So when Sammy pushed a sheet of paper under his door, a wordless request to draw, he had no choice but to push it back, blank. Even Maddie was looking at him funny these days. Lewis caught strep throat sometime during all this so he didn’t even have his voice to drown anything out. Jonas was adrift in an echo chamber of his own misery. People talked about him, about him and Mitch, like they always had. But now it was like tiny pebbles being catapulted at his back until the sting was unbearable. Jonas wanted to make them aware of their ignorance, of what a kind, gentle person Mitch was, someone he never got a chance to be outwardly. Ah, but where was this fire when Mitch turned to you as a character witness? Where was it now, sitting on this twin bed?
“I fucked up,” the words felt raw and foreign in his throat.
“You?” Carmen sat up, leaning over him slightly, blocking the stars. “No way.”
“Mitch didn’t kill that rabbit, Carmen,” Jonas sat up, hands between his knees like a prayer stance. “He–he broke into Mr. Newman’s desk once to steal pet treats. He would keep them in his pocket and give it one when no one else was in there. I caught him once and he said he was,” Jonas put his hand over his eyes to stop the tears, he gulped down spit, “he said he never got to take a class pet home as a kid. Even though he really wanted to, they wouldn’t let him. He didn’t hurt that rabbit, Carmen.”
“Oh, Jonas,” Carmen started to put a hand on his back but stopped herself. “Who do you think—who would do that?”
“I don’t know,” Jonas croaked, “but I was there, and the situation looks bad, I know, but Mitch wouldn’t do that. He didn’t. I should have said something, I’d probably have lost my SHS scholarship for admitting to graffitiing the school but–but who cares. Geez, I’m the worst boyfriend, I deserve this.”
“You’re not the worst boyfriend,” Carmen teased half-heartedly. Thinking about all the uncomfortable things she had endured with Neil, like his dad saying she spoke very good English and Neil not correcting him at any point because he didn’t mean it like that, and the time he forgot her birthday and compensated with a silver bracelet which was stupid because she wore exclusively rose gold, and the being-a-dick-to-everyone all the time thing.That too. “You at least know Mitch’s birthday right?”
Jonas sniffed, “It’s in April, I think.”
“You don’t know?”
“We,” Jonas admitted, “weren’t dating for very long. And I don’t think he ever mentioned it.”
“Hm,” Carmen hummed, “do you think you guys will make-up?”
“No, I–“ Jonas let out a shaky breath, “I’ll tell them I was there, and with him the whole time, so he couldn’t have killed the rabbit. They’ll believe me, I hope. And, hey, I’ve already kissed my boyfriend goodbye, what’s a little Beckham funded cash?” Jonas said bitterly. It wasn’t a little, the Sellwood Honor Society scholarship was a good chunk of change that, coupled with other scholarships, the money from his part time summer jobs, photography contests and the college fund Dean and Sue set up for he and Sid, he could coast smoothly for most of his four-year. “But no, there’s no fixing this. All I can do is what I should’ve done to begin with.”
“That’s,” Carmen blinked, “really noble of you, Jonas.”
Jonas hung his head, feeling a migraine growing like a zit and the drop alcohol turn sour in his belly. He didn’t feel noble, nothing about Jonas was brave, or noble or good. He was a coward through and through.
“I wasn’t completely honest with you earlier,” Carmen confessed, putting her hands in her lap.
“Oh?” Jonas said, a little disinterested.
“I kissed you on a dare,” Carmen toyed with her manicured fingers, “but I was also checking to see if I liked guys.”
That got his attention.
He slowly turned his head toward her.
“I do!” Carmen answered like she had been accused of witchcraft. “Like guys, I think. It was nice, kissing you. I mean, my crotch isn’t on fire or anything, but like, sex with you would have been fine, fun even. Have you had sex before?”
“Um–yeah,” Jonas’s voice cracked against will and it probably sounded like he was lying.
“And I just—wait, really? Oh my god, is Mitch a good kisser?—totally inappropriate question, sorry! Just…don’t tell anyone,” Carmen sighed, “I’m not even sure I like girls. And I was with Neil so long, I don’t even know. Like, do I like girls or is Neil just gross, y’know?” Carmen threw her hands up, exasperated. “How do you come to that conclusion? Do you just know?”
“I…really didn’t give it much thought,” Jonas shrugged one shoulder, “the big deal was more that it was Mitch than Mitch being a guy.”
“He made you realize?” Carmen grinned. “So this is recent.”
“Is yours?”
“No,” Carmen gripped the edge of her bed. “There’s just…a lot on the line. If I’m a lesbian, then what? I have to tell my mom and dad? My abuelita? No thanks. My friends will be…weird around me. I don’t even like any of them like that. But they won’t want me in the changing rooms with them if they think–even for a second–that I do. I’ve seen how they act around Mitch’s girl friend–not his girlfriend, but yeah, his girl friend. Chrissy? Clarissa?”
“I know who you’re talking about.”
“They’re mean to her,” Carmen hissed, “like really mean. They avoid her completely, she changes in the locker room showers. They talk about her behind her back. Becka didn’t invite her to her pool party despite every girl on the face on the planet getting invited to that pool party. Because they think she’s gay. They can say it’s because she’s Mitch’s friend or that she bit Sasha or that she smells bad, but it’s because they think she’s gay. They’re so mean to her and I don’t think she even knows–“
“She knows,” Jonas said flatly, watching Carmen squirm, “we always know.”
Jonas wasn’t actually sure if Scratch was aware of the fact she was being bullied, but he had a hunch, just based on the twinge of sadness in her rapid eyes when she looked at him now or the way she rocked Cliff’s mite-covered chicken like a baby, that she had more social awareness and softness to her than her buck-wild persona would admit. It didn’t surprise him that she apparently suffered in girl-world. He and Sidney had a similar discussion to the one he and Carmen were having now. Sid didn’t want to come out to people for a long list of reasons. It might get back to Dean and Sue, she might be deemed unsafe to be around the children (projecting much, Dean?). Maddie might turn her nose up at her–they weren’t best friends, despite what Madison seemed to think, but still that would hurt. She might become a target like Jonas.
“Being a guy and gay is, y’know, it’s whatever,” Sidney told him, sitting on her bed below her That 70’s Show poster. “Other dudes beat the shit out of you, but girls think you’re safe, cool, you’re their ‘best friend’,” she said it in a thick valley girl accent. “Which is dehumanizing but…but when you’re a girl and you’re gay, the tables turn, but this time it’s double negative. Girls treat you like they treat sleazy guys, or they want to experiment with you,” Sidney mimed obnoxious kissing sounds, “and guys think it’s sooooo hot, they want to turn you. Like, how do you know you don’t like it if you’ve never tried it??” Sidney said in a dude-bro voice. “Like his penis is broccoli or some shit. Or if you're ugly, you’re not even a person. You’re not fuckable and you don’t want to fuck them and they can’t wrap their heads around it. And that’s just what I need right now Jonas, being the fat gay girl at Sellwood High.”
“You’re scared of them treating you like that?” Jonas asked.
“It’s hypocritical,” Carmen rubbed her forearm, “but yeah. It’s terrifying.”
“I get it,” Jonas nodded.
“And even if I’m not,” Carmen said, “It just sucks that I can’t be anything other than what I’m supposed to be,” she put her head in her hands, “the sports, the teeth, the hair. I have this whole,” reached out, grasping at nothing, “thing I’ve put together. It’s like I’m Dorian Gray, there’s this ideal that everyone gets to see but there’s a piece of myself rotting away somewhere hidden.”
Huh, Jonas thought, so she did do the reading for Rubin’s class. She just had him write the essay.
“Bi.”
“Wait! I’m sorry,” Carmen put a hand on his arm to stop him from getting up, but he didn’t actually move.
“Not ‘bye’, bi,” Jonas gingerly removed her hand, “as in bisexual. You could be bisexual. Or a multitude of other things…just what you’re describing could be that.”
“Oh,” Carmen's voice shook, relieved, she returned to fiddling with her hands, “that’s…a possibility, I guess. I don’t think anyone would take me seriously if that was the case. I’d still be whore,” Carmen rolled her eyes, “and my friends would still think I’m trying to get in their pants.”
“I think you need better friends.”
“Yeah,” Carmen said, looking at the photo on her vanity and back to Jonas. “Yeah.”
Jonas stood, pointing to the door, “I think I’ll go, it’s a long walk from here to my house.”
“Sure–can I ask you one more thing?”
“I’m not the spokesperson for bisexuality, Carmen,” Jonas said, hand on the door knob.
“No, where’d you get your shoes?”
“Oh,” Jonas looked down, “uh, downtown thrift store.”
“No shit?”
“Yeah,” Jonas opened and gently closed the door behind him.
“Bye,” Carmen waved at the door, suddenly the loneliest girl in the world, “good luck.”