When Everything Feels like the Movies by Raziel Reid Read Free Book Online

never could, being the male JonBenét Ramsey and all. Well, I always did walk around like there was a tiara on my head, and everyone wanted to choke me out …
    My grandma spent all her time cooking in the kitchen, so Tobey and I would hang out in the basement and watch Mean Girls, which I kept playing on repeat just to give my grandma something to pray about. I knew each line by heart.
    One day, right when the sales lady was all like, “You could try Sears,” Tobey looked over at me. I can’t remember exactly how it happened, I just remember being down to our underwear and humping on the couch while my grandma was upstairs baking pies of contrition for the church.
    I was pretty much in love with Tobey because he was two years older than me and had pubic hair. I always wondered how he’d end up. I’d get depressed thinking about it, as depressed as I got when wishing I were a character in one of my mom’s Jackie Collins novels. I thought Tobey would probably end up getting a girl pregnant, and he’d work at the mine, same as everyone else.
    Then, one weekend, I went to my grandma’s, and he was gone. He’d moved across town. I saw him around sometimes after that, but he always pretended like he didn’t know me. His face faded a few shades, and Tobey Field became a ghost. I thought about him a lot, though, I couldn’t help it. I hated the past, but sometimes I wanted to curl up in it because at least it was familiar and safe. Sometimes I wanted life to be like Mean Girls ; I wanted to know exactly what was going to happen right before it did.
    Tobey told me what being gay meant, as if I hadn’t downloaded Grindr when I was like, nine, and my mom gave me her old phone. He said that I was gay, but he wasn’t because he had a girlfriend.
    And then we took turns fucking each other with my Barbies.
    The first person I came out to was my grade-two teacher. Her name was Mrs Schaeffer. She took me out of class because I spontaneously broke out singing Britney Spears during a test. When she told me to “Stop that racket!” I said, “It’s not racket. It’s Britney, bitch.”
    Mrs Schaeffer didn’t know what to do with me. She had already called my mom and told her she should take me to the doctor. Mom did. The doctor prescribed Ritalin for me after diagnosing me with ADHD, even though my mom said I was just an attention whore. I never did take the Ritalin; Ray got to them before I could. Mrs Schaeffer took me out in the hall and crossed her arms, looking down at me. “Every day it’s the same thing, Jude. You insist on causing trouble for yourself.” I tried to make myself cry because tears get you out of everything. “What’s wrong with you?” she asked. I didn’t know if I was supposed to answer. She looked at me, waiting.
    What was wrong with me? Well, I never watched cartoons growing up because my mom always wanted to watch her shows: Days of Our Lives, Gossip Girl, and The Real Housewives of Orange County. What do you expect from a boy whose only role model was Blair Waldorf?
    “Well?” She asked again, crossing her arms to stop herself from hitting me. “What’s wrong with you?”
    I looked up at her and shrugged. “I’m gay.” That was what everyone else seemed to think was wrong with me.
    “How do you know that word?” she gasped.
    Mrs Schaeffer called my house that night. I heard the whole conversation because I was sitting next to my mom on the couch, helping her sew one of the broken straps of a sequined bra. Most kids had to vacuum once a week for allowance. Not me. I had to wipe down the latex.
    “Do you have anything to tell me?” Mom asked once she’d hung up the phone.
    I shook my head.
    “Something you told your teacher?”
    I shrugged.
    She looked at me for a second and then lit a cigarette. “That Mrs Schaeffer sounds like a real bitch,” she said, blowing smoke.
    I told my mom a few days later. We were standing in line at Safeway when I read a headline on the front of a