The thing about the Tennessee suburbs: they have teeth. Every day when Wren rides their bike to school they feel it, the jaws of their town about to clench shut. It always makes them pedal a little faster, feeling the autumn air tighten like that. It’s comforting and constricting in the same breath. James Takeda, Wren’s best and only friend, has just gotten the keys to an old pick-up with the fender hanging off. Both of them would beg and borrow their way to a bigger life. Wren thinks that’s why they get along so well. Layered chain necklaces, top surgery dreams, and the taste of other worlds on their tongues: that’s Wren and James.
There is no better brand of escapism for the modern genderqueer teen than theater. Cleetus Finch, their drama director, announces that he will hold a weekend retreat at his farmhouse up in Mimosa, land of the nobodies. He’ll workshop his newest play with a small, carefully chosen cast. James leans in, doused in a halo of Old Spice, and says, we have to go.
Wren can already see them nestled in those hills, waiting to seize their chance at goodness, even greatness. Wren does not tell their mother. They know what she’ll say, so they lie and say they’re staying with James for the weekend. This way, allegations won’t stick to the walls of Wren’s house like flies on rotting fruit. His wife is half his age, their mom always says. She was a student at your school when they met. He was teaching. Wren, that’s not normal.
But Wren remembers the first time they stumbled into rehearsal as a lost little freshman. Finch shared his trail mix and showed them pictures of his kids. Welcome to the family, kid.
AA
When they arrive at Finch’s beat-up old farmhouse, Wren’s chest tightens with excitement. They dream of cities and theaters flooded with light, but they’ll take anywhere other than home. Right now, anywhere happens to be a house surrounded by poplar trees and acres of dead grass. James pulls out his phone to identify the sleek bird on Finch’s roof.
“Look, Wren,” he whispers. “That’s an osprey. Pandion Haliaetus. You don’t see something like that at home very often.”
He’s gotten a lot taller these last few months, and that’s without even starting T. Bandaged fingers from a botched attempt at woodcarving, one pierced ear, warm brown eyes, a ratty hoodie that smells like boy and friend and home. Wren is overcome with the urge to tell him how much they love him, but they settle for rubbing their fist against his head.
“Birds are lame, birdbrain,” they say.
“You’re lame!”
There are six of them standing on the scraggly lawn, dragging suitcases and duffel bags and boxes full of props. Wren feels like a doomsday prepper, ready for anything barring a plague of locusts. Their dyed-red hair hides under a bucket hat that says dad friend, the one that James got them for Christmas. And there’s Finch on the front porch, wearing a corduroy jacket and a tattered baseball hat, ushering them in with his crooked smile and comforting calluses. He claps Wren’s shoulder once as they pass through the doorway.
“Hey, kid,” he says. “Up top.”
Wren grins and high-fives him; his laughter is husky and good-natured. For a moment, Wren remembers how much smaller they are than him, how his presence takes over a room.
“That was forceful! Got muscles from moving sets around?”
Wren flexes their nonexistent biceps. “Oh, yeah. Maybe I’ll forget the whole writing thing and just be a stagehand.”
“Don’t even joke,” Finch says, wide-eyed. “It’d be such a waste.”
He pulls Wren inside with the others a few seconds later, but in that liminal space there is no one in the world except the two of them.
AA
Auditions for Finch’s new show, Scenes from the End of the World, are up in the attic where his children aren’t allowed to meddle. Wren settles onto a musty bean bag to watch Eden, the shoo-in for the female lead, and James. The other cast members wait off to the side.
“I’m not going to apologize,” James says, voice flat and shoulders raised.
Eden stares off into the carefully constructed distance, the space where the scene ends and the audience begins. Her face contorts with spite. They are husband and wife, stuck in a post-apocalyptic bunker. Wren tastes metal and death in their mouth.
“No, of course not,” says Eden. “You think saving my life is enough, huh?”
“I’m not some heartless monster, Tabitha, I just…”
“You just what? Cheated on me?” Eden turns away and crosses her arms. Not acting, reacting. “Consequences don’t just go away because the world ends.”
This is far from Finch’s best work, but James plays the role like he was born for it. Eden’s vowels stretch wide and airy like they always do when she acts. Five years from now she will be one of Juilliard’s top students, studying drama and music with the all-time greats. She and Wren will be good friends after college. For now, there is only the unspoken tension between the star and the support. Eden’s sights are set on bigger things, too. Wren can’t blame her.
Finch surveys them from the doorway. Every male character that he writes is a fragment of himself. James acts accordingly. He grows bigger and rougher as he grabs Eden’s wrists, eyes like an insect’s. In that moment, he becomes a mirror twin of their teacher.
“It was the end of the world. I was scared. Wasn’t thinking right.”
Wren has taken to watching Finch watch auditions. They can read his expression; tonight he wants to crush James under his heel and call it love. You’re my kids, he once told Wren after rehearsal. Love y’all even more than my real ones, don’t tell ‘em. Everyone in the attic applauds, the noise seeping into the rafters. Finch doesn’t say anything. He loves a good dramatic pause.
“Guys, that’s what I’m talking about,” he says. “James and Eden aren’t acting emotions, they’re acting objectives. We should all take notes from them on commanding a scene.”
James grins ear to ear at the praise, but Finch holds up a hand.
“The only thing is,” Finch says, “You’re not believable as a cynical middle-aged man. You’re acting your ass off, but at a certain point it comes down to looks.”
James’s smile crumbles as soon as it is built. Everyone giggles when Finch says ass.
“I just don’t buy it,” Finch says, feigning pity. “Next to Eden, you look…flimsy.”
Eden flinches; the other edge of the sword has pressed against her at last. Despite her incredible talent, Finch never stops talking about how tall and matronly she is, so she gets the leading roles wrapped in barbed wire. He swears up and down that it’s not because she’s Black, it’s not, but those are not the hips of Ginger Rogers or Julie Andrews. He’ll make her take her cornrows out for the show; she will wear them to her first red carpet.
“Makeup could fix some of that,” Wren offers haltingly. “Lighting, too.”
“Son, I know you can’t help your situation.” Finch ignores Wren and takes James’s face in his hands, who balks and tries to push away. No such luck. Thumbs on cheekbones. “But you’re just too skinny and small. That might pan out later, but it’s not gonna pan out here.”
“Can I ask, sir,” James spits out, “what role you have in mind for me?”
“Well, you’re an actor, right?” Cleetus strokes James’s face. “The most impressive acting you can do is sticking with the girls, at least until you can make yourself look like a guy.”
“I don’t have to look like a guy.” James’s eyes flash as he tries to rip away, but Finch’s hands come around his wrists. “I am a guy.”
“I know, James, but we want this show to go places. Don’t burn bridges over one role.”
James slumps, eyes downcast as he tries to avoid Finch’s gaze. His wrists come away an angry, brutal red. The casting notes blur in front of Wren’s face.
AA
Wren knows Cleetus is not a kind man, even though he has smile lines and loves dogs. Loving something does not mean you care for it correctly. For example, he says he loves Wren but does not know what to do with them. He introduced Wren to camp and commedia d’arte, Samuel Beckett and Sondheim, but their talent outpaces him.
“Make the words sing,” he told Wren over their keyboard. “I know you can.”
If he ever asked, Wren would pull all their memories bloody and slimy from their skull: here’s the song that saved their life, here’s the vampire fanfiction that made them want to be a writer, here is the cast from falling off the auditorium catwalk, here is the moment in the mirror when they knew their body was wrong, here is their first kiss drunkenly shared with James on the local playground, here is the infectious laughter that followed right after. Here is Wren’s life for him to pick through on a plate.
No one loves Wren the way they want to be loved except James, who has just been methodically, gently ground into dust. Still, Wren likes being the favorite. Being invincible. But Wren does not at all like how Finch’s fingers brushed James’s jaw in the attic. They dial their mother’s phone number but do not press “call”. They don’t want to hear the betrayal and smugness thick in her voice. Maybe this fantasy of being known wasn’t wise after all.
After dinner, Wren finds James shivering in the bed of his truck.
“Jamie, you need gloves if you’re gonna be out here,” Wren says before they swing over the side and snuggle up beside him. He doesn’t soften into them like usual.
“Rather be out here than in there,” James whispers. “I’m never getting a male role. Ever.”
Twelve years from now, James Takeda has been on four magazine covers and cast as a main role in the new Star Wars trilogy. He is the proud father of two chubby, perfect baby girls, and he has long forgotten how Finch’s calluses felt against his skin. Now, though, Wren sinks.
“You’re out to everyone,” Wren says. “We’re out to everyone.”
“He doesn’t care about us.” James burrows further into his jacket. “Didn’t you hear what happened with Eden last week?”
When Wren shakes their head, James sighs and turns his face away.
“He invited Eden to get dinner after rehearsal last month,” James murmurs. “Alone. His own wife is barely older than us. Where is she, by the way? Don’t you think that’s a little strange?”
“That’s bullshit,” Wren says, not quite believing their own words.
“The facts are right there, Wren.” James’s eyes looked sunken in the darkness.
“He bought us ice cream after competitions. He let us nap in the back room.”
James just wraps his arm around Wren and huffs out a long breath through his nose.
AA
Wren’s laptop screen lights up the darkness as they fix Finch’s mistakes, meticulous and careful not to insert themself into the narrative. “Following directions is one of the most important things a writer can do,” Finch once told them. They took it to heart.
Wren can’t wait to show Finch how well they’ve healed his work. It’s 2 A.M., shadows long and oil-slick across the hallway. They stumble towards Finch’s room. He’s probably not even awake, right? Wren might be dreaming, sleepwalking even. At any moment they’ll wake up, slumped over their laptop and—
Warm light trickles out from the inside, and a figure appears in the hallway. It’s James, curled in on himself. He’s in nothing but his binder and a pair of pineapple-print boxers, his pants clutched to his chest. He looks up, sees them standing there—his face crumples as Wren stumbles over to him.
Wren walks him to the nearest door and immediately locks it, hands shaking, eyes blurring over with tears and exhaustion. The laundry room’s lights blare on and now Wren can see the tear tracks on James’s face and the cut on his lip, the bruise on his neck.
“I fought him a little,” James rasps, “but it doesn’t matter in the end.”
“How long has this been happening?”
“Long enough.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Wren knows it’s the wrong thing to say as soon as it comes out of their mouth, but James just cracks a wry, sad smile.
“Because men don’t get raped, dumbass,” James says, and promptly bursts into tears.
They both spend the night huddled on the laundry room floor amongst piles of clean linens. James lets Wren stroke the bridge of his nose until he’s fast asleep. The excitement in his eyes when Finch announced his retreat hadn’t been a ruse. It was all real. Or maybe Wren just didn’t want to see the warning signs.
Wren’s guilt drags them sleepless into the woods. They won’t find any answers by scrolling on social media, no matter how hard they search for them. It’s terrifying, walking alone at night like this, but it’s a fear that can be labeled and tamed and controlled; this is nothing like the fear that a man can instill. That kind of terror takes root and chokes life from the inside out.
Wren will grow up with a lot of trust issues. The paranoia will be so bad that their tattooed teddy bear of a partner will wake them up from night terrors, holding them as they shake. What starts as an attempt to control this fear ends up becoming a successful career writing horror movies. Wren excels at controlling tension in an audience. It started here, when they want nothing more than to make Finch feel this kind of bottomless dread.
And they will.
AA
It’s easy to steal Finch’s phone. Wren comes back from the woods with a plan and a stomach full of rage. James’s knuckles are white as he clenches his pillow, but he wants justice more than he wants a home and a family here.
Wren bypasses Finch’s lockscreen with ease—his password is ‘Nora’, his daughter’s name—and they find exactly what they need. The camera is always hidden, perched on his desk in an innocuous place, and the subject is mostly James. Sometimes it’s Wren. As sick as it sounds, some of the most startling videos are the ones where Finch is bent over Wren, looking at their screen and guiding them through the writing process. Nothing sexual about it. Just power, pure and simple.
After James sends the evidence to Wren and deletes the chat history, he lets out a deflating, almost hopeless breath.
“Where do we go now?” James asks.
“Anywhere is better than here,” Wren says. “We could go to the police, but only if that’s what you want. Or there’s a Waffle House a couple of miles from here. Whatever you need.”
Wren throws their stuff in the backseat and queues their favorite album, the one about angels without haloes and mass queer exodus. They mumble the lyrics under their breath as James puts the car in reverse. Cleetus Finch stands on the front porch in his pajamas, hair disheveled, mouthing get back inside like he has the right. Neither of them will ever get a real confrontation or an explanation. Disobeying this man, the closest thing they ever had to a father, used to be Wren’s worst fear.
But tonight is not like other nights.
Tonight Wren rolls down the window and screams, “Fuck you forever!”
“Yeah!” James yells, voice cracking as he shifts the truck into drive. “Fuck you for-fucking-ever!”
In the end, this is a love story. This is James and Wren and Wren and James, tangled up as they laugh at YouTube videos and knock their knees together. Wren and James, painting each other’s nails, wiping each other’s tears, wanting, sharing, feeling. James and Wren, screaming for each other in their sleep for years to come. One day, James Takeda will become a household name. One day, they will both sit in the Tennessee hills and remember everything in silence. Peace is hard to come by for a long, long time, but one day, Wren will write the end of this man.
For now, they get the hell out and let the highway swallow them whole.
MJ Brown
Alloy 