Starry-Eyed (22 page)

Landon couldn't speak. Couldn't meet Jesse's eyes any longer.

More quietly, Jesse said, “I mean, if you want.”

It should have been the most amazing moment of Landon's whole life. This incredible guy said he wanted to be with him, the kind of guy Landon had only ever been able to dream about, somebody he'd never have thought would actually like him back. But knowing the real reason for Jesse's feelings—it ruined everything.

By now Jesse knew something was up. He just sat there, looking more and more awkward, until it became unbearable. Nothing was worse than Jesse thinking maybe Landon didn't want him. It was so wrong, so crazy, that it made Landon do something he'd intended never to do in his entire life.

It made him tell the truth.

“You don't really like me,” he blurted out. “Not really.”

“Yeah, I do.”

“No, you don't. I made you like me. I didn't mean to—I swear to God, I never meant to, I wouldn't—but this isn't something you feel. This is something I did.”

“You're not making sense.”

How could he prove it? Landon looked around at the dozen or so people who were also braving the chill outside. “Okay, watch. All these people are about to decide it's way too cold out here. Maybe they'll go in, maybe they won't, but they're all going to think it's freezing. You'll see.”

“What are you—”

“Just watch.” Landon went very still as he concentrated completely on his talent.
Thump
. Suddenly people sat up straighter, pulled the necks of their sweaters over their chins, yanked their sleeves down over their fingers. Most of them grabbed what was left of their lunches and headed for the cafeteria; a few simply started eating faster.

Jesse's eyes widened. “What just happened?”

“I made them do that.” Landon felt almost dizzy with horror. He was revealing his strangest, most shameful secret, but what other choice did he have? It was one thing to let kids in class think he was a brilliant actor. Making somebody think they wanted to be with a person they didn't want at all—that was evil, like slipping roofies into a girl's drink or something. He wasn't going there, not ever, particularly not with someone as good as Jesse. “I can make people feel what I need them to feel,” Landon said. “I always thought it was something I had to do on purpose, but apparently I can do it accidentally. Like I did with you.”

“That can't be real. It was just a breeze, or something.”

Landon pointed at Coach Pang, who was walking along the sidewalk at the perimeter of the quad. “He's going to decide he's late. I don't even know for what. But he's going to think he needs to get where he's going right away.” Almost immediately, Coach Pang jerked his head upright and started jogging toward the gym. Then Landon nodded toward a girl who was eating by herself, a lost expression on her face. “She's going to be in a
better mood. She's going to stop letting it bother her, whatever ‘it' is.” Slowly the girl began to grin as she tore open her bag of chips. “Do you see now?”

“Oh, my God.” Jesse said. “Whoa. What did you—you did that.
You did that
.”

“I only try to do good things with it, or at least things that don't matter. Like, I made Mitch leave me alone, you know? Me and some of the other kids they used to push around. I didn't let my parents hate me for being gay. Sometimes I try to cheer people up, stuff like that. And acting class. I can't act. I just do my thing.”

Jesse stared at him then. “We were acting last night. I don't mean . . . not when we . . . but during the scene.”

Landon breathed out in frustration. “Sometimes I try, yeah. Because I wish I could act for real. And with you, it seemed easy.” His throat was starting to tighten. “But I cheat. I make people think I'm awesome when I'm not. Like today? The ‘Queen Mab' speech?”

“
That's
why everyone clapped?” Jesse looked confused. “I thought they were being polite.”

“What?”

“You weren't acting at all! You just spoke the words. Totally flat. I thought maybe you were distracted. Because of, you know, everything.” Jesse's expression was changing to one of total astonishment. The truth was beginning to sink in. “But you did the—made the—you put the mind whammy on everybody. Holy crap.”

“Wait. You didn't think it was great?”

“You were
awful
. But nobody else saw it, did they?”

Landon didn't understand. Apparently he had influenced everyone's minds . . . except Jesse's.

If he hadn't bent Jesse's mind today, then maybe he hadn't done it last night, either.

Jesse began repacking his enormous lunch in a hurry. “Okay. Wow. All right. I have to think about this.”

“Please don't tell anyone,” Landon whispered.

For a moment Jesse went still, his dark eyes meeting Landon's. “I'd never do that to you. Not ever.”

That was the moment Landon knew he hadn't messed with Jesse's head at all. Whatever Jesse felt for him was real.

Except that now Jesse was walking away.

Now Jesse knew he was a freak.

. . . . .

So then everything sucked.

Landon basically hid in his room all weekend. Occasionally his phone would chime with a text and his heart would turn over, but it was usually Claire asking him how he was feeling. (He'd pretended to be sick, the only way to tactfully ditch their Saturday plans, a twisted Netflix double feature of
Little Shop of Horrors
and
Sweeney Todd.)
Once it was this girl from his psychology class asking for last week's notes.

It was never Jesse.

At least half a dozen times, Landon nearly broke down and called Claire. It would have felt so good to talk to someone about this—but what could he have said? He'd never told Claire about his talent. He'd been too scared to, and seeing Jesse's reaction to the news wasn't encouraging. No way he could stand losing Jesse and Claire both.

He could just have said that he liked someone but it wasn't working out. But Claire had already noticed his crush, so she would know he meant Jesse. If she realized something had happened between them, then Landon would basically have outed Jesse without his permission. That was incredibly not okay.

So Landon had to lie there alone and try to figure it out for himself.

Was Jesse actually immune to Landon's talent? It was almost a relief to think that his power wasn't, well, all-powerful. If only he could have figured out Jesse wasn't affected in some other way besides revealing his
secret:
Hi, I'm a total weirdo out of a science fiction movie, so maybe you should run really fast in the other direction
right now.

Sunday morning was the worst. Landon had never used his talent in church; it felt sacrilegious, the kind of thing that would get you struck by lightning. This meant a lot of people there felt about him the way his parents would've felt if he hadn't given them what Jesse had called the “mind whammy.” Every single Sunday, he could feel the rest of the congregation staring at him, their eyes boring through his back. Not everybody there knew he was gay—but enough of them did, and most of the ones who knew weren't okay with it, not by a long shot. Landon was able to keep persuading his parents, but he couldn't keep going around town convincing everyone all the time that his sexuality was just awesome. It was a bleak reminder of the limits of his talent.

But seeing what he
couldn't
do wasn't the worst part. The worst part was when his mother smiled at him, or his dad put his arm around Landon's shoulders. It was when he saw exactly what he
could
do.

That was when he had to remember they only loved him because he'd made them do it.

. . . . .

Monday's rehearsal included his death scene. Which meant he'd be staring Jesse in the face all day.
Great
.

By coming in late and spending plenty of time talking to Mrs. K, Landon managed to avoid Jesse until the rehearsal itself. He'd never felt more exposed than he did standing in the auditorium in front of hundreds of empty seats, on a bare stage, waiting for Tybalt's entrance.

And he'd thought he felt as bad as he could feel until the moment Jesse walked out, so handsome and yet so remote, and Landon couldn't even believe he'd been able to touch him, or that he'd never get the chance again.

But Jesse looked right into Landon's eyes as he spoke: “‘A word with
one of you.'”

Is he playing it the way we practiced it? Like he knows I want him and doesn't know what to do
? He is.

So Landon put all his longing and shattered hopes into his next line: “‘And but one word with one of us? Couple it with something; make it a word and a blow.'”

When the fight began, their wooden swords smashed against each other with real force. Landon stumbled back, genuinely startled, and Jesse seemed to be equally surprised . . . even as Sean Pryor moved between them as Romeo, and Jesse stabbed his sword beneath Sean's arm, against Landon's side.

The force wasn't any harder than it should have been; their stage-fighting workshops had paid off. But Landon crumpled immediately, like there were no bones left in his legs. It was as if he let his despair drag him down.

Then it was his death scene, his biggest moment in the play, and for once, Landon knew he didn't have to project anything for anyone else to feel. He didn't even have to act.

“‘A plague on both your houses!'” he said, his voice weak with strain. Though the stage directions called for Tybalt to go offstage, Mrs. K had blocked it out so that instead Jesse stood at the far corner of the fray, as if being held back by his friends. Landon forced himself to focus on Sean-as-Romeo instead. “‘They have made worms' meat of me. I have it, and soundly too. Your houses!'”

With that, Landon let his head drop back onto the floor. For the rest of the scene, he'd just lie here and try to look dead. Should be easy. He felt dead.

Tybalt challenged Romeo. Romeo, maddened with grief for his friend, struck back. Within moments, Jesse fell to the ground by Landon's side. He was so close—but Landon didn't dare open his eyes to see.

“‘O! I am Fortune's fool!'” Sean shouted.

“And scene!” Mrs. K started the applause, but then the whole class went nuts from the wings. Landon sat up, Jesse beside him, neither of them
looking at one another. “Guys, that was fantastic! Landon, with you, I expect the best. But Jesse—who knew?”

“Landon's helped me,” Jesse said quietly. “We've been practicing.”

“It shows.” Mrs. K patted Landon's shoulder. “That fight isn't just two guys acting out. It's personal. It's powerful. And frankly, it raises the bar for all the rest of you. Tybalt's reaction when Mercutio dies—you feel real pain there, real horror at the consequences of his actions.”

Landon couldn't help imagining what Jesse's face must have looked like, or wondering what emotions had been behind it.

Mrs. K finished, “Romeo, Juliet, if you don't want to get outshone, you'd better get cracking.”

Sean glared, but Claire grinned at Landon; she mouthed the word
Yay!
His heart ached to see her so guilelessly happy to see him praised in front of the class, so completely unaware of his secret misery about Jesse. She was his one true friend, the one person he never had to doubt. Landon had come out to her before anyone else, and months before he'd discovered his talent. He'd kept his talent a secret from her, but he'd always believed it was absolutely the only thing he couldn't tell Claire. Apparently he'd been wrong, because now he couldn't tell her about Jesse either—it wasn't his secret alone to share.

Jesse still sat next to him, breathing hard from the fight, not looking in Landon's direction.

But as the bell rang, Jesse said, “Want to cut?”

“Sure.”

They hung around backstage as everyone else filtered out, Mrs. K included. Finally they were alone, sitting behind the old red velvet drapes—so old the color was starting to change, worn pink in some places, stained dark in others. Landon kept rubbing a fold of the curtains with his finger, still unwilling to meet Jesse's eyes.

Landon managed to ask, “You get sad when Mercutio dies?”

“Yeah. Right then, I realize that I hurt you. That I really hurt you. None of it was real before that.” They finally looked at each other then,
and Landon knew even if he'd lost Jesse as a potential—whatever he might have been—Jesse at least didn't hate him. “You were great, by the way. You really went for it. None of the—you know.”

“I didn't do it that time.”

“I was thinking about that all weekend. The thing you do. Your—”

“Talent.” That was the least scary word for it Landon had ever been able to come up with.

“Okay. Your talent. I kept thinking about how you used it to be an actor.”

“You mean, how I cheated.”