“My tres leches brings all the boys to the yard,” Paloma sings.

  “I retract my compliment,” Farrah says. “That cultural reference is at least a decade out of date.”

  “Says the bitch who wants us to be the Supremes and Destiny’s Child,” Paloma shoots back.

  “Don’t make me put down this cake,” says Farrah. “Miss Ross and Miss Beyoncé Knowles-Carter are timeless.”

  “Mmm-hmm,” says Paloma. “More like old. Like your look.”

  I sit back and listen to them while I eat my cake. I think about how much meeting these two—and Lola—has changed my life, and is going to keep changing it for a long time to come. Family shows up in all kinds of surprising forms, and I’m lucky to have such a large one.

  I think too about the conversation I had with Lola about Shangri-La, and how it’s a safe place for us. I understand that now. I also know the world is bigger than our little paradise, and that I’ll have to venture outside of it to figure out exactly who I am. That scares me a little. But it helps knowing that I can always come back, and that Farrah and Paloma will be here, eating cake and insulting each other’s wigs, just like the Grands will be at the kitchen table in our house, drinking Nehi and playing cards.

  Not forever. Not for long enough. But for now.

  Thirty-Five

  Summer always seems to end before it’s even really begun. One night you go to bed thinking about all the things you still haven’t done, and all the time you have left to do them in, and the next morning you wake up and realize you’re going to be late for the first day of school if you don’t hurry up and get in the shower.

  The weeks following my birthday go by in a rush. Clodine comes home. She still can’t talk all that clearly, and maybe never will, but she manages to get her points across anyway. She and Millard Fillmore form a Weyward Curse Survivors club of two, and she spends a lot of time rubbing his ears and feeding him Oreos and other things he probably shouldn’t eat. At first, Hank and my father try to get her to stop, but then Starletta says, “If Livvie Comstock’s curse didn’t kill them, nothing will,” so now we let them eat whatever they want.

  One night I’m in my room, listening to the Divinyls’ Desperate, which is number 15 on Ilona’s list, when I realize that although I love it (Chrissy Amphlett is hands down my favorite singer of all time, and every song on the album is pretty much perfect), I don’t want to hear it. At least not right now, and maybe not for a long time.

  That’s when it hits me that Ilona’s twenty-one albums have been the soundtrack to my life for so long that I’ve forgotten that these are her twenty-one perfect albums. I thought that I could understand her if I understood them, but that wasn’t true. So, it’s time to stop trying.

  I still keep the albums in the box Ilona left them in. Now I put Desperate back into it, sandwiched between Nina Hagen’s Nunsexmonkrock and Prince’s Purple Rain, and I close the top. I take the box and put it in my closet. I’m not going to forget about it, and I’m not never going to listen to those albums again. There’s a ton of good music on them. But it’s time to make new music.

  Over Labor Day weekend, the lake people leave. As I stand behind the window of the Eezy-Freezy for the last time this year, I watch car after car go by. A couple of people wave, but not as many as do when the summer visitors arrive in June. Mostly, they look sad to be going back to wherever they came from. Especially the kids.

  I look for Tom Swift’s grandparents’ car, but I never see it. I know that they’re gone, though, because when I drive by their cabin later, the windows are boarded up for the winter. I haven’t heard anything from Tom since he left, and I hope he’s okay. When I stop at the Bi-Rite to pick up some milk and Nehi, Anna-Lynn is working the register. She’s had one text from Tom, saying that his parents were monitoring his phone and had cut off his social media accounts, so she doesn’t think we’ll hear much from him. But she’s not worried. “He’s tough,” she reminds me.

  We close the Eezy-Freezy the day after Labor Day, which for me is the official end to summer. As my father locks the door, I can tell he’s a little depressed.

  “This time next week, you’ll be in school and I’ll be in the garage,” he says.

  “We’re looking for a new bartender at the Shangri-La,” I say. “Toby’s decided he’d rather be an X-ray technician.”

  He pretends to consider the offer. “Would I have to wear a tank top?”

  “Farrah says you get more tips if you don’t wear any shirt at all.”

  He shakes his head. “I want to be admired for my mind,” he says, pretending to be offended. “Or at least my ability to fix a transmission.”

  Before when I thought about my senior year, I thought about it as an ending. Now it feels like a beginning. I have college visits to look forward to, and thinking about what I want to study.

  When I walk through the doors for my last first day of high school, I see someone new. When there are fewer than a hundred people in your class, you tend to notice people you’ve never seen before. But I would notice this guy anyway because, well, he’s really cute. Short. Stocky wrestler build. Dark hair. Wearing a T-shirt with the Hufflepuff crest. And he looks lost.

  “Hey,” I say. “Can I help you find something?”

  He looks at the slip of paper in his hand. “English,” he says. “With Mr. Bluh—Blus—Bluz —”

  “Blaszczak. We just call him Mr. Blah.”

  “Is he that boring?”

  “No, he’s actually really great. It’s just easier. And that’s where I’m going, so you can come with me. I’m Sam, by the way. Sam Weyward.”

  “Hatch,” he says. “Well, really it’s Owen. But (a) that’s kind of boring and (b) when I was little I thought I was hatched from an egg because I didn’t have a mom, so my dads started calling me Hatch.”

  “Dads?” I say.

  “Yeah. I have two dads. As in gay. Is that a problem?”

  “Not for me,” I say. “I’m gay too. Is that a problem?”

  He shakes his head. “I’m just a little surprised. I thought in a place this small, I would be the only one. We moved here from Minneapolis, so I wasn’t sure.”

  It takes me a second to realize what he’s said. “Gay dads and you’re gay?”

  “I know,” he says. “And one of my grandfathers is gay too, although it took him a while to figure it out. It’s like a weird family tradition.”

  I laugh. “I know all about weird family traditions.”

  “I have to admit, when my dads told me we were moving here, I kind of freaked out. Not just because of changing schools and all, but because of it being such a small town.”

  “People here are pretty nice,” I assure him. “And it’s not like they don’t know anything about gay people. We have the internet, you know. There’s even a gay bar.”

  “You’re kidding. Out here in Nowheresville?” He laughs. “Sorry. I don’t want to come off like the city boy looking down on the country people or anything. It’s just different.”

  “I’ve never lived anyplace else, so I’m used to it,” I say. “But look, you’ve already made a friend.”

  “Good point,” says Hatch. He pumps the air with a fist. “Achievement unlocked.”

  “So, where do you live?”

  “Just down the street,” he says. “The blue house with the big porch.”

  He means Lola’s house. I knew the buyers had closed and moved in, but Farrah handled everything, and I was sort of afraid to drive by and see someone else living in it, so I’ve avoided it. Now, hearing that a family of gay guys is living there, I’m unexpectedly overwhelmed by happiness.

  “I know that house,” I tell Hatch. “Which room is yours?”

  “Second floor, overlooking the yard.”

  Lola’s room.

  “Do you know who used to live there?” he asks.

  I nod. “Why?”

  “This is going to sound weird,” he says. “But every night since we moved in, around three in the morning I wake up because I think I hear someone singing. And there’s always this faint smell of perfume. Something with roses. It’s gone by morning.”

  I start humming “Whatever Lola Wants.” Hatch stops and stares at me, his mouth open, surprised. “How do you know that song? That’s what I hear.”

  “It’s a long story,” I say. “A ghost story.”

  He grins. “My favorite kind. But seriously, what is that song?”

  “How about you come over this weekend and I’ll tell you all about it?”

  “Okay,” he says. “It’s a date.”

  Now I grin. “Achievement unlocked.” I’m surprised that I’m flirting with him, and I almost apologize. But he just smiles and walks into the classroom ahead of me.

  It turns out we have a couple of classes together. And at the end of the day, when I see him at the lockers, I ask him if he’d like a ride home.

  “Uh, it’s like three blocks away,” he reminds me.

  “Yeah,” I say. “But they’re three long blocks. And you’re new. You might get lost.”

  We walk to my truck, which Hatch proclaims the coolest thing he’s ever seen, and I drive him home. It takes all of five minutes, and that’s with me taking the long way. When we get there, I pull up to the curb and park.

  “I’d invite you in,” Hatch says. “But we haven’t even really unpacked.”

  “Some other time,” I say. I’m not ready to go inside Lola’s house yet anyway. I think it needs time to get used to having new people in it. But I also think it’s going to like Hatch and his dads.

  “Well, thanks for the ride.”

  We look at each other for a long moment. I want to say a lot of things, but I don’t say any of them, because they all sound crazy. Instead, I say, “See you tomorrow.”

  Hatch smiles and kind of blushes, which is completely adorable. “See you tomorrow,” he says as he gets out.

  He walks up to the porch, turns around, and waves. I wave back, and he goes inside. As the door shuts, I look up at the windows of what I now know is his bedroom. For just a second, I think I see someone looking down at me. I blink, and the window is empty.

  I drive home, say hello to the Grands, who are playing cards and drinking Nehi as I think they’ll be doing every day between now and the end of the world, and go up to my room. I pick up my guitar, sit on the bed, and get back to work on the song I’ve been trying to finish.

  Song About a Girl

  there’s a stranger in the mirror

  someone sleeping in my bed

  whispered voices in the darkness

  something playing with my head

  i’m possessed by the ghost, by the ghost, by the ghost

  of the girl that you wish i would be

  i need an exorcism, an excision, a division

  from the one i feel living inside me

  holy water saints and jesus

  save my soul and set me free

  no more devils no more demons

  cleanse my heart and let me be

  i hear your prayers in the night, asking favors, making bargains

  saying, “make her like she was before she changed”

  i know i’m not the one you wanted, that you’re troubled and you’re haunted

  by the girl who has replaced me in our game

  wrestling with an angel

  trying to win my soul

  stitching two together

  will not make me whole

  deal with the devil

  make another roll

  meet him at the crossroads

  can’t afford the toll

  two girls living in one body

  at war, fighting to the death

  one left standing, one victorious

  one raised fist and one last breath

  It’s not quite there yet, but I know it will come. When it does, I’m going to record it as a surprise for Rhonda. Maybe I’ll do some of Percy’s other songs too. I think the world should hear them. Maybe that’s why we were brought together, so that I could help her finish what she started.

  I set the guitar aside and pick up the deck of tarot cards that Percy sent me. I remember how she had me pick one card to signify what was happening in my life. I shuffle through the deck until I find the Eight of Swords. I look at the woman bound, blindfolded, and surrounded by swords. That really is who I was just a few weeks ago. But what am I now?

  I put the Eight of Swords back and shuffle the cards. I’m not sure how it’s supposed to work, exactly, but I remember what Percy did. I cut the cards and reshuffle a couple of times, thinking about my life and everything that’s going on. Then I spread the cards out in a line on my bed.

  I run my hands over the cards, waiting for something to happen. I don’t know what, exactly. A feeling. A sign. A booming voice bellowing, “Pick that one!” in my ear. That doesn’t happen, so I decide to just choose one.

  I turn over the Eight of Rods. It shows what looks like eight branches flying through the air, each one tipped with a blossoming flower. I have no idea what the card means, so I look in the little book inside the box. “Momentum toward desired end,” it says. “Great expectations, haste. May also denote the arrows of love.”

  The image of Hatch smiling at me as he got out of my truck pops into my head, and my stomach does this funny tingling thing. I also think about all the new plans I have for my future. Does drawing the Eight of Rods mean things are happening for me? I hope so.

  I decide to do a reading for Percy next. I don’t know if tarot cards work for dead people, but I don’t see why not. I shuffle again, this time thinking about her and picturing her in my mind. I lay the cards out and try the hovering thing again, waiting for a card to speak to me.

  This time, I do feel as if I’m drawn to one in particular. I take it from the others and turn it over. An image of a sun with a face looks up at me. It’s bright and colorful and radiates warmth. The sun isn’t exactly smiling, but it looks happy.

  I consult the booklet again for the card’s meaning. “Contentment, liberation, attainment of personal or business goals.” That’s exactly what the card makes me think of. And I think it’s a perfect ending to Percy’s story. I like to think of the sun coming out and burning away the fog she’d been trapped in, turning the sea gold and lighting up the world for her as she swims into whatever’s next.

  I put the card back into the box, and set it on my bedside table. On the floor is the telephone. I pick it up, close my eyes, and dial. It rings.

  “Hello?” says a voice. It sounds like a little boy.

  I lean back against my pillow. “Tell me a story.”

  Author’s Note

  Although a work of fiction, this story was very much influenced by my own experiences and by the experiences of other people in my life. The character of Tom Swift in particular is a combination of many different trans people I have been privileged to know and love over more than thirty years. Everything that he experiences in this book has happened to someone I know.

  This does not mean that all trans people experience all the things that happen to him. There is no such thing as “the” trans experience. The experience of each individual is different. Tom’s story is a combination of stories, but ultimately it is his story. He does not represent an entire community, just one particular experience of it.

  If you are a trans person without a support system and are looking for information or assistance, please consider contacting one of the following organizations:

  Trans Lifeline

  www.translifeline.org

  877-565-8860 US

  877-330-6366 Canada

  Trans Student Educational Resources

  www.transstudent.org

  Trans Youth Equality Foundation

  www.transyouthequality.org

  About the Author

  MICHAEL THOMAS FORD is the author of numerous works for both adults and teens, including some of the earliest books about the HIV/AIDS crisis and several books about the LGBTQ community. His most recent novel, Lily, was a Tiptree Award long list title and a finalist for both the Lambda Literary Award and the Shirley Jackson Award. He also authors the Sickening Adventures series, starring some of the most popular contestants from RuPaul’s Drag Race, including Sharon Needles, Manila Luzon, and Jinkx Monsoon. He has a lot of tattoos and dogs and a beard.

  www.michaelthomasford.com

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  Copyright

  HarperTeen is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

  LOVE & OTHER CURSES. Copyright © 2019 by Michael Thomas Ford. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

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  Cover art by Jenna Stempel-Lobell based on a photograph by Christine Blackburne/MergeLeft Reps LLC

  * * *

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Ford, Michael Thomas, author.

  Title: Love & other curses / Michael Thomas Ford.

  Other titles: Love and other curses