Chapter Text
“I'm a dumb teen boy
I eat sticks and rocks and mud
I don't care about the government
And I really need a hug
I feel stupid (stupid)
Ugly (ugly)
Pretend it doesn't bother me
I'm not very strong but
I'll fuck you up if you're mean to bugs”
Mac, 8 years old.
Mac doesn't know how he managed to garner the attention of the popular kids, he only knows he can’t screw it up. It's lunch break, a time Mac usually spends by the special spot behind the appletree, digging for worms hidden just under the surface. It was raining the night before, making the ground especially soft and easy to dig around in and he knows this not just because the air smells wet but also because the heavy raindrops were draining out the sound of his parents “grown-up talk” from downstairs as he fell asleep. But Mac doesn’t have time to look for worms today, Adriano Calvanese has asked him to join the rest of the cool kids to play Star Wars. The Return of the Jedi came out almost two years ago and the kids have been obsessed ever since. The corridors are filled with friends quoting different parts of the movie or passionately fighting over who the best character is. The girls are arguing about whether Han or Luke is cuter, while the boys are still trying to recover from seeing Leia in that slave-bikini. Mac hasn’t technically seen the whole movie yet, but he doesn't tell Adriano that. He was supposed to see it on the same week as it premiered but he got chased out of the theater when some old couple ratted him out for stealing their seats. But Mac doesn't think this has to be a huge problem. He's seen the other kids play Star Wars before and it mostly seems to include waving around sticks, making “whoosh” sounds as the makeshift lightsabers touch. Mac figures it’ll be easy.
“I get to be Luke,” Adriano says before they even step out on the schoolyard.
“But you were Luke last time,” Chris, the new boy in school, protests.
It should be weird that Chris has gotten accepted into the cool gang after only living in Philadelphia for a little over two months, but it's somehow not. Chris has a three-story house with a pool and the biggest brown eyes that Mac’s ever seen. He's the type of person you can't help but instantly like, his angel-kissed pale skin and confident smile as intimidating as it is intoxicating. He also has an Atari at home, something only two other people in the class have, and Mac would give up looking for worms forever for a chance to play with it. He's seen Chris take home other boys from class and sometimes at night when the sounds from downstairs are too loud, Mac imagines what it would be like if Chris asked him instead. He thinks they would talk a lot on the way to Chris's house, about movies, and how much they hate the math teacher, and what sprinkles are the best on chocolate ice cream. He would make Chris laugh and make him to regret that he’d never hanged out with Mac before. They’d get cokes from the fridge before starting the game and they’d take sips out of it through the day, the carbonated liquid tingling on their lips. And Chris wouldn't be angry with Mac when he eventually won the game, he’d just smile, his brown eyes giving away a hint of mischief as he pinned Mac down on the floor for revenge. Then they would wrestle and Mac would-
“I only want to play if I get to be Luke,” Adriano fires back, crossing his arms in a way that everyone just knows means its final.
“You can be Han,” a girl, Keisha Mac thinks her name is, tries to suggest.
“Whatever,” Chris rolls his eyes, “I just think everybody should get a chance to be every character.”
Mac wants to agree with him, wants to give Adriano and his stupid face a piece of his mind, but he remains quiet, painfully aware of his fragile position in the group. One misstep and he's out.
“I’m Luke,” Adriano repeats, a dangerous edge to his voice, “Chris can be Han, Kesh, you’re Leia and Ronnie can be… Yoda.”
“Doesn't he die? I don’t want to be the old green dude that dies.” Mac hears himself say before it's too late to stop the words from pouring out.
The rest of the kids turn his way but thankfully only Keisha has a look of judgment on her face.
“So?” She snarls, “Yoda is smart, smarter than you at least. You should be happy you even get to play with us at all.”
She looks back at the others, her pigtails almost hitting Mac in the face as she turns around.
“I would rather be Yoda than Leia, I don’t want to be in love with Chris.”
Adriano laughs, an evil sound that makes Mac think he should play Darth Vader instead of Luke. Chris looks down at the ground and it's obvious to anyone who pays attention that the snide remark has hurt him. Something painful pokes Mac in his heart watching those brown eyes turn glossy and unsure. Maybe that's why he opens his stupid mouth again or maybe he really is as “goddamn useless” as his dad always says he is. Either way, Mac regrets the words as soon as they come out.
“I can be Leia if you want to be Yoda.”
The kids turn around to look at him again but now all of their faces match Keisha's look of judgment. Adriano is still smiling, like he’s found an angle, a crack he can pick at until Mac falls apart. Chris isn’t smiling and that's almost worse. His brows are furrowed and he's looking at Mac, really looking at him for the first time. The game nights, the walking home together, the laughter and wrestling matches, it all slips away and the sharp poking in Mac's little heart has grown into a wild stabbing.
“Leia is a girl,” Keisha says like Mac doesn't already know, like he's even more stupid than he already feels.
“Yeah, and I’m not gonna be in love with you if that's what you were thinking,” Chris agrees.
Mac doesn't see them leaving, he's too preoccupied with counting the pebble on the ground, wondering about the worms living under the pavement. The look that Chris gave him, cold and disgusted, keeps playing in his head as the week goes by. He sees it during class, in the pages of his new math book. In his half-eaten plate of food as he sits alone at lunch. In the dark ceiling when the yelling from downstairs keeps him awake. The cool kids don't ask him to play Star Wars again and Adriano takes every opportunity he gets to give Mac dirty looks, whispering out F-A-G when the teachers aren't paying attention. Mac isn't sure what it means but he doesn't like the feeling it gives him, the way it pokes his heart. He’s heard his grampa, Larry, using the word before, either during Christmas or Thanksgiving. He remembers his voice being all slurred and filled with disgust, painfully similar to the disgust on Chris’s face.
“Fags,” he’d say, “I just can’t stand them, in my day we made sure to-”
There was a lot of shouting after that and Mac remembers his older cousin Brett, the one with the lip piercing, saying something about “Empathy and home of phobia”. But how anyone can have a phobia of their own home and how that has anything to do with Mac, is beyond him.
He goes back to the special spot behind the appletree and asks the worms about it. They don’t answer and Mac wonders if its because they don't want to, or because they too don’t know why all the kids are such a-holes or what it means to be a fag. One day he’s interrupted by one of the other poor kids from class, Charlie. His hair doesn't look like its been brushed since he was born and his shirt has stains on it from yesterday's lunch. He’s a mess but he looks at Mac with interest rather than disgust.
“So you’re the one they’ve been talking about,” the strange boy conspires.
“Who?” Mac asks, instantly afraid of whatever rumor Adriano has started about him, “what did they say?”
Charlie just smiles at him, picking at the dirt trapped under his fingernail.
“The worms” he clarifies, “they told me you were cool.”