For Lise. She said lambs. She said performance anxiety. I said, way overdue for baby!sync. Happy belated birthdayfic.

 

In Mississippi, Lance is pretty cool. But already he can tell that Florida might have its own rules about that kind of thing. They all five have lunch together, without his mom. Lance knows an audition, the real audition, when he sees one, and he thinks to himself, be funny. Not too funny. Don't be scared. Don't be too giggly or girly. Don't want it too much. Just be cool.

They're just a bunch of music geeks, he tells himself. He only joined Showstoppers because he'd been singing in the church choir anyway, and in seventh grade when his voice changed and he couldn't take computers fifth period because it interfered with Algebra, it was either that or art. Lance might not have been on the football team but he wasn't about to take art. He reminds himself that he's the junior class vice president, for crying out loud. He's almost for sure going to get into Emory or Tulane or Vanderbilt if he wants, probably all three. He's the assistant business manager for his church youth group and secretary of the Honor Society. Then he reminds himself to never mention any of these things to anyone ever again if he can help it.

Justin is the only one younger than Lance and doesn't look much different from the ninth graders at his school. He swaggers like the boys who play JV a year early, the kind that wave around keys to trucks they only get to drive when their daddy is out of town on business. JC passes him the ketchup and smiles quietly. Be quiet, Lance reminds himself. People always think you've done more if you just stay quiet. But Joey looks a little like the guy who played Gene Kelly's role in their On the Town number last year, the one who was always kind of snotty to Lance, and Chris says, right in front of Lance like he's not even there, "He's too pretty, but I guess singing bass is kind of manly. Maybe he'll grow into it."

So Lance might have been a little annoyed with these guys already, even if his mom hadn't told him that Justin and JC were kind of famous, from that TV show Stacy used to watch after school sometimes. His mom talked a lot about Annette Funicello on the drive over and Lance tried to practice frowning and sitting still because he isn't sure if the way they are supposed to sing for Attaché is grown-up enough for an actual band. His mom had spent the flight being calm and concerned but in the rental car she got a little giddy. "It's like the Beatles, honey. Which one would you be if you were a Beatle?"

Lance wondered if there was a nervous one. "There are only four, mom," Lance said.

"Yeah honey, but they want a fifth."

Lance isn't quite sure what they want, not really. These guys, they live and breathe music and singing and harmony and Lance loves to sing but not like that. He wonders what his life would look like if all he did every day was sing. No other extracurriculars. He'd probably still have to do homework, though. Which is okay, because even though he'd never admit it, he doesn't mind so much. He hates being in class, but homework is better than being called on and not knowing the answer.

What he wants, he thinks, is to be famous. To not have the slightest possibility of getting stuck in Clinton like everyone else he knows probably will, marrying other kids they've known since kindergarten. They'll all get houses with two-car garages and go to their mommas' for Sunday dinner. It's not bad, exactly. It's just not what he wants. He wants somewhere where all the little parts of his life that feel spiky where they should be smooth don't make him so alone in the middle of the night. He wants too much, he thinks sometimes, especially on days when kids call him names he has to pretend not to hear. It's too much to want to have lots of money and for people to be afraid to whisper about him and to also think he'll have friends and his family who all still love him, too.

And even if these guys don't get all that, he thinks maybe at least one or two of them've got something they want to smooth out, too. They want to be famous and it's not like Lance thinks without them he'll never have a chance, but here's a chance, here's one waiting for him and if he's not too pretty and they like his voice maybe he won't be so alone in wanting too much.

*

"You were seven months old when Lennon died," his mom says, fixing his collar in the parking lot. He feels real bad about asking her to wait out there but no way is she coming inside. "I remember because it was the first time you ever pulled yourself up to stand, that day. I was in the living room watching the news and I looked over and you were hangin' on the end of the couch with big wet eyes, like you knew. Somehow you knew." Lance has heard the story, she's told it before. Once when Grandpa huffed out during Sunday dinner, she sat on the porch swing smoking a cigarette and told him she liked the Beatles a lot. A lot more than her folks would have approved of cause good Baptist girls don't listen to that kind of music, so she'd gone to her friend Marylou's after school to listen to the 45s. "You listen to what you want to, honey," she said, stubbing out the butt and swiping hair from her eyes. He remembers how pretty she was with hair all dark and wispy, like some kind of fairytale mom. "You listen to what you want, and you do what you want, and even if you think it's not what I'd like for you, you know that I'm never gonna stay mad long, okay?"

There's a guy who dropped out of choir because he said it was just for girls with braces and boys who worked the counter at McCoy's over the summer instead of roofing. He said he wasn't a fag and the rest should get out while they still could, cause there was a name and a place for boys like that. Lance isn't sure but he thinks maybe wherever it is, whatever they call him, it can't be worse than never getting out of Mississippi.

*

Lance fingers the edge of the table where the plastic's chipped and sharp and decides he is glad his mom always taught him to scrub his fingernails clean in the morning and not at night. Somehow they always get grimy if he does it before bed, and he wants to be thinking about the music and not his dirty nails. He wants to get this right. He thinks it's like how you flip a coin to decide something because maybe you don't really care but when it comes down heads instead of tails it's not at all what you wanted.

It's like that, just that fast, he thought Mississippi was good enough for now and he'd get out to go to college and maybe then he'd find a new life where all the pieces fit together and he was for-real happy, not yearbook-picture happy, and he'd come home for Christmas in a fancy car. He thought all that was going to be enough, just knowing that he'd get out soon enough, but now he's here and he's glad his fingernails are clean because he thinks if has to wait two more years it will be like drowning over and over again, like when his cousin Billy held his head underwater at the pool, let him up every minute or so to breathe and then pushed him back down.

He jumps when Justin pops his head into the hall, nicking his thumb on the broken plastic. "How ya doin'?" Justin says, and Lance grins, not too wide, because he's gotta stay cool, but Justin's smiling so Lance doesn't think he has to pretend to be all bored or anything. He's definitely not bored. Justin looks back over his shoulder and then closes the door behind him, walks toward Lance.

"They're almost ready, I think. Hurry up and wait, you gotta get used to that doing this kind of stuff." Justin doesn't sound fourteen even if his voice is kind of high and probably already changed.

Lance says, "Sure," and kicks at the carpet. Hurry up and wait. As long as he doesn't have to do it in Mississippi, Lance thinks he could get used to that.

"Is that," Justin starts, and then kind of punches Lance's shoulder lightly. "You got anything else in your bag?"

"Anything else?"

"To wear," Justin says, and Lance feels the blood drain from his neck.

He feels ghostly and looks down at his striped polo shirt. It's new, his mom just bought it the day before and oh lord he let his mother dress him and what was he thinking, he can't come to something like this in a shirt his mother picked out for him, even if when she'd pulled it off the rack he'd thought it was okay. It's not okay, he can tell, and Justin frowns a little like he's realized that wasn't the nicest thing to say. "Uh," Lance says. "I don't, my bag's at the hotel. I'm sorry, I know, I --"

Justin grabs his arm and pulls him down the hall, away from the room where Lou and the other guys are hurrying up and waiting and what, where are they going, who is this boy and where is he taking Lance. Justin rounds the corner and pushes them into a closet. No, it's a bathroom. It's a closet bathroom that maybe also doubles as the janitor's office. Lance spent seven minutes in heaven in Janie's bathroom at her party last month and he doesn't know why he's thinking about that now, especially because he didn't even like it and mostly they just talked about what other people had done in there before them.

"Here," Justin says, and then Justin is pulling his nylon windbreaker and his shirt off. He's wearing another shirt, under that shirt, but when he pulls the t-shirt off the long-sleeved longjohn shirt he's wearing underneath comes up too and Lance wishes he could stop thinking the word shirt but the only other word in his head is skin, skins and shirts, except he doesn't even like basketball and doesn't usually play if he doesn't have to. Shirts and skins and Justin is standing in front of him with one of his shirts in his outstretched arms and the other still tugged up around his chest. "Here," he says again, thrusting the simple blue t-shirt at Lance. "Wear this instead. It's my lucky shirt, anyway. So." Lance stares at his shoes for a minute and Justin shuffles, yanks the shirt back over his stomach, pushes his hands toward Lance again. "It's totally okay, it's clean and all."

Lance wants to say something but he thinks his voice might crack so he just pulls his polo shirt off fast and drops it on the floor because he can't hold it and take the other one from Justin and put that on all at the same time. "Um, thanks," he says when he can breathe again. Just stay cool, he thinks.

Justin smiles and his teeth are so white that Lance blinks reflexively. "Between you and me," Justin says, and Lance leans forward cause it's a secret and even if they're in the janitor's office you lean in to let someone whisper a secret in your ear. Justin puts his hand on Lance's shoulder and says, not quietly at all, "They really want to pick you already."

"But," Lance sputters. "But. They haven't even heard me sing yet." He doesn't understand how there really isn't anyone between Orlando and Mississippi who wanted this first, or is better, or knows not to wear stupid shirts to important auditions.

Justin shrugs and lets go. "You can sing, right?" Lance nods. "You'll be fine. Just, whattya gonna sing? Sing something good and you'll be fine."

"It's, they said the Star-Spangled Banner and something else, so the something else is this song we did last year when we went to New York, Luck Be a Lady?" Justin doesn't smile and Lance thinks he's never going to get out of Mississippi, he can't even pick any of the right things and the kind of people who get out of Mississippi and get to live their own lives where things fit together are people who know what to sing and what to wear and he should maybe leave right now, he should at least get out of the janitor's office before someone actually needs to clean something and they're in the way. He bends down and snags his other shirt and goes back into the hallway, quiet.

Justin follows him, kind of tagging at his heels and Lance thinks, he can't even drive yet, he's just a kid. He was on a stupid cancelled show and his shirt smells like some weird detergent and there are other ways out of Mississippi. Justin grabs his elbow and Lance spins around. "What?" he says. Justin's put the windbreaker back on and it hangs on his shoulders. "What? That's what I practiced, that's what I'm gonna sing, and if y'all really need me that bad it'll be good enough or it won't."

"Lance," Justin says, like they've known each other forever already, and Lance backs up and his heels hit the wall. Justin looks right at him. "You're gonna do good," he says, and he leans in like he's checking to make sure Lance doesn't have something in his eye, except why would he check for that, and then Justin's mouth lands on the corner of Lance's lips.

It's fast, it's so fast, not even seven seconds or time to call heads or tails but Lance knows, he knows knows knows that he has to get out Mississippi and if there are other ways to do that he doesn't care. He likes this way. He wants this.

Justin says, "Don't run away yet, 'kay?" and Lance nods weakly and then Justin's hand, Justin's hand is up near Lance's throat and he swallows really loudly and Justin fingers the cross hanging around Lance's neck. "You sing in church?" Justin asks.

Lance clears his throat and manages, "Yeah."

"You should, maybe. Sing somethin' simple," Justin says. "Somethin' from church, and the Star-Spangled Banner, and just don't give them a reason not to pick you and you're in."

Justin steps back and it feels like a breeze. Lance pushes off the wall and walks slowly, steadily, real cool, down to the room where everybody's waiting. Justin sits at the table with Lou and the other guys and Chris frowns a little and squints at Lance but then JC claps his hands and says, "Good, let's start."

Lance looks around and there's no one with a piano and he's nervous, he's actually really really nervous standing there in Justin's shirt with nothing to sing. "What are you going to do, Lance?" Lou asks, craning his neck forward and stretching out Lance's name like it has extra letters in it.

"Um," Lance says, sweat on his palms. "I'm gonna sing. Um." He looks at Justin and Justin's got his hand up by his neck, tugging on his own crucifix. "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, I think," he says. "If that's okay?"

"That's good," Justin says, and Lou frowns a little but nods. It's all over fast, maybe too fast, and he wipes his hands on his shirt, Justin's shirt, and smiles like it's for a class picture, and Justin nods.

There's a long, long pause where Lance decides every decision he's made that day was completely wrong, especially the part in the hall with Justin, and then Lou says, "Okay." And that's not enough and Lance teeters, tugging at the hem of the shirt, and Lou says, "Okay, good. Good job, kid," and Lance thinks if he never calls a coin toss right again he won't care because this was the one that mattered.

Justin lets out a little whoop and JC claps again and Lance grins for real. There's a place for boys like him, and maybe it's here. It's here.

 

END.

 

Credits: Sandys, Jamie and Ray. West Side Story and David Drake's The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me.

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