[Ricky’s dad punches Luke in the face when he comes in to take Ricky to sleep over at his house.]
“Get out,” Ricky’s father spat. “Both of you.” Luke took no time at all to oblige. Holding his stinging cheek with one hand and grabbing Ricky’s wrist with the other, he made for the door. When they were out in the yard, Ricky pulled back on his wrist: Wait. Luke let go, and watched Ricky’s black-on-charcoal silhouette fade out of eyeshot. Barely a minute later, Ricky returned, a backpack slung over one shoulder. They got in Luke’s car. Moments unmeasured in uneasy silence later, once he’d put a few blocks between them and Ricky’s father, Luke glanced up at himself in the mirror and swore, pulling over to the side of the road. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Luke chanted, grinding his teeth. “My mother’s gonna kill me when she sees that!” “They’re still at the theater, right?” Ricky asked. “We’ve still got some time.” “Yeah,” Luke said, laughing despite himself, “but I don’t think a bag of ice is gonna clear this up before they get back!” “I can do you one better than that,” Ricky said, half-grinning. Luke shot him a quizzical look. “Just trust me, okay?” And, well, Luke did. So he drove them the rest of the way to the house, as Ricky fidgeted restlessly with the zipper on his purple backpack. “Go ahead and get that bag of ice,” Ricky said, striding through the house. “We need to get the swelling down. And meet me in the bathroom.” In keeping with the night, Luke kept doing as he was told. Baggie, ice, kitchen towel. There was an orderly sort of clatter happening on the sink down the hallway. What was Ricky up to in there? Hand pressed to the freezing bag, bag pressed to the hot bruise forming beneath his left eye, Ricky shuffled half-blinkered down the hallway. Ricky stopped him at the door, looking nervous. “I need you not to tell anyone what I’m about to show you.” “Okay,” said Lucas, bewildered, and Ricky let him into his own bathroom. His sink was covered in makeup products, more tubes and sticks and jars and palettes and brushes than he had any name for. “What...?” Ricky cut him off. “This is in my bugout bag for a couple reasons. One, about once a month, somebody I know takes me to a drag show downtown, and I borrow his wigs and dresses.” He cut his eyes to Luke, waiting fiercely for some reaction. Luke blinked— well, winked anyway— and nodded. ` “And two,” Ricky said on the exhale, “I need it to cover bruises.” Luke’s mouth ran suddenly dry. “I, uh, saw that — he’d been hitting you.” “Guess I didn’t cover well enough, huh?” Ricky said with a sour quirk of the lips “No.” Luke shook his head sharply — how to explain he’d seen Ricky changing for bed and stared, slack-jawed, through the blinds at the layered blotches, of differing ages, that marred Ricky’s lithe torso? — “I’ve never seen it at school, or around the others.” Ricky nodded solemnly. “Dad avoids anything that’ll show, but sometimes he — gets reckless. And onstage —” He stopped. “Little red dresses?” Luke said; clumsy levity. Ricky chuckled. “Believe it, dahling... Sleeveless numbers, y’know, with slits up to here...” “So...” Luke paused, unsure first of what he was going to say, then of whether it should be said at all. “So you are gay.” Ricky laughed again, but this time it didn’t sound funny. “Yeah, I’m gay. Everyone knows I’m gay. I’ve never been allowed to forget it, ever, in my life.” “But your dad lets you...?” “He doesn’t like it,” Ricky said impatiently, busying himself with the brushes, “and he hits me or he yells when he sees makeup left on my eyes still. But he doesn’t want me around anyway, and I don’t want to be there either. Besides, this is what happens to people like me. We get pushed off onto someone else.” Someone else like me? Luke thought, but for once in this conversation he kept his fool mouth shut. “The key to covering a bruise, or redness, or beard shadow, is this right here.” Ricky tapped a palette: Professional Color Correct!... “Translucent tinted makeup. Comes in green, orange, yellow... You use whichever color is opposite the blemish on the color wheel. Yellow covers purple. Orange colors blue. Green covers red. Right now, your bruise is mostly purple and red, so we’re going to need mostly green and yellow...” When Ricky had finished concealing the bruise and blending the edges out, which took a frankly astonishing number of steps to Luke’s way of seeing things, Luke looked... like he needed some sleep, or a drink, or a solid meal. But not like he’d taken a fist to the face barely an hour earlier. “That’s incredible,” Luke said breathlessly. Ricky looked smug. “Simple color theory. I can do it again in the morning.”
[Sleepover stuff. A day and a half passes before the next scene.]
=====
“Look up,” Luke’s mom said sharply, and against his better judgment Luke complied. “Is that a black eye?” Luke kept his mouth shut. It only made his mother angrier. “Who did this to you? Was it Eric’s father?” A chill ran through Luke’s bones. “So you know about him.” “I know he seems very rough,” his mother said, “and if he did that to you then you will not be going back —” Luke snapped. “If you know what he does to Ricky, are you only mad now? Because it happened to me?” “Luke, what —” All at once, he was all the way to angry. Luke pointed below his left eye. “This? This is a fraction of what Ricky goes through living in that house, and I’d willingly take it a dozen times over to give Ricky a fraction of my safety —” ` “Why do you have to be at risk?” Luke’s mother cut in. “If the monster is beating Ricky, then we ought to tell the authorities —” “And what can they do for him?” Luke asked. “Take his father’s side? Or take him away from his friends, his city, his nearly-complete education? Everyone he has here that understands —” Here, Luke stumbled. “Who he is as a person?” His mother’s face crumbled, instantly, into understanding. Ricky’s words echoed in Luke’s mind: Everyone knows... “Ricky doesn’t want to report his dad. He’s been bullied at his old schools; it could happen again. And he’ll be done with school after the coming semester, and —” Luke paused, took a breath. “I’m saving money to move out, right? And I’m gonna need a roommate anyway. I can help him find a job, but I’ve looked up apartments, I’ve done the math, I’m gonna have enough to — to cover him until he contributes rent.” His mother’s face was sliding, still further, into some deeper understanding than Luke could follow this time.