TRIAL AND ERROR | short stories + snippets

Caleb steals the popcorn from Nicolás's hand with his mouth like an animal and Nicolás doesn't even react. They're bingeing the second series of RuPaul's Drag Race that they taped when it originally aired. Caleb has his hairline tapered again, curls braided into neat cornrows along his scalp.

Daisy has stood in the doorway for the past five minutes. 'D'you wanna sit?' Nicolás glances at her, assuming her feet must be aching in her lace-up heels.

She raises an eyebrow. 'Do I want to spend Friday night watching RuPaul's Drag Race for the millionth time with you two? No.' She flips her cell open to check for messages from her mates who are apparently late. 'I'm going to the club.'

Caleb scoffs. 'Enjoy that.'

'I will.'

She glares at the side of his head. All her mates passed their A-levels—they deserve to celebrate. And since they've all had summer jobs, they can actually afford to.

Though she has already decided to be the bigger person, her voice swells out of her mouth. 'What the fuck is that meant to mean anyway? I'd've reckoned T would've made you less of a bitch but you've been in a strop¹ all summer.'

Her phone pings and she flips it open, pushing off the living room doorway. 'Laters,' she says, irritation evaporated. 'If mums start fighting about money, come down. I'll buy you a drink too.'

The front door opens and shuts. Dita Von Teese is stoic and gorgeous on the judges panel as she watches the queens do their best burlesque for the main challenge of the episode but Caleb can't even appreciate her condemnatory stare.

He frowns at the bowl of popcorn in his lap. 'That's true, innit?' Nicolás freezes, thinking he's asking about whether it's true that his mums argue about money, but Caleb clarifies. 'I have been in a strop all summer. I'm sorry.'

'Oh, that's alright.' Nicolás tosses the cushion between them to the floor with the dozen other decorative cushions to shuffle closer to Caleb. He loops an arm over his shoulder, tucks him into his side. 'I love you. You're my best mate; I can deal with a strop or two. Sides, you being moody ain't nowt new.'

Caleb tries to force himself to scowl but his lips twitch. The act doesn't stay up for long and he grins, dropping his head on his friend's shoulder. 'Now that she's gone, can I put makeup on you?'

Daisy leaving the house for several hours means it's prime time to pillage her room. She keeps it so messy that she won't notice if he returns things to the wrong places.

'Why?' Nicolás whines. 'Do it on yourself.'

'I can't do it on myself.'

'Why not?'

'I...' Caleb is a boy. Nicolás is also a boy but it's different because Nicolás can be girly and still be a boy but if Caleb is girly then he's a girl. It's just his internalised compulsory cis-sexuality that wants him to be feminine. '... Don't have the face for it.'

'You always poke me in the eye. I'm gonna go blind one day.' When Caleb doesn't smile, Nicolás surrenders. 'Alright then. Could you, erm, pluck my eyebrows while you're at it?'

This only deepens Caleb's frown. 'But that's permanent.'

'Not really. Just thought I'd give it a go. I always like groomed eyebrows on other people so why not myself?'

But that's not how that works. Yourself and other people are different things. Caleb likes the way Daisy looks or how his mums look or how his peers at school look but that doesn't mean he can walk around in a skirt. He likes how the queens on the telly look but he can't walk around with rhinestones and painted nails.

But what if he did? What if he did and nobody cared? Some people would, naturally, but not anyone close to him.

He never had a Barbie but he had a Nicolás and Caleb has put him in dresses since they were kids and, though the boy has no idea how to walk even in plastic kitten heels and always ruins his vision, no one important ever cared. No one ever said they were dressing the wrong way around when Caleb ran about as a knight. He only got disciplined when he broke the clay planters outside while pretending they were evil princes he had to slay.

Notes

1. Strop: Bad mood/tantrum