Kens Read online

  But Ken Hilton’s lips spread into a smile as he looks the new kid up and down with a day-drunk flicker of his glossy blue eyes. “You’re hot,” he says. “And not just because you’re holding eight carats.”

  DON’T EAT

  Three Kens walk up to a lunch counter…

  A lunch lady scurries to the back to retrieve the caviar Ken Hilton has specially ordered. Ken Roberts has already purged three bowls of chili and is back for more. Another lunch lady plops a steaming heap of chili onto Ken Carson’s tray and warns him it’s hot. But he assumes she’s calling him hot. He puts a huge spoonful in his mouth and his eyes well with tears.

  Tommy, Allan and Tutti are waiting in line behind the Kens. Tutti hurries to the counter and passes Ken Carson a napkin.

  Ken Carson spits out the burning mouthful of chili and passes the napkin back to her.

  “Thanks, dude.” He smiles. A veneer literally sparkles.

  Ken Roberts looks over at them and gasps. “Your outfit is savage as fuck,” he says, lifting his iPhone to take a photo for the “Look of the Day” section on SoFamous. It’s almost always a Ken.

  Tommy momentarily thinks Ken Roberts is talking to him, but of course not; Tommy can’t afford the designer stores that plaster the Kens’ feeds. He shops at Zara for knock-offs. Tutti comforts him by saying it’s very Duchess of Cambridge.

  “So trust-fund hipster,” Ken Roberts tells a bewildered Allan, who looks behind him to see who Ken Roberts is talking to.

  Allan is wearing a graphic tee that says “Books Make Me Happy, You Not So Much” tucked into brown corduroy pants that have been cut rather jaggedly at the bottom to show off a few inches of his bright blue dinosaur-print socks. Allan is one of the few students at Willows High to so openly defy the Kens’ consumer culture.

  The Kens stride off to the table at the center of the cafeteria where they sit with the Barks football players and the cheer squad.

  Ken Hilton is the most popular Ken because his first nose was most people’s third nose, but Ken Carson has all the boys dangling from his impressive foreskin. He’s taller, broader and a stronger football player. The jocks at Willows High have a particular respect for all the Kens, whom they treat like otherworldly creatures. Mostly, they’re in awe because the Kens have control of the girls in a way the jocks only do when they’ve spiked their drinks.

  Ken Roberts is a feminist icon because he hasn’t digested food since the second grade. Plus, Harry Styles DM’d him (and, according to Ken Roberts, DP’d him with Ken Carson). His skinny twink figure can rock runway fashion better than anyone. The shallow girls of Willows High worship him.

  Tutti holds up the napkin filled with Ken Carson’s mouthful of food.

  “I think it’s love,” she says.

  “Are you still holding that?” Allan asks.

  Tutti ditches the napkin in the trash bin for her own self-respect. They get their lunch and go over to their usual table in the corner of the caf, occasionally co-inhabited with random art freaks.

  “Hey, Tommy,” Tutti says as she sits across from him and Allan. “I need a male model for a drag tutorial I’m doing. Any plans after school?”

  Tommy is distracted by Blaine entering the cafeteria. That’s the name of the newest product at Willows High, which Tommy learned in Spanish class. Francie and fellow cheerleader Midge were gossiping about meeting him. Unfortunately, Tommy didn’t have any morning classes with Blaine.

  Allan follows Tommy’s line of vision. He waves his hand in front of Tommy’s face. “Earth to Tommy,” he says.

  “I hear he drives a Harley.” Tutti gives Blaine a once-over. “Guys on motorcycles are so sexy.” She turns back to Tommy. “So what do you say? If you can’t, then I’m making Allan do it.”

  “Kill me,” Allan says. “Wait, I’m working tonight. Sorry, Toots!”

  Allan works at Taco Accessory in the food court at Willows Mall. Tommy doesn’t get it, but Allan won’t take money from his parents. They tried to buy him a BMW for his birthday, but he refused it and bought a beat-up secondhand car with his savings instead. He wants to pave his own way or something equally esoteric. His whole family is weird. They may live up in The Hills but they’re total hippies. His mom only gets Botox once a year.

  “Don’t feed the model,” Tommy finally answers Tutti, pushing his tray of chili across the table. He keeps one eye on Blaine, who is leaning against the cafeteria counter waiting for the lunch lady to dish out his chili. Tommy isn’t the only one who’s noticed him.

  Ken Hilton rises from his spot at the center table and struts to the counter. His arm grazes Blaine’s leather jacket and he sticks out his butt. Ken Hilton has a permanent arch in his lower back. He makes his plastic surgeon father experiment on him all the time. He has, like, no ribs.

  Over at the center table, Brad cracks his knuckles as he watches Ken Hilton lean over Blaine to seductively grab a spoon. Tommy can’t help but notice.

  Ken Hilton turns and walks back to his table in a perfectly straight line, one leg in front of the other, fully aware that Blaine is watching.

  Brad nudges his buddy Todd, who is cute but stupid in a varsity jacket. Linebacker of the Barks. They jump up from the table and make their way over to Blaine.

  Todd puts his finger in Blaine’s chili and swirls it around. He licks his finger. “This stuff runs right through me, man. You ever have that problem?”

  “This town looks like it rains Pepto-Bismol,” Blaine says. “How could anyone have that problem?”

  “You calling him a liar?” Brad shoves Blaine’s chest, knocking his bowl of chili onto the floor.

  “Heathens.” Blaine takes a deep breath through his nose. He’s still inhaling when Brad puts him in a headlock, pushing him to his knees while Todd lifts his leg and farts in his face.

  “Yep,” Todd says. “That was a wet one.”

  Brad lets go and high-fives Todd. They start barking, and once they get going, all the Barks at the center table join in. Soon the whole cafeteria is barking.

  The cafeteria instantly shuts the fuck up when Blaine pulls a gun out of his leather jacket and points it at Brad and Todd. They put up their hands.

  “Shit, man,” Brad says. “We’re sorry. We didn’t realize you’re Muslim!”

  “I’m a colonial.” Blaine gives them a dirty look. He pulls the trigger.

  The gun clicks.

  “Relax, ladies.” Blaine presses the barrel to the side of his head and pulls the trigger. The gun clicks again. “It’s a camera,” he says. “Captures the look on a person’s face when they think it’s about to be blown off.”

  Blaine taps the gun on Todd’s head.

  “See,” he says. “As light as you.”

  Tommy watches as Blaine tucks the camera gun in his jacket, steps over his spilled lunch and casually strolls out of the cafeteria.

  “Fake or not,” he hears Allan muttering next to him. “That just isn’t appropriate in today’s climate.”

  BEAT THE FACE

  The makeup photos Tutti posts on Instagram have a large following. She’s really good. Tommy is her frequent test-subject. They’re up in her room, Tommy sitting in front of a mirror surrounded by small lightbulbs. A printed photo of Tommy and Tutti fooling around with the Face Swap app is tucked into the frame.

  The drag look Tutti is doing on him for her latest shoot is in honor of Ken Hilton, who will be performing as his drag alter ego, Sandy Hooker, at the Willows High homecoming game tomorrow afternoon.

  Ads for the game are spammed all over SoFamous. While Tutti is beating his face, Tommy scrolls through the Tumblr. The Kens know all. They’re illuminated with secrets and forbidden knowledge (celebrity dick sizes, Lucky Blue Smith’s iCloud password, et cetera).

  “Play the song,” Tutti tells Tommy. “Maybe I’ll edit it in as background music on this Story.”

  “Watch Ken Hilton sue you for copyright,” Tommy says.

  “That’d be extra.” Tutti reaches over and presses Play on
Tommy’s phone.

  Sandy Hooker dropped a single. It’s called “Hunty.” Ken Hilton sings the lines with a sultry voice filtered through heavy Auto-Tune over a pounding house beat.

  They call me hunty / You give I like to get / Don’t call me cunty / When I be making you wet / They call me hunty / I can be so sweet / But I mix my honey / With shit from the street

  Ken Hilton’s father, Dr. Hilton, bought him a music video production for his second sweet-sixteen birthday party. (Terrified of becoming an aging twink, he decided to be sixteen for another year.) In the video Ken Hilton is wearing nothing but pink dental floss.

  The track plays and Tommy keeps scrolling, landing on an item about Willows High’s newest student. There’s a photo of Blaine making a goofy face for the camera, sticking out his tongue, bulging his eyes. It’s like he’s purposely trying to make himself look as bad as possible, which is unprecedented at Willows High, where everyone tries to be as perfect as the Kens. If you’re lucky enough to have your photo taken in the hall and posted to SoFamous, you’re usually giving red carpet realness.

  The only text in the post is, “Remember school rules, gurs: a Ken goes first. Even if it is ISIS! xo.”

  Tutti reads the post over Tommy’s shoulder.

  “I wonder what his story is,” she says. “He’s so mysterious.”

  When Blaine pulled the camera gun, Tommy took in Ken Hilton’s reaction: he was shocked. And it isn’t easy to shock Ken Hilton, who lives to provoke. He brought the contents of his first colonic in a jar for show and tell as a kid. Tommy can tell Blaine has piqued Ken Hilton’s curiosity, and when Ken Hilton wants something, he bends the universe until it brings it to him on a pink slide.

  Tutti lifts a makeup brush to Tommy’s nose. He looks up from his phone and examines his reflection in her mirror. “Even with contour my nose is so big,” he says. “It’s the bane of my existence.”

  “Your nose is adorable. It has character.”

  “It has several.”

  “You have to stop comparing yourself to the Kens. You know they’re totally manufactured. The Bride of Wildenstein is their spirit animal.”

  Tommy touches the scar on his cheek from summer camp with Ken Hilton. It has faded over the years, but there’s a small patch of skin that looks as fine as wrinkled tissue paper.

  “I have just the foundation.” Tutti puts her hand on his shoulder and gives it a squeeze.

  “Ken Hilton’s dead eyes are definitely set on Blaine,” Tommy says. “His first day at Willows High and he’s already been featured on SoFamous. They’ve never given me a headline.”

  “You can find me in the archive under ‘Two-Ton Tutti.’ It’s not that glamorous.”

  “Just because the Kens say your pink scale should be permanently set to 110 pounds doesn’t mean everyone has to obey,” Tommy says.

  He watches Tutti covering his scar. “I just can’t help but feel like they’re ignoring me on purpose.”

  In first grade, when Tommy and Ken Hilton were friends, he’d always have to play at Ken Hilton’s house. Ken Hilton couldn’t leave The Hills because the Mainland made him itchy. They’d have a lot of fun hiding Ken Hilton’s mom’s pill bottles around the house and watching her throw cushions off the couch as she looked for them, desperate to re-up. Barbara Hilton is a pilled-out Willows landmark. Imagine all of the Restylane and Juvéderm in the faces of Bravo’s Real Housewives being molded into a human being and you get Barbie Hilton. She’s posted on SoFamous every time she gets another DUI, is arrested for public intoxication/battery of a police officer or checks in to rehab. So, daily.

  Ken Hilton was always really advanced. He’d mock Tommy when Tommy was afraid to try the pills they were hiding from Barbie, and it had been his idea that he and Tommy should finally come out together in tagged Facebook posts.

  But then, a day earlier than planned, Ken Hilton did it without him. He wrote a post and didn’t tag Tommy. It went viral. He got so much attention for it. Everyone called him brave. A real pioneer.

  Tommy was hurt and confused, especially when Ken Hilton ignored him on the playground. He was too busy signing autographs from his adoring public.

  The next day, Tommy decided to come out alone. When he came down for breakfast that morning, his mom put her hand on her hip and tilted her head.

  “Are you jealous of all the attention your friend is getting?” she asked.

  “No!” Tommy insisted. “I really am gay!”

  “Oh, Tommy.” His mom waved him off. “You wish.”

  Ken Hilton’s coming-out post got thousands of Likes. Tommy’s only got one—from the class “fire-crotch,” as Ken Hilton called him during his ritualistic teasing. Allan.

  That summer Tommy and Ken Hilton went to camp together, and after that, it was as if Tommy didn’t exist in Ken Hilton’s world. To this day, the Kens don’t even write rumors about him on SoFamous, which they do for most people when they’re bored. The Kens never claimed to be good people—or, in fact, to be people at all—but the meanest thing they’ve ever done is ignore Tommy.

  “Face it.” Tommy looks at Tutti through the mirror. “In a school where the Kens are queens who are treated like Queens, I’m the forgotten faggot. I’m brunette.”

  “We could dye it,” Tutti suggests. Her hair is currently bright blue.

  Tommy scrolls past the post about Blaine. The next post has been reblogged from the Willows High Stoner Conspiracy Theorists page. It’s called “The Ken Conspiracy.” Tommy presses Play.

  “You want to know why they’re so popular? They sold their souls, man,” a Stoner Conspiracy Theorist says in the video, stopping to puff on a giant cross blunt. “Kens don’t have actual blood in their veins. They have glitter. No one knows exactly how a commoner would join, but it’s widely believed it would involve sacrificing your favorite maid and eating the organs of a drag queen.”

  “I haven’t heard that one before.” Tutti laughs.

  Tommy looks back up at his reflection. With the makeup on and under the right light he’s almost…

  pretty.

  POSSESSED DOLL

  Streetlights brighten lawns of fluorescent-green grass, each blade as sharp as a surgeon’s knife. The air is still and the sky is dark. Emerald leaves blow in the wind. A perfect storm is coming.

  Tommy walks home from Tutti’s house, his face tingling from the toner Tutti applied after taking off his makeup.

  His parents are sitting in the living room holding a tablet between them when he walks through the door. They’re watching InfoWars on YouTube.

  “Oh, hi, Tommy!” his mom says. “Leftovers are in the fridge.”

  “Eat up,” his father calls after him as Tommy starts climbing the stairs. “End times, son. End times.”

  The window is open inside his shoebox of a room. The only good thing about it is the small window with a view of the WILLOWSLAND sign across the hillside, framed far behind countless rooftops, winding roads and telephone poles. Tommy leans out of the window, staring longingly at the view, which is best at night when the hills are dark and the pink letters of the sign are lit up so bright they look like they’re floating in the air.

  It starts raining and Tommy closes the window. As he turns around, he sees himself in the mirror above his dresser. He runs his hand across his red and blotchy skin. The scar on his cheek looks more glaring than ever. And that’s totally a zit about to surface on the tip of his nose.

  He lifts his arms and tries to flex. What a joke. He’s so lanky he makes Ken Roberts look like a heifer.

  Tommy puts his face right up to the mirror and stares into his own eyes. It might just be the lightning outside, but it seems something is emerging in his pupil—a bulb, pulsating, as if on the cusp of a flash.

  Falling back onto his bed, Tommy opens his computer and rewatches the Stoner Conspiracy Theorists’ “Ken Conspiracy” video.

  A gust of wind blows against the window. It rattles like a drug-addled heart. Branches scratch against the
surface. Tommy’s computer screen powers off and the room goes dark.

  That night, Tommy can’t sleep. He tosses and turns, his scar burning like it’s new, the marshmallow still stuck to his skin. He kicks off his sheets. His mind won’t turn off. If only he had a control panel.

  He’s thinking about the way Ken Hilton took the pink diamond stud from Blaine’s hand so flirtatiously it was like they were exchanging bodily fluids. It made Tommy blush and stare down at the gym floor. He stayed on his hands and knees until Allan touched his arm and told him they could stop looking, crisis averted, Ken Hilton and his diamond had been reunited. The balance of the universe restored.

  Tommy gives up on trying to sleep and gets out of bed, listening for any sound in the house. But his parents are logged out for the night. He sneaks into the dark hallway with a backpack slung over his shoulder; it holds his phone and one of his childhood Barbies. The Stoner Conspiracy Theorists said to bring Baphomet a gift of a virgin. Tommy could always offer himself—he’s pretty sure he’s destined to die one—but he’s hoping Baphomet has a sense of humor.

  He doesn’t worry about the stairs creaking and waking his parents. Nothing creaks in Willows, except the Kens. And that’s more of a squeak. It’s the sexiest sound.

  Down in the kitchen, he opens the liquor cabinet and looks through the bottles of liqueurs. Tommy’s parents don’t really drink anymore; ever since they joined a dispensary, they’ve become potheads. They’re always at pro-legalization rallies. Fridays are Fried Days in the Rawlins household. Even his parents fit into trendy Willows better than he does. They’re basically avatars.