Straight expectations, p.1
Straight Expectations, page 1
UNION SQUARE & CO. and the distinctive Union Square & Co. logo are trademarks of Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.
Union Square & Co., LLC, is a subsidiary of Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.
Text © 2023 Calum McSwiggan
Cover art © 2023 Union Square & Co., LLC
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This edition first published in 2023 by Union Square & Co., LLC.
First published in Great Britain by Penguin Random House UK in 2023.
ISBN 978-1-4549-5165-0 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4549-5167-4 (e-book)
ISBN 978-1-4549-5166-7 (paperback)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022055567
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Cover and interior design by Liam Donnelly
Cover art by Kevin Wada
For anyone who’s ever wanted to wish away the thing that makes them different.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Six Years Ago
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Eight Years Ago
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
One Year Ago
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Two Years Ago
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Acknowledgments
Chapter One
“Wishing for world peace is a terrible idea,” I say, dropping the PlayStation controller down on Dean’s bed as our Fortnite avatars do their victory dance. “Because that would last for what? One day before humanity found something else to fight about? What you need to do is wish away the cause of conflict instead. You need to wish away . . . toxic masculinity.”
Dean laughs. “Oh, come on, Max. That would be your one genie wish? Not for infinite cash . . . or boys? But to rid the world of toxic masculinity?”
“You’re telling me it wouldn’t be a better place for it?” I grin, lying back on Dean’s bed and cozying myself into his extravagantly colored cushions. “There’d be no prejudice, no conflict,” I continue. “And boys could paint their nails without worrying that it makes them gay.”
I hold my sparkling nails up to the window. “You did a good job,” I say, admiring the silky sheen as it catches in the streetlights of Brimbsy Road.
Dean has been expertly painting my nails ever since the day I came out to him. He keeps telling me I need to learn to do it myself, but no matter how much I practice, I just don’t have the steady hand or the patience to get it right.
“Some of your best work, I reckon. Just wait until Mr. Johnson gets a load of these.”
“Don’t,” he says, laughing again. “Maxwell Baker, what the devil is that on your nails?” he mimics the PE teacher’s voice impeccably.
“Please, sir,” I plead with puppy-dog eyes, “it’s just a little nail polish.”
Dean beams. “He’s gonna lose it for sure. Total meltdown guaranteed.”
“Let him,” I say just as Dean’s mum pushes open the door with two steaming mugs of hot chocolate topped with whipped cream and marshmallows.
“Here we are, then,” she says, setting the mugs down on the desk, exchanging them for a pair of Dean’s dirty socks with a barely audible tut.
“Thanks, Marcy,” I say, looking at Dean to remind him to say it too.
“Oh yeah, thanks, Mum,” he adds, amping up the sweetness.
“How was the meeting?” I ask, and she shrugs.
“Same old,” she says. “They’re applying for planning permission again. They don’t take no for an answer, these white men.” She turns to Dean then. “Good for nothin’, the lot of them. Especially your father. No offense there, Max.”
“None taken.” I get up and grab one of the hot chocolates. “They’re idiots if they think they’re going to win against you.”
Marcy smirks at that. “Well, they’re free to waste their energy tryin’.”
For the past five years, a property-development company has been trying to tear down the Brimsby Road townhouses to replace them with some fancy new apartments. Marcy has stopped them three times already, rallying the community to save the place that so many of them have lived their whole lives. It’s pretty amazing she finds the time really, what with being a single working mum and all. She’s a force to be reckoned with: you don’t mess with Dean’s mum.
“Well, we’ll see anyway,” she continues. “We’re trying to bury them in paperwork, but I’ll chain myself to their bulldozers if I have to.”
“Don’t get yourself arrested, Mum,” Dean says with a grin.
“Well, it wouldn’t be the first time . . .” she mutters, and then quickly changes the subject. “It smells like teenage boys in here.”
My favorite, I think, but I don’t say that out loud. Some things just aren’t meant to be said in front of parents, no matter how chill they are.
“Light one of those scented candles or something, would you?” she says, walking across the room to crack the window.
“Max doesn’t smell that bad, Mum, jeez,” Dean jokes, and she shakes her head with a chuckle.
I do a subtle sniff test, but I swear I’m fresh as a field full of daisies.
“Sexy,” Dean adds, catching me with my nose in my armpit.
“All right, well, behave now,” Marcy says, turning to go back out again. “No more cutting up your best clothes.”
“But we were improving them!” I protest.
“Yes, I’m sure that’s what you thought you were doing,” she says with a decidedly wicked smile, closing the door behind her.
Dean cracks up. “I think my mum just read you to filth, Max!”
“She’s always been savage,” I say. “I can see where you get it from.”
“What can I say?” Dean shrugs and picks up two of the candles on his chest of drawers. “Unicorn Cupcake . . . or Pistachio Mint Dreams?”
“Cupcake,” I say, which quite frankly was the obvious answer.
“Cupcake it is.” He nods and begins rummaging in his underwear drawer. “Oh . . .” He stops in his tracks. “Well, these definitely aren’t matches.”
“Huh?” I say, trying to see what he has in his hand.
“Wanna give it a go?” He holds up the three-pack of Durex.
“Oh God,” I groan. “Don’t even joke. I can’t believe those are still in there! You do know they have an expiration date, right?”
“Third of August,” Dean says as he squints at the box. “Barely even a year out of date! Maybe they’ll still work?”
“Throw them away!” I say in mock horror. “You need to pay more attention in sex ed.”
“I’m joking,” he says. “I can’t toss them, though. Memories and all that?” He drops them back in the drawer and closes it.
The condoms had appeared three years ago while I was staying at Dean’s for the summer just after my parents split. Marcy went all out on the food while I was here—jerk chicken, curried goat, and all kinds of other Caribbean food I’d never tried before. I guess it was her way of trying to make me whole again. She told me I was one of the family, and she really meant that—because she was convinced Dean and I were secretly dating. Despite telling her over and over that we were just friends, she’d wink and say, “If you say so.” Then, one night, to Dean’s absolute horror, we came upstairs to find them. They were Marcy’s way of offering support, no questions asked, but the way Dean gasped when he opened the drawer will stay with me forever. It was the first time I really laughed that summer—and I laughed till I couldn’t breathe.
The joke was on me, though, because I then had to be at the center of the most awkward family discussion in which Dean had to explain once and for all that he hadn’t, in fact, been upstairs bumping uglies with me the whole time. I’m still not sure she was convinced, though.
“Another round?” I say, picking up the controller.
“Nah, three victory royales is enough,” he replies. “We can’t keep beating all these straight boys. Their egos are fragile enough.”
“Toxic masculinity,” I say with an I-told-you-so shrug. “This is what I’m telling you. It’s gotta be the wish.”
“I don’t buy it, Max,” Dean says, finally finding the matches and lighting the bright pink candle, the flame illuminating his flawless Black skin and killer cheekbones. He’s wearing a subtle face of makeup today, just enough to bring out his most feminine features. “I’ve known you long enough to know you wouldn’t wish for something so selfless. You’d use your wish on something stupid that would come back to bite you in the ass.”
“What are you trying to say?” I reply indignantly, sitting back upright.
“You could be stranded
I wish I could deny it, but Dean is absolutely right. Oliver is exactly how I’d spend my one and only genie wish. In fact, I’d wish for a thousand more wishes and still use them all on him. He’s the perfect boy-next-door type, and he’s been living in my fantasies rent-free ever since he came to our school a year ago. Dean and I were the only openly queer kids in our whole class before that, and then BAM! Oliver Cheng. With messy black hair that sticks up at all angles, dimples stapled into each perfect cheek, and deep brown eyes that make the school corridors appear to narrow around him. I’ve had many a crush during my time at Woodside Academy, but none of them compare to the way I feel about him.
“I just wish he’d acknowledge my existence,” I say, something I’ve repeated about four thousand times this week alone. “Just a hey would be nice.”
“Really, Max? This again?” Dean says, exasperated. “You literally never make any effort to talk to him. Why don’t you just put on your big-boy pants and ask him out? Honestly, what’s the worst thing that could happen?”
“Complete and total humiliation!” I groan, covering my face with a pillow. “I’d rather live in hope than face that rejection. Besides, a boy like me doesn’t just go up and ask out a guy like Oliver Cheng. He’s a solid ten. An eleven, in fact. I’m barely even a six.”
Dean rips the pillow off my face and hits me with it.
“Don’t you dare,” he says sternly, waving the pillow at me threateningly. “You are not a six. Nor are you a seven, an eight, or a nine. You’re a ten, Maxine. And if boys like Oliver Cheng can’t see that, it’s their problem, not yours. Got it?”
“Got it,” I say with a nervous laugh. Dean relinquishes his weapon.
“A six?” he scoffs, running one hand over his neatly shaven head. “Honestly, Maxine, we’re gonna have to work on that self-confidence.”
Dean has always been this way. My biggest cheerleader from day one; even through our regular squabbles, he’s always had my back. We became friends back in primary school. The other kids seemed to know I was gay before I did, and it made me a bit of a target. Dean was always out and proud, though. Thomas Mulbridge had been picking on me for weeks until Dean stepped in to defend me. Thomas never dared try it again after that. I didn’t come out to Dean until years later, but I think he knew, even back then. Queer people have a way of finding each other, and I don’t know what I’d have done if Dean hadn’t found me.
“So go on, then,” I finally say. “Your turn. If not for boys or world peace, what would you ask for from our ever-so-fabulous genie?”
“Hmm,” Dean says, pacing the room as he thinks. He’s wearing a cropped yellow hoodie and baggy gray sweatpants, and somehow, even dressed down like this, he still oozes with style.
“Well,” he continues, “I think I’d wish for a few more years in the here and now. For senior year to stretch on a bit, you know?”
“What?” I say, dumbfounded. “You have one solitary wish and you’re going to waste that on—let me check my notes—ah yes, more school.”
He’s laughing now, but I don’t stop.
“Not the ability to magic up fabulous gowns with the snap of your fingers? Not the leading role in a West End show? But more school? Really, Dean? Literally anything would be better than that. You’re banned from making wishes! Your wishing card has been revoked!”
“Okay, but hear me out!” he says, falling onto the bed beside me.
“No. Shan’t,” I say. Emily Blunt, The Devil Wears Prada.
“What does Chris say every single time I come over to yours?”
“That we should ‘make the most of this time because these are the best years of our lives,’ ” I say, heavy on the mockery. “And do you know why he says that, Dean? Because he’s straight! And it may be true that the straights peak in high school, but I dunno if you’ve noticed this yet, but we are not heterosexuals!”
“We aren’t?” He slaps a hand to his mouth, aghast.
“No,” I say firmly. “We aren’t. And I can’t believe you’re treating my mum’s boyfriend as some font of wisdom. The man can barely even tie his own shoes.”
“I don’t think that’s true, Max,” Dean says, laughing.
I shrug. “Well, whatever. You have to pick a better wish. We can’t stay stuck here forever. I need to get out of this town and kiss some boys!”
“My God, is that all you think about?” Dean asks. “Despite what you think, Max, there’s more to life than boys and kissing.”
“Is there, though?” I grin, and he playfully shoves me.
“I’m not saying I want to be seventeen forever,” he continues. “It’s just that things are pretty great right now, and I don’t really wanna mess with that.”
“Oh, come on!” I say. “You can wish for anything! And you’re really gonna throw it away, just like that? For a few more years here with little old me?”
“It’s not all about you, Max,” he says, rolling his eyes.
“But I mean . . . yeah. It’s our last year. This is it. We don’t get to go around again.”
I suppose he has a point. I still don’t know what I want to do when I leave school, so a little extra time to figure that out couldn’t hurt. It’s easy for Dean: he was born to be on the stage. He practically came pirouetting out of the womb. But me? Sometimes it feels like I was forgotten about when they were handing out talent.
“Maybe you’re right,” I finally concede. “I guess there is something to be said for the way we run Woodside, annoying Mr. Johnson, using the corridors as our own personal runway. That’s definitely something I’ll miss.”
Dean smiles. “That’s the spirit!”
“You better believe that if I found a magic lamp tomorrow, though, I’d still be wishing for a Friday-night sleepover with Oliver Cheng.”
“A Friday-night sleepover?” he says. “What are you—nine? Well, I guess anything to get him in his underwear, right?”
“We’d be wearing matching pajamas, actually.”
“Matching pajamas?” Dean echoes with utter disbelief. “You’re such a doofus, Max.”
“That may be true, but I’m your doofus, and nothing will ever change that.” I pick up the controller. “Come on, let’s give these straight boys one last run for their money.”
Chapter Two
I always meet Dean outside the drama department on a Wednesday afternoon, but rehearsals must be running over today because the cast is still inside. This year they’re doing Little Shop of Horrors, and I can hear a female voice expertly carrying the notes of “Somewhere That’s Green.” It’s a song about wishing for something better, and she really sings it like she means it.
I peer awkwardly through the door until Mrs. Ashford notices and waves me inside. She has frizzy ginger hair and deep laugh lines, and although she can be a bit of a stress ball, she’s always been my favorite teacher. I haven’t taken drama since sophomore year because I can’t act to save my life, but she’s always run an open-door policy for all of us queer kids regardless. Need advice? A name change? Condoms? Mrs. A has your back.
“She’s good, huh?” Mrs. A whispers, scooting down her desk to make space for me next to her. She doesn’t take her eyes off the singer for even one moment.
It’s Poppy Palmer, or Double P as she’s known to most of us, playing the role of Audrey. She’s perfect for it actually because they’re both so misunderstood. Poppy has built up a bit of a reputation for making out with pretty much every guy on the soccer team. People can be a little judgmental about that, but if she was a guy, people would be celebrating it, so I say more power to her. Make out with every last one of them. I’ve even thought about going to her for pointers, to help me get Oliver’s attention. He’s the one soccer player she’s never gotten to.
Double P finishes the song to a round of applause. Dean is sitting in the front row, cheering the loudest as his hands thunder above his head. I throw in a little whistle for good measure, which makes Poppy blush.
“Nicely done, Ms. Palmer,” Mrs. A says as the class begins to settle down. “You’re really nailing those high notes, and you’ve got the accent down to a T . . .”
“Thanks, but . . . ?”
“But,” Mrs. A says, “I want you to really try to sell us on Audrey’s innocence. She’s young and naive and imagining a future she thinks she may never have. When she sings about wanting a ‘big, enormous twelve-inch screen,’ I want you to really exaggerate that. It’s something she can only ever dream of. That’s what I want to see.”
