Coin Tricks

by Willow Scarlett

I was ten when I’d realized I was a bully, and I didn’t want to be. I was fourteen when I’d realized I was gay, and I really didn’t want to be.

Moa had been there for me when I didn’t deserve anyone to be there for me at all.

But I felt bad for the guy who stood there not knowing what to do, caught up in worrying about things that no one else cared about. I got that. I never knew what the right thing was, what I should be doing. In the ad, when the guy made his choice, a voice over came up to tell everyone he’d done the right thing. Legend! You don’t get that in real life. You just get the regret and confusion. Days, weeks, years, of wondering if you should have done something different. Internalizing a really complicated situation in my head.

I grunted. I knew it could suck to accept charity, like admitting you were poor meant admitting you were a failure. I hated that. I hadn’t meant to embarrass him. I wished I’d just left the containers on the doorstep so Sid wouldn’t have had to thank me to my face. I turned to go.

It came natural: you see someone hurting, you help out. Tane has a great life, lots of family around.

gift from the hands is a gift from the soul.” “Yeah.” Sid was giving me something from his soul and that was even more tingly-awesome than a gift of his time. I liked the calm that came over Sid as he settled into a routine, and the little smile that appeared on his lips. I liked just sitting beside someone, not having to say anything or do anything or prove anything. It was nice. Companionable was the word.

Whatever I had to do to earn his happiness, it would be worth it. Sid deserved to be happy and not scared. He deserved to have friends. It looked like the world had been a shit place for him, and no one deserved that.

Seeing Bryant again, and seeing him engaged, was a double whammy. Turns out we’d had the same dreams all along, except his had never been about me. “We have to get out of here,” Moa said suddenly. I craned to check the sky. It was getting darker, but the sun hadn't set. Dinner wouldn’t be dished up yet. “We’ve got time.” “No, I mean our life. The same things every day with the same people.” “Mom and the whanau?”

She sighed. “Don’t you ever feel like you’re stuck in a rut, waiting for real life to begin?”

“Yeah, sure. Wanting something better.” “Not just wanting, Moo. Knowing you deserve it. Knowing you have to stand up and take what’s yours.”

That was one cool thing about Sid’s clothing all being crap: he was lily-white but he got frowned at nearly as much as a brown boy.

My longings were impossible. I had to stomp them down like embers in a dry forest, kill them before they could grow into hopes or expectations that would hurt so much more to be crushed. Impossible dreams. But when they flitted into my head, it was too tempting to just savor them a while longer.

“So you do think parents shape their kids.” I shrugged. “Of course. Big people are role-models for the little ones. But there are so many of us, teachers and uncles and aunts and stuff, as well as parents. Everyone plays a part. Plus kids are real people, they’ve got their own brains. So, yeah, of course you change Gina. But you’re not the only role-model in her life.”

But no. Sid wasn’t alone, and Gina wasn’t alone. No one was. That’s not the way the world works.

“Gina’s her own person and she’s going to live her own life, no matter what you do. That’s one of the things that’s so cool about watching kids grow up.”

“You’re not the boss of anyone’s life. You can’t make their choices for them and you can’t make them feel something.” “You really believe that?” “It’s a good thing and a bad thing.” Many times I’d hoped I could make Gerald see life differently, before I’d had to accept that he might never change. “You got other people to look out for her? Your friends?” He shook his head slowly. “She seems like a cool kid.”

I shifted again in the cloth seat and prayed for the lights to change. Those things took practice: The emotional things. Talking about feelings. Sid’s eyes had a sparkle like he was close to tears.

I caught Gerald’s arm and said, “Don’t be a dick.” “Shut up, Moo Cow. You ain’t his dad.” “He’s just little.” “Yeah, and shit at sport.” I held my ground with a glare. Gerald said, “This is how we learned.” Like I needed any reminding of that. Dad had yelled at us every day of our lives. Sure, we’d toughened up, and fast. But that didn’t make it great parenting.

He pressed his palms to the car door and tried to push off like a swimmer kicking away from a wall. But I held him firm. He glared up at me, and for the first time it clicked that I was taller than him. Somehow, I’d grown up and gotten bigger than my big brother.

“Get off me,” he snarled. I wanted to hold him in place until he learned his lesson. I wanted to embarrass him in front of everyone. I wanted to beat him to a pulp. Let him know what it felt like to be picked on and laughed at and treated like dirt. It had been so long since I’d felt that kind of anger. It came to me like the taste of bile, foul and hated but familiar. I wanted to hurt him. I wanted his blood and spit on my knuckles and over the door of the busted car.

I’d told myself that every day of my life. It was the code I lived by. But what if Moa hadn’t stepped forward? How far would I go to protect Sid? Mom rounded the bonnet of the car, her eyes flashing and face grim. I didn’t want to explain myself. The violence had washed away and left the soil of guilt.

“There’s something I should tell you.” His voice shook but he kept it loud and clear. I wasn’t brave like Sid, I couldn’t talk well through my nerves.

Guess that’s how you measure a friend: not how long they’ve been in your life, but how much better they make it.

“You fucked up?” “Yeah. Have you ever been so scared of something happening that you try to make it happen, just so you won’t be scared of it anymore?”

“Do you know what triggering means?” “Like for bombs?” “No. For trauma. It’s a word they use to mean when something brings up distressing memories or puts you into a negative mindset. It triggers an automatic reaction. You see?”

“That word, queer. It’s triggering for me. Mom used to use it on me as an insult, even before I came out. She had these ideas—I guess everyone has them—of what a man should be, and I could never live up to that. I’m never going to be sporty or, like, tall and muscular and handsome and so on. I was always a bit of a book nerd.” “Book nerds are awesome.” “I know. I know that now.” He picked with one hand at the knuckles of the other. “But there’s still always this nagging voice in my head telling me that I should be something other than what I am. I’m not the right kind of man. I’m not big enough or strong enough or masculine enough, I don’t drink the right beer or watch enough sports or... I don’t know, eat pies and get drunk and wolf-whistle at women. Whatever. Mom would have been happier if I was a pig than a sissy. She was always prodding me.” “I know what you mean.” Sid frowned. “What? Wire, you are the guy I wish I was.”

“That, too. But I’m the family runt.” “Wire, you’re huge. And great at sports.” “Not when I was little. Besides, I’m ‘soft’. I hang out with girls, and I look after kids. And I read. I wanted so badly to be Gerald when I was growing up. But I could never be him. I couldn’t even fix that damn car.” Sid frowned. “You want to be your brother?” “Not anymore. This is who I am, and I’ve gotta deal with that. It’s enough. I mean, it’s got to be, right?” I looked out over the playground and the sport’s field. “This is what we’ve got, so it’s what we’ve got to get used to. And that’s all there is.” “I guess.”

“Everyone’s different, right? So we’ve all got our own cool shit. Like, look at what you do with Gina. You’re raising her on your own. That’s awesome. No one could do more than you’re doing for her. So you proved your mom right.”

There’s a scene where he’s sitting in a hammock and gets sad looking at a freckled leaf, thinking about beauty so still and calm that it aches like your heart in your chest when you think about the things you’ve lost and which you’d still have if you’d lived differently. All that from a hammock and a leaf. I knew that combination of beauty and sadness. To see something beautiful like a speckled leaf and to know it was going to fall, like all good things went bad, and maybe something couldn’t be good without knowing it was bad. Impossible

dreams are the dearest kept.

Sid was my impossible dream. He was the promise of something so good that I knew I could never have it and that w...

wanted to push him, to hurt him, an urge even stronger than last time. But rising up beside the anger was a voice inside telling me to calm down, that he wasn’t worth it, that I was better than this.

“Would you fight for Gina? If someone was hurting her?” He chewed his lip. “I’ve taught her non-violence.” “You’re a good brother, Sid, and you get angry for Gina. You’re angry right now. I know that if you saw all those bruises on her, you’d fight for her.” “This isn’t about Gina. This is about me, and what I’ve done myself. It’s not like some stranger walked in one day and started beating me up.” He gestured with his hands before trapping them against his sides. “You’d fight for Gina,” I insisted. “And I’d fight for her too. I’d fight for both of you. Because I care. Because we’re friends. Not because I love going around getting into fights.”

“Whakapapa[24], yeah. Mom wasn’t allowed to speak te reo Māori at school but she makes sure we know our culture and our ancestors. It’s important for, you know, the spirit. Because our ancestors are part of who we are.”

“Family’s not just what you’re born into. I mean, yeah, obviously who you share your genes with is important. But you can share genes with someone and be totally different—Moa says that there are enough people in anyone’s family tree that you can average out the bad influences, or focus on the best ones. But whanaungatanga[25] isn’t just about being related to people, it’s about bonding through shared struggles and loyalty. So you can have someone in your whanau who isn’t a blood relative—like how Anne was one of us, even before she married Gerald and legally became our family.”

It was strange to think that I’d met him in this parking lot. I’d just thought I was catching a thief. How had he gone from the sad soap-stealing punk to the most important person in my life?

He was beautiful. I hadn’t noticed it at first and no one else had ever pointed it out, but this was something I knew all on my own. Looking at Sid made me happy. And that’s what beauty means, right? Beauty was when it felt good to look at something.

Sid was beautiful. From his dusty red hair to his long fingers to the creamy skin showing through holes in his sweat pants. That devastatingly warm smile. I could see mushed up crab meat in his mouth, all pink and white. And that, right there, was the moment I knew I was in love. Love’s the only word you can use for looking at someone with a face full of surimi and still thinking they’re beautiful.

“It’s time we move on. We need to find out who we are as people out on our own.”

“Here’s the thing about magic: I want to believe it. Everyone who wants to see a magic trick, wants to believe in magic. That’s how it works. They don’t believe, but they want to. When I first started learning I was hoping I could find magic there, like maybe if I was good enough with the lying and the sleight of hand then one day I’d find the real magic. And then I did. But it’s not even about me, it’s in the look on Gina’s face. Seeing people shocked and amazed, even just for a moment. “And I did that. I gave Gina a bit more magic. And I’m just so fucking glad I have sleight of hand because that’s what it takes to get people feeling like they’ve seen real magic. You look at me like I’m magic.”

But I was too scared to move. I sat there frozen on the bench in the middle of the wind and my fear. I wasn’t brave enough—I’d been afraid of the impossible for too long.

And as I kissed him, my nerves and fear melted away like his happiness and willingness were rays of brilliant sunlight beating on my skin. I was so full of Sid’s sunny beauty that it pumped through my veins and pounded in my heart, drumming out the blissful magic word. Possible. Possible. Possible.

I loved him with a constant warm glow. It felt good to be around him and it ached to have him mad at me. It reminded me of what Annie Proulx had said in The Shipping News: learning that love comes in more colors than the black of none and the red of obsession. I couldn’t turn from Sid and Gina when they needed help, even if Sid was crap at asking for help. I sent him a letter. Through the mail and everything, so he’d know I wasn’t lurking around his house and smothering him after I’d thrown him out.

He looked beautiful, even better now I knew what it felt like to love and be loved by him.

“You don’t gotta tell me this thing if you don’t want to.” “No, I want to. It’s really important and I need you to know. I’m sick of pretending to be something I’m not.”

better at the street stuff. But it’s not just that. I like the idea of being both the performer and the distraction.” Sid put his hands on the dash and leaned his head onto them, biting his lip and glancing sideways at me. “Both the feminine and masculine.”

“I’m saying I’m not fully masculine. I’m feminine, too.”

“What I mean is that I’m… sorta gender fluid. You know what that means? So, like, most days I feel like a man—a gay man, and that’s fine—but some days that doesn’t make any sense for me and I get annoyed at people calling me a man. Not even like I’m a woman, just something else. Do you understand that?”

I was so seized with love. I saw the hugeness of my love rippling out until it stained the world into something beautiful, a novel say, like The Bridge of San Luis Rey.

I was struck again with how beautiful my boyfriend was. No matter how much I looked at him I just couldn’t get over the fact that he wanted me, that we had this house together, that he could be my impossible.