Free The Worst Best Luck by Brad Vance

wasn’t it.  He would chide himself, A pillow is all you get, so get used to it.
    Then he found the solution for his pain.  Jordan was straight, right?  Sure, he was, everyone knew he fucked the cheerleaders, plural, he was like, half the squad’s time share lover.  Maybe the worst part was that Jordan was always nice to Peter, even though he could, had to, totally see the longing, the desperate hunger, in Peter’s eyes. 
    But there was nothing reflected there other than polite disinterest.  Look, it’s not you he’s not interested in, he’s not interested in guys!  It’s nothing personal!   The sun came out for Peter then, his days got easier, the wild mood swings of adolescence working in his favor for once.
    Until the night he was the last one in the theater, or thought he was anyway, and he walked past the big closet that passed for a dressing room.  Out of the corner of his eye he saw movement, so he turned to look, and saw Jordan locked in a hungry, no, ravenous kiss with Scott Brady.  Scott, the flirty little queen!  Scott, with his little bee-stung lips and too-tight pants.  He froze in the hallway, unseen, unable to look away, to walk away. 
    Then Jordan raised his arms above his head and Scott pulled Jordan’s shirt off, and Peter saw the unattainable magnificence that was Jordan’s torso, surely the most beautiful body in the world… And when Scott went to his knees, and Jordan put his hands behind his own head and closed his eyes, then and only then did Peter run away, careful not to sob until he was out of earshot.
     
    Like an eminent Victorian, repressing his sexuality but having to put all that crazy somewhere, Peter channeled it into work.  Even the rigors of the landscaping job were welcome, because he would come home exhausted, too tired to pine or sigh or do anything but eat, and lay down on the bed with Mom. 
    He’d come home on a Saturday evening and get on top of the covers, with Mom underneath the pile of blankets.  They’d watch X Factor or Idol or whatever they’d taped during the week on the old VHS recorder.  And that way, when a Jordan type came onscreen, fresh faced and talented, Peter was too beat to get upset.
    He would stay with Mom till she fell asleep, before quietly turning off the TV and going to bed.  Some nights that was nine o’clock, but most nights it was 11, 12, 1, and Peter was the only one who slept.  Mom’s chemotherapy was laden with drugs that wore her out but wired her up, robbed her of the rest she needed to actually get better. 
    They didn’t talk about her getting better.  Peter would ask her, “Are you feeling better today?”  Today was the keyword, there was only today.
    “Yeah,” she’d say.  “It’s a decent day.”  Or, some days she’d say, “Might as well make me a shit sandwich for lunch.”  Peter had inherited his mother’s cold, clear-eyed view of the world, so of course neither of them said stupid shit like “you’ll be fine, you’ll get better, it’s going to be okay.”
    One night they were on the bed, watching TV, and Mom said, out of the blue, “So Millie picked up your emancipation papers today.”
    “My what?”
    “We need to get those in to the court, so that when I die, you don’t go to foster care, what with you still being underage.  She’s got a house, there’s a free-standing garage in the back with an apartment over it, and that’s where you’ll live while you go to college.”
    “Mom…”
    “Don’t argue with me.”
    “I can’t afford…”
    “Student loans.  Community college.  There’s a job open at the library at the college.  Twenty hours a week.  You have bookstore experience, which they agreed is close enough to library experience at your age, so it’s settled.”
    Peter smiled.  “You just planned my life without asking me, you know.”
    “Yep.  If you’re going to have a life in the theater, it’s about time I became a stage mother.”
    They didn’t speak of