Page 20 of Elemasters

Chapter 8

Nine in the Afternoon

When Dustin and James finally made it back downstairs, Chris was grinning at them like he’d just body-swapped with the Cheshire Cat.

“Took you guys a while to find the stash huh? Or did you have to grow it yourselves?”

Dustin just rolled his eyes and plopped down on the wrap-around couch next to Bailey, but James didn’t miss a single beat.

“I wanted to show off my favorite plants. Some of them bloomed sooner than I expected,”

Chloe and Bailey exchanged amused glances, while Chris started fake-gagging.

“Definitely didn’t need that image in my head,” Chris said, clearly trying to sound annoyed, but barely stifling a laugh. Dustin scoffed and tossed a small bag of weed at his head.

“As many times as I’ve had to suffer through overhearing you smashing random girls? If I can live through that, you can live through this,”

“Fair enough,” Chris shrugged as James passed him a pack of blunt wraps. He rolled up with the expertise of someone who’d been doing it in secret since Freshman year, and about twenty minutes later, a cloud of smoke was hanging in the air and the entire group was giggling at a joke James made before he even finished saying it out loud.

Dustin’s entire body felt light and relaxed; he barely realized he was sinking into the couch until Chloe started snickering at him.

“You look like the deflated girl from that anti-weed commercial,” she said with a snort. The entire group roared with laughter, including Dustin. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed like that; not a polite laugh, not a ‘don’t rock the boat’ laugh… just a real one.

“So,” Bailey began, taking another hit and coughing for a solid thirty seconds before getting her bearings enough to continue, “what do you guys think about us all going to Dustin’s swim meet on Friday? I was already gonna go with my big ass sign, but we could totally make it a group thing,”

“That sounds adorable,” Chloe replied, sounding wistful; like she was making a real Sophie’s Choice, “I would love to go and support our beautiful emo fish boy, but I’m going with my mom to buy fabric, and that shit always takes a goddamn lifetime. I can’t blow her off again,”

“I’m tied up too. Our mom wants to take me to dinner to celebrate me making the basketball team… again,” Chris said with a sly, self-congratulating smirk. Normally Dustin would’ve tensed at the mention of that, but in his weed-induced haze, he couldn’t bring himself to care. If their mom wanted to treat Chris like God’s gift to Pacific Cove, fine.

“Well, I’m definitely gonna be there,” James grinned, “I’m not passing up a chance to see Dustin in a speedo,”

Chloe choked on a laugh, while Dustin playfully tossed a pillow at him.

“Since you brought that up, I’m kinda curious about something,” Chloe glanced down at her lap like her nerves were trying to convince her to stay quiet, but she shook her head, steeling herself, and continued, “when did you guys, like… know?”

The atmosphere shifted almost immediately; everyone knew exactly what she meant. Dustin’s throat constricted a bit; such a direct question was enough to cut through his high like a sword.

Unsurprisingly, Bailey was the one who stepped up to the plate without hesitation.

“I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know,” she said casually, “when I was a kid, every time someone called me a ‘cute little boy’ it just felt viscerally wrong. But what even felt worse was trying to fit that mold; it was definitely ‘round peg, square hole’, y’know?”

“Yeah… I can understand what it’s like to be forced into a role that doesn’t suit you,” Chloe replied, fiddling with the zipper of her tracksuit jacket, “not really in that way, but I get it. When did you decide to be you? The real version of you,”

“Near the end of seventh grade. I was so fed up with trying to be someone else, that it started making me physically ill… all I knew was that ‘Braelen’ had to die, and I needed to crawl out of his corpse like cordyceps fungus and step into the limelight,”

Bailey’s tone was light and somewhat flippant, but Dustin knew her well enough to clock the tears welling up in her eyes, along with how quickly she blinked them away like it was a practiced routine.

“That’s both beautiful and gross,” Chloe replied with a genuine smile; the most genuine one Dustin had seen from her since they met, “what about you James?”

James just shrugged.

“Kinda like Bailey, I guess? I’ve just always kind of been into people. If you’re hot, I wanna kiss you, doesn’t matter what you’re working with. My mom noticed that I’d always flirt with pretty much every other kid in my class, and she sat me down to talk to me about it one day. Funnily enough, she was the one who told me that I was probably bisexual instead of the other way around,”

That admission melted Dustin’s heart like candle wax… but it also made him ache. He was genuinely happy that James’s parents were supportive of him and that he didn’t have a tragic queer backstory weighing him down. However, he couldn’t help the hollowness in his chest at the realization that he’d probably never have that kind of bond with his own parents.

“Wait, she told you you’re bisexual just because you think dudes are hot? Isn’t there more to it than that?” Chris chimed in, genuinely confused.

“Not… really?” James chuckled, “being into guys and girls is pretty much all it takes to be one of us,”