The Family Fang - Kevin Wilson [28]
He turned to his rival and saw that she was crying. Had she won or lost? Had he won or lost? He looked into the audience, searching for his parents, but they were lost in the camera flashes and the spotlight that seemed to envelop everyone onstage. And then he felt someone’s hands on his shoulders and something so light it almost didn’t exist being placed upon his head. A bouquet of crimson clover was jammed into his hands. “Hug me,” he heard the first runner-up bark, and he kissed her cheek and lightly placed his hand across her back. Now it was time for the inevitable, the thing that made Buster’s crown art instead of artifice.
They had rehearsed for days, the different permutations of this event. Buster being dismissed immediately in the first round. Buster going out in the final ten. Buster being sent offstage when the final three were announced. Buster finding himself sashed and applauded but not crowned. And, without as much vigor, they practiced for this, the stage empty save for Buster, sparkling and shiny, the focus of everyone in the auditorium, a vacuum that pulled all the air into his own lungs.
He waved as he had seen the women do in the videos, not actually waving but instead turning, as if mechanized and fully wound. Tears began to fall down his cheeks, the heavy mascara raccooning his eyes and staining his face. He toed the edge of the stage, steady on his unsteady heels, and as he seemingly adjusted the crown, he leaned forward, out over the edge, bowing gracefully, and then snapped his body back to its original position. As planned, his wig flipped off and over his head, skittering across the stage behind him, the only sound for miles. And then there was the sound of the entire audience pulling that surfeit of air out of his lungs, necessary for them to now gasp, for some to scream, for the whole room to, as the Fangs dreamed, tear apart at the seams.
With an easy shift in his posture, slumping his shoulders, repositioning his pelvis, he became an obvious boy, the movements so natural that it echoed the way a chameleon changed color, the gradual but effortless reshading. Buster then stumbled on his high heels and ran to the crown, freed it from the tangles of the artificial curls, and returned it to its rightful place atop his head. Sprinting down the stage toward him, one of the directors of the pageant made a grab for his crown, but Buster ducked away from her and she lost her balance and tumbled off the stage. This was the familiar ending to all Fang events, the understanding that things had shifted and now you were in trouble, in danger, on your own.
“Say it,” Mrs. Fang shouted to Buster, who seemed too stunned to proceed. There was a final stage to the event before they could reconvene and retreat, the scene of the crime disappearing in the horizon. Buster was to toss the crown into the audience and shout, “A crown, golden in show, is but a wreath of thorns.” Instead, Buster was clutching the crown to his head like a piece of his skull that had come unattached. “Drop it,” Mrs. Fang said, “just toss that thing.” Buster leaped off the stage and ran down the center aisle, past the Fang family, out the door, and into the night. Mr. Fang continued to film the confused faces of those in the audience, then zoomed in on the first runner-up, crying and hiccupping and shaking Buster’s wig like a cheerleader’s pom-pom. “This is good,” Mr. Fang said. “It could have been even better,” Mrs. Fang replied. “No,” Annie said, still clapping for her beloved little brother, “no it could not.”
The Fangs found Buster hiding under their van, conspicuously sparkling as he shifted his weight upon the uncomfortable asphalt. Mr. Fang knelt down and helped his son inch out into the open