"Tomorrow," my dad says. "Of course, we know. That's why we're nervous as cats."

"We wanted to talk to you about tomorrow," my mom says. "We know how upset you are about your brother still, and we think it would be good for you if you'd march with our group in the parade."

Jump to another weird sick disappointment just coming over the horizon.

Jump to me getting swept up in their big compensation, their big penance for all those years ago, my father yelling, "We don't know what kind of filthy diseases you're bringing into this house, mister, but you can just find another place to sleep, tonight."

They called this tough love.

This is the same dinner table where Mom told Shane, "Doctor Peterson's office called today." To me she said, "You can go to your room and read, young lady."

I could've gone to the moon and still heard all the yelling. Shane and my folks were in the dining room, me, I was behind my bedroom door. My clothes, most of my school clothes were outside on the clothesline. Inside, my father said, "It's not strep throat you've got, mister, and we'd like to know where you've been and what you've been up to.”

"Drugs," my mom said, "we could deal with."

Shane never said a word. His face still shiny and creased with scars.

"Teenage pregnancy," my mom said, "we could deal with."

Not one word.

"Doctor Peterson," she said. "He said there's just about only one way you could get the disease the way you have it, but I told him, no, not our child, not you, Shane."

My father said, "We called Coach Ludlow, and he said you dropped basketball two months ago."

"You'll need to go down to the county health department, tomorrow," my mom said.

"Tonight," my father said. "We want you out of here."

Our father.

These same people being so good and kind and caring and involved, these same people finding identity and personal fulfillment in the fight on the front lines for equality and personal dignity and equal rights for their dead son, these are the same people I hear yelling through my bedroom door.

"We don't know what kind of filthy diseases you're bringing into this house, mister, but you can just find another place to sleep tonight."

I remember I wanted to go out and get my clothes, iron then, fold them, and put them away.

Give me any sense of control.

Flash.

I remember how the front door just opened and shut, it didn't slam. With the light on in my room, all I could see was myself reflected in my bedroom window. When I turned out the light, there was Shane, standing just outside the window, looking in at me, his face all monster movie hacked and distorted, dark and hard from the hair-spray blow-up.

Give rne terror.

Flash.

He didn't ever smoke that I knew about, but he lit a match and put it to a cigarette in his mouth. He knocked on the window.

He said, "Hey, let me in."

Give me denial.

He said, "Hey, it's cold."

Give me ignorance.

I turned on the bedroom light so I could only see myself in the window. Then I shut the curtains. I never saw Shane again.

Tonight, with the lights off, with the curtains shut and the front door locked, with Shane gone except for the ghost of him, I ask, "What parade?"

My mom says, "It's the Gay Pride Parade."

My dad says, "We're marching with PFLAG."

And they'd like me to march with them. They'd like me to sit here in the dark and pretend it's the outside world we're hiding from. It's some hateful stranger that's going to come get us in the night. It's some alien fatal sex

disease. They'd like to think it's some bigoted homophobe they're terrified of. It's not any of it their fault. They'd like me to think I have something to make up for.

I did not throw away that can of hairspray. All I did was turn out the bedroom lights. Then there were the fire engines coming in the distance. There was orange flashing across the outside of my curtains, and when I got out of bed to look, there were my school clothes on fire. Hanging dry on the clothesline and layered with air. Dresses and jumpers and pants and blouses, all of them blazing and coming apart in the breeze. In a few seconds, everything I loved, gone.

Flash.

Jump ahead a few years to me being grown up and moving out. Give me a new start.

Jump to one night, somebody calling from a pay phone to ask my folks, were they the parents of Shane McFarland? My parents saying, maybe. The caller won't say where, but he says Shane is dead.

A voice behind the caller saying, tell them the rest.

Another voice behind the caller saying, tell them Miss Shane hated their hateful guts and her last words -were: this isn't over yet, not by a long shot. Then somebody laughing.

Jump to us alone here in the dark with a casserole.

My father says, "So, honey, will you march with your mother and me?"

My mom says, "It would mean so much for gay rights.”

Jump to the moment around one o'clock in the morning in Evie's big silent house when Manus stops screaming and I can finally think.

Evie is in Cancun, probably waiting for the police to call her and say: Your house-sitter, the monster without a jaw, well, she's shot your secret boyfriend to death when he broke in with a butcher knife is our best guess.

You know that Evie's wide awake right now. In some Mexican hotel room, Evie's trying to figure out if there's a three-hour or a four-hour time difference between her big house where I'm stabbed to death, dead, and Cancun, where Evie's supposed to be on a catalogue shoot. It's not like Evie is entered in the biggest brain category. Nobody shoots a catalogue in Cancun in the peak season, especially not with big-boned cowgirls like Evie Cottrell.

But me being dead, that opens up a whole world of possibility.

I'm an invisible nobody sitting on a white damask sofa facing another white sofa across a coffee table that looks like a big block of malachite from Geology 101.

Evie slept with my fiance, so now I can do anything to her.

In the movie, where somebody is invisible all the sudden—you know, a nuclear radiation fluke or a mad scientist recipe—and you think, what would I do if I was invisible ... ? Like go into the guy's locker room at Gold's gym or, better yet, the Oakland Raiders' locker room. Stuff like that. Scope things out. Go to Tiffany's and shoplift diamond tiaras and stuff.

Just by his being so dumb, Manus could've stabbed me, tonight, thinking I was Evie, thinking Evie shot me, while I was asleep in the dark in her bed.

My dad, he'd go to my funeral and talk to everybody about how I was always about to go back to college and finish my personal fitness training degree and then no doubt go on to medical school. Dad, Dad, Dad, Dad, Daddy, I couldn't get past the fetal pig in Biology 101. Now I'm the cadaver.

Sorry, Mom. Sorry, God.

Evie would be right next to my Mom, next to the open casket. Evie would stagger up leaning on Manus. You know, Evie would've found something totally grotesque for the undertaker to dress me in. So Evie throws an arm around my mom, and Manus can't get away from the open casket fast enough, and I'm laying there in this blue velveteen casket like the interior of a Lincoln Town Car. Of course, thank you, Evie, I'm wearing this concubine evening wear Chinese yellow silk kimono slit up the side to my waist with black fishnet stockings and red Chinese dragons embroidered across the pelvic region and my breasts.

And red high heels. And no jawbone.

Of course, Evie says to my mom: "She always loved this dress. This kimono was her favorite." Sensitive Evie would say, "Guess this makes you oh for two."