Cherry Jubilee Issue 3

When evil rises from the weak minds of the world.
Look into your heart and let your love unfurl.
Take up the mantle, take up the fight
Champion against the wrong, battle to defend what is right.
Summon the love, for all the world to see
The HIGH SCHOOL SENTAI, Cherry Jubilee!

Dinner was a bit…awkward.

The five of us sat around the table with Mom carrying on light conversation with Dad. Allan and I ignored each other, and Kat ate calmly without saying anything until Dad muttered something about a co-worker who as a slow as an ass at work. The four of us then turned in what was almost slow motion as Kat explained what had happened earlier and ended with “What does wonder fag mean?”

One would want to think that my parents would get onto Alan for saying something like that and to tell Kat it was rude to repeat that…. but…we all know how it all went:

It was my fault.

How could I think like that?

How long has it been like this?

Can you just switch back?

Not once did he ask exactly what caused all of this in the first place. Alan ‘volunteered’ to speak for me, telling dad whoppers that would cause Pinocchio’s nose to stretch into infinity. My face turned different shades of red, my mouth contorted to try and answer to the charges put upon me, and my voice failed to speak up due to the shock of it all.

“He has a dress hanging in his closet,” Alan concluded, as if that were the worst thing he could have said

“It’s not a dress, it’s a collector’s item.”

“From what?” Dad asked, his expression looking like a defeated man.

“A manga.”

A what?”

“A comic book dad, some girly comic book.” Alan piped up.

The three of us—Mom had long taken Kat out for ice cream, in hopes that Kat would never repeat the new vocabulary words she had picked up—sat around the now cleared-off dining room table.

“I thought you were interested in that Cala girl?” Dad asked me, his demeanor hinted that he wanted the evening wiped form his memory.

“I am, I mean I was.”

“She called him a freak,” Alan chimed in.

“Ghen, rejection from one girl is not the end of the world. It doesn’t mean you need to pitch for the other team.”

“I’m okay with it, Dad.”

“Okay with her rejection or with…”

“Both,” I replied, “I’m fine with both.”

Dad and Alan exchanged looks, prompting dad to shake his hands in slight frustration. “So it’s not a dress, just a Halloween costume?”

“Dad, that’s not the problem. I’m not going to be embarrassed by Gehn being a fag!”

“Gehn, I’ll talk with your mother and we’ll get an appointment with a doctor who can help you through this.”

“Help me get through what? Alan being a jerk?”

“I knew we should have signed you signed up for football.”

I got up from the table, walked down the hall to my room, and slammed the door closed.

The room was still trashed from my brother’s earlier chaos.

“Why isn’t he in trouble?” I asked myself while picking up the glass fragments from the poster that used to be on the wall. I honestly wanted to pick up a shard of glass and run it across everything my brother owned that could be pierced by the jagged points. Not once did I think of plunging a shard into my wrists or face. I was not the problem. My life was not something others could control or foot ball
I had so much rage towards Alan but I didn’t want to go to war with my brother…he would win in physical fight, and I would topple him in a battle of wits, and I refused to do battle with an unarmed person. Alan would tell everyone some form of lie that no matter how many times I would try to deny it, it would just cause it to spread around the school. He would not be able to stop himself; it was in his nature to keep me under his heel in the hierarchy of high school.

The word would get around the school before I stepped past the threshold. I had to think someone would come to my defense. There had to be others like me, but would they step out before superficial stormtroopers and unite to put down the witch hunt?

I carefully folded the poster up and placed it in my nightstand drawer. I looked to the closet and opened it, fearing that Alan had indeed gotten in there and ransacked everything I owned in there. I admit, I did indeed have a dress hidden in the back behind a suit I wore only once at my grandfather’s funeral. The closet was untouched. Nothing thrown about or ripped apart. I reached for the dress, a handcrafted third-party creation based on Cherry Jubilee, even down to the bow and ribbons. Alan knew about it as he was in the living room when it arrived and he commented on how hot his “flavor of the week”—I think her name was Danielle—would look in it. That comment made me quickly run it back to my room and it was never spoken of again.

At least until that night.

“Fine,” I whispered to myself as I lifted the hanger with the words “チェリージュビリー” engraved into the wood. “Time to shine.”