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“I freaked out,” Wes made himself say. “It wasn’t about my hair. Not really. It was... I hated the attention. I hated people seeing me. People paying attention to what I ordered in a cafe or what shirt I chose to wear.”
Adam’s eyes were wide. “That sounds horrible.”
Wes nodded. Something had happened to him, then. Something confusing and insidious. The more visible he became on the outside, the more he became invisible to himself. Every worry about being seen, every thought spent on the perceptions of those who might see him, stripped away the part of himself that engaged with the world on his own terms. That wondered what would happen if he put the coffee machine together backward, or how a plant could grow through concrete.
The inner peace he’d always possessed when tinkering, experimenting, observing, had been obliterated by the threat of constant observation.
Wes couldn’t stand it. Without his questions, without his experimentation, he didn’t know who he was. And worse, he didn’t care.
“I quit. I told my dad I wouldn’t do it anymore. It didn’t go over well. My dad told me I was making a huge mistake. That I was an idiot to throw away something that anyone would kill for.”
“But you wouldn’t,” Adam said fiercely. “You didn’t want it.”
Wes shook his head.
He would never forget the look in his father’s eyes when he’d told him. A furious disgust that had burned as hot as his approval had when Wes agreed to do the show.
You’ll change your mind, his father had said at first. Sleep on it. I know, fame can be a lot of pressure. Adam had slept on it, knowing his mind was made up, and the next morning he’d tried again. The mild mentor was gone, then, and his father’s judgment had rained down—falling like acid rain on their tenuous connection until it was eaten away to nothing but holes.
“I was foolish to think I could just walk away and it would be over,” Wes said. “The publicity machine runs on speculation, and my privacy was the chaff that got spit out in the process.”
Where In the World is Crawford Magnusson?!, Soap Digest had asked on its front cover as Wes tried to go to school, go to the store, hang out with his friends. People seemed to recognize him more than ever. They would bombard him with questions about when he was returning to the show.
After a group of tourists surrounded him when he was coming out of a bookstore, Wes shut himself in his bedroom, staring at himself in the mirror. His hair had been shoulder-length, then. A fall of shiny, tight curls that bounced as he walked. It was distinctive. Noticeable.
Wes shaved his head with his father’s electric razor and dumped his curls in the garbage can. He’d kept his head shaved ever since. It had worked, mostly. Little by little, the longer he stayed out of the spotlight, the public lost interest. Eventually, they left him alone.
And so, it turned out, did his father.
For the year after Wes quit, his father hounded him, guilted him, berated him for his choice and his selfishness. But when it became clear Wes would not return, his father was simply done with him. Wes served no purpose for his career, so Wes was of no interest any longer. He only had one thing to say, and he’d said it with utter conviction: “You will regret this.”
Then Lana turned thirteen and told their father that she wanted to be an actor, and a new alliance was made.
“So what’s the deal now? Do you have a relationship with your dad?”
“I text him on his birthday. Sometimes he responds.”
Thank you with a period at the end was usually the response, when there was one. Once, a few years ago, the text had come through late at night. Wes had been up, as was his habit, but his father was clearly drunk and alone, likely on the couch in Wes’ childhood home, staring at the picture of himself that hung over the television: standing on the red carpet in a tux and shiny shoes, young and vibrant, laughing at something just out of frame.
We really could’ve been something, son, that text had said. It all could’ve been different.
Wes hadn’t responded.
“My sister called earlier. My dad’s birthday is right before Christmas. She wanted me to come home. It’s his sixtieth.”
“Are you gonna go?”
“Hell no. Lana doesn’t actually want me to come. She just wants to be able to tell my parents she tried to get me to.”
“Do you get along with your sister?”
Wes could remember her as she used to be, when she’d sit quietly in the corner as he tinkered, knowing she’d get kicked out if she made a sound but wanting to be near him.
“We never had much in common, but we got along fine. She went into acting after I quit. My dad helped her get started.”
