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The Best Man

Lio Kammueller

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The sky outside the windows is still dark when I stumble into the kitchen, and the air smells like rubbing alcohol and weak coffee. The high-pitched voices of Brady’s calm acoustic folk music play out loud, floating over the table where he’s scattered his syringes and needles. He’s always done his testosterone shots in the morning—at first because he got really nervous and wanted to get it over with, and now because we get the house to ourselves after our parents leave for work and before we leave for school. In this system, Brady also does his shots out in the open in the kitchen. When we’re on our own together, he likes to take up space.

“Hey,” Brady greets me without looking at me. He’s too focused on not drawing air bubbles up into his syringe.

“Hi,” I yawn back. I don’t look at him either. The needles still freak me out. I kind of feel bad for him, how he has to get up before the sun and stab an inch and a half of sharp metal into his leg like it’s no big deal. I told him that when he first got his prescription. That made him laugh, and he assured me he’d rather stab himself in the leg once a week than spend every second daydreaming about slicing his chest right open. I guess it makes sense—if blood has to be involved either way, I’m at least relieved he has a nonviolent option. 

“What time are you done with rehearsal tonight?” Brady asks. He twists the needle off with a plasticy click and rips open another alcohol pad.

I grab my Lexapro from the cupboard, then a little bottle of orange juice from the fridge. “Should be six. But we have a lot of blocking to do, so we might run a bit late.” I take my pill with a mouthful of juice and place the medication back on its shelf next to my dad’s.

“If you’re out at six, you should ask Helena to drive you home,” Brady says. “I’ll be at work until seven.”

The idea of asking Helena to drive me home makes my ears burn. She’s Silent Sky’s leading woman, and has been the leading woman of every other show our department has put on for the past two years. She also has the greenest eyes you’ve ever seen and the brightest laugh you’ve ever heard. I don’t even know how I would ask her for a ride home, never mind making small talk alone with her for a whole twenty minutes. 

“I can just wait around for you,” I say quickly.

“Why bother? She lives like four blocks away.”

“I bet Megan would stay to hang out with me. It’s fine.”

I can feel Brady’s eyes on me behind my back, and I hear the smirk in his voice when he speaks again. “What’s the matter, Claire? You’re not scared of any of my other friends.”

“I’m not scared of her!”

There’s a long pause. Brady’s breathing slows, then stops and starts a few times before he forces out a cough as he jabs himself in the thigh. “Fucking ouch,” he hisses. “Okay, you’re not scared of her? So, there’s no problem with her driving you home?” 

I wait for a minute until he sets the syringe down, and then I turn to face him. He has this smartass twinkle in his eyes, like he knows he has me all figured out. I won’t confirm it, though—I won’t give him the satisfaction. He doesn’t say anything, just slaps a star shaped bandage on his leg, just above where his wrinkled uniform skirt falls, then throws his used supplies into the laundry detergent bottle labelled OUCH!! in black Sharpie.

“Fine,” I groan, “I’ll ask her. But if we run long, you can just pick me up.” I give him the most innocent smile I can muster. He rolls his eyes.

“You better not lie to me about it,” he says, pointing at me with a fist full of plastic packaging. I just stick my tongue out at him and march off to the bathroom to do my hair. “Orange juice is not breakfast, Claire!” he calls after me.

“Neither is half a cup of coffee!” I jab back.

Usually, I would have a normal breakfast, or at least grab something to eat on the way to school, but today my anxiety is flipping my stomach around like a janky laundry machine. I redo my French braids again and again, trying to channel the stress into my fingers and away from overthinking about Helena, but I only partially succeed.

I only fix my braids twice during the day, so they’re the exact right amount of messy when Megan and I walk into the theater at three o’clock. Helena and April, perched on the edge of the stage, don’t turn around as our shoes clack across the waxy floor. Daniel, our director, sits in the first row of the auditorium with a sour look on his face. Megan and I silently take our places on the apron with the other girls. Helena still doesn’t look at me. She has almost the same expression she puts on during the scene where Thomas-as-Peter tells her-as-Henrietta he’s married someone else. My fingers twist together in my lap, sweaty in the stale, unventilated air.

Daniel sighs heavily and clasps his hands together. “Well. Thomas came to see me this morning. The soccer team beat St. Jerome’s, some-fucking-how, so they’re going to sections, and the tournament is during our tech week. Thomas wants to play—he has different priorities than I do. We need to replace him, and I want that done as soon as possible. I got Will to agree he would step in if we can’t find anybody in a week.”

I frown, chewing at the inside of my cheek. Will is the director’s assistant, so he pretty much already knows all the lines and blocking, but he’s no actor. His delivery is flat, his timing is way too fast, and he doesn’t even like to be onstage. He could stammer his way through Peter’s awkward, flustered scenes, but the bossiness, the charisma, the temper? Not in his wheelhouse.   Either way, he might be our best option since after last year’s seniors left, we’re short on reliable male actors. Unless we get lucky and find someone else willing to take the part.

“Since we have no Peter,” Daniel nearly spits, “let’s just go from Annie’s line on page seventeen and run through the rest of scene two a couple times. I don’t want to see any scripts onstage, please.” 

I’m only onstage for about half of the scene, so I spend a good amount of rehearsal time absentmindedly plucking flyaways out of my scalp in the shadows of the wings, my mind rushing almost too fast for me to keep time with. I automatically call out Peter’s handful of lines from offstage, my disembodied voice flirting timidly with Helena, who turns to gossip with Megan about a crush that is entirely scripted. We nail the scene twice in a row before it hits five o’clock, so Daniel lets us go early with a plea that we find someone, anyone with any interest in stepping in as the male lead. 

I jump down off the stage and start wrapping myself back up in my thin navy blue cardigan. My breath moves in and out manually, slowly, and I carefully refold the waistband on my polo to sit just above my belt. I only jump a little when I hear Helena’s voice behind me.

“Hey, Claire, you want a ride?”

My head spins around, and I must do a terrible job of hiding my surprise at the unprompted offer, because Helena laughs one of those magnetic, musical laughs, and says, “Brady told me I should take you. I know he’d rather just go right home after work, he was complaining about his leg being sore all day.”

“That’s because he loves attention, not because it’s actually that bad,” I say, carefully aware of my voice like we’re still running lines. 

Helena giggles again. My face heats up, and I drop my eyes to the linoleum auditorium floor so I don’t stare too hard.

“Yeah, a ride home would be great,” I murmur to the floor.

I follow her out to her little black Volvo, and she makes me wait outside until she can move some trash out of the passenger seat. She apologizes three times, but I wave off all three. Sure, if I had a car, I would never leave trash in it, but I ride to school every day in Brady’s ancient Honda that doubles as a moving, oversized garbage can and part-time ash tray, so I’ve learned to get over it. Helena starts up a Ben Platt album and reverses out of the parking lot. I wait until we’re on the highway, inhale like I’m about to do a polar plunge, and glue my eyes to the road ahead of us.

“Um. How do you feel about Will taking over for Thomas?”

Helena taps her press-on nails agitatedly on the steering wheel. “Not great, if I’m honest. If we were doing a comedy, that would be one thing, but he’s never done anything like this. I love the guy, but with this little time, I don’t know how much we can expect from him.” Her fingers keep drumming. My heart accelerates in sync. “I’m thinking about asking Daniel to hold another audition, just in case someone comes out of the woodworks. Like Thomas did for the musical last year.”

Bingo. “I think that’s a great idea, but I worry no one would show. I’m wondering… if we could convince the school to let a girl take the role. Not genderbend it, I know they would hate that, just have a girl play him. It’s just acting.” 

Helena glances over at me, a glimmer shining in those emerald eyes. “I bet we could get Daniel to go for that. We definitely have enough girls who would be ready to join us tomorrow. I guess we might have to cut the kiss, but no kiss is better than no Peter. That’s smart, Claire.” 

I chew on my lip, hesitating, scared of flying too close to the bright, brilliant sun. “Well, I was thinking, I do already know almost the whole role. Margaret might be an easier one to learn in such little time, and I also know there are more girls who would want to play her than… oh, you know.”

Helena smiles fondly and shakes her head. “Looking for more spotlight, huh? Tired of playing my little sister?”

I shrug quickly. “I dunno. I just think it would be fun.”

“You should at least audition if I can convince Daniel to open it up. I agree Margaret would be easier to replace, and I think you could do a really good job.”

I think you could do a really good job.

I let the conversation fizzle out there, that last sentence echoing in my head. I try not to be too proud of myself. Helena is famously nice to everyone, at least to their face. Still, it’s lovely to hear, especially in her sweet honey voice. It stays in the back of my brain, motivating me to plop down onto my bed with my script and start running lines that have no highlighter or notes on them, trying to remember the blocking in my head for scenes I’ve only watched a few times. By the time my mom is calling me to dinner, I haven’t even touched my homework.

I slide into my seat at the kitchen table next to Brady, gently kicking his ankle. He kicks back, and keeps kicking at an unpredictable rhythm to amuse himself while the rest of us say grace. We’re all silent for a few minutes as we start eating.

“How was school?” my dad finally asks.

“Fine,” Brady answers. He doesn’t really tell our parents about his own life anymore. He says they stopped actually listening to him a few years ago, shortly after he cut his hair with safety scissors, all choppy and uneven, in the bathroom late one night. 

“School’s good, but rehearsal was a mess,” I groan. “We have to recast the male lead for the play. Thomas dropped out to play more soccer.”

It’s Brady who replies first. “Who’s going to take over?”

I drop my head dramatically into my hands. “We have no idea. We probably need to hold a second audition.” I assess my parents’ faces carefully as I continue, watching for any miniscule change of expression. “I was talking with Helena about maybe replacing Thomas with a girl.”

Next to me, Brady goes stone still. He used to love performing when we were kids, singing his little heart out in the church choir or forcing everyone at the family gathering to watch him dance around the living room, but it’s been a long time since he’s shown any interest in it. Glancing at him, I realize what he’s about to say a second before it leaves his mouth.

“Maybe I’ll try out.” Brady speaks so rapidly I don’t even see his mouth move. Our parents turn to him with shock written across their faces. He firmly looks away from them, addressing me instead. “I know I’m not an actor, but I’ve always wanted to try. I just never…” He trails off.

“Maybe you should wait and see if any of the boys want to try out first, honey,” my mom says gently. “There usually aren’t a lot of male parts in the shows there. You wouldn’t want to take that opportunity from them.”

A hurricane whips through Brady’s eyes. I curl my tongue backwards in my mouth, fighting to stay true to my sworn silence on the matter. When Brady speaks, his voice is as low as it can go, a deep, dark rumble in his chest that he practices in the mirror sometimes when he thinks we’re all asleep.

“I wouldn’t want to take that opportunity from myself.” He clenches his jaw, and I can almost see the rest of the words he wants to say flashing across his mind. Then, almost as quickly as it started, the hurricane dies down, and the closet door thuds closed again, leaving only the thinnest crack for the beams of light inside to escape from.

“It’s not like it’s a new thing in theater,” I venture carefully, addressing our parents. I give Brady’s hand a tight, staccato squeeze under the table. “I was actually thinking about auditioning. It’s just a really fun role. And you know Daniel’s an amazing director, he’s not going to cast someone who isn’t the best option he has.”

My mom looks ready to argue, but my dad—bless his conflict averse soul—jumps in to ask me about when I want to start driver’s ed. Brady stays silent except for a mumbled “Thanks for dinner” when we get up from the table. I follow him to his room and close the door behind us.

“You really wanna try out?” I ask him. 

“Yeah, of course I want to,” he replies. “I’ve spent three years at this fucking school just hiding and waiting to leave. I guess I feel like if I play a man onstage, they can’t all keep pretending that I don’t exist.”

“They probably still will,” I sigh. “But I know what you mean.”

I can picture it so clearly: me in Peter’s vest and glasses, grasping Helena’s hands and telling her carefully and clumsily that I love her. In that moment, it doesn’t matter that the words and feelings aren’t really mine. What matters is the way we glow under the bright white spotlight, the only bright thing in the dark of the auditorium, like a radiant, blinking star in a distant galaxy. 

But the picture of Brady isn’t any less clear. His voice is loud and confident, and he never turns too far away from the audience. He moves like the character lives in his body, which, I realize, it sort of does. His spotlight is just as bright as mine.

The sound of my own voice brings me back to Brady’s room again. “Tell you what, I’ll help you get ready for the audition. It’ll be good practice for me, too. Whatever happens, we don’t have to do it alone.”

Brady grins the toothy, boyish grin he’s growing into so perfectly. “Sounds good to me.” He holds his hand out like we’re finalizing a business deal. “May the best man win.”

“Bring it on, bro.” I grasp his hand firmly and beam back at him.

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Lio Kammueller (he/him) is an amateur fiction writer and a 2026 graduate of Beloit College with a BA in Spanish Language & Culture and Education & Youth Studies. Beginning in August 2026, he will be attending Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago to pursue an MA in Linguistics. He writes mostly short form literary fiction exploring themes of identity—such as gender, queerness, religion, and family. He is a proud gay and trans man and a lifelong Midwesterner currently living in his hometown of St. Paul, Minnesota.

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