TRIAL AND ERROR | short stories + snippets

Best Friend Space Adventure: The Garden, pt 1

After months of clothes piling on The Chair™ and the floor and Nicolás's wardrobe, Caleb finally decides to organise his room.

He's not sure why he thought it would be a good idea to bring so much stuff with him to the flat when his mums live barely half an hour away, but somehow, when it came time to move out, he thought he could never survive without his Pokémon cards at immediate access.

Sure, he hasn't looked at them once, but that's beside the point. What if there's an emergency?

All this means that now that his drag career seems to be on some sort of precipice of success and starting to make money rather than lose it, he runs out of space very quickly. He would need three more wardrobes to fit all his drag supplies, and that would still leave some in Nikki's.

In the process of looking through his things, Caleb has created an... interesting get-up. He sits on his bed wearing a Buffy the Vampire Slayer crop-top, camo cargo shorts, a gummy-bear necklace, every Silly Band he ever stole from his sister around one arm, and a striped wristwarmer on the other. The outfit is tied together with a pink cowboy hat with a fringe of silver beads that move with each shift of his head. He's playing with a Tamagotchi he unearthed from a shoebox of junk, and that somehow still had batteries.

"Oi." Nikki realises that Caleb has done a total of no cleaning in the past quarter of an hour. "I said I was gonna help you organise. Not that I would organise for you."

But Nicolás has not been entirely immune to the excitement of discovering nostalgic belongings. He has tied a fish-pattern bandana around his head that he distinctly remembers Behati forcing Caleb to wear as a child to avoid heatstroke. He picked up a few butterfly clips from random places and has entirely forgotten that he hooked them onto the loose locs that frame his face. He also has an elastic choker around his neck. These elements could conflict with his gym shorts and white vest, but somehow he manages to make this all look just fine.

He throws a pair of rolled-up socks at his friend. "Caleb! I've got other shit to do today."

Caleb is still invested in skipping rope with his Tamagotchi. "What, scrolling Grindr?"

"I've got coursework."

He snorts, dropping his voice to his best hetero geezer impression. "Yeah, coursework in sucking cock."

"Sure," Nicolás goes along with it, "and when you get overstimulated by the mess in your room, you won't be coming to sleep in my bed. It'll be occupied."

"I'm your best friend. I don't care if you're having an orgy. They can sleep on the floor."

Caleb scoffs but tosses the Tamagotchi into his keep pile and pulls the junk shoebox closer to pick out the next item.

A note that says something illegible in a five-year-old's handwriting. He crumples it into a ball and tosses it in the rubbish bin, missing masterfully.

A plastic lizard. It's in good condition so, donate.

The next item he picks up is a compact mirror. It has gears and cogs on the front. Maybe it used to be a clock but the face fell off, leaving the inner workings visible.

Caleb prods the gears around, gets momentarily lost in the fun of it. Maybe it's a fidget toy from the Victorian era. They must have had fidgets of some kind back then. He doesn't remember owning this contraption but he must have bought it from a charity shop once.

There's a lever on the side to open it, but no matter how hard Caleb tries, he can't pry the thing open. He rotates the clockwork dials again in case they're a secret lock, but nothing happens.