Billy Bloom is going to teach you how to be fabulous.
The teen drag queen has just moved to (red alert!) Florida to live with his dad in Fort Lauderdale after proving to be a little too much for his Connecticut mother to handle (which is saying something since she’s a boozer who likes to drug their cat and wear it as a fur stole).
When Billy makes his grand entrance at Eisenhower Academy dressed as a pirate (he thought it best to go for a butch look on day one), things don’t go over as well as he expected. Instead of celebrating his fashion sense and all-around amazingness, the kids at Eisenhower (a school made up of Aberzombies jocks and religious Crucivixens) react as you might expect at a Southern high school where the new kid is in drag and working his homeroom like it’s his dressing room and he’s a pilled-out Liza Minnelli.
But Billy is nothing if not resilient, and instead of conforming to the bland bigots he schools with, his next look is even more outrageous. So outrageous, in fact, it catches the attention of Flip Kelly, football hero and Prince of Pout. Unfortunately, it also catches the attention of Billy’s other classmates — who put him in a coma.
With the help of Flip, Billy pulls off a glamorous resurrection, and in a showdown of looking bitchin’ versus tradition, starts a campaign to be his school’s first queen prom queen.
James St James, author of Party Monster and blogger for World of Wonder, writes exactly as he speaks in person — fast, funny and feverish. With Billy Bloom, he has created the teen idol we all wish we were brave enough to be.
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