A Rare and Beautiful Thing

by Emery C. Walters

  She had a twin brother, too, Van, and he was in my algebra class, which was lucky, because he sat next to me and showed me the answers when I had no clue. I had no idea why he was so nice to me, but I suppose it was because I’d been friendly with his sister. Twins are supposed to be close like that, right?

  Speaking of siblings, my own sister, Nell, was in high school with me now. I was a senior and she was in the tenth grade. Our school system uses the middle school system, in an old fashioned way, making high school only tenth, eleventh and twelfth grades. At least I hadn’t had to put up with her the previous year. Nell is not exactly easily overlooked. While she and her friends no longer seemed to sneak around and tattle on people kissing, it was probably because they were doing it themselves. She even sat with me at lunch and made me come sit with her if I was alone. Nice, but strange.

  People tease you for anything and everything, but it was getting to the point where there was so much that I no longer cared. I think Nell was starting to understand that I might be different, but I wasn’t strange, or weird. I know she was probably concerned that my differentness would reflect badly on her, but she continued to be nice to me in small ways. That almost made me more uncomfortable than her former teasing. But hey, it was good for her, and it was good to see her maturing and growing more tolerant. She might have to make some really big strides in the direction if and when I came out as whatever I might be.

  One day just before Homecoming, Van wrote me a note during algebra class. It said, “I should invite you to prom, and if I were a different kind of guy, I would. Do you know what I mean, at all? Nobody, and I mean nobody else at all, does. And it has to stay that way.”

  I understood immediately, partly because when I looked up at him, he was blushing, biting his lip, and looking up at me with tears in his eyes, from under what I now saw were beautiful, and lined with dark eyeliner and blue eye shadow, long, curly eyelashes. I was unable to speak. He was beautiful and I’d never noticed.

  Then I almost reeled. I’d wondered how twins of different sexes could look so much alike, but I thought that hey, it could happen, right? But then I thought; nope. I raised my hand and said, “Excuse me Miss Platt but Van and I have to go see…something about his sister…sorry.” And I grabbed his arm, pulled him to his feet, and dragged him out of class. I dragged him down the hall to the girls’ bathroom, checked that it was empty, pulled us inside, and locked the door behind us. It wasn’t exactly empty, however, as there was a girl vomiting in one of the stalls, but I knew she’d never tell on me if I never told on her. Annabelle. She did this all the time, and she cut herself, too.

  Just the same, with Van standing there hyperventilating beside me, I called out, “Annabelle! Knock it off! If you’re doing this because you’re gay, big whoop! I need to talk to you about a prom date, okay?” She stopped. Came out. Wiped her face. Looked at me with awe and amazement, and nodded. The she blushed, smiled like a princess, and left.

  “How’d you do that?” Van asked in awe.

  “I have super gaydar. And you, you’re a girl, aren’t you? Or are you going to be? Which way are you going, Van, or is it Vanna? And don’t be scared because, boy, have I a story to tell you in return!”

  I was all set to pull this gorgeous person’s pants down and check for myself, but someone pounded on the door. Van sighed and almost rolled his/her eyes back in his/her—oh the hell with it—he was visibly being a boy so there, his head. His eyes in his head. His beautiful, gorgeous—wait a minute. I don’t like boys. Boys do nothing for me. So why in hell was I getting all dithery (my grandma taught me that word) over him? What did this mean? Was I—gasp—straight?

  I heard that bitch Annabelle in the hall. “There’s a boy in there!” she yelled proudly. It was my own fault. She’d never opened her mouth in school, well, other than to puke, before, but I must have given her all the confidence she needed to overcome her shyness.

  In the meantime, my boy Van had opened the window, was halfway out, and beckoning me over. I joined him, and out we went. Laughing, and holding hands like little kids, and running off the school grounds and into the autumn woods behind the gymnasium.

  He reminded me so much of Cal, and I couldn’t help but wonder how he was. Sure we texted and emailed and all that, but it wasn’t the same. And for one totally selfish minute, I was glad he wasn’t here, because Cal and Van? Perfect match. But I wanted them both for myself. I blocked out all thought about boys vs girls vs who I was and who I liked. They were mine, both of them—if only in my heart.

  What were the odds that the only two transgender kids in our high school—if we were the only ones—would find each other and even like each other? I’ve heard of trans people who sneer at others because they’re not as trans as they are, or that they can’t be trans because they haven’t done this or had that—yet. You should not do that, throw rocks at your own people, live in a glass house and smash your own windows. You have to stick together. And then there was the whole LGB or GLB or LGBTQI etc. thing. Where do you stop including people?

  Nuts to that. Here I was in the golden woods, leaves crunching underfoot, the whole beautiful sunny autumn day thing, with a beautiful person who liked me back. There was no way I was going to ruin it worrying about things I couldn’t change anyhow. Hell, I’d be lucky if, some fine day, I could even change myself.

  I managed to steer us, without thinking about it, to the little glen where I’d smooched Cal. It was a happy place, and brought Cal’s spirit back to me as if he were really there. I wished he were.

  “This is beautiful,” Van said approvingly. “I like it. What a day, huh?”

  If you’re waiting for us to make love, don’t hold your breath. I wanted to kiss him more than I’d ever wanted to kiss anyone, other than Cal, of course. But I held back; I mean, technically he was the boy, right? But as he lay on the leaves beside me, idly watching the clouds go by and without a clue in the world about how gorgeous he was…well, maybe a little clue, I thought, as I caught him cutting his eyes over at me and then looking away innocently. Yeah, innocent, my hind end. He was pursing his lips together now and sighing.

  My mouth—I had no idea this was going to happen but suddenly I said, “Are you gonna get hormones and grow breasts?” Well, that was that. His eyes filled up with tears. His breathing changed to short little gasps like he was going cry. His chin trembled and that was it for me. I didn’t care if he had boobs on his butt or dicks growing in his armpits. Whatever inside him was showing up so fearfully on the outside, his emotions, his thoughts, his caring, his needing, it tore my heart open, and while there was still Cal in there, a gaping hole had opened up that Cal could not fill. Cal didn’t fit in this part. Ada didn’t fit. Nobody fit, except this person here beside me. Van.

  So this time in the grass, I was the one doing the kissing, initiating it like I thought I would with Cal. I was the one pressing myself on top of the other, and I was the one whose soul thrilled to his response. If this was lust, I’d be terrified of love. But it wasn’t lust, because I needed this person, this other spirit, to be with mine. The kissing was sealing wax on an undying declaration of love, and need. If—and probably when—we got around to doing the deed, I thought at the time, that we would use whatever parts we had at that time. The love we shared would overcome any dismay that might occur because the outside of the person did not meet our expectations, our thoughts based on our ‘chosen’ identity. Chosen not in choosing to be gay or lesbian or trans, that’s just what we were, but chosen as a self-labelling device to clarify things for ourselves as well as others.

  That said, we kissed for a long, long time. I think we only stopped because I got a tickle on my arm. When I lifted my head to look, I saw it was a butterfly, so out of season that it shocked and delighted us both. We both laughed when it landed on his nose, as if to kiss him, and then if flew away. We looked at each other, thinking, what a rare and beautiful thing to have happened. I felt like it seared my heart. I pulled down my sweater and
showed him my tattoo, and when he ran his finger over it just like Cal had, I almost died.

  When we left and walked each other home, dusk was falling and a chill had finally bitten into the warmth of the day. The sun was glowing red far to the west, and a wind had come up to shake the remaining leaves off the bare, dark trees, but the warmth and beauty of the butterfly still remained.

  Chapter 2: Prom

  Four of us ended up going to the prom together. This was the big one, not counting the graduation prom next June, but for now, this semester, the Homecoming prom was the event of the season. Van, Ada, Annabelle, and I decided to all go together. Nobody was sure who was going with whom. Van said he wanted to wear the new dress their mother bought Ada, but Ada loved it too much to trade. Ada’s dress was long and bright blue and slinky. Mine was much younger looking, next to hers, sort of a dusty rose and elegant only in its simplicity and lines. My sister was going with a senior, Mark Adstrom, who was on the varsity and on the student government panel, and had passed all Dad’s rigorous questions. She was wearing a traditional pink frilled thing with lace overlay. Annabelle dressed up in a tux. I’m not even sure my parents knew she was a she and not a he. She introduced herself as Belle which of course, given the outfit, my parents heard as Bill. My sister rolled her eyes, but she was too excited by the glory of her date to say anything, in case it reflected badly on her.

  Annabelle, that is Bill, also had a flask of rum stuffed into her hip pocket. Nobody knew. My dad drove us to the prom, and we said someone else would bring us home. He forgot to ask who that would be and we didn’t say because frankly, we didn’t know. My sister pulled up with her date in his fancy sports car just after the rest of us got there. We all walked in together like we liked each other, then Mark and Nell split off to go sit with his friends, the UberGroup, and their Groupies.

  It was so exciting at first, and I didn’t notice when Annabelle spiked the punch. She must have poured the whole thing in, because it wasn’t long before the punch bowl became the focal point of the whole gymnasium.

  Annabelle wasn’t exactly the brightest orchid in the bouquet, but she knew how to have fun. When she nodded and showed us the empty flask, we all started watching the kids grabbing for the punch, and tasting it. They all made funny faces, and smacked their lips, praising the old recipe the home ec teacher used year after year, which probably surprised the hell out of her when she found out.

  The kids were either going back for more or spitting it out and never going back again. We had such a good time, until the chaperones figured out who spiked the punch and we were asked to leave. We hadn’t even danced together yet. I dragged Van out onto the floor and lost ourselves from sight, and we swayed there together, laughing. Ada came by in Annabelle’s arms. The music ended all too soon, however, and the chaperones found us.

  Nell had been thrilled to sit with the popular seniors, instead of hanging around with her very unpopular sister (me), or the few other tenth graders who had been invited to come. Her date seemed like a very nice guy. But by the time that dance ended, and the chaperones were hunting us down, she was not speaking to me or even acknowledging that I was A, related to her, or B, in the same gymnasium. When I saw her blush and turn her back on me, I was proud of finally being the one to embarrass her, instead of it being the other way around like it had always been before.

  While the chaperones were stalking us, we made haste into the restroom hallway. It wasn’t really just Annabelle’s fault that we had to leave. I kinda started a group kissathon in the hallway there. I was standing there innocently smooching up Van. Was it my fault others liked the idea, too? Well, all right, we’d just come out of the boys’ room together having exchanged clothes, all right? And believe me that boy could rock that dress I’d worn out of the house. I looked hot in his suit too by the way, don’t think I didn’t. But as we kissed, others figured it out and then they started clapping, and the kissathon was on. Some kissed the date they came with, others grabbed randoms who happened to walk by. Someone grabbed the Home Ec teacher who was ancient, and kissed her. I think it clued her in about the popularity of the punch bowl this year; old recipe my butt. She could probably taste the booze on the guy’s mouth.

  I think some other people wanted to exchange outfits too but after my sister came by and saw us and starting laughing and screeching and pointing, instead of just silently hating me from a respectful distance, the little whore, the chaperones put a stop to all the messing around, and of course, kicked us out. Ada could have stayed, but she’d had too much punch so we took her along to keep an eye on her, and also because she was so funny.

  * * * *

  When I eventually got home I got the lecture of the century, but by that time—well, now, did you really think we’d gone straight home? No way. And you can’t prove that the nine rolls of toilet paper on the principal’s house and trees had anything to do with us. Nobody saw us. I paid careful attention to that.

  I swear it wasn’t us who put the bag of dog poop on his porch and set fire to it either. At least, I don’t think it was us. Maybe it was. Yeah, it might have been. It was hilarious when he came out and started stomping on it to put it out. If he’d gone to the dance and chaperoned, instead of delegating it to others, he wouldn’t have had to do that. Serves him right.

  And don’t be saying something like ‘kids these days!’ because we got the ideas from our parents. That’s the sort of thing they used to do for fun, or maybe it was our grandparents, I’m not sure anymore.

  Anyhow, by the time we got home, and there I was still in Van’s suit, and my parents got up to the ‘why can’t you be a good girl like your sister?” part, the police came to the door to tell Dad to go pick my sister up at the station. They’d had to ‘take her in’ after she drove her ‘wonderful’ date to the hospital. See, they’d gone up to Kissers Point and he couldn’t see well enough to drive after she broke his nose because he tried to have it on with her, and of course she was still just fifteen, and didn’t have a driver’s license. Since it was her boyfriend’s car and not his parents’, she told me later, she had maybe accidently hit a tree or something, too. “How careless of me, I know,” she said, smirking.

  My parents were shocked. There were the police at the door and there I was, apparently, ‘the good son.’ I wanted to smile and brag, “Isn’t she coming along nicely? I taught her everything she knows.” But I didn’t, for once in my life, I kept my mouth shut. But after Dad and the officers left, I did sneak some of the gin before Mom got it all.

  Luckily Mom was three shots down when Van rang the bell shortly after that, wearing jeans and a flannel shirt and my dress over top of it. We stripped off the dress, I gave him back his suit, we kissed, and Mom poured out number four. It was the best prom ever. I couldn’t wait to get on my computer and tell Cal all about it. That made it twice as much fun, sharing it with him.

  Chapter 3: Ghosts

  Next there was Halloween. There were parties to go to, candy to nab, costumes to be thought of. Did we go to a lot of trouble, the four of us? Well, sort of. In the past, Mom or Dad took Nell and me out trick or treating, usually in store-bought costumes, sometimes in old clothes or thrift store finds. The past two years I’d taken Nell out on my own. This year I’d been asked to babysit Curly, because his parents had been invited to a party. There was no way I was going to stay home and miss everything, nor did I want to make him miss everything either. He was only eleven. I had a feeling this was going to be a party of six at this rate, not the four I had initially hoped for. Somehow, though, we’d manage. I didn’t see how I could enjoy myself anyhow if I knew Curly was stuck home with my parents watching him, which is what would have happened if I had turned down the job, or even if Nell was trying to find something to do. What if she picked a jerk like whatshisname again to go around with?

  So all of us went out for sodas on the Saturday before Halloween, even Curly and Nell. Everyone had a different idea of what to be: zombies, vampires, ghosts, cats, and du
h, frogs. Nell was the one who put it all together. There was this book out, being made into a movie, called The Glastonbury Gate. It was the most popular book ever, way better than the last couple of teenage thrill stories. Anyhow, Nell got all excited and said, “Let’s all come as one of the characters from the story! There are only six main ones so that’s perfect.” She was beaming as we all agreed. It was a genius idea and we all started talking at once, thinking that if we did it right, we could have the whole cast.

  Curly, however, though he liked the idea and loved the book, said, “I’m going to come as the cat. You know, that one that opened the gate to Hell beneath the castle.” And he was not to be persuaded otherwise. That left us one character short, the ghost of Ashton, Merlin’s grandson, but it still sounded like a great idea. He would be missing, but we could do the rest. Curly wouldn’t have made a good Ashton anyhow, he wasn’t handsome enough yet, and he certainly wasn’t dead either.

  Suddenly it seemed like that’s what we had all wanted to do all along. Plus the costumes could range from whatever we had around the house to store-bought. I ended up taking Nell to the thrift store. Curly’s parents, out of guilt probably, bought him a brand new all black cat costume, complete with tail and ears, and I didn’t know what Van, Ada, and Annabelle were going to do or where they’d get theirs. Halloween had always been, to me, a time when I could be my true self. No matter what I dressed up as, it was always male. Even when I used to dress up as a cat, it had always been a boy cat.

  The funny thing was my Dad knew so much about Welsh mythology that he knew exactly who we were and some of what it was all about. I had to listen to way more about that then I’d ever known even existed, but it sure put the book and movie into perspective.

  On Halloween, we got together in front of my place at twilight. I only recognized Van because he came with Ada. He was dressed as a beautiful, albeit somewhat slutty, heroine Zenda. Annabelle was the vampire Ellington but we only knew because she told us. She looked more like a cross between King Arthur and the Hunchback of Notre Dame.