by Corrie Wang
“Why does he keep calling us fee-males?” I ask.
“Like he thinks he owns us,” Su adds.
Sway mumbles, “Bump me.”
Comma shushes us all, squints at the screen.
“I cannot be clearer,” Chia says in a steady yet slightly impatient voice. “If you see these females, you must call or hand them over to your local patrol immediately. Any males found abetting them, holding them hostage, auctioning them or their body parts off for profit, or using them for sex will immediately be subject to death. Hand them in, though, and as a show of my office’s appreciation, you will receive a fifty-thousand-dollar reward.”
“Whoa,” Comma huffs. “Not to say you aren’t worth every penny, but that is…”
“Astronomical,” Sway finishes for him.
Su is glaring at me. Lest her hot gaze sear off my face, I finally look at her.
She mouths, What if they figured out who you are?
I tug my ear. I can’t hear you.
If Comma and Sway think we’re priceless solely for being fees, how fast would they turn us over if they knew which fees we actually were? This is not good.
“As you know, our talks with Matricula Rhodes have stalled these last few years. I hopefully do not have to explain how important a little bartering leverage is. So let me repeat—again—there is no reward if we have to take them from you. Or if you turn them in dead or in pieces or harmed or damaged in any way. This includes bruised, cut, violated…”
As the mayor continues validating everything we’ve ever been taught about beasts, the screen cuts back to the newscaster. He blows his nose on a not-clean-looking sock.
“You’d think maybe he’d try to look a little more presentable,” I say.
“Why bother?” the males say together.
“We do have a photo of one of the females,” the newscaster says.
“Holy waste,” Su curses.
Because suddenly, she is looking at her hatchet-wielding self.
It was snapped in the tunnel. I’m next to her but as barely more than a vertical blur. Sway, meanwhile, is a fuzzy bright orange cloud on a moped.
“You look fierce, boy,” Comma says to Su, nodding approvingly at the photo.
“Thank you.” Su blushes, pleased.
“Eyewitnesses describe the other female as five feet nine inches tall, one hundred and sixty-five pounds, with medium brown skin and dark brown eyes….”
I scoff, “That describes more than half of the fee population.”
“We do not have a description of the male that is aiding them other than that he is wearing a loud orange jacket and a bright yellow bandanna.”
“Loud?” Sway echoes.
“Told you,” Comma says.
“Do you think Matricula can see this?” I ask Su.
She shakes her head. “I don’t think so. Stuff would have exploded by now if she had.”
Su’s right. At this point, someone should have found our note. Which meant, one way or another, Matricula had to know we were gone. And while I’m sure she was highly displeased, she wouldn’t risk fees’ lives trying to bring us back. But if she found out the beasts knew we were here? And were offering that big a reward? Well, that would certainly change the game.
“And this just in.” The newscaster holds a finger to his ear. “The mayor is issuing a reward for the male as well. Thirty dollars. Alive or dead. Now back to our rebroadcast of the 1989 AFC Divisional Playoff Game between the Buffalo Bills and the Cleveland Browns.”
Sway clicks off the television, stunned.
“Thirty dollars?” he says. “I own toothbrushes that cost more than that.”
His portable immediately chirps, but he silences it before we can hear the PTT message. Comma glances at the front door. Which is when I realize that not only do I have no idea where my girls are, but that we are locked in a monstrous warehouse with two well-connected males who have recently learned that we’re worth enough money to sustain them for at least a decade. Never mind that if I were in their position? With my own life at stake? I’d turn them in faster than water evaporates off the sidewalk in the heat months.
Clearly having identical thoughts, Su slowly takes a flashlight off a side table and goes back-to-back with me. As if beasts might suddenly rappel in through the windows or spring up out of the aboveground pool the males filled with plastic balls. Sway holds his hands out the way I do when I approach skittish feral cats.
“Everyone, calm down,” he says.
“If you get me to my brother,” I say, “I can get you double that amount of money. Not the thirty dollars. The really big number. Our number.”
“Rub it in, thanks,” Sway says. “No one’s turning you in. Comma, you’re up.”
“I’m what now?” Comma asks, eyeing Su and her flashlight.
“Swanify Glori. Full treatment with as much desensitization as you can squeeze in.” Comma starts to protest, but Sway stops him. “It’ll only get worse if we wait. They’ll be expecting us to go to ground. They won’t be expecting us on the street. Su, you’ll stay here.”
“My left breast, I will.” Both males look. She rolls her eyes. “It’s an expression.”
Sway reddens and continues, “That’s the only way I’ll do it. They have your picture, and you’re too protective of Glori to pass. You’d need a year of desensitization around norms, and I’m not sure that’d even be enough. You’ll put everyone at risk.”
Su spins on me. “We don’t need them. Let’s go back to the Charlestonians. I remember the route. They’re fees, Glor. If we explain who we are and what we’re doing here, they have to help us. Plus, you heard that one.” She nods at Comma. “They might already have Twofer.”
The choice is between my best friend and a scrawny, fast-talking beast. No doubt Sway knows his way around the city. But even if he can get me in to speak with the influencing beast who hates fees, he might also backstab me at any moment. Or decide something is too dangerous and leave. Even as my brain murmurs that he rescued us from the mob, it more loudly reminds me that he left us to defend ourselves against them in the first place.
Only coincidence has aligned me with this male. Yet I have spent my entire lifetime with Su. There’s no one else I trust more implicitly. Maybe we don’t have Sway’s connections, but we shouldn’t split up. There is no choice here.
But then Su quietly says, “Think about what Matricula Rhodes would do.”
What would Matricula Rhodes do if Twofer were in danger and she had to choose between sticking with fees or rescuing an innocent child? She’d stick with the fees. At all costs. Without veering off course for love or family. She’d stick with the fees.
I should know.
After all, Two Five and I aren’t some random children to Matricula Rhodes.
We’re her grandchildren.
“Sorry, Suze. I’m going with Sway.”
Su flinches as big as if I’d swung a surprise right hook at her.
“And what am I supposed to do?” she asks.
“Maybe you can go back home and try to run interference with Grand.”
Although this is what would be most helpful, going by the I-will-murder-you expression that settles over Su’s face, it’s not the answer she was looking for.
“Or you can stay here with Comma,” Sway quickly says. “And be an integral part of the next portion of the rescue plan.”
“Right.” Comma snaps his fingers. “And in the meantime, you have lots of vital catching up to do. We won’t have long enough for all twenty seasons of Unicorn Warrior, but we can start the HP reboot, Harriet Potter. And she’s Black. They only made three films before the world ended, but Snape alone will turn these lemons into lemonade. Hu-buh.”
“Sure, why not.” Su wipes at her eyes. “Better than going anywhere with this traitor.”
She doesn’t say it lightly. And she isn’t kidding. But I don’t blame her. Su risked the ire of our entire community, never mind her own life, to come here. Yet she
came without question, because I asked. Now I have chosen a beast over her. And not for the first time. Kind of ever since Twofer came into our lives. No wonder she never liked him.
“I’ll be on the roof if you need me,” Sway quietly says. “We’ll leave at dusk.”
Hoisting up the window next to the generator, Sway wiggles out onto the fire escape. As the burned smell of fresh air fills my nostrils, his foot catches on the windowsill and he stumbles to one knee. Only after manually unsnagging his leg does he spring to his feet and give a thumbs-up, his face flushed bright red.
“Solid choice, Glori,” Su says.
She bangs into my shoulder as she heads to a tire swing the males installed over the aboveground pool ball pit. Hand over hand she climbs the swing’s rope to the ceiling.
“Don’t worry about her,” Comma says. “Of all the bumps and scratches, bruised egos hurt the worst. She just needs to climb out her anger, apparently. In the meantime, lesson number one. The three things you will need to pass as a male, swan or any other variant, are confidence, ownership of place, and balls.”
“But I’m a fee. I’ll never have testicles.”
Comma’s eyes go wide. “You murder me! It’s like you speak in T-shirt slogans.”
He goes to take my wrist, but I smack his hand away.
“Sorry.” I take a deep breath. Let it out. “I know I have to stop doing that.”
“Let’s try again, shall we?”
This time I hold still as his fingers lightly encircle my wrist. His touch is soft. Gentle. No different from Twofer’s or Grand’s.
“Very good,” he says as he guides me across the loft back to his quarters. “And no, dolly. By balls, I do not mean the actual physical accoutrements. How do I je ne sais quoi this? What I mean is the gravitas they deliver. The brashness. Oomph, essentially. Like this…”
Comma stomps his foot, throws out his hands, then shimmies his shoulders. When I do not seem impressed, he sighs.
“Anyway, little fee, luckily the balls part you already have covered. You walk like a mobster, fight like the patrol, and scowl better than Sway. If it weren’t for those tiny little boobies and the fact that you practically rip males to shreds every time they so much as breathe near you, I’d say you fit right in.”
At the door to a white-tiled bathroom that’s spacious enough to house a co-family of ten, Comma stops and calls out to Su, “Are you coming, Spidey? You’ll definitely want to see this. I’m about to give Glori the one thing that remains sacred, honored, and adored across all genders, rivers, and weather-ravaged countries.”
Having climbed to the ceiling, Su is now doing pull-ups on the metal rafters.
She calls out, “A seven-inch axle-to-axle slingshot tech crossbow?”
“A giant piece of corn bread?” I guess.
Comma pinches the bridge of his nose. “Remind me never to bring either of you to a party. No. Even better than a crossbow or food, I’m giving Glori… drumroll, please… a makeover.”
Su and I immediately look at each other. Normally, we’d laugh. A makeover? What is that? But then she remembers she’s mad at me.
“I’d prefer the crossbow,” she grunts.
“You’re going to make me look ridiculous, aren’t you?”
Comma tsks and says, “I do believe the o-u-s word you’re looking for is fabulous. It’s how you carry it off that determines the prefix.”
“Oh dear,” Comma says.
“Please stop saying that.”
Two hours later, we’re all staring at my reflection in the mirror of Comma’s bathroom wondering if it’s too late to go back in time and reverse this entire thing. I have been shaved, plucked, deodorized, and perfumed in regions that have never before said hello to the sun and if you ask me, were better left that way.
For the hundredth time, I hold my arms above my head. My underarms look so underdressed, like being naked at the dinner table; my legs the same. But when I tried to resist shaving them and insisted that hair insulated us, Comma shot back that so did another neat invention called clothing. And that no swan would ever be caught dead with my Chewbacca level of body hair. So now I stare mournfully at my goose-pimpled arm divots. Because I can’t quite manage to look at my face.
After hacking off my butt-length braids with three heavy scissor cuts, Comma powered up a pair of solar clippers. Now my head looks almost like his, nearly bare along the sides, with what can only be described as a mane on top. It starts at my widow’s peak and goes to the nape of my neck. Mounds of shaved curly brown hair lie scattered at our feet. After the haircut, I actually thought I resembled Two Five a bit. But then Comma went and put bleach on my hair—apparently an all-the-rage trend for males my age—and now it’s so yellow it’s almost white, gelled upward so that it swoops into a peak.
“Glori, bruth,” Comma says, gently directing my chin until I meet my eyes in the mirror. “No one knows better than me what it’s like to be attached to something disastrous. In my case, his name is Fuego. Don’t play with fire, lesson learned many times over. But, dolly, you look so pretty without all that extra-ness.”
“Except I don’t want to be pretty, Comma.”
“Who doesn’t want to be pretty?” He squints at me as he sweeps up the floor.
I thought I’d made that clear.
Me. I don’t want to be pretty or anything it entails. Back home, anytime Liyan let slip a compliment about how lovely my hair was, Grand would go off on a rant about how beauty standards were the first thing that should have died with the Night.
Beauty was a yoke, she would say, that’s harnessed us since the dawn of time. Then she’d list a bunch of procedures I didn’t know the definitions of and didn’t care to. Hair dye. Hair straightening. High heels. Liposuction. Tummy tucks. Botox. Teeth whitening. Electrolysis.
Back then, Grand told me pretty meant every fee always thought she had to lose five to ten pounds. Pretty meant we took hot wax and applied it to our vaginas. As far as I was concerned, Beauty could toss her high-maintenance ass over the Falls.
Now pretty was a fiery sunset after a day of hard rain.
A clean leg sweep.
The golden crust on a loaf of fresh-baked bread.
Thanks be, pretty no longer had anything to do with us.
Jostling me aside, Su inspects her teeth in the mirror.
“I, for one, think Glori looks absurd.”
“Let’s agree on absurdly beautiful,” Comma says. As my inner voice rebuts, Beautiful is watching a cell divide through a microscope, he adds, “I know thirty different boys who would kill for your eyelashes.”
Su stops picking at her teeth.
“Not, like, literally, though, right?” I ask, as much to reassure Su as myself.
I mean, the mayor did warn his citizens against breaking us down for parts.
Comma laughs. “Glori, dear, you have to release this go-to assumption that all boys want to slaughter anything that moves. So, no, not literally. In fact, lesson number two is: Males love them some innuendo. Especially when it references their privates.”
“By privates, you mean penis, testicles, and anus?”
“Oh my Gilded Gruff,” Comma squeals. “You’re murdering me! To wardrobe! To wardrobe!”
Tugging us along like we’re maces to his chain, Comma yanks Su and me into his bedroom, where he immediately gathers sections of the pastel curtains and slides them back along the pipes with a flourish. Comma and I smile at each other. Even Su grunts with admiration. Because hidden behind the fabric are racks and racks and racks of clothes. They are all sorted by color. Apple-red jackets, garnet shirts, and flaming fire-hydrant-colored skirts flow into an array of orange items all in the same vibrant jeweled order until at the very end of the rainbow is a section—double the size of the rest—of black garments.
Beyond the clothes, on their own individual shelves, is an entire boutique of hats. Shell hats with ruffles. Top hats with thick patterned bands. Plus, more than a few hats that look like th
ey could take flight for all the feathers.
And the shoes.
Boxes and boxes stacked at least ten feet high with the front flap cut away so you can see inside. Brightly colored sneakers, fringed boots, and so many glittery, colorful pairs with tiny heels that have to be solely decorative, because what male in his right mind would choose to walk around in tight shoes balancing on the equivalent of chopsticks?
“It’s okay to happy cry.” Squinting at me, Comma plucks a tiny white-veiled hat off its shelf and sits it on the very tip-top of my hair at a jaunty angle. “Please tell me you’re a size-eleven shoe.”
“Eight.”
“Close enough. Now listen, little nag. Sway won’t tell you this because it’s not his style, but it’s very important. Lesson number three: If things ever get out of hand, don’t be afraid to fall back on your feminine wiles.”
“Her what?” Su asks.
“You know”—Comma pulls out a gold, sparkly shift and holds it against my chest, then crinkles his nose and lovingly hangs it back on the rack—“play up your sexuality. Be alluring.”
He bounces his shoulders, drops his chin, and winks.
“She needs to pretend her head is heavier than usual and there’s something in her eye?” Su asks. “Are you trying to tell her to flirt? Because no fee flirts like that. Glori, sexy isn’t this waste. Sexy is a look. Or a touch. It’s chemistry. Passion. Racing pulses. Secret kisses.”
Comma has literally dropped what he’s doing to listen. “Go big or go home, I guess.”
“I mean”—Su blushes—“at least that’s what it’s like in my experience.”
“She’s right, though, Comma,” I say. “No fee acts like that. Ever.”
“Perfect, because you aren’t trying to be a fee, are you? At least not today’s model.”
He presses a black sweater and a pair of sparkly leggings into my arms along with a pair of shiny white thigh-high boots that have only moderately absurd heels on them. He also tosses me a warm-looking melon-green puffy coat with an enormous ostrich-feather hood.
