Zenobia July

by Lisa Bunker

  Zen looked blankly at her.

  “Your period, hon. Do you have it yet? Could be cramps.”

  Zen continued to stare, then blushed deeply and stammered, “N-no, not yet.”

  Mrs. Lopez was not paying close attention. She clicked a mouse, then did some typing on her computer. She said, “Lucille Jarecky. Is that your mom?”

  “No, ma’am,” Zen said, still reeling from the period question. “My mom is . . . I mean, my parents . . . my parents are gone. Aunt Lucy is my guardian.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” said Mrs. Lopez. But then right back to business. “Well, she’s listed as your contact, so just lie still and breathe, hon, while I make a call. Do you want a glass of water?”

  “Yes, please.” Freak-outs were hot sweaty work.

  Zen lay on the vinyl-covered couch-bed thing and watched the nurse stare at the wall as she listened to Aunt Lucy’s cell ring. The phone squicked and her face came to life. “Yes, hello! Is this Mrs. Lucille Jarecky? It’s Anita Lopez, the nurse at Monarch Middle School. I’m calling about Zenobia”—a glance at the computer screen—“July. You are her guardian, correct? Yes? Okay, that’s fine. I’m calling because I have her here in my office, and she says she’s not feeling well.” Mrs. Lopez glanced again at Zen. Underplay, underplay. Zen let her eyes go unfocused and grimaced slightly. “Yes, stomach pain. Could be this bug that’s been making the rounds here. Twenty-four-hour thing.” Then the nurse was mostly nodding and um-humming, and Zen let her head fall back with a sigh. She was going to get to go home.

  Mrs. Lopez hung up the phone and stated in a carefully neutral voice, “She said her wife is coming to get you.” Her face had gone blank. Did she disapprove of women married to women? Anyway, she seemed to need convincing, so Zen said, “Yes, they’re married. Aunt Lucy and Aunt, uh, Philomena.”

  Mrs. Lopez nodded one short nod, her face still flat and chilly. “Yes, that was the name,” she said. Then she instructed Zen to lie still and went off into her computer again.

  When Aunt Phil showed up, she did a thing Zen had never seen her do before, a kind of scrunched-up little smile and a careful way of talking, as though Mrs. Lopez was either a child, or someone who could cause a lot of trouble, or both. A gentle, laughy uber-politeness with lots of nodding. There was an awkward back-and-forth, but finally the nurse seemed to believe that all was on the level. Then Zen and Aunt Phil were walking home. The afternoon was cloudy and cool. It felt like autumn saying, Hold on a second there, summer, it’s my turn.

  They walked for a while without speaking, and then Aunt Phil said, “So, stomachache, huh?”

  Zen glanced up. Her aunt’s eyes seemed sunk deep in her face. “Yeah.”

  They walked a little farther. “What do you suppose caused it, tweetie-bird? Some kinda bug?”

  Zen glanced again. Expression still unreadable. Suddenly she mistrusted that seamed face, those pointy-awl eyes. What do you care? she thought savagely. “The nurse said there’s something going around.” Silence. “Could we walk a little slower? I don’t feel so good.”

  “Sure, honeybunch.”

  Zen took refuge in temper. “Why couldn’t you have picked me up in the car?”

  “Lu has it, scrumptious. And anyway, as I’ve mentioned, me and driving . . . not so much.”

  They walked the rest of the way back to the apartment without further speech. Once there, Zen went straight into her room and closed the door, brushing aside as she went Aunt Phil’s bumbling words about food and water and medicine. She lay down on the bed and had a silent cry. Then she fell asleep.

  When Aunt Lucy came home there was a different flavor of an adult not knowing what to do or say, and from the deeper layers of a mood quickly darkening, Zen observed them contemptuously. These people had no idea how to be parents. They had never done it. They didn’t know anything about it. How could she have started to trust them? Effortlessly she deflected their feeble attempts to say helpful things, to find anything out, though she did accept the offer of soup and crackers on a tray. Once she had it, she closed the door in the Aunties’ worried, solicitous faces. She slurped her soup, then turned to the machine. Cyberlandium beckoned.

  Turn to the side first, though. As soon as she signed on, Arli was there.

  THIRTY

  Hey, Zen. Are you OK?

  Hello? Are you there?

  I see your green dot.

  Yes I’m here

  Uh-oh, no punctuation.

  Now I’m really worried.

  Hello?

  What do you want

  ?

  Do I have to want something to talk to you?

  No, I guess not.

  Whatever.

  Somebody’s in a mood.

  So what if I am?

  OK, fine. So you’re in a mood.

  What happened today?

  You wouldn’t understand.

  Try me.

  Hello?

  Look, no offense,

  but I haven’t known you very long.

  So?

  So

  So maybe I don’t feel like sharing every little thing.

  OK, I’m going to take the chance and ask.

  Was it the thing about that kid Elijah?

  No

  Because, if it was, I would suggest that you need to calm down. It’s not a big deal.

  I mean, you were cool about genderqueer that other time, but maybe you still need someone to tell you: Trans is real, and normal, and nothing to get worked up about.

  That’s not it at all.

  No, listen, I think you really need to hear this.

  Stop

  I don’t know what things were like back in Arizona, but if you want to learn how to be a good ally, which clearly you do, can I just suggest that maybe you need to do a little work here?

  You are getting this so wrong right now

  You don’t have to get all defensive.

  I’m not

  Are you sure about that?

  Hello?

  Well, it doesn’t matter.

  I’m going to send you a couple of links.

  Some 101 websites.

  I can’t even

  And just, you know, a friendly suggestion that you maybe try to put aside what you learned back home and approach this with an open mind?

  Can I suggest that, as a friend?

  OK?

  Hello?

  Hello?

  THIRTY-ONE

  DRIVEN BY THE black boil of feels inside her, Zen slammed into the Lukematon control room. The clang of the door hitting the wall ricocheted back down the grungy tunnel behind. Nobody there. Nobody ever there. And nobody understood her, nobody really knew her, nobody could be trusted. It was infuriating. She needed to wreak havoc on something, on someone. The old dark drive was back. Time to do some hurting.

  It only took a second to confirm that Chopper789 was active in a game. Robert would do for a start. Him and his mean laughing face. And no kooky mouse-breathing dragon this time. She was going to erase him. No, she would torture him first. Turn his precious Vorpal Sword into a trout. Have NPCs insult him. Empty his satchel and fill it with rocks. Then she would totally erase him. She would expunge him from the platform, block him from ever playing again. But turning the sword into a fish, that was first.

  Except, he wasn’t in the D&D world where she had found him before. He was . . . Wait, really? That silly lollipop game? What was he doing in there?

  Invisibly, she inserted herself into his playing environment. He was at one of the early puzzles, the wall with the maze on it, sliding the different colors of gumdrops around. And he
was playing as a girl. His avatar had a dress and cute black shoes and anime hair.

  What?

  No.

  Could Robert be trans too?

  Zen pulled back from the laptop with a gasp. She sat, breathing heavily, and stared at this question in her mind. Then she shook her head. No, it was extremely unlikely that Robert was trans. Everything she had ever seen him do and say, all his ways of being, were just so obviously boy boy boy. Not his body. That didn’t matter. How he did. He was a natural boy.

  And yet he was playing a girl character in a game.

  Which was totally common, she recalled, now that she was breathing and thinking again. She pictured a hulking muscle-bound warrior bristling with armor and weapons, pushing gumdrops around in the maze wall with the point of his spear, and snorted. And she had done it herself, of course. She ran a quick partial list in her mind of the many different aliases and avatars she had inhabited. There were plenty of both female and male. And some animals and a genderless plant creature and who knows what else.

  So, okay, Robert was just playing. Fine. She could still wreak havoc on him. She could wreak havoc on anyone. It was her superpower. Except . . . hovering hand . . . except, she didn’t want to, anymore. The tornado was spinning down. The mood-blackness still lurked, but it was shading over to sad now. The rage felt so good when she was down inside it, but it was hard to keep it going. Zen wondered if that meant she was weak somehow.

  As a matter of form, just because it was so easy to do, she slid a couple of Robert’s gumdrops back after he slid them forward. She switched two of them. Changed the color of one. Made one disappear. She sighed. With a click she increased the number of gumdrops tenfold, so that they jammed every channel of the maze and couldn’t be budged. Then she sighed again and, with another click, returned his game to normal.

  She sat for a bit, playing with her fingers. Kept wanting to paint her nails, kept forgetting. Another thing the Aunties were clueless about. Or at least, insufficiently enthusiastic. But was that their job? To cheerlead endlessly? Zen frowned, wondering if she had been too harsh before. Sure, they had no parenting experience. But they had taken her in and were trying to make her a home. Her throat tightened. It was just that they weren’t . . . They could never replace . . . A tear tracked down her cheek.

  A tap on the door. “Twiglet?” said Aunt Phil’s voice. “You still in there?”

  Zen made a wordless sound. Not angry. Just minimum effort to answer yes.

  “May I come in?”

  She wiped the tear away. “Mmm.”

  The door cracked open, and Aunt Phil stuck her face in. “I just wanted you to know, your aunt Lucy and I are going out. We have a meeting.”

  “Okay.”

  “How are you feeling now?”

  “A little better, thanks.”

  “You sound tired, cupcake.”

  Zen looked at her aunt. “I am tired,” she said. “So tired.” She stared at her computer again, safely switched to an innocuous homework screen. “Tired like, a week’s vacation can’t even begin to touch this tired.” She took in and blew out a shuddery breath.

  “Well, we’ll be back late, so why don’t you start with at least one good night’s sleep?”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  “And you know, there’s still some lemon cake in the fridge.”

  “Really? Okay. Thanks, Aunt Phil.”

  Aunt Lucy looked in over her wife’s shoulder. “Feeling better?”

  “A little, thanks. Aunt Phil told me about the lemon cake. I think I’m going to finish my homework, and have dessert, and maybe watch some of my show, and then sleep.”

  “Very good. I’ve got my phone if you need to reach me. We’ll only be a short walk away.” Then the SFX of gathering stuff, and out the door they went.

  Ten minutes later Zen was in her nightgown, a plate with a large cube of cake on it balanced on her knees, and she had dimmed the lights to make the subtitles easier to read and had pulled up the latest episode—yo, ho, fiddledee-dee, everyone a pirate nowadays—on her favorite clearinghouse site. Time to disappear again for a little while into the marvelously convoluted plots and cyberpunky glamour of Kimazui.

  * * *

  ~

  So, yeah, God.

  This kid Elijah at school: turns out he’s trans. Too. And he got outed today, and I just couldn’t handle it. I pretended to be sick and made them send me home.

  And if I go back tomorrow, with everybody thinking about stuff like this, I mean, how can they not see? How can they not know? It just keeps happening that nobody sees and so I’ve kept going, but I’m always waiting for the hammer to fall, and I hate having this hammer hanging over my head. I HATE IT!

  But if I don’t go back, if I play sick again tomorrow, and again the day after that, first of all they’re not going to believe me. And then, if I’m so afraid to go to school, to go anywhere, because somebody might figure out that I was born with a boy body, that I have this stupid thing between my legs that I hate with all my brain, then . . . then they win.

  I’m so tired. And I’m so afraid. But I guess I have to try again. God damn it all to hell. And I don’t care if that’s taking your name in vain. God, Jesus, Lord, they’re all just words. Mom would hate me saying that. Dad would scream at me. But that’s how I feel right now, so that’s what I said. Bless everyone, blah blah blah. That’s all.

  THIRTY-TWO

  ZEN SPENT BREAKFAST on the edge of playing sick for another day, but when Aunt Lucy said, “It’s time to go,” she sighed and picked up her backpack. Okay, fine. What she would say when she saw Arli, she had no idea. She hoped it wouldn’t be until lunch. If then.

  But there were other challenges first, starting with Mr. Walker’s class first period. It felt like even though the hallway was flat, it was getting steeper uphill with each step toward the classroom door. Who was already there? Which eyes would meet hers first? Her hand squeezed her backpack strap tight. She clenched her jaw and continued forward.

  First eyes, one quick flick and away: Elijah. So, he had come to school today. That was brave. Zen’s heart went out to him, all at once. She took a step toward him, wanting so much to offer comfort, support . . . but what could she say without risking exposure herself? Having a secret turned out to have a big problem attached to it. It made it practically impossible to stand with someone else who had the same secret.

  Melissa’s voice spoke behind her. “Sad.”

  Zen turned and faced her . . . friend? Were they friends, really? There had been some truly sweet moments. But, also, this feeling of not quite matching up. Zen asked, hoping her guess was wrong, “What’s sad?”

  “That girl. Thinking she’s a boy.” Not wrong, then. “And I guess her parents actually encourage it. I mean, look at her. Look at the clothes she’s wearing. She didn’t buy those by herself.”

  Zen’s heart was whacking in her ears. She managed to say, “Himself.”

  “What?”

  “Himself. He’s a boy.”

  “No, she’s not,” said Melissa. “My mother says, people like that, they’re just confused.”

  Mr. Walker saved Zen from having to answer this by calling the class to order. She turned her back on Melissa and found a desk closer to Elijah, who had drawn into a protective ball. All shields up.

  At the end of class Mr. Walker once again caught her eye, so Zen made her way over to his desk. To her intense annoyance, Robert moved in the same direction.

  “Zen,” said Mr. Walker, “I just wanted to tell you, the website committee checked out your tracker, and it looked good, so we downloaded it and installed it.”

  Zen opened her mouth to answer, but didn’t get to speak.

  “Tracker?” said Robert. “What tracker?”

  By his breezy tone, Mr. Walker was unaware of the tension zinging between the two students in front
of him. “Zenobia here turns out to be quite the expert,” he said. “She’s helping us set up a, well, not exactly a trap, but a safety device, so that if the hacker strikes again, we’ll have a way maybe to find out who it is.”

  Robert’s mouth twisted. “I could have helped you with that,” he said. His face looked like a storm moving in. The locked gazes crackled and fizzed.

  Mr. Walker, rummaging in a desk drawer, was still oblivious. “I’m sure you could have,” he said in a soothing voice.

  Robert’s face got darker, and he said, directly to Zen now, “How come you know so much about computers? Huh?”

  On any other turf, Zen would have backed down. Not here. “What, you think nobody but you has skills?”

  “Where are you even from? You’re a really weird kid, you know that?”

  This finally got Mr. Walker’s attention. “Robert,” he said. “That’s no way to talk to a fellow student.”

  “Fellow student,” Robert echoed. Zen felt her face go white. Fellow. That was a gendered word, that was. At least, sometimes. But was he using it that way? Robert’s hand went up to his brow. His finger did inchworm motions.

  Zen’s face went hot. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “If you don’t know, I’m not going to tell you.”

  Mr. Walker said, “What is going on here?” Both of his students ignored him.

  Robert said, “Who are you?”

  “Who are you?”

  “Whoa!” Mr. Walker said, actually sounding sharp for once. “Time out.” They both looked at him. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but it needs to stop. You two need to get to your next classes, and I need to teach mine.”