Symptoms of Being Human

by Jeff Garvin

  I nod. I figured as much. Then, still looking Dad in the eye, I say, “Is it because of me?”

  Dad’s mouth drops open slightly, but he recovers quickly. “No, it’s . . .” He shakes his head. “That’s how these things can go. It’s a conservative county. Any kind of story like this . . .” He trails off, looking at my mother for support. One part of me appreciates that he’s trying to protect me—but another part is angry at him for thinking I’m too weak to face the truth.

  Mom reaches for my hand, but I withdraw it. The hurt in her eyes just makes me angrier; she thinks I’m weak, too.

  “You’re more important to us than all of that,” Mom says.

  “Far more important,” Dad echoes.

  I nod, feeling heat start to build up behind my eyes.

  Dad clears his throat. “I know you’re still processing all of this. And I don’t want to push you. But if you don’t talk to that detective soon, they won’t be able to—”

  I stand up abruptly, cutting him off. “I’m not doing this right now.”

  Dad’s face goes red. “You can’t just give up like this.”

  “Oh,” I say, my voice breaking, “and what about you? It’s okay for you to give up?”

  “What?” he says.

  “You should be out campaigning, not sitting here, interrogating me about things you can’t fix.”

  His face goes white, and when he replies, the words come out in choppy bursts. “Riley, whatever you think, I’m—I’m not giving up.”

  I clench my fists. “Well, I’m not, either.”

  Mom intervenes. “Stop it,” she says, gripping my dad’s arm so hard he winces. She looks at me, and there’s a ferocity in her eyes I’ve never seen before. “Okay. You don’t have to talk to the police. But you need to talk to us.”

  I look at the two of them sitting there, Dad confused, Mom scared. I think I ought to feel sad, or ashamed, but all I can feel is the heat in my face and the tension in my jaw. I take three long breaths. When I open my mouth to talk, the words won’t come out, so I just shake my head.

  Mom rises from her chair, walks over, and puts her arms around me. Dad gets up, too, and places a hand on my back. We stand there like that for a long time, not talking.

  Finally, I push away. “I just need to be alone right now,” I say. And then, pretending not to see the defeated look on my mother’s face, I turn and head up to my room.

  I put an old Trespassers William record on the turntable, lie back on my bed, and try to lose myself in the ocean of echoing guitars—but my brain won’t be quiet. My dad is losing ground in the polls because of me. My best friend—girlfriend?—won’t return my calls. And the guy who did this to me is walking around free, while I’m holed up in my room, hiding from reporters and the police, isolated from everyone. I consider calling Solo, but he’ll only try to cheer me up, and that’s not what I want right now. I wish I could blog—but that’s out of the question. Even if my anonymity hadn’t been stolen, it would only take one cruel message to break me into pieces. And I can’t fall apart. Not again. So I turn off my phone, shove my laptop under the bed, and bury my face in my pillow.

  I recognize what’s happening—I’m isolating myself, just like Doctor Ann warned me I might. I’m withdrawing, closing myself off. I’m acting like a victim—and I hate that word. I hate it.

  I have to do something.

  But I don’t have the courage to leave the room, let alone face my blog—and the thought of accidentally coming across some news article about what happened makes me physically ill. Still, I can’t just lie here; I have to do something. So, more out of rage and desperation than a genuine desire to heal, I reach under my bed, retrieve my laptop, and fire it up. And, with a couple of carefully crafted Google searches, I start doing the research Doctor Ann prescribed.

  I find dozens of websites about violence against trans and genderqueer people—but after half an hour of browsing, I end up back on QueerAlliance.org, reading personal stories written by survivors. Just like Doctor Ann said, many of them went through the same things I’m going through now: the numbness, the isolation, the nightmares. The guilt, the shame, the lack of appetite. It’s weird; part of me is comforted by this information, but another part is angered by the thought that I went through this . . . unthinkable experience only to come out the other side as a stereotypical victim. A statistic who perfectly fits the profile.

  And then I find a story dated June of this year—a month before I went to Pineview. It’s about an eighteen-year-old trans man named Eduardo who was suffocated by his ex in an Orange County motel room. When I read the name of the motel, a shudder runs down my spine; it’s three blocks down from the old hardware store where my dad used to take me when I was a kid. I’ve driven by it dozens—maybe hundreds of times.

  I drove by it that night.

  I put a hand on my head, feeling the tender spot where it struck first the windshield and then the hood of my mom’s minivan. And that’s when it dawns on me: I’m one of the lucky ones. Because I survived.

  I’m surprised to feel a hot surge of anger rising in my throat. I survived—and yet, thanks to my famous father, my story has been all over the news. But what about Eduardo’s story? How is it possible that a murder like this happened so close, and that I never heard about it on the news? Why wasn’t this a headline?

  There are dozens more, but the story that affects me most is about an eight-year-old trans girl in Ohio whose father beat her to death with a chair after she told him, “You know I’m really a girl inside, right?”

  I have to wipe away tears to read on.

  According to one site, over three hundred acts of violence have been committed against trans and genderqueer people this year in the US alone—and thirty of the victims were children and teenagers. I can only assume that Andie Gingham is one of them—that is, one of the thirty that were actually reported.

  The thought that I might be number thirty-one sends a bolt of cold shooting through me.

  But the feeling only lasts a moment, and then it’s eclipsed once more by anger. A deep, slow-burning rage—at Jim Vickers and his accomplices, yes—but it’s bigger than that. It includes Eduardo’s ex. Andie Gingham’s dad. The father of that eight-year-old girl. And, somehow, it includes me, too. For sitting here, unable—or unwilling—to do anything about it.

  But what can I do? Me, who can’t even face talking to my parents, let alone the police. I consider Mike/Michelle’s invitation to speak at the Trans Health Con this weekend, and I shake my head. I don’t have the courage to leave my room. How could I possibly stand in front of an audience of brave, out, genderqueer adults and claim to be some kind of “online community builder”? It’s absurd.

  But then I think about my blog and my fifty thousand followers—however unintentionally it came to be, it’s an undeniable number. And even though it’s only a virtual crowd, when I imagine those fifty thousand faces looking at me, I feel invisible bands begin to tighten around my chest. I remember vividly the real crowd of reporters outside the hotel that night—all those faces, all those microphones and cameras—and the pressure builds until I can’t breathe. Until I just want to disappear.

  My phone buzzes on the bedside table, and I flinch. The display shows Park Hills PD calling for the fourth time today; I never should have given that officer my cell number. Ignoring the call, I slide off the bed and go to the window. I peek out through the curtains and see a news van still idling on the curb across the street.

  Just when I want to be left alone—isolated, Doctor Ann would say—I’m surrounded instead: by the police and the media and my parents, and by the overwhelming thoughts swarming around in my head. I can’t go on like this. I need to talk to someone—someone other than Doctor Ann. And although Solo has been amazing to come see me every day, he’s not the one I need. I need Bec. Now. And, since she won’t return my calls, I’ll have to go to her.

  CHAPTER 32

  THE CLOCK ON THE DASH reads 10:42 p.m. when
I pull up to Bec’s house, and all the lights are out. I try Bec’s phone one more time. It goes straight to voice mail. It’s way too late to knock on the door—so, using my phone as a flashlight, I walk around the side of the house, fumble with the latch on the gate, and make my way into the small, overgrown backyard. The lights are on in the back window, and there’s a small gap in the curtains. I approach the glass and peer in.

  It’s Bec’s room, all right, but it’s a disheveled mess: bed unmade, dresser drawers hanging open, books piled on every surface. And there’s Bec, sitting on the floor facing away from the window, staring at a framed photo surrounded by lit candles.

  Gently, I tap on the glass, and she looks up in surprise. When our eyes meet, I take a step back; her face is drawn, her eyes hollow. Her hair is short and sticks up in clumps, as though she chopped it off with dull scissors. Finally, she crosses to the window and opens it.

  “Hi,” I say.

  “Hi.” Her voice comes out like a croak, as if she hasn’t used it all day.

  “Can I come in?”

  She looks up at me, glances back at the door, and then sets about removing the screen from her window. I climb through, and she closes it behind me.

  “Sorry if I scared you,” I say. Bec shoves aside a pile of clothes and drops onto her bed. “But you weren’t answering your phone, and I thought it was too late to ring the doorbell.”

  Bec shrugs. “Erik’s at my dad’s, and my mom took, like, three Ambien. She would’ve slept through it.”

  I lean up against the wall next to her desk. “You look worse than I do,” I say. I hope to tease a smile out of her, but she just nods. “How come you haven’t been answering my texts?”

  Bec gestures vaguely at the door. “I dropped my phone in the toilet. I didn’t want to talk to anyone.” She licks her chapped lips and looks up at me. “How’s your head?”

  “It looks worse than it is.” I move toward the bed and sit down next to her. I hope she’ll take my hand, but she makes no move to touch me. I clear my throat. “I want to ask you about what happened that night.”

  As though she’s been dreading this, Bec closes her eyes and nods.

  “Did you know it was him? Vickers?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you tell the police?”

  She nods again.

  “Then why haven’t they arrested him?”

  She punches her thigh with a fist. “I knew it was him, but . . . that night, Solo and I hardly saw anything. Guys running. A truck pulling away. We couldn’t see faces, let alone a license plate. When the detective took our statements at the hospital, he acted like we were wasting his time.” Bec buries her face in her hands. “It’s my fault,” she says.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “All of it. It’s my fault. That’s why I couldn’t talk to you.”

  My stomach twists, seeming to understand something my mind doesn’t grasp yet.

  When Bec speaks again, her voice is low, and she won’t meet my eyes. “Erik hacked your computer. He found out about your blog.”

  My heart begins to pound. “What?”

  “The night you came over to study. When he set up the Wi-Fi on your laptop, he stole your browser history.”

  I stare at her. “I don’t understand. Are you telling me that Erik is the one who outed me? That he called the reporters?”

  “No,” Bec says. “It’s more complicated than that.” She lets out a long breath. “Erik had this fantasy of being on the football team. You saw him, working out with that video game. I guess he already knew who you were when you came to the door, because he’d overheard Vickers talking about you. So when I handed him your laptop that night, he saw a chance to get in good with the team. He hacked whatever he could and gave it to Vickers as some kind of bribe.”

  I stare down at the patchy brown carpet, trying to process what I’m hearing. I remember spotting the two of them on the athletic field that day: Vickers, apparently teaching Erik how to throw. I remember Erik digging something out of his pocket and handing it to him.

  “And then,” Bec continues, “when we humiliated Vickers at the football game, I guess he just snapped. He had your blog, he knew your name. He must have Googled you, found out who your dad was. Read about the fund-raiser, and then made his plans to get back at you.”

  My mind is spinning, my face starting to tingle; Erik knew about my blog and gave the info to Vickers, who waited until the right moment to out me. The moment when it would cause the most damage.

  “So . . . ,” I begin, then pause. There’s so much, it’s hard to wrap my mind around it. “How do you know all this?” I ask.

  “Erik told me,” she says. But something in her eyes tells me it’s not the whole truth.

  “He admitted it to you?”

  She nods.

  “When did you find out?”

  Bec starts to say something, then drops her gaze to her lap.

  “When?” My voice sounds hard, and Bec seems to shrink from it. She glances up at the door, then back at me.

  “The night you came over to study. Right after you left, I caught him looking at your blog. And I confronted him.”

  My chest tightens. “So you . . . you read it?” I ask.

  Bec doesn’t respond.

  “Did you read it?”

  She nods.

  “All of it?”

  She nods again, and suddenly I can’t breathe.

  “But I made him erase everything he stole,” she says. “I thought it was gone, I swear—but he must have, I don’t know, emailed it to himself before I caught him.”

  I put a hand on top of my head as if to hold myself down; the room has begun to tilt.

  “But he didn’t tell me the rest until—until after the . . . after it happened. I swear, Riley, I’m telling you the truth.”

  But I’m not listening; I can’t listen. She read my blog. She knew everything, all along. Her invitation to the Q, our “dates,” what I thought was flirting—was any of that even real?

  My heart turns to lead in my chest.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “I should’ve told you sooner. I didn’t think—”

  “So,” I interrupt, my voice trembling. “I was just a project to you?”

  Bec’s head snaps up. “What do you mean?”

  “You took pity on me.” Heat rises to my face. “Thought you could ‘fix’ me.”

  “What? No. Riley, you know that’s not how it was. I didn’t—”

  I stand up, cutting her off. “What do I know? That you invaded my privacy? That you lied to me?”

  Bec opens her mouth as if to reply, but only shakes her head.

  “And when it really counted, when I really needed you—you couldn’t face it, so you ran away.” I shake my head; now I’m the one who’s disgusted. “You never liked me for me. You couldn’t save your fucked-up sister, so you thought you’d try to save me instead.”

  Bec goes white.

  I turn and stride to the closet. I dig my fingernails under the edge of the big rainbow decal on the closet door—Gabi’s decal—and I tear at it, ripping it off in strips, shredding it. Something pops in my head—like a water balloon bursting—and I start to scream. My vision goes blurry. The sound of blood pumping through my ears is deafening. I push away from the closet door and stagger back toward Bec, yelling incoherently. My shins smash into the desk chair and I cry out. I stumble backward and kick the chair as hard as I can, sending paperback books flying.

  And then Bec is on her feet, wrapping her arms around me, holding me. I thrash against her, slapping her back, trying to kick her, but she just holds me tighter, and my screams turn into wails. My legs give out, and I drop like a rag doll. Bec gets down next to me, not saying anything, just holding me. Just holding me.

  There’s a knock on the door, and a slurred, groggy voice yells, “Francesca? What’s going on in there?”

  “Nothing, Mom,” Bec says. “I just had a bad dream. Go back to bed.”


  “Is that you yelling?”

  “Go back to bed, Mom!”

  Her mom mutters a few more incoherent protests, then withdraws. Bec holds me the whole time.

  Gradually, my breathing slows. My heart rate goes down. I blink as Bec’s face comes back into focus. She looks like herself again—her eyes are still hollow and her chopped hair still sticks up at random, but she’s back in control.

  “I have to go check on my mom,” she says. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.” She stands and quietly leaves the room.

  I cross to the bed, and my eyes find the framed picture Bec was staring at when I knocked on the window. It’s a photo of a beautiful, dark-haired, fine-featured child about six years old, wearing a pair of patent leather Mary Janes. It’s Gabi.

  My phone vibrates in my pocket, and I check the display—it’s Mom. They must have discovered I left. With a pang of guilt, I decline the call and text her back instead.

  I’m okay. Had to see Bec. Home in an hour. Sorry.

  Bec returns with a cold, wet cloth, and I use it to wipe my face as we both sit back down on her bed.

  “Is she okay?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” Bec replies. “Are you?”

  I look at her. “No. I’m pretty not-okay.”

  Bec nods, looks away.

  “But I’m more okay than your hair.”

  She groans and runs a hand across her almost-buzzed scalp. “I’m so pissed I did that.”

  “I actually kind of like it,” I say.

  She rubs at it again. “I feel like a boy.”

  I smile. “I know what you mean. Sometimes.”

  Bec smiles back, that crooked smile, and warmth floods through me. I put the cold cloth against the back of my neck.

  “I’m sorry I said that. About your sister. And about you.”

  Bec shrugs. “You were pissed off.” There’s a long silence as the two of us look at each other. Then she says, “When I saw the footage of you online, getting mobbed by reporters outside that hotel, I knew something was going to happen. I called Solo. We went looking for you.”