“Hi, Lisa.”
Someone cusses loudly, and that seems to break the spell. Everyone is standing up to get a better look at me. My cheeks are warm, but I stare straight forward, and try to keep a neutral smile on my face. This had to happen sooner or later; just like with David, I only need to ride it out.
“All right, that’s enough!” shouts Mr. Macker, and eventually he wrests back control of the class. He’s gripping his lectern quite hard. “Danny, if that’s who you really are, I’m going to need a note from your parents explaining this.”
There’s a general ripple of laughter. Of course that’s what he wants. Notes from parents make everything better. Why, if a girl can show up and report for class without a note to explain what she’s doing, next we’ll have anarchy. Where does it stop? Soon they’ll be dancing!
“Sure thing, Mr. Macker,” I say. I feel like I’m on top of the world, and just for a moment contemplate literally going back up there between classes.
But then it happens again in first period and it’s not as fun. Second period is the same thing, and now it’s actually getting annoying. What started as something that was almost an affirmation (everyone is noticing I’m a girl!) has now become tedious (and now they won’t get over it!). When a runner from the office comes to fetch me out of third period, I’m almost grateful. I sit next to David in this class and he hasn’t stopped staring at me. Getting yanked is a relief. This feeling lasts for about as long as it takes me to get to the office and see Mom waiting for me there.
Well.
Crap.
In a way, it would almost be easier if it were Dad. He would be deadly calm while we were still in the office, and then once we were in the car—BOOM. The detonation would be fast, and hard, and he’d scream himself hoarse at me. I’d know how to brace up for it, how to avoid making it worse.
But Mom isn’t like him. What she does is almost worse. The moment I stick my head in the door, she’s rising from one of the cheap chairs in a little waiting space in front of the big main desk where the school secretary sits.
“Danny, we have to go,” she says.
“I have class.”
“I’ll pick your homework up from your teachers.” She’s already moving toward the door, moving to push me back out of the office. “We need to leave.”
Everything about her is calm, serene almost, but there’s something off. Nobody but me would notice how different she is right now. If she were Dad, I like to think I’d just shout back, that after last night, after the promise I made myself at the top of the atmosphere, that he wouldn’t have that power over me anymore. But I’m not ready to deal with Mom.
She steps close and speaks quietly. “We talked about this. You’re not going to school until your treatment begins.”
“I don’t need treatments,” I say, but somehow we’re already in the hallway. She’s got me in her orbit and I’m just following her along.
• • •
She pulls out of the parking lot a lot faster than she normally does. It takes a few blocks in our beat-up old sedan before she slows to a more normal pace.
“Danny, you shouldn’t have done this,” she says, in that savage whisper she uses sometimes. “If your father finds out, he’ll be very upset.”
If? She’s going to lie to him. She’ll pressure me to keep quiet, too.
After a moment I realize we’re headed the wrong way to go home.
“Where are we going?”
“The mall. You need some new clothes.” With a start, I realize she’s bribing me, and worse, this isn’t the first time. It’s a ritual with us. But now something in me has changed, made it seem wrong all of a sudden. I open my mouth to say something, and then stop. The sunlight catches her cheek, and for the first time I see the whole person. Maybe it’s because your mother is always Mom to you, or maybe it’s because I was in denial, but finally it hits me: Mom is just as much his captive as I am. She’s not just the quieter parent, the more reasonable one. She’s the trustee trapped between the warden and the other prisoner.
Immediately upon the heels of this understanding is another: I must not say this out loud. To say it out loud is to name it, and to name it is to give it irresistible power. That power will mean it can no longer be ignored. The polite fictions and convenient blind spots won’t work anymore. Something will have to change. And I know, with a certainty that fills me with dread, this is something she will not do. If I say the name of this thing he’s done to her, she will fight me. She will join him, because she’ll have to. Because she’ll have to destroy me or else admit I was right…
And then.
Dot.
Dot.
Dot.
And then somehow, it gets worse.
“Mom, I can’t stay locked up forever.”
“You’re not going to. This is just for now.” Her voice is soft and reasonable, but she doesn’t deny they’re hiding me.
“It’s not going to go away.”
“We’ll deal with that when it comes to it,” she says, and I know this means we won’t deal with it until it can’t be avoided any longer. Which, given how practiced we are as a family in avoiding things, could mean more or less forever.
“Everyone at school already knows.”
Her knuckles are white on the steering wheel. “He won’t ask them,” she says, almost to herself.
Feeling sick, and alone, and very, very young, I let her drive me to the mall. There’s a thrift store there, and she buys me some jeans. It goes without saying I am never to wear them around the house.
Chapter Nine
Minovsky_Particle has signed on.
CombatW0mbat: dude where did u go?
Minovsky_Particle: mom came and picked me up. She doesn’t want me coming to school.
CombatW0mbat: Oh man, that sucks. is your dad pissed?
Minovsky_Particle: what the hell does that mean?
CombatW0mbat: nothing. just hope your not grounded or anything.
Minovsky_Particle: ok. No, I’m not grounded. Yet.
CombatW0mbat: this whole thing is just so weird. Everyone has been asking me about it.
Minovsky_Particle: oh?
CombatW0mbat: you turned into a frikkin GIRL Danny! People are freaked out.
Minovsky_Particle: I guess they’ll just have to get used to it
CombatW0mbat: as cute as you are, that shouldn’t be a problem.
Minovsky_Particle: lol uh, thanks
CombatW0mbat: when are they going to let you come back?
Minovsky_Particle: i don’t know
• • •
The next day I decide to go back to school again. Mom might try to pull me out, might be really mad this time, but I can’t let that stop me. They have to know I won’t be shut away anymore. I won’t live in shame anymore. Truth is, I’m scared to think what will happen when Dad inevitably finds out. Yesterday I felt invincible, but Mom’s quiet little freakout has me rattled. It’ll be bad, I know it will. But I’m stronger now. I’ll be okay. Sooner or later, he’s going to have to accept the fact that I’m not his son. I’m his daughter. He’ll yell and scream and pitch a fit that might last for days or weeks. I don’t look forward to it. But I have to believe this can work. And really, how bad could it get? He hasn’t hit me since he stopped spanking me as a little kid, and if he tries now, he’ll probably break his hand. I can endure whatever comes of this, I know I can.
First, though, I have to get out of the house. Dad always has to leave early to beat rush hour on his way to the crappy retail tax preparation job he’s had since the economy wiped us out, but Mom’s vigilant even in his absence. I make a show of eating breakfast through the times when the school bus should arrive, and when Mom lets her guard down I slip out my window again. Taking a city bus is longer, but in some ways more comfortable since there aren’t other students around. Flying would be faster, but if the kids at school learned I could fly now, too, that would make the crowds and the staring even worse. It might even ge
t some people thinking about why I suddenly have a “special ability” just a few days after they put Dreadnought in the ground.
I get to school in time to be late for second period. Class ends, and as we file into the hall there are a lot of eyes staring, but I keep my face blank and pretend I don’t notice. Over the squeak of linoleum and the cascading voices of dozens of conversations, I hear my name more than once. Every time I get nervous I remind myself that I can look down on these people like ants any time I want to. Literally, I can look down on them. Because I can fly, and they can’t. That’s the important thing to remember. I’m invincible.
At the end of second period, we have a fifteen-minute break, and I head for the bathrooms. My hand is actually on the door to the boys’ room before I realize my mistake, and with a giddy kind of smile turn around and head for the girls’ room.
The air seems to snap tight when the door shuts behind me. There are nine or ten other girls in here, and they all seem to look up at me at once, some breaking off in midconversation. My cheeks get warm, which happens way too often these days. I flick my eyes to the ground and go to stand at the back of the line to get a stall. (There are no urinals in here, so it almost doesn’t seem like a bathroom to me.) To my great relief, most of the other girls almost immediately lose interest in me. Two leave quickly, another keeps staring, but nobody hassles me. When it’s my turn, I shut the stall door and let out a quiet breath. This will get easier, I’m sure.
I hope.
When I’m done the bathroom is almost empty, just a few other girls still waiting to use the toilets. I’m washing my hands, trying to be quick but thorough, when I sense someone at the sink next to me staring.
“Yes?” I say, looking over.
It’s a girl I sort of recognize. Long dark hair, dark eyes. She’s looking at me intently, and is chewing on a kind of rubber pendant on a necklace. She probably doesn’t like me.
“Nothing,” she says, pendant dropping from her mouth to hang on its string. She looks down at her own hands, begins scrubbing them intently. “Never mind.”
“No, really. What?” I say, a little more forcefully than I’d intended.
“It’s just…well, I suppose this is all a big change for you.”
“Only because other people make it a big change,” I say as I wipe my hands.
“Right. Sorry. I didn’t mean to stare.” She grabs a fistful of paper towels and wipes her hands quickly, then holds one out to shake. “I’m Sarah.”
“Danny,” I say, shaking her hand.
The warning bell rings and we head for class. She goes the other direction from me, but turns back to say, “Welcome to being a girl. Don’t mind the boys. You’ll get used to them.”
What the hell does she mean by that?
• • •
I think a memo must have gone around because my teachers stop demanding I prove who I am in every class. Whether Mom likes it or not, her coming to the office yesterday, asking for me by name, and then obviously recognizing me and accepting who I am in front of the school secretary has made it more or less official in the school’s eyes. That’s what I hope, anyhow. Fourth period goes by, and I let myself begin to believe the novelty of my transformation is starting to wear off, because most of the other students I’ve already had a class with today don’t stare at me anymore.
The lunch bell rings and I hustle to put my books in my locker and meet David for lunch.
“So you’re not getting yanked today?” he asks.
“Looks like, yeah,” I say as I click my lock shut. “God, I do not look forward to the next test.”
We join the herd moving toward the cafeteria and split up to the different meal kiosks. There’s a lot of cruddy things about this school, but their food program is really nice. We’ve got plenty of selections, and because there are about a half dozen choices each day, we get to avoid the sort of huge lunch line that eats up half the break period that a lot of kids have to suffer through. I get a slice of pizza and am reaching for a second when I realize this is what a boy would eat. I mean, I’ve seen girls load up their plate like a boy, but now that I’m here I realize there is a big difference in the gender breakdown of different kiosks. The pizza line is almost all boys. Suddenly, I’m worried about getting fat, which is something that hasn’t happened to me before. Nobody cares if a boy is a little chubby, but that’s not true for girls. Crap.
But can I get fat in this body? It’s my physical ideal, right? Does that mean forever? Crap.
I settle on one slice of pizza, and a side salad instead of a second slice. Now, let’s see if I’m hungry for the rest of the day. David meets me at the exit from the food kiosk area to the seating area, and we head to our usual table in the back corner, where it’s drafty and the light is always broken and flickering, and people leave us alone. It’s so good to be back after a full week trapped at home. It feels a little surreal to think of it, and stranger still how normal it feels to be back here, finally, as the self I always wanted to be. Can I please never wake up from this dream?
I’m about halfway through my slice of pizza when I realize David is staring at my boobs again, and has been for our entire meal, and with that realization I enter a whole new realm of mortification. Don’t get me wrong—I was in the bathroom looking at these things for like an hour when I first got them, but holy crap is it different when it’s him doing it. And not just glancing, but staring with, like, intention.
“David!” I hiss. “My face is up here!”
He looks almost like I’ve startled him out of a reverie. Oh God. He was imagining me naked, wasn’t he?
“Uh, sorry,” he says, and his face is quickly turning scarlet. “I didn’t, you know—it’s not like I’m gay or anything.”
“What?”
“Oh, I mean—”
“First of all, I’m a girl.”
“Okay, Jesus, sorry.” He munches on a french fry sullenly. “You on your period or something?”
I slap my hand flat on the table, a bit harder than is strictly within the bounds of normal human behavior. It makes an impressive bang, and both our trays jump. “Not. Funny.”
We’re getting looks from the nearest tables. He sees this, and hunches over, embarrassed. “Christ, I said I was sorry! You don’t have to be such a drama queen about it.”
For just the briefest moment, I imagine what the look on his face would be if I introduced him to the stratosphere. Believe it or not, that helps. Maybe it’s not healthy, but it helps. Compared to him, I’m a god. Goddess. Whatever. The point is, I shouldn’t let this little boy get to me.
I snort. “And you wonder why you’re single.”
“Oh, oh, I see! I can’t make a joke, but you can be hypersensitive about everything, and make fun of me for not having a girlfriend.”
“You were being a jerk.”
“And you’re being a stuck-up bitch. I’ll see you when you’re over yourself.” He gets up in a huff.
As I watch him leave, I take deep breaths and clench my fists. The hell is his problem, anyhow? We never had fights like this before. I go to take another bite of salad, and find that I’ve broken my plastic fork. Wonderful.
As my anger cools, I realize I’ve been feeling things a lot more recently. My highs are higher. My lows are lower. Before, it seemed like half the time I didn’t have feelings as much as I had a script of how I thought I was supposed to feel, and I just followed the script. Maybe for people who are actually male that’s not what it feels like, but for me, testosterone muffled everything. Now it’s like the estrogen in my blood has taken the cotton out of my head, and I’m feeling things clearly for the first time. Maybe it’s not fair to say my feelings are stronger now, but they have more resolution. Before I was living in muddy pastels, and now things are all lit up in neon. I like it. Even when it hurts, I like it a lot. David will calm down, and he’ll get over my shocking insistence upon having boobs in public, and then things will go back to normal, except they will be better.
<
br /> I know they will.
Chapter Ten
David doesn’t get over it, at least not today. He’s sullen and won’t talk to me in the halls, and in class he never once looks my way. We used to get warnings all the time for our whispered conversations, but now it’s like a brick wall between us. Dude, get over it already so I can tell you about my superpowers, I want to shout at him. Can’t we just go back to hanging out?
I’m relieved when the final bell rings and we head our separate ways to catch the bus home. I’ve got a whole lot of homework to catch up on. Even getting my assignments sent home hasn’t kept me up with my classes. It sucks because I’d totally planned to have superpower practice tonight, but it looks like I might not have time.
When I arrive home, Mom is waiting for me with her lips pressed thin.
“Danny, we talked about this.”
“No, you talked at me,” I say as I pull my books out and get ready to start on French. “But I decided I didn’t agree.”
“Danny!” Her voice is sharp, and I look up in surprise. Mom is not the one who yells. “We are holding on by a thread here, do you know that?”
“Everything would be fine if you’d just let it be!”
“You know that’s not true!” She glances at the front of the house, like she’s scared he’s going to come home early. “Your father is at his wit’s end trying to help you.”
“He’s in denial. I’m a girl. That’s not going to change.”
“You don’t know that. We might find—”
“It won’t change because I don’t want it to.” Mom steps back a little. “I thought you understood that.”
“Why would you think that?” she asks.
“Because you bought me those things. Because…” My throat clenches up and my eyes prickle with tears. Because we had such a nice day out together. Because I felt closer to you that weekend than I ever have before. Because I thought you loved me, and could see I was happy now. I have all the things I need to say, but none of the strength to say them.
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