Besides, in another two weeks it would be Becca’s turn to sleep over at my house, and my moms would be sure to tell her then. What was the harm in keeping it secret a little longer?
So I said, “It was the school stuff,” and held my breath. It was a good thing the room was dark, or she would have seen the lie blazing on my face.
Chapter 6
The bad thing about good weekends was they ended. Monday, I woke up cranky, and with each passing minute, I got crankier. When the other girl sat at the middle of the lunch table, giving me her usual side-eyed stare, I lost my temper. “If I’ve got food on my face, tell me.”
“Hazel,” she said.
I almost dropped my sandwich. Maybe I shouldn’t have been that surprised she knew my name—we’d been in school for a week now—but considering how little notice the other kids had given me, I hadn’t expected it. I’d paid minimal attention to their names myself.
“You don’t recognize me?” The girl studied me with dark brown eyes, and I felt that strange sense of familiarity again. It put me off-balance.
“You’re in language arts and algebra with me,” I said.
“No. I mean, yes. I mean, never mind.”
If it hadn’t been for my conversation with Becca on Friday, I might never have made the connection. But as the girl stammered, I could picture her in the back corner of a classroom, face hidden by bangs and a fantasy book. Squishy.
We’d only had a couple of classes together at Osterhout, but I felt stupid for not recognizing her. Except she was out of context here at Finley, and the last time I’d seen her, she’d had a boy-type name and worn boy-type clothes and had a boy-type haircut. All those differences combined had been enough to throw me off.
“Hey!” I said. “I do know you. You’re—”
“Please don’t say it,” she said. “Seriously. Don’t.”
Maybe she was afraid I’d call her that awful nickname. Or maybe she was afraid I’d blab the boy-type name she obviously didn’t use anymore. She was right to be afraid, because that was exactly what I’d been about to do, my mouth working faster than my brain.
I backtracked. “You’re from Osterhout. Go Otters?”
There was an awkward pause. She took a deep breath and said, “My name is Carina now.” Another pause, shorter this time. “I’m a girl.”
“Carina,” I repeated. “Okay.”
She stretched her hand across the table, and I shook it. Her fingernails were painted a plummy purple. They were a stark contrast to mine, which, as usual, were ragged and grubby from being outside.
“Are you surprised?” she asked.
I thought about it. I’d known Carina was different, a kind of different that made bullies converge on her like a pack of hyenas on a zebra. That hadn’t been her fault, but that was how it was. When I looked at it that way, it didn’t surprise me that something had been going on inside her the rest of us couldn’t see.
And Carina wasn’t the first transgender person I’d met. Mimi’s friend Antoine had been assigned female at birth, but the girl label had turned out not to fit. I’d asked him lots of questions when I was younger, which I now knew were sometimes on the invasive side of the curiosity line (especially the ones about body parts), but he’d patiently answered every one. Now the most interesting thing to me about Antoine was that he had a pet chinchilla.
Which wasn’t to say I didn’t have plenty of questions. Had Carina always known she was a girl, or had she realized it gradually? Did she feel different now that she had a girl-type name and girl-type clothes, or did she feel like the same person as always? Why, when she could have chosen any name in the world, had she chosen Carina?
But I bit my tongue. That first lunch, she’d reminded me of a baby deer. There was still something about her that urged me to step quietly so I didn’t scare her off.
“It’s not a big deal to me, if you’re worried about that,” I said. “Mostly I’m surprised you’re here. I went all last week thinking I was the only kid from Osterhout.”
Carina nodded. “I was surprised to see you too.” She picked up her fish stick and swirled it in a pool of ketchup. “But if I was going to see someone I knew, it could have been worse.”
“Uh . . . thanks?”
“Sorry, that sounded bad. But really, I’m glad it was you. You always seemed too wrapped up in your own little world to bother me.” I must have grimaced because she added, “I don’t mean that in a bad way. If everyone had ignored me, that would have been sort of nice. Why are you here, anyway?”
“Same reason as you, I guess. My family lives way out in the country, so the whole redistricting thing—”
Carina looked confused. “Re-what thing?”
“Isn’t that why you’re here? They redrew the boundaries of who goes to which school.”
“Oh.” She shook her head. “No. My parents made special arrangements. They drive me here and pick me up every day. It was so I could get a fresh start. That was the idea anyway.”
“Of course,” I said, feeling stupid. “Wow. I wish my moms had made special arrangements. I tried so hard to convince them to let me go back, but they kept talking about new opportunities and—”
“Hazel,” Carina interrupted, “I’m glad they wouldn’t let you go back.”
I frowned. “Why?”
“Who else would I eat lunch with?”
It wasn’t a compliment, exactly, but when she smiled shyly at me, I smiled a crooked smile back. “Oh. Good point.”
Baby deer or not, she’d barged right past the “Do Not Disturb” sign into my cave—and it turned out I didn’t mind.
At dinner, Mimi said, “Mom and I have been talking,” which was never a promising start to a conversation. It was never followed by, We should go on an expedition to the Brazilian rain forest! or We’re going to eat more pizza and less quinoa from here on out!
“I’ve got an ultrasound tomorrow. We thought you kids might like to come along.”
Like I said: no Brazil, no pizza. And not a single meal without talking about the baby.
Rowan said, “Is this for your twenty-week?”
Mimi smiled. “I shouldn’t be surprised that the Stanford student can do the math.”
“He’s not a Stanford student yet,” I muttered. “He’s an assistant goat-keeper.”
I was irritated with Rowan for reasons I couldn’t explain. Or maybe I could. He was way too good at kittens and rainbows. How could he pretend, when history wasn’t on our side?
Mom reached around the table and put her hand on mine. “Hazy, Mimi and I thought it might help if you sort of met the new baby. Saw for yourself how well it’s doing. Heard its heartbeat. Heck, we can even find out its sex. We won’t need to call it ‘it’ anymore.”
I couldn’t believe her. They thought meeting the baby would help? It would be fine so long as the baby stayed healthy. But what if something bad happened—something unexplained, the way something unexplained had happened to Lena and Miles? It wouldn’t help then. It would only hurt more. Besides, what if we got to the appointment and the worst had already happened?
My feelings must have been scribbled across my face, because Mimi said, “It’s okay if you don’t want to go. We just want you to have the option. You’re part of this.”
“That’s right,” Mom said. “And if you need more time to think it over, that’s okay, too.”
“I don’t need more time to think it over,” I said. “I should probably come straight home. The teachers at Finley assign a lot of homework. But thank you.”
Mimi and Mom exchanged a look of disappointment—which was annoying, because if it bothered them that much, they shouldn’t have given me the choice. It wasn’t as if they never made decisions without considering my opinion. Case in point: Mimi getting pregnant again.
“What about you, Rowan?” Mimi asked.
He hesitated. “What time’s your appointment?”
“Four o’clock.”
“I’d like to go,
” Rowan said. “I’ve never seen an ultrasound in person, and I’d like to see the little guy, or girl, for myself. And I’d like to be there for you, Mimi. But”—his eyes flicked my way—“maybe I should be here when Hazel gets home from school, since no one else is going to be.”
“No one else except Arby, Pax, and ten goats,” I retorted. “I’m thirteen. I don’t need a babysitter. If you want to go, you should go.”
Now there was a three-way exchange of significant glances—Mom, Mimi, and Rowan all together—which was incredibly aggravating. If there was anything to make you feel like a little kid, it was nobody including you in their significant glance.
“You should come, Ro,” Mom said. “Hazel’s right. She’ll be fine on her own until we get home. And if you want to be there, we want you with us.”
That was almost enough to make me change my mind: picturing the three of them staring at a black-and-white screen with the pulsing image of a baby on it, listening to its heart, finding out if I’d have a sister or a brother. But I couldn’t. I imagined the doctor rubbing the wand on Mimi’s belly and saying, I’m sorry, but I can’t find a heartbeat. I couldn’t handle that.
“If you change your mind, Hazel, just let us know,” Mimi said. “Even during school, go to the office and call home, okay? Mom or Rowan will pick you up.”
I nodded, but I knew I wouldn’t.
After helping with the dishes, I went up to my room and sat at the dormer window. Arby nuzzled up beside me and butted my elbow for attention. The sky was dusty blue. A soft breeze came through the screen. Crickets chirped, and I heard the distant whistle of a train. Out on the lawn, a furry black splotch with a white-striped tail shuffled along.
The summer before sixth grade, Mimi had been pregnant for the second time. Since spring I’d been watching a mother skunk and her five kits from my window. I’d named them after wildflowers: Aster, Bergamot, Chicory, Dandelion, and Echinacea, which was an awful name, but I couldn’t think of another wildflower that started with E. I named the mother Sweet Melissa, because she was sweet—not how she smelled, maybe, though even that didn’t bother me, but the way she loved her kits.
Every night the family waddled out from its den under the tool shed, across the lawn. And though I’d never know precisely what a mother skunk told her kits, I could guess. She taught them where to find fallen fruit that was juicy and tart, how to dig up grubs and grasshoppers. Nuts and berries, worms and slugs—they were all yummy to a skunk.
I’d imagined the new baby toddling along after me that way, listening and learning.
This was our rainbow baby, our burst of bright colors after the darkness of losing Lena. I’d been sure Mimi would use a different donor, but she hadn’t. Our donor’s Mr. Perfect, and anyway, sperm banks don’t take bad sperm. Last time was just bad luck. She’d conceived on the first try, and things went well for a long time. Mimi felt great. The baby kicked so much Mom joked he was half kangaroo.
When she found out he was a boy, Mimi named him after Miles Davis, the artist behind one of her favorite songs, “All Blues.” The lyrics say that just as a rainbow contains a stripe of blue, every moment in life—even a good one—contains a shadow of sadness. Some shade of blues is there. She’d picked it because even though Miles was our rainbow baby, and we were full of happiness and hope, we’d never forget Lena.
Then, like a bad dream your brain keeps serving up, something went wrong. Miles stopped moving. It was normal for babies to nap inside the mother’s uterus, but this was different. It went on too long. Mom rushed Mimi to the hospital. When the doctor did the ultrasound, there wasn’t a heartbeat. Miles was in there, but he was silent. Miles was gone.
Mimi spent hours pushing him out, all the while knowing it was too late.
Days passed, and we barely spoke to each other. Mimi took a leave from work and stayed in bed for days at a time. Mom took care of Mimi and the goats. Rowan took care of Arby and me. When I cried, it was alone in my bed. Arby washed my face with her soft tongue before I went back downstairs, so nobody would know. At night, we stared out my bedroom window, watching Sweet Melissa and her five kits.
Then one night there were only four. Then two. Then zero.
I freaked out. It didn’t matter that, as Rowan reminded me, they were only skunks. It didn’t matter that I read in Grzimek’s Animal Life Encyclopedia that kits started foraging on their own during fall. When I saw the first small black-and-white body lying by the side of the road, my heart broke all over again.
This time my grief wasn’t silent. I started a petition to post signs and reflective markers along unlit country roads. I wrote letters to the newspaper editor about the environmental value of skunks, and emails to the Department of Animal Services and the county commissioners about improving human-skunk relations. I hung flyers and showed up at the farmers’ market with signs painted on poster board.
Unfortunately, just about everyone thought it was hilarious. Why did I care about skunks? They spread their stink wherever they went. They were stupid. Their only talent was becoming roadkill. They should be exterminated. Kirsten stopped calling me Goat Girl and started calling me Skunk Girl instead. Even the officials who nodded seriously and shook my hand didn’t really care about the skunks. They only wanted to encourage my sense of civic responsibility.
As for my family, I wasn’t sure what they thought as they helped me draft letters and bought supplies for my posters. Maybe everyone was relieved to think about something besides Miles for a change.
In the end, all that happened was my family got a zoning exception to post skunk-crossing signs along the road by our property. Rowan helped me build them one frosty weekend that fall. I painted them myself. We had the only skunk-crossing signs in the county—and just one skunk left in the yard. I’d never seen the kits again.
Chapter 7
Everything was quiet when I stepped off the school bus the next afternoon. Well, not completely. Out in the pasture, Kali bellowed her latest series of decrees, with a supporting chorus of maa-aaas from the rest of the herd and an occasional hee-haw from Pax. Arby barked joyfully as I slid my key into the front door. But somehow it was different from having even one other human around.
I’d been alone in the house before, of course, lots of times—but it wasn’t the same. Even as I grabbed two carrots from the fridge, my mind was reeled upstairs to the baby’s room. The baby’s room and the empty crib. I shivered, goose bumps rising on my arms, and bolted back outside. I had to get away from the house.
I slipped Arby a carrot and dumped my backpack on the front porch. I’d deal with my homework later. “Come on,” I told Arby once she’d demolished her carrot in a spray of orange bits, “let’s go for a walk.”
Beyond the pasture, on the wide end of our property, the trees thickened. The woods on our side of the barbed wire separating Thimbleweed Farm from the big farm—the real farm—beyond weren’t big enough to get lost in, but they were enough for a decent wander.
I crunched my own carrot as Arby darted ahead, pausing once in a while to scrabble at the dirt with her skinny white paws. The squirrels had begun burying food for the winter, and Arby was an expert at undoing their hard work. I was pretty sure half the peanuts Mom put in her bird feeder ended up in Arby’s stomach.
My eyes were caught by a dark, yet iridescent, flash in the leaf litter. I bent to pick up the long, pluming crow’s feather. I kept a collection of feathers in my room and had nearly every color—a cardinal’s, a blue jay’s, a goldfinch’s, an indigo bunting’s—colors meant to attract attention. There was even a green one Mimi said probably came from an escaped pet parakeet.
My favorite, though, was a pheasant’s tail feather. It wasn’t flashy, but that was the point. Its brown-and-white stripes were perfect for camouflaging its owner in the tall prairie grass.
I tucked the crow’s feather in my back pocket and kept walking, resisting the urge to check my watch. I hadn’t been walking nearly long enough. The appointment had been at
four. How long did an ultrasound take? Fifteen minutes? An hour? Add another thirty minutes or so to drive home from the hospital. They’d definitely be home by six, in time for Rowan to do the evening milking and Mom to start dinner, like any other day.
My wrist rose anyway, putting me face-to-face with the digits on my watch. 4:27. Was that it?
I’d come to the woods to put distance between myself and whatever was happening at the hospital, but with each step I took away from the house, my heart retreated an equal distance. It didn’t matter that I’d chosen, with utter certainty, not to go to the appointment. Something even deeper inside me wanted to be with the rest of my family.
“Come on, Arby,” I said in a low voice. “I should get started on my homework.”
The words themselves were responsible and confident, but I wasn’t any better at lying to myself than I was to other people. I knew my real reason for heading back was I couldn’t stand not to know the second the others returned.
At the house, I sat on the front steps with my math homework while Arby poked around the yard, too much of a scaredy-dog to venture off on her own. I finished math and moved on to social studies. Finished social studies and moved on to science. When that was done, I took out the Guide to Misunderstood Creatures and began to write.
Dear King Philip came over for good soup. That’s a way to remember taxonomic rank in biology: domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species. Domain is like a fat tree trunk. It splits into smaller branches at each level. Species are the leaves at the tips of the twigs.
Sometimes a branch has only one twig, or a twig has only one leaf. That’s called a monotypic taxon. Mono = one. Typic = type.
Take the red panda (AILURUS FULGENS). For a long time, scientists thought it was part of the raccoon family. Then they thought it was part of the bear family. They thought it was related to the giant panda. They thought it was related to seals. But in the end, they decided that while it may have a mask and ringed tail, and while it may eat bamboo, the red panda is a family of one.
Hazel's Theory of Evolution Page 5
