I’ll never forget the look on his face when he came into the bathroom and found Gerry and me with our hair cropped off in uneven hanks, none of them more than two inches long. I was better with the scissors than Gerry was, and had actually managed to craft something that looked almost like a decent haircut. My hair looked like it belonged on a doll from the thrift sale dollar bin. But it was worth it to see the way my brother smiled—and he had always been my brother, even if most people refused to understand that. Both of us had always known exactly who we were.
We’d entered the Bureau’s odd excuse for foster care not long after that incident, being shuttled from family to family until we turned fourteen and could be enrolled in boarding school. Gerry had bound his breasts, cut his hair, and lived as a male from the day we walked onto campus. Neither of us had been sure it would work … but halfway through the first semester I woke up and it was snowing in my room. Actual snow, falling out of the air and landing on my bed. Gerry’s share of the narrative had snapped and was rebounding on me, now its only target, because Rose Red is a girl, and Geraldine Marchen wasn’t.
It took almost fifteen minutes to explain the situation. By the time I finished, my throat was dry and Demi’s eyes were so wide that it seemed like they might fall out of her head. I glanced at Jeff, afraid of finding judgment or disapproval in his eyes. Not because it would change the way I felt about my brother, but because I liked Jeff, and it would be a shame to have to find a place to hide his body.
My earlier fondness only grew deeper as Jeff said, “As a way to avert a narrative, that smacks of genius, although it would only work if the subject was genuinely gender dysphoric—otherwise you’d be inviting a ‘hidden princess’ scenario, and that could force you into a Sleeping Beauty or worse.”
“What’s worse than a Sleeping Beauty?” asked Andy, sounding half horrified and half curious.
“Have you ever read the Oz books by L. Frank Baum?”
“Okay, we’re going to stop right there,” I said hurriedly, so we didn’t get even further off track. “So here’s the situation: I became a potential seven-oh-nine when Gerry averted our mutual four-two-six. Only now I’m a full seven-oh-nine, and somehow this has caused Gerry to activate as part of a story he shouldn’t even be eligible for. How can that happen? More importantly, how can we make it stop?”
“Are you sure you’re a seven-oh-nine?” asked Andy. “Maybe you activated as part of the other story, and that’s what’s dragging him back in.”
I hesitated. I hadn’t told anyone about the forest full of whiteout women. It seemed private somehow, like it wasn’t meant to be shared with people outside of our story. “I’m sure,” I said finally. “Four-two-six doesn’t say anything about snow or apples, although it’s pretty heavy on the woodland creatures. I’m definitely an apple girl.”
“Many people have forgotten that the two stories are meant to be separate,” said Jeff, with the particular slowness that always accompanied his thinking hard. “It’s obvious in the original German—it’s like assuming that girls named ‘Mary’ and ‘Marti’ are the same—but once you translate the stories into English, they become easier and easier to conflate. The narrative has been evolving. Maybe it’s found a way to combine the two tales into a coherent whole.”
“I don’t want to marry a bear,” I said. It was the first thing that popped into my mind. There was a moment of silence while we all considered it and then, by mutual unspoken agreement, ignored it.
“So Gerry’s a Rose Red now, even though Henry’s part of a different story,” said Andy. “Is it going to try to force him to be a girl?”
“That’s a risk, and the narrative has done stranger things,” said Jeff.
“Great, we’re going to get to see my brother punch out the narrative,” I said. “That’ll make our jobs a lot easier.”
Demi blinked. “Is that possible?”
“Probably not,” I said, and looked toward the door that Sloane and my brother had vanished through. “I should go and check on them.”
“Do you want me to come with you?” asked Andy.
“No,” I said. “I bet he’s waiting for me to come. I’ll be right back.” I started across the bullpen, trying not to focus on worst-case scenarios. This was my brother. I was going to help him.
Whatever it took, I was going to help him.
#
Memetic incursion in progress: tale type 426 (“The Two Girls and the Bear”)
Status: IN PROGRESS
It had been a long damn day, and while it wasn’t getting any shorter, Gerry March was no longer quite so pissed off about it. He sat on the edge of the break room table, Sloane leaning in between his knees and kissing him like she thought that the act of physical affection was on the verge of being outlawed. One of his hands braced her hip, holding her against him, while the other explored the lines of her back, which were so familiar and so forbidden. He found the clasp of her bra and slipped two fingers underneath it, making it clear that he could strip it away at any moment.
Her anger had melted into kisses with no warning. He was fully aware that it could turn back, and he was going to take advantage of every second that he got.
Finally, after what seemed like forever and nowhere near long enough at the same time, Sloane pulled back just far enough to offer him a languid smile and say, “See, this is why you should never have left. You miss me too much when you go away.”
“You’re too old for me,” Gerry countered. “Isn’t that what you said the last time you dumped me? That you were too old for me and I should find a nice girl my own age who could grow old by my side?”
“That sounds like the sort of bullshit I spout when I get maudlin, sure,” said Sloane, leaning in to kiss him again. This time she was quick, in and out in a matter of seconds, leaving his lips still smarting from the rasp of her teeth. “Besides, cougars are in now, right? I could be your Mrs. Robinson.”
“I’m not sure that the way to celebrate turning into a fairy tale is by fucking one,” said Gerry. He immediately winced. “Sloane, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”
But she was already pulling away, the familiar walls sliding back into place across her expression, until the cold, heartless mask she showed to the world was gazing at him with impassive eyes. “No, no, it’s good. It’s useful to hear what you really think of me. It helps keep me from doing things I’ll regret later. Who knows? I might get called to play the bad guy in your story, and then where would we be?” She turned, stomping toward the door. “I’ll tell your sister you’re in here.”
“Sloane, please.”
She kept walking.
Gerry took a deep breath, and said, “Rose Red’s supposed to be a girl, you know.”
Sloane stopped.
“Ten years of hormones and surgery and more therapy than I like to think about just to be the man I was always supposed to be, and now this story comes along and all that keeps running through my head is ‘well, it was fun while it lasted. At least you got to be yourself for a little while.’” Gerry looked down at his hands, lying limp and useless between his legs. “I grew up knowing magic was real, and the one thing it could never do was fix me. I just wanted to recognize the person in my mirror. I just wanted to know what it was like to be normal.”
“None of us are normal,” said Sloane. He raised his head. She was standing in front of him again, her red- and green-streaked hair tumbling to almost cover her eyes. “We never got to be normal.”
“No, but you got to live in a world that didn’t judge you for the ways you were strange,” Gerry said. “Henry can put on foundation or go to Goth clubs. You’re happy in your skin. I’ve had to work my ass off for every inch of normal I’ve ever had, and now I’m going to lose it all.”
“You don’t know that.” Sloane sat down on the edge of the table, resting her weight on her hands. “We did cleanup for a male Little Mermaid just last week, and Demi—that’s the new girl, the Latina chick with the scared rabbit face—i
s a Pied Piper. Sometimes the narrative flips the gender of a story to throw us off the scent.”
“Yeah, but Henry’s a girl.” Gerry shrugged. “I don’t think the narrative can handle that kind of complexity. It’s going to want us both to be women in order for the story to hang together. Something’s going to go wrong with my hormone treatments, or there’s going to be an accident and the hospital will give me the wrong medication, or something. Everything I’ve worked for is going to go away because of the goddamn narrative.”
“I guess you’re right,” said Sloane sadly. “You’re doomed.”
Gerry raised his head and blinked at her. “What?”
“I mean, why did you even bother trying? You always knew that the narrative would come for you one day. It would have been better to just put on a pretty dress and live a lie. That way you wouldn’t have had anything to lose. That would have really shown the narrative, right? Making yourself miserable for your entire life, pretending to be something you weren’t—that would have been a much better choice.”
“Sloane, what the fuck is—” Gerry stopped mid-sentence, his mouth shutting with a snap. He eyed her for a moment before he asked, “Are you messing with me?”
“Yes,” said Sloane blithely. “You’re being stupid, and so I’m messing with you. It’s one of the simple joys of my life. Besides, I’m still pissed at you for running off and leaving me with your sad sack of a sister.”
“That’s not very nice, you know.”
“Since when has ‘nice’ been a part of my job description?” countered Sloane. “I’m a Wicked Stepsister, remember? I’m not active, but I’m a lot closer to it than I used to be, thanks to the narrative and our old dispatcher.” Gerry looked at her blankly. She frowned. “Didn’t Henry tell you about that?”
“Henry and I … we don’t really talk,” said Gerry slowly. “Not for the last few years.”
Sloane’s frown deepened. “I knew you weren’t talking to the rest of us, but I thought you were still in touch with Henry. How long is ‘the last few years’?”
“I changed my last name to March eight years ago,” he said. “So … about eight years, I guess.”
“You haven’t spoken to your sister in eight years?” Sloane stared at him, looking genuinely stunned. All her masks had fallen away, revealing a woman who was older than she looked and younger than she should have been. “How can you do that to her? How can you do that to yourself?”
“You never called me,” Gerry said.
“Uh, one, I didn’t have your number. Two, you were pretty clear when you left here that you didn’t want to have any contact with the freaky fairy tale people. And three, I’m not your sister. Henry’s your sister. I’m just the girl who took your virginity in a supply closet. Totally different relationship.” Sloane stood. “Come on. We need to talk to the team. We’re going to find a way to freeze your story so that it won’t mess with you, and you’re going to make things right with your sister.”
Gerry frowned as he stood, watching her carefully. “Why are you so upset about this?”
“Gerald …” Sloane took a deep breath, visibly calming herself down. Then she took his hands in hers and said, “My family died a long time ago. All of them. If I have blood relatives left in this world, I’m not allowed to know about them, because my story means that I might hurt them. But I had a family once, and I’d give anything—anything—for the chance to have them back for just a day. Just an hour. Your family is back in the other room, and she’s probably been worried about you this whole time. You’re going to make things right with her, or you’re going to regret it for the rest of your life. I’ll make sure of that.”
Gerry took a deep breath. “Okay,” he said, and kept hold of her hand as she led him out of the room, back into the future.
#
I was heading down the hall toward the break room when Sloane came around the corner up ahead, hauling a frazzled-looking Gerry by one hand. I stopped, blinking, and let them come to me. Sloane yanked Gerry to a stop before releasing his hand, grabbing his shoulders, and shoving him in my direction. If we hadn’t been essentially the same size, he would have knocked me over. As it was, he caught himself against my shoulders as I caught his upper arms. Both of us blinked at Sloane.
“You two, talk, now,” she snapped, and stormed toward the bullpen, where she would doubtless improve everyone’s day with her sunshine-bright demeanor.
“What did you do to Sloane?” I demanded, pushing Gerry away from me. “She looks like she’s going to start microwaving baby bunnies to take the edge off.”
“Uh, nothing,” he said, a blush creeping into his cheeks.
It wasn’t as good as one of my blushes—the lucky bastard actually inherited some melanin from our mother, even if it wasn’t enough to make him more than Irish pale—but it confirmed one of my suspicions. I stepped back and folded my arms, glowering at him. “Did you go off to make out with Sloane?”
“No,” he mumbled. “I went off because I needed to get my head together, and Sloane was willing to help me do it. The making out was sort of an unexpected bonus.”
“Oh my God you are such a boy,” I groaned. “I thought you were freaking out or something.”
“To be fair, I sort of was. I just found my focus.”
I paused. I was still mad at him—maybe I was always going to be mad at him—but he needed me, and I couldn’t let anger be the only thing that was left between us. Even if I wanted to do that to him, I couldn’t do that to myself. So I cleared my throat and said the first thing that popped into my head: “Does your focus look like Sloane’s ass?”
Gerry grinned unrepentantly. I groaned again, but my heart wasn’t in it. If Gerry was grinning at me like that, he wasn’t too depressed to cope with the world.
“You’re a pig,” I informed him. “Not in a literal, house of straw sense, but still.”
“It’s good to see you too, sis,” he said, and hugged me. “I’m sorry I was all weird before. This situation is sort of messing me up.”
“I picked up on that,” I said, hugging him back. “We’re not going to let this thing hurt you, okay? We’re going to figure out what’s going on and why your story has activated—it shouldn’t have been able to, not with me squarely invested in being the wrong kind of Snow White—and then we’re going to stop it.”
“Can you do that?” he asked dubiously.
“Sure,” I said. It wasn’t entirely a lie: stories can be averted. I just had no idea how we were going to manage it with this one. “In the meanwhile, I’m not letting you out of my sight. I hope you like couches, because you’re staying with me for the next few days.”
“Do you still have bluebird issues?”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “Oh, dude, you have no idea.”
#
Gerry emerged from the bathroom, a toothbrush in his hand and a perplexed expression on his face. “There’s a frog in your toilet,” he informed me. He was wearing sweatpants and a shirt with the Bureau logo on it, having forgotten to pack pajamas in his hurry to find me and make me fix whatever was going wrong with his life.
“I know,” I said. “Just ignore it. Try not to pee on it. It gets pissed off when that happens, no pun intended.” Since I had access to my entire wardrobe, I was in one of my normal flannel pajama sets. This one had been a gag gift from Andy the previous Christmas: red, printed all over with happy moose. I looked like something out of a bad holiday special. I was okay with that. They made me happy, and they didn’t seem princessy at all.
Gerry looked at me flatly for a moment before shaking his head and walking back into the bathroom, which was apparently less perturbing—frog and all—than trying to deal with me. I laughed and went back to tucking sheets into the couch. If a little frog was enough to freak him out, this was going to be a fun sleepover.
Having Gerry in my house was probably a terrible idea, but we didn’t have any better options. If he was on the verge of going full princess, sendi
ng him to Sloane’s could get one or both of them killed, since Sloane was still fighting her natural tendency to murder any princesses in her immediate vicinity. Andy’s place was reasonably safe, excepting his husband, who was tolerant of him bringing work home, but not quite that tolerant. Jeff didn’t offer. Demi couldn’t, since she still lived with her parents. That left me, and my living room couch, and my carpet with the marigolds and cinquefoil growing around the edges. I paused to pull out my phone and take a few quick pictures of the little yellow flowers. Jeff would probably be able to figure out something about our current situation by studying the patterns of their growth.
And if he couldn’t, well, at least they were pretty.
Gerry emerged from the bathroom a second time, announcing, “All done. And I didn’t pee on your frog.”
“I thank you, the frog thanks you, and your own butt thanks you,” I said, tossing him a pillow. “Like I said, the frog gets pissy when pissed on, and angry frogs jump around a lot.”
“Do I want to know why you have a frog living in your toilet?”
It was a reasonable question. It probably deserved a reasonable answer. It was really too bad for both of us that I didn’t have one. “Having a frog in my toilet was the best out of a list of lousy options,” I said, sinking down onto the freshly made couch and resting my elbows on my knees as I looked up at him. “Get rid of the frog and you get talking goldfish sometimes, or garter snakes.”
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