by Lisa Bunker
He shakes his head. “Not the only one,” he says. “One of the only ones.”
“You have a ton of friends, I thought.”
“Yeah, you know, people I hang out with, but I wouldn’t call most of them friends. People I hang out with and people who really know me—not the same.”
“So just a few.”
“Yeah. Annabel and Markus, they’re cool. It’s, like, so easy being with them, you know they are there because they really wanna be. You can tell they like you for who you are.”
“Do you like them too?”
“Well, yeah. I like them fine. I like lots of people. I’m gregarious.” What a great word. Mother Hubbard, I love this boy.
“But the others?”
“Oh, they’re all right, y’know, they’re fine. But when they talk to me, there’s always this distance, this sorta careful separation. And every once in a while someone’ll get weird about how they say the word ‘black,’ like they think they’re not allowed to use it or something, and it gets all awkward. And once or twice I’ve even gotten the N word.” He falls silent. I think to myself that I’ve heard people call him other names too, I guess because he does seem kinda girlish sometimes, but maybe it’s like with the way Zyx makes me—maybe mostly they can’t see past the first thing. But I don’t say anything out loud.
When Hector goes on, his face is serious. “Here’s what bugs me. ’Cause, you saw, my dad is from Haiti, but my mom is American—she’s white. And growing up, I always thought of myself as a white boy, just like everyone I went to school with. But to most everyone around here, I’m the black kid. And then when we go down to Boston to visit my dad’s people, I’m the white kid again. It’s like I’m stuck between two worlds.”
I stare at him, because pinball lights are flashing in my head. The threeness of things, the middle voice, me and Zyx … it all fits together. I repeat like a robot, “Stuck between two worlds.”
“Yeah.”
I can’t help it—it just comes out by itself. “I know exactly what you mean,” I say. Fervently, that’s the word for how I say it.
He doesn’t say anything, but he gives me a look like, Oh yeah, how could you possibly? See, I forgot he doesn’t know about Zyx. So then I start flapping my hands and stuttering, but I manage to say something about how I’m not brain-damaged, so I don’t belong in the world of people with disabilities, but people think I am, so I also don’t belong in the world of people without disabilities. And he purses his lips and nods, like, All right, I’ll allow that. The thing about people who show their doubt, when you convince them, you can tell. Cool.
The rest of the talk is not important—stuff about people we both know. Gossip, I guess. But the way we’re talking now, there’s a no-worries rhythm. Like, we’re friends. I get distracted a couple of times because I keep noticing this cinnamon smell in the air which I wonder if it is coming from his hair, but I just get my mind back on listening and pick up the thread again. And then there’s the part right at the end when it’s time to go and once again the words come out of my mouth by themselves: “So see you at the con maybe,” and he nods and says, “Yeah, maybe see you there.” So, good.
And the other thing, with Ms. C. On the way out after last bell I bump into her again, and she asks to talk to me and steers me into an empty classroom, and then she asks me whether I’ve decided to enter the writing contest. I feel shy all of a sudden, but the look on her face is so open and nice, I say, “Well, yeah, maybe, I’ve had this idea,” and she smiles and nods, so I talk some about the threeness of things, about the sinfonia and Hector and about being between two worlds myself, and her smile gets this extra twist and she says, “That sounds wonderful, Felix. You should write it all down. It’s really good.” So then I feel all warm and can’t talk for a second, and she goes on, “But, you don’t have much time. The deadline is Friday.”
“This Friday?”
“Yes, this Friday. But that’s enough time. And if you can get it done by Thursday, I’ll look at it and make suggestions, if you like. Another pair of eyes always helps.”
I feel confused by that, and say, “But …”
“Don’t worry,” she says. “It will still be all your writing. Editors, good editors anyway, don’t take over or write for you. They tell you what they like and make suggestions, and then you can change it or not, as you see fit.”
“Oh. Well, OK, I’ll try. Thursday.”
“Thursday. And, Felix, one more thing.”
“Yeah?”
“I told you before that I like your voice, and one reason is your eye for detail. Another reason is, I think you are an honest writer. That’s also really important. The more honest your writing is—the more you say exactly what you think and feel—the better it will be. Remember that.”
“Honest.”
“Yes.”
“OK,” I say, and then I have to run to catch the bus.
And now my head is full of stuff I want to write about the threeness of things, so I’m going to stop writing this and start working on that instead. And maybe Ash has posted by now too. I can’t believe I’m going to maybe meet her in a few days. Should I take some Jarq drawings to show her? I could. But would I die if she didn’t like them? Yes, I would. So probably, no, I won’t.
15 Days to Go
Wow, I just learned something big about our family. I’m not sure how I feel about it. It’s weird. And she doesn’t show stuff like this usually, but I think Bea is really freaked out. I want to go talk to her, but right now she’s in her room with the door closed, being left alone like she asked.
But, first things first. Last night when I was working on my threeness paper, Mom came and leaned in the doorway the way she does when she wants to talk medium serious and asked me about chess. She said Rick had asked her again about bringing the Estonian Grandmaster over to see Zyx play. I could tell by the way she asked that she was still irritated with Rick, but she also said that seeing as how in a few weeks Zyx would be gone (being careful just to mention that one possible scenario), if it was truly interesting to me, she figured I might get to meet some people and see some things I wouldn’t otherwise get to meet or see, so go ahead if you want. And I said, “Sure, let’s go ahead,” and Zyx made me twitch the way vo does when vo’s happy chess pretty
You don’t mind at all saying the same thing over and over, do you?
not mind chess pretty
I rest my case. So now on Friday Rick is bringing this Ursula Ots person over after dinner to play some chess. Should be interesting. I’m glad it’s on Friday, because I will have turned in my threeness paper by then.
After that, sleep, wake, breakfast, bus, school. Nothing much to report. I was on the lookout for Hector, but the two times I saw him, there were other people around and basically I froze up, so we didn’t talk. I wonder … I wonder if … Wow, I can’t even type it.
I wonder if he likes boys too.
There, I did it.
many like many hector like many
Sure, lots of people like lots of people, but I mean like like.
like like question mark
Yeah, like like, like, you know, more than friends like. Like, want to get closer like. But, with the Procedure coming up, it seems wrong … but what if … I mean … what if this is my only chance … triple-quadruple gah! Why does this have to be so hard?
…
Uh-huh. ANYWAY. So then home, and another family dinner. Mom and her evil plans. It really does make us talk to each other, eating together.
Which is what I’ve been trying to get to. Conversation got around to school, and I started looking for an opening to bring up my paper. I was actually nervous about it, because I wanted to ask them all about their threenesses, you know, like, in what way might you be the middle voice between two other voices? And, this is stupid, because they are my family, but I thought … well, I just felt like they might laugh at my idea. But I did it anyway, and they didn’t laugh. I asked Grandy first, because v
o’s always talking about stuff like this—Ideas, Philosophy, Big Concepts about Life and Stuff. Also, I figured I knew what vo’d say. Vo was in Vera mode again, btw, with a skirt and bracelets and big dangly earrings, but I’m still going to use vo and ven, because vo always corrects me if I use either she or he.
Of course the first thing vo says is, “I suppose you know what I’m going to say.”
“The Vera/Vern thing.”
“Well, yes, dearheart, naturally. It is rather a tidy and complete model of the idea you are exploring, wouldn’t you agree?” When Grandy is Vera, vo talks more like one of Mom’s British mysteries than when vo’s Vern.
“What is your original ends-with-X name, anyway?” I ask. “If you have one?” This question is sort of a joke, because I’ve asked it about a hundred times, and vo never answers. Vo likes to have veir secrets. Like Dad’s other parent. He had two parents, of course, but all I know about the other one is that vo died, or maybe disappeared, and nobody will tell me anything about ven, even a name. It’s like there’s a family rule about not talking about it.
Grandy gets an annoying little smile on veir face—smirk is the word for that smile—and says, “Now, dearheart, you know I can’t tell you that.”
Usually that’s the end, but this time I ask the next question, because, the paper. “Why not?”
“Oh, well, you know, if I did have such a name—note I’m not saying whether I do or not—nothing frightful would happen if I told you. But it has become important to me that no one around me who doesn’t already know my birth name learn it, whether or not it ends with X.”
“Why?”
“Because then someone might assume vo knew which biological sex I was at birth, and then vo might decide that one of Vera or Vern was the real me and the other was only an act, or a joke, or worse, a mental illness, which is most certainly not the case. I am Vera, and I am Vern, and I am also both and neither.” Thanks, Zyx, for the word for word.
welcome
I’m going to have to learn to take notes or something if … when, I mean … gah, going on. “Both? Neither?”
“Both, because both come completely naturally to me. Neither, because the place they come from is a sort of middle me, where I don’t believe I actually have a gender. The me I am when I’m by myself on the seventh day each week.”
“Door locked, not talking, not eating, not wearing any clothes.”
“That’s right, pet.” I hate it when vo calls me pet, but whatever. And of course I know better than to ask what I would see if I walked in on ven naked.
Next I turn to Bea, who is playing piano on the table, as usual. “Hey.” Nope. “Hey.”
She does this slow returning-from-a-million-miles-away thing, which is her in a nutshell. “What?” she says.
“Threenesses. Got one? Are you an end point, or in the middle? All that stuff.” She stares at me blankly—typical Bea—but then she seems to get an idea and opens her mouth to say something. She doesn’t get to speak, though, because all of a sudden Mom makes this odd sound, a kind of bigger than usual hiccup, and gets up so quickly her chair nearly tips over, and runs out of the room. “I can’t, I can’t,” she’s crying as she runs up the stairs, and then, “Not another one.” Her door closes, click not slam. Bea and I sit there with our mouths open. Grandy gets up, looking serious, and says, “Don’t worry, children, I’ll take care of this. Go ahead and keep eating,” and goes upstairs after Mom.
14 Days to Go
So last night I was writing about the big family secret, but then Mom called me back downstairs to talk some more, and I meant to come back and finish but I never did. Another cliffhanger. Ha. Next time I’m doing it on purpose. Turns out one thing writing seems to be about is torturing the reader as much as possible. Weird, but cool.
Picking up from Grandy going upstairs after Mom, the next thing that happens is Bea looks at me and says, “I hate it when she freaks.”
“Yeah.”
“What do you think is wrong?”
“I have no idea. Stress, I guess. You know.”
We sit. Bea pokes her macaroni around on her plate with her fork. “This Rick person,” she says. “I don’t like him very much.”
“Yeah, me neither. He’s gotten weird about the chess.”
“Are you really going to do that?”
“Sure, why not? Zyx likes it.” We look each other in the eyes. “Kind of a going-away present, know what I mean?”
She nods. Then she gets up and goes into the living room and starts playing the piano. My stomach has knotted up the way it tends to do when Mom is upset, but I also remember that before dinner I was hungry, so I sit there making my teeth chomp and my tongue push the food around and my throat swallow. Then Grandy is back with Mom standing behind ven, her face all blotchy from crying. She says, “Felix, please come into the living room. We need to have a Talk.”
Gah. I hate Talks with a capital T.
Mom has to put her hand on Bea’s shoulder to get her to stop playing. Then she sits on the edge of the big stuffed chair, hugging herself with one arm. I stay standing in the archway back into the dining room.
“Children,” Mom says. “Beatrix. Felix. I have something to tell you.” She looks down into her lap, then up again. “I am sorry to bring this up at this time. Your dad and I could never agree about telling you, and after he … after the accident, it went clean out of my head for a long time, and then it became a thing that had happened a long time ago, before other things started taking up all the family’s attention. So when I thought of it, I never felt it was the right time for … for this bit of family history.” I glance at Bea and see the same look of suspense on her face I figure is on mine. Grandy is scanning from face to face, looking sad. “And now with the Procedure only a couple of weeks away, it seems like a worse time again, but on the other hand … Oh, I don’t know. Anyway, now I have to.”
Mom turns to Bea and puts her shoulders back and says, “Beatrix, you had a twin. You had a twin brother who died a few days after you were both born.” Bea is frozen. “His name was Benedix”—she does a little sob-laugh—“that was your father all over, that was, Beatrix and Benedix … He was always taking things a little too far, like really using names that started as a joke, or going ahead with an experiment when there was still so much unknown about …” She waves her hand, like, I can’t go into that now. “Anyway, Ben, your brother, he had a problem with his lungs. They said he would only live a few hours, but he hung on for two whole days. Then he died.” She stops talking for a second, and I can hear the clock on the bookshelf and the four of us breathing. “He was so small. You both were. Too small to die. Too new to be done.” My throat squeezes. “I’ve been thinking about him since Saturday. Seeing you, Felix, inside that machine …” Her face begins to crumple up. “You are too new to be done too. And I’m scared. I’m not supposed to tell you that, I guess, according to the parenting rules, but I’m scared.” She does a little shrug with her hands and then just sits there and cries.
We are not much of a touching family, but now my feet start shuffling me toward her, and Bea gets up and comes over too, and Mom puts her arms around both of us and clutches us to her and sobs. Bea is not crying but she’s looking more and more uncomfortable, and my eyes are stinging. Grandy is standing behind Mom with a hand on her shoulder. Veir cheeks are wet. Bea breaks out of the huddle first. “You could have told me sooner,” she says, and I can’t tell if she is mad or sad or both. She turns and starts up the stairs. “Beatrix,” Mom says, and Bea says, “Leave me alone,” and she is gone. We hear her door close, click not slam.
Mom stands at the bottom of the stairs for a second but doesn’t go up. Instead she goes into the bathroom and I hear the faucet running. When she comes out her face is pink with a few wet hairs plastered to her cheek. She goes into the kitchen and starts cleaning up, and then, as I mentioned, a whole day happens and here we are a day later.
I had a brother. Or I would have had, if he had
lived until I was born. An older brother. It’s so strange, I can’t make it make sense.
13 Days to Go
Since the Big Family News, it has been business as usual—morning school home dinner—except for all of us in the Yz family being a little extra nice to each other. The other thing that has been going on is that I haven’t been thinking about ZeroDay much because this threeness of things paper wouldn’t let me alone, so during study hall I went to the library and finished my draft. It’s pretty good, I think.
I explained the general idea of threenesses first, and I put in the stuff that Grandy said about the Trinity and the Dialectic (and, duh, obviously, I looked them up), and then I put in Hector (with his permission, which was nice of him, and we might have had another conversation too, but we only had a minute between classes), and I wrote about Grandy switching between Vera and Vern, and about the Story version of brain injury and the Procedure. I wanted to do Bea’s secret twin, too, but I didn’t think I could without asking, and with the news still so fresh I didn’t feel like I could ask. Then I finished by trying to describe the vision I had when I was in the Apparatus. Actually, I mostly just used what I wrote here about it. I didn’t have to do much except take out the snarky comment about school.
dance
You know, for a supersmart alien with a big word collection, you sure do use the same few over and over again.
swoop
Yeah, that’s different.
whirligig
What? Where did you get that one?
helix
Hey, Felix helix. Cool.
curlicue arabesque whorl
Hoo boy, I’m sorry I said anything. Hush now?
…
Thanks. Anyway, I finished the paper in time to get it to Ms. C after school, and she said she would e-mail me comments as early in the evening as she could so that I could do a rewrite, and now I’m in my room waiting for the you’ve-got-mail chime. So far she hasn’t gotten back to me.