by Elliot Wake
Tamsin crouched beside us. Put a hand on me, an anchor to reality.
I let Ingrid go. Her hair was wild, a lash of blood snaking from her lip.
“You’re in denial,” Inge said. “I’ve seen your videos. I’ve seen how much you regret this.”
“I don’t regret it. It’s just hard.”
“You bailed on being a girl because being a girl is hard.”
“I bailed because I’m not a fucking girl.” I clawed the back of my head. “Want to talk about how hard being a girl is? Were you the one who was fucking raped?”
Saying it aloud tore something loose from me, left a raw place.
“You think it was easy for me, Sofie? Being the dyke, the fag?”
“It doesn’t justify this.”
“But you never gave a shit how hard it was. It was all about you and your fucking gender identity. My identity is always visible. I can’t hide being a lesbian. But you pass now. If you didn’t tell people you weren’t born a boy, they’d never know. You could live without taking anyone’s shit, if you wanted.”
She was right. But it didn’t make me wrong.
“You could have said this before taking matters into your own hands, Inge. Told me you were struggling with your identity, too.”
“I’m telling you now.”
“It’s too fucking late.”
“Sofie,” she whispered. Her eyes were glassy, limpid. “I know you’re still in there. And I still love you.”
Something snapped. That last thread between us, finally breaking.
I reeled away from her, staring up into the light. Looking for something to burn away this feeling.
Tamsin stood, touching my shoulder. “We’ll take care of this now.”
“Just let her go.”
“She’s tried to ruin your life. She’s no better than Adam.”
“Let her go, Tamsin.”
Tam exhaled, hard. “We’ve worked for months to gather evidence on her. We’ll record her confession, clear your name. You deserve this.”
“I don’t want it. It won’t fix anything.”
“It’s justice.”
I flooded my lungs with cool air. “Then I don’t want justice. Hurting her changes nothing.”
“It stops her from hurting others.”
“Nothing stops that.”
“This will,” she said, gesturing with her gun.
Our eyes locked. Hardness in hers, an unforgiving gleam.
I put my hand on the pistol.
“Tamsin,” I said, “let her—”
We moved at the same time, in sync. Like always.
I grabbed the gun and Tam whipped an elbow at my chin. Part of me expected it and I held on through the pain, twisting till she dropped the weapon. It skittered between our boots and I kicked it away. Tried to pin her arms but she anticipated, slid free. She swept my feet just like I anticipated, and I braced. We knew each other too well now. How the other moved, thought. I was stronger than she was by far but also unwilling to hurt her past a point. So she pushed me to that point, again and again. We danced across the room, evading blows at the last second, taunting each other. She kicked a boot heel into my back and knocked me breathless. I slammed her against the wall, all my weight on her chest. Win passively, I thought. Wear her out. But she was wild, a demon energy in her veins. She jabbed my jaw and blood flew. I reeled and she tackled me, toppling us to the floor.
I knew what she was doing. Working me up, getting me to break through this final mental block. First I’d hurt her, a woman I cared for. Then I could hurt Ingrid.
“I won’t do it,” I gasped. “Just stop.”
Tamsin seized my collar. “Then bloody let me hurt her.”
“Why?”
“Because she hurt you, and I can’t bear it. Because I’m in love with you, you stupid boy.”
I stared up at her. Stunned, but no pain now. I worked a hand free and touched her face.
Tamsin winced. “Oh, hell. Oh, bloody hell. I’ve done a number on you.”
“Ditto, I think.”
Gingerly we sat up. Everything hurt. I felt bruised down to the bone. Tam dabbed the blood from my mouth, kissed my cheek, my temple.
“How sweet,” Inge said dryly. “She hits you, so it must be true love. You like it rough, right, Sofie? You always did.”
“Can I make that aggravating noise stop?” Tam said.
“Be good.”
Ingrid snorted. “No offense, Tamsin, but you’re simple. Sofie doesn’t do simple. It’s boring.” She shrugged. “I’m fucked-up on a whole other level. You’re about as complicated as Harry Potter. I’m Ulysses.”
“No offense taken. Ulysses is a crock of shite.”
Inge actually laughed. “I knew I liked you.”
“Now that is offensive.”
I peeled my jacket off, and my sweaty tee. Tam raised an eyebrow.
“Tell Laney to come get her,” I said.
Inge’s eyes moved over my bare chest, tats, muscle, hair.
“You can still come back,” she breathed. “It’s not too late. Your voice, your clit, that’s all you can’t change. And I kind of like you with a big clit.”
I twisted my tee into a rope.
“Ingrid,” I said, looping it around her mouth, “shut the fuck up, you toxic bitch.”
———
Two girls sat in front of the camera and the bright lights. Norah fidgeted, her gaze fluttering around the room. Ingrid stared into the lens stoically, her eyes empty and clear. Cold light cascaded off the high slopes of her cheekbones.
“State your names,” Laney said.
—Norah Grainer.
—Ingrid Svensson.
“Are you here under duress?”
—No.
—No.
Norah did most of the talking. Eager to take the blame, do penitence, absolve herself. The world held no pity for a woman who’d falsely accused a man of rape.
I knew how hard it would be on her. They’d hold her up as proof that all girls were liars. They would hate her. They would say she should actually be raped, for lying about it.
Strange, how those so eager to punish girls for lying turned a blind eye to the boys. As if the real goal was merely to inflict hurt on female bodies. To punish femininity.
I knew these things. I knew exactly how hard it was to be believed after you’d been hurt. Even by yourself.
But believing was Black Iris’s job. I needed my name cleared. My life back.
“How do you know each other?” Laney said.
—Through my friends. Inge hooked up with some girls I know. It’s kind of a small world. All the lesbians have slept with each other at some point.
“Did Renard Grant ever assault you?” Tamsin said.
—No. Never.
“Why did you lie?”
—She . . . well, everyone sort of convinced me.
“Everyone?”
—My friends said he’d played me. That I was nothing to him, just another slut. He’s slept with every willing girl at Umbra. That’s what they say.
“They slut-shamed you?”
—Yeah. Lesbians can be pretty judgmental of bisexuals. But Ingrid was always nice to me. Sympathetic. She said he’d played her, too, and she wanted to get back at him.
“That convinced you to accuse him of rape?”
—No. But she kept putting these ideas in my head. She’d say, “Are you sure you wanted it? Did you ask him to stop?” And she told me how sometimes, when she was with him, he’d keep going when she didn’t want to. It made me question myself.
“Do you feel the sex you had with him was coercive?” Laney said.
—No. No, I wanted it.
“Then why did you say it was rape?”
—Because I felt slutty, okay? Everyone made me feel like shit about it, except Ingrid. She said I could make myself look better if I played the victim. That I could fix my reputation.
“By ruining his.”
—I didn’
t think it through that fully, but . . . yeah. That’s what it was.
“Didn’t think it through?” Tam echoed, anger in her voice.
—It’s like . . . I know he’s different, but guys do that kind of thing all the time, you know? And most of the time they get away with it. Ingrid kept saying that sometimes you need to make an example of someone to keep the others in line. It sounds crazy now, but it made sense then. I felt like such a pariah. I just wanted people to stop treating me like trash. I didn’t realize how much it would hurt him.
“Why did Ingrid want to ruin me?” I said.
—She hated that you became a man. She thought it was destroying you.
“Why couldn’t you let me be happy, Inge?”
No answer from her.
Softer, I said, “When did you start to hate me?”
Something wet and fractured glittered in her eyes. Breaking ice. But still she remained silent.
The lights and the camera switched off, and everyone else left, and the two of us remained, facing each other.
“I never hated you,” she said quietly.
I crossed the room and sat in the chair beside her. Pressed my palm to her cool marble cheek. Her eyes closed.
“Open them,” I said.
She looked at me.
“This is why I had to get away from you, Inge. You’re like my mother. You will never see me as I am.”
“I could try.”
I let my hand fall. “Sometimes I wonder what would’ve happened if I never transitioned. If I stayed the way you wanted.”
Now she put a hand to my face, tentatively. Brushed my scruff.
“You wouldn’t have been happy,” she whispered. “But I would.”
At least she didn’t lie.
Something prickly scratched my throat. I stood.
“What are you going to do to me?” she said.
“I’m going to let you go.”
At first she seemed to think I meant go free. Then she understood.
On my way out of the room she said, falteringly, “Ren.”
I shivered once, hard. Turned.
Ingrid never apologized. That statuesque face never cracked. In another era, she would have marched unflinchingly to the stake to burn, head high. For all that her heart was a twisted mess, I admired the diamond hardness of it.
If only you’d been a better friend to me, Inge.
If only we’d both been.
We held eye contact for a long moment. Then she said, “Kill that motherfucker.”
———
I kept you in the dark, Laney said, because I knew it would hurt you. If you knew I was using him.
Adam had been thinking about what happened between him and me. What happened. Like it was a force of nature, not man-made, not a brutality he inflicted on me but some unpreventable disaster our bodies had endured, a wreckage of limbs and skin. Well, he had been thinking, and he wanted to apologize. If I thought it was rape. Not because he did.
Amazing, that he managed to shirk responsibility even in his guilt.
Once Adam finished grad school, he moved back to Chicago, where he reunited with Jay, his old college friend.
Jay had always been a misogynist. The kind of guy who’d assign hotness numbers to girls straight to their faces, as if handing out compliments. The kind of guy who’d shame his best friend for not simply taking what was his by birthright, for not using my body the way it had been designed to be used by men. Without Adam to temper him, Jay had become radicalized. He called himself Crito and harassed women on the Internet, with the help of a hundred or so of his cronies.
And someone very powerful had noticed, and was sniffing out his trail. One by one, Crito’s “soldiers” had gone dark, scared silent.
I need a favor, Crito told Adam. Remember that hot blonde your ex-girlfriend was all dykey with?
Ingrid? Adam said.
Yeah. Remember how she never shut up about feminism? She’s gone off the deep end. She’s trying to ruin my life.
Adam had his own reasons to talk to Ingrid. She was his only link to Sofiya, and things had ended badly between them. So he went to see Inge.
He said, How is Sofie?
She said, Sofie wants you dead. And I do, too.
Adam expected as much. He said, Jay says your vigilante friends are ruining his life. He wants a truce. And I want to talk to Sofie.
Ingrid saw opportunity.
Maybe we can work something out, she said. Tell me what you know.
Unwittingly, Adam told her all they knew about Black Iris. She put the pieces together, realizing that I had to be involved, that she could use this to plant the seeds of doubt in my mind. Make me distrust my friends. Render me isolated and helpless, with her as my only safe haven. When Adam asked about me, she lied.
Sofie transitioned because of you, she said. Because of what you did to her. You made her hate being a woman so much it pushed her over the edge. Now she thinks she’s a man, and it’s your fault.
He was horrified. What can I do?
She said, Help me bring her back.
Adam knew this wasn’t right. If someone felt like a man inside, he was a man. If his ex had gone down that path, then good for him.
Amazing, that an abusive asshole managed to be more accepting than a radical feminist.
Tamsin, of course, had been watching the whole time. Anyone who contacted Crito was suspect as far as Black Iris was concerned. Especially a notorious radfem blogger who should’ve been public enemy number one to the men’s-rights creeps. When Ingrid didn’t contact Black Iris for help, Laney realized something was off. Tam followed all four of us, and Laney gradually put the puzzle together:
Ingrid had been ruining my rep, systematically destroying me.
By following a male monster, Laney found the hidden female one.
My ex–best friend.
I had to use Adam, Laney said now. I couldn’t tell you. There was no way you’d accept it. He was our link to Ingrid—she didn’t know we’d flipped him. Once we saw what she was doing to you, we built a case against her to undo the damage. And he helped with that. We’ve been behind you all this time, Ren. We’ve always been on your side.
I told you to trust me, once.
Was I right?
For years I’d lived with the person poisoning my body and mind. The person turning me against myself.
And the man who’d hurt me was the one who freed me from her.
Too much. My mind couldn’t hold the idea without feeling as if it would crack.
It’s all over now, Laney said. Her machinations. His usefulness.
I can make them both disappear. If you want.
What do you want, Ren?
———
It was a small room without windows. White walls, white door, chair under a colorless lightbulb. When the man in the chair moved, his shadow split from his body and struck a random surface. He was not tied or restrained.
No camera. No witnesses.
Only me and him.
Like that night.
When I walked in, his eyes widened, and he looked at my body, every inch of it, unblinking. Then he swallowed.
I wore joggers and a tank, to show him there was no weapon on me but my own muscle.
I’d lifted a few sets before I went in, to heat my blood. To make me feel like I could take the whole world on, single-handed. But seeing him this close, feeling the air stir and eddy with his breath, made me shiver.
Over the years I had rehearsed this scene a hundred times in my head. Sometimes even recorded my part, watched the video again and again till I slammed the DELETE key. It became a letter I was writing to him, and the letter became a diary, and this thing, this evil thing he’d done became the great divider between her and him, Sofie and Ren. In some sick way it was an anchor point, almost a perverse comfort. It contextualized things. Gave shape, form, meaning to the pain roiling inside me. I hurt because he hurt me, not because I was messed-up before then, not because I was
transgender. I hated my femininity because he used it as license to violate me, not because I had problematic feelings about being feminine.
I hurt men because he hurt me, not because I hated myself.
All the speeches I’d rehearsed focused on the past. What he’d done to me, how it made me feel. A darkness that had come and gone.
They were all wrong.
“Adam,” I said.
His head rose.
Here’s the face of a rapist:
He looks just like any other man. Nothing distinguishes him from men who don’t hurt women.
This face was handsome, and once I’d thought, as I let him unbutton my jeans, I wish I looked like you.
Now I said, “Don’t talk. Listen.”
His expression didn’t change, but the apple in his throat bulged. He glanced at mine as I spoke.
“You came here for forgiveness, and I won’t give it to you. I will never give another thing to you.”
Without touching him I leaned close, until our bodies shared one heat.
“But I’ll do something else. Something better.” I smiled. “I’m going to let you go. Live your life. Get married, have kids, buy a house. Build something for yourself. Put down roots. Find your place in the world, Adam Halverson.”
Faint wrinkles lined his brow. I imagined that face aging, showing no sign of what it had done.
“Live the dream,” I said. “The good life. What every man fantasizes about. And every time you start to feel comfortable, warm, safe, you’ll pause. You’ll shiver for no reason. Feel eyes on you in a crowd. See a shadow on the street, following.” Closer. “I’ll be watching you, Adam. To see if you’re fucking up. If you’re hurting anyone. And if you do, I’ll drag you out of bed, or into an alley, and I’ll hurt you the same way you hurt me. I’ll make you feel what that felt like. Do you know how much I bled? You will.”
The wrinkles smoothed away. He stared vacantly, as if he’d just been struck in the back of the head.
“You may live to be an old man, like I will. Or you may not. But you’ll always be living on borrowed time, my time, and someday I’ll come to collect. No forgiveness, Adam. Only fear. You’ll always be looking over your shoulder. You’ll never know when I’m watching.” I laughed. “Better be a good boy.”