Snowsisters

  [From Freddy to Soph] Dunno. Best ski vacay ever. Even parents are happy.

  [From Soph to Freddy] Do they know?

  It takes Freddy a few minutes to respond.

  [From Freddy to Soph] No. Not going there.

  How can Freddy stand this? Tess has a hostile home, and Joey’s father, well he sounds creepy and scary. Freddy’s parents should be able to handle it. They’re in the City where anything goes. After the initial surprise, Mrs. Peckett would probably be thrilled that her son is gay.

  [From Soph to Freddy] What do U need, F?

  [From Freddy to Soph] Not the third degree.

  Back at the table, Professor Forsythe talks about the peer review. “We’ll take an hour and a half so that each person can read and think about the work they’ve received. If anyone wants to, they can discuss the work with the author quietly so as not to disturb the group. You should use this chance to inform your understanding of what the author is trying to say.”

  “Tomorrow, after we come back from touring Minerva, each of you will present to the group your final work and the person you’ve exchanged with today will comment on it. You should be prepared to describe it. Then your partner will explain what she thinks of it in a constructive manner.”

  * * *

  I like Gabriela, but her poetry is very different from mine. She writes about loss with a stilted rhyme scheme and a fluid structure. I like the way she staggers lines of different lengths and she uses language that comes across as natural. Her poetry is about her father dying when she was young. She has a couple of lines about her mother which I don’t understand. I tell her it should be clearer, and she ducks her head. We talk about it for a while.

  I give Gabriela my Spenserian sonnet. It’s the first time I’ve been able to mix up the lines like this and have them make sense together.

  I could see the world as wide, bright and full,

  Though without companionship, was alone.

  With optimism, feeling, capable,

  Love I’d find, corporeal, flesh and bone.

  But first I learnt the limits of my zone

  Of vision. I don’t see all that is there.

  My knowledge, my beliefs, what I have known,

  I can expand if she will only share.

  This world’s not right, us, a clandestine pair,

  Confined, contained, shut up in our small room.

  If concealed even here, can anywhere

  There be a place for us to finally bloom?

  I don’t know if the dark can be endured.

  I wish I could see us both assured.

  Gabriela reads it with her brow furrowed. “I don’t think I understand, Soph. I see that it follows that pattern, but I’m not sure I understand it or agree with it. What are you saying?”

  I’m disappointed. I was excited for her to read it. “I was trying to create a character who is optimistic, but finds someone who is too scared to be open about their relationship. It makes the protagonist doubt whether she can stay with them.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, you know! If you keep something secret, that means you’re ashamed.” I’m surprised.

  “Always?”

  “Yes. Always.”

  “But can’t there be good reasons to keep some things quiet?”

  “Not when you have something amazing and important together. Why wouldn’t you be open about it?”

  “I don’t know, Soph. Two people could have strong feelings for each other but still have reasons to keep it private. Take Romeo and Juliet.”

  I don’t agree with her, but this is a writing workshop, not a personal philosophy class. We move on to some of my earlier poems, so she can see how my work has progressed during the week. I show her my first poem here, with the Shakespearean rhyme scheme, and tell her how I was able to free myself to the more complicated Petrarchan and Spenserian structures.

  “They still seem pretty structured to me.”

  “You’re missing the point! I love the structures and I want to be able to work within them. They have a rich history and are worth bringing into the twenty-first century.” I can’t tell if she doesn’t like the structures or if she thinks I shouldn’t be fitting my work into them.

  I’m relieved when Joan comes by to speak with both of us.

  “Soph, you’ve done a big part of what you came here to do. But now I’d like to see you take the next step, push beyond your goal, and take your work up a level.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that, having gotten to the more complicated forms, you should try something you didn’t set out to do, something more than your goal.”

  “Like what?”

  “That’s not for me to say, Soph.” She smiles. “I’m confident you can figure it out. Poetry has structure, style, content, and emotion. What would you like to expand in yours?”

  I’m frowning as she turns back to Gabriela.

  Tess.

  They pair me with Orly for peer review.

  Orly and I both take our writing samples into the lounge, but some of the other girls are there and I ask her if she wants to come up to our room where it’s quiet.

  She hesitates, then asks, “Are you sure?” I can hear a little tremor in her voice, as though she’s nervous. I nod and smile, and we walk up the stairs.

  Orly sits on Soph’s bed, and I sit on mine. We agree to spend a half hour reading each other’s work. The chapter I have is about Orly’s memory of a summer day.

  Lawrence Irwin drowned right in front of me the summer I turned five. I don’t remember it. My ten-year-old sister Rose was supposed to be watching me. By her account, she went to the snack bar, fixing to buy us a popsicle with the dollar bill Mama gave her, when she heard the ruckus, all whistles and screaming. Four lifeguards leapt from their high chairs and dove into the deep end of the pool.

  Rose says I was still whining for the popsicle as she stood by the pool, terrified and mesmerized by little Lawrence under the water in his star-spangled trunks, his face tinged blue.

  We went to the pool most days of that hotter-than-blazes summer. Mama, Daddy, and Meemaw worked all day, and the pool was where all the kids in town went. A few of the stay-at-home moms were officially in charge, rubbing on sunscreen and handing out Band-Aids to their own kids and any others who landed in front of them. No one really thought about whether it was safe. Of course it was safe; it was Allenton, Georgia. We had two stoplights, a Pepsi factory, and a pine mill out by the used-car dealer on Route 17.

  I don’t remember Lawrence or the lifeguards or everyone getting out of the pool at once. I wasn’t there, in the back office of the changing house, when the manager, poor Mrs. Bowen, surrounded by paramedics, pulled out the alphabetical membership list to call Lawrence’s mother and let her know what had happened. Our names were so similar, and Mrs. Bowen was so shaken, anyone could understand why her finger landed like a bug on “Erwin” and she never reached the Irwins.

  Mama got the call at her desk in the reception area of the local community college. She said later that she could barely hear Mrs. Bowen whispering into the phone. But Mama heard the word “drowned” and she flew out the door without her purse, not even telling her boss she was leaving.

  I don’t remember Lawrence, but I will never forget Mama’s arrival that day. She pushed her way through the crowd of adults and children near the empty pool. First she grabbed Rose, but when she saw me fussing and grabbing for the forgotten popsicle in Rose’s hand, now gone to a sticky, orange mess, Mama hollered. I froze, terrified. She grabbed me hard and held me for several long minutes while she wept. I squirmed in embarrassment and Rose petted her shoulder, both of us still in the dark about why she flew off the handle like that.

  “I’ve got you, baby,” she told me over and over. “I’ve got you always.”

 
Soph thinks I have it hard, but reading this piece makes being who I am feel pretty simple, even if parts of it are still not easy. I tell Orly I’m glad she wrote it, because I’ve never met a transgender person and maybe lots of people who never have either will read her story and learn about her life. But I’ve also never met anyone from Georgia and that part is interesting too. She writes in a way that makes it sound like its own planet, not just another state in the same country as New Hampshire. It makes me wish Chris would read it.

  After she finishes reading I say, “Can I ask you a personal question?” I’m not sure how she’s going to react.

  “I can guess. You want to know when I first figured out I was a girl.”

  “No.”

  “Really? That’s usually what people ask.”

  “I was just wondering what made you decide to tell.”

  Orly looks at me as though she’s trying to figure something out, and I can feel my face turn red. I shouldn’t be asking her these kinds of questions. But she says, “I was little. It wasn’t a question of telling. I acted the way my sister acted. And when my parents tried to treat me like a boy, I just knew I had to correct them. I never thought about keeping quiet.”

  She stands up then, stares out the window, and says, “And now, anyone who didn’t know me then doesn’t ask. I like that.”

  “Not having to explain yourself all the time?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say. She shrugs, but she doesn’t look mad. I’m not sure what else to say.

  After Orly leaves, I go upstairs to grab a computer to work on my final chapter. I know how the story is going to end. It’s funny how making that decision to write the characters doing something out of character actually made me figure out how to write this story differently. Maybe this conference has taught me something.

  But as I’m headed down the third-floor hall, I spy Chris in her room through her door, which is open a little. Before I know what I’m doing, I’m knocking on it.

  * * *

  From Soph Alcazar’s Writing Journal,

  February 16, 2018

  Am I allowed to be feeling this hurt?

  Heartsick, I want to proclaim, to assert.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  From the Fan Fiction Unbound Archive,

  posted by conTessaofthecastle:

  Daphne breathed in the scent of roses and ash so familiar to her. She didn’t want to move, for fear it would disappear again. “I don’t understand,” Daphne murmured. Astoria was real, was here, wasn’t gone forever. “I never found the spell-caster. How did I make it happen?”

  Soph.

  After the peer review, I’m not sure what to do with myself, so I go back to our room. I want to try to talk to Tess again, to convince her to come out here, even if it’s only for a day. She’s in our room. But she isn’t alone. It’s dark, and I step in and turn on the lamp next to my bed, figuring Tess doesn’t want to talk to me and I should get my book and go. To my surprise, Chris is sitting there. They look up at me.

  “Hey,” says Chris. She sounds nervous.

  “Soph, Chris and I were talking.” Tess continues to surprise me. Here she is, reserved and refusing to put herself out there all day after opening up to me last night. Then she goes and still tries to figure out someone like Chris.

  “Do you want me to leave?” Chris and I both say it at the same time and, since neither of us knows how to answer, we turn to Tess.

  “This is Soph’s room, too,” Tess says, glancing at me, and I remember last night. “Do you mind if she stays?” she asks. Chris shrugs. Tess walks over to her bed. “We talked the other night over here,” she says, pointing to my bed. “Let’s move. We don’t have any more chairs.” She sits down and pushes herself sideways across the bed until she’s up against the wall. I sit next to her and Chris sits on her other side, exactly as we were during the power outage, only on Tess’s bed.

  “No Hennessy today,” teases Tess. That breaks the ice. I roll my eyes and snort.

  Chris giggles and says, “Never again.”

  I smile, and we relax.

  Tess breaks the silence. “Chris was telling me about what happened with Orly. I told her I wanted to know. The same way she wanted to know about her old boyfriend.” Tess turns in my direction and adds, “I don’t think Soph is going to be critical. And we can agree to keep it to ourselves if you want. Soph can keep a secret.”

  Hearing that makes me want to scream with equal measures of joy and frustration. Tess trusts me, so maybe last night was not a one-time thing. But she’s also telling me to keep my mouth shut about it, which kills me. I can do that. At least, I can do that until the two of us are alone.

  I say, “Yeah, Chris. I would like to know. I promise not to get pissed.” I want to push my thigh close to Tess, to be able to feel her next to me, but I’m not sure how she will react. Instead I push away from her a few inches. She notices.

  Chris’s face softens as she talks. “I wanted to come to a writing workshop to do some work I could use for colleges and to try to publish an article. I didn’t know all this was going to happen.” She puts her head down, shaking it.

  Tess lets the silence hang, then asks quietly, “What happened with Orly?”

  Chris fiddles with the bottom button on her sweater. “They sent me her name. His name. I don’t know how to say it. Nothing other than his name.”

  I’m about to correct her again when I feel Tess’s hand, like a warning, on my arm. I hold my tongue.

  “No one said anything about trans girls. Or what that means. Or gave me any warning at all. Then Orly shows up the first night, and there’s all this weirdness about changing clothes, and I figure out that she isn’t really a girl. Or that she’s a girl with boy parts. Like I said, I don’t know how to say it.” She stares at Soph. “Maybe this happens all the time in New York. I don’t know. I never met a trans person.”

  I’m probably not supposed to break in, but I can’t help myself. “Chris, what does it matter that you never met a trans girl? I’ve never met anyone from Dallas. So what?”

  She’s getting frustrated.

  “I didn’t think I was going to be put in a room with a guy without being told.”

  “Orly’s not a guy, and why are you worried about boys? They’re just boys.”

  “The point is, I didn’t know! What I did know is that I got a roommate who’s a stranger to me and has a—” She stumbles over the word, then says, “A thing. That’s a lot different from being put in a room with a girl you don’t know from Atlanta. If my parents knew about that, they’d never have let me come. And then when I figured out some more stuff about it, it was too late to go talk to Professor Forsythe, because everyone got mad at me—even Yin—all because of a dumb joke that Orly didn’t even care about.”

  I’m not sure what she is trying to say, so I ask, “What did you figure out?””

  Chris stares at the ceiling. I can’t see her that well on the other side of Tess, but I can tell she’s thinking about what words to use.

  She sighs and says, “I researched trans kids.”

  Well, that is news.

  Tess asks quietly, “What did you find out?”

  Chris explains that she first found all the statistics about trans kids and how they have lots of safety concerns. “Then I went and tracked down the rules for various school districts about overnight trips and it turns out lots of them say you can’t tell someone like me about their roommate being trans. It’s like not allowing someone to opt out of having a Black roommate or a Muslim roommate. It would be considered prejudice.” She sighs and shakes her head. “Then Grace gave me a lecture yesterday. She told me I was wrong, and that the professors found out about the carrot thing. Now I’m all confused about everything. I just want to go home.”

  “Chris, you say you’re interested in journa
lism. I know you’re good at it because of the investigation you did for our Maizy Donovan piece.”

  Huh? The last I heard, Chris wasn’t involved. But Tess keeps talking without explaining.

  “What if you talk to Orly? She might have told the instructors or she might have had a reason not to.” Chris doesn’t say anything, so Tess continues. “Wouldn’t you rather try to get to know her instead of leaving tomorrow knowing you didn’t ask?”

  Tess picks up her phone as if she’s going to text Orly and invite her over, but I tell her I’ll go myself. I’d rather let Orly know what’s going on ahead of time.

  Orly answers her door holding a book in one hand. She has on that oversized sweater she was wearing the first day. She is not interested in coming to see Chris.

  “Why would I?” she asks. I don’t have a good answer, except that Tess asked me to ask her. I tell her that and she cocks her head as if I said something important. She puts down her book and follows me back to our room.

  The lights are all on in our room now, and the sky is darker outside. Tess is showing Chris something on her phone and asking her questions. You would think they were friends, like they’d been friends all week.

  Tess greets Orly with a smile and pushes over on the bed to make room for her. Chris doesn’t say anything.

  Orly doesn’t sit on the bed. “Well, I’m here.”

  No one says anything. I guess we are each expecting someone else to go first. Tess wades in. “Orly, Chris says that she was surprised when she met you. Surprised and a little frightened. Right, Chris?” Chris nods slightly. “But we thought maybe if we all talked, we could clear this up. We’re going home tomorrow. It would be nice if we could work this out first.”

  Orly is silent. Then she sighs and says, “I just wanted to get along.”

  Chris sits up. “I don’t want to know your private life. But I do want to know who I’m rooming with.” She juts out her chin. “You acted like it was a joke anyway, Orly. Besides, I already apologized. Why can’t you just drop it?”

  Orly shakes her head and says very quietly, “You need to be honest. You didn’t feel unsafe, and you didn’t mean it as a joke. Believe me, just because I wasn’t intimidated doesn’t mean I thought it was a joke. I reckon you know that.”