by Tom Wilinsky
I’m about to back her up when I feel Tess’s hand on my arm. I hold my tongue.
“You did it to try and make every other girl uncomfortable with me.” Orly continues. “And you only apologized to me after Grace made you.”
Chris protests. “Look, I wanted a story. I admit that. But I apologized, and it’s still not good enough.”
“Of course it’s not good enough!” Orly raises her voice. “You just don’t want to be in trouble anymore.”
“No, no. I did some research and I understand much more about trans kids—”
Orly cuts her off. “Let me tell you something, Chris, you don’t get to tell anyone else how to walk into a room. I get to decide whether to tell people about myself and I get to decide when I want to do that, whether it’s where I’m from, what kind of girl I am, or anything else. If you want to call yourself a feminist, you need to let me make those choices myself.”
Chris ducks her head. “I think we’re just really different people. I don’t know how you change that.”
Orly says, “You change that by educating yourself. We’re not that different. We’re both Southern girls who want to be writers.”
Chris furrows her forehead. Orly looks at the ceiling, composing herself. She catches my eye, then continues. “I’m not a threat to you, Chris, and you thinking I am is your problem, not mine.”
I think Chris is about to leave, with everyone still upset, when Tess pulls printed pages out of her knapsack. She shows them to Orly and asks if she can read them. Orly shrugs and glances at Chris. I’m not sure what Tess is doing until she reads part of Orly’s memoir out loud.
It’s cold on Christmas morning, the year I turn ten. I can see my breath when I open the front door to let Hallie the dachshund out for her walk. My feet are cold when I step barefoot onto the concrete stoop to call her back in. The morning is waking up, winter sun struggling to climb in the sky. Inside, Mama fusses with coffee and homemade coffeecake even though no one wants to eat anything when the tree is surrounded by packages. Then there will be church, followed by turkey and ham for Christmas dinner at Meemaw’s. Uncle Howard will play Christmas carols at the old piano, and Aunt Gwen will tell me to stand up straight and stop fidgeting. It’s the same every year, and that’s what I like best about it.
Tess stops reading. “It sounds like Christmas in my house,” she says, “except there’s no way I could go out barefoot, obviously. And we have a collie named Felix, not a dachshund.”
“We have a poodle,” says Chris quietly. She looks quickly at Orly. “Named Bella.”
“I don’t have a dog,” I say, “but my Aunt Valentina is always telling me to stand up straight on holidays. What is that about?”
We sit around talking and showing each other pictures on our phones until it gets darker outside and a little less awkward in our room.
Tess.
The conference schedule said there would be a formal farewell banquet on Saturday night. I brought one of my church dresses to wear, because I don’t have anything else. I knew it would be wrong when I packed it, but it feels even more wrong now.
Chris and Orly have gone back to their rooms to change. I don’t know if I handled that right, but I still feel bad that I didn’t speak up for Orly when Chris first talked to me. I’ve pretty much given up on finding some way to be a leader here. Maybe I should just cancel the interview next week. There doesn’t seem to be much point.
Soph, in one of her lacy black bras and matching black underwear, is pulling clothes out of her duffel bag and flinging them all over the bed. I see a black leather miniskirt, a sheer black blouse, and a gold tank top. Little high-heeled, open-toed suede booties land on the floor. Things are still tense between us since breakfast, and even though she isn’t giving me the silent treatment, she’s kept her distance during the day’s activities. Even now, after what we did with Chris and Orly, she’s pretty quiet.
I messed this whole thing up and I have no idea how to fix it. I also have no idea how to stop staring at Soph in her underwear, until she looks up at me and that does the trick. I instantly look away. I stare at my light pink shift dress, plain navy flats, and navy cardigan sweater. I don’t know who I am or who I want to be anymore. Soph looks at the pile of clothes on her bed and then back at me. I’m still wearing the black sweater she loaned me this morning.
“Do you want to borrow something?” she asks with a little smile, like a peace offering. She gives me a couple of outfits to try on, but the skirts are too tiny, and they’re all wrong with my shoes anyway. Finally, I put on my own dress, and Soph wraps a thick leather belt with a double-row of metal grommets around my waist. Then she snaps a leather cuff with more metal on it around my wrist. She has fishnet tights in her bag, which I put on, and by the time she’s finished changing my outfit, I don’t look at all as though I’m going to Our Lady of Mercy.
“I love dressing up,” she says as she adjusts my dress for a little too long. “I wish you could come to one of my school dances.”
Soph texts Orly to come and do my makeup. Orly gives me smoky eyes. Then she pulls my hair off my face with a huge silver metal clip and puts this dark fuchsia lipstick on me, which is more than amazing. Orly also gives me some dangly silver earrings and makes me take off my Pandora bracelet. I’ve never worn this much metal or this much makeup, but it feels more like me than I think I probably have ever felt. It’s funny how wearing Soph’s things makes me feel that way.
By the time Soph is dressed in her own black and gold outfit and Orly has given her the reddest lips I’ve ever seen outside of a movie, we’re all laughing and the tension has dissipated. Orly is wearing a flouncy skirt and a simple black top with an infinity scarf and more dangly earrings. Soph makes us take pictures all squeezed together. I even take some on my phone and send one to Joey.
The three of us go down to dinner, and Soph surprises me. She sits right next to me, and though she doesn’t look at me while she’s talking to Orly and Clover, under the tablecloth she holds my hand for the entire meal.
After dinner, Professor Forsythe stands and announces that she has selected one of the group projects for a reading. “I think you’ll enjoy it as much as I did, for its entertainment value, its cleverness, and the spirited message it delivers.”
Soph’s group reads its project. She didn’t tell me. Each girl tells parts of the story, in song, verse, free verse, and as a blog. Freya has a husband and a wife; the husband’s feelings are hurt, and Freya uses magical implements to find him. She wants him back and is about to use a magic necklace when they discover that they all like each other and it works out. Each of the girls in the group hams up her own part, and we’re all laughing when Soph steps forward to give the conclusion in one of her complicated sonnets.
Thus did Freya find Od to bring him in.
And just as the two of them did marry,
Freya found Stola and love nonpareil,
Love without need for the Brísingamen.
Od, devastated, did flee the women,
Believe his love a corpse to bury.
Only then did Freya react and query.
She loved both lady and gentleman.
Freya believed only charms could mend,
Her bond with Od her new love caused to rend,
Found Od, and prepared a magic amend.
But Stola and Od, quick to each other befriend
Added their own love, the marriage to extend.
The moral is three as well as two can blend.
When they finish, Soph smiles at me, and I smile back, clapping as hard as I can.
* * *
Later that night, back in our room, Soph closes the door and leaves the lights off. I reach for her tentatively. She pulls me into a hug. She kisses me, and I kiss her back. Everything outside this room is complicated, but here I can breathe. I never want to leave this room ever ag
ain.
As we’re getting undressed, I hand Soph her belt and I sit on the bed to strip off the fishnet tights. I leave the leather wrist cuff on. I’m thinking about leaving tomorrow, and I ask Soph, “What should I tell Joey about us?”
She turns toward me, startled, then sits down on her bed across from me. She has already taken off her skirt and her tights and is now pulling off the shimmery blouse she had on at dinner. I can barely see her.
“I don’t know, Tess. What do you want to tell him?”
“Can we…” I want to talk to her more about this, but mostly I want to touch her skin while we talk, and I don’t know how to ask her for that. I can feel my face heating up.
Soph must sense it because she says, “Let’s get under the covers and talk.” I’m relieved that she didn’t make me ask out loud.
After we’ve undressed and washed off the lipstick and the eyeshadow, we climb together into my bed. With the door locked and the lights out, I curl into Soph and close my eyes. She’s warm and comforting. The darkness makes it easier to say what I’m thinking.
“I never lie to Joey. I don’t want to lie to him about meeting you. Or about how much you mean to me.”
“Okay.” I can hear the question in Soph’s tone. She doesn’t ask it though.
“I don’t…” I feel selfish, but I also need to tell Soph. She deserves to know, even if it makes her mad.
“I don’t know how I’m supposed to have a boyfriend, you know, a boyfriend in the sense that we have, when there’s you… and I don’t know how not to either.”
“Okay,” she says again, but now I can’t read her tone. I guess there’s nothing I can do to keep her from getting mad again. I need to be clear about this. I say it all in a rush.
“I need to keep being there for him until we graduate. Even though I want… I want to see you again. I—can’t break up with him. Not now.” My voice cracks a little when I say it.
I’m sure she’s going to climb out of bed now and leave me alone. Then she’ll lecture me about how I need to come out to everyone in Castleton and I’m not being fair to her. I brace myself for it. In fact, I push back from her side a little, to give her the room to leave, though I’m sure I will shatter into a million little pieces when she does.
But instead she pulls me back toward her and puts her hand in my hair, stroking it gently. She says, “You never want to see anyone left out, do you, Tess?”
That surprises me. I’ve never thought about it like that. She keeps talking, her voice low, her hand still on my hair. “All week, you kept trying to convince Chris to work with you, to make sure Orly wasn’t left out without making the other girls mad. Then you were the one who said we had to go find Chris when she was missing. No one else wanted to do that.”
“You went with me,” I say, a little embarrassed now. I feel her shrug next to me.
“I went for the Hennessy.” That makes me laugh.
“I think things work better when everyone is part of the group. I don’t always feel as though I fit in and I guess it means something to me to try to make sure other people do too. Just like I can’t leave Joey on his own, not now. He doesn’t have any other friends he can talk to about stuff. Not in Castleton.”
Soph makes a humming noise, as though she’s thinking about something, and then simply says, “All right.”
Once I’ve figured out she isn’t leaving and settle back against her, she tells me that I can be like Freya, the Norse goddess of love and war, who has both a man and a woman in her life, and they all care about each other in different ways. That turns into more kissing.
* * *
From Soph Alcazar’s Writing Journal,
February 16, 2018
I want her to come out, culpa mea,
But I can be Stola to her Freya.
Chapter Twenty-Five
From the Fan Fiction Unbound Archive,
posted by conTessaofthecastle:
A woman came in from the other room, startling Daphne, who reached for Astoria, prepared to utter the shape-shifting spell again.
Astoria spoke in her ear. “You shifted me to her when you said the spell in the forest.”
Daphne peered up at a wrinkled face, a kind smile, and a hand holding out the mug of tea Astoria had set down.
“You’ve had a long journey,” said the spell-caster.
Soph.
I wake up before Tess. There’s so much I want to ask her, I’m almost buzzing with anticipation, pressed up against her back. But it feels so good lying close to her while she sleeps that I try not to move. I never thought about this part before, what it would be like waking up next to someone you don’t want to be apart from. She wakes up slowly, something I didn’t expect from her. I’m lying on my side with my arm over her waist.
“You’re up with the cows,” she jokes. She turns on her back, her right side up against me.
“Tess,” I ask, “why did you keep trying to bring Chris into the fold?”
“Interesting phrase, Soph.” She yawns and ducks her head closer to me. “Do you know what ‘the fold’ is?”
I’ve heard the phrase, but I don’t know what it really means. She continues.
“A ‘fold’ is a fenced-in area, like a paddock. You bring the herd or the flock in so that they are safe and together.”
I chuckle. “So, you were trying to bring Chris safely into the fold on Thursday night when the power went out. Only that’s not exactly what I meant. You said then that you weren’t supposed to leave a soldier on the field. But you went further than that. Even though she was horrible to Orly and wouldn’t cooperate with your group, you offered to teach her to skate. You invited her to go sledding with us. A few days ago, I thought you were going to shove that carrot up her nose. Then, yesterday, you had her in here and got her to make up with Orly.”
“Soph, a baby calf was born at home right before I came here.”
Tess tells me about struggling with the mother to get her to nurse her baby, and how she left the calf too long and it got kicked into a corner of the barn.
“Putting feed on Angie, that should have attracted her mother. We had to try something else. And then, when her mother still wouldn’t learn, we had to take care of Angie a different way.”
I don’t get it.
“Soph, even if Angie lives, she won’t be as strong as the rest. The herd might not accept her. I don’t know if her mother really hurt her when she kicked her away, and that’s on me. I shouldn’t have left her alone. I didn’t do the job Daddy trusted me to do. She could still die.”
I still don’t understand. “But, I mean, Angie’s mother is supposed to feed her own baby, right? You shouldn’t have to do that in the first place.”
“In a way, yes. But Angie’s mother didn’t do it. We can’t let a cow die if we can save it. They’re worth money, but they’re also… I don’t know exactly how to explain this, but calves are part of the farm. They’re ours, not just their mothers’. So it is my responsibility. Mine and Daddy’s and Molly’s and Mom’s. And we have to keep trying with the mother, even when she’s wrong and stubborn about being wrong. The same way, even though Daddy was mad at me, he still gave me another chance to get it right.”
Tess.
Soph lets go of me and rolls onto her back. She stares at the ceiling. “Tess, you’re going to make a great cadet.”
I shake my head. “I doubt I’ll be admitted.”
“Why?”
I remind her. “I’ve got my interview next week with the admissions panel. I still don’t have a good answer for that leadership question. That’s enough for them to reject me.” I don’t want to admit, even to Soph, even now, here, how much I want to get in.
She sits up suddenly. Cold air hits me when she pushes back the covers. “Come on, Tess, you must see it!”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean what you just told me, what you did here with Chris. How can you not see this?”
“No, you don’t understand, Soph. It’s not about just doing the right thing.” She makes a face. “I didn’t take everyone here and save them or anything.”
“I think you don’t understand, Tess.” She puts her hand in mine, still tangled in the blankets. Her palm is warm. “You stood up in front of everyone and confronted Chris. Then, when no one else thought about it, you went to make sure Chris was safe. When we found her, you insisted on making her stay with us.”
“I don’t think that’s quite what West Point has in mind, Soph. All I was trying to do was understand both sides and not leave anyone out. Besides, it’s not like Chris and Orly ended up friends.”
“I’m not even finished. You were like a general or something, mediating differences between Chris and Orly. We learned in American History about how Eisenhower did that when he took command in World War II. You got Chris to speak directly to Orly when no one else would because you kept trying to understand. Maybe Chris and Orly didn’t end up being friends. But you and Orly did.”
I’m quiet for a few moments. Then I sigh. “I need to think about it. It doesn’t sound like a very traditional answer.”
“Oh, god, tradition. You had to say that word?” She must be thinking about her mother, because she flings herself down next to me again, still holding my hand. I smile at the drama.
“Soph, you’re more of a traditionalist than you think.”
“I’m not!” she insists.
“What’s your big passion, Soph? I mean besides social justice, coming out, and texting?”
I smile to show her that I’m kidding. Her face is close to mine, and she smiles too. “Writing, I guess.”
“Yuh, writing. What kinds of poems?”
“Oh. Sonnets. Okay. Sonnets from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries. But I don’t use the same language or the same topics.”