by Casey Plett
By the elevators in front of the open staircase, Wendy looked through the window expecting a storm, but it had stopped snowing. Under an arch she could see a parking lot and an old gilded apartment building across the way. The street was pristine and quiet and footprint-less.
She walked through the reflecting marble lobby. The roads outside were empty sheets of blue and white, ice stretching far, far away, looking like outer space. She put on her headphones as she walked through the revolving doors into the night. She felt okay about where her life was headed.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to all the friends who read this story and talked to me about it, full names this time: Torrey Peters, Jeanne Thornton, Marika Prokosh, Maeve Devine, Meredith Russo, Cam Scott, Kate Friggle, Zoey Leigh Peterson, Calvin Gimpelevich, Gwen Benaway, Morgan M Page, John Toews, and Sherri Klassen—special thanks to Cat Fitzpatrick and Daniel Shank Cruz, who gave more of their time to this book than a friend could ever ask for.
To the Arsenal folks: Brian Lam, Cynara Geissler, Susan Safyan (blessings on all your future endeavours with your ever-watchful eye!), Robert Ballantyne, Shirarose Wilensky, and Oliver McPartlin, thank you. I’m humbled and proud, if that’s a possible combo, to say I’m published with you.
Thanks to the Winnipeg Arts Council, who provided funding in this book’s genesis.
Thanks to Terry Loewen and my mom for Plautdietsch advisories and other insights from inside the house. Thanks to Nic Bravo for a joke or two. An enormous thank you to Shawn Syms, for so many reasons. And the book Wendy remembers in Chapter 20 is Lorrie Moore’s Anagrams. To every Mennonite who has been good when there are costs. Bless you. To the housemates who shared space as I wrote this, all I can say is thanks for putting up with my silly ass … Jillian, Kendra, Brittany, Sharla, Kiki, and most of all Sybil, who knows more than anyone.
CASEY PLETT is the author of the short story collection A Safe Girl to Love and co-editor of the anthology Meanwhile, Elsewhere: Science Fiction and Fantasy from Transgender Writers. She wrote a column on transitioning for McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and her essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, Maclean’s, The Walrus, Plenitude, the Winnipeg Free Press, and other publications. She is the winner of a Lambda Literary Award for Best Transgender Fiction and received an Honour of Distinction from The Writers’ Trust of Canada’s Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ Emerging Writers. She lives in Windsor, Ontario.