“Seems a little convenient, though, doesn’t it?”
“Perhaps it’s just fate.”
“Sure.”
“Have you and Darren been getting along?”
“He doesn’t say much. Jamie says he’s weird.”
“Who’s Jamie?”
“My friend. She’s a patient here too.”
“You must mean Jamie Borstein. I suppose it’s not a surprise you two would hit it off.”
“Why would you say that?”
“You’re close together in age, you have similar backgrounds, and you’re both terribly lonely.”
“I’m not lonely.”
“You’re not?”
“No. I have my sister, remember?”
“But that’s not the same, is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“So what do you and Jamie talk about?”
“TV, music, boys.”
“I see. Do you like talking about boys?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I’m only ten. I’m too little for boys.”
“That’s debatable.”
“Everything’s debatable with you.”
“I only want to try to help you see the truth.”
“That I still think I’m a boy?”
“That’s part of the truth. Do you still think you’re a boy?”
“Sometimes.”
“What about right now?”
I wave the boa at him. “Not so much.”
“That’s good. We’re making progress.”
“I can’t forget about being a boy,” I say. “I was a boy for fifty years.”
“You don’t have to forget that time of your life. You just need to feel comfortable within your body—as Stacey. That’s a lot harder to do if you still see yourself as Steve.”
“Maybe I don’t want to see myself as Stacey Chang.”
“Why not?”
“Because she’s little. She’s weak.”
“In what sense?”
“Every sense.” I take a deep breath and then tell Dr. Macintosh about Keshia. She kept it up my second day, though I was smart enough not to let her trip me. Still, every time she answered a question she would look at me, as if to shove her knowledge in my face.
When I finish, the doctor nods. “Sounds like this Keshia has problems of her own.”
“She’s a bitch,” I say. “That’s her problem.”
“I suspect it’s deeper than that.”
“You would.”
“I suspect Keshia is focusing on you because you threaten her role.”
“What role?”
“The successful minority student. I suspect her parents have been pushing her all her life to prove herself to be equal to her white peers. That’s driven her to be the best in her class. The last thing she wants is for someone to usurp that.”
“She doesn’t have anything to worry about. I’m still not very bright.”
“Maybe you’re not trying hard enough. Do you want to succeed at school?”
“Yes.”
“If you have to remain Stacey Chang indefinitely, then I think it would behoove you to do well in your studies.”
“Behoove me?”
“It would benefit you.”
“Oh,” I say. “See, I’m not smart. I can’t even spell ‘Magnificent.’”
“How old is Stacey Chang?”
“Ten.”
“Then you have plenty of time to learn.”
“Maybe I’m just not that smart. Maybe I’ll always be dumb.”
“Do you think Steve Fischer was dumb?”
“Ask his coworkers.”
“I’m more interested in what you think.”
“I wound up here, didn’t I? That wasn’t very smart.”
“So you blame yourself for what happened?”
“I went into that lab without any backup. Wouldn’t you say that’s pretty stupid?”
“Maybe, but you could also say it was pretty brave.”
“Yeah, well, maybe I was brave because I was dumb.”
“True courage is being smart enough to see the danger and throwing yourself into the fray anyway,” Dr. Macintosh says.
“Whatever.”
“Don’t shut down on me, Stacey,” he says. He waits a moment, but I don’t say anything. “Even if Steve wasn’t a straight-A student, that doesn’t mean Stacey couldn’t be, if she works hard at it.”
“Why? I never needed to be smart before.”
“You liked being a police officer?”
“Yes. It was all I ever wanted to be.”
“What about working as a salesgirl at your friend’s clothes shop?”
“It was all right.”
“But not really a career, was it?” Dr. Macintosh smirks at me. “Did you get much satisfaction out of working there?”
“Some.”
“Not the same as being a police officer?”
“I don’t know. They’re totally different things.”
“Are they?”
“Yes.” The way he stares at me, he expects me to say more. “One is putting dangerous criminals in jail. The other is selling old clothes to hipsters.”
“I see. Then why did you keep working for Grace?”
“She’s my friend. And it let me see Maddy.”
“Are those the only reasons?”
“I guess.”
“You guess or you’re sure?”
“I don’t know. It was kind of nice not being in life-or-death situations all the time. You know, if someone buys an ugly T-shirt you aren’t going to get a bullet in the head.”
“I see. So you enjoyed the ease of the job?”
“A little. Does that make me a slacker?”
Dr. Macintosh smiles and shakes his head. “Not at all. I read Steve Fischer’s obituary. He sounded like quite a good cop. All those commendations and medals.”
“Yeah, he was a real hero.”
“After all that, maybe he needed a break.”
“I’m real lucky Artie Luther helped me out with that then.”
“Don’t hide behind sarcasm,” Dr. Macintosh chides me. “Had you given any thought to your retirement?”
“Not really. I always assumed I wouldn’t make it. Or else my liver would give out.”
“I see. Do you think Steve had a death wish?”
“What?”
“Do you think he worked those long hours, drove himself so hard, because he wanted to die?”
“No.”
“But you assumed you would die in the line of duty, right?”
“In this city the odds are pretty good.”
“What about your partner, Jake? Do you think he plans to die in the line of duty?”
“I don’t know. I hope not for Tess’s sake.”
“I see. Your friend has something to live for. And you didn’t.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I’ve seen cases like that before: a man takes a lot of stupid risks because he wants to die but can’t bring himself to commit suicide because that would be cowardly. Do you think that would describe Steve Fischer?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I didn’t want to die!” I snap.
“You said you spent a lot of time drinking and clearly you took a lot of stupid risks. How would you describe that behavior?”
“Stupid.”
“That’s a good ten-year-old way to put it. But when you became Stacey you didn’t do that anymore, did you?”
“No,” I say. In truth I did engage in some risky behavior as Stacey Chance, behavior that got me shot twice, once by Artie Luther’s favorite assassin the Tall Man and the second time by Jake when he betrayed me to Luther, but that was so I could become Steve again.
“As Stacey, would you say you’re more passive than you were as Steve?”
“Maybe.”
“Why is that?”
“Stacey is smaller. And weaker. She ca
n’t brawl like Steve could.”
“That’s a pretty good explanation, though I don’t think size is that important. Plenty of short people have been good at fighting.”
“Maybe.”
“If you felt weak, you could always go to the gym. You could learn karate or some other martial art.”
“That takes a lot of time and money.”
“I suppose it does. Did you ever think about buying some weights? Maybe go jogging?”
“Are you saying I’m fat?”
“You are a little pear-shaped.”
“Pear-shaped? I’m only ten.”
“Childhood obesity is a serious problem.”
“I guess.”
“But I think we’ve gotten off the issue here. Do you think it might be accurate to say Stacey didn’t engage in risky behavior because she had more to lose?”
“I don’t know.”
“Stacey had her guardians, the Madigans. Then of course she had her friends, Grace and Madison. Who did Steve Fischer have to lose?”
“Stop it!” I shout. I curl up in the chair and bury my face in one arm of it while I sob.
I feel Dr. Macintosh pat my back. “It’s all right. You should focus on the positive. You were given a magnificent gift: a second chance. It’s important to make the most of it. Apply yourself to your studies. Stacey Chang can be whatever she wants to be.”
“All right.” With another sniffle I uncurl myself. I wipe at my eyes with the pink boa.
As I start to take the boa off, Dr. Macintosh says, “You can keep that. You earned it.”
“Gee, thanks,” I grumble.
I still have the stupid boa and tiara on when I go out into the waiting room. Maddy runs over to me and almost bowls me over. “You look pretty,” she says.
“Thanks,” I say. I look back at Dr. Macintosh, who nods to me. Then I put the tiara on Maddy’s head and the boa around her neck. “Now you look pretty.”
Chapter 27
When I get to class it’s after lunch. Tess took us to McDonald’s on the way to school. I remembered how Dr. Macintosh described me as “pear-shaped” and ordered a salad. Tess gave me a concerned look, but didn’t say anything.
Keshia gives me a look too, an angry look that suggests I should have stayed away. I take my seat and make sure not to look at her. When I open my history textbook, I study the words intently to try to absorb the knowledge. I stare at it so hard, I don’t hear Ms. Lowry when she says, “Stacey?”
“Huh?” Keshia leads some of the other girls in snickering.
“I asked you a question.”
“What question?”
“I know!” Keshia says.
Ms. Lowry ignores her to glare at me. Maybe she and Mr. Delmore had a rough night. “Young lady, you need to pay attention.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Now, as I was saying, this year is St. Andrew’s sesquicentennial. Do you know what that means, Stacey?”
I think about it for a few moments. I’m old enough to remember the bicentennial in 1976. That meant two hundred years. A centennial is one hundred years. Since I doubt the school is older than two hundred years, I guess, “A hundred fifty years?”
“Very good, Stacey. St. Andrews is turning one hundred fifty years old. To celebrate, Headmaster Armey has decided all grades from kindergarten to sixth grade will put on a presentation for the parents and alumni.”
Everyone but Keshia groans at this. “Our grade has been assigned to do a presentation on the arts in the last one hundred fifty years.” There’s another groan at this. “Since there are sixteen of you, I want everyone to pair up. Each pair will be assigned two decades to present for the parents and alumni.”
“Do you mean like an essay?” Keshia asks.
“It can be an essay. You could also do a skit or a slideshow or something similar. Dr. Armey is encouraging us to be creative.”
I glance over at Keshia and can see the wheels in her mind start to turn. The good thing about being her partner is you wouldn’t have to do any work; she’s the type who would do everything herself. At most you might have to do some manual labor for whatever she comes up with.
But of course she doesn’t want to be partners with me. No one does. I watch helplessly as the other kids push their desks together; no one so much as looks at me. It’s like a game of musical chairs and I’m the one left standing.
Except thanks to our even numbers, I’m not the only one left. Darren mumbles, “You want to be my partner?”
“I guess so,” I say. I force myself to smile. “It’s not like I have a choice.”
“Yeah,” he says to indicate I’m not his ideal partner either. He’d probably rather not have any partner.
After we’ve partnered up, Ms. Lowry walks around the room and hands out slips of paper. I cross my fingers and hope she’ll give Darren and I something contemporary; the 60s and 70s would be right up my alley. I wouldn’t even have to do any research; I could just go from personal experience.
I’m not that lucky. Instead of my era, I get my grandpa’s era: 1930-1950. I suppose it’s better than the 1890s. At least I have a vague idea of the arts during the Depression and World War II era. I turn to Darren. “So what should we do?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s not very helpful.” I see his notebook on his desk. “You like music. Maybe we could do something with that.”
“I guess.”
“Come on, you must know something about music from back then.”
“Not really.”
“My grandpa has some jazz records and stuff. That might help.”
“Maybe.”
“What about your uncle? What kind of music does he listen to?”
“I don’t know.”
I shake my head. I can see I’ll have to do the lion’s share of the work on this project. I guess it’ll let me show Darren’s uncle how smart I really am. “Well, it shouldn’t be too hard to find out. We could go look for some books in the library and stuff.”
“I guess.”
“Do you have a computer? Or one of those phones?”
“Yes.”
“With you?”
“Yeah.” He reluctantly takes out a phone like Jamie’s. I wonder if he has Angry Birds on it? Darren doesn’t seem the type for that. He pushes a few buttons to bring up Google and then Wikipedia.
“Let’s start with jazz,” I say. Darren punches that in. From what the article says, jazz is more associated with the Roaring Twenties than the 30s. “What was that other stuff? Like Glen Miller or whoever.”
Darren types in Glen Miller and brings up the article on him. Big band music, that was the stuff my grandparents listened to. I remember when I sat in the back of their station wagon and whined like Maddy about my Creedence.
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” I say. I hope to engage Darren. He doesn’t take the bait. It wasn’t this bad for Grace and Maddy to deal with me as Stacey Chance, was it? Did they have to pry words out of me with a pair of pliers?
“What about Frank Sinatra?” I ask. “I think he was from around that time.” Darren looks up Old Blue Eyes, who was a favorite of my dad. I had my dad’s record collection, but it got burned up with the rest of Steve Fischer’s stuff thanks to one of Artie Luther’s goons. “There we go, a couple of leads. You can research one and I’ll look up the other, OK?”
“OK.”
“Which one do you want?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Come on, Darren. Work with me here.”
He thinks about it for a long time, as if it’s a life-or-death choice. Then he says, “I’ll take Miller.”
“Fine. I’ll take Sinatra. We can read about them, listen to a few songs, and then tomorrow come up with some ideas about what to do. Right?”
“Sure.”
I raise my hand to bring Ms. Lowry over. “Can we go to the library, Ms. Lowry? We have a couple of ideas to research.”
“She doesn’t even have a pho
ne,” Keshia stage whispers to a couple other girls. They laugh along with her. Now that I look around, I see everyone else does have a smartphone of some sort. Most of them the latest iPhones. A few of the less wealthy have other brands. In my day the closest we had to a portable phone was two paper cups tied together with string.
“Very well,” Ms. Lowry says. “I’ll write you a pass.”
“Thanks.”
I take the note and then turn to Darren. “Are you coming?”
“No. I’ll use my phone.”
“Fine. See you later.”
***
I look around the library for Jamie, but she’s not there. I go up to the biographies to find one on Sinatra. I also get a couple on the Rat Pack. Then I sit in a cubicle to read, though mostly I look at the pictures. I remember some of those old movies with Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. We didn’t have VCRs back then, but they showed those on TV sometimes. Dad could do a pretty decent impression of Sammy. That was about the only time when he kidded around with me. Back then dads were supposed to be the pillars of strength and virtue to their kids.
I sigh at this thought. I tried to be that for Maddy, but times had changed. Other fathers were more touchy-feely, into all that sensitivity bullshit. They’d want to talk about their feelings, like women. I sigh again and know what Dr. Macintosh would say about this line of thought, that I shouldn’t be so gender-biased. Then again he is one of those touchy-feely types too.
I force myself to study. I jot down a few notes on songs I can look up later. Maybe Tess can take me to the library to get some CDs. This would be so much easier if I had a computer or one of those fancy phones. I ought to ask Jake about one of those, but I know Jake and Tess are close to the edge as it is now that they have two extra mouths to feed.
I’m still in the cubicle an hour later when someone taps me on the shoulder. I expect the librarian or Ms. Lowry, but it’s Jamie. “Hi,” she says. “You weren’t at recess. I asked your sister if you were here and she said you were. Then I asked that weird kid Darren and he said you went to the library. What gives?”
“I was just studying,” I say. “For our presentation.”
“Oh yeah, that thing. What did you guys get?”
“Art.”
“We got ‘Significant Events.’ Whatever that means. The thirdies lucked out; they got Sports. I hear the sixthies got Fashion.”
“What about the firsties?”
Chances Are Omnibus (Gender Swap Fiction) Page 43