“My fortune is vast. I will make good the shortfall, if and when necessity should compel me,” says Valkyrja.
“That wouldn’t be fair,” says Chlorophyll. “You might as well announce you’ll be voting twice from now on.”
Valkyrja’s wings pull in tight against her back, and she replies in clipped tones. “You already enjoy my coin. Does it sway your vote? This tower was but a dream before I—”
“That’s apples and oranges, the tower is held in trust!”
“Danny, don’t listen to him,” says Doc Impossible. “We’ll get along without you if we need—”
“No. Chlorophyll is right,” says Graywytch, and a few people look at her in surprise. I’m getting the feeling these debates have expected factions, and she’s crossing party lines. “The mantle is too powerful to be left to waste. Perhaps a more suitable host can be found.”
All eyes drop on me like lead weights. My voice is small when I speak. “Doctor, would my transition stay in place if I gave up the mantle?”
“I…I don’t know.”
“Then I’m keeping it.”
“As you should!” says Magma. He turns to Graywytch. “We’ve never set that precedent, and we’re not going to start now.”
“What makes him worthy?” she says. “Dreadnought was dying, he had no choice in the matter, no other options.”
“That makes this different than how the last three people got the mantle in what way, exactly?” Magma opens his palms questioningly. “It’s always been luck of the draw.”
“Maybe that should change. You heard him yourself; he only wants to keep it to be sure of being able to continue perpetrating this masquerade of his.”
“That’s not what I said!” I say.
“It’s what you meant,” she says with poison syrup in her voice.
“Her meaning was quite plain to me,” says Valkyrja. “You twist her words.”
“Really, what is bothering you?” says Magma.
There’s more, but I don’t hear it. I’m falling away inside, to the place I sometimes go when it’s too loud at home. This isn’t how it was supposed to go. Isn’t it enough to tell them I’m a girl? What does it really matter what my chromosomes are?
“Uh, maybe—maybe that’s enough, Graywytch,” Carapace is saying when I come back. He sounds uncomfortable, like if he could tug on the collar of his armor, he would do it. “Your…position is noted.”
She stares at him, almost scary intense.
“You can take your provisional membership and shove it,” I say, standing up. It’s a bit sad these chairs have silent wheels because I would have really loved to scrape some chair legs over the ground just now. “But I’m keeping the suit. And I’m keeping the mantle.”
“That is not your decision to make, young man,” says Graywytch.
“Then come take it!” I shout at her. A few of them are taken aback. I don’t think they’re used to being threatened by kids, but I can see the realization sinking into them: they can’t steal this from me. I’m sure fighting them would be way harder than I expect, but I have the powers of freaking Dreadnought, and even if they won, nobody knows how the mantle transfer works. “That’s what I thought.”
My guts are twisted in knots. My face is burning. I feel like a sodden, icy blanket is trying to press me into the floor. But dammit, I’m going to walk out of here with my back straight and my shoulders square.
Doc Impossible says something to Graywytch that sounds like it rhymes with sure a ducking bunt and there’s an explosion of yelling back at the table. I don’t stop to listen.
Chapter Seven
The wind pulls at my cape as I stand at the edge of the landing balcony at the top of Legion Tower. Below me, city lights are like fireflies trapped in canyons of black ice. My heart is slamming in my chest and I’m shaking with rage. I can admit it to myself now: I wanted to join them more than anything. It was a desire I barely let myself daydream about. It felt presumptuous, arrogant.
But now it just seems naive. Nobody is who they look like on TV.
They want Dreadnought, all right. But they don’t want a tranny.
Nobody does.
The door opens, and I hear footsteps cross the landing to me. “Danny, I’m so sorry,” says Doc Impossible.
“Save it.”
“I didn’t—that was as much a surprise to me as it was to you.”
“I don’t know those people.” I turn and glare, and it’s a good thing I can’t kill with a look or she’d be a smoking crater. “You do.”
“Graywytch sprung that on me.” Doc Impossible fiddles with her cigarette, an anxious flick, flick, flick between drags. “I knew she was old school, but I didn’t think she’d go all MichFest on you.”
“So you just sent her my medical file?” I shout at her. “Isn’t that supposed to be private? You don’t even know if she hates trans people or not and you tell her what chromosomes I have?”
Doc Impossible looks sick. “I’m sorry. That was a mistake. I—”
“Why? Why did you do that?”
“We needed to be sure the mantle hadn’t been damaged. That it wasn’t malfunctioning. Showing them it was working the same way it always had—by making you your ideal self—seemed the best way to do that. And to explain that, it seemed necessary to tell them you were trans.”
“Thanks a lot. Really. That makes it feel so much better.”
“I’m sorry. I am. Really. I brought you your street clothes and phone. I put the handbooks on it, and my phone number, too.” She holds a satchel out for me. I sigh and take it.
“Thanks. I don’t think I’m going to be coming back here.”
“Look, at least keep the provisional membership. It doesn’t cost you anything, and Valkyrja and Magma really like you. I do too.” An hour ago, hearing that Valkyrja liked me and wanted me on her team would probably have sent me to the moon. Right now, it feels like one of those stubby little trophies they give to the losing team in grade school soccer. “And Carapace is a good guy; he’ll come around when he gets to know you.”
“Carapace will come around when I agree not to pollute the memory of his friend.” I make sure the satchel is strapped securely closed and slip it around my chest. “Wouldn’t do to let an icky trans chick stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the great ones.”
“He just needs time.”
“And I needed to know I could trust you. All of you.”
I step off the balcony’s edge and fall.
• • •
I fly. It’s easier to get home than it was to reach Legion Tower. After I stash my clothes in my room I consider trying to sleep, but my head is whirling. It feels like it’s been weeks since I left. The clock says it’s been about eighty minutes.
My cape snaps as I leave again, boosting for altitude. Below me the lights of my street drop away like candles off a cliff. The rage comes back, hot and thick, and I’m screaming. I’m screaming like I never have before. My voice echoes in the night air, reflects my fury back at me. It is a girl’s rage, and it is right. It is necessary.
The clouds are low and glowing orange with reflected city lights. I punch through them, up into the hard clear night beyond. The temperature is dropping quickly, and I nose over, fly for open water. I reach for more power, more speed, and the mantle answers me. My power surges—and it is my power—until the wind tears at me with feeble fingers, until it seems the world itself is scared of me, begging me to stop. I will never stop. I will never give this up. I will never be what they want me to be.
The rumbling pressure builds at my forehead, pushes down around my shoulders, hangs for a moment, and then explodes in a cloud of vapor. I pass through to the other side of the sound barrier, to a world of silence and pressure. My screams slip away from me, gone before they reach my ears. It seems to bottle the fury. Bottle it, compress it, make it burn hotter and brighter.
Fifteen years trapped. Seven of those, aware of my prison and screaming inside.
The
shelter of boyhood ended, and they called me a young man. For no reason at all, they looked at the things that felt right to me, and they took them. Even down to the way I carry my books and cross my legs. They took it. They took everything. Puberty came, and my body turned on me, too. Watching every part of myself I liked rot away one day at a time, the horrified impostor staring back at me. Watching the other girls, the ones they let be girls, head in the other direction. Every day, torn away further from myself, chained down tighter. Suffocated. Strangled.
They’ll make a man of me. Show me how to be a man. Teach me to man up by beating me down.
THEY NEVER ASK IF I WANT TO BE A MAN.
And now I’m finally free. I’m finally myself, inside and out.
So they spit on me. They’re embarrassed by me. They hate me.
FOR A MISTAKE THAT THEY MADE.
They want me to cooperate in my own destruction. They want me to tell them it’s not true. They want me to help them believe the lie.
NEVER AGAIN.
I tip over, and shoot back down through the clouds. Five seconds later the ocean slams into me like a cement wall. The water is cold, and grips me tighter and tighter still as I go down. The black is absolute. The water wants to crush me like a soda can, but it can’t. The pressure breaks itself against me. My ribs should shatter. My lungs should collapse. I hold. Effortlessly.
The sea floor rises to greet me, and though I can’t see anything, I know it’s there. I can trace the tangles in the lattice spreading out beneath me, a rolling smooth floor all the way out to the continental shelf. The mud is soft against my boots when I touch down. I can hear for miles. Whales call. Dolphins click. Schools of fish swirl and bloom.
Down here, in the heavy cold, there is peace. This scalding outrage cools and hardens to something stronger than diamond, and infinitely more precious. Resolve.
The water bursts and leaps after me when I leave it, a white geyser a hundred feet tall. I push for speed. Higher and faster, until the seawater that’s left on me freezes and cracks away. Up, past the clouds and the birds, past the jets and the atmosphere. I let go of the speed and coast, floating so high the planet curves away from me in all directions. Earth is gauzy blue at the edges. There are lightning storms in Canada, and wildfires in Mexico. All of humanity is pinpricks of light beneath me. The silence up here is perfect. I can see forever.
And I see.
I see a world that is terrified of me. Terrified of someone who would reject manhood. Terrified of a girl who knows who she is and what she’s capable of. They are small, and they are weak, and they will not hurt me ever again.
My name is Danielle Tozer. I am a girl.
No one is strong enough to take that from me anymore.
Chapter Eight
Minovsky_Particle has signed on.
Minovsky_Particle: David, are you there?
CombatW0mbat: yeah. still sick?
Minovsky_Particle: Nope. I’m coming to school tomorrow.
• • •
Leaving through the front door is an invitation to a fight. Dad says I can’t go back to school until they’ve figured out how to “fix” me, but it’s been a week since it happened and I’m falling behind in my classes. It takes a long time to get in to see an endocrinologist, and the truth is even if we started testosterone injections tomorrow, it would take months for the effects to show. If Dad has his way, I’ll be repeating sophomore year. After last night at Legion Tower I’m finished being a good little girl who does what she’s told, so I’m going to school and showing people who I am. They can deal with it, or not. I don’t care anymore. Whatever happens, David will have my back. It’s been too long since we hung out already.
I slip out my bedroom window, close it behind me, and drop silently to the ground. The gate in our cramped back yard—really more like a pad of cement where we’ve got a small table—opens onto an alleyway, and I follow that down to the street and then toward the bus stop. I pass up my normal stop and wait at the next one. It’s not like Dad could really stop me anymore, but it just seems better to avoid the fight until I’ve already done it. A fait accompli, it’s called, an accomplished fact. Do it fast without their permission, and then there’s nothing they can do to change it back. More and more, I’m starting to think that’s the way to live. He’s going to scream at me for sure over this, probably as bad as he ever has, but that doesn’t matter anymore. I’ve got superpowers.
A few kids are already at this stop. I stand apart from the group, and try to smile in a normal, friendly way when a few of them look over with questions on their faces. There’s the bus. A family of nervous centipedes is crawling around my guts. I clench a fist to steady myself. I can do this. I’m invincible.
The other kids file onto the bus, and I’m last in. There is something terribly fascinating about the floor between the seats, or at least there must be, because that’s all I’m staring at until I find an open seat and sit down. But nobody says anything. Nobody points and laughs. As far as I can tell, I’m just the new girl to them.
The new girl. Yes.
We pull away from the curb and I watch the world slip by through the windows. Everything looks brighter, and better. I’m smiling like it’s my job. I send a text to David: meet me at the normal spot.
Awesome, he texts back. Can’t wait to see you.
• • •
The bus pulls in at my school, and we file off and toward our classes. The centipedes in my stomach have joined the circus and are doing a trapeze act. There’s the spot where David and I always meet up, against the front wall of the school, right under the tarnished metal letters that spell out KENNEDY HIGH SCHOOL. It’s a nice spring day, the sky pale and crisp. A dozen different ways this could play out are running through my mind, no matter how much I try not to think of them. The hard part is going to be holding back from blurting out that I have superpowers right away. We need to get somewhere private first, so I can prove it. Screw what the Legion says; clearly they don’t understand what’s good for me after all.
It’s almost time to go inside. I’m checking my phone for the third time when I hear him say, “Hey, are you waiting for someone?”
David is taller than I remembered—no, I’m shorter. He’s got short brown hair, glasses, a soft stomach, and big arms. When I smile at him, he blushes. He also can’t stop scanning his eyes up and down my body. Well, I suppose that was inevitable. No biggie, as long as he knocks it off soon.
“Hi, David.”
“Do I know you?” he says. I can see the gears turning. He’s recognized me, but he’s not letting himself believe it. “Are you waiting for Danny too?”
“I am Danny. This is why my dad was keeping me home.”
David laughs. “No way, no. You’re like his cousin or something, right?”
“My cousins live in Empire City, and they’re all boys.” As far as I know, anyhow. I suppose one or more of them could be trans, too. “There was…an accident, I guess you could call it?”
“You got turned into a girl?” he says. No, he yelps it.
The bell rings, and some people are looking over at us.
“Come on,” I say, grabbing him by the arm and steering him toward a side door. “I don’t want a crowd just yet.”
“H—how the hell did this happen?” he whispers.
“A supervillain did it,” I say, dropping his arm. “Dad wants to find a way to turn me back.” We push through the side door and head to our lockers. David gets more than a few dirty looks from bumping into people in the crowd as his eyes are fixed on me.
“Um.” David sort of gropes around for words, finally settling on, “Does he have to?”
A laugh is almost out of me when I notice he’s staring at me, I mean really gawping. We go way back, and it’s a big adjustment, so I brush it off. “No, and he can’t make me. I’m going to stay a girl.”
He blushes. “Oh, uh. All right. That’s…yeah, great.”
We get to our lockers, and I spin the co
mbination into my lock. They’re cramped half lockers, little better than what we had in middle school. I shove my bag in, take the books I’ll need until lunch, and I clasp them in front of my chest, in the distinctly feminine hold that was slapped out of me as a child. It feels right. It feels necessary.
David hasn’t opened his locker. He’s just standing there, staring at me. Or rather, at my chest.
It is suddenly obvious to me why some girls hold their books this way. Oh Jesus.
“You’re going to get a tardy slip,” I say, and turn to head for homeroom, my cheeks blooming.
“You’re really hot!” he blurts.
My shoulders hitch up, and I turn back. “Uh, thanks?”
His face is scarlet now. He laughs nervously, and I get to homeroom as fast as I can without flying. It’s normal though, right? I mean, as normal as any of this can get. I look a certain way, and he’s just getting used to that. David likes flirting. He’ll get it out of his system, and then it’ll be fine.
• • •
“Townsend, Beverly.” Mr. Macker is real formal about roll call. Last name, first. Sound off, soldier.
“Here,” says Beverly.
“And Danny’s still out, so—”
“I’m here,” I say, raising my hand.
Every head swivels towards me. Inside my shoes, I’m clenching and unclenching my toes, but my face is solid, impassive. I’m invincible. I can do this. Last night I went from the bottom of the sea to orbit. I can handle high school.
“Young lady, I do not appreciate pranks in my class. What is your name?”
“Danielle Tozer. I’ve been in your homeroom all year long.”
Mr. Macker scowls. It occurs to me that he might not recognize me; he’s one of those teachers who spends all his time staring at his notes, ignoring his students as much as he can. “Your commitment to this prank is impressive, however—”
“Danny?” says Lisa, who sits next to me. Her face is pale.
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