FLESH & BLOOD
E. DOOLAND
Copyright © A. E. Dooland 2015
First published as a weekly web series on aedooland.com
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under the copyright reserved above and excluding ordinary retail purchase from authorised distributers, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission of the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters and events in this story, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Cover design and art by Yue Li
yue-li.tumblr.com
Edited by Anne Farmer and Martina Veselá
ISBN: 978-0-9941779-3-3
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you once again to Anne Farmer for her thoughtful critique, tireless support, and persistent encouragement, and also to Martina Veselá for her sharp eyes and helpful suggestions. They both deserve a holiday after listening to me talking about this story for a full ten months.
Thank you to Jieun, Jude and Haley for sharing their culture with me and checking I wasn’t getting anything about Min’s mum horribly wrong.
And finally, thank you to my own wonderful mother for being nothing like Min’s!
***
FINANCIAL BACKERS
Sequel to Under My Skin, this story ran as a crowd-funded weekly web series and has been collated as a novel. The following people were major financial supporters of the story.
Firstly, a big thank you to the most generous backer, the enigmatic ‘Mysterious Mitchell’ who is truly a pleasure to write for, and:
Becky
Miya
Manu
Aleksandra Borowska
David Goodes
David and Stephanie Jones
A. Miura
Brooke A. Steele
Tsutako
Lake McGlone
Amy ‘Bucky’ Watson
Nora
Irian and Mai
Brooke Stewart
Yue Li
Sapaen
Max
S. X.
Katie S.
Kristen Madrid
Sam D.
Liv and Tiz
Ashleigh Wickens
Ken Dibbins
Nib
Lo Lyons
***
ONE
When Bree and I pulled into the driveway of Sarah’s house, it was dark. Not that I expected an epic fanfare or anything upon my return, but given what day it was, what I didn’t expect was nothing. For a couple of seconds, I actually wondered if the GPS had led me astray – I had only just moved into Sarah’s spare room right before I’d gone away for two weeks, after all – but then I saw her boyfriend’s banged up ute in the carport. This was the right house, owned by the right people, and it was dark and empty and they were somewhere else on my birthday.
It was hard not to be disappointed, even if I was well into adulthood now.
“Sarah and Rob aren’t home?” I asked Bree as we got out, thinking she’d probably been here to drop off her stuff before she came to meet me at the airport.
Bree shrugged. “I think Sarah said they needed to go pick something up for Rob? I didn’t really ask.” She saw my expression as I opened the boot to get my luggage. “Don’t worry! They didn’t forget or anything, Sarah said something like, ‘You’re making Min a cake, aren’t you?’ just before. They’ll probably be back soon. Here, I’ll take the smaller case.”
I handed it to her. “Oh, well,” I said, trying pretty hard to be pragmatic about them abandoning me on my birthday, “I suppose celebrating alone with my girlfriend works just as well as it did for the last few years with my boyfriend.”
Bree gave me a look as we hauled the cases up the stairs to the back porch. “Gee, don’t sound so incredibly enthusiastic about it,” she said. “I was going to cook you dinner and spend all night in your lap telling you how totally impressive and amazing you are at whatever game you want to play, but I can always—”
“—I didn’t mean it like that,” I said, ruffling her blonde curls with my spare hand as I dumped my case by the back door. The porch light wasn’t even on; that was weird.
“I know what you mean,” Bree said, apparently not bothered by the missing light. “I get it. You were kind of hoping Sarah and Rob would make a big fuss over you.”
I sighed, feeling around in my pocket for my keys. “Silly, isn’t it? I’m not a kid anymore.”
“Yeah,” Bree said, brightening again. “You’re in your late 20s.”
I scoffed. “Please, 26 is still mid-20s.” I stopped sorting through my keys for a second, frowning. “Hey, don’t you think it’s kind of weird Sarah didn’t leave the back light on for us? She’s normally really good about stuff like that. I wonder if she’s okay.”
Bree looked blank. “I’m sure she would have called if she wasn’t?”
Sure she would have called… “Oh, shit!” Something suddenly occurred to me. “I don’t think I switched my phone off Flight Mode in the airport because someone jumped on me too quickly.” I hurriedly fished it out of my pocket so I could fix that. The second I did, a whole stream of notifications came through, including seven voicemails from a private number. Sarah’s number was private.
Bree looked a little impatient. “Don’t you want to wait and do that when we get inside?”
“Nah, it’ll just take a second,” I said, dialling voicemail and propping my phone between my shoulder and my ear as I fit my key into the lock. “She’s left me a few voicemails, I should listen to them in case they’re really important and—”
I didn’t get the chance to finish because the very second I opened the door and set foot inside, the lights burst on and a chorus of voices yelled, “Surprise!”
I—what?
I just stood there for a second with my jaw open.
There was a group of people, most of whom I recognised from Sarah’s movie nights, all wearing pleated skirts or tailored pants, blazers, school hats, neckties, and knee-high socks. Sarah had pulled the kitchen table into the centre of the living room for the spectacle and was standing on top of it. I didn't notice at first because I was too distracted by all the people, but on the table at Sarah's feet were dozens of presents. While I was standing frozen in place and gaping at it all, everyone began to sing a che
erful, drunk version of Happy Birthday to me.
I was just... I’d been winding up to spend the night alone with Bree; I hadn’t thought… well, I knew these guys, but we weren’t buddy-buddy and they had their own lives, you know? They were busy. But this… it didn’t feel real. If they hadn’t been singing ‘Happy Birthday, Dear Min’, I don’t think I would have really believed any of it was for me.
When they were done singing, Sarah cleared her throat ceremoniously and held up a piece of paper which looked suspiciously like a running sheet. “So,” she addressed me, grinning. “You’re probably wondering why there’s a bunch of 20- and 30-somethings dressed in school uniforms in my house. I mean, apart from the fact that we’re all totally rocking them. Am I right, guys?” Rob cheered enthusiastically, and the rest of them laughed at him as Sarah continued. “Well, it’s for two reasons. First of all, it is your birthday, and we all know you have a thing for schoolkids…”
I had to laugh a bit at that. Beside me, Bree joined in. She was still wearing her real uniform.
Sarah let me finish chuckling and then sobered. “And secondly, I know high school really sucked for you because you were different, and you didn’t have a proper graduation party the first time around. You didn’t have a proper anything the first time around. And, like, I can do better than that, Min,” she told me with a smile. “I can make a fuss over you. So here’s the celebration you always should have had!” She held up her beer towards the ceiling to toast me. “Congratulations on leaving the crappiest boss on the planet, on getting into the course of your dreams, and Happy Birthday!”
Everyone cheered and drank deeply, and I… God, they all looked so happy for me. They were all smiling and toasting me, and they’d all dug up their old uniforms just for me. And all those presents… Real people didn’t come home to birthday parties like this, did they?
Apparently, if they had friends like Sarah, they did. Fuck, I couldn’t tear up in front of everyone.
Fortunately, Sarah rescued me by climbing down off the table in her scandalously short school dress and coming to give me a big hug. “Sorry,” she said, not sounding very sorry. “But it’s kind of compulsory to be the centre of attention on your birthday.”
I hid the fact I was smiling and hugged her back very tightly. “If you make me cry in front of everyone, I will kill you.”
She pulled away and narrowed her eyes at me. “Challenge accepted,” she said. She then grabbed my hand and towed me into the scrum of adults in school uniforms to be hugged, patted and wished Happy Birthday by everyone.
Sarah had invited all the people she usually had over: Liz and her husband Chris, Andrew and Gay Matt, the other Matt ‘Smithy’, as well as Rob and one of Rob’s friends, ‘Dazza’, who looked rough, spoke broadly and was covered in tattoos, but seemed otherwise very friendly.
I hadn’t really wanted to ask myself the question, but as I finished up shaking hands and getting hugs from people, I kept kind of hoping I’d see Henry’s face amongst everyone. We were very freshly broken up, and I knew it was a serious long shot because he’d told me he didn’t know if we could stay friends, but I wouldn’t have put it past Sarah to invite him anyway, not at all. I also wouldn’t have put it past him to accept that invitation. It would have been nice to have him here.
When I got to the last person, though, it wasn’t him. It was someone who was wearing a skirt that was even shorter than Sarah’s, and while she did actually have a very nice pair of legs, she obviously wasn’t that comfortable with showing so much of them.
“Gemma,” I said, greeting her. She smiled and went to hug me, but she tilted her head in the same direction as I did and we nearly smacked noses. I had to laugh. We got it right the second time.
“Happy Birthday,” she wished me belatedly as she pulled away. I must have been glancing downward as I thanked her because she noticed and went a bit red. “Oh, god... it’s been at least ten years since I put my uniform on. I didn’t know it was going to be this short.”
“Yes, she did,” Sarah said loudly behind me.
Gemma looked mortified, but didn’t get the chance to say anything else about it because I was dragged all the way back to my bedroom and deposited there by the host. “Your costume’s in there, Birthday Boy!” Sarah told me as she pushed me inside. “Don’t come out until you look as terrible as we all do.” The door closed in my face, and I had to laugh at it.
My ‘costume’ was spread out on my bed, and it turned out to be pretty much what all the men were wearing: generic tailored pants, a white shirt and – I checked the crest – a St. Peters Boys’ tie. Everything was in my size, too.
This is so surreal, I thought, grinning down at the uniform. Someone had thrown a party for me, complete with costumes, and there were actual people at it! I put my phone on the table and went to try everything on.
There was a gentle knock on the door while I was buttoning the shirt up over my binder. “It’s me,” Bree’s voice said, and then she burst straight in without waiting for an answer and practically bounced over to me. “So how cool is this whole thing? Sarah’s been planning it for ages!”
Well, that at least answered the question about whether or not Bree had been in on everything. “You were part of all this!” I accused her faux-sternly, but I’m pretty sure it was clear I was bluffing.
“Maybe!” she answered brightly. “Sarah did all the organising, but she’s always at work and she needed someone who could do stuff for her during the day.”
“You’re at school during the day.”
She looked very guilty. “Yeah,” she said dismissively, and then hung off my waist as I tried to get my tie done. “So, did you guess at all? Like, did you think, ‘these guys are hiding something from me’?”
“Surprisingly, no,” I realised. “Or maybe not surprisingly, I was away for two weeks.”
She giggled. “Yeah, you being up in Broome did kind of help, but seriously, I thought you were going to guess when we got home just before. So I figured if I could just keep you, like, focused on your disappointment at Sarah and Rob being ‘gone’ and everyone totally forgetting about you, you wouldn’t think of other reasons the house might be dark.”
I stopped mangling the knot in my tie to look at her like she had three heads. I kept forgetting how good she was at lying; it was unnerving. “That’s one seriously well-considered lie,” I observed, and then got straight back to fucking up the knot.
“Worth it, it worked!” she declared, batting my hands away from my tie and fixing it for me in about five seconds flat. Then, we both stood back to consider my reflection in the mirror.
It was okay, except my pants had that sagging crotch thing again; story of my fucking life. I tried to reposition the fabric. “Do you think I should put the packer in to fill that up?”
Bree stopped posing for a second. “If you want?”
I looked back at the mirror and sighed. “Will people think it looks weird without it, though?"
She laughed good-naturedly at me. "You’re overthinking again! No one else is going to notice, seriously." She turned towards me and put her arms around my waist. "Besides, everyone out there knows you're kind of a guy but not, like, a typical trans guy. They call you 'she', you know? It's no big deal." She pointed at the mirror. "So stop stressing and check out how cute we look! See?" She squeezed my waist.
I looked back at the reflection again. I did like how we looked together, and she was looking especially gorgeous with that great big smile. I tapped her nose with my index finger. “I think you do ‘cute’ enough for both of us.”
Her face lit up at the compliment and she smiled up at me for a second or two. “I’m so glad you’re back,” she said more tamely, and then pulled me down by my tie into a kiss. That, I had missed; it had been two weeks since I’d kissed her properly. Having her skype me on the weekends from Sarah’s computer wasn’t really the same. And since we were finally in the privacy of my own room, it meant that we could really get—
Bree sighed as I straightened again, looking like she was going to whinge about not being able to pash me more, but then she remembered something. “Oh, the cake!” she said, “I have to get it ready!” and then rushed back through the door.
I followed her out, and everyone had pulled chairs into the mouth of the hallway and cheered at me when I emerged. That was a bit confronting, even if I knew everyone.
Still, since the crowd was waiting, I did a slow turn to present myself so they could all appreciate how I looked in my boys’ uniform. That earned me a round of drunken applause and a couple of wolf-whistles. Even when they’d settled down again and stopped yelling compliments, I was still smiling like an idiot.
Sarah gave me the once-over, impressed. “Nice. Bree got the sizes right.” She took a deep breath and called into the kitchen, “Bree, you did something right!”
“Yay!” was the response as Sarah led me over to the present table and sat me in an empty chair.
There were about 20 full shot glasses on the table between me and the presents. Sarah wasn’t fucking around with the ‘drunk’ part. “Is killing me all part of the celebrations?”
Sarah clapped me on the back. “I’ve seen you drink. Those would hardly make you tipsy, let alone kill you, but no,” she said. “You’ll only drink all of those if you can’t guess which present came from who. If you guess right about who gave you a particular present, they drink one.”
It was actually surprisingly fun. People had brought me pretty funny presents to start with; the ‘boy’ theme was popular, so there was a lot of typical guy-stuff like nice leather wallet – which I actually really needed so I knew Sarah had bought me that – a set of three novelty-patterned ties, football-scented soap, some dog-tags which I remembered mentioning to Gemma that I liked a few weeks ago, and various other random stuff. I guessed wrong on the ‘His First Shaving Kit’ present because it seemed like the type of joke gift Sarah would give me.
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