Parrotfish

by Ellen Wittlinger

  But my interrogator ignored her. “Well then, we were wondering, um, you know . . . I mean, we don’t really get it. You know, how you do it. A boy who’s not really a . . . you know, boy.”

  Kita and Sebastian and I stared at one another a few seconds, trying to make sense of the question. She wasn’t really asking me that, was she?

  “What is it you need to ‘get’?” Kita asked them, her voice thick with disgust. “Are you really asking Grady how he has sex? I bet you aren’t even on the school paper, are you? You’re just a couple of nosy brats!”

  The girls stared at her as she exploded. “Has anybody ever asked you that kind of question? Do you prefer big biceps or big dicks? Come on, girls! Don’t you want to tell me all about your personal sexual choices?”

  I think the brave girl swallowed her gum. “Jeez,” she said. “Chill.”

  I stepped in front of Kita, partly to fight my own battle and partly so she wouldn’t break the little people in half.

  “Nobody ever knows what goes on between two people when they’re alone, do they? All you know is what they tell you—and most people don’t tell. What I am is a person who’s capable of loving other people. That’s all that matters.”

  Both girls turned around and stumbled off, looking embarrassed.

  Kita grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “Grady, that was great,” she said. “You told them, those creeps. What’s wrong with people like that?”

  I took a deep breath and shrugged. “They don’t like me, I guess.”

  “They don’t have to like you,” she said loudly. “They just have to mind their own business!” Between the two of us we’d attracted a lot of attention. Kita noticed me looking around uncomfortably.

  “Listen, I have my mother’s car today. Let’s get out of here—go get coffee or something. I want to talk to you. Oh, and you too, Sebastian. You should come too.”

  But Sebastian already had his escape plan in place. “Oh, I’d like to, but I promised my mother I’d go to the library and pick up this book right after school. They’re holding it for her and she’s really anxious to get it. You guys go get coffee. You can come over to my place afterward, Grady.” He took off after the bogus book before we could protest.

  A lot of kids saw me getting into Kita’s car, and I wondered what they were thinking. Kita was the definition of cool at Buxton Central High School. Not the kind of cool that cares about being cool, but real cool. Being seen with the local oddball might damage the reputations of certain pseudocool kids, but because Kita couldn’t care less what people thought, it probably just enhanced her standing. What it might have done for me, I had no idea.

  We didn’t say much in the car—Kita drove carefully, and I wrote a little scene in my head.

  GUM GIRL: So, like, how do trans . . . whatever-you-ares . . . have sex? I mean, ’cause you’re so abnormal and all.

  ME: Well, sex for us abnormals is very strange, as I’m sure you can imagine.

  GUM GIRL: Ooh, yes, I’m imagining it!

  ME: First of all, we have to be in the same room with the person we’re having sex with.

  GUM GIRL: [writing it down] Right. In the same room . . .

  ME: And it really helps if we like each other a lot.

  GUM GIRL: [still writing] Like . . . each . . . other . . .

  ME: And then we touch each other’s bodies in places where it feels good.

  GUM GIRL: Feels . . . good . . . Hey, wait a minute. This doesn’t sound any different from regular sex!

  ME: Really? I had no idea you normal folks did it that way too.

  GUM GIRL: [suspiciously] Have you ever even had sex?

  ME: Well, no, but I can imagine!

  Kita parked in the lot behind Java King. As we walked in, the arm of her peacoat brushed against my down jacket. You would think with all those layers between us, I wouldn’t even have noticed. You would be wrong. We ordered and took our drinks to a table in the back of the store.

  Our butts had barely hit the chairs when Kita said, “That’s what’s wrong with guys like Ben and George, our big athletic heroes, dressing up like ugly girls and speaking in falsetto voices. It makes a joke out of something really serious.”

  “Gender dysphoria,” I said, supplying the term they used on the online sites.

  “Right. And that opens the door for the kind of cruelty Danya specializes in, or the insensitivity of those so-called newspaper reporters.”

  “I guess people feel threatened,” I said. “So they make fun of the stuff they don’t understand.”

  Kita shook her head. “How do you stand it, Grady? How do you deal with people who are such idiots? Don’t you get furious? Don’t you just want to . . . to hurt them back?”

  I thought about it. “People like those stupid newspaper girls are annoying, but it only really hurts me when somebody I care about does something crappy to me. I never liked Danya to begin with, so I can’t get too worked up over her nastiness. But I’ve been really mad at Eve Patrick, because we were best friends practically our whole lives until she started hanging around with Danya. Now she acts like she hardly even knows me.”

  “That’s terrible, Grady. I’d never speak to her again if I were you,” Kita said.

  “Well, but then she was the one who told me about Danya’s plan today. She saved me from gross humiliation, so I guess I can’t really hate her anymore.”

  Kita sighed and sipped her coffee. Her eyes were looking in my direction, but I was pretty sure she wasn’t seeing me anymore. “It’s always more complicated than you want it to be, isn’t it? You want to be totally mad at somebody, but it’s hard when you used to like them so much.”

  “Are we talking about Russ now?”

  “No. Well, yes, I guess we are.” She smacked her cup down on the table. “He’s so aggravating. One minute he’s a sweet guy, all what-can-I-do-for-you-Kita, and the next minute he’s completely selfish. He hurts my feelings and he doesn’t even realize he did it. He’s such a guy!”

  “But girls can be hurtful too. Look at Eve. Look at Danya!”

  “Yes, but girls know when they’re being mean. Russell just walks all over me like it’s his birthright. Like my plans or thoughts couldn’t possibly be as important as his. Or like I’m his mother and he’s getting away with something. It makes me crazy.”

  “I guess some guys do act that way. My little brother is kind of like that, but I don’t think my dad is. Maybe they grow out of it.”

  As soon as I said that, I thought of my mother putting up with Dad’s Christmas fuss all these years and him not really registering how much she hated it. As much as I adored my father, and even though he was usually nice about it, I had to admit that in our family he always got the last word. Was that sense of yourself as leader of the pack, as the one who was always right, programmed into men at the factory? And if so, did I have it? It didn’t seem so. Maybe I’d have to rethink my placement on Sebastian’s gender football field.

  I pulled my mind back to Kita’s troubles. “You know, Russ is basically a good guy. I think he does respect you, but maybe he doesn’t know how to show it.”

  She snorted. “Well, it’s too late now anyway—we broke up, remember?”

  “You don’t sound too happy with that decision though.”

  “I’ll get used to it.” She smiled. “You know, Grady, I think I could tell you spent most of your life as a girl even if I didn’t already know it.”

  “You could?”

  She nodded. “You pick up on things. You care about other people. You aren’t just thinking about yourself all the time.” She laughed. “Maybe if Russell had been a girl for a few years, we’d get along better.”

  I smiled, but not energetically. “Maybe. But there’s got to be an easier way.”

  Her hand flew up to her mouth. “Oh, Grady, I didn’t mean to make light of what you’re going through. I’m so sorry. I would never want to hurt your feelings!” The hand that had recently covered her mouth reached up and ran along m
y cheekbone, sending out signals of delight throughout my body.

  “I know,” I said, but then I couldn’t continue speaking because my brain short-circuited. Kita was staring soulfully into my eyes, caressing my face with the tips of her fingers. I couldn’t help it; my eyes began to flicker down to the soft pinkbrown of her lips, which seemed closer than they’d been just a second before.

  “Grady, I really admire you,” she said. “You’re such a great person, and so, kind of, adorable.” And then she kissed me. Kita Charles leaned across that little table and kissed me.

  When she sat back again, smiling, I felt like I’d been smacked in the head with a fairy godmother’s wand. Everything was different; everything was right; everything was perfect. I was, kind of, adorable.

  I looked around the coffee shop to see if this miracle had been apparent to anybody else, but they were all reading newspapers and novels, sharing gossip and mainlining caffeine, completely unaware of the way in which one small event can change the whole world.

  Afterward, Kita dropped me off at Sebastian’s house. I arrived at the same moment as the pizza, but Sebastian was far more interested in me. He leaped around me like a puppy, begging for details.

  “She kissed me” was all I said. What more was there to say? Did she like me? Did she feel sorry for me? Did she regret it two seconds later? I had no idea.

  Sebastian’s mouth fell open. We ate pizza and decided to watch Ma Vie en Rose after all.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Ms. Unger was right about Danya wanting revenge, but, as it turned out, it wasn’t revenge on me. I didn’t hear about it from Eve herself; Wednesday night she called Sebastian and he called me.

  Before launching into the story, he asked me what he’d been asking me constantly for two days. “Have you heard from Kita? Did you see her at school? Did she call you?”

  “No, no, and no. It was just a spontaneous thing,” I told him. “It didn’t mean anything.” But in my heart I hoped that wasn’t true—I hoped the meaning of it would soon become obvious. If Kita’s feelings for me were one quarter of what mine were for her, I would die happy. But I couldn’t admit it, not yet.

  I changed the subject. “So what’s the story with Eve? Is she freaking out that Danya’s mad at her?”

  “Mad doesn’t begin to describe it, Grady. Apparently Danya and her minions are spreading the word that Eve is a lesbian and that you and she were girlfriends before she came to Buxton High. Eve is very upset.”

  I didn’t want to hear it. “Why? What’s the big deal? Being a lesbian is practically normal compared to me, right?”

  “Come on, Grady. You can understand this. Eve is shy, and she’s hardly made any friends at the high school except Danya’s awful group of ninnies, who she hooked up with before she knew better. She’s not a lesbian, and she doesn’t want kids to think she is. You should get that—you want people to know who you really are.”

  I grumbled. “She had one friend when she got to the high school. She preferred to look for new ones.”

  “Grady, Eve feels really bad about all of that. You know she does. She never wanted to stop being your friend, but she was scared. She didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  “Yeah, that whole thing backfired, didn’t it? Anyway, how do you know so much about Eve’s feelings?”

  “I just talked to her for forty-five minutes. Look, she took a big chance telling you about Danya’s trick. She must have known Danya would figure out who told you about it. Don’t you think we owe her something in return?”

  “‘We’? We owe her?”

  “Well, technically you do, but I’m willing to jump in too.”

  I sighed. “What am I supposed to do? Wear a sign around my neck that says, ‘Eve is not a lesbian’? Go on the cable channel and declare, ‘I did not have sex with that woman’?”

  “That would be amusing,” he said. “But, no. The first thing you could do is to be nicer to your old friend. She really needs you now.”

  I grunted. “Where was she when I needed her?”

  Sebastian didn’t answer for a minute, then he said. “She’s been there, quietly. Some people are stronger than others, Grady. Be glad you’re one of the strong ones.”

  That Sebastian. I never knew what he was going to say next. Was I a strong person? Stronger than Eve—that I could see. Eve had always been the kind of person who preferred to follow carefully in someone else’s footprints. Mine, until her unfortunate alliance with Danya Siefert. But if “strong” meant stable, steady, determined—did those adjectives define me? Not every day they didn’t, but sometimes, and more often as the days passed.

  “I have to go,” Sebastian said, interrupting my reverie. “You are going to have my paper proofread by tomorrow, aren’t you? I need to fix any problems you find and get it turned in by Thursday.”

  “Yeah, I was just about to start it when you called,” I lied.

  “Good. Don’t forget to bring it to school tomorrow.”

  “I won’t,” I promised.

  After we hung up, I retrieved the stoplightparrotfish paper from my book bag. It was a ridiculous notion: me, proofreading a paper for Sebastian, the A-plus English student who read Shakespeare for fun. I knew it was just a ruse to get me to read the paper, of which he was very proud.

  “The Fascinating World of the Stoplight Parrotfish” was twenty-six pages long with an additional four pages of footnotes and a two-page bibliography. I suspected Sebastian would say he enjoyed doing the work.

  Stoplight parrotfish are commonly found among the coral reefs in the tropical waters of the Florida Keys, the Bahamas, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Caribbean Sea.

  More about their size, life span, etc., etc.

  Parrotfish exhibit three adaptations that set them apart from other fish. First, they have a set of teeth in the back of their throats called pharyngeal teeth, which they use to grind up coral and extract from it the algae known as zooxanthellae, a necessary nutrient for the fish.

  Information about the excretion of the ground-up coral, which eventually becomes beautiful white Caribbean beaches. More than I wanted to know about where sand comes from.

  A second unusual characteristic of this fish is that it secretes and surrounds itself with a mucus cocoon at night to protect itself from predators.

  And what that smells and tastes like. Scientists are a hardy breed.

  But the third parrotfish adaptation is perhaps the most fascinating. Depending on fluctuations in population density, these fish may change their gender from female to male.

  Okay, this is the part for me. I’m liking it that the young female is an undistinguished gray with a red belly, but it turns a beautiful green with a golden-yellow stripe down its face when it becomes male.

  Nature creates many variations, and gender ambiguity is not unusual. It is normally a device to allow reproduction to succeed. Particularly among fish, gender can be quite flexible. In fact, reef fish that do not change gender are in the minority.

  Okay, that is pretty cool. If only I were a better swimmer.

  Gender shifting occurs only when it’s necessary for survival.

  Now, that I can relate to. It’s necessary that I no longer live as a female. Necessary for my mental survival, if not actually all that great for my day-to-day physical life.

  The paper goes on to tell about the advantages of being able to switch genders. As Sebastian told me earlier, the females who change to males are called supermales and are dominant over the regular old born males. Which is a fantasy I haven’t even bothered to imagine. It does, however, seem that the only purpose for the gender changing is to ensure rapid reproduction, thereby allowing the species a better chance of survival. So what’s my excuse? Having babies has nothing to do with my reasons for wanting to live as a male. In fact, it may—probably will—hinder my chances of ever reproducing. Sebastian meant well, but alas, I am just not a fish.

  Still, I read on to the end, finding and marking one missing comma and one instance
of “the” mistyped as “tha,” both mistakes I’m sure Sebastian made purposely so I’d feel useful.

  And then, the last page:

  Matthew Grober of Georgia State University has measured the number of cells producing isotocin (a hormone involved in reproduction) in female fish that change gender.

  Blah, blah, blah. Then:

  “The part of the brain that controls sexuality is the same in all animals, including fish and humans,” said Grober. “And animals that change sex in a matter of days, like the bluebanded goby, are ideal systems to understand what drives maleness and femaleness across species.”

  And finally, Sebastian’s summation:

  Perhaps the study of the stoplight parrotfish and other gender-switching reef fish will eventually shed light on the mysteries of human gender, enabling us to understand what makes a person—both in body and in mind—male or female, or even a little bit of each.

  I was momentarily stunned. There were people actually studying these things—what makes somebody male or female. Oh, Mr. Grober, I thought, please keep doing that research! Because if you understand these things, maybe I will too, and maybe my parents will, and eventually so will everybody else. And if you can’t do it, Mr. Grober, how about turning it over to Sebastian Shipley? He’s one smart kid.

  SEBASTIAN: [into a microphone] Now that I’ve conquered the problem of speaking to fish, I will attempt to translate for you the words of my devoted helper, a stoplight parrotfish I call Malachite due to his astounding coloration. In fact, the color might more accurately be called aquamarine or even turquoise, but I chose the name for its classical quality. Greetings, Malachite!

  MALACHITE: Up yours, Shipley. My name is Frank and you know it.

  SEBASTIAN: Malachite sends his greetings to us all. Now, would you tell the audience, please, Malachite, what it felt like to change your gender from that of female to that of supermale.