And She Was

by Jessica Verdi

  “What? Don’t tell me you knew.”

  “I suspected.”

  I try not to blush. “Well, whatever you suspected, it’s probably over before it began. I think he went back to his ex.”

  Mom tilts her head to the side. “I don’t know if he did or didn’t, but if you have feelings for him, you should let him know.”

  I chew on my lip. “Yeah.” Wait. I don’t have to be the only one on the spot here. I straighten up. “I think you should consider dating too.”

  She splutters.

  “Seriously. Go online. Find people.”

  “Dara!” she says with a laugh in her voice. Before she can say anything else, I duck out the door and cross the lawn.

  The little blue house is filled with the aroma of Ramesh’s baking. He pokes his head around the corner of the kitchen. “Dara! Long time no see! Want a coconut cake? Fresh out of the oven!”

  “No, thanks,” I say. “Maybe later.”

  Niya comes down the hall and startles when she sees me.

  “Hey,” I say, a little awkwardly.

  “You’re back!” she says, surprised.

  I nod. “I am.”

  “Your mother must be very happy.” I wait, but it’s the only thing she says about Mellie. I know in that moment that Niya and Mom are going to be just fine.

  “She is.” I smile, and head downstairs.

  Sam is at his computer, as always. I lean against the doorframe and watch him, undetected, for a minute. How many times have I witnessed this exact scene? Sam so lost in his work that he doesn’t notice me at the door, his fingers moving rapidly across the track pad, his other hand propping up his chin, his hair in his face. And how did I never feel these butterflies fluttering around my belly? Why did I have to drive halfway across the country to realize that I’ve been living right next door to the perfect person for me?

  “Hi,” I whisper.

  He jumps so high I worry his chair is going to tip over. But he catches himself and stands up.

  “What are you doing here?” he asks breathlessly.

  “Oh, sorry, is now not a good time? Okay, see you later, bye.” I spin around and jokingly begin to leave.

  His hand shoots out and catches my arm. “Don’t you dare.”

  I turn back around. We’re much closer to each other now. He gazes down at me, his eyes searching. “So, does this mean you’re back?”

  I nod.

  “For good?”

  I nod again.

  “Want to talk about it?” he asks.

  “Not right now. But I will.”

  “Okay.”

  “So, um …” I step back just a little. I have to ask. “What happened with Sarah?”

  He runs a hand through his hair. “Nothing.”

  Something small, hopeful, flickers in my chest. “Nothing?”

  “I was going to go back to her. But I thought about it a lot on the ride home, and I realized that was just a reflex to things going south with you and me.”

  “Oh.” The flickering goes flat, and I look away. I don’t know what to say. He was going to go back to her.

  “Dara,” he says, taking a step forward and closing the distance I’d opened up. “My reasons for not being with her haven’t changed.”

  I meet his eyes, and find there’s something there. I can’t name it, but it’s promising. This is all so new; I don’t know how to read him. I don’t know how to take control of this situation. What if I take a risk, and it ruins everything? What if I say the wrong thing, and he turns me down? Or what if he doesn’t turn me down, and our friendship is replaced with this far less familiar, far less confident thing? What will happen if things don’t work out down the line? Would that mean the end of us?

  All these questions have me feeling more tied in knots than ever. But despite all the reasons to stop, I can’t. I’m on the court, and the ball’s been served. I have to hit it.

  Plus, not all change is bad, right?

  “You should know something,” I say.

  “What?”

  I take a step closer. “I didn’t spend the night with Matt.”

  His breath catches. “You didn’t?”

  “No. I slept on the couch.”

  He searches me with his eyes. “Why?”

  Another step. We’re inches apart now. I run my hands up his chest and grab a fistful of the material. “Because he wasn’t the guy.”

  Sam’s chest rises as he takes a breath. I can feel his heart pounding. He’s nervous too. “And who might—”

  I don’t let him finish. I use the shirt to pull him to me. Our mouths collide like they’re asteroids on the same trajectory, and the resulting explosion is all light and stars and fire.

  The butterflies go crazy.

  Sam wraps his arms around me, and lifts me a few inches off the ground. “Glad to see you’ve finally come to your senses,” he murmurs.

  I laugh. “Me too.”

  He sets me down and we kiss some more. I never want to leave his arms. Well, except to go kick ass on the tennis court. And try that new Amazonian yellow hot sauce Mom ordered from Brazil. But then I immediately want to come right back here. Or to his dorm room. Or wherever he happens to be at the moment.

  I pull back just a little. “Question.”

  “Yes?”

  “How is this going to work? The long-distance thing, I mean.”

  “We’ll figure out a way,” he says, sounding so certain.

  “Yeah, but that’s the reason you broke up with Sarah. And you said all the reasons you ended things with her were still there.”

  “Dara,” he whispers. “That wasn’t the only reason I broke up with her.”

  “It wasn’t?”

  “No.”

  “What else is there? She’s pretty and smart and—”

  “She wasn’t the girl.”

  My heart melts into a giant puddle. It’s all he needs to say. I understand completely.

  We start to kiss again. “Hey, Sam?”

  “Hey, Dara.”

  “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For coming with me, for reading about transgender stuff, for having beers with me, for telling me when I was being stupid, for being right about so much …” I’m rambling now. “Basically, for all of it. I really think things are going to be okay between me and Mellie—maybe even better than before—and you played a big part in that.”

  He smiles. “I have something for you.”

  “What is it?”

  “Well, it’s not quite done, but …” He turns his computer screen to face me. It’s the project he was working on when I came in. The picture is of us, at the bar in Virginia. My arm is around him and I’m kissing him on the cheek. It’s the selfie I took with his camera.

  But what I didn’t notice at the time, all drunk and silly, was the way Sam was looking at me in that moment. Like a boy in love.

  He’s tweaked the photo a bit to illustrate this very fact. Where the light catches the darkness of his eyes, tiny twinkling stars have been added.

  “You made this for me?” I whisper.

  I look up. He nods nervously.

  “I love you too,” I say.

  His whole face seems to be made of stars in that moment. He swoops down and kisses me again.

  A couple weeks ago my entire life fell apart. Now I’m wondering how I could have possibly gotten so lucky.

  “What do you think our moms are going to say about this?” Sam asks, laughing, his forehead to mine.

  “About us?”

  “Yeah.”

  I grin. “I think they’re going to love it.”

  Throughout the writing and editing process of And She Was, the importance of ensuring this story is as authentic and truthful as possible never left my mind. Though Mellie Baker is a fictional character, she is representative of millions of very real individuals—individuals who may have had experiences similar to hers, and individuals whose stories are vastly different. While I am par
t of the LGBTQ+ community, I am cisgender, which means I’ve had a responsibility to go above and beyond any typical level of research in order to do Mellie’s story justice. From the very bottom of my heart, I want to thank the transgender community (including my brilliant sensitivity readers) for sharing your experiences—in your books and essays and on television and in your podcasts and in one-on-one conversations.

  If you’ve read any of my previous work, you’ve probably noticed that I write a lot about family and identity and acceptance. I believe fiction has the capacity to change the world. Those of us who worry we may be alone in our feelings and realities often find comfort and strength in seeing ourselves reflected in the pages of a novel. And those of us who are seeking to understand other viewpoints are given the opportunity to connect with characters in novels and get a glimpse of the world through someone else’s eyes. For these reasons, and many more, it was imperative to me that this book not be told strictly through Dara’s point of view. Incorporating the perspective of an adult character into a young adult novel is a bit nontraditional, but, in this case, crucial. In the past, books tackling LGBTQ+ issues were primarily told solely through the points of view of straight and cis characters, thereby “othering” the very characters who the stories were about. I’m grateful I’ve had the opportunity to embrace Mellie’s voice in this story.

  Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed And She Was, and I also hope you’ll consider reading books, both fiction and non-fiction, written by transgender authors. Here are just a few books on trans topics that I have read and enjoyed and recommend to readers. Happily, there are more being published every day.

  George by Alex Gino

  If I Was Your Girl by Meredith Russo

  Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out by Susan Kuklin

  Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teen by Jazz Jennings

  Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More by Janet Mock

  She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders by Jennifer Finney Boylan

  Stuck in the Middle with You: A Memoir of Parenting in Three Genders by Jennifer Finney Boylan

  Trans Bodies, Trans Selves: A Resource for the Transgender Community, edited by Laura Erikson-Schroth

  If you are a transgender or gender-nonconforming teen who is looking for someone to talk to, visit glaad.org/transgender/resources for an extensive list of resources and organizations.

  A very wise woman once wrote, “It takes a village,” and never have I felt that truth more keenly than during the creation of this book. So, to start this long list of thank-yous, I’d like to acknowledge Hillary Rodham Clinton, a real-life superheroine who has inspired me in more ways than I can count. Thank you, Ms. Clinton, for proving that women—whether cis, trans, or otherwise—are unstoppable, despite a world that does its best every day to keep us down.

  My eternal gratitude to my incredible editor, Aimee Friedman, for … well, literally everything. I’m a very lucky author to have found an editor who “gets me.” And huge thanks to David Levithan as well, for championing this book from the start.

  Kate McKean, Queen of Literary Agents, remember that email you sent me over four years ago with the teensiest, tiniest nugget of an idea for this story? Look what we did! We made a book!

  Thank you to everyone at Scholastic who has worked on this project along the way: Ellie Berger, Alan Smagler, Mindy Stockfield, Rachel Feld, Tracy van Straaten, Lizette Serrano, Emily Heddleson, Olivia Valcarce, Melissa Schirmer, Lindsay Walter-Greaney, and Nina Goffi.

  Mellie’s story would not be what it is today without the insights of my phenomenal sensitivity readers. A gigantic thank-you to Mey Valdivia Rude, Annie Mok, Rachel Olivero, Parrish Turner, and Sharon Shattuck for your invaluable contributions.

  Paul, thank you, as always, for being my cheerleader. With you by my side, I feel like I can achieve anything.

  Susan Miller (aka Mom), Dara and Mellie’s story might not be about us, but in a way it also is. I’m so grateful to have your support in everything I do.

  There are a lot of pretty cool dudes in my family. Thank you to Cynthia, Rachel, Peter, the Araujos, Sam C., Adrienne, Emily, Adam, and Amanda, just to name a few. To my cousin K, you are amazing. I truly hope our country starts doing better for you. #ProtectTransKids

  Thank you to my author friends and non-author friends alike: Mary G. Thompson, Alison Cherry, Lindsay Ribar, Mindy Raf, Amanda Maciel, Kevin Joinville, Steven Shaw, Caron Levis, Dahlia Adler, Brandy Colbert, Colleen Mathis, Michael Armstrong, Sarah Doudna, Renia Shukis, Casey Cipriani, and Carolyn Spagnoletti.

  Some of my closest friends are also the most brilliant writers I know. Thank you, Corey Ann Haydu, Caela Carter, Alyson Gerber, and Laurie Boyle Crompton for reading my stuff and always being excited and bearing with me while I unload my troubles on you. Amy Ewing, without your friendship and support, I’d probably give up on all the projects I start. And I definitely wouldn’t be a member of my hot sauce of the month club. Love you guys.

  Some of my personal heroes happen to be trans women. Jazz Jennings, Marlo Mack and her daughter, Jenny Boylan, Janet Mock, Jen Richards, Laverne Cox, and Sarah McBride, I aspire to be half as cool and strong as you all are.

  Finally, my dear friend Cristin Whitley was a bright light in the lives of all who knew her. This year, our world got a little dimmer. Cristin, this one’s for you.

  Jessica Verdi is the author of My Life After Now, The Summer I Wasn’t Me, and What You Left Behind. She is a graduate of The New School’s MFA in Writing for Children program, lives in New York, and firmly believes life is better with hot sauce. You can find her online at jessicaverdi.com.

  Also by Jessica Verdi

  What You Left Behind

  The Summer I Wasn’t Me

  My Life After Now

  Copyright © 2018 by Jessica Verdi

  All rights reserved. Published by Point, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, POINT, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

  ISBN 978-1-338-15053-7

  First edition, April 2018

  Jacket art © 2018 by Sara Wood

  Jacket design by Nina Goffi

  Author photo by Paul Bausch

  e-ISBN 978-1-338-15054-4

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.