Her head was bowed, except for when she took a swig of her water, and the guy interviewing her was offscreen so you could only hear his voice. You assumed it was a man, and he asked the usual questions about her time and whether she would set a world record. Then Caster talked, and her voice was deeper than his. My dad gave a start.
As I stood behind him, trying not to have a panic attack, my dad searched “intersex test,” and I got to read about how in the seventies, before lab testing was developed, officials would have all the girl athletes parade naked in front of doctors to make sure all their parts were in order. Then he clicked on a link to a David Letterman skit about a “gender verification test” that involved hitting a person in the crotch with a baseball bat. My dad swore and closed the tab right away, but I’d seen enough to make me feel sick.
Together, we found another article about Caster where this women’s magazine gave her a makeover. They’d put on hair extensions, stuffed her in a dress, and decorated her with earrings and dangly bracelets. LOOK AT OUR CASTER NOW! In some ways, that was the worst of all. How easily you could make someone look more “feminine.” How easily you could turn a freak into a homecoming queen.
One thing Coach Auerbach hadn’t mentioned was that, even though Semenya was cleared to race in the Olympics, some people thought that she had thrown the gold medal race because she didn’t want to face any more controversy, and didn’t want to be accused of having an unfair advantage. And who could blame her?
My dad surfed onto a video of Caster at a press conference a year after the controversy broke. While he watched Caster talk about staying positive as an athlete, all I saw were the YouTube user comments underneath. God, it sounds like a dude, said one. It LOOKS like a dude too, said another. Then: OK here’s the real test. What guy would want to stick his wiener there?
And all of a sudden it was too much.
“Turn it off,” I said loudly. My dad jumped. “Please turn it off,” I pleaded.
He blinked and shut his browser. “Honey, why don’t you go see if there’s a game on?” my dad asked. “I’ll be done in a second. I can make popcorn.”
I swallowed. My dad’s hand was still on the mouse. I might not have the stomach to read any more, but he did. When my mom was throwing up from chemotherapy, all I could do was hold her hand. But my father researched every kind of antinausea treatment and came home with ginger and peppermint oil and DIY acupuncture wrist bracelets. It’s what he did to keep the powerlessness from eating him alive.
I shook my head and gave him a kiss on the head. “You keep reading. I’m going to bed.”
I trudged up the stairs to my bedroom, telling myself, I don’t look like Caster. I look like a woman. I am a woman. Dr. Cheng said so. Just to prove it to myself, I dug into my closet and got the emerald-green Victoria’s Secret nightie that Sam had given me for Christmas. I put it on and posed in front of a mirror. I told myself that if I took a picture and posted it on Craigslist personals I would get hundreds of responses.
I would. I knew I would.
But the only response that I wanted was one from Sam. With shaking fingers, I tore off the nightie. Even after I’d curled into bed in my flannel pajamas, though, all I could think about was Sam, and each memory was like a hot poker in my chest: The look of joy on his face when he saw how pleased I was with his gift. The way his lips parted ever so slightly when I modeled it for the first time. The feel of his biceps against my rib cage when he lifted me up for a kiss.
I had been staring at my alarm clock for almost half an hour before it dawned on me that I had lied to Sam and Faith. And to myself. Dr. Cheng hadn’t said that I was a woman. She had said that most people with AIS “identified themselves” as women. Which wasn’t the same.
Which wouldn’t ever be the same.
After another half an hour of lying in bed awake, I turned my light on to go to the bathroom and tripped over my purse. The pain medicine Dr. Cheng had given to me fell out. I hadn’t planned on taking it—the pain wasn’t that bad—but then I caught sight of the little yellow warning label with a droopy eye. MAY CAUSE DROWSINESS.
A bonus side effect.
Before I could change my mind, two of the Percocet pills were in my mouth. They didn’t go down easy, sticking in my gullet like concrete. Even after I went to the bathroom to get some water, it still felt like there was a knot in my heart, but before I knew it I had drifted off to sleep.
CHAPTER 19
I woke up the next morning in a Percocet haze. The whole world was fuzzy, and I couldn’t move, as if I’d been cemented into my bed. My muscles had turned into stone, my blood into molten lead. Just turning my head to see my clock took all the energy I had. Reaching the snooze button was impossible.
It didn’t matter if I went to school, did it? In the grand scheme of things. No one would be hurt. No one would die. The only people who’d care would probably be Sam and his jerk-off friends, because they wouldn’t have their new punching bag. If I stayed at home it’d be one less piece of homework for my teachers to grade, and one less stop for Faith.
It was a win-win situation, really.
I lay there until I had to pee so badly I couldn’t hold it anymore, and I rolled out of bed. As I walked to the bathroom my dad was coming upstairs to put his uniform on.
“Why aren’t you dressed yet? Faith’s going to be here any minute.”
“I don’t think I can go to school today.”
My dad went instantly into alarm mode, which I should’ve predicted. “Is everything okay?”
“I’m just feeling sick from the pain meds.”
“I’ll get you some ginger ale on the way home. But we should make an appointment—”
“No,” I interrupted him. “No more doctors. Please?”
He looked at me, and turned away quickly. “Okay,” he said, taking a deep breath. “But I’ll ask your aunt Carla to check in on you in an hour or two.”
“Fine.”
I went to the bathroom, texted Faith that I wouldn’t be going to school, and crawled back into bed.
I woke up to a blinding light.
“Wake up, sleepyhead! It’s a beautiful morning!” chirped Aunt Carla.
I tried to pull my pillow over my head, but she pulled it away and threw off my covers, which were damp with sweat. Aunt Carla gasped.
“Krissy, are you okay? Do you have a fever?”
“I don’t know. I just feel hot.” When I went back to bed that morning, I’d tossed and turned. One minute I’d be burning up, the next minute I’d be freezing.
“I’ll get the thermometer. What you really need is some nice fresh orange juice and some hot biscuits.” When I lifted my head I could smell something buttery and amazing. My stomach grumbled.
“Okay, okay,” I said.
After the juice and biscuits, my stomach felt full but the rest of me still felt empty. Out of place. Aunt Carla took my temperature, which turned out to be normal.
I brushed my teeth. Took a shower. And when I started thinking too much about school and Vee and hernias I went into the kitchen. Maybe I could surprise my dad with dinner. I flipped through our recipe box, and stopped at my mom’s baked ziti recipe. It had been my dad’s favorite, but we hadn’t cooked it in years.
I couldn’t understand how staring at a recipe card could make me feel physical pain. My mom always used to say that my dad was proof of the old saying that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, and I wondered what aphorism she would’ve used to get me through today. Probably something like, “What doesn’t kill you will only make you stronger.” I couldn’t remember how many times she said that during her first few rounds of chemotherapy. By the end, though, her maxim became, “God doesn’t give us more than we can handle in life.”
My mother never saw me run, and that was one of the saddest things about leaving the church—giving up the idea that my mom was up there in some cloudy-fluffy angel land, looking down on me for my first kiss, or the day I won the state ch
ampionship. I wished she could’ve seen me at Homecoming. Or even now. I knew she would’ve loved me even if she’d known that I had boy parts.
I decided to make a pie, which had been our favorite thing to make with each other. I loved cutting the butter into the flour, and the satisfaction of making a perfect lattice. Flour everywhere, soft and dusty like baby powder.
It would have killed my mother never to have grandchildren, I thought suddenly. She would’ve pretended it was okay, probably, but I knew she would’ve taken it hard. She probably would’ve noticed that I never got my period and taken me to an ob-gyn sooner. Maybe if she’d been alive, I wouldn’t have had to tell Vee.
And what would my life be like, if no one knew but me? Would I still be running, or would I feel guilty that I was somehow cheating?
I’d never know.
I folded the crust into the pan and started to work on the filling.
While the pie baked, I brought out my laptop so I could email the secretary who was supposed to get homework assignments for students who were out sick. There were dozens of new messages in my account. I hadn’t checked my email since the locker incident. Half of it was spam, or the daily digests from the college track mailing list.
I would have ignored them all, just let them clog my inbox, if it weren’t for the Facebook notifications:
Pat Hermaphrodite tagged you in a photo.
Bruce Torino commented on a photo you’re tagged in.
Andy Sullivan liked a photo you’re tagged in.
The kitchen was warm from the oven being on, so I shouldn’t have felt so cold. My hand shook as I logged on to Facebook, where I had 846 friends. Where my status was still “In a relationship.” Where I was still listed as being female.
It hurt so much to see my profile picture that I almost couldn’t breathe.
Vee had taken the picture over the summer, at her annual pool party. Sam and I were cuddling with each other on a lawn chair, and God I looked happy. I remembered the day: the smell of coconut-scented suntan lotion, the brilliance of the pool reflecting the cloudless sky. It was surreal seeing myself like that, like looking at the school photo of a missing child.
Just below that was the picture I had been tagged in.
Whoever it was in real life, Pat Hermaphrodite was a pretty talented Photoshopper. He (or she) also had good access to porn, to find a penis that was just the right proportion and angle to splice onto the picture of me in my bikini at the car wash.
The picture had seventy-three “likes.” Sixteen comments. I didn’t want to read them, but it was as if I was going by a car wreck and couldn’t turn away.
There was one comment from Jessica Riley saying, “So not cool, guys. Not cool,” but five others that told her to chill out, that it was just for fun. Every post felt like a dagger thrust into my back, and still I scrolled through the list of people who “liked” them.
They were faces I had known since kindergarten, faces of teammates and rivals. A few people from my homeroom. One guy who’d sent me a singing Valentine during middle school. The girl who stood next to me in the alto section of our junior chorus.
I wanted to throw up. I ran to the bathroom, but when I got there all I did was dry-heave over the sink. When I lifted my head I could taste the acid in the back of my throat.
My brain could barely wrap itself around the hurt. These weren’t mean people. I told myself they’d probably just seen a funny picture and clicked “like” out of habit, because that’s what you do when you read something on Facebook.
But who was I kidding?
CHAPTER 20
When Faith called later that afternoon, she was totally shocked when I told her about my surgery.
“Oh my God, was it something serious?”
“It was just a hernia,” I said, which wasn’t exactly a lie.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
I had no excuse, and I knew it. But Faith forgave me, as always.
“You know I’m the chair of the Sunshine Club,” she said. “We should at least throw together a care package for you. My mom just got some of those almond cookies you love so much. I’ll send around a card tomorrow.”
And what would people write in it? “No. Please don’t make a big deal. I should only be out a few days.” Dr. Cheng had actually said that I might not have to miss any school at all, but no one needed to know that.
“I’m pretty sure they covered ‘Making a big deal about having a surgery’ in Friendship 101. I’ll stop by tomorrow to give you my bio notes,” she said. “I can’t promise that I won’t bring brownies, too.”
I really hoped she wouldn’t send around that card. Could I tell her not to ask anyone who had liked that picture on Facebook? After we got off the phone, I turned on my computer.
I had untagged myself in the photo, but I couldn’t help myself from going back to it like a moth to a flame. Pat’s picture was up to 132 “likes.”
Once again, seeing the profile picture of me and Sam together took my breath away, the reminder of old happiness cutting like a razor blade. I deleted the picture but couldn’t bring myself to find another one, and left the generic drawing of an androgynous blue silhouette in its place.
Fitting.
That’s when I noticed that just underneath my empty profile picture, where it said “In a relationship,” Sam’s name was missing. When I searched for his name in my friends list he was gone, too. I couldn’t find him on Facebook at all.
I’d been blocked.
We were officially over.
It shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me; it shouldn’t have reduced me to a crying, shaking ball of misery. But there you have it: the power of the internet.
I cried at the memory of how warm and safe I’d felt when he hugged me. I cried because I blamed myself for not telling him as soon as I got my diagnosis. But mostly I cried because I missed everything about him—his grin, his quiet sense of humor, and the steadiness of his footsteps as they kept pace beside me.
I knew I wasn’t supposed to run yet. But my whole body itched for it, craved it like a junkie: the feel of muscles pulling, heart thumping, lungs filled to the brim with fresh air and life. I couldn’t stay in my room any longer, couldn’t sit still while the world crumbled around me. I pulled on my workout clothes. At the bottom of the stairs, I peeked into the living room, where Aunt Carla was ensconced on the couch.
“I’m just going out for a second,” I told her, standing out of sight so she couldn’t see my blotchy face.
“Make sure to be back in time for dinner,” she said, barely looking up from her crossword puzzle. “I’ve got a roast in the oven.”
I decided to run my three-mile loop, which took me through the older part of our development, the one with fewer kids in high school. As soon as I felt the pavement under my feet the cloud in my mind lifted, and my legs took over.
My incisions pulled as I ran, but the soreness was a sweet kind of pain, reminding me that I wasn’t the same person—the same thing—that I had been the day before. The wonderful tangibility of it struck me for the first time. I would have scars to prove what I had done.
What I had done for Sam. Surely he would be able to see that?
With a subconscious eagerness, I found myself turning onto my five-mile loop. My eyes had dried; my nose no longer felt like a cherry tomato. In my mind, I ticked off the landmarks at each half mile:
The library.
The old farmhouse with the barn, once red, that had faded to a light pink.
Sam’s house.
With a jolt of recognition, I stopped. The world spun.
The light in his room was on, a shining beacon. Was I imagining it, or could I almost make out the shadow of a person? Who knew how long I would’ve stood on the sidewalk in front of the Wilmingtons’ house with a staccato heart and gasping breath, if a car hadn’t pulled up into his driveway and brought me to my senses.
I turned to flee back the way I’d come. But then a door slammed, and I hea
rd a woman shouting behind me.
“Kristin! Hey, Kristin!”
I turned around. Sam’s mom walked down the driveway to meet me, her wide grin so similar to her son’s it made me want to cry. As much I wanted to run, I couldn’t.
“Kristin,” she said, holding out her arms. “I haven’t congratulated you yet for Homecoming! Tell me, have you come back to earth yet?”
As I sank into Mrs. Wilmington’s hug, I realized that Sam must have been too embarrassed to tell his mom. It was almost worse than her running me off the property.
I plastered a pleased look onto my face, praying that it would be convincing. “Nope, it’s still sinking in.”
“Please tell me you’ll come in and have something to drink. Sam’s been holed up in his room the past couple of days. He and Bruce must’ve had some sort of spat.”
“Oh, I’m only halfway through my run,” I said, jogging back a couple of steps.
Mrs. Wilmington clicked her tongue and grabbed my hand. “Don’t be ridiculous, Kristin. The season hasn’t even started yet, and Madison misses you. She hasn’t seen you in weeks.” I allowed her to pull me toward their driveway, partly because I didn’t want to be rude, but mostly because I couldn’t help but dream that being brought in by Mrs. Wilmington would put me under a spell of protection. Sam would have to listen to me if I was with his mother.
Walking into the Wilmingtons’ felt like coming home, right down to the spot in the shoe rack for my sneakers.
“Sam! You’ve got company,” his mother yelled. When he didn’t respond, she shooed me toward the stairs as she went into the kitchen. “I’ll get you some Gatorade. Blue, right? You know where to go.”
I hadn’t even gotten to the bottom step when the door to the basement rec room flew open and a twelve-year-old whirling dervish flew out.
“Hey, who’s here? Krissy, is that you?” Sam’s little sister, Madison, threw herself at me with such force that I almost lost my balance.
None of the Above Page 11