None of the Above

by I. W. Gregorio

  “You never emailed me the pictures of your dress,” she said reproachfully when she let go. “Sam just had one little teeny shot on his phone and the lighting sucked.” I had to laugh at how stern she looked, even with her curly brown hair frizzing out in all directions from her run up the stairs. “And why aren’t you wearing your ring?”

  My grin froze on my face. “I had to get it sized a little. It was a bit too small. But it was beautiful. Sam said you helped him pick it out?”

  “I did,” she said proudly. “Sam wanted to get you this awful gold thing but I told him that silver and green would be better colors for you. Did he tell you about our Christmas pageant? I got the part of an angel. Promise you’ll come to opening night?”

  I tried so hard to keep smiling that it hurt. “Congratulations, sweetie! You know I’ll do my best to make it.”

  “Okay. I’m going to look beautiful. Want to see a picture of my costume?” She was tugging me toward the rec room when her mom came in.

  “Maddie, I know you’re excited to see Kristin, but why don’t you let her go up and talk to Sam for a little while?” Mrs. Wilmington handed me a cup of Gatorade.

  Madison pouted. “But it’s not going to take a little while. It always takes forever!”

  “Then maybe you should think of something to do that’ll take a long time,” said her mom. “Why don’t you give Allison a call?”

  “Okay.” Madison slumped. “See you soon,” she told me.

  I nodded wordlessly as she went back downstairs.

  My hand only shook a bit as I drank the blue Gatorade. “Thanks so much,” I said, handing the cup back to Mrs. Wilmington.

  She smiled. “Madison really thinks of you as her playmate first, and Sam’s girlfriend second. Why don’t you go upstairs? I’m going to start some dinner.”

  I took the first step cautiously, as if I were scaling a cliff. Though I’d barely broken a sweat in the cool autumn air, someone had cranked the heat up in the house. At the top of the stairs, I stopped to wipe off a thin sheen of sweat from my forehead. I redid my ponytail in a mirror on the landing, thinking about how I always used to make fun of the girls on my track team who ran with makeup in their little armbands instead of iPods.

  Silently, I walked to the second room on the right, and listened at Sam’s door to the strains of Eminem. As I raised my hand to knock, a track ended, and I could hear the faint sound of a keyboard clattering. I wondered if he was doing homework or IM’ing. Or posting on Facebook.

  With a flash, I came to my senses. My hand dropped. What in God’s name was I doing? What could I possibly say that would change his mind? I would never be able to take back his humiliation, or restore his ruined reputation.

  I deserved nothing. Not his forgiveness, and certainly not his love. And he’d already made his wishes clear: Stay away.

  I took a step back. Turned around.

  But just before I reached the top of the stairwell, his door opened.

  CHAPTER 21

  “Hey, Mom,” he yelled. “Do you know where my—”

  Sam caught sight of me and stopped midsentence. His mouth gaped open slightly for a moment, then snapped shut into a thin, pursed line.

  We stared at each other.

  I noticed Sam’s stubble first—about a day and a half’s worth, I figured. When we were going out, for him to skip a day of shaving was unusual. He knew I liked him smooth.

  Sam broke the silence. “What the hell are you doing here?” His voice was oddly subdued, and he pulled nervously at the white V-neck undershirt he wore over his sweatpants. Maybe he only kept his voice down because he didn’t want his mom to hear, but it was better than him shouting like he had in the hallway at school.

  “I was running. Your mom invited me in.” I could’ve told him that I was just about to leave, but I didn’t. Because as much as I wanted to go before, now I wanted to stay. I took a step toward him.

  But there was more to it than that—somehow I sensed something . . . open about the wariness of his blue-eyed gaze. A willingness, now that we were away from teammates and A-listers and teachers alike.

  “You haven’t told her yet?” I asked.

  He looked away, picking at the paint on the doorjamb with a fingernail. The muscles in his jaw spasmed, and he seemed to come to a decision. Stepping back, he waved me into his room. Heart pounding, I followed.

  The smell of boy made me ache; funny how you can be nostalgic for the scent of deodorant mixed with sweat. Sam’s room looked exactly like I remembered, with one exception. Before, there’d been a ring of pictures circled around his desk. Now, the wall was blank. I didn’t think it was possible for my heart to sink any further, but it did.

  Sam straddled his desk chair, and waved me to the armchair by his stereo without looking at me.

  “What was I supposed to tell her? Not just my mom—everyone? My sister? My dad?” His voice broke, and I understood. Mr. Wilmington’s favorite nickname for Sam was “stud.”

  “I don’t know. . . . That it’s a medical condition.” A wave of grief and anger overwhelmed me. “God damn it, Sam. It’s not like I am what I am out of spite.”

  “I know, I know,” he moaned. He put his hands over his face. His beautiful hands. I couldn’t help it—I reached out and brushed his knuckles with my fingertips.

  He flinched, and I closed my eyes at the sudden pain in my chest.

  I retreated, and told him, “I had surgery. You don’t have to worry about . . . my having boy parts anymore.” I pulled down my tracksuit to show him my scars, two puckered-up pink lines running just below the level of my underwear.

  I tried to explain to him about mixed signals and testosterone deafness, but the more I talked, the more his eyes glazed over. Finally he just raised his hand. Gave a long blink. And looked at me with clear eyes.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  My turn to look away.

  “Why do you think? Because I was scared.”

  “You . . . you didn’t trust me.”

  I shook my head. “Should I have?” I stood up and paced around, needing to move, needing to feel brave. “Show me that I should’ve trusted you. Show me that you don’t care about these scars. That all you care about is who I am, not what I am.” I stopped in front of Sam’s chair and sank to the ground in front of him. I looked up at him, our faces inches apart.

  Sam bowed his head so that it rested against the back of the chair. He stayed there a long time, breathing heavily as the clock ticked. Behind him, his computer pinged two, three times with message alerts.

  “Do you remember the first time we met?” I asked him.

  “Wasn’t it at some track meet or something?”

  “Yeah. I was all gross from my race and had this awful jog bra on that made me flat as a pancake. I thought for sure that when Vee got you to come out on a double date you’d remember me as a total train wreck and run in the opposite direction. But you came.”

  Sam lifted his head. Our gazes met, and I felt it—that magnetism, that connection that we’d always had. Slowly I moved in closer until I could feel his uneven breath on my face. “You saw me for who I was,” I whispered. “Can’t you see it’s the same thing now?”

  Just as our lips were about to touch, Sam pulled back and shook his head with a faraway look. He turned to me. His eyes hardened.

  “I’m gonna say this once, and only once,” he said, his words brittle. “I. Don’t. Date. Men.”

  I gasped as if he’d struck me, and I couldn’t stop the tears from brimming.

  “I am not a man.” Why couldn’t he see? Hopelessness burned into frustration. “You’ve seen me . . . all of me. How can you not accept that?”

  Sam wiped his hand down his face with frustration, and shook his head. When he spoke, his voice had thawed a little. But not enough.

  “Maybe someone else can, Krissy. But not me.”

  He got up from his chair and stared down at me, really looked at me, and the revulsion and pity in his
eyes only made my tears come quicker.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, not offering me a hand up.

  Somehow I made it to my feet on my own. I dried my eyes with my sweatband and sniffled to clear my nose. As he held his door open, Sam stared down at the worn patch of carpet at the entrance. “I promise I won’t tell my sister if you don’t want me to.”

  I paused at the threshold, and wondered if it’d be possible to shield a twelve-year-old from the truth, or if she’d hear the malice behind the whispers. It hurt to think of her blaming me for staying away, but so did the idea that she could hate me for what I was.

  “You can tell her that we got into a fight over going to different colleges. Tell her that high school romances never last,” I said, allowing a sliver of bitterness to creep into my voice.

  “Whatever.”

  “Yeah, whatever,” I said, as my last figment of hope shriveled up and died.

  I turned to shuffle down the hallway. When I didn’t hear Sam’s door click, I turned around once at the top of the stairs. He still stood there, leaning against the doorjamb, staring down at the carpet. I felt sure he could feel my eyes on him, but he didn’t look up.

  Halfway down the stairs, the door shut.

  I let myself out of the house without saying good-bye to Mrs. Wilmington, who was still in the kitchen, humming show tunes.

  Dusk had fallen, and I ran home in the twilight.

  I welcomed the darkness.

  Because really, at this point, being anonymous was what I wanted more than anything.

  CHAPTER 22

  The next day, Faith stopped by with the promised almond cookies and a Get Well Soon card. She’d gotten a normal-sized one, unlike the card for my birthday just a few weeks earlier, when she’d bought a huge thing that looked like a small poster. She’d even gotten some people to sign it: a few track teammates, a couple of choir members, and some of the girls from her youth group.

  “I hope you get better soon,” she said. “It sucks driving in alone.”

  “What, Vee isn’t riding with you?” I tried to sound casual, but failed.

  “I don’t want things to get awkward when you get back. She’s been hitching a ride with Bruce.” She hesitated. “I know she doesn’t show it, but I think she feels really badly about how things went down.”

  I snorted. Faith meant well, but she was kidding herself if she thought I believed that. Vee didn’t do guilt, unlike Faith, who always seemed to feel responsible when someone was upset, as if all the sorrows of the world were somehow her fault, and the solution to all sadness was in her hands and her hands alone.

  She looked guilty now as she asked, “Would you be willing to talk to her? Work it out? I hate seeing you two fight. We’ve been the Three Musketeers since preschool. This can’t go on forever?”

  “What would I possibly say to her?” I said. I hated acting irritated, but sometimes Faith was too nice, to the point of it being a fault. “She hasn’t even tried to call me, or apologize. For God’s sake, Faith—she screwed me by telling Sam. How could I forgive her for something like that when she doesn’t even think she’s done anything wrong?”

  Faith was silent. I couldn’t tell if she was hurt by my anger, or if her well of sympathy had just run dry. She opened her mouth to say something. Paused. Shut it again.

  I went on before she could start her “turn the other cheek” mantra. “I know you’re going to say something about forgiving other people’s trespasses, but sometimes forgiveness needs to be earned. I’m sick of appeasing Vee. She’s not the only person in the world with problems.”

  Faith looked uneasy, the way she always did when there was conflict. “But what if—” She stopped, and brushed a couple of cookie crumbs off her jeans.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Nothing. Just . . . I hate this.”

  “You and me both.”

  After Faith left, our doorbell rang again within a few minutes. I let Aunt Carla answer it, assuming it had to be a delivery truck or something. Instead, I heard her yell up the stairs in an excited voice.

  “Krissy—there’s someone here to see you. It’s a boy!”

  My heart skidded to a stop in my chest, and my first thought—a hope that washed over me like a tidal wave—was that it had to be Sam. I rushed down the stairs, but even before I saw his face I knew the silhouette was too tall, too rangy.

  My face fell.

  “Hey, it’s me,” Darren Kowalski said. “Ms. MacDowell asked if I could take notes for you again. The guidance office added on some stuff from your other classes, too.”

  I tried to smile, to brush away the crushing disappointment. Darren deserved better than that. “What’d I miss in English?”

  “Not too much. Wrap-up stuff on The Merchant of Venice—people did their extra-credit scenes.”

  “Did you do one?”

  “Nah. I don’t think any of the seniors did, except for Jessica. She did Portia’s speech.”

  The quality of mercy, I remembered.

  A blast of cold wind ran through our porch, and Darren stuffed purpling hands into his windbreaker. Feeling the draft, Aunt Carla peeked out of the kitchen and proceeded to bodily drag Darren into our house.

  “Kristin Louise Lattimer, are you trying to freeze your friend to death? I’m about to make some hot cocoa this very instant, so please do invite this young man who I’ve never met in, and introduce us like civilized people.”

  I sighed. Sooner stop a steamroller than halt Aunt Carla once she got the wheels of hospitality going. “Aunt Carla, this is Darren. Darren, this is my aunt Carla.”

  “Actually, I think we met a long time ago, back when I was in middle school,” Darren said. “I’m Anna Kowalski’s son.”

  Aunt Carla brightened. “That’s right! The caterer. I always did say that Bob let that one get away.”

  I couldn’t tell if Darren’s face was flushed from embarrassment, or if it was the cold, but he came into our kitchen anyway.

  Aunt Carla showed him to a counter stool. “Kristin, can you get the sugar for me?”

  “You’re making it from scratch?” Darren asked. “Can I help?”

  “Oh, no, no,” Aunt Carla clucked. “Just sit and relax, dear. You’re the guest.”

  “Please,” Darren insisted. “Do you know what would happen in my house if I just sat on my butt while the women cooked?”

  “He can stir,” I volunteered.

  “Yes, that is an appropriately basic task for this hapless male.” He imitated a caveman. “ME STIR. USE STICK.”

  For the first time in what seemed like years, I cracked a smile. Darren peeled off his windbreaker, revealing a T-shirt that said DATE A RUNNER. EVERY OTHER ATHLETE IS A PLAYER.

  When the hot chocolate was done, and poured into our mismatched coffee mugs with a dollop of Reddi-wip on top, Aunt Carla picked up her paperback book and went to go read in the den.

  At first, Darren and I drank in companionable silence. Then the quiet grew heavier and heavier, and eventually he cracked his neck and cleared his throat. “So, you doing okay?” he asked, peering over his New York Rangers coffee mug.

  “Yeah,” I lied. “I had surgery. For a hernia.”

  Darren nodded thoughtfully.

  Too thoughtfully?

  Even when we were in middle school, Darren had always been a fact-checker, the kid who couldn’t watch a movie without looking up its historical or scientific accuracy online. I wondered how much searching he’d done on the internet, and what, if anything, he knew about my insides.

  I was staring at the dregs of cocoa staining the bottom of my cup when Darren said, “Your dad must be pretty depressed. . . .”

  A jolt of pain flashed through my body, laced with disappointment and anger. Why was everyone so fixated on how crushed my dad must be about my diagnosis? I opened my mouth to tell Darren off, but before I could say anything, he continued. “I mean, the Rangers are totally tanking this year. That goalie they have? It’d be more effective if they pu
t pads on a chimpanzee and stuck him in the net.”

  Hockey! He was talking about hockey. I almost laughed out loud.

  “Are you still an Islanders fan?” My relief made me punchy. “Wasn’t it the twentieth century the last time they made the playoffs?”

  “Hey, it’s all part of their grand plan. Suck for a few years, get a bunch of lottery picks in the draft.”

  “Do you still play?” I had a vague memory of freezing my butt off in a rink or two while our parents were dating.

  “Nah. When you get to travel league, it gets pretty expensive. And once my center of gravity got really high I didn’t have the speed to be a good defenseman.”

  We bantered back and forth for a little longer until Darren looked at his watch and frowned.

  “I’d better get going,” he said, picking up our cups to take them to the sink. “I’ve got to pick up Becky. I’m sure you’ve got other plans, too.”

  I couldn’t imagine where he thought I’d be going, dressed in warm-up pants and an old track T-shirt, with hair that hadn’t been washed in three days, but I nodded anyway. “So you’re still going out with Jessica Riley’s sister?”

  “Yeah.” Darren blushed a little, and I felt an odd wistfulness.

  “Well, have a good time.”

  After Darren left, I was channel flipping in our living room when Aunt Carla peeked her head in. She had her handbag over her shoulder, and a fresh coat of magenta lipstick that was about three shades too dark for her pale winter skin.

  “Well, I’m glad to see you up and about, dear. I wanted to tell you that I have a casserole in the oven that should be ready by the time your father gets home.”

  I blinked at her, not understanding.

  “I’ve got to get going!” Aunt Carla said brightly. “It’s book club night, and I’ve got to bring the chips and dip!”

  “Sure. Have fun,” I said. Aunt Carla packed up her knitting, and I decided that I had officially hit rock bottom: my divorced, fifty-year-old aunt had hotter plans for Friday night than I did. I couldn’t remember the last weekend night when I didn’t have a date, or a party, or some sort of track thing to go to. Being friends with Vee meant you never had to fill your calendar.