Before Aunt Carla left, she gave me a little hug, and whispered, “Maybe tonight you guys can have some father-daughter bonding time!”
That’s when I knew I had to get out of the house. After Aunt Carla left, I went up to my room. Sitting on my bed, dreading the sound of my dad’s car pulling into the driveway, I realized I couldn’t stand the thought of him having to come up with some awkward, public thing we could do together, like playing miniature golf, or ice-skating.
So I steeled my shoulders, opened my closet, and chose a skirt and top fit for a Homecoming Queen.
My dad must have expected to find me moping around when he came home; he did a double take when he walked in at eight and saw me glammed up and ready to go.
“Faith and I are going out tonight,” I lied.
“Oh, okay.” I could see the relief in his eyes. “Do you need some money for gas?” It was his favorite way to be a good dad, so I took the twenty that he waved at me.
Walking out of my house into the cold felt amazing, like getting freed from a straitjacket. Never mind that I was freezing my ass off in my miniskirt. I thought about how weird it was that, before, I would never in a million years have gone out alone on a weekend night. It just wasn’t something you did when you were popular. You ran with the herd, even if it meant having to argue for an hour about where you were going to go, or who got to ride shotgun, or who was designated driver for the evening.
When you were going out by yourself, you didn’t have to deal with all that crap. You made your own decisions, and lived with the consequences. You had to be strong in ways that I’d never thought of back when I believed that not being surrounded by a bunch of friends meant that you were weak.
Instead of turning east out of our development toward Utica, I headed west to Whitesboro, where the restaurants were a little older and the bars not as trendy. Where no one, I hoped, knew about the intersex girl next door.
My heart pounding, I circled around the main strip three or four times before I parked in front of a pub that didn’t have a bouncer outside. Sam had gotten me a passable fake ID last summer, but when I saw my reflection in my rearview mirror I worried that I didn’t look enough like my picture. Instead of my normal pastels or earth tones, I’d put on the Red Vixen lipstick that I bought for a Halloween costume. I’d deliberately overdone my eyeliner, and had curled my hair instead of putting it in my usual ponytail, praying that even if I did run into someone from my school, they wouldn’t recognize me.
After I turned off my engine, I sat in my creaking car as the cold settled in, gathering my nerve. The initial excitement of going it alone had worn off, and I felt suddenly vulnerable. Afraid. For a split second I considered restarting my car and heading home; then I thought about sitting at home with my dad, watching Classic Sports Network while he did sudoku and nursed a Heineken.
I opened my door.
The bar was perfect—cozy and dark, and busy enough that you could pretend that you were with any one of a number of groups. Noisy enough that if someone wanted to talk to you they had to get so close you could smell the beer on their breath.
I scoped out the crowd. There seemed to be a lot of people who were on their second or third drinks already. Some guys who looked like they were there after work. A bunch of college students watching the game on the flat-screen TV. Not very many couples. More men than women. The odds were in my favor.
When I got up to the bartender I ordered myself an appletini and he barely glanced at my fake ID. While he fixed my drink, I smiled at the boy waiting behind me, a twentysomething guy with a buzz cut. He was wearing a blue pinstripe shirt with the sleeves rolled up like he was getting ready to change the oil in his car or something. He was around my height, but stocky, and built like a wrestler. You could tell he went to the gym. I paid for my drink and I could see out of the corner of my eye that he was checking me out.
Back when I was with Sam, I used to hate the meat-market looks I would get at clubs. Strange, that I had been so ungrateful when guys thought I was sexy.
This time, when I turned to Pinstripe Shirt and saw his gaze slide down my body, I felt a surge of pleasure headier than any booze.
I still had the power.
Leaning just the slightest bit toward Pinstripe Shirt, I sucked on the tiny straw in my appletini, pursing my lips the way I’d practiced when I was twelve and learning how to flirt from TV shows. A little voice in my head whispered, What if he finds out that you’re a boy?
I’m a girl, I shouted back. I’m a girl.
I didn’t have to wait long for his pickup line. “Haven’t seen you around here before. You here with those guys?” he said, pointing toward the college kids.
“No,” I said, laughing like I was insulted. “I’m out of school.” It was easier to lie when you were wearing makeup. Like you were in costume or something.
“Nice. I don’t do college drama.” Someone crowded in to buy a drink and he moved away from the bar, still facing me. “What’s your name?”
“Lara,” I said, giving him the name of a foreign exchange student from a couple of years back. “What about you?”
“I’m Josh,” he said, holding out his hand. He didn’t give a last name. I didn’t need one.
“Nice to meet you, Josh.” I shook his hand, but lingered an extra second. Long enough to see the spark light up in his eyes.
I put back my drink so he couldn’t see my smile, and when I set it down he nodded his head toward an empty table.
“Let me buy you another drink,” he said.
Vee would have been proud.
An hour later, I was deliciously buzzed and Josh had his hand under my shirt as we made out in a back hallway.
“You are so hot,” he murmured, and it should’ve been a turn-on but instead I just thought about how he was only saying that because he wanted to get laid. Because he was drunk. Because he didn’t know about my fucking chromosomes.
It was just what I had wanted. But as Josh’s thick fingers roamed down my back and up my miniskirt, the panic at what he would find cut through my Absolut haze. I blurted out the least sexy thing I could think of.
“Shit, I’ve gotta pee so bad. I’m so sorry.” I untangled myself from his arms and ran to the bathroom. All the stalls were full, and there was a pair of girls smoking by the hand dryer. They stared at me with heavily lined eyes as I leaned against the side wall, suddenly overcome with shudders. I could still feel Josh’s fingers sliding into the dimple in my tailbone, and the sickening fear that he’d discover what I was.
When I went back out, I half expected Josh to be gone. Instead, he sat slumped on the ground by a free-travel-brochure rack.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey,” he said, looking like he was about to enter the sad drunk phase. I had wanted to break the mood, but I felt guilty about it, so when he asked me for my number I gave it to him.
After I left, I took a couple of circuits around the block to clear my head before driving, and to process what a near miss it had been. I passed huddles of giggling girls, a trio of guys smoking and telling jokes outside a club. Everyone seemed to understand that strength came in numbers and identity came as part of a group.
I wouldn’t make the same mistake again.
CHAPTER 23
Monday morning I didn’t bother setting an alarm. My dad poked his head in before he left for work.
“I don’t feel up to school today,” I mumbled into my pillow. “I think I have a fever.” I’d had another bad night, and my sheets were on the floor from where I’d tossed them.
“Honey, you need to see someone.” My dad’s eyebrows tilted with anxiety.
“Tomorrow,” I promised. “If things aren’t any better.”
“I’ll call for an appointment right now, just in case.”
“Fine.” At least Aunt Carla worked at Boscov’s on Mondays and I wouldn’t have to worry about her bugging me to rise and shine.
At around ten, my cell phone chirped. Faith, of cou
rse.
U feeling any better?
No mention of Facebook, or of what she did the rest of the weekend—had she gone out with Vee on Saturday? I knew I could never answer her text the way she wanted, with a cheery “Oh, everything’s fine, don’t worry about me.” The last thing in the world I wanted to do was burden her with something else to worry about.
Faith’s brother had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder the summer he turned cute, which was right before his senior year and our freshman year. He was on medicine now, and was at a local college, living just fine on his own, but in the bad years Faith had become a total Pollyanna. She still went through each day as if she wanted to supply the whole world with happy juice. No sad faces allowed.
I lay down on my bed with my head nestled in my pillow, mind racing, wondering how I could ever be in a relationship, how I would ever be able to go back to school, and if I would run competitively again.
I stared at my phone, and deleted Faith’s text without responding.
Underneath it, there was one more text that I’d ignored: Josh had messaged me late Sunday night, but I hadn’t had the guts to answer him, either.
Hey, Lara. Wanna hang this Fri?
I couldn’t imagine what a date would look like now. Before every big track meet, at the point where everyone’s nerves were beginning to fray, Coach Auerbach always made us lie down and visualize our races. “‘What the mind of man can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve,’” she told us. Some of the other girls rolled their eyes whenever it was time to do our psychosomatics drill, but I always ran smoother and lighter after running the cadences of a race in my head.
So I closed my eyes and pictured a date with Josh. A movie, maybe, was his style. Some superhero movie with a convenient romance. I saw us making out in the back row of the theater, saw his hands move downward. . . .
I shuddered.
The best thing to do was ignore him; if I messaged him back it would only encourage him. But then I thought of his dejected look when I came back from the bathroom, and threw him a bone.
Things R crazy busy this weekend. Will call you when things R less insane.
Somehow, that seemed better. The ball was in my court, and I had no intention to ever send it back.
Ms. Diaz called the next day and left a message on our answering machine. I didn’t pick up, of course. She’d heard that I had missed a few days of school and wanted to know how long I thought I would be out. And could I or Mr. Lattimer please give her a call back within the next hour to discuss a few options?
What “options,” I wondered, as I deleted her message.
When I got back to bed I found a voice mail on my cell phone, also from Ms. Diaz. I was almost certain that if I checked my email I would see a message from her there, too, but I didn’t ever want to open that email account again.
When our doorbell rang at three o’clock, I hauled myself up from my bed and answered the door. It was—you guessed it—Ms. Diaz.
“Hello, Kristin,” she said. “Your father said that you were at home.” Her glasses fogged up when she came inside, and I felt guilty for making her wait in the cold for so long.
“Do you want something warm to drink?” I asked automatically.
She took in my pajamas and hair, and shook her head. “You look exhausted. Maybe I should be making you a cup of tea?”
I made a noncommittal sound and led her over to the living room. Standing up took too much energy, so I slouched onto the love seat.
Ms. Diaz moved slowly, but her eyes were sharp as she followed me, taking in our family pictures and the books on our shelves.
“So, you were in the neighborhood?” I finally asked.
“Oh, nothing that casual.” She smiled. “It’s just I noticed that you weren’t in school the past few days, and as you had surgery recently, we wanted to make sure that you hadn’t had any . . . complications that might require you to take a leave of absence.”
“No real complications,” I said. “I’m just not bouncing back as fast as I thought.”
“It’s a lot to go through,” Ms. Diaz said, and I could tell that she wasn’t just talking about the surgery. She clasped her hands and leaned forward. I stared at the ground.
“Kristin,” she said as I counted the flowers on our living room carpet. “One of your friends came to my office today and told me about some disturbing things that were posted on Facebook. He couldn’t show me the actual links, because it appears that they were taken down, but what he described sounded like cyberbullying.”
Fifteen. There were fifteen flowers on the border of the carpet.
“Kristin?” Ms. Diaz said softly. “Were you aware of anything questionable on Facebook? Do you know who may have done it?”
Interesting way to put it: “anything questionable.” I nodded wordlessly. I could feel my face turning red. I wondered who had told her. It was bad enough that all of my “friends” had seen, but teachers and counselors, too? At the thought, my stomach started to cramp, a dull twisting ache. It wasn’t my incisions, but something deeper.
“The administration is working on contacting the company to see if they have any archived images that they can trace. If the person who did that to you is in our school, we will make certain that they are punished appropriately.”
“No,” I blurted out. “Please don’t make a big deal out of all this. It was just a prank.” If they did a whole investigation, my dad would find out for sure.
“There’s a fine line between pranking and bullying,” Ms. Diaz said, her voice sharp. “The person who made that profile crossed it.”
I shrugged, and curled my legs into the fetal position. I laid my cheek against my flannel pajamas and closed my eyes, but even then all I could see was a photo of myself with naked boy parts pasted on.
“Kristin, I’m concerned about you.” Ms. Diaz’s voice was soft again. The kind of voice that brought tears to your eyes even when you thought that you’d cried them all out.
Ms. Diaz reached into her pocketbook and brought out a pack of tissues.
“I can’t go back to school again,” I said. “I can’t see those people again. My ‘friends.’” I made quotes in the air with my fingers.
Ms. Diaz sat back in her chair and crossed her legs. “We do have a temporary home-instruction option,” she said. “It requires a doctor’s note, of course.”
She handed me a pamphlet, and I stared at her as if she’d just told me that she believed in immaculate conception. “You mean I don’t have to go back?”
“Not right away. Technically, there’s a six-week limit to home instruction. But that is flexible if your physician requests more time.”
I hiccupped, and the tears slowed down. I couldn’t believe it. “Thank you,” I whispered. “Thank you so much.”
At that point Ms. Diaz got out of her seat and sat next to me. She put her hand over mine, and spoke softly but firmly. “Kristin, you do have to realize that this is a temporary solution until things . . . settle down.”
I barely heard her. All I could hear was that I wouldn’t have to go to school the next day. Or the day after that.
Ms. Diaz went on. “The one requirement you still need to meet, Kristin, is your community service project. You still need sixty more hours to graduate. I understand that you were working with Big Brothers Big Sisters?”
I froze in the middle of blowing my nose. Vee and I and a few other people had been working on a benefit race for the program. “I’ll have to switch to another project,” I said, trying to keep the panic out of my voice.
“Do you have any idea where else you’d like to volunteer?”
Wherever Vee wasn’t. Or Sam, or Bruce, or . . . anybody.
I shook my head, scrunching my Kleenex into a tight little ball.
“A number of organizations are still looking for students to help out.” She handed me a stapled list. “Why don’t you look at that and get back to me? I’ll start the paperwork for your home instruction. We�
�ll need to have a formal meeting with your father present, and a doctor’s note as well.”
“We have an appointment in a few days,” I said.
“Well, then.” Ms. Diaz stood up and put on her coat. “Take care, Kristin. Give yourself some time to heal. We hope to have you back at school soon.”
As I showed her out, I wondered who “we” was.
CHAPTER 24
“So, um, have you been checking your email?” Faith asked a couple nights later. She was trying to be casual and all, but even over the phone I could sense an undercurrent of anxiety.
“No, why?”
“Well, Vee wanted me to tell you she sent you an email,” she said. “About Big Brothers Big Sisters, now that you’re not doing it. She just needed to know about some logistics, but hasn’t heard from you.”
“Why didn’t she just call me herself?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Probably because she thought you wouldn’t pick up?”
“I would’ve,” I said. Just to see if she said she was sorry.
“Well, anyway, she wanted me to tell you.”
When I opened my email I ignored the Facebook notifications, and scrolled down to Vee’s message, sent the day after Ms. Diaz’s visit. It was four measly lines:
Subject: BBBS
Hey.
Faith said you had surgery. Hope you’re okay.
So, I hear from Ms. Diaz that you’re not doing BBBS anymore. Can you email me all the info on the sponsors you’ve gotten so far?
-V
The absence of an apology hit me as hard as any blow. I read the email twice, as if I could’ve missed something. It was almost worse that she had asked if I was okay, because that implied that she cared. Except if she had given a rat’s ass about me, she would’ve said she was sorry.
I searched through my files to find my sponsor spreadsheet, and sent it to her without bothering to write anything in the message field. Then I slammed my laptop shut, hands trembling.
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