Out

by Laura Preble

  “—and then Carmen decided that she would follow in her mother's footsteps and become one of the youngest Perp League board members in the society's history. Her tireless work for the group is well documented, and she's also managed to maintain a straight-A average in her studies. She's also in her school's choir as well as the speech and debate club. So, we’re honored to sponsor her as the Perpendicular League of Northwestern Ohio’s exchange student for the rest of the school year.” Riotous applause breaks out; every person in the room turns and smiles at the amazing Ms. Wilde, so I’m able to stare at her too without looking obvious.

  When Lainie Goldman just keeps clapping and gesturing toward Carmen, it becomes obvious that she wants her to stand up and speak to the group. Blushing, the girl stands and waves graciously, a reluctant princess greeting her kingdom. “Thank you so much,” she says. Her voice is strong; it resonates like music or deep water against stones. “I am so honored to be here with you, and I know my mother will be really excited to hear about all the great progress the group is making here in Northwestern Ohio.” She pauses, but judging from Lainie's gleaming, high-beam smile, more is expected. “And...” she falters. “And I am having a wonderful time, meeting all the great people here in Bentham.” She sits down, making it clear that this is all they are getting out of her.

  I can’t stop looking at her, and in a couple of seconds, that’s going to be embarrassingly obvious. She isn’t talking anymore, so I have no excuse to stare at her like a drooling idiot. She must feel me looking, because as soon as Lainie starts babbling on about some new topic, she turns her head slowly and stares up at me with those amazing blue eyes.

  It’s like drowning, but I don’t want to come up for air. I want to swim in her eyes and dive deeper, be crushed under the weight of water, let my lungs explode as I touch bottom. And as I’m thinking this ridiculous romantic nonsense, the room erupts in manicured applause. The meeting is over.

  Carmen sighs heavily and studies her hands, which are folded in her lap. I shoot Andi an urgent look, and she takes the hint, turns to Carmen and introduces herself.

  “I'm Andrea,” she says brightly.

  The girl’s tanned hand reaches for Andi’s, and I have to stop myself from touching her as she says, “I’m Carmen. Well, you probably already heard that, huh?”

  “Yeah, well, you must be something for Lainie Goldman to brag on you like that,” Andi says, glancing nervously at me. “This is my friend, Chris.”

  Carmen blushes slightly, and suppresses a smile. “I think we've met before, haven't we?”

  “Uh...yeah.” God! Why do I sound like I'm as intelligent as pocket lint? I've never had trouble talking to a...a girl before. Of course, I was never attracted to one before, either. “I'm Chris.”

  Instead of looking at me like I’m an idiot, or pocket lint, or idiotic pocket lint, she extends that graceful hand capped with short shell-pink nails, and takes my hand.

  It’s even worse than at the church. Blood pounds in my ears, a current runs from fingers through arm, into belly, out through the top of my head.

  She lets go, but I’m still reeling.

  Andi, bless her, saves me from abject embarrassment. “Uh, so, I'd really like to welcome you to Bentham. You know, officially, like as one of the young people.” I hear words, but it’s like the touch of this girl’s hand knocked out my ability to understand language. “Anyway, would you like to have coffee with me? With us? Just as a get-acquainted kind of thing?”

  Do I just imagine that Carmen’s blue eyes show the same intoxicated confusion I feel? “I think that'd be great,” she says softly. “I haven't met too many young people here, actually. Lainie keeps me kind of busy with Perp League stuff, and then I've got my test to study for. I'm taking my college boards next month.”

  “In November?” Andi asks. The lovely feeling is zapped out of existence by the mere mention of college. “Isn't that kind of early?”

  “Yeah,” Carmen answered shyly. “But I want to get to university early. I'm really done with high school, you know, the whole high school attitude. They're so immature, and stupid to people who are...different.”

  Is this a message? Does she feel it too? I can’t stop staring.

  Andi links arms with Carmen and starts to walk toward the door. “Well, we're pretty mature out here. You grow up early when you have to...milk cows and stuff.”

  “Do you milk cows?” Carmen asks.

  “No, not really. But that's what people think about Ohio.” The girls laugh as they walk, and I follow, watching the curtain of Carmen’s dark silk-raven hair, and the autumn bounce of Andrea's curls.

  I should run away, fast, in the opposite direction. I should forget I ever met her. But it’s like watching a car accident—even if you know it’s awful, even if you know someone might be dead in the wreckage, you can’t help but slow down to watch.

  Except this time, I’m in the car.

  Chapter 3

  She blows into her cappuccino and gets a flick of white foam on the end of her nose. It’s the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.

  “Let me get that for you,” I say, wiping it with the end of my napkin.

  “Thanks,” Carmen says, laughing at herself. “God, I am the most graceless person on the face of the earth.”

  “Oh, you've never seen Chris in action,” Andi says. I glare at her. “Uh, sorry.”

  Carmen turns to me. “So, Chris, are you interested in being part of the Perpendicular League?” She sips her cappuccino, carefully avoiding the mischievous foam.

  “Uh...well, I don't exactly know. I'm pretty busy with school and stuff, but I was...we were, Andi and I...interested in what the Perp League actually does. I guess you'd be the person to ask, huh?”

  Carmen smiles and sets the oversized blue mug on the cafe table. “Sure. I can tell you anything you want to know. I've been raised in it. Raised by it, I guess you could say.”

  Andi shoots me a guarded glance, then turns to Carmen. “What do you mean, raised by it?”

  Carmen sighs, then checks over her shoulder as if she were scouting for spies. She studies me for a moment, and then moves in closer, and says confidentially, “It's all bullshit.”

  I am, unfortunately, taking a sip of my latté, and spew it in a geyser worthy of a silent-film spit take. “What did you say?” I ask, choking.

  Amused, Carmen grins even larger, satisfied at my reaction. “I said, it's all bullshit. The Perp League is just an excuse for people to hate other people. What good does it do?”

  Andi's face registers the same amazement that I feel. “But...your mother is the head of the national group. What, you just sort of go along for the ride?”

  Carmen's intense blue eyes go stormy for a minute, and her lips tighten. I can see what it’d be like to have her mad at you. “No, I don't go along for the ride,” she answers curtly. “I don't have much of a choice right now. Once I'm eighteen, though, I'll be telling everybody what I really think of it.”

  I clear my throat. “So, why do you think it's...uh...”

  “Bullshit?” I can’t help but laugh even though I’ve never heard anybody talk that way about anything related to the Anglicant Church. Andi doesn’t look all that shocked. “As I said, it's a bunch of people hating another bunch of people for no good reason.”

  “What about the church?” I hear myself parroting my dad. “What about the Bible?”

  “What about it?” Carmen leans closer, and the smell of her hair and perfume makes me dizzy. “Do you know what it really means, or just what they've told you it means?”

  “What's the difference?” I ask.

  She stares down into her coffee cup. “I've known since I was ten that I was…different. Imagine how it was living in a place where what I am, what I can't help being, is nothing more than somebody's idea of an abomination against God.” Her smile is angry, cracked. “I knew that if they knew, they wouldn't love me anymore.”

  Andi and I are silent, searching the table full o
f empty sugar packets for answers.

  “I know it's hard to accept,” Carmen says. “I hope I haven't misjudged you. If you tell anyone, I'll deny it.”

  Andi touches her hand. “It’s ok. So you’re a...”

  “Do I like guys?” She grins, then gives me a smoldering stare that makes it hard to sit still. “Yeah. I do. Some guys.” She looks down at her coffee. “Probably why my mom wants to get me married as soon as possible,” she mutters.

  “I think my father's trying to arrange a marriage for me with Jim McFarland,” I say.

  She shakes her head and puts her mug down. “You can’t marry him,” she says quietly.

  “I don’t know if I’ll have much of a choice—”

  “No, I'm serious.” Carmen touches my hand, which sends a thrill of pleasure up my arm and into my chest. “He's really evil. We always have a choice. Please promise me that no matter what, you won't marry him.”

  “Well, my dad is the one—”

  “Then let your dad marry him.” Carmen sips the last of her coffee and wipes her cherry lips with a black napkin. “Well, I’ve got to get back to the Goldman’s and work on my Perp League assignments. I can't even tell you how fulfilling it is, working on projects that will make sure people like me are put in their place.”

  “Is that really so bad?” I blurt suddenly. “What's so bad about the Perp League? I mean, if they're just exercising their opinions, what's the big deal? People don't have to do what they say, do they?”

  Carmen stares in disbelief. “You're not kidding, are you?” she asks gently.

  Andi shakes her head. “It's true. They're kind of…fanatic, right, but just like a community service organization. They get scholarships for people, right? I mean, what else do they do? Host carnivals and blood drives and stuff? How evil is that?”

  Carmen sighs. “You guys...you just don't know. I'm not surprised. Nobody talks about it, really.”

  “Talks about what?”

  She purses her lips, then leans forward so her face is closer to ours. “Have you ever met anyone else who's Perpendicular?”

  Andi thinks for a moment, then answers, “No.”

  “Have you ever wondered why you haven't?”

  I answer. “Well, I just figured there weren't very many of them. I mean, they are a really slim minority. What, is it one in every one thousand people or something like that?”

  “It's one in one hundred.” Carmen crosses her arms across her chest. “One in one hundred. And the reason you never see any is because as soon as the League or the Church finds out, they're gone. They disappear. Nobody hears from them again.”

  Andi stares at her, then laughs. “Oh, c'mon. Are you trying to say that the Church actually kills them? Where are they, then? Do they just dump 'em in a swamp or something? How could that many people just cease to exist?”

  “They do it,” Carmen says quietly. “Let me ask you this: What do you think happens to someone who is a Perp? What do they tell you happens?”

  I look at her, bewildered. “Well, legally, they have two options. They can go through counseling, then come back to their home community, or they can relocate.”

  Carmen sighs impatiently. “Okay. So what does that mean, 'counseling'? They talk to them until they're cured and become Parallel? What?”

  Andi frowns. “Well, yeah...isn't that what happens?”

  I’m watching Carmen, trying to decide if she’s really a making this up, or if she’s somehow telling us some horrible truth. “What do they do with them?”

  Carmen glances over her shoulder again. “Here's what really happens, and I know because I saw it happen. Once they’re sure about you, they give you a choice. You can be reconditioned, like a broken piece of machinery, and what that means is that they... neutralize you.” A shadow of utter distaste crosses her face.

  “Well, that's no big deal,” I say, too loudly. “Neutralizing just means that they retrain you to be attracted to your own gender, like it's supposed to be, right? That's not anything sinister.”

  “How do you think they do that?” Carmen's voice breaks. “They neutralize you. It's like what they do with a dog or a cat that they want to keep from reproducing. They just take away your gender, your sexuality, so you don't have any impulses. At all.” Tears form in the corners of her eyes, and she dabs angrily at them with a napkin.

  A cold chill seeps down my spine. I don’t want to believe her, but somehow I know what she says is true. “Did they do that to someone you know?”

  She nods.

  “What happened?” Andi asks.

  Carmen shakes her head. “I don't want to talk about it. Just, I do know that it happens.”

  Almost as if she’s afraid to bring it up, Andi asks, “So, what's the relocation?”

  Carmen sniffs, then answers. “They send them away. To a work camp, usually in some obscure, easily hidden location.”

  “A work camp?” I ask. “That can't be right. How could they just send people somewhere they don't want to go?”

  “Read the Constitution. Fourth amendment. ‘No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, except in cases that present a public danger; Perpendicular cases are subject to immediate detainment without representation due to the extreme threat to national security and the social structure of our Nation’. The government is controlled by the Church – no matter what they say, there’s no equality of Church and State. It’s all run by what God has planned. And when the Church decides you’re dangerous, they can make you disappear, because there’s no one to stop them.”

  Something inside me wells up, panicking. I can’t believe her. I just can’t.

  Andi snorts. “You sound like one of those left-wing liberal conspiracy theory nuts. With the signs and the tents and the stinky sweaters.” She shakes her head. “Don’t you trust anybody?”

  “I trust people I know.” Her eyes blaze at me. “I don’t really know either of you. I’m going on instinct. And if you tell anyone about our conversation, I can make it bad for you. I have connections.”

  The fear sits in my stomach, eating at me. “But…they can’t just take people away for no reason.”

  “Don't you get it?” Carmen hisses, eyes blazing. “They’re cases. They aren't people anymore. They have no rights. They're just an inconvenient aberration. They mess up the gene pool. They drag everybody down. They're not human.”

  They're not human. The words hit me with the force of a silent bullet. The idea, the feeling, that I’d never quite fit into this world suddenly comes clear, shifts into razor focus. In a heartbeat I revisit all the times in the past when I had known I was different, when kids on the playground had pushed me against other boys and I felt nothing, when I’d seen ads in magazines of fresh-faced girls and focused on them a bit too intently, when I’d had dreams of feminine lips and eyes and soft curtains of hair brushing my cheek.

  “I'm Perpendicular,” I whisper, almost involuntarily.

  Carmen's thin, brown hand covers mine, and she smiles shyly. “I had a feeling you were.”

  I stare into her blue eyes, forgetting that Andi’s sitting there. “But what you said about those camps and all that. That can’t be true. I mean, my father is involved in this. He’s an ass, but he’s not evil. He’d never condone hurting people.”

  “I know it sounds crazy, like some wild conspiracy theory.” Carmen stirs her coffee and gazes into the cup. “If I hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t believe it either. And your father…he knows all about it.”

  Andi rolls her eyes. “Come on. You expect us to believe that people we’ve grown up with, people we’ve known all our lives, are really monsters who dispose of people who are different?”

  Carmen is silent. She carefully lays the spoon beside the cup. “I don’t think we should see each other while I’m here. I’ve said way too much.”

  “How long are you here?”

  “Just till winter break.” Her lip trembles slightly. “I needed to get away. This w
as the only way I could do it. As soon as I’m eighteen, I’m gone. I don’t know how, but I’m going to get away.”

  I feel sick. The thought of losing her now that I’ve finally figured out what’s going on terrifies me, but the thought of being with her…that’s almost as bad. But this isn’t who I am. It isn’t who I’m supposed to be. “What do we do?” I ask helplessly.

  Carmen licks her lips. “I hadn’t counted on…anything like this. I can’t get involved with anyone.” But the way she looks at me…I don’t think she really means it. Or she wishes it were true, but it’s not.

  Carmen grabs her purse and touches my hand, which sends a bolt of blue lightning directly to my solar plexus. Her eyes are determined and hard. “I wish things were different. I’m sorry. Be careful.” I watch her walk away and realize, with a wave of intense sadness, that I can’t see her again.

  I can’t.

  “Chris?” Andi waves a hand in front of my face. “You’re staring at the door. Kind of looks a little weird.”

  I focus on her. “Sorry.”

  She leans forward, eyes squinted in concern. “What are you going to do now?”

  I stare into the remains of my coffee drink. “Nothing.”

  “Nothing? What do you mean?” She snaps her fingers near my ear. “You still there?”

  “Andi, there’s nothing I can do. I can’t…be…that.”

  “But you are.”

  “No. I won’t be. I’ll choose not to be.”

  She leans back in her chair and folds her arms across her chest. “You’re just going to pretend this never happened?”

  “Nothing happened.”

  My soul is screaming at me. A small, angry voice inside pounds on invisible walls as it sinks deeper into a windowless room. Remember the feeling! It screams. Remember how alive you felt! But I push it down, harder, further, lock it up, cement over it.

  “Chris. You can’t just pretend—”

  “I gotta go.” I pick up my cup, drain it, and put it in a blue plastic bin near the door. “See you later.”