Out of Blue Comes Green, page 12
She deflates. It happens so suddenly that I question whether she was just smiling. The quiet between us makes her grin. “That was a long time ago.”
Say something. Ask her why. Tell her a funny part from the play.
But I wait too long, the lights dim, curtain opens, and there’s Viola’s supposedly dead twin brother Sebastian, alive and well, thinking Viola instead is the one who is deceased.
At the end of the scene, Madi covers her face. Sebastian agrees to marry Olivia, which makes her overjoyed because Olivia thinks he’s Cesario/Viola.
I grab hold of her hand, her chilled fingers closing around mine. She laughs, knowing she shouldn’t be tense. It’s a comedy after all. For the rest of Act Four, she clutches my hand against her thigh, squeezing from time to time. Stage lights illuminate her lips, her cheeks. Beautiful.
She releases her grip at the top of Act Five, giving me the sweetest smile. Everything is about to explode in the storyline. All the misunderstandings and doppelgängers will be revealed. As the confusion is unraveling, Viola, still dressed as a man, confesses that she loves Orsino “more than I love these eyes, more than my life.”
Orsino, of course, doesn’t understand. My chest tightens. Viola’s words are heartbreaking. To love someone who doesn’t understand who you truly are is heartbreaking.
Madi lets out a tiny gasp. A tear slides down her cheek. Do I dare take her hand again?
I do.
This time she covers my fingers with her other hand as well. She’s sad for Viola.
Gradually things on stage work out. Sebastian and Olivia, Orsino and Viola all live happily ever after. It’s all fine; it all ties together. My English teacher this year said that fiction makes sense out of life. In fiction things have to fall in line, events cause other events. Of course, Viola can dress up like a man and still end up with the man she loves at the end. It’s fiction.
When the actors come on stage for their bows, Madi lets go of my hand to clap. Pausing for a moment to wipe away a few tears, Madi gives me a nervous laugh, then cheers some more.
Once the applause dies down and the mandatory Minnesota standing ovation is over, I shake my head. “Wow.”
“I know.”
Not sure what she knows, what she thinks my “wow” was about, but I don’t know how to ask her. Instead, I say, “I can’t believe Shakespeare got all of that to work out in only a few hours.”
Laughing, Madi covers her mouth, but only a moment later, her laughter changes to sobs.
“What is it?” I put a hand on her shoulder without questioning whether I should.
She waves a hand at me. “Nothing, nothing.”
“You can talk to me.” My other hand goes to her other shoulder.
Sharp intake of breath, her eyes meet mine. “Not here.”
Chapter 16
WITH EVERYTHING THAT’S HAPPENED IN the past few hours—from dinner to the play to the men’s room to Madi holding my hand—I can hardly remember where I parked. But since the weather is kind this evening, I don’t mind walking around a little. It’s cold, sure, but it’s above zero at least, and no wind.
When the crowd from the play has separated off into little bunches and couples, Madi and I are mostly alone. She occasionally wipes her eyes but doesn’t speak.
I should say something. Let her know I’m still here. After making several false starts, I finally say, “I’m glad we went to this.”
A smile. That’s all.
“I mean, I forgot how much I like plays.”
She pulls on mismatched mittens and watches the ground where she steps.
Keep it going. She’ll say something if you keep it going. “The story was a little confusing …” I trail off.
She kicks limp snow with her next step. Still quiet.
Until we’re in the car and the heat is on, the conversation is paused. But her tears come again, and I’m thankful only because I want to know what hurts her so much. “What is it?”
“I feel so stupid, crying like this.” Fingers wipe her eyes once the mittens are off. A stray bit of yarn dangles from one.
“You shouldn’t.”
She snorts through her tears. “I’ve known you for like two days, and we’re supposed to be having a good time.”
“I’ll have you know that we’ve known each other for an entire week now.”
Madi snorts again. She evaluates me, sizing up my trustworthiness. “Uh … take the next right.”
Not what I was expecting, but okay. I wait for her to say something more.
She gives me more directions to her house.
As I follow her suggested turns, the neighborhood grows dirtier, more crowded, houses get smaller, more rundown. While the houses degrade, Madi’s tone grows cynical. “Pull over here. Don’t pull in the driveway.”
The “driveway” is only gravel leading to a box-like house. I must be staring at the copious imperfections for too long because she finally says, “It’s not much.”
I force my gaze away from the house and onto her, which is much more pleasing anyway. The streetlight shows me the red around her eyes. She’s not done crying. But I don’t know if she wants me to ask her questions or just listen or wait for her to be ready or walk her to the door or simply say goodbye.
“I can’t believe we’re living here.” She fiddles with the string of yarn on her mitten. She winds the stray yarn around her finger, pulling another inch free. “The play just reminded me—” The tautness of the yarn turns her finger red. “My brother and I used to be so close. He kept everything sane with us. With all of us.” She wipes her cheek.
I think about my brother Sam. I wouldn’t say he kept my family sane, but he certainly would make a difference if he was around all the time. “What happened with your brother?”
“He graduated and moved out. Now it’s just me.”
In spite of her seriousness, I smile. That’s exactly how it is. With Sam gone, there’s only me. To reason with my parents. To try to keep them rational. To state a younger point of view. I’m outnumbered now. “I know what you mean. My brother left for college two years ago.”
Her shoulders relax. “So you get it.” She unwinds and rewinds the yarn around her finger. “Without Charlie around, it’s like my parents don’t have anything to talk about anymore. And my dad feels so ashamed about his job.” She winds the yarn more quickly.
“That’s—” Something I haven’t had to think about. Guess I’m lucky in that way. “That must be difficult.”
“Yeah. My mom tries. After she gets home, she tries to talk to him about her day.” The hole in her mitten has grown. “He thinks she’s rubbing it in, saying he’s worthless because he doesn’t work.”
“Why would he think that?”
She’s quiet, enlarging the mitten’s hole even more. “He buys into all that men-have-to-be-the-breadwinners crap from the fifties or the eighties or whatever. He thinks Mom shouldn’t have to work.”
My mom would never let that thought enter Dad’s mind.
“Stupid patriarchal bullshit.” Realizing she’s nearly ruined her mitten, she winds up the strand of yarn and shoves it inside the hole.
“Yeah.”
“I can’t think of anyone I know other than my dad who thinks like that. Like men have to be a certain way. And women a certain other way. Instead of being who we are.”
But I am a certain way. Does that mean I shouldn’t tell her I’m trans? That she’d think it was stupid that I care about which gender I am?
She can’t mean that.
She sighs deeply and sits up straighter in her seat. “I’m all right. I’m better now.” She reaches for my hand like it’s the most natural thing for her to do, and though her fingers are cold, I don’t mind even a little.
“Talk to me,” she says. “Tell me more about what you meant before about your mom.”
What do I say? She doesn’t accept me as male? I came out to her two years ago, and she still won’t recognize the real me?
“She won’t let me be myself.” It’s not enough, so I keep going. “She’s always trying to change what I do, what I wear.”
“What’s wrong with what you wear?” This, unfortunately, makes her look over my body more closely to see if she’s missed something incriminating.
Clearly, I can’t say my clothes aren’t feminine enough, but nothing besides the truth comes to me. “She doesn’t like anything about me. Not my grades or my friends. She even got ticked off when I stopped playing basketball.” I shouldn’t have said that. I’m not telling her why I stopped playing. I’m not.
“That’s your choice, though.”
“That’s what I thought.” For a moment she’s only a few inches from me, and her eyes are a brilliant blue, and her lips are a little wet, and I imagine that it would be all right for me to kiss her, for me to take the next step.
But I can’t do that. I don’t know how she’d feel that I’m not technically a boy. I don’t know what she’d do.
“She’s just so stuck in—”
“In what?”
“Expectations, you know. Being like everyone else.”
She seems to be checking out my clothes again, then my face, my body. I shift so my jacket falls differently across my chest, though I doubt she can see anything in this light or with my binder so tight. I smile. “Maybe she wants me to be more like Sam.” In every way but being male, that is.
I gaze past her at the little, rundown house. It’s hard to believe that her parents are both inside, likely asleep. It doesn’t seem like a place where real people live. Once I’ve thought that, though, I feel like an ass. Madi lives there. She’s real.
Then I wonder if her parents are both inside, not sleeping but waiting up for her. I make a point of staring at the time on the dashboard. She has to have a curfew, right? “Oh, man, I didn’t realize it was 1 a.m.”
She’s uninterested in the time, but after a moment she says, “I suppose I should go.”
I feel like she’s waiting for me to protest, and I want to, but I also don’t. If we keep talking so honestly, I’m likely to say more than I should, tell her I’m trans, and I’m not sure she’s ready to hear that. I was prepared to tell her earlier tonight, but now, I don’t really want to anymore.
She’s watching me as if she thinks I’m going to kiss her goodnight, like this was a real date. I stay still. Inching toward me, Madi puts a hand on my hand. When she tilts her head, I turn away. But that doesn’t stop her from kissing my cheek and pretending that’s what she’d intended all along. “I had a really nice time,” she says.
My cheek pulsates with the sensation of her soft, wet lips. I keep my body turned away from her, so I don’t take this further. “Maybe we could do the community theater play together too.”
Her smile is answer enough.
Chapter 17
I’M STILL THINKING OF HER smile at school. With my cleanly laundered gym clothes in my hands, I stand outside the girls’ locker room, not wanting to go in. I’ve been avoiding the girls’ gym class changes by coming super early in the morning, but today, I’m not as early as I want to be. Likely I’ll be partially clad, and the group of girls will arrive.
Even if I’m in the adjacent bathroom stall, I’ll still have to pass them on my way out. They’ll still get the opportunity to harass me.
Down the hall a door opens. Though I flinch, I don’t know which way to turn. Do I go into the locker room or turn around like I’m not going in?
Coach Wendell emerges from the open door.
Go in the locker room, I tell myself. But my feet don’t move.
“Good morning,” Coach says as he approaches.
I echo his greeting.
He slows and stops beside me, looking at the locker room door in front of me. Why can’t I just go inside?
“Do you have a second?” he says. He gestures for me to follow him back to his office. He opens the door, staying in the hallway. “I wanted to ask you something.”
This can’t be good. Whatever a football coach has to say to me is not going to be good.
“If you feel like it. It’s completely up to you. I wanted to tell you that there’s no one in my office before weightlifting. It’s completely empty.”
I check his mouth for a smirk. I check his eyes for mischief. Is he asking if I want to use his office to change for class?
He rubs the back of his neck. “My brother’s kid has been having a hard time. He’s in middle school, and you know how kids can be.”
I nearly smile, but I don’t really follow.
“She,” he says too loudly. “Sorry. I talk with her a bunch, and I’m not used to switching my pronouns yet.”
Every nerve on my body awakens. He has a transgender niece? Is that what he’s telling me?
He smiles. “She’s always been my favorite. Great kid. Athletic. Really good at tennis.”
I swallow.
Awkwardly, he steps just inside the office and pulls on the inside of the door. “There’s this little hook here. It’ll hold the door closed so no one will bother you.”
“Are you sure?”
His smile grows. “I can’t imagine you like changing in there with the girls.”
Something in my throat silences my Thank you.
He reaches in his pocket, pulling out a lanyard with a key. “I’m not supposed to let students—” He places the key in my hand and puts a single finger to his lips. He steps by me but pauses. “You ought to hold on to that for the rest of the year.”
Briefly he touches my shoulder. Then he’s gone.
I step inside, close the door, and secure the hook. Before I remove a single piece of clothing, I check out the room. Simple. Harmless. Normal seeming. There’s a desk and a file cabinet, a variety of athletic equipment, a chair. I fold my shirt and jeans and leave them on the chair. Slip on my gym clothes and lock the door behind me.
Back in the hall, JT nearly runs into me, coming around a corner, and instead of sneering or swearing or insulting, he stares. If it was weeks ago at the talent show, I’d get it. The surprise in his eyes seeing me as a boy for the first time would make sense. But the way he looks at me now, it’s like he doesn’t recognize me. When I know he does.
Even though I’m as taken aback as he is, I don’t linger. If he wants to make up for this missed harassment opportunity, he has the whole class hour. I don’t have to give him time now.
But he’s still confused, even among the barbells and weights. I station myself at the losers’ free weights, curling twenty-five-pound dumbbells one arm at a time. While I don’t keep a constant eye on him, I sneakily check on his location from time to time. Each time he’s watching. Something’s brewing in his little brain.
Danny watches him too. “Is he up to something?”
“Don’t know.”
Danny chuckles to himself. “Looks like he wants to come up with a plan, but the thoughts just aren’t there.”
I laugh too.
When Danny changes exercises, he tells me about a band. “They play industrial and some harder stuff, but also a bit of low-core punk. They’re called The B Batteries.”
I nod along as he describes them. Dumb name. But then I consider how there are A batteries, C batteries, D batteries. There aren’t any B batteries. Maybe it’s a clever name.
“They’re playing at my uncle’s pub. I thought we could check them out on Friday.”
Danny and I seem to like some of the same music, and he’s so easy to be around. Not to mention the most important thing: he accepts me. When I haven’t responded for a while, Danny says, “They go on about eight. Probably play a two-hour set.”
“Sure, yeah. Let’s go.”
I relax into my workout, ruminating over what kind of people name themselves The B Batteries. It’s now when I’ve let down my guard that JT appears at my bench, uncomfortably behind me as I’m bent over to keep my form. I sense him there before I can spot him with a careful glance. I’m torn between finishing my set and whirling around to clock him in the head with the dumbbell.
“What are you going for, Kinkade?” he says. He slinks onto the bench. Too close. The hairs on my arm just touch the hairs on his.
Not sure what he means, and even if I was, I don’t think I’d answer.
“If you want bulk, you need to increase your weight. Fewer reps, heavier lift.” He scrubs his hand against his blond flattop, then lays his palm against Danny’s chest. “Got that? If you want to bulk up—”
Danny steps back so JT’s hand drops.
I’m coming up on fifteen reps with this weight mostly because if I stop, I have to change sides, and that would mean facing JT for my next set. With the sixteenth lift, I let out an accidental grunt.
He laughs. “If you want definition, by all means keep doing what you’re doing. I just don’t know what you’re working on defining. I mean …” He trails off like we all can tell I have no muscles to speak of.
“Screw you,” Danny says.
I straighten up, bringing the weight close to my body. He’s so tall that even when he’s seated and I’m standing, he’s nearly as tall as I am. I stand a little straighter.
Without warning, he seizes the dumbbell from my hand and trades it in for one that’s ten pounds heavier. “Try this one.”
I accept it from him, though I worry it’s somehow laced with smallpox.
“Go on,” he says.
Moving down the bench, I position myself for a tricep extension, but I keep him in my sights. Thirty-five pounds is more than I’ve done on triceps. As I draw the dumbbell up, fire spreads from my elbow through my whole arm. One. I force myself to lower it slowly. Then back up. Two.
“That one’s too light.” He launches up from the bench and when I bring my arm back, he switches a forty pounder for my thirty-five pounder.
My arm falls back down, unable to compensate for the difference. I let the weight drop.
“Oops,” he laughs. “Found your limit already.”
Danny steps up, saying, “You’re such an ass—”
But I don’t hear the rest. I throw myself at JT, both hands out to force him off the bench, but he barely moves. He grabs my wrists, pulls me toward him until my ear is by his mouth.
