None of the Above (9 page)

A pair of arms enveloped me. I knelt on the side of the road like a supplicant, staring at the wheels of a Ford SUV. I could still feel the sting of its love tap on my right leg.

“. . . you okay?” I turned around and stared blankly at Darren Kowalski. He released me right away, but before he did he held his hands against my shoulders for a second as if afraid that I would topple over once he let go. We were close enough that I could see the individual strands of his curly hair flapping in the wind.

I nodded wordlessly. What had I almost done?

The owner of the SUV, a stocky middle-aged woman, slammed her door and came huffing over. She looked both scared and pissed.

“What the hell were you thinking? Didn't you see me coming?”

I stared down at my gloveless hands, pockmarked with gravel. “I must have spaced out or something.” I rubbed the gravel off and stood up. “It's so cold. . . . I must have forgotten to look both ways.”

The woman eyed me. “As long as you're all right. I suppose you want my insurance information?” she asked hesitantly.

“No, that's okay, I'm fine.” I showed her that I could walk around fine. The woman looked relieved, but I felt a hand on my shoulder.

“Are you sure?” Darren whispered into my ear. “Why don't you get the information just in case something comes up. Things never hurt right away.”

“No.” I shook my head and leaned away from him. “You can go,” I told the SUV woman. “Please. I'm sorry to have bothered you.”

The woman started to say something, but another gust of wind blew and she hunkered back to her car and drove off. For a while I just toed the pebbles on the ground as the wind whipped my hair.

“You heading back?” Darren asked after I didn't move. His voice was full of unanswered questions that I was grateful he didn't ask. Behind him, a cluster of his friends from the AP/Honors track were huddled, shooting occasional looks at me.

I shook my head as if waking from a dream, then nodded. It was either that, or run home again. But I was tired of running. “Just give me a minute to catch my breath.”

“Hey, guys,” Darren shouted to his friends. “You can go without me.” They shuffled away. So I walked with Darren. We crossed the highway in silence—I was still in shock—but as we cut through the back alley of a gas station, he spoke.

“Do you ever just wish that you could find the guy who coined the phrase ‘Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me' and smash his face in?”

I turned to stare at him.

“You know. Some words are just . . . they trigger actual physical pain. Like the word
faggot
.”

I winced.

“See?” Darren said matter-of-factly. “You look like someone just sucker-punched you. Other words don't do that. I mean, the word
gay
is totally okay, even if it does sound kind of dippy sometimes.
Queer
sounds kind of cute, and
lesbian
is almost, like, classy sounding.”

When I didn't say anything, Darren went on. “After my dad came out, I totally used to flinch whenever I heard the word
gay
. Even when it wasn't actually used to mean ‘homosexual.' Like, I remember watching the movie
Camelot
with my sister when she was in her King Arthur phase. There's this song in it called ‘The Lusty Month of May,' and one of the parts is something like ‘It's wild! It's gay!' and I remember wanting to curl up and die.

“Once in a while some jerk-off on the bus would call me
a faggot, or say I was gay because my dad was, and my mom would tell me, ‘Don't let other people's labels define you,' and make me a strawberry shortcake or something. But I'll be honest, it never helped.”

As we neared the school, I asked, “What did?”

“Well, it helped that most people were cool with it. I mean, we're in the twenty-first century, and in a lot of places, you're more likely to be ostracized if you're homophobic than if you're gay.”

But not all
, I thought.

“The biggest thing that made me get over it, once I stopped hating my dad,” Darren continued, “was that I realized what an insult it was to my father to think that my life had ended just because people thought I was gay.” Another gust of wind blew, and Darren hunched his shoulders against the cold. “You never knew my dad, but he was a kick-ass father. He was the kind of dad who loved baseball and taught you how to play catch when you were in kindergarten, but didn't pressure you when you said you wanted to quit in fourth grade after batting 0.177 and almost falling asleep in center field during the last game of the season.”

“I think I remember him,” I said. “He always used to come to our elementary school concerts. A big guy, right?”

“Yeah, he's like six foot four, two hundred twenty. He always blamed my mom's cooking for the last forty pounds.”

“Do you see him often?”

“Not as much, since he moved down to the city. Three or four times a year.”

“It must have sucked when he left.”

“Like, epic levels of suck,” Darren said. I grinned despite myself. His smile back was shy, and I had a pang of regret that we had stopped hanging out after our parents broke up.

“I'm sorry,” I said.

Darren shrugged. “Time heals all wounds, and all that crap. So, how about you? Are
you
going to be all right?” He turned toward me, and I couldn't figure out if he was asking about my AIS, or almost getting run over by a car.

I chose to assume it was the latter. “I'm okay. It was just a little tap. I can't believe I was so stupid. I must've missed that class in kindergarten when they taught us to look both ways when we crossed the street.”

“Yeah, well.” He brushed his hair out of his eyes and looked down at me with an expression I couldn't read. “You gotta take care of yourself, okay?”

“Okay.”

Darren held my gaze for one more second, and loped off to his class.

As I walked to American History, I decided that I hadn't actually tried to kill myself. At least, not really. Maybe for the teeniest fraction of a second, I'd kind of thought that it would be easier if I could just go to sleep and never wake up, but I
wasn't sure if that counted.

What hadn't been done, hadn't been done. And it wouldn't ever be. I could never do that to my dad, and I had to remember that no matter how dark things seemed, now it would get better. It had to.

I must've looked half frozen when I got to American History, because Jessica Riley looked at me funny when I sat down next to her. When I caught her staring at me, she jerked her head down quickly to look at her spiral notebook, and I thought that was the end of that. But a minute later, before class had begun, she turned to me and asked, “Do you, um, know when we're supposed to do the yearbook photos? For Homecoming? And are we supposed to wear our dresses?”

I blinked. I had forgotten that the Homecoming Court had a special spread in the yearbook. It seemed strange that they wouldn't cancel it this year; I mean, would Sam really want to have his picture taken with me?

“I think they do it in the spring, together with prom pictures, but maybe you should ask Faith. She's always on top of those things.” I made an effort to make my voice sound normal.

Jessica nodded, and took a closer look at my eyes. “Are you okay? You look like you might be catching a cold or something.”

It would actually be nice to be sick and have an excuse to stay home from school.

We were on a unit on women's suffrage, and I couldn't concentrate on my notes. I felt queasy the whole class. It wasn't until the middle of class, when Mr. Morris read an Elizabeth Cady Stanton quote out loud, that I realized what bothered me.

“‘It would be ridiculous to talk of male and female atmospheres, male and female springs or rains, male and female sunshine . . . how much more ridiculous is it in relation to mind, to soul, to thought . . . to talk of . . . male and female schools.'”

I couldn't stand the word
female
. It gave me PTSD or something. When I heard the word, a jolt of electricity went down the back of my neck and turned into a ball of stress in my stomach. It was like, when Mr. Morris used the word, he wasn't just saying “female.” He was saying “not Kristin Lattimer.”

Finally, I couldn't stand it anymore and got up for a bathroom pass. As I walked out, someone stage-whispered, “Is that for the girls' bathroom or the boys'?”

Their laughter rang in my ears as I hurried to the bathroom. I rushed into the first open stall, which ended up being the same one where I had tried to scratch off Vee's name what seemed like years ago. I stared at the door, wondering how long it would take for my name to make it up there.

A toilet flushed in the stall to my right, and as the person went to wash her hands someone else walked in.

“So, what's up with the fishnets, Jenny?” I recognized the voice of Marissa Sweeney, one of the junior cheerleaders.

“I dunno,” said Jenny coyly. “Maybe I'm just swimming around ready to bump into some newly available fish in the sea.”

Marissa laughed. “OMG, are you talking about Wilmington?”

I felt like throwing up.

“Maybe, maybe not,” said Jenny. “My mom always said you gotta get the hot ones when they're on the rebound.”

“Wait, doesn't doing it with a tranny make him gay?”

Jenny thought for a minute. “No, I think it means he might be bi. But with a butt like that, who cares?” They laughed, and changed the subject to some other guys they had their eyes on, but at that point a buzzing in my ears overwhelmed me and I curled my knees up against my chin to stop the crushing feeling in my chest.

It took forever for the bathroom to clear out, so I stumbled back to my seat in history just before class ended. I dawdled while packing my book bag, and didn't get up to leave until everyone else had left. I put in my earbuds, the better to drown out the whispers, and slipped out.

As soon as the bell rang in study hall, I flashed my pass and walked the empty corridors to Ms. Diaz's office. I hadn't been there in ages. Because I'd been recruited, I'd gone through the whole college deal early, and Coach Auerbach had guided me through most of the process.

Ms. Diaz greeted me like an old friend. I remembered how we'd bonded my sophomore year because she'd been a discus
thrower in college. She was pushing fifty now, and maybe a little thick around the waist, but you could still see the strength in her arms. It made me feel strangely comfortable.

“Kristin, so good to see you again. Sit down, make yourself at home.”

Her office had two seats—a fluffy armchair set off to the side of her desk, and a wooden captain's chair directly across from her. I choose the wood, and rubbed my fingers against the smooth grain for a few seconds before looking up at Ms. Diaz.

She leaned in just the slightest bit. “I heard you had a bit of a rough morning.”

I nodded, cringing at the understatement.

“Do you want to talk about what happened?”

I shook my head, still fingering the arm of my chair.

“I respect that,” Ms. Diaz said, with the tiniest of sighs. “But I wanted to bring you in to remind you that if you ever need a safe place to talk things out, I'm here. Everything you say in this room is completely confidential. The more I know about the situation, the more I can help.”

I looked up. My words came out slowly, driven by morbid curiosity more than anything else. “My situation. What
do
you know about it?”

Ms. Diaz took a deep breath. “Well, I gather that there is a medical issue such that there's a question about your gender.”

Close enough. I nodded.

“I can understand how things must be very confusing right now,” she went on. “And truly upsetting, too, the way your classmates have reacted. Kristin, it breaks my heart to see you the target of such cruelty.”

Ms. Diaz's face blurred as the tears welled up in my eyes.

“There are a lot of things we can do to help. Regular counseling sessions, peer education. First of all, though, I want to make sure you have a good support system. Are there any other students you feel comfortable talking with?”

“Yeah,” I sniffled. “Faith Wu.”

“She's a sweetheart, isn't she?” She handed me a tissue. “How about adults? Are you okay with my calling your father to—”

“No!” I almost leaped out of my chair. Ms. Diaz gave a little start. “Please leave my dad out of this. He has enough to worry about. Please, please don't make him upset.”

“Of course not, Kristin,” Ms. Diaz said soothingly. “You're eighteen. We don't have to involve your father if you don't want to. But would you mind giving me permission to speak with your doctors so I can get more information on your diagnosis in order to . . . educate our faculty and staff at least?”

I agreed—I'd do anything as long as they didn't call my dad—and wrote down Dr. Cheng's information.

“Just, please . . . no pictures of naked girls with bars over their eyes.” I thought of the pictures of “AIS physiology” on Wikipedia.

“Come again?” Ms. Diaz asked.

“Never mind,” I said.

When I got home, I called Mohawk Valley Urology Associates. It took three minutes of navigating an automated telephone line, and another twenty minutes waiting for her to call me back, but I finally got hold of Dr. Cheng.

“Hello, Kristin,” she said. She sounded harried. “My nurse said you have a problem?”

I almost laughed out loud, almost told her that yes, I had a problem: I had fucking testicles instead of ovaries, and when was she going to do something about it?

But instead, that politeness kicked in again, and I managed to ask a question that no teenage girl should ever have to ask, in a measured tone that would've made my mother proud.