Liar (39 page)

I'm relieved. I don't want to meet new people. I am nervous and wound up enough as it is.

“Would you like some tea?” Yayeko asks, after she's taken off her shoes and put her bags away. She offers me a seat in the kitchen. I sit down. There are trees out the window. They're still mostly green.

“Yes,” I say. “No, not really. Do you have coffee? No, that's not a good idea.” I stand up, walk around the kitchen. “Maybe water?”

“Water then. Are you okay, Micah? I'm sorry. Of course you're not. Are you ready to tell me what's going on?”

“Yes. But it's hard, Yayeko. I don't know where to start and there are so many questions you'll ask. I think I should just show you.” I pull the test results out of my pocket, unfold it, and hand it to her.

“Your DNA test?”

I nod.

She opens it, pulls the report out, reads, flips pages.

“You see?” I say.

Yayeko looks at me. “Your test was invalid. The blood you sent in wasn't human.”

“The blood
I
sent in? You were there when we all took the test. You sent our tests off. That was
my
blood. It says my blood is animal. That's what it proves.” I'm pacing.

“Invalid results are common. What are you trying to prove, Micah?”

“I'm a wolf.”

Yayeko doesn't say anything. She doesn't bow down before my scientific proof. This is not going as I planned.

“Not all the time,” I say. “Obviously. When I get my period, I change into a wolf. Only I don't since I started taking the pill all the time, like you said to. But it's not really because of how bad my period is. It's to stop me changing. Whatever triggers the change—it has to do with hormones because birth control pills stop it.”

“You're taking hormones continuously and there's nothing wrong with your menstrual cycle?” Yayeko's voice gets louder. “You're only seventeen!”

“I'm not—”

“You lied to me. I can't believe . . .” She pauses. She's not looking at me anymore.

“I didn't! There
is
something wrong with my periods! I turn into a wolf!” Now I'm shouting.

Yayeko puts her hand up. “There's nothing wrong with being a girl, Micah.”

“What?” I'm spluttering. I sit down. “Of course there isn't. I didn't say there was.”

“I remember when you pretended to be a boy, Micah.”

Yayeko keeps saying my name. She doesn't usually.

“Micah, I know things have been hard for you, but you don't have to take it out on your own body. You have to stop suppressing the girl parts of yourself. Is that why you keep your hair so short, Micah? Why you never wear skirts or dresses? Why you don't have any girlfriends?”

“No!” I scream. Yayeko moves back in her chair. “Sorry,” I say quickly. “My hair's short because it's easier—I'm
not
trying to be a boy. I'm a wolf.”

“And what's more masculine than a wolf?”

I groan. She's never going to believe me. “I don't know. Lots of things! Half of all wolves are female!”

“Micah,” she says, “you're not a wolf. Rejecting your own body isn't the answer.”

“I'm not!” I jump up, knocking my chair over. It clatters loud on the tiled floor. Yayeko winces. “Sorry,” I say, righting the chair. “I'm not rejecting my body or being a girl or anything like that. I'm trying to tell you the truth.”

As soon as I say it I know I shouldn't have. Yayeko looks at me with such sadness I know there's no hope for me here. I'm a liar, even when I tell the truth.

“Micah, taking a pill every day is not going to turn you into a boy. It's not going to make you into someone you're not. You're seventeen years old. Who knows what all those hormones are doing to you? Elevating your risk of stroke, of some cancers. When I talked to your mother I thought you had a problem with your body, but now you're telling me this is in your mind . . .”

My
mind
? She's saying that I'm crazy.

“It's not good for you, Micah. It's not helping. You're overwrought,” she says softly, like she's soothing a small child.

I'm calm.

“I think maybe you should lie down.”

I nod, realizing how hopeless this is. The cotton curtains at the window move slightly in the breeze. Light floods in, golden fall light. The plates and glasses drying by the sink glisten. It's a beautiful, sunny, normal kitchen. My life doesn't seem real in this kitchen. It makes me feel as if I'm lying.

“I'm a wolf,” I say again. I can't help myself. I've finally told the truth and gotten . . . this.

“I'm a scientist, Micah.”

“I can prove it. Send my blood to another lab—”

“You believe you're a werewolf.” Yayeko's voice is flat. She thinks she understands why my parents threw me out. I have to convince her otherwise.

“I am a wolf, Yayeko. Go ask my parents to let you into my bedroom. There's a cage. A big metal cage with a cloth over it so it looks like a desk. It's the biggest thing in my room.”

“A cage? Micah, what are you talking about?”

I don't even try. Mom and Dad would never let her in, never show her.

“Is this because Zach was killed by dogs?” Yayeko asks.

“No!”

“Do you think you did it? This is guilt about your boyfriend's death, isn't it?”

“He wasn't my boyfriend,” I say automatically. “I didn't kill him. This is not about Zach. This is about who I am. What I am. I know it sounds . . . I know how it sounds. That's why I've never told anyone. But I can prove it to you.”

Yayeko looks at me. I think she's scared, but not because I'm a wolf.

HISTORY OF ME

Telling the truth gives you strength.

Telling Yayeko gave me strength. Even though she didn't believe me it made me feel more real, more like someone.

I used to think I was nothing: not black, not white; not a girl, not a boy; not human, not a wolf. Not dangerous, but not exactly safe. Not crazy, but not entirely sane.

I felt like nothing at all.

I thought that half of everything added up to nothing. I was a nonperson who belonged nowhere. Not in the city, not with the Greats.

I have never known what I was. If I'm not completely any one thing, then what am I? Who am I? Something in between?

Or nothing?

I don't think that now: half of everything is something, not nothing.

Lots
of somethings.

AFTER

This is what I thought would happen. This is what could have happened. This is what
did
happen.

We go to a track at the local middle school where Yayeko's daughter is a member of the girls' basketball team. Yayeko talks to the track team's coach. He's thin and lean-muscled like a marathon runner. A silver whistle bounces at his chest when he moves. I don't know what she says but he agrees to let me race with his sprinters. A hundred-meter sprint.

They line up, putting their feet in the blocks. They are all smaller than me. Except for one boy who is muscle-heavy and tall for a fourteen-year-old.

I have never raced before. Never put my feet in blocks. I glance at them, copy what they do. Place my hands precisely on the line just as they do. The muscly boy notices and grins. He thinks he's about to blast me. I know better.

When their coach blows his whistle I stumble, but then I find my balance, lift my knees high, pump my elbows. I do everything Zach taught me. The track is springy, the give helps propel me along. I run faster than I ever have before. I pass the other sprinters. Easy. There's a hum of air past my ears. I turn with the track. The world blurs. It feels so good that I'm long past the finish line before I stop.

I jog up to Yayeko and the coach. They're staring at me.

“Holy shit, girl,” the muscly boy says. He's staring at me, too. So are all the runners. Their mouths are open. All set to catch flies, Grandmother would say.

The coach looks at his stopwatch, then at me, then at the stopwatch again. The whistle around his neck bounces with every twitch. “Just over eight and a half seconds,” he says at last. “I must have made a mistake.”

I have beaten the men's world record. Crushed it. I grin at Yayeko. She is ashen.

“We need to do it again,” the coach says.

I laugh. “Wanna see me run a mile?”

HISTORY OF ME

Maybe it was ten seconds?

I'm dizzy.

So many lies.

I thought I'd done better than this.

What number lie is this? Eight? Nine? Ten? I can't even figure out how to count them anymore.

The fabric of my life unravels. Is anything I've said true?

It's cold in here. Dark, too. No windows.

My grip slips. The cogs grind. Do I know anything that's true?

Actual real genuine true truth.

Is there anything at all?

I'm a wolf.

A wolf. All the way down to the marrow of my bones. Every cell. Every fiber.

Wolf = me.

That's all I've got.

AFTER

I do know what's real and what's not.

I did run on that track. I did prove what I am. But not the way I said.

Here's how it really happened.

Yayeko does not believe me. Though she pretends she does. Or at least she lets me stay. She introduces me to her daughter, who is fourteen years old and wary. Megan holds a basketball behind her back and stays in the doorway, her hair falling over her eyes. She's short. Shorter than Yayeko. Point guard.

“Wanna shoot some outside?” I ask. I noticed a netless hoop on the side of the apartment building on our way here.

The girl's still looking down.

“Answer her, Megan.”

Megan mumbles.

Yayeko's mother arrives, pulling a briefcase on wheels through the door, dressed in a suit, tiny and elegant and frostily polite. I smile. She smiles. She makes me feel oversized and badly designed. We eat Lebanese delivery. After, I wash. Yayeko's mother dries. As soon as the dishes are done she disappears into her room, as Megan has long since disappeared into her own.