Luna (8 page)

The copy was clearer than yesterday’s, but not much. It was a stupid experiment. Heat up an ice cube until it reached the boiling point, recording the temperature in Fahrenheit and centigrade at various stages of meltdown. There was an additional exercise about converting Celsius to Fahrenheit and calculating absolute zero. I think I did this in fourth grade.

It was hard to concentrate with Chris sitting so close, brushing shoulders with me every once in a while. I noticed how he held his stubby pencil between his thumb and index finger. How he printed the measurements in perfectly square, block numbers. How his fingernails were jagged, like mine, as if he chewed them, like me. Maybe we could compare blood loss.

“What?” Chris said.

I flinched. “Huh?”

“You’re smiling. Am I doing something wrong?” His face fell. “Are you laughing at me?”

“No. Of course not.”

“You sure?” He looked worried.

“You’re doing it right. I just . . .” I shrugged. “It’s kind of a wee-Todd-did experiment.”

He reeled backward, jaw dangling. “You don’t think knowing how fast an ice cube melts is important? My God, woman. This is vital science. What if I wanted you to bring me a frosty brew with a piping hot plate of nachos? Do you know how much time you’d have to get it to me before the beer got warm?”

I knuckle-fisted his chest. “Pig.”

He snorted like one.

“Hey, Chris.”

We both jerked around. The thermometer I was holding slipped through my fingers and clinked on the counter. Chris managed to capture it between cupped hands before it hit the floor and infected us all with mercury poisoning.

The person behind us winced an apology: “Sorry.” The person: Shannon Eiber. It’d barely registered that she was in this class. She’d changed a lot since sixth grade. Physically, anyway. Who hadn’t? Me. I lived in a state of eternal stasis.

“Aren’t you guys done yet?” Shannon asked. “That experiment took us three minutes.”

I curled a lip at her, which she missed because her eyes were glommed onto Chris.

“There’s a rave Saturday night in Genesee.” She wedged herself between us, speaking directly, and only, to him. “You want to go? We could drive together — you and me and Morgan and Tay.” She thumbed across the room where Her People, the Chosen Ones, had staked out the choice lab stations. No doubt they’d put them on reserve a year ago.

Chris smiled at her. “Maybe,” he said. “Can I let you know?”

He radiated heat. Or was that me?

“Sure,” Shannon said. “Call me.” She grabbed his hand and flipped it over. Wrote her number on his palm in red ink. “Later.” She strutted off.

A bubble burst — the one that had sucked me up in its helium high. “I thought you were new here,” I said, taking the thermometer and repositioning it in the beaker of boiling water. “Didn’t know anyone.”

“Yeah, well,” his lip cricked, “that was last month.”

A shroud of darkness descended over me. I don’t know why I thought it’d be different. He’d be different. Someone as cool as him? All he had to do was cross the threshold of Horizon High to be instantly absorbed by Them. The ones with shape, form, matter. They Who Mattered.

Reality check, Regan. How dare you wish he was yours.

Shannon cast him a little finger wave as she wriggled back onto her stool. Her lab partner was Hoyt Doucet. No wonder she was stealing mine.

When had Hoyt become a member of TWM? Shannon’s standards had taken a plunge.

The bell rang, jolting me back to my destiny. “Are we done?” Chris asked.

“I am.” I filled in the solution to the absolute zero equation and thrust the lab report at him. “All you have to do is sign it.”

He scribbled his name next to mine. Regan O’Neill. Chris Garazzo. I imagined a plus sign between them. Which confirmed my unstable state of emotional delirium. As Chris rushed around to clean up our station, I hustled to the front to turn in our paper.

On the way out I made a mental deposit in the hazardous waste receptacle. Disposed of any dreams I might’ve had of us hooking up.

When I got home, Liam’s bedroom door was closed. I wondered how he’d spent the day, if he’d even bothered with school. Considering how my day went, I should’ve blown it off, too.

A wave of music washed up from under Liam’s door. Then singing. My heart stopped. Dana International. Oh my God.

Pounding the door. “Liam.”

He can’t hear because he’s got his CD amped up to earsplitting volume. Dana International, this Israeli singer I can’t stand. Liam idolizes her.

I knock again. “Liam!”

When he doesn’t answer, I do the unthinkable. I barge in.

First thing I see are the pill bottles. A row lined up neatly along the edge of his bookshelf. They’re Mom’s; they have to be. I’m thirteen and I already know my mom’s a popper.

But that’s not what freaks me. The bottles are all empty.

“Liam?” I punch off the music. “Liam!”

“What?”

His voice is faint, but it’s a voice. I run toward it, to the closet. He’s huddled in the corner dressed in his football uniform. I rush over and grab his arm; try to wrench him to his feet.

He resists. He buries his head between his kneepads and mumbles, “Leave me alone.”

“No.”

“Go away.”

“Come on.” The panic registers in my voice. “You have to throw up.”

He goes limp. He doesn’t budge. My first impulse is to kick him, so I do.

“Ow!” He scoots further into the closet. “Why’d you do that?”

I fall to my knees and clench his shoulders; start to shake him. “You have to throw up, Liam. I won’t let you die!” This comes out a screech, which makes him raise his head and look at me. His eyes are

already dead.

“Liam. Lia Marie. Please.” My eyes well with tears. “Please.”

His left hand reaches out and snags the football helmet beside him. He holds it up to me by the faceguard. Inside is a mound of pills. Blue, purple, orange, white.

“I can’t do it,” Liam says. “I can’t even do it. I can’t do anything right. I’m wrong. All wrong.”

“No, you’re not.” I feel so relieved I throw my arms around him.

“Please, Re.” He clasps my wrists and pulls me away. “I wasn’t meant to be born.” He transfers the helmet to my right hand. “Help me die. Pour these down my throat, okay?” He pleads urgently, “Please?”

My fingers grip the faceguard. I straighten up and charge for the bathroom. I flush all the pills down the toilet. I flush it over and over and over until all the pills have dissolved, disappeared. Then I crumple to the floor and rest my forehead against the toilet bowl. And cry. Just cry. For my brother. Liam. God, Liam.

After a few minutes, I leave the helmet in the bathroom and return to Liam. He’s perched on the edge of his bare mattress, the shoulder pads heaped on the floor at his feet. He’s already kicked off the cleats.

“You don’t have to play football,” I inform him. “Just because Dad’s coaching doesn’t mean you have to play. Why did you tell him you wanted to? You hate football.”

Liam’s eyes bore holes through the blank wall.

“Liam —”

“You wouldn’t understand.” His eyelashes glisten. He blinks and a tear overflows the rim. I reach to wipe it away; wipe all the tears away.

He beats me to it and swipes his eye with a knuckle. Then sniffles, and heaves.

I gather the jersey and shoulder pads and cleats off the floor. “I’ll take care of it,” I tell him. “You
don’t
have to do this.” I’m mad, seething mad.

At the bottom of the stairs, I stop. I drop the bundle of gear. There’s something else I want to say.

“Lia Marie?” I stand in the doorway. “You can wear my new nightgown to bed. You can have it. And you can use my room to dress in from now on, whenever you want.”

Liam glances over his shoulder and meets my eyes. Slowly, the color in his face returns. He comes to life. I see him physically morph into Lia Marie. “Okay.” She smiles. “Thanks, Re.”

I breathe a sigh of relief.

Liam’s door swung open in my face and Dana International assaulted me. “Hey, Re. Come here, look at this.” Liam motioned me inside.

I breathed a sigh of relief — the same one I’ve breathed every day since that Liam’s been too chicken to do it.

If he’d considered suicide again, Liam hadn’t discussed it with me. Not that he’d give me the date and time. But I watched him pretty close. I think he’d gotten to a new place, a better place. Having the freedom to dress in my room had cured him — I thought.

His room still creeped me out. It was stark. Cold. Abandoned. He never used sheets on his bed, or even a comforter. Just this scratchy wool blanket he’d bought at army surplus or something. During the day he kept it wadded up at the top of the mattress where most people have pillows. The walls were bare, too, except for the books and paperbacks and notebooks and computer manuals that were stacked to the ceiling. The room always felt vacant to me, unoccupied.

Liam was speaking, but I could barely hear him. I deamped the volume on Dana.

“. . . and I found all kinds of history on TG’s. For instance, did you know in ancient Greece and Rome, Philo writes about men transforming into women?”

TG’s. Transgenders. “Well, yeah. Everyone reads Philo.”

He ignored the sarcasm. He was sitting on the floor, surrounded by all these piles of printouts. “And King Henry the Third of France was referred to as
sa majesté. Her
majesty. Abbé de Choisy in the seventeenth century actually wrote, ‘I thought myself really and truly a woman.’ Then there’s Joan of Arc.”

“Joan of Arc was a man?” My eyes bulged.

Liam tilted his head. “In her mind,” he said. “There’s enough evidence to suggest it.”

Wow. I never considered that girls could be transgender. I dropped my backpack on his bed and slid down beside him. I wondered, too, what his sudden interest in history was all about. “Why are you researching TG’s?” I asked. “I mean, why now?”

“Why not now? One day I’m going to be a part of history.”

My heart sped up. Did he mean he was going to
be
history?

“Lots of Native American tribes pass down stories about trans people,” Liam babbled on, “the Mohave, Navaho, Pueblo. They accept, even embrace, females who are men, and vice versa. ‘Two-spirit’ people, they call them. Did you know in the Yuman Indians there were groups of people called Elxa who actually underwent a ‘change of spirit’? Isn’t that cool?”

My mind was reeling. I glanced at the page of text Liam was reciting from. He’d highlighted sections, starred names of famous people. Dana International. Oh. She was trans. I never understood why he liked her so much.

“Mick Jagger says he cross-dresses at home.”

I frowned at Liam. “Does that make him trans?”

Liam shrugged. “You never know. It’s not either or. There are shades of gray to people’s gender.”

“I know that.”

“Ru Paul,” he said.

“Ru Paul? I thought he was a drag queen.”

“Maybe. Probably. But she is beautiful.”

“Is that what you want to be, a drag queen?” God, was Luna going to be on stage? Performing?

Liam said, “We’re not all so gifted. I just want to blend in. And look.” Liam got all excited. “I found these testimonials from TG’s who’re transitioning. What they’re going through. It’s me, exactly me, same as me.” He grabbed another stack of printouts that he’d set aside on his treasure chest. That’s what he called it — the locked steamer trunk that contained his life. His desired life. The girl clothes. The makeup. He’d even wired the trunk with an alarm system.

“There’s this one T-girl, Teri Lynn, who transitioned a couple of years ago. She calls it ‘remaking herself.’ She’s following the Harry Benjamin standards to the letter so she can have her SRS next year.”

“Her what? Wait. Who’s Harry Benjamin?” He was addressing me as if I was on his level, his plane.

“Harry Benjamin,” Liam repeated. “The Benjamin standards. You know, the steps you have to go through before you can get your SRS.”

“Slow down, Liam. You lost me. SRS?” I picked up a Web page and skimmed over it. “Welcome to the Gender Identity Center,” it said at the top.

Liam touched my shoulder. “Sorry. I should keep you filled in on the lingo. SRS: Sex Reassignment Surgery.”

I dropped the page. My brain engaged. “You mean a sex change operation?”

His smile extended across his face. Her face. Luna’s eyes grew dreamy. “Oh, Re. It’s all I’ve ever wanted my whole life. You know that.”

No, I didn’t know that. How could I know that? My eyes fell from her face and grazed the floor, unseeing. I couldn’t look at her. Why did this shock me? Because I never allowed myself to go there.

Transition. Is that what it meant? An actual, physical transition? A sex change operation?

Liam gathered the printouts together. On the fingerpad he’d installed atop his treasure chest, he pressed a series of numbers and letters. The latch released and he lifted the lid. He set the stack of papers inside, dug out a leather purse and a tapestry bag. The tapestry bag looked familiar. Wasn’t that Mom’s?

Liam said, “Which of these look more everyday?”

A wave of nausea washed over me. I pushed to my feet.

“Re?”

“Neither. Both. They’re fine,” I mumbled, lurching for the door.

He called to my back, “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.” Don’t desert him, my brain screamed. Don’t do this. Don’t let him down. Don’t let him know.

He asked more softly, “You understand, don’t you?”

I stopped in the threshold, my eyes squeezing shut. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Holding my stomach, I opened my eyes and forced a smile over my shoulder. “Well, yeah,” I lied. “Of course.”

Chapter 9

“T
his experiment involves two potentially dangerous chemicals. The first is potassium permanganate, a strong oxidizing agent that will react quickly with skin and clothing. The second is sulfuric acid, which is caustic and corrosive. Wash off spills of either solution with
large
amounts of water. Goggles must be worn at all times. Any questions?” Bruchac cleaned his nerd glasses with his Tweety Bird tie.