Mad Honey: A Novel (26 page)

Time and time again, I got exposed against my will, and the consequences were terrible. It happened at Pacific Day School in Seattle. It happened at Marin-Muir. It happened at Pointcrest. Each time, it was worse. Even at Pointcrest, where—thanks to Dad—everyone found out about me, and they tried to turn me into the diversity poster child—even there, I wound up humiliated and tortured. That last time, at the Valentine’s Day dance my junior year, was the end of the line.

The day after that dance, while Mom was at work, I filled the bathtub with water, and I got a knife from the kitchen and turned on the sharpener. I can still hear the sound of the blade as I pulled it against the spinning sharpening stone. I can see the light reflecting off the steel. I can feel the quiet of the house.

I patted Boris on the head as I made my way up the stairs. “Goodbye,” I told him. “You’re a good boy.”

Which was more than I could say about some people.

We won’t tell anyone,
Mom said, afterward, when we were getting ready to move east.
What’s past is past. From now on, it’s just you and me.

It was a great plan, but there was one thing we hadn’t counted on. We never considered what would happen if I fell in love.

There’s a gentle tap against my window. I look up.

He’s here.

I CAN TELL,
from the way he stands awkwardly at the foot of my bed, that he doesn’t know what to do next. Asher Fields, who does everything with sureness and grace, is completely at a loss. He looks at me with what can only be described as hunger and hope, all braided together, but he doesn’t want to come any closer until I give him a sign that it’s what I want.

God, I love this boy.

I take a step forward and press myself so close to him that it is like we were carved out of the same piece of wood. I feel like wax, molding to him everywhere there is heat.

He drops his coat on the floor, and we wrap our arms around each other and we kiss like we’re on the deck of the
Titanic
. “Thank God,” he says. “I missed you. I missed you so much.”

“I missed you, too,” I say, and we kiss again and I wish I could slip underneath his skin, but he pushes me back until he can look into my eyes
.

“Are you okay?” he asks, just like I thought he would.

“Yes,” I tell him, and I am—there’s a way in which I feel more like myself when I’m with him than when I’m alone. Maybe deep down I always thought I did not deserve to be loved by someone like Asher. But then again, the thing I feel is not only about him. It’s about being part of the world. There is so much ahead for me and I want to put my arms around all of it.

“I was afraid you had—second thoughts,” he says. “After we—”

“No,” I tell him. “I mean yes.”

He’s listening to me very carefully. “Yes you have second thoughts?” he says. “About me?”

“Yes I have second thoughts about myself,” I say.

“Lily,” he says, sitting down on the bed. “Talk to me.”

“I—” I feel my throat close up. “I don’t know how.”

He reaches over and holds my hand. “Then I’ll wait till you figure it out,” he says.

I squeeze his hand back, and I’m feeling the tears welling up, but
goddammit I am not going to cry. I think about Lizzy in the music store, how she was herself and how, amazingly, that was enough. That was perfect.

“If what you want,” Asher says, “is to go back to the way things were before, we can do that. I’m sorry if we—if
I—
rushed things. I love you. I don’t want you to feel—”

“Stop,” I tell him. “Asher. Being with you…
being
with you,” I underline, “made me feel like I’ve never felt before.”

He takes this in, and he breaks into a big smile. Dimples. I think, fleetingly:
Fuck it, I can just keep my mouth shut and everything will just stay like it is.

“Then…why?” he asks. “I’ve been losing my mind. I thought—” He looks down, as if he’s afraid to say it out loud. “I thought you changed your mind. About us. About
me
.”

That almost breaks me. Because my body may be different, but the one part of me that has never changed is my mind. “Asher, I love you,” I rush to explain. “I love you so much that even using those words is like saying ‘the ocean’s just water.’ ” I swallow. “But there’s something I have to tell you.”

He sits. Waits.

“Lily?” he asks gently.

“I’m scared,” I whisper. “I’m afraid that once I tell you, you won’t ever look at me the same way again.”

Asher shakes his head. “Nothing you could say would change how I feel about you. Do you understand? What we have, you and me—I don’t know. It’s—”

“Holy,” I say.

Asher thinks it over. “Okay,” he says. “I wasn’t going for
holy,
but sure.
Holy
works.”

“I feel like no one’s ever known me the way you do,” I say.

“I feel that way, too,” says Asher.

“We’ve been honest with each other,” I tell him, and he nods. “Except that there’s something about me you don’t know.”

“You’re scaring the shit of out me,” whispers Asher
. “
Just say it.”

The room is so quiet.

“Just say it,” he says again softly. He rubs his thumb in small circles on the back of my hand.

It’s the kind of quiet like when a conductor is standing in front of an orchestra, holding a raised baton, and you’re just waiting for the music to begin.

“I’m trans,” I say.

He takes this in, sort of. Then Asher smiles again. “Very funny,” he says.

“It’s not a joke,” I say, a little too loudly, and I think about how Mom is asleep down the hall. What would she think if she knew that Asher was here? What would she think if she knew I was telling him everything?

“You’re—what?”

“I’m trans,” I tell him. “I should have told you, before we started going out, before we had—”

“You’re trans,” he says. “You mean, like—you want to be a
man
? Seriously?”

Oh, Asher.

“No,” I say. “I mean—when I was born, people thought I was a boy. I looked like a boy, I had the body of a—”

He’s looking at me like a bloodhound who’s heard someone call his name in the distance. A little bit curious, but mostly confused.

Now he lets go of my hand. “You’re saying—”

“I’m trans,” I tell him. “Or—I used to be. Before surgery—”

“You had
surgery
?” says Asher. His face is pale, and there is no longer any part of him that is touching a part of me. “So, when we had sex, you were—”

“Me,” I interrupt. “I was me. I’m exactly the person you’ve always known. The person who loves you.”

“But I-I…” His voice trails away.

He’s thinking really hard. It looks like he’s gnawing on a bone, like he’s trying to get to the bottom of something, but it keeps slipping away. Then, all at once, I can feel a wave of disappointment washing over him. “Jesus, Lily.” He looks up at me, and repeats my
name. “Lily,” he says slowly, like he’s pulling on a sweater that doesn’t fit.

Asher stands up. He walks over to the window, the same one he came through not ten minutes ago, then he walks back to me, staring at me hard, like he’s looking for something he couldn’t see before.

“But what, Asher?” I say again.

He shakes his head. I can’t tell if he can’t figure out what to say, or if he’s trying to keep from saying something he will regret. He makes a fist, then his hands go slack.

“I have to think,” he says.

Everything inside me turns to ice. “Please,” I beg. Tears are in my eyes, but it doesn’t keep me from seeing what’s happening. What I
knew
would happen.

He opens the window.

“Asher—” I cry, walking toward him. “If you have to think, think
here
. Stay
here
.” I reach out my hand to keep him from leaving and that’s when it happens.

He flinches.

Like my very touch is poison.

It feels like he’s flayed me down to the bone, and it shows on my face. “You’ve known about this your whole life,” he says. “I’ve known for ten seconds. I need…I’ve gotta think.” He steps out onto the roof and he jerks his chin, the kind of goodbye you give someone you barely know, someone who is an acquaintance. Not someone you’ve moved inside; not someone who loves you, whom you love.

Loved
.

A second later Asher is climbing onto the branch of the tree outside my window.

He didn’t even close the window behind him.

From town I can hear a church bell tolling. It’s the spire of St. Clement’s. It’s midnight. The cold wind freezes my face and I listen to the bells chiming in the distance—
ten, eleven, twelve.

And just like that, the day of All Souls is done.

OLIVIA
6

MAY 6, 2019

Five months after

The courtroom is so quiet that, for a heartbeat, I can hear the crawl of my own blood. And then, in the next, everything explodes. The gallery erupts in a rush of sound and shock, the attorneys struggle to speak over each other, and Judge Byers is banging her gavel.

I ignore all of it. I look at Asher, whose face is pinched and white. His eyes are closed and his hands are clasped on the table. It looks like he is praying.

Or begging for forgiveness.

“All right…all
right
!” the judge yells. “I will remind you we are in the
middle
of a trial and if you cannot handle yourselves you will be removed from my courtroom.” She turns to Jordan and the prosecutor. “Mr. McAfee, proceed.”

Jordan’s mouth opens and closes around empty air. Finally he says, “No further questions at this point, Your Honor. But…we reserve the right to recall the witness.”

Gina clears her throat. She looks like she’s smacked into a wall—a little dazed. “Your Honor,” she says. “We have no objections to the defense recalling the witness.”

“I didn’t ask you, did I?” the judge snaps. “This is a good stopping point. Idris Elba walking into my courtroom right now couldn’t convince me to finish out the afternoon.” She turns to the jury. “We’re going to recess for the day. I reiterate my admonition to you—do not
read any media, do not talk about the case with anyone, not even the people who share your bed, and come back tomorrow at nine
a.m
. Court is dismissed.”

The bailiff takes the jury out, and the judge retreats into her chambers. Asher is now staring blindly in front of him, like the empty-eyed marble bust of an old philosopher.

I am in no rush to stand up, or go anywhere. I can’t imagine what the media gauntlet will be like, once I step outside these doors.

Gina jams papers into her leather briefcase. Jordan grabs her arm and turns her to face him. “Why didn’t you tell us this?” he demands under his breath.

She yanks herself away from his grasp. “You’re assuming I
knew.
”

The prosecutor exits through the double doors of the courtroom, and immediately I hear the roar of questions rise over her like a tide. Jordan turns to us, waving me through the little wooden gate that separates the gallery from the table where he and Asher were sitting. “Don’t say a word,” he says, and he leads us through a side door into a hallway. At the end of it, I can hear Gina saying something to the press, and with her in the spotlight, we are able to sneak off in the opposite direction.

Jordan pulls us into the conference room we were in earlier. He slams the door behind him, sits down at the table, and opens his briefcase. “We’ll stay here till the media gets bored and goes away,” he says, as he takes out the autopsy report, scouring it like he is expecting it to burst into flames in his hands. “How the hell did we miss this?”

I know the answer to that.

No one was looking for it. People see what they want to see.

Asher picks at the cuticle on his thumb. There’s color in his face again. He opens his mouth and then closes it, as if there is so much inside of him to say that it’s jammed up in the back of his throat. He seems unsettled.

But not surprised.

I shove that thought away so hard that I feel dizzy.

Jordan spears his hands through his hair, making it stand on end.
“Okay,” he says, giving himself a pep talk. “Okay. We will figure this out.”

I clear my throat. “Is it…really that big a deal?”

My brother pins me with a glance. “Yes. And here’s why Asher’s case just got progressively worse: It’s a lot easier to blow holes in a case that is basically a glorified version of
boy meets girl, boy and girl argue.
Plenty of couples fight without killing each other. What Gina Jewett couldn’t offer a jury, until ten minutes ago, was
why
Asher got so mad that he would commit murder. But now, the prosecution has motive. They’re going to say Asher found out Lily was transgender, felt duped by her, and then killed her in a fit of rage. Trans panic. It’s in the news every goddamned day.”

Asher looks up. “But I—”

“No,” Jordan interrupts. “Don’t. Do
not
tell me whether or not you knew Lily was trans. As long as you say nothing about that to me, I can build your defense on the belief that you were never told. And if you were never told, you had no motive to kill her.”

Asher very slowly wilts toward the table, pressing his cheek against it, as if all the will to fight has gone out of him.

WE WAIT LONG
enough for the press to have dispersed, and then before heading to the car, I tell Jordan and Asher I’m going to use the bathroom. The ladies’ room at the courthouse is on the far side of the building, but I don’t pass a single person in the hall the entire way there. I use a stall, flush, and step out to wash my hands.

Standing at a sink a few feet away is Ava Campanello.

I have not seen her in the months since Lily’s funeral. She is stick-thin, her dress hanging on her shoulders and swallowing her body whole. She looks up.

“Ava,” I say, hoarse.

She jerks her gaze away from mine, scrubbing at her hands with the vengeance of Lady Macbeth. Then she turns, reaching for the tongue of paper towel curling from the dispenser.

I am rooted to the floor, trapped by the loss of Lily and the
potential loss of Asher. If things were reversed—if Asher had been the one to die—would I so badly want to find a scapegoat, a way to burn the world down, that I’d think the worst of Lily? I can’t imagine how badly she hurts, how she can hold herself together. I would never presume to know Lily as well as Ava did, but I still cannot see myself believing the worst of her.

I would never presume to know Lily as well as Ava did.

Jordan might not have known Lily was trans. Gina Jewett might not have known Lily was trans. But Ava
did,
and she chose to say nothing. Not even to the prosecutor, who would have interviewed her at length before moving ahead with this trial.

The question is…why?

It wasn’t to protect Asher, for sure. Was it to protect Lily?

Or was it because this secret wasn’t Ava’s to tell?

“Asher isn’t a murderer, Ava,” I force out. My voice is wobbling so much it is unrecognizable. “You must know that.”

Sometimes, in a hive, you find brood cells shaped like circus peanuts, where potential new queens are being raised to replace an old or weak one. Most beekeepers say the first queen to emerge will sting the others still in their cells to kill her rivals, but I prefer to think that she caucuses: running around the hive, shaking hands and kissing babies and leaving her pheromones all over the place. As later queens hatch, they have to challenge her candidacy. It’s about persuasion, consensus. Not everything is solved with violence.

Ava doesn’t turn around, but her shoulders stiffen. “Things aren’t always what they seem to be,” she says, and then she is gone.

I run the water in the sink and wash my hands. Then I splash some over my face. Finally, I go back to the conference room where Jordan and Asher are waiting. “It’s about time,” Jordan says. “What the hell took you so long?”

I force a smile. “Coast is clear,” I announce.

He gives us our marching instructions, in case we are ambushed en route to the truck, but it is unnecessary—the reporters have slunk back into whatever holes they came from. Our vehicle is in the far corner of the lot, baking in the afternoon heat. An oak tree stretches
its arms over the truck, casting long shadows on the flatbed. Asher climbs into the backseat, but before Jordan can open the passenger door, I put my hand on his arm. “Jordan?” I ask softly. “Do you think Asher knew?”

The sun glints in his eyes, illuminating a flash of sympathy. “You better hope like hell,” Jordan says, “that he didn’t.”

BRADEN AND I
met on a blind date that included neither him nor me. I had been set up by a co-worker. Her fiancé’s former college roommate worked in the Clinton White House and had suggested we meet at The Tombs in Georgetown. I hated going to Georgetown; it was crowded and full of frat bros and decidedly out of the loop of the Metro—but I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt, because who wants to be the woman who nitpicks over the meeting spot? When I got to the bar, I was ten minutes late because of traffic, but I figured maybe he was late for the same reason. I didn’t want to start a tab, so I asked for a glass of water and sat down next to a man nursing what looked like whiskey, neat. I noticed him in the way that single women notice men—sizing him up for general douchiness—and marked his athlete’s body, his cashmere sweater, his ringless left hand. “You wouldn’t happen to be Henry?” I asked.

“Uh, sorry, no.” He smiled politely at me and turned back to his drink. When he was otherwise absorbed, I slid a glance in his direction again, this time taking in the black gleam of his hair, the electric blue of his eyes. The groomed stubble on his jaw, which somehow on him looked honest, instead of cultivated.

He kept checking his BlackBerry. I checked my watch. I finished my glass of water, and asked for another, this time with lime.

When the bartender brought it, the man beside me raised his empty glass, signaling another. I started to wonder if I had messed up—gotten the date wrong, or the time. My missing date had five more minutes, and then I was going home.

Beside me, the man lifted his new glass and took a sip. “Please don’t spontaneously combust,” he said, staring straight ahead.

It startled a laugh out of me. “What makes you think I’m angry?”

“I can feel the temperature creeping up,” he said, pulling at his collar, and then he turned.

If I thought he was handsome before, he was
devastating
now.

“I’m Braden,” he said. “And you are?”

“Waiting for a blind date,” I replied.

“I figured.” He lifted a brow. “How late is he?”

I glanced at my watch. “Thirty-five minutes,” I said.

Braden huffed out a laugh. “I’ve got you beat by fifteen.”

At that, I nearly fell off my stool. “You were stood up, too?”

He lifted his glass, clinked it to mine. “I have an idea,” he said, leaning closer. “Let’s egg their houses. I’ll stand watch and then you can return the favor.”

I smirked. “I have no idea where he lives.”

“Right. The blind part of the date.”

“They’d have to be blind,” I said, “to not show up for you.” My hand flew to my mouth. Did I really just say that out loud?

He was grinning at me, his eyes bright. “Thank you,” Braden said. “I think.”

“Guess I’ve had enough to drink,” I muttered.

“Yeah, two glasses of water and I’m under the table, too.”

Suddenly a hand squeezed my shoulder. I froze, thinking that it must be my date and that the greeting was a little aggressive. Braden had stiffened, too. A very drunk woman wearing a necklace of plastic penises and a sash that said
I’m the Bachelorette
had wedged herself between us from behind, draping her arms around us both. “Sorry, sorry,” she slurred. “The bartender’s been totally ignoring me.”

“Go figure,” Braden said.

The bartender came over. “Six CoronaRitas,” she ordered. Braden looked at me over her head, and I met his glance, and we both hid a smile. But she intercepted the glance, only then seeming to realize that she was cuddled between us. “Oh my God,” the bachelorette sang. “You two are the cutest couple. I’m gonna buy you a drink, too.”

“We’re good,” Braden assured her, at the same time I said, “I’m not drinking.”

Her eyes grew huge. “You’re pregnant!” she announced, like she’d just deduced the theory of relativity. She looked down at my stomach. “How far along are you?”

Before I could tell her she was hugely mistaken, Braden said, “Three months. But we want the gender to be a surprise.” He reached for my hand on the bar and laced his fingers with mine. His skin was warm and dry and between our palms it felt like we were holding a secret.

“Name it after me, no matter what,” the bachelorette said. “Brenda.” Then she disappeared, having gathered up a tray of giant frozen drinks with beer bottles upended in them.

“That escalated quickly,” I said.

“Considering the fact that we’re expecting, I should probably know your name.”

“Olivia,” I told him. I squeezed his hand, a pulse, and started to let go, but he wouldn’t let me.

“Would you like to go somewhere for dinner?” he asked. “Maybe toss out some potential baby names? We’re
obviously
not going with Brenda.”

He took me next door to 1789, a restaurant far too chic for my pocketbook. I learned, over dinner, that Braden was a resident in cardiac surgery; I told him that I worked in the panda enclosure at the National Zoo. He was delighted—he’d never met a zoologist before. He leaned forward, elbows on the table, and asked me to tell him something he didn’t know about pandas. “Well,” I said. “What do you know?”

“They eat bamboo.”

“A lot of it,” I confirmed. “They cost five times more to keep in a zoo than any other animal. Also male pandas do handstands to pee to mark their territory.”