Mad Honey: A Novel (48 page)

I looked in the mirror again. I was beautiful, an unlikely miracle. But I did not see how I was ever going to survive in this world.

You wreck everything, I told that girl. But since I was looking in the mirror, she just said the same thing back to me.
You wreck everything.

I opened the door and I went down the stairs and into the living
room, where Dad was drinking a beer. He looked up. For a second I think he had no idea who I was—was I maybe some nether-universe version of my mother, from when she was a teenager, before he even met her?

Then his jaw dropped. “What the fuck?”

“I told you,” I said. “I’m going to be free.”

Dad took a moment, as my words sunk in. He slowly crushed the Pabst Blue Ribbon can in his right hand and he threw it on the floor, where it rolled along the hardwood.

Then he smacked me. It landed so hard that I was literally knocked off my feet. I flew across that room, and my head cracked against the wall.

A little later, when I came to, I realized that I’d been tied to a kitchen chair with clothesline. I heard a snipping sound. Dad had the scissors out, the same ones we used to cut wrapping paper for birthday presents. “What are you doing—?” I whispered, although I already knew the answer. I heard the snip. I felt my long hair fall onto the floor. He worked his way all around my head. It didn’t take long. Dad wiped my face with a damp paper towel. Most of the makeup came off, but not the mascara, of course. It was the waterproof kind.

“I hate you,” I said. “
I hate you.
”

“Liam,” said Dad. “I’m doing this because I
love
you, Champ. Because I don’t want you to get hurt.”

He was the one who was hurting me. “Fuck you!” I shouted. “I hate you! Go to hell!”

“Liam, please,” said Dad.

“
I. Am. Not. Liam!
”

“No?” said Dad. “Then what’s your name?”

I sat there squirming in the chair, trying to get my hands loose, but he’d tied me too tight. I was trapped where I was, until my father decided to let me go.

I wanted to tell him what my name was, but I didn’t know it yet.

“Let me fucking go,” I said.

“I’ll let you go,” said Dad. “When you say that your name is Liam.”

“Fuck you,” I said.

He put his face right in my face. “What…is…your…fucking
name
?”

I spat. The big spitball landed right in his eye, and he reached up with his fingers to clear his vision. Then he set his jaw again, and he grabbed the chair and hurled it so hard I tipped over backward and fell, still tied, onto the kitchen floor.

I watched his shoes through a veil of tears.

Then he said, “I am
not—
a bad person.”

There was a jingling of keys, and then the shoes walked out of the room. The front door opened, and closed. The car started up, and then drove off.

I lay where I had fallen. I don’t know how much time went by. Hours. Eons. Millennia.

Finally I heard the sound of the front door opening and closing. I shut my eyes tight, preparing for the next round, although what there was left for my father to do to me I couldn’t imagine.

Then I heard the sound of dog toenails against the tiles. It was Boris, back from the ocean with my mother.

Liam,
said my mother.
Dear God in heaven, Liam, honey
. I heard the snipping of the shears again—the same ones Dad had used to cut off all my hair—and then the clothesline was loose. Mom gathered me into her arms.

“My baby,” she said. She said it over and over again.
My poor baby.

Now here we are, seven years later, in a house in New Hampshire. Boris is old. Mom is going gray. My name is Lily.

BORIS HAS HIS
head out the window, his ears flopping in the breeze. There’s a fancy opera house downtown, an old river snaking off to the west. Little stores, a church. It’s all so cute, like something out of an old movie.

We go around a corner, and there is the high school. It’s got a huge gym on one side, and a performing arts center on the other. There’s a sign:
Home of the Fighting Presidents
.

I laugh, thinking about the idea of fighting presidents, but I get a
kind of nervous chill, too. Because this is where I’ll actually be going to school. My senior year, at last!

Mom looks pensive. “Don’t worry,” I say. “It’s going to be fine.”

She blows some air through her cheeks. “I hope so, Lily,” she says. “I just hate to think about what will happen, if—you know. Things don’t work out.”

When Mom and I were driving east, we had endless conversations about what it means to be a woman. Is it about biology, the result of what’s between your legs? Or is it more a matter of neurology, or even spirit—something between your ears?

Is it about having ovaries and a uterus? Well, maybe, except that the world is full of women who’ve had hysterectomies, and they are all still women.

Is it about having breasts and a clitoris? Well, maybe, except that the world contains women who’ve had mastectomies. Others have had clitoral circumcisions (like the kind I learned Dr. Powers reversed). These women are all still women.

Is it about two X chromosomes that you can’t even see? Well, maybe, except that the world contains women who have Y chromosomes and never even know it, women whose genetic makeup contains all kinds of chromosomal variations. These women are all still women.

As we drove east, we kept coming up with a list of all the things people use to define women—but we’d always find an exception or some rare difference that belied the binary definition. Until at one point my mother suggested that being a woman, for some people, might mean
just not being a man.

Mom said that has been true for her—that being a woman has meant being someone who gets talked over in conversations or ignored; someone who gets judged as a
body
instead of as a sentient soul; someone who, no matter who you are or what you are doing, always has to be on guard, lest someone else decide that you’re going to be his victim.

But maybe what was true for Mom won’t have to be true for me.
I’m not going to be a victim, ever again. I’m going to live my life with power, and fierceness, and with love.

To be honest about it, I don’t actually have a whole theory about who I am or whether I get to live my life as myself. Other women don’t have to come up with a reason why they exist. Why is it necessary for me to justify the fact that I’m here upon this earth, to explain and defend the things I have known in my heart since the day I was born?

I think sometimes about all the strange and wonderful things the world contains—the blue potato, the Venus flytrap, the duck-billed platypus.

If there is room under heaven for all of these miraculous things, couldn’t there possibly be room for me?

I know that Mom is nervous about this year.
I’m
nervous about this year. But I’m going to be fine. I’ve been through so much worse.

As I stare at the high school building, I think of all the incarnations of me: who I’ve been, who I am right now, and—most of all—who it is I might still become.

“Don’t worry about me, Mom,” I tell her. “I’m a survivor.”

OLIVIA
11

JUNE 5–JULY 1, 2019

Six months after

You cannot ever really go back to normal. You can approximate the axis of what your life used to be like, but as with an asymptote, all you’ll ever really do is get close and never intersect the sweet spot. It is true that the way the legal system works, once you are acquitted you are free to go home, but there’s a cognitive dissonance in the realization that the world has spun away without you. Even innocent, you will still be
the boy who was involved in that murder trial.
You are blameless, but stained.

There isn’t much point in Asher returning to school for less than a month; instead, we register him to get his GED. We don’t go out much, but when we do, people snap surreptitious photos with their phones when they think Asher can’t see, or—in some cases—even ask him to take a selfie. He is a curiosity. He has become notorious.

He tries, at first. He shows up at a free skate on a Saturday afternoon where a bunch of other hockey teammates sometimes play pickup. On the ice, he’s who he used to be—sure of himself and smooth, every action leading to a consequence he can predict. But he gets hip-checked by another player and they get into a fight and the other kid calls Asher a
chaser
. Asher throws a punch and receives several more and winds up in our kitchen with ice on his black eye, explaining to me that
chaser
is a slur for someone who’s attracted to trans people.

Dirk comes over to play video games, but the easy banter between
them is missing. He had always managed to invite himself to dinner in the past, so I am surprised to find Asher sitting alone at the table later. “He talked about teachers who wouldn’t grade on the curve and who dumped who and who’s going to what college next year,” Asher murmured. “It’s like we’re living on two different planets.”

Maya doesn’t contact him at all.

We fall into a routine, Asher and I. We visit the hives at my pollination contract locations. We add supers where needed, and we monitor how the bees are filling them with honey. Every day, we do the
New York Times
crossword puzzle together. We cook dinner—Asher chopping vegetables like a sous-chef, while I stir-fry and braise and roast. We watch all the Marvel Universe movies, in their correct order.

We are not always in each other’s company, but I keep tabs on where he is, because once you almost lose your child you are wary. Asher spends a lot of time sitting among the transplanted daylilies that grow beneath the tree house, but he doesn’t pry out the nails and go inside. Sometimes he sketches there. Sometimes he sits with his head bowed, being coronated by the sun. King of solitude; ruler of nothing.

THREE WEEKS AFTER
the trial ends, Maya shows up unannounced. She throws herself into Asher’s arms. “Oh my God,” she says. “I wanted to come earlier but my moms were total assholes about it, like they think Williams will take away my financial aid or something if they find out that we’re friends.”

Asher looks at her. “You’re going to Williams?”

“Oh. You didn’t know.” Maya sees me standing there, observing all this. “Hi, Ms. McAfee.”

I clear my throat. I cannot erase the picture of Maya on the witness stand, of the selfie with Lily’s bruises. “Congratulations,” I say. “That’s quite an achievement.”

Her eyes are wide and fathomless as she looks at Asher, as if she is only now realizing that while she was finishing high school, his life
was derailed, partly thanks to her role in the trial. “I…I wrote my Common App essay about Lily,” she admits. “She was all I could think about in December.”

“Clearly it paid off,” I say under my breath.

“Mom,” Asher murmurs. “It’s not her fault.”

Maya flinches. “I wanted to be there for you, Asher. I’ve always been there for you. But it was so…terrible.”

“I miss her, too, Maya,” Asher says.

“I hated all the things they said about you in court,” she says. “You should never have had to go through that.”

Maya bursts into tears, throwing herself into Asher’s arms. Over her head, he meets my eye and shrugs. He rubs a circle on her back, and she burrows into him. I turn, heading toward the kitchen to give them privacy.

“You shouldn’t even have been arrested,” I hear Maya say, weeping. “You weren’t supposed to be there.” I am just crossing the threshold of the kitchen when she adds, “Lily told you it was over.”

The words are dominoes—one trips, and the rest fall. I stop moving, my hand braced in the open door. “Maya,” I ask, turning, “what do you mean?”

Maya steps out of Asher’s arms, glancing from me to him. “She…she texted you.”

I think back to the hours Jordan spent huddled over the printouts from Asher’s phone and Lily’s. Of the motion he filed to exclude evidence, and the judge’s ruling. My eyes pin Maya, staking her in place. “Yes,” I say. “But Asher never got that text…and it wasn’t mentioned at the trial.”

Maya covers her face with her hands. “It was an accident,” she sobs.

A BEST FRIEND
just
knows
things. And Maya knew that her best friend was falling apart at the seams.

She also knew her best friend needed her more than he ever had before, even if he didn’t realize it yet.

She could see it in the way Asher barely even spoke to her or
looked at her. In the way he checked his phone six thousand times a day to see if Lily had finally responded.

Maya had reconciled herself to the fact that the way Asher saw her was not the way she saw Asher. But that wasn’t so bad. There were plenty of guys who woke up one day and realized that the girls they pined after weren’t as reliable or interesting or worthy as the ones who stood staunchly by their sides. Maya had made an adolescent career out of making sure Asher was happy, even if it meant she wasn’t the one who got to be with him. She could be patient. She could befriend the girl he loved.

Until Lily broke his heart.

Maya knew what was best for Asher, and it wasn’t Lily.

Lily had been home sick, and was surprised to see Maya at her front door. They’d already texted that day, and Lily said no, she didn’t need her homework brought to her. Lily looked like hell as Maya followed her up to her bedroom and sat down on the bed.
What couldn’t wait?
Lily asked.

Do you have any idea how Asher feels right now? Do you even give a fuck?

How can you possibly ask me that?
Lily said.

There was a ding on Lily’s phone, and Maya could read the message over her shoulder. It was from Asher, like the last dozen.

THIS ENDS NOW, I’M COMING OVER.

Lily looked at Maya, and then down at the phone.
You’re right,
she said softly.
Asher and I need to talk.

It was, Maya realized, the opposite of what was supposed to happen. The details were fuzzy, but she could so clearly see the aftermath she had intended: Lily would dump Asher, instead of stringing him along. He would be heartbroken, and Maya would be there to pick up the pieces.

Lily started to type a reply to Asher.

No,
Maya said out loud, and Lily looked up, surprised.

You don’t love him the way that he loves you,
Maya said, and she was crying, and she didn’t even care.
You never will. And let me tell you, Lily. It sucks.

Lily’s mouth dropped open. She looked at Maya, who realized that she’d just revealed her cards.

Maya,
Lily said,
I didn’t know…

Maya’s cheeks were hot. She didn’t need Lily’s pity. She needed Asher to just open his goddamned eyes and understand that she was here. She had been here all along.

If you really love him,
Maya pleaded,
let him go
.

It’s
because
I love him that I can’t,
Lily said. She glanced down at the phone, at the text reply that would reel Asher right back to her. Again.

Without thinking about what she was doing, without thinking
at all,
Maya snatched the phone from Lily’s hand and erased her unsent message.
Don’t bother, it’s over,
she typed instead
.
But before she could hit send, Lily grabbed for it.

The rest was hard to remember. They were tangled and grasping, both of them, knocking over a lamp and the nightstand. There was glass crunching under her sneakers. Maya clutched the phone to her chest, curling her body around it like an oyster cushioning a pearl, as she backed out of the bedroom. It was Lily who fought for it. If she hadn’t, Maya wouldn’t have shoved her away. If she hadn’t, Lily wouldn’t have lost her balance and tumbled down the stairs.

WHEN MAYA FINISHES
talking, the truth presses between us like an iron, hissing. Asher is pale, his teeth sunk into his bottom lip.

“I didn’t know what to do,” Maya tells him. “So I ran. I didn’t know you were going to show up.” She lifts a shaking hand to her eyes, wiping them. “I never meant to hurt her. I just wanted her to stop hurting
you.
”

A shudder runs the length of my spine. Here is the ultimate irony: Lily Campanello was not killed because someone was threatened by her being trans.

She was killed because someone was threatened by her being a
woman
.

“Maya,” I say quietly, “we have to tell the police.”

She doesn’t even look at me. She reaches for Asher’s hand and holds it like a lifeline. “You kept
her
secret,” she whispers, broken, hopeful. “Couldn’t you keep mine?”

THERE CAN ONLY
be one queen in a hive.

When a queen dies, you can either introduce a new one you purchase, or you can wait for the bees to create royalty.

Nurse bees feed royal jelly to all larvae, at first. It’s milky and thick, full of vitamins and sugars and amino acids. After a few days, the formula changes to worker jelly, which has lower levels of protein and sugar, or drone formula. But any egg can be repurposed to become a queen, if she is instead fed royal jelly through her entire development. The nutrients trigger different genetic programs, which are already somewhere inside that egg.

This has always been my favorite fact about bees: in their world, destiny is fluid. You might start life as a worker, and end up a queen.

A FEW WEEKS
after Asher and I tell Mike Newcomb about Maya’s confession, it is time for the first honey harvest. Asher and I are in the barn. He is manning the extractor while I saw through the combs with the hot knife. We’ve spent the morning collecting dozens of frames heavy with capped honey; now we are sweaty and sticky. The hair that has escaped my braid is glued to my cheek.

Asher opens the extractor and flips the frames so that the centrifugal force can suck the honey from the other side of each comb. I sleek the hot knife along the edge of the plastic tub where I’m collecting the wax cappings, trying to degum it.

“I was thinking,” Asher says, “of taking a ride to check out Plymouth State.”

Very deliberately, I keep doing what I’m doing. “Oh?” I say mildly. It’s the first time since the trial that Asher has expressed an interest in college. In moving on.

“They have a BA in graphic design,” he adds. “And a Division Three hockey team.”

“Sounds promising,” I say evenly.

“But I don’t want to leave you here alone.”

My eyes fly to his. “Asher,” I say, “it is
my
job to worry about
you,
not the other way around.”

“I don’t think that’s a hard-and-fast rule,” Asher replies.

I imagine Asher an hour and a half away, reinventing himself. I think of him with friends who do not know he was on trial for a murder, and it strikes me that this will become the thing he hides away. The secret he will have to decide whether or not to tell the next person he loves.

“Can I ask you something?” he says. “Do you think she had it? That blood thing?”

He is talking about TTP, the clotting disorder that Selena’s expert pathologist explained at the trial. I know Jordan would say that legally it does not matter whether or not Lily was afflicted; it only matters that the jury thought it was possible. But Asher is not a juror, and I know what it feels like to want to write the ending to a story that you’ll never finish living. “I guess we’ll never know, for sure. What do
you
think?” I ask gently.

He is quiet for a moment. “I hope she did,” Asher says.

A shadow falls across the dusty wood floor, and I look up to see Mike silhouetted by the sun. “Am I interrupting?” he asks.

Asher stills. He’s wary, even though Mike has been here a few times since the trial.

“I thought you’d want to know that the prosecutor isn’t bringing charges against Maya,” Mike says.

Something flickers in Asher’s eyes—relief, but also confusion about why she’d been absolved, while he was put through the wringer. Mike turns to me, tilting his head a tiny bit toward the doorway. An invitation.

I put down the hot knife on my worktable. “I’ll be right back,” I tell Asher, and I leave the barn, pulling the door shut behind me.

We wander a short distance, until we are caught between the whir of the extractor and the hum of bees. “He doesn’t like me,” Mike says.