Being Emily (21 page)

“Sure,” I said,
then
thought through the implications of that question. “Oh, you mean do I
like
her?”

He looked at me as if I’d lost a few brain cells.

“Dad, if I was cheating on Claire, I wouldn’t take her along, would I? Natalie’s just cool. She’s from Chicago.”

He made some grumbles of agreement and settled back into the couch. “How’s that other problem?”

I had to roll back the movie in my head to recall what he was talking about.
Right, my alleged impotence.
“It’s fine,” I said. “I’m doing
good
.”

“Good,” he said.

That was it with the questions. My dad was funny that way. He’d have these spurts of concern and the rest of the time it was like the family was made up of supporting characters in the drama of his job and the cars.

I watched TV with him for a while and then went upstairs to lie in bed and relive the day over and over again. For so long I’d thought I was trapped in this life and now I could see the way out and I knew I could take it. Now it was just a matter of moving through the obstacles. My next milestone was set for my appointment with Dr. Mendel on Thursday.

***

“You said I should come up with a plan,” I told her. “I want a plan.”

“Good,” she said. “I think you probably already have one, you just haven’t thought it through or formalized it.”

She was right, and I told her how I planned to work all summer and as much as I could for the next few years, and to go to community college until I could get the money together for the physical transformations that I wanted.

“What about hormones?” she asked. “Are you still taking the ones you got illicitly?”

“Yes.”

“We need to get you to an endocrinologist and do this right. We need a plan for talking to your parents.”

I sighed. “It’s going to suck,” I said.

“Do you want to do it here?” she asked.

“You’re brave.”

She smiled. “It’s my job.”

“Yes,” I said with tremendous relief. “I do want to tell them here.” It was so good not to be in this all by myself anymore.

“Okay, let’s talk about when you feel you’ll be ready.”

I liked that she left it up to me to decide. It was late March now with spring break coming up next week and the potential for a few more trips to see Natalie. I didn’t want to risk losing that. Then I was in the crunch to the end of the school year.

“Can we do it in June?” I asked.

“Sounds like a good time to me. What are you going to do at home between now and then?”

“Be a good boy,” I offered, raising my eyebrows at her.

She laughed.

I was a good boy at home, actually, and it seemed so much easier now that I could get out of the boy role with Claire and Natalie and Dr. Mendel. Playing the good boy now felt like a really long dress rehearsal for a play I would never star in. Mom commented about how great it was that my visits with Dr. Mendel were helping and I agreed happily.

I made an offer to Dad to help him sell some of his used car parts on eBay if I got a cut, and I even managed to play with
Mikey
a couple times. He was always making up these games in which superheroes from his favorite cartoons had to fight each other, and he never minded that I took the women heroes for my characters.

***

My birthday isn’t my favorite time of year. It’s near the end of April, so the world outside is slushy. At least that smell of hope is in the air, gently warm and green, and every year I let myself hope it’s going to be different than the year I got a tool box, or the model car, or the neckties, the suit jackets, and so on. I used to hope I’d get gifts I wanted, but now I just hope I won’t get anything too awful. I asked for a couple of computer games and for a copy of some graphic design software to practice with in case I ever want my own website.

Mom asked if I wanted a party, but I said not really, so she suggested we all go out to dinner, the family and Claire and one of
Mikey’s
friends. That didn’t sound like a particularly fun evening to me, so I added, “Can I invite Natalie and her mom?”

They were more than happy to come out for my birthday, but by the time the evening rolled around, I was regretting my invitation. We had only one nice restaurant in town and I picked that because I didn’t want to have to drive too far with my family, and I thought it would be fun for Natalie to see downtown Liberty in all its glory. But when we pulled up in front of
DaVinci’s
, I wanted to turn around and head home. The restaurant looked very small and kitschy compared to those in the big malls in the cities. I worried that my family would be too strange and at the same time I worried they’d realize Natalie had been born a boy. This was shaping up to be the worst birthday ever.

Claire grabbed my elbow and dragged me into the red and gold waiting area where Natalie and her mother sat on a low, red velvet bench. Claire made the introductions because my mouth was too dry for me to talk effectively, and then we were all seated at a long, rectangular table. Mom quizzed Natalie’s mom about what kind of law she practiced, which left Dad to interrogate Natalie.

“So, you’re in the Cities?” was his first attempt.

“We moved from Chicago a couple of years ago. I’m a junior at Maple Grove,” she said, deftly tearing off a piece of garlic bread with her manicured nails. I envied Natalie’s hands. Her fingers tapered toward the tips, so even though she had wide hands, she still looked great with the long, thick manicured nails she wore. My hands were square the whole way, from the base of my palms to my blockish fingers. In long nails I would look like a drag queen.

“And how did you meet?” Dad continued, though I’d already told him.

“We met online,” Natalie said. She knew he already knew, because Claire and I had prepped her thoroughly on what we’d told my parents.
“Gaming.
We’ve been playing together for, what, four months? And I just thought that
Em
—uh, Chris was really cool.” She kept going, but Dad had heard it. And I’d heard it so now all the blood in my body was rushing to my head, making it feel like it would burst open. That wouldn’t have been a bad way to go just then.

“What were you going to call Chris?” Dad asked.

“
Amalia
,” Claire said. “It’s one of Chris’s characters. Sometimes we get so caught up in the game, we call each other by those names even when we’re hanging out together. My character name is
Vaorlea
.”

“The Mighty,” I added reflexively, though my voice came out as a squeak.

“You play a girl?” Dad asked me.

I nodded.

“Most mages are girls,” Claire lied. “Natalie plays a guy because she’s a barbarian. I mean, warrior.”

That jab wasn’t lost on Natalie, who flinched when Claire said it, but she went with the flow. “Yeah,” she said with a pointed look at Claire. “It’s kind of weird sometimes, having to be a guy. But it’s also kind of cool to see how differently people respond to you. It’s an expanding experience.”

“But you’re a girl,” Dad said to Claire, meaning in the world of the game, though he didn’t say that.

“The whole time,” she said, trying not to smirk. “But my character is a paladin so she also uses magic. I’m not a barbarian like Natalie.” She paused and shot another glare at Natalie.

Natalie coughed quietly into her napkin, and I couldn’t tell if she was embarrassed or trying not to laugh.
Probably both.

Claire continued, “You get bonuses and stuff. Chris’s character is very powerful. He can wipe out a whole tribe of
orcs
with his
flamestrike
. Well, it’s not just that, he’s also
got these dots…that’s
damage over time spells. One of them makes the monster explode…”

She trailed off as Dad’s eyes glazed over. Claire often said that the quickest way to get parents off a topic was to start going on about gaming.

Mom changed the topic by asking Natalie’s mom about their house, and Natalie glared at Claire, “A barbarian, huh?”

“You’re just lucky his magic user is named
Amalia
,” she shot back in a deadly whisper. They were sitting next to each other, both facing me, while Dad was on my left, so I barely heard what they said to each other.

Natalie looked at me wide-eyed. “I’m so sorry,” she mouthed.

I shook my head because I didn’t trust my voice entirely yet. The inside of my skin felt like Jell-O still quivering. I tried to eat some spaghetti, but my throat was so tight it hurt to swallow. I wanted my mom and dad to know and understand so badly, but how could I survive telling them if I got this nervous about one slip?

The rest of dinner passed uneventfully, except for
Mikey
and his friend, John, trying to throw meatballs at each other. We dropped off Claire, and Mom
gushed
the rest of the way home about how smart Natalie’s mom was. But when we got home, Mom took me aside in the kitchen.

“They’re very nice,” she said. “But I’m not sure you should go into the Cities to see Natalie alone.”

“Why not?”

“I think Claire’s jealous of her,” Mom said. She called to my dad, who was still taking his boots off in the entryway, “Jerry, don’t you think Claire’s a little jealous of Natalie?”

“Yep,” he shouted back. A minute later he stood in the kitchen entrance. “There was something going on between those two. That Natalie’s an attractive girl.”

Mom nodded. “And she has a great way with her makeup. Most girls her age either don’t wear any or they put on way too much or, well, all that dark eyeliner isn’t doing anything for Claire’s complexion. Natalie is tasteful. But if you like Claire better, you need to let her know that. She’s probably feeling threatened.”

“And maybe you should try being a barbarian for a while,” Dad added on his way to the garage.

Mom looked at me quizzically because she’d missed that part of the conversation, but I just shook my head.

“You and Claire have been dating for awhile,” she said. “Is it serious?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“I remember when I was dating your father in high school,” she said with a smile that made her face look young and wistful. “Some of the other girls thought I shouldn’t just stick with one guy. Do you get that?”

“Some. Other guys on the swim team date around more, but I don’t really want to.”

She put her hand gently on my upper arm. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, honey. I just want you to have someone that you love. Someday I’ll get to come visit you in a nice house with your children and your wife, and whoever that is, I hope she makes you very happy.”

I wondered if she had too much wine at dinner. I think she was trying to let me know that it was okay to dump Claire for Natalie, or not, whichever I wanted.
As long as I got married and had kids.
At least that’s how it sounded to me because all I could see was this picture in her mind of me growing up like her, or rather like Dad.

“Sure,” I said.

“You’re going to make some woman very happy some day,” she added.

I managed a smile. “I hope so.”

I went upstairs to send Natalie an email about my parents’ compliments to her. I also wondered about what they’d said about Claire. I wasn’t attracted to Natalie at all, but I don’t think I’d ever said that out loud. Maybe I should do something nice for Claire. She took such good care of me, and she’d saved my butt at dinner.

CLAIRE

“Let me take you out to dinner tonight,” Chris said over the phone. Claire looked at the stack of books next to her computer. She wasn’t going to get through all of them tonight anyway and it was a Saturday. Plus she had Monday off for Memorial Day, so she had two more full days to finish that paper for AP English.

“Where?” she asked.

“How about the new seafood place?”

“It’s going to be packed.”