None of the Above (8 page)

I spent first period in the girls' bathroom, using a paper towel soaked in cold water to bring down the puffiness in my eyes. Then, after the bathroom cleared a few minutes before the bell rang, I dragged myself to the north-wing stairs and waited.

In less than a minute, I heard a pair of uneven steps echoing through the empty hallway. Even after she'd transitioned to a soft cast, Vee's teachers still let her out of class early so she could get a head start on the crowds. I'd been her bag carrier long enough that I knew her schedule by heart.

She froze when she saw me, and stared at me as if I were a stranger, not the person who physically carried her part of the way to the school nurse the day she broke her leg.

My hands clenched as I turned toward her. “How could you do this to me, Vee?”

“Do what?” she asked, seeming surprised, but that was
Vee. Always an incredible actress.

“You told,” I said, my voice still stuffy with tears. “Everybody knows. Sam, too. How could you? I had the right to tell him myself. I would've been able to make him see that I'm the same person. I'm still Kristin. Not a freak.”

“Wait a second, wait a second.” She put her hands out as if she were stopping traffic. “Calm down. I told Faith, but you'd already told her part of it. I did
not
tell Sam.”

“Then how does he know? Who else did you tell?”

“Only Faith, I swear!”

Something about the tension in her shoulders and the set of her jaw told me she was lying. “No one at all?” I pressed. “Really?”

Vee squirmed. She actually squirmed, and it should have been a victory, but instead it was a disaster. “Okay, fine. I told my mom—”

“Oh. My. God. You told your mother?” I wanted to throw up.

“I mean, what was I supposed to do?” she said defensively. “I had to tell someone. It's all so fucked up. I mean, I was so traumatized—”

“
You
were traumatized?”

“Whatever, I was in shock. So I told my mom. And she said that someone should tell Sam. But I didn't, I swear!”

“You expect me to believe that?” Never, not in a million years. It was exactly what she would do to someone who'd stolen
the thing she'd dreamed about for three years. “It's because you were jealous that they voted me Homecoming Queen, wasn't it? You bitch!”

“You have some nerve, calling
me
names, after what they've been calling you,” she said hotly.

“Oh sure, turn it back on me,” I said. My jaw hurt from gritting my teeth. “It's always my fault, isn't it? I'm the one who always has to apologize? Well, I'm sick of it, Vee. The world does not revolve around you. When you say things, people get hurt.”

“I
told
you that I didn't tell him.”

“You told your
mother.
Isn't she in Junior League with Sam's mom? How else could he have found out?”

“Beats me. Do you really think my mom would go out of her way to tell him? She thinks you're a fucking saint. Which clearly you aren't.”

“Maybe she only thinks I'm a saint compared to
you
.”

Vee rolled her eyes, and in that one gesture—so careless, so familiar—I saw the fault line in our friendship, saw the crack develop. Then Vee asked, “Why are you getting so bent out of shape, anyway?” and made it into a chasm.

I stared at her, this horrible, clueless person I considered to be my best friend in the whole world, and my simmering hurt boiled over into anger. I screwed my face into a smile and did the one thing I knew could hurt her:

I laughed.

“They're right,” I said, in my best imitation of her ruthlessness. “You really are evil. No wonder no one voted for you.”

Vee flushed. The side of her mouth quivered. As her eyes hardened, I stepped back involuntarily.

“And look what they got,” Vee said, her voice pure venom. “The Homecoming Hermaphrodite. Well, they can have you. I wouldn't be caught dead with such a freak. Excuse me, I have to get to my next class.”

She clunked down the hall.

The bell rang.

And after I stopped shaking, I ran.

I ran the three miles home, hearing Vee's voice in my head.
I wouldn't be caught dead with such a freak
. The bitter late-autumn air stung my face and slicked my tears into the wind. Half of the time I could barely see the ground in front of me. Thank God it was a workday and the streets were empty.

When I got home, I went straight to the bathroom and puked, knocking over half the stuff on the counter on the way to the toilet. After I washed myself with Listerine I knelt down to clean up the mess: A couple of hair clips. Some lipstick. The claddagh ring Sam had given me Homecoming night. When I had shown it off to Aunt Carla she'd gotten all excited, saying that in the old days it was practically an engagement ring. The heart was for love, the two hands were for friendship, and the little crown over the heart meant loyalty.

What a load of crap.

I turned the ring around and around between my fingers, and thought about flushing it down the toilet too, but that seemed spiteful and wasteful. So I stuffed it into my travel bag to get it out of my sight. Maybe, just maybe, after Sam calmed down he wouldn't be so mad, and he'd realize what an asshole he'd been and apologize and everything would be okay.

All I wanted was for everything to be okay again.

I went to my room, and lay on my bed. I looked around at my track trophies and the posterboard collages of my friends. Nothing in my room had changed. Yet everything was different. I'd only ever felt that way one time before: the day after Mom died.

I ignored the first three text messages I got. After the fourth one, I turned my ringer off, and stared up at the ceiling, a prisoner in my bed. I couldn't run because of the people outside. I couldn't check my email or my phone for fear of another Photoshop masterpiece. So this was how shut-ins were made.

My thoughts didn't so much swirl as swarm as I rehashed the conversations with Vee and Sam over and over again in a masochistic loop.

Later, when I heard my dad's car door slam, I knew I should get up to go down and greet him, but my legs felt like they were made of Play-Doh.

Instead, he came to me. “Krissy, you in there?” he asked after knocking on my door.

“Yeah, just getting back from a run.” Not
exactly
a lie.

“I'll put something on, maybe the lasagna in the freezer?” I listened to his heavy tread down the stairs, then my thoughts swarmed again. I relived the pain, the humiliation and the fear, and then one thing that Sam had said made me sit up straight in bed, my hand to my chest as if I'd just been stabbed.

I thought I loved you. . . .

Past tense.

My whole life, I'd only told four people that I loved them. One of them was dead. Now another one of them hated me. I went a little crazy. That's the only way I can explain why I opened up my phone, trying to ignore the other texts, and typed a message to Sam:

I am a girl. Please talk to me so I can tell you the truth. You know I love you, and would never, ever try to hurt you.

Maybe I was a glutton for punishment. But this I believed: it shouldn't be possible to stop loving someone so quickly.

As my dad and I ate, I kept my phone on my lap. It didn't ring, but our doorbell did just as I rose to clear my plate.

It was Faith, with an anxious-smiley mash-up on her face.

“Hey. You haven't been answering my texts. I was just coming by to see if you were okay.”

My dad hovered in the foyer. “Is something wrong, Krissy?”

Faith looked back and forth between me and my father, her smile faltering.

“Oh, I'm just here to see if Krissy's okay with all her Homecoming Queen duties. You know how it is—photo shoots and speaking responsibilities and everything.”

“Huh. You girls have a good chat.”

My dad wandered back into the kitchen, and I waited until I heard the clank of dishes in the washer until whispering to Faith, “You didn't have to come.”

“I waited for you for half an hour after school! How could I not worry? What was I supposed to think?”

I shrugged, and picked at my cuticle. “I don't know . . . that I'd gone underground. Isn't that what you're supposed to do during a natural disaster?”

Faith put her hand on my arm. “We'll get through this, Krissy.”

I pulled away at the pity in her eyes. How could she understand? Everyone loved Faith the instant they met her. In fifth grade, she and I had sold cookies together outside the local Walmart, and that'd been the first time that my dad hadn't had to buy a dozen boxes so I could meet my quota.

Even she couldn't sell hermaphrodites, though.

“Should I pick you up tomorrow morning?” she asked.

I shook my head, thinking how nice it would be not to
have to hear the whispers, not to have to worry every second about whether Vee or Sam would be around the corner. Then I remembered the suffocating vortex of my bed. I worried that if I stayed home I wouldn't be able to keep the whole blowup away from my dad. And I heard my mom's voice in my head.
A lady always holds up her head and smiles, even in the most trying circumstances.

“I'll be ready,” I promised Faith.

Glutton for punishment.

I went back into the kitchen to the sight of my dad crouched over his laptop with his hand to his temple, muttering something under his breath.

“Do you need some Excedrin?” I asked.

“No, no.” He shook his head. “I'm fine. It's just . . . Did you know that AIS may be what that runner Caster Semenya has?”

“Who?”

“Don't you remember? That teenage girl who came out of nowhere and broke all those records in the eight hundred meters a few years ago? They accused her of being a man. Ended up suspending her. She was from South Africa or something.”

“So?”

“If State ends up taking away your funding . . .”

“No.” My voice came out strangled.
Please don't let them take this away from me, too
.

My dad rubbed his hand up and down his face like he was wiping off sweat. He took a deep breath, and schooled his face to look calm. “It's okay. . . . I can always take out some loans if they take it away.”

“What . . . my scholarship? Can they do that?”

“Honey, I'm sure it'll be fine. I'll make some calls tomorrow.” He fiddled with a napkin, and I stared at the liver spots on the back of his hand. His comb-over had gotten thinner and thinner. When had my dad gotten so old?

I went up to my room, but couldn't fall asleep. Instead, I lay in bed for an hour listening to the sound of the wind battering the trees against my bedroom window. Longing for the past. Dreading the future. And drifting in the present like a ship lost at sea.

Faith picked me up early the next day so we could get in and out of our lockers before the morning stampede. For the first time since freshman year, I got to homeroom before the warning bell had even rung.

Ms. Thomason looked up when I walked in, and waved me over to her desk.

“Kristin, how are you doing?” she asked gently. I recognized that eggshell voice. “Ms. Diaz left me a message for you. She wants you to stop by the guidance office whenever's convenient for you—here's a hall pass. You could even go now, you know. I don't have any important announcements.”

I shook my head. “No, that's okay. I don't want to miss first period.” More like, there was no way in hell I was walking anywhere during school rush hour.

As the other kids filtered in, none of them laughed or
pointed or anything, so I guess that was an improvement. I almost wished that I had a test so I could pretend to cram. Instead I listened to Faith go on and on about the winter-formal bake sale.

“You know how hard it is to get people to bake,” Faith chirped. “Will you make Rice Krispie Treats? If you can, make sure to use some Fruity Pebbles on the top,” she said as we heard a ruckus out in the hallway. A bunch of kids went over to the door to peek out, and I raised my head to see what the commotion was about, but Faith ignored them. “It adds color and makes them so much more—”

“What's he writing?” one of the other kids asked.

“Whose locker is that?”

“It's probably some stupid football hazing ritual.”

That didn't make sense; I thought it was too far into the season for that stuff. I felt a flicker of dread. And I heard my name.

“Where're you going?” Faith asked as I stood up. “Just wait here, Krissy. I'm sure it's something stupid.”

I had to push through people who were coming into the classroom, giggling. As I walked down the hallway toward the noise, I felt someone grab my arm. It was Darren Kowalski. He wasn't laughing.

“Hey, Kristin,” he said a little too loudly. “I wanted to talk to you about that
Merchant of Venice
homework. Were you thinking of doing an extra-credit scene at all?” He tried to steer me
in the other direction, toward my homeroom.

“No, Darren,” I said calmly, despite my racing heart.

I pulled my arm away, and went down the hall to my locker to find out what Darren was trying to prevent me from seeing. When I got there I just stared at it, as if it was some other person's locker and not mine. It was so ugly. They'd chosen an awful dark green color, and half of the paint was dripping down because they'd done such a crappy job. Vinnie McNab, the guy who had the locker next to mine, was going to be pissed because they'd gotten some of the spray paint on his door, too.

STaY aWaY, TRaNNY FaGGOT

The first thing that popped into my head was that I wished they'd chosen a more girly color.
I'm a girl I'm a girl I'm a girl.

The bell rang, and people started rushing to class. Staring at my locker, some people laughed. Other people looked disgusted. Either way, it was like I had this bubble around me that no one was willing to enter. Hell, I didn't want to be in it, either. I looked down to see if the people from my homeroom were still looking out at me, and they were. Faith hung half out of the doorway. She was waving me to come back in, and I almost went, but then I saw Vee standing one classroom down, her face stony. I wrenched my head away, back to the words on my locker. Was it me or did the
S
look like Sam's handwriting? The thought turned my heart into a block of ice.

Stay away.

“What's going on here?” Ms. Thomason peeked her head out at the commotion. I watched her face as she looked at my locker, her mouth twisting, and knew that there was no way I could go back to homeroom. But where could I run? Where could I possibly go to hide from what I was?

As I stumbled toward the back entrance, I passed the gym. I saw the USD seal on the floor and looked up at the
SPARTAN PRIDE
sign my teammates and I always hit on our way out to the track. Instinct took over.

I walked to the back of the gym, where the varsity teams had a weight room. It had that comforting Febrezed-over smell that I associated with track. I went to one of the leg machines and lifted until it hurt. Coach Auerbach liked to say that pain was our friend, and I'd always bought it. Physical pain meant that you were bending your body to the will of your mind, that you were stronger than muscle or bone or cartilage.

I kept going until I could tell myself that the tears in my eyes were from pain, not from shame and panic and dread of the future.

The door to the weight room opened.

“Krissy, that you?” Coach Auerbach walked in. It was strange seeing her in jeans. She must've just gotten to school. “You're getting an early start on training.”

I pretended to wipe sweat off my face. “Gotta defend my indoor title.”

Coach Auerbach's face fell. She sighed, and put her hand on my arm. “Krissy, why don't you come into my office for a minute? We need to talk.”

“At least two of the other teams in our division have already filed complaints with the athletic board, accusing me of cheating and demanding an investigation,” she told me. “I know that probably nothing will come out of it, but I'm sorry to say that we can't allow you to run until we get things straightened out.

“I know it sucks, Krissy. But I'm sure it'll blow over real soon.”

I tried to hold things together, but I could feel pieces of myself crumbling, turning to dust. Vee and Sam. Now the team, and probably my scholarship, too. What would be left?

“It's not fair. I'm a girl.” My voice came out in a whisper.

“Sounds like it's more complicated than that,” she said sadly.

“You know that running is the only thing that . . .” I couldn't go any further.

“Krissy, no one is more heartbroken than I am about this.” I believed her. Coach Auerbach had been my wingman on half a dozen interviews with recruiters, ridden at the front of the
bus on who-knows-how-many road trips. She leaned over to touch my hand. At her kindness, tears started streaming down my face.

Coach Auerbach handed me a tissue and rubbed my shoulder. “It's okay, Krissy. It might just be a temporary thing. After all, the IAAF ended up reinstating Caster Semenya after she passed a medical eval.”

“How long did it take for them to clear her?” I asked.

Coach Auerbach didn't look me in the eye. “It's not really the same situation, Krissy. She was competing in the world championships, and was shooting for the Olympics.”

“How long?” I demanded.

Finally she sighed, and answered. “About a year.”

Someone knocked on the door, and a girl's voice said, “Hey, Coach, I was wondering—”

I looked up, and through my tears I saw Rashonda Glenn, one of the juniors, who would probably be captain next year. She still had her hand in knocking position but her mouth gaped open like a fish's. I turned away from the shock in her dark-brown eyes.

“Never mind, Coach. I'll come back later.” She always was one of our best sprinters.

Pain was my friend, my ass.

Coach Auerbach let me pull myself together in her office. Got me some hot tea and a cool washcloth. I lay down on her couch
while she taught a phys ed class, but eventually all the yelling from the gym started bothering me and I snuck out.

I didn't want to go back to my locker to get my lunch, and I had a twenty that I always kept in my sneakers for when I was jogging, so I picked up the spare coat I left in my gym stall and went to the 7-Eleven.

What if I never ran another race in my life? I couldn't imagine it. Couldn't imagine never again living in that perfect endless moment before the starting gun went off, never feeling the ecstasy of leaning into a finish tape. Of course, I would run. I would always run. But what did hurdlers do when their careers ended? They didn't put hurdles up in their backyards just to remind themselves that they used to fly.

What was funny was that I never wanted to be an athlete. Then suddenly one day in phys ed—during all that Presidential Fitness stuff—I was the fastest. Faster than all the boys, even, except one or two. I joined the track team, and a couple of years later I had a college scholarship, a new posse, and a boyfriend.

Now I didn't even have someone to walk with to the 7-Eleven.

Because I didn't want to have any of the deli workers looking at me funny, I picked out one of the premade sandwiches even though they're always gross and soggy.

In front of me, a little girl and her father waited to pay for some soft pretzels. The little girl sidled up to the candy racks. When she fingered some Kit Kats she lost hold of her stuffed
rabbit, and it tumbled to the floor. I picked it up before it got trampled on by customers rushing in from the cold.

“Hey, you dropped something,” I said.

“Thanks,” said the dad, but the girl just stared at me for a second. As her father paid for their stuff, she kept on turning around to look at me. I wondered if she could tell that I wasn't really a girl.

“Remember, Dee Dee, it's not polite to stare,” her father whispered as he shuttled her out the door.

I bet if he knew the truth he'd stare, too.

“Five twenty-seven,” the cashier said, glancing at something to the side of his register. He didn't even look at me as he palmed my bills and dished out the change. “Thank you. Next.”

The wind picked up when I went outside. I looked up at the sky, muddy and gray. No sun to be seen, even though it must be around noon. Kids were starting to shuffle back to school. Mostly they had their heads down from the cold and didn't notice me, but one redhead with earmuffs recognized me from homeroom. She turned her back to me as she passed and whispered something to her friend, and I felt another wave of humiliation.

I walked up to the edge of the parking lot and watched the cars go by, catching little glimpses of the drivers' faces. They all stared ahead at the road, everyone in such a rush to get to their destination, barely registering things on the outside before
they blew on by. I wondered if they were going on errands, or rushing to hot dates. I wondered what they thought of when they saw me. Did they see a girl? A boy? Could they tell something was wrong?

I teetered on the side of the road, unable to see an opening to cross. There were too many cars. I was too tired. Way too tired to run.

I stepped out into oncoming traffic and looked to the left, saw a car approaching. I was vaguely aware that it was far enough away that I should be able to cross if I sprinted, but my limbs felt leaden, as if I were sleepwalking. The other side of the road seemed so very far away. I heard the screeching of tires, a wordless shout, and then something hit me from behind.