Parrotfish (4 page)

“I can wait,” I said, “if it takes you awhile.”

She made her mouth curve into a bad imitation of a smile and cleared her throat. “I wanted to tell you that if you want some nicer
clothes—boys’ clothes—I could buy you a few things. Some . . . shirts or something.”

“I’m okay,” I said. “I got some stuff at Goodwill.”

“You don’t need to wear secondhand clothes!” she yelled, her anger surprising us both. “Even if you’re not . . . dressing as a female, you can still look well dressed. We can afford to buy you decent—” She put a hand up over her mouth as if she had to physically stop herself from saying more.

“I know that, Mom. I mean, I guess you can if you want to.”

She took a deep breath and the sad smile popped up again. “You always had long arms for a . . .” She picked up my right arm and held it out. Why did her touch suddenly feel so rough to me? “Still, you’re very thin. I imagine a men’s small would be big enough for you.”

“Are you sure? I mean, I don’t want it to be tight.”

Her gaze fell to my chest then, and for a moment I thought she was going to reach out and touch me there and feel the Ace bandage binding my breasts against my chest. Just thinking about it made the bandage feel tight and itchy, and I squirmed as she looked at me. I
knew she was wondering how I’d gotten flat so suddenly; I turned away from her.

Even though my boobs weren’t that big to begin with, this stupid bandage thing was
so
uncomfortable. I was definitely going to have to order the chest binder I’d seen recommended on a website. It looked like a close-fitting undershirt and was supposed to eliminate the shooting pains caused by this do-it-yourself method.

Laura came shuffling into the room, shoelaces dragging, and threw her book bag on the counter.

“Do we have any Pop-Tarts?” she asked, banging open cupboard doors.

Mom moved away then, and the tense connection between us fell away so quickly, it was as if gravity had been pulled out from under me. I felt like I might fall over or float off. As the two of them argued the merits of Pop-Tarts versus cereal, I tried to calm down and pretend it was just an ordinary day.

But I knew it wasn’t. It was the day I was going to school with my hair parted and combed the way a boy would, my chest bound tight under a boys’ flannel shirt that was tucked into a pair of boys’ baggy jeans. It was the day I was going to the principal’s office to ask that my name be changed on all my records. It was the day I planned to ask my teachers and classmates to call me by my new,
neutral name, Grady. It wouldn’t be an ordinary day. It would be the day that, for better or for worse, I became myself.

Laura leaped out of Mom’s car before it had even come to a full stop in front of the school.

“Laura!” Mom called after her. “Are you staying after school for anything?”

“Maybe!” Laura yelled. “I’ll call you!” She was already halfway up the front steps.

I took my time getting my backpack together and climbing out so Laura could make a clean getaway.

“You need to be picked up today?” Mom asked.

I shrugged. “If you’re not coming for Laura, I’ll just walk. Weather’s good.”

She looked uncertain, even a little afraid. “Well, you can always call me if you want to. I’ll be home.”

“Okay.” I guess she thought Grady would need her protection more than Angela had.

A few kids stared at me as I walked inside the building, but nobody said anything. I figured they’d gotten used to me looking different little by little as I went from tomboy to lesbian to short-haired guy-in-a-flannel-shirt. As I headed for my locker, I could
hear Eve’s laugh—not her real laugh, but the high-pitched, phony-sounding laugh she’d begun using since her arrival at the high school. I turned around to see her standing with her new pals outside the door to their first-period French class. Her eye caught mine for just a second, but she immediately turned her back to me. Before this year I never would have believed I’d see that: Eve ignoring me. For a dozen years she’d been my shadow, my henchman, my one and only friend—and now she wouldn’t even look at me. How could she do this to me? Of course, she thought I was the one who’d done something awful to her.

I watched her twirling her wavy, slow-to-grow-out hair around her index finger—her
I am nervous
signal since she was five. Her pasted-on smile flitted from Danya to Melanie to Zoe, begging them to grin back. No such luck.

“Will you stop doing that thing with your hair, please?” Danya said, pushing Eve’s hand away from her curls. “You’re driving me crazy.” She reached back to tighten her own long ponytail—straight, blond, perfect.

“Sorry,” Eve said, cringing like a puppy who’d just been caught peeing on the carpet. Why did Eve want to hang out with such obnoxious people? I had to look away.

“Hey, Angela.”

I wheeled around. “Oh hi, Sebastian.” Sebastian Shipley, a guy I knew from TV Production class and Cable Club, had his locker near mine. He was short, skinny, and quite the nerd, but always friendly. One of those kids who live on such a distant planet, they don’t understand the laws of high school, or even know that there
are
laws. He spoke to everybody all the time, and everybody from the jocks and the popular kids to the Goths and the hip-hop wannabes were so stunned by his lack of awe that they actually spoke back.

“What video are you doing next?” he asked.

“I’m not sure what I’m shooting—I have to check the schedule. I’m editing the final boys’ soccer game right now. It airs Thursday.”

Buxton’s local-access cable TV studio was located at the high school, and any student who took TV Production could join the Cable Club and help program the channel. It was the best thing about going to Buxton High, in my opinion. I’d already learned how to shoot and direct a show, and now I was learning digital editing too.

Sebastian nodded. “I have to finish editing an elementary-school Thanksgiving program this week. I hope I don’t get assigned to film a bunch
of little kids’ Christmas programs—they’re so boring. I’m going to ask Mr. Reed if he’ll schedule me to shoot the Winter Carnival dance.”

“Really?” I was surprised. Sebastian Shipley didn’t seem like the type of person who’d want to go to a big, fancy dance. He was friendly, sure, but I was pretty certain he’d never had a date or gone to any of the usual school functions. He was a guy who was always alone and seemed okay about it.

“Sure. I wouldn’t go otherwise, and I like seeing everybody all dressed up like that. The girls look so great.”

Sebastian noticed girls? Huh. I guess everybody has hormones.

“Are you going?” Sebastian asked.

“Where? To the dance?”

He nodded.

“No way.” I laughed. “Not my kind of thing.”

He smiled. “Me either. You know, if I don’t get to film it, I mean . . . maybe we could go to it together?”

This day was turning out even weirder than I thought it would. “What?” I gasped. “You want me to—”

“I know I’m a lot shorter than you are, but that doesn’t bother me,” Sebastian said. “It wouldn’t be like a real date or anything. It would
just be fun to dress up and go. Don’t you think? I’ve never gone to a dance before.”

No, I absolutely did
not
think. Obviously, Sebastian would have to be told the whole story, now. “Look, Sebastian, there’s something you should know. I’m changing my name. I’m changing my whole life—”

“Cool! What’s your new name?”

“It’s Grady, and—”

“Grady. I like it. I liked Angela too, but—”

“Look, Sebastian, Grady is a . . . a boy. I’m a boy now.”

The first bell rang as Sebastian looked up into my face.

“So I can’t really go to the dance with you. Because, you know, we’re both guys. And I’m not gay or anything.”

I grabbed my English books from the shelf, shoved my backpack into the locker, and slammed it.

Sebastian was staring at me by then, his mouth open wide, his eyes sparkling with amazement, as though I’d just announced my virgin birth. “Wow!” he finally managed to say. “You’re just like the stoplight parrotfish!”

What?
“Uh-huh. Well, I have to motor, Sebastian. I’ve got English—” I started to back away from him.

“I’m doing a report on them for Environmental Science! The stoplight parrotfish!” He was practically yelling now, and people were turning around in the hall to look at him.

“Yeah, okay—”
Whatever
.

“I’ll tell you all about them when we get to TV Production!” he said. “You won’t believe it!”

I ran for the stairs.
That
was a reaction I wasn’t expecting. God, the kid was more interested in some fish he was doing a report on than the fact that the girl he asked to a dance told him she was really a boy. Was the rest of the day going to be this strange?

Mrs. Norman, my English teacher, was erasing the board when I walked in, so I took the opportunity to sidle up to her, trying not to make a big production out of it.

“Mrs. Norman?”

“Angela.” Mrs. Norman never used a spare word if she didn’t have to.

“I’d like to ask you a favor. Um, I’m changing my name.”

Mrs. Norman continued to erase, keeping her back as stiff as a tree trunk. I hadn’t yet penetrated her force field.

“I’d like you to call me Grady from now on instead of Angela. That’s my new name. Grady.”

Finally she put down the eraser and looked at me. “Have you talked to Dr. Ridgeway about this?”

“Not yet. I plan to go there before lunch and ask him to change my name on my permanent records.”

The second bell rang, and Mrs. Norman started writing some ten-syllable words on the board. “I’m sure Dr. Ridgeway will notify all your teachers if and when he approves the change,” she said.

What?
“Well, the thing is, Mrs. Norman, I’m changing my name whether Dr. Ridgeway approves of it or not. And I’d like to be called Grady. So I’d appreciate it if you’d call me that now.”

Finally she looked at me. “Angela, it seems to me that changing one’s name is nothing more than an attention-getting device. I see no reason to disrupt my classroom just because you’ve made a rash, momentary decision. You may decide by tomorrow that you want to change your name back again!”

“I won’t, though. I’m never going to be Angela again.”

But she was through with me. “Take your seat, please. Second bell has rung.”

I sat down. I hadn’t even told her
why
I wanted to change my name. I could imagine that conversation.

       
ME: I’m a boy now, Mrs. Norman. Grady. A guy, not a girl.

       MRS. NORMAN: Don’t be ridiculous, Angela.

       ME: No, really, I’m a boy.

       MRS. NORMAN: Why do you feel the need to call attention to yourself like this, Angela?

       ME: Believe me, if I only wanted attention, I’d find an easier way to get it.

       MRS. NORMAN: Is this some silly idea you came up with over the Thanksgiving weekend?

       ME: Actually, I’ve been thinking about this for months. Years, even.

       MRS. NORMAN: I suggest you take a yoga class, Angela. Rather than become a . . . [shivers] male. Learn to breathe deeply and stand up straight. Good posture is the key to mental health.

       ME: I’m not mentally unhealthy, Mrs. Norman. I’m just a boy.

       MRS. NORMAN: Really, Angela, get hold of yourself. By tomorrow you’ll want to be a girl again. Girl, boy, girl, boy. You’ll have everyone confused.

       ME: No, I won’t. And I won’t be confused anymore either.

       MRS. NORMAN: Take your seat, Angela, or I’ll hit you with an eraser.

Mrs. Norman called on me three times that hour, singing out all three syllables of “Angela!” as loud as possible. Bitch.

Ms. Marino, my Spanish teacher, was easy. It was her first year teaching, and she just wanted us all to like her. I could have said, “Please call me Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart from now on.” I could have told her I’d decided to become an elephant or a lilac bush and she’d have said the same thing.

“Why, that’s wonderful! I’m so happy for you, Grady!
¡Mis mejores deseos para tí!
” Then
she
called on me three times, always shouting out “Grady!” at the top of her lungs, rolling the
R
so it sounded vaguely Spanish. Apparently, Mrs. Norman was right: Changing my name was getting me way too much attention, especially from teachers.

The half-awake kids in my Spanish class didn’t seem to care what name I was called. I barely ever spoke to any of them anyway, except when forced to converse in our foreign language.

“Para la merienda, ¿quieres la chuleta de puerco o la sopa?”

“Mi comida favorita son las chuletas de puerco con arroz.”

As if the high school cafeteria ever served a recognizable pork chop anyway.

Next class, however, was gym. I’d been dreading
it the entire Thanksgiving vacation. Gym was one place it mattered very much whether you were a boy or a girl. There was no gray area for Grady—you either changed clothes in the boys’ locker room or the girls’. And I could no longer imagine using either one. Unbinding my boobs to step into the girls’ shower? I didn’t think so. The
boys’
? Right. Or I could just jump into an active volcano.

Ms. Unger and Coach Speranza cotaught gym class. Sometimes the boys and girls did stuff together, and sometimes we split up according to gender. I wasn’t crazy about Ms. Unger, but I’d never be able to put up with Coach Speranza for the rest of the year. He was the kind of gym teacher who encouraged the athletes to make fun of the kids who had a hard time huffing around the track or getting to the top of the climbing rope. He believed public humiliation was a teaching tool. Even Ms. Unger didn’t like him, and she wasn’t such a sweetheart herself.

I found Ms. Unger in her office just inside the door to the girls’ locker room, bent over a newspaper that was spread open on the floor. She looked up at me from her task of digging dog shit out of the crevices of her sneakers.

“Right in the middle of the track!” she said, as if I’d asked her a question. “There’s a sign out there begging those idiots to pick up after their
mutts, but they ignore it. Somebody could slip in this and break a leg. One of these days I’m gonna catch one of those morons, and
then
they’ll be sorry!”