Zenobia July Read online

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Aunt Phil gave her a look, and Zen blushed red. The Aunties had asked her, politely but firmly, several times, not to call them “ma’am.” She was trying, but it was hard training to break. “Take two?” said Aunt Phil gently.

  “Yes . . . thanks. I made it.”

  A smile. “Right on. Good for you.”

  Zen returned the smile.

  “Any less than stellar aspects of the day?”

  “Um . . . no, not really. Just a lot of people. I’m not used to it.”

  “Yeah, right on. So many humans. I dig that.”

  “And there was a tricky part in a bathroom.”

  “Oh, heavy,” Aunt Phil said, nodding.

  “But it turned out fine.”

  “Groovy.” Another smile.

  Zen looked back across the street to see if anyone was watching. “Um, you didn’t have to come get me. I remember how to get back to your apartment.”

  “Our.”

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  “Our apartment. It’s yours, too, now. You know that, right?”

  “Yes, m— Um, okay, thanks.” Growing more aware of the possibility of watching eyes, Zen started pull-stepping toward home. Aunt Phil obliged, and they were headed back. The apartment was only a few blocks away, up in the old Parkside neighborhood.

  Zen said, “You still didn’t have to come get me.”

  “Sure, I dig. Like this morning, all independent. But I just wanted to make sure our wandering lamb was okay, okay?”

  Zen glanced up at the rugged face. Those eyes glinted back, full of a sort of gleeful mischief. “Okay?” Aunt Phil repeated.

  “Okay. Thanks.” They walked in silence for a minute. “Tomorrow, I want to come back alone.”

  “Right on. Groovy. Gotcha. And what a gorgeous blue it is, the sky today, don’t you think? You could flip gravity upside down and just dive straight up into it.”

  Aunt Phil worked in a restaurant kitchen, so she was home a lot during the day. Aunt Lucy, who was Zen’s actual aunt, her father’s older sister, was a professor at the local university. She was a tall woman, very thin, with short gray hair. If there was a pattern to Aunt Lucy’s coming and going, Zen hadn’t figured it out yet. She was in the apartment when they arrived. “Welcome home, Zenobia,” said Aunt Lucy. “I’m glad to see you. How did it go?”

  “It went fine, thanks.”

  “She had some kind of bathroom conundrum to figure out, I guess,” said Aunt Phil.

  Aunt Lucy was instantly intent. Her eyes had a different kind of sharpness to them. The way they flashed, it seemed like she was always ready for a fight. “What happened?”

  “Nothing. I just got scared.”

  “Scared of what?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Stupid stuff. Nothing anybody said or did, to me anyway. I spent the whole break in the stall, and these girls were talking about someone. Saying mean things.”

  “Ah, indeed,” said Aunt Lucy. “That would be part of the novelty of the day, of course it would. First substantive inside encounter with American girl culture. Quite apart from the challenge of what you’re undertaking with your own gender personally, what a rare and valuable opportunity to observe the cliques and roles around you with radically fresh eyes. It’s fascinating.” Zen looked back and forth between her Aunties, wondering—not for the first time—how two people who used words so differently could be married.

  “I’m just glad our twiglet is snug home,” said Aunt Phil. “While the spheres continue to roll in their orbits.”

  A long glance went between the two women, and Zen felt a sudden warmth as she watched them. She really did like them both. But oh, this new life, it was so completely new and strange. It still felt so close to impossible so much of the time.

  Her phone chimed.

  FOUR

  Hello.

  hello?

  who is this?

  Don’t you know?

  arli?

  May I have my capital letter, please?

  what?

  My capital A.

  Arli

  Thank you!

  really? u care about that?

  Yes, I care about that.

  I am a word geek.

  jeezum, lookit u w all words spelled out

  punctuation

  nobody does that

  I do.

  You mean, like this?

  Yes.

  But it takes so long.

  So?

  And now that I’ve started, I can’t seem to stop.

  It’s like being bitten by a vampire.

  Now you are a word geek too.

  Curse you!

  Avert!

  I read that in a book once.

  Me too! That one with the wizard school.

  I mean, not That One With The Wizard School.

  Before that.

  Yes, that one.

  You still there?

  Yes, I’m still here. :-)

  Please don’t do that.

  Do what?

  The smiley face thing.

  Emoticons.

  Why not?

  They’re dumb. I hate them.

  Judgmental much?

  OK, fine. I’ll put it this way:

  Words can always say it better.

  That’s what I believe, anyway.

  OK, then, how about if I spell it out?

  Smiley face.

  All right, I’ll allow it.

  Thank you.

  Any other rules about texting with you?

  While we’re on the subject, Your Royal Texting Highness?

  *scratches head*

  I do like using asterisks to bracket actions.

  “Star scratches head star.”

  *nods thoughtfully*

  Like that?

  Yes.

  OK then.

  OK.

  And:

  So?

  So, what?

  So, aren’t you going to ask me?

  I already did, remember?

  That was before.

  Aren’t you going to ask me again?

  *rolls eyes*

  What if I don’t?

  Totally your choice.

  But then you’ll never know.

  I could find out another way.

  Oh yeah?

  Yeah. If I wanted.

  Like how?

  Um, how about school records?

  What are you, some kind of Hacker Genius?

  Maybe I am.

  Wow face. Now I am impressed.

  Are you still there?

  *rolls eyes again*

  OK, fine. What is your full name?

  I thought you’d never ask.

  Starling Kedum.

  Starling?

  Yes.

  What an odd name.

  You’re not wrong.

  But that’s what it is.

  13 letters. With no repeats.

  Yes.

  Nice.

  Thanks.

  Um . . .

  Um, what?

  How do you get Arli from that?

  Middle four letters.

  Puzzled face.

  I wanted a nickname. But Star is pretentious.
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  And Ling sounds like I’m pretending to be Chinese. I am not Chinese.

  So: Arli.

  You give a lot of thought to nicknames.

  Word geek.

  You are a strange person.

  Grinny face!

  Thank you, I’ll take that as a compliment.

  FIVE

  THE DAY HAVING gone so much better than she had expected, Zen found it almost easy to face the mirror when she brushed her teeth before bed. Not easy. Almost easy. Even when her confidence spiked high, facing her reflection was never simple. And confidence spikes could not be relied on. Life in girl mode had turned out to be way more of a roller-coaster ride than she had expected. Her mood swung constantly, wildly, and her confidence with it. Which meant that, approaching mirrors, she never knew what she was going to see. Always, there was some boy. Usually a lot. The worst times, nothing but. Only once or twice had there been a heart-hammering moment of maybe beginning to see only girl. Even those moments were fraught, though. She yearned for them so much, and they never lasted more than a second. No way to hold on to the seeing. So fragile and elusive, it was.

  She rinsed and spat, then raised her head and made herself look at her face. She tugged at her hair, wishing it were longer. She tried a kissy mouth. She twiddled the starter-studs in her ears, longing for the day when she could wear her first real earrings. She held her head at different angles and pulled with her fingers to bring out the shapes of the bones and cartilage under the flesh.

  The other thing that made mirrors challenging was simply the passage of time. She lived in terror of the changes puberty would bring. The heavier, thicker facial bones. The beginning of an Adam’s apple. The first dark hairs sprouting on her upper lip. Body hair. Bulking muscles. The first voice break. Other, more awful changes further down. Thank God, none of them had begun yet. She had been lucky so far, but it couldn’t last.

  It had taken the whole summer to work up to this day. In June there had been the first trip outside in girl mode, after nightfall along the quiet streets of their neighborhood, in an agony of trepidation, with Aunt Lucy there to hide behind when the one or two people they met walked past. Then the second, trembling and bold, in the middle of the afternoon down Congress Street, the busy main drag through Portland center. Then several more forays after that. All had been completely without incident—not even a single double take—and at last she had begun at least to hope, if not to believe or trust, that other people might really be seeing her as the girl she knew she was.

  So: Try again tomorrow? It was going to be a constant question, fresh each day. Day at a time, Aunt Phil had said once, and inside, Zen had laughed bitterly. Day at a time! What luxury! Try hour at a time. Minute. Second, sometimes.

  Today had been a bewildering, fear-drenched ordeal.

  But, there had been good moments.

  So, yeah, maybe, try again tomorrow. Final call in the morning.

  Before sleep, Zen said her prayers. She had stopped actually kneeling by the bed, but it still felt good to close her eyes and direct her mind out and up, the way she had been taught. The way she had been doing for as long as she could remember.

  * * *

  ~

  Hello, God.

  Thank you for me not dying today. Even though I felt like I was going to. And thank you for no one seeing that I have this stupid boy body. Thank you for getting to meet Arli and Dyna and Clem. Thank you for Aunt Lucy and Aunt Phil. Bless them. Bless them all. Please.

  What am I doing? How can I even imagine this will ever work? But don’t get me wrong, God, I’m so grateful to be trying. I lived a day as a girl today. As who I really am. In school. Thank you for that, from the bottom of my heart, of my soul. Thank you.

  And bless everyone back home, too. Even though.

  Please, God, give me the strength to do it again tomorrow. Thank you and amen.

  SIX

  THE PROBLEM WITH being so self-conscious on day one that you can’t even hear words: day two is not too early to have missed something important. As soon as the first-period bell had rung, Mr. Walker asked everyone to take out their rubrics. Zen watched in blooming panic as the other students around her extracted a stapled packet from notebooks and backpacks. What rubric? What even was a rubric? “Did everyone have a chance to look through this?” Mr. Walker asked. A murmur of yesses. They had all done the homework Zen hadn’t even known existed. Her face burned. “Any questions?”

  Hands went up. Zen felt a touch on her arm and jumped. She turned and looked. The person who had touched her was a girl with long blond hair and sympathetic eyes. “Did you forget yours?”

  “What?”

  “Your rubric—did you forget it?”

  “Um . . . yeah.”

  “You can share with me if you want.”

  Zen scanned the girl’s face again and saw only kindness. “Thanks.” They scooched their desks closer together, and, by craning, Zen was able to follow along. Whispering thanks and introductions, she found out the girl’s name: Melissa.

  When class ended, Zen lingered at her desk, summoning nerve. Mr. Walker had a natural kid-like enthusiasm about everything, and he just let it shine out, like, I don’t care if you judge me for being such a geek, because I am. Even so, it was a challenge to approach him. She pulled her phone out and checked her dim reflection in the dark screen. She tugged down on a lock of hair by her ear. She walked up to the desk.

  “Hey there,” said Mr. Walker. “It’s Zenobia, right?”

  “Yes, sir.” A beat. “My nickname is Zen.”

  “Okay, Zen, great. Welcome to Monarch Middle. You’re new, right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Cool.” Another beat. “So, what’s up, Zen?”

  “Um, yes, I’m sorry, I seem to have missed getting one of those rubric things yesterday.”

  “Is that all? No problem. I’ve got plenty more.” He reached for his briefcase and pulled it up onto his desk, but then his gaze went out over Zen’s shoulder. “Hey, Robert!” he said.

  Zen turned and looked. A tall dark-haired boy was standing with one foot already out the door, looking back. “Yes, Mr. Walker?” the boy said.

  “Do you have a second? I have a problem with my laptop, and I know you know stuff about that. Could I get the benefit of your expertise?”

  The boy’s cheeks turned pink. “Sure,” he said, coming back into the room.

  Mr. Walker extracted a rubric from his briefcase and handed it to Zen distractedly as he moved around his desk, answering her “thank you” with a nod. He sat down at his laptop. Robert came over to where he could see the screen. Zen felt dismissed, but couldn’t quite bring herself to leave. The old pull. Her jam.

  Mr. Walker said, “Okay, see, when I sign on . . . Hold on, I’ll restart. It happens every time. Okay, here we go. Startup screen . . . dum de dum . . . and there, did you see that? That little window that popped up for a second?”

  “Yes, I saw,” said the boy.

  Zen shifted so she could see the screen, too.

  “That never used to be there before,” said the teacher. “And it feels like the machine has been running slower, too, for the last little while. And sometimes when I type, the letters don’t appear for a second, and then they all burst out in a bunch.”

  Robert said, “When’s the last time you defragged your disk?”

  Zen shook her head. Her fingers itched to get at the keyboard.

  Mr. Walker said, “I’ve never done that, as far as I know. I don’t even know what it means.”

  Zen tuned out as Robert talked about how data gets stored on hard drives. She stared at the laptop, all her alarm bells jangling. It had that dark-side feel. Robert finished what he was saying and left, hurrying to his next class.

  Coming into this new school and this new life, Zen had made a rule for herself: don’t get n
oticed. She couldn’t help it, though. Robert’s advice was wrong, and Mr. Walker was such a nice teacher, and anyway, she hated not saying what she knew. “Um . . .”

  “Oh, Zen! You’re still here. What’s up?”

  “I don’t think defragging is going to help you.”

  “No?”

  “No, sir. I think something else is causing the problem you’re having.”

  “You know something about computers.” It was nice the way he said it—an observation, not a question.

  “Yes, I do. Do you mind if I look?”

  “Well, the thing is, I have another class this period.” Kids were already filling up the desks.

  “Just a quick check. One thing.”

  “Okay, I guess so. Be my guest.”

  Zen sat down in front of the keyboard. As always at the gateway to Cyberlandium, her mind immediately switched to laser-concentration mode. She brought up the registry and scanned it. Yep, telltale signs. She summoned the list of running processes and saw a string of characters she knew. She began shutting down the computer.