How to Ditch Your Fairy (23 page)

PROMISE

I was born with a light covering of fur.

After three days it had al falen off, but the damage was done.

My mother stopped trusting my father because it was a family condition he had not told her about. One of many omissions and lies.

My father is a liar and so am I.

But I’m going to stop. I
have
to stop.

I wil tel you my story and I wil tel it straight. No lies, no omissions.

That’s my promise.

This time I truly mean it.

BEFORE

The first two days of my freshman year I was a boy.

It started in the first class of my first day of high school. English.

The teacher, Indira Gupta, reprimanded me for not paying attention.

She caled me Mr. Wilkins. No one cals anyone Mr. or Ms. or anything like that at our school. Gupta was pissed. I stopped staring out the window, turned to look at her, wondering if there was another Wilkins in the room.

“Yes, you, Mr. Micah Wilkins. When I am talking I expect your ful and undivided attention. To me, not to the traffic outside.”

No one giggled or said, “She’s a girl.”

I’d been mistaken for a boy before. Not often, but enough that I wasn’t completely surprised. I have nappy hair. I wear it natural and short, cut close to my scalp. That way I don’t have to bother with relaxing or straightening or combing it out. My chest is flat and my hips narrow. I don’t wear makeup or jewelry. None of them—

neither students nor teachers—had ever seen me before.

“Is that clear?” Gupta said, stil glaring at me.

I nodded, and mumbled in as low a voice as I could, “Yes, ma’am.” They were the first words I spoke at my new school. This time I wanted to keep a low profile, be invisible, not be the one everyone pointed at when I walked along the corridor: “See that one? That’s Micah. She’s a liar. No, seriously, she lies about
everything
.” I’d never lied about
everything
. Just about my parents (Somali pirates, professional gamblers, drug dealers, spies), where I was from (Liechtenstein, Aruba, Australia, Zimbabwe), what I’d done (grifted, won bravery medals, been kidnapped). Stuff like that.

I’d never lied about what I was before.

Why not be a boy? A quiet sulen boy is hardly weird at al. A boy who runs, doesn’t shop, isn’t interested in clothes or shows on TV. A boy like that is normal. What could be more invisible than a normal boy?

I would be a better boy than I’d ever been a girl.

At lunch I sat at the same table as three boys I’d seen in class: Tayshawn Wiliams, Wil Daniels, and Zachary Rubin. I’d love to say that one look at Zach and I knew but that would be a lie and I’m not doing that anymore. Remember? He was just another guy, an olive-skinned white boy, looking pale and weedy compared to Tayshawn, whose skin is darker than my dad’s.

They nodded. I nodded. They already knew each other.

Their conversation was littered with names they al knew, places, teams.

I ate my meatbals and tomato sauce and decided that after school I’d run al the way to Central Park. I’d keep my sweatshirt on. It was baggy.

“You play bal?” Tayshawn asked me.

I nodded because it was safer than asking which kind. Boys always knew stuff like that.

“We got a pickup going after,” he said.

I grunted as boyishly as I could. It came out lower than I’d expected, like a wolf had moved into my throat.

“You in?” Zach asked, punching me lightly on the shoulder.

“Sure,” I said. “Where?”

“There.” He jerked his thumb in the direction of the park next to the school. The one with a gravel basketbal court and a stunted basebal diamond and a merry-go-round too close to be much use when a game was in progress. I’d run past it dozens of times. There was pretty much always a game going on.

The bel rang. Tayshawn stood up and slapped my back. “See you later.”

I grinned at how easy it was.

Being a boy was fast becoming my favorite lie.

BEFORE

At the end of the second day of my freshman year, Sarah Washington found me out.

Nothing dramatic. I didn’t slip up and go into the girls’ room.

I laughed. Sarah heard me.

“You’re not a boy,” she said.

We were in the hal. Brandon Duncan slipped—I am not making this up—on a banana peel. I laughed. Lots of people laughed. But Sarah was walking past me. She heard me laugh. She turned.

“You’re not a boy,” she said again.

“Huh?” I repeated, continuing toward the exit.

“Boys don’t laugh like that,” she said, walking beside me, her voice rising.

“He what?” Tayshawn said, sliding across to join us, standing in front of me, blocking my escape. “We played hoops yesterday. He

—” He was staring at me now, moving in close. I was forced toward the wal. “She?—shoots like a boy. You are a girl, aren’t you? Look at her cheeks. No fluff.”

“I’m only fourteen,” I squeaked, my voice betraying me.

Now Lucy O’Hara was staring. Wil Daniels, too. And Zach. Al of them crowded around me.

“You’re a girl,” Sarah said. “Admit it.”

“I’m a boy,” I declared, wanting to push through them, to run.

“Let’s pul off her clothes,” Wil said, laughing. “Know for sure that way.”

I hugged my school bag to my chest.

“Girl!” Tayshawn shouted, laughing. “Boy would’ve guarded his nuts. Hah! You fooled us good, Micah.” He nudged Wil. “A girl beat you, man. A girl!”

Wil looked down, saying nothing, and kicked his shoes into the floor.

I fought an urge to cry. I’d loved playing hoops with them.

Tayshawn and Zach were so good. Especialy Zach. When you play with the boys and they know you’re a girl they either won’t pass to you or treat you as if you’re too fragile to breathe or they’l try to beat you down. Whatever way it goes it sucks. Playing as a guy had been so great. They’d passed to me, guarded me, blocked my shots, bodychecked me so hard my teeth rattled. But now Wil wouldn’t look at me. Zach had already gone.

“Freak,” Lucy said, walking away. Sarah stared at me a second longer before walking after her.

Then there was me, alone, leaning against the wal, bag stil clutched tight, as more and more students flooded by. I waited til they were al gone. Looking back, I saw the banana peel, trampled, broken into bits, but stil identifiably a banana peel.

BEFORE

The first and second week of my freshman year were bad. Realy bad. After Sarah Washington and the banana peel, everyone knew who I was: the girl who pretended to be a boy.

So much for being invisible.

I was caled into Principal Paul’s office and forced to explain.

“My English teacher thought I was a boy,” I said. “I thought it would be funny to go along with it.”

He said it most decidedly wasn’t. Then lectured me about the danger of lies and erosion of trust and blah, blah, blah. I tuned him out, promised to be good, and wrote an essay on Why Lying Is Bad.

“So why’s your name Micah then?” Tayshawn asked me. He was the only one who agreed that me pretending to be a boy was funny. He even asked me to play bal with him again. Wil was less happy. Zach ignored me. I didn’t go. Though I played H-O-R-S-E

with Tayshawn a couple of times.

“It’s a girl’s name, too,” I told him. “Just not as often.”

“It’s as if your parents knew you was going to look like a boy.”

“Wel.” I paused, feeling the rush I always get when I begin to spin out a lie. “You can’t tel anyone, okay?”

Tayshawn nodded, bracing himself.

“When I was born they didn’t know if I was a girl or a boy.”

Tayshawn looked confused. “How’d you mean?”

“They couldn’t tel what I was. I was born a hermaphrodite.”

“A what?”

“Half boy and half girl. You can look it up.”

“No way.” His eyes glided down my body, looking for evidence.

I nodded solemnly, figuring out how to play it. “I was a weird-looking baby.” (Which is true. I like to thread my lies with truth.)

“My parents totaly freaked.” (Also true.) “You won’t tel anyone, right? You promised.” In my experience those words are guaranteed to spread what you’ve said far and wide. I liked the idea of being a hermaphrodite.

“Not anyone. You’re safe.”

Tayshawn never told a soul. I know because days later there stil wasn’t a whisper about it. Turned out that he’s good that way.

Trustworthy.

I figure the rumor finaly spread al over school because I told Lucy when she was hassling me in the locker room. I went for the sympathy card: “You keep caling me a freak. Wel, guess what? I am!”

She looked more grossed out than sympathetic.

Or it could have been Brandon Duncan, who overheard me teling Chantal, who wanted to know how I managed to fool everyone on account of she wants to be an actress and thought it would be useful to know. She had me show her how to walk like a boy. I taught her how to spit, too.

Or maybe it was al three of them. Most likely. Hardly anyone’s as tight-lipped as Tayshawn.

However it spread, it reached Principal Paul’s ears, who contacted my parents, who told him it wasn’t true, and there I was in his office again, explaining how I had no idea how the rumor got started and was hurt and upset that anyone would say anything so mean about me. “I’m a girl. Why would I want anyone to think I was some kind of a freak?”

Because I wanted them to pay attention to me.

Something like that.

Mostly it’s the joy of convincing people that something that ain’t so, is. It’s hard to explain. But like I said at the beginning, I’ve quit the lying game now.

But that’s now, back then it was:

“Why did you want everyone to think you were a boy, Micah Wilkins?” Principal Paul looked at me without blinking. I returned the favor.

“You don’t know?” He sounded unsurprised. “Perhaps you wil find out when you visit the school counselor.”

I didn’t let him see how much I hated that idea. There have been way too many counselors and shrinks and psychologists in my life. I mean, I know lying is bad, that’s why I’m giving it up, but I’ve never understood why I had to see shrinks about it.

“You’ve been at this school less than two weeks, Micah Wilkins, and already you have a reputation for teling falsehoods and making mischief. My eye is on you.”

I didn’t ask him how that affected him seeing anything else.

My second essay for the principal was on the virtues of honesty. I ran out of things to say on the first page.

HISTORY OF ME

Being a liar is not an easy business. For starters, you have to keep track of your lies. Remember exactly what you’ve said and who you said it to. Because that first lie always leads to a second.

There’s never ever just one lie.

That’s why it’s best to keep it simple—gives you a better chance of tracking al the threads, keeping them spinning, and hopefuly not propagating too many more.

It’s hard work keeping al those lies in the air. Imagine juggling a thousand torches that are al tied together with fine thread. Or running the world’s most complicated machine with cogs on wheels on cogs on wheels on cogs.

Even the best liars, even the ones with the longest memories, the best eye for detail and the big picture, even they get caught eventualy. Maybe not in al their lies, but in one or two or more.