None of the Above (18 page)

The next Monday I timed my run perfectly and reached the woods just as Darren was jogging in.

His face lit up when he saw me, and he pulled his earbuds out. “You heading in?”

I nodded, trying to play it cool.

We fell into step. Under the canopy of trees, it was dark and chilly, and it was comforting to have someone beside me, to have someone else's footsteps echoing my own.

“Were you listening to The Concept?” I gestured toward his iPod.

“Nah, they're not really running music, you know? Too slow, too many tempo changes.”

I shook my head. “I never really listen to music when I'm working out.” It was too hard to set my pace when I did—I always wanted to match my stride to whatever song was playing.
And besides, I never used to run alone. “What
is
good to run to, then?”

“Depends. Did you know there are websites out there that tell you how many beats per minute there are to a given song? So you can choose what to listen to based on how fast you want to go.”

Surprisingly, I didn't.

“Lemme show you,” Darren said, flicking through his iPod. “We're on pace for what? A ten-minute mile? I've got a playlist for that. Here.” He stopped for a second and unwrapped his earbuds, handing me the left one. I slipped it in and he started the song, a poppy, happy tune that we fell into step with right away. Tethered by his earbuds, we ran close—almost as if we were dancing our way through a three-legged race.

It felt both comfortable and slightly disconcerting. I was aware of Darren's every breath, of the moments when he reached up to wipe sweat from his forehead. Now and then he'd shake his head to get an unruly brown curl out of his eyes, or pull out his CamelBak to take a sip, and it was as if his headphones amplified not just the music, but how attuned I was to his every movement.

The playlist brought us to the top of the overlook, where we stopped for a breather. I took out the earbud and dropped it into Darren's open hand, suddenly shy. Then I walked up to the view point and did a couple of quad stretches, turning back to watch Darren from a distance. Even though the physical
thing linking us was gone, some part of our bodies' understanding remained. I knew that, from that point on, I would never have a problem recognizing him from a distance.

We ran back down, and when it was time to part ways I hesitated.

“See you on Tuesday, then? East lot?”

“Yeah,” said Darren. He fiddled with his headphones for a bit before tilting his head back toward the woods. “So, anyway. If you end up running tomorrow, or Thursday, just send me a text. Maybe I can find something a bit more up-tempo for you. Jeez, did you even break a sweat?”

“You're too sweet,” I said, looking down as I scuffed the curb with my sneaker.

I ran home wearing a silly little grin.

The good feelings lasted until I checked my email, and found a message from Coach Auerbach. My dad had forwarded her the relevant NCAA guidelines, and she'd been able to convince the school board to reinstate me to the team. Would I like to come to practice starting tomorrow?

I was coming off a great run. I'd started taking my hormones and seeing a therapist. And still I felt blank, like the feeling you get in your leg after sitting on it the wrong way, just before the pins-and-needles pain comes rushing in with your circulation. But I didn't delete her email, either.

Would I like to go to practice tomorrow? Even now, my gut said no.

I replied back, and lied. I told her that Dr. Cheng hadn't wanted me to do any vigorous physical activity for ten weeks.

Maybe in a month I'd be ready.

I was
almost
there.

On Tuesday, I got to the east lot early, well before the after-school activities started to let out. Despite everything, I couldn't help staring out at the football field once the blue and orange dots began to emerge. Usually, I could spot Sam from a mile away, but that day I couldn't pinpoint anyone with his height and running stride. Was he injured, or in detention? Could he have quit the team? I thought about logging onto Facebook to see if he'd posted any updates, and then I remembered that he'd blocked me, and I felt that old sickening feeling, like someone had stomped on my heart.

My phone alarm went off at four, and I looked for Darren among the clusters of kids scattered across the sidewalk. With his height, I spotted him in no time, leaning over a slim girl almost a foot shorter than him that I recognized
as Becky Riley. He faced me, so I could see his animated motions, and his surprising smile.

I found it
surprising
because I'd always thought of Darren as a serious guy. He had a sense of humor, yes, but most of the time he'd deadpan, or if he was really pleased with a joke, he'd smirk. The smile he gave Becky was a genuine, 24-karat grin, unironic, unfettered by insecurity, and true. It was the kind of smile that transformed a perfectly ordinary, likable boy into a boy a girl could
like
.

I felt an unexpected twinge in my chest. I rolled down the window of my car, which was suddenly way too stuffy.

Eventually, Darren peeked at his watch and scanned the row of cars until he found mine. He said something to Becky, who glanced in my direction. I caught a glimpse of her heart-shaped face, and her long black hair. A smile lingered on her lips, a reflection of Darren's own.

Darren leaned over for a kiss, and I looked away for a second. But I couldn't keep myself from looking back; they were cute together. A Science Olympiad power couple. Good for him. Good for her.

I pulled out my copy of
Beloved
and pretended to be surprised when Darren finally opened the door to my car.

“Sorry, I lost track of time,” he said.

“Oh, I was a little late too,” I said, not knowing why I lied.

At the clinic, Darren did a double take when I popped the
trunk to unload my suitcase.

“You going somewhere afterward?” he asked.

“It's my donation to the clinic.” I went to lift the suitcase.

“What? Cool. Let me help you get that thing out,” he insisted, reaching in at the same time.

My hand brushed his wrist.

He yanked his hand away as if I'd scorched him.

I was unprepared for the flush in my face, for the stab of pain right over my solar plexus. Darren didn't look at me. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “I know you can take care of yourself.”

“Sure can,” I joked, trying to mask how rattled I felt. “I can bench-press ninety-eight pounds.”

We didn't say much else as I rolled my suitcase into the clinic. Darren walked an arm's length away from me, and checked his phone the entire way. Probably texting Becky.

When Darren peeled off to go to the Dungeon, I took a deep breath. I reminded myself that volunteering at the health clinic wasn't about me and Darren. It was about the patients and their families. I went back to the doctor's office to show Dr. Johnson what I had brought.

“Is it okay for me to set up a little kids' play area in the waiting room?” I asked.

Her face lit up as I showed her my setup. “That'd be brilliant, Kristin. I'll bet the parents would love that.”

So I went back to the waiting room and climbed up to one
of the light fixtures. I used an old sheet and some string to make a play tent. Underneath, I laid out a second sheet with the Legos and a DVD player from the Stone Age. I set up the craft supplies on one of the folding chairs, and scattered the
Highlights
and
Seventeen
s throughout the waiting room.

By then, I had an audience. Four little kids couldn't take their eyes off of me, though they dutifully stayed sitting under the watchful stare of their mother. One of the girls, bolder than the rest, picked up a magazine, but looked longingly at the pompoms and googly eyes on the folding chair every few minutes.

They reminded me of myself. So polite. Conditioned not to put anyone out.

I looked at the mom. “Is it okay if they come to play?” She'd barely nodded before they ran over. The younger boys cranked up the DVD player right away.

“What's your name?” I asked the bold girl, who hovered over the craft area.

A pair of bright brown eyes peered up at me from under a mop of dark curls. “My name's Lucinda. It's spelled L-U-C-I-N-D-A,” she recited.

“Wow, Lucinda. You are a terrific speller. Do you want to do coloring, painting, or puppets?”

“Puppets, please.”

We were hard at work on a Popsicle-stick family when I
felt eyes on me. I looked up, and saw Darren jerk his head back toward the charts in his hand. I could see the tips of his ears coloring pink as he grimaced.

I knew that look.

My face burned. Was he thinking of my wrongness? Breaking down the width of my shoulders and the narrowness of my hips, comparing them to Becky's willowy perfection? Or was he imagining that my boobs weren't real? Tears sprang up unbidden.

I drew deeper into the play tent as Darren carried the charts back to the Dungeon. I wiped my hand across my eyes and dried it on the sheet, and turned back to Lucinda.

“Tell me again what you wanted to make? A girl puppet or a boy puppet?”

“Oh, please please please a girl puppet.”

“What color should her hair be?”

“Brown, like yours,” she said with utter certainty. “With green eyes.”

My eyes misted again as I helped Lucinda cut some yarn, and she pasted it in an unruly pile above two green sequin eyes. She frowned, and picked at the eyes.

“It doesn't look right,” she said.

“Are you kidding? I have brown hair and green eyes. It's perfect.”

“Okay,” she said doubtfully. Then she smiled up at me,
sunlight and apples. “It's for you!”

“Thank you, sweetie.” I laid the puppet gently onto another folding chair. I blinked, and forced a smile in return. “Now let's make one for you.”

“Wait until you get to college and meet some real boys,” Gretchen told me a couple of days later.

“Yeah, about that.” I paused. “I've actually been thinking about taking a year off.”

“What?”

“To keep my scholarship, I have to go back to school, which I'm not sure if I want to do in the first place. But even if I do end up at State, there are ten people from my class going there, too. It'll be like I've never left.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Taking a year off would be perfect—I could reapply to some places that are farther away. I don't have to run Division One, I've decided that. And I can definitely get a Division Two scholarship. Some of the smaller schools, maybe they'd
be fun. Be a big fish in a little pond. There are thousands of colleges—”

“Kristin, listen to me.” Gretchen cut off my babbling. “You can't hide from your diagnosis for the rest of your life.”

I crumpled up the piece of paper I was doodling on and sighed. “I know. But don't blame me for trying?”

“Whatever. You're still coming with us to Club Eternal a week from Saturday, right? Because if you don't show up, I will personally hunt you down and drag your ass out.”

“Fine,” I said, but only because the club was in Syracuse, and I knew Gretchen probably would resort to bodily harm.

“Good. And the next thing you need to do is come with me to one of the national AIS-DSD meetings,” Gretchen said. “You'd be surprised at how normal and well-adjusted people are, once they settle into their diagnosis.”

I snorted. She made it sound like getting used to having AIS was like moving into a new apartment.

“Sure, everyone has issues at first,” she said. “People fall apart. Some people start drinking. One woman did heroin for a little while after she was diagnosed. But that's what those meetings are for. You realize that no matter what they've gone through, people can heal, as long as they have someone to show them the way.

“The meetings are like a big reunion, with lots of food and mingling. In the evening there's drinking. There was this
woman one night who'd had a couple of glasses of wine. She got up on a cocktail table and yelled, ‘I am intersex—hear me roar!'”

Gretchen laughed, but I shuddered. How comfortable would someone have to be with herself to do that in front of strangers?

“Was she old?” I asked.

“Dunno—maybe in her forties?”

“So I've got twenty years to get used to it.”

“Now that's just crazy talk. There's a teenage support group too. Not just in the US. I'm sending you a link to some of the stories on the UK website. Add that to your homework list. Required reading, due next weekend.”

I groaned. “What, am I going to have to write a book report?”

“No, but class participation counts.”

Now that the play was over, Jessica and Darren resumed their normal carpool routine, though they offered to have me join them.

“No, it doesn't make sense,” I said, back to excuses. “I've always got doctors' appointments and things to rush to afterward. Thanks, though.”

The clinic had been thoroughly Christmasfied, though the decorations were low on the Santa-and-elf scale, being more heavily weighted toward Nativity scenes and lambs.

“Can't they diversify a little bit and put up some Hanukkah stuff?” Jessica complained at lunch.

“Why do you care? You're as Jewish as the Dalai Lama,” said Darren.

“It's the principle of it. Don't impose your religion on other people.”

“So let me get this straight.” Darren leaned back in his chair. “You're saying that if I got your sister a present for Christmas, I'd be imposing my religion on her? That'd save me a mint.”

“Don't be an asshole. By the way, Becky's not into diamonds. She's more of a sapphire girl.”

“Yeah, I'll keep that in mind if I win the lottery,” Darren muttered.

The tips of his ears turned pink. I couldn't tell if he felt embarrassed talking about Becky, or about money. Maybe both. Jessica's eyes flicked over to me.

All of a sudden I became acutely aware of being an intruder, a last-minute interloper into
their
clinic. I didn't want to be a doctor, or a nurse. I was just looking for another place to hide. After one last bite of my turkey sandwich, I packed up.

As I got up to leave, Jessica looked at her watch. “We've got another twenty minutes for lunch.”

“I'm just running to the bathroom,” I said. And I did go to the restroom, but instead of going into a stall I stood at the sink and looked at myself. I stared at my Adam's apple. My jawline. I held up my wrist and examined the bone structure. I wondered if Caster Semenya ever got questioned for using women's restrooms.

Staff filtered in for the end-of-lunch rush, and I left. Instead of going back to the break room, I went to the waiting area, which was just starting to fill up. No older kids yet, just a baby in a car seat. So I picked up a bit. From inside the play tent
I watched for a pair of Converses. Only after I saw them go by and exit into the hallway did I head back to the exam rooms to help with turnover.

I did a quick calculation on the way there. I'd worked the clinic two full Saturdays, and five weekday nights. That gave me almost thirty of the sixty hours I needed for my community service requirement. If I just pushed through and volunteered like crazy during the holidays, when Jessica and Darren were less likely to be there anyway, I would fulfill my requirement and get out of everyone's hair.

I grabbed my coat to go home as soon as Dr. Johnson saw her last patient. Jessica, who was helping Dr. Johnson finish up her paperwork, waved me down as I went by.

“Hey, Kristin. A bunch of us are going to see the new James Bond movie and maybe hang out afterward. Quincy. Darren and my sister, some other people too. Wanna come?”

It was nice of her, but every bone in my body screamed no. I wasn't ready for something that public. And if I was perfectly honest with myself, I would rather eat iron filings than spend a night watching Darren Kowalski making out in the back row of a movie theater with his adorable girlfriend.

“Sorry, but I've got plans with my dad. Rain check?”

“'Kay.” Unlike Gretchen, Jessica took no for an answer.

I trudged out in the December chill and sat for a while in my car while it warmed up. My evening stretched out in front of
me like a desert, not an oasis in sight. My stomach rumbled, and I dug out an old PowerBar from my glove compartment.

The thought of having to cook dinner depressed me, so I called in some pizza. One meat lover's for my dad, one broccoli and spinach for me. You can tell something's a true comfort food when you feel better just having ordered it.

There are probably dozens of pizzerias in Utica, but Tony's Pizza had always been my mom's favorite because she had gone to high school with the owner's son. She was loyal like that, even though Tony's pies were a little more expensive and had fewer topping choices. Once she passed away, my dad and I kept ordering from Tony's because to switch to another pizzeria seemed a betrayal of her principles even greater than buying 1 percent milk instead of skim, or not going to church.

It being Saturday, the pies weren't ready when I swung by Tony's on the way home. So I stood reading the ads and business cards posted on a corkboard by the front door, marveling that Utica could support so many dog walkers and tarot-card readers. As the minutes passed, more and more people came trickling in and I moved closer to the dining room to give them space. Okay, I'll be honest—to give
me
space.

Just as I went to the counter to ask how much longer my pizza would take, a loud crash and an even louder curse burst from the dining room. Along with everyone else, I rubbernecked, and saw Rashonda Glenn sprawled on the ground in a shower of broken glass.

I knelt down to help her round up the shards.

“Shonda, you okay?” I asked, even though I knew she would be. Rashonda wasn't a hurdler, but she was a long jumper, which made her almost as tough.

“Sh . . . sugar.” She grimaced. “Hey, Krissy. I'm fine. It's my paycheck that's gonna be hurting when I have to pay for these glasses. That's
if
I'm lucky and my manager didn't hear me yell the
F
word in his family restaurant.”

“You could just tell him you were yelling
fork
,” I offered.

“Yeah, if he buys that I'll get you a drink.” She shooed me away when she heard the pickup people call my name. “Go. Your order's done. I'm fine here. Thanks, and get your butt back to the team soon.”

I felt a flush of warmth, and stood up smiling.

That's when I saw Sam.

He saw me too, and his eyes darted away like he'd been burned. And I felt like I'd been scorched by his gaze as well. Was there a hint of guilt when he looked at me? Despite how much it hurt, I couldn't avert my eyes from the sight of Sam sitting at a cozy two-person table with Stephanie Peterson, head of the football boosters club. The only thing that would've been more cliché was if she were a cheerleader.

Sam mumbled something into his drink and Stephanie swiveled around in my direction, her eyebrows raised in a perfectly plucked arch. If Sam's eyes seared, then Stephanie's gaze chilled me with its detached curiosity. I could've been a zoo
animal, or a fish in an aquarium—she didn't see
me
, and really only bothered staring for a few seconds before she smirked and turned back to her salad.

Rashonda stood up after picking up the worst of the glass. She took my arm gently, angled me away from Sam's table, and nudged me toward the front door. “Your pies are ready, Krissy. You know they aren't any good once they get cold.”

I closed my eyes and held them shut, as if I could press the restart button on my brain, and nodded.

It shouldn't have been a shock. Sam was too hot and too popular to be single for long, even with the stigma of having done it with a freak. It still hurt, though, in the way that I suppose a phantom limb hurts. I knew that the person I loved wasn't there anymore, yet I still felt the hope for him, the memory of his touch.

The worst thing, though, was the fear that I would never be able to fill that void again.

When I got home, I thumbed through my phone for Jessica's number to see if I could take her up on her offer. My call went to voice mail, and in desperation I actually left a message. I had to. Something about the house around the holidays made me want to go out in the worst way. Maybe it had to do with how my dad played his
Home for the Holidays
CD in a constant loop. Or maybe it was the silent loneliness of the dead bulbs on our Christmas lights, which Aunt Carla insisted on hanging on our windows “to guide the angels to our house.”

Either way, I had to escape.

It was too cold for a skirt, so I dug up my red pleather pants, knee-high boots, and a black top. The minute Dad came in and saw me all made up, he asked if I had plans, nodding happily when I told him yes, and handing me another twenty. “Say hi to Faith for me,” he said.

I headed out to Whitesboro again, and trolled the strip looking for a club that seemed likely—not too popular, but not too empty either. I had decided on a club called Bliss and was looking for parking when I saw them, standing in line, shivering adorably in their miniskirts while they laughed, not a care in the world.

Vee and Faith.