None of the Above (20 page)

Darren's house was pretty much like I remembered it, with the exception, of course, of the baby paraphernalia that had infiltrated every room. We took our shoes off next to the stroller by the door, and walked through the living room strewn with burp cloths and soft toys. Even the kitchen had been compromised by a huge bottle-drying rack. Ms. Kowalski sat at the center island with an icing bag, surrounded by pastry shells.

“Hey, Mom,” Darren said. “I brought you a set of taste buds.”

“Kristin!” Ms. Kowalski exclaimed when she saw me. She got up and gave me a handless hug, careful not to get any sugar on me. “It's been ages. My, you've become such a gorgeous woman.”

I glanced at Darren, who nodded his head ever so slightly. His mom knew. I closed my eyes and leaned into her hug,
breathing in the scent of flour and butter.

“You came at the perfect time,” she said. “My client is a horticulturist, and wanted a floral theme for the reception. I'm trying some new lavender and rosewater fillings, and I need to know if they're too overwhelming.”

She held out an éclair for each of us. I closed my eyes as I bit down, savoring the delicate explosion of flavor. “Wow,” I said. “It's like edible aromatherapy.”

“And that's a good thing?” she asked anxiously.

My mouth was too full of éclair to answer so I nodded instead. “Mmm hmmm.”

Ms. Kowalski beamed. “Here, try one of the rosewater ones.”

“Can I help you fill them? It's the least I can do.” I reached for the other icing bag and plopped myself down by a tray of shells.

“Kristin,” Ms. Kowalski protested, “I'm sure this isn't how you want to spend your Saturday night.”

“Actually, I can't think of a place I'd rather be.” Aware of how cheesy I sounded, I didn't dare look over at Darren. But I heard a metallic screech as he pulled over a chair, picked up a pastry brush, and began putting a chocolate coat on my finished éclairs.

After a couple of minutes, the baby monitor went off. “Oh, dear,” Ms. Kowalski said. “Wendy's in the shower. I'll be back in a bit.”

“Okay, now's your time to jet,” Darren whispered as his mother's footsteps faded. “You've paid your dues. Éclair points earned. I'll tell my mom your dad called or something.”

“No need for excuses.” I smiled as I filled another shell. “It's kind of soothing.” There was a rhythm to baking, a surety of repetition that was as satisfying as running. The brightly lit kitchen and fantastic smells were just what I needed after a roller-coaster night.

Then it occurred to me. “Unless you want me to leave.” I put down the icing bag and slid off my chair.

“No, of course not!” Darren reached out to stop me, but only managed to paint my arm with chocolate. He swore, and ran to get a wet washcloth.

“I'm so sorry.”

“Don't even worry about it,” I said. I ran my finger across the offending chocolate and licked it off. “See? All better. Getting messy never tasted so good.”

Darren sighed, but he was smiling. “My mother is such a bad influence. Let me at least get the sugar off so you don't get all sticky.” He took my hand in his and gently wiped down my arm. My skin tingled.

We were so close I could hear Darren's tiny gasp as my fingers tightened around his. A strand of unruly hair fell out from behind his ear and I had to restrain myself from reaching out to tuck it back. Outside, a motorcycle zoomed by, setting off a chorus of dog barks.

We both stared down at our clasped hands.

“Kristin,” he said quietly.

Darren's cell phone went off, shrill and jarring, breaking the spell. He pulled his hand from mine as he reached for the phone, and when he saw the caller ID he turned around so his back was to me.

“Hey, babe,” he answered.

I picked up the icing bag again, pretending not to eavesdrop. But of course I heard every word.

“Yup, I got home okay.” Was it me, or did Darren's voice sound just a little too casual? He was silent for a while as Becky monologued, nodding his head once.

“Yeah, I remember him. . . . Okay. . . . I'll check it out.”

After what seemed like forever, he finally wrapped things up. “Well, thanks for calling, babe. I gotta go. My mom needs my help with some last-minute catering stuff. See you on Monday?

“That was Becky,” he said unnecessarily after he hung up. He didn't look me in the eye.

“Yeah, kind of figured,” I said. I could still feel the echo of his hand on mine.

“She was telling me about her uncle who went to Cornell and loved it,” he said with an eyeroll.

“Oh,” I said. I filled the last éclair, and set it carefully on Ms. Kowalski's lacquered tray. I stood and picked up my keys. “Well, that's the last of the lavender batch. Tell your mom
thank you again?”

Darren gave me a halfhearted grin. “You already know what she'll say: anytime.”

“You guys are too awesome,” I said.

And I meant it so intensely that it hurt.

The next morning, it was clear that Faith was ready for the Three Musketeers to be back together again.

Faith: So. U want V and me to pick U up 2morow?

Me: No not quite ready

Faith: Srsly?

Me: Im almost there

Faith: Okay fine. But gonna keep bugging you.

She wasn't the only one breathing down my neck. That afternoon, Ms. Diaz called to “check in,” reminding me that I only had a week's leave of absence left.

“It's really close to the end of the semester. Wouldn't it make sense to have a fresh start at the beginning of the year?” I asked. That'd give me until after winter break to pull things together.

“Well, the district has strict criteria for extended leaves.
We'll have to get some paperwork from your physicians, and you'll need to be evaluated every two weeks.”

I hated the idea of another visit to Dr. Cheng's office. After I got off the phone with Ms. Diaz, I paced around my room, then lay down on my bed. I pretended I was in the middle of a track field, and imagined Coach Auerbach's voice leading me through her visualization exercise:

Focus on the area under your belly button, and breathe in using your abdomen, as if you're pulling the breath out with a string. Relax your shoulders. Reach out. Now draw a picture in your mind.

I visualized myself getting out of Faith's car and entering the doors of Ralph Perry High with Vee by my side. As we walked through the hallways, people stopped and stared, and I imagined myself standing tall and ignoring them. Good people were there, too: Jessica and Darren, and maybe even Jorge and Quincy.

Then I remembered the heaviness in Darren's voice while we were filling éclairs. The moment Becky called, he had started to say something. I had a hunch that he had been about to let me down easy. Thank God he hadn't had the chance.

I deleted Darren's face from my visualization and put in Rashonda Glenn and Peggy Shah. Once classes started it was easier to see how I could fall back into the routine, the machinery of school.

Maybe I was ready, after all.

But as I pictured myself walking into the cafeteria, Bruce
appeared. And he did more than stare. He taunted, and got some of his buddies to follow me into the hall as I fled. He cornered me in a stairway, pushed me up against the wall, and unzipped my jeans as I flailed. . . .

I opened my eyes, my heart pounding.

Leaning up against my bookshelf, half hidden from view, there was a picture board that Faith and Vee had put together for me on my sixteenth birthday; I had taken it down one day after things fell apart, and hadn't rehung it yet. My gaze settled on one picture of the three of us hugging in front of a church. We were all wearing black.

My mom had been sick for almost a year before the cancer finally took her. She died in the summertime, and on the morning of the funeral I went out with Aunt Carla and some of my mom's friends to collect wildflowers—her favorite.

I remember Aunt Carla bawling behind me as I bent over to pick a daylily. “What is Bob going to do with a motherless child?”

“Shhh,” Mrs. Wu whispered. “It'll be okay, Carla. Kids are resilient. Look at how poised and strong Kristin's been today.”

Poised
, I thought, when they poured dirt over my mom's casket.
Strong
, I told myself that night when I hugged my father as he sobbed.

Six years later, I realized I was neither. How poised could I be if I was sitting in my room, trembling at the thought of Bruce Torino bullying me? How strong was I if I couldn't even
envision a place or a time when I could stand up and confront my diagnosis, rather than fleeing from who I was?

Except, according to Gretchen, such a place existed. People with AIS found ways to live and thrive, ways to be loved. And some of them had shared their stories. I turned my computer on and found the link she'd sent me to the support-group website. I expected maybe a couple of testimonials or links to magazine articles, maybe even a video or two.

I didn't expect 146 personal stories, ranging from a few paragraphs to a few pages. Written by women who'd found out about their AIS when they were as young as twelve and as old as thirty-five, and by a few men with partial versions of AIS that sounded even more confusing and mind-messing than what I had.

Then there were links to information on other types of intersex, including conditions that were nowhere near as cut-and-dried as AIS was. Syndromes like 5-alpha-reductase deficiency, where you start out looking like a girl but then “virilize” when you hit puberty.

For the first time since my diagnosis, I felt like I'd gotten lucky. Only
lucky
didn't completely describe my feelings:
humbled
was a better word for what I felt reading the honesty on that webpage. Truth stripped naked for the entire internet to see.

The common thread from all those stories was that talking
helped, and listening, and time. One day I would find my own place. I couldn't run there, though, because it didn't exist yet; I had to build it myself, out of forgiveness, truth, and terrifying gestures of friendship.

Before I left to go clubbing the next Saturday, I came up with a story for how I met Gretchen just in case her friends asked how we knew each other. Once we got there, though, I relaxed, because it turned out to be one of those clubs where the bass was so intense you could feel it in your cheekbones. It was the perfect way to hang out with four people you barely knew, because we couldn't have had more than a five-word conversation if we'd tried.

Gretchen introduced me to her girlfriend, Julia, as we waited outside in line, and I liked her instantly, even if I was intimidated by how glam and gorgeous she looked in a black sheath with a gold belt and fishnets. Inside the club, we met up with their friends Jenn and Leslie at the coat check. We'd barely exchanged words before I was half deaf from the pounding music and strangely amped up, itching to move. We plunged
into the strobe-lit chaos.

For the first time since my surgery, I danced. Not the single-girl dance, all flirty and mussing my hair around, but the girl-friend dance, in a little circle with the others. I danced until I could feel the sweat soaking my top. Once in a while one of the other girls would take a break to go to the bathroom or get a drink, but I kept going even when I didn't like the music, as if I were running a race. I just moved and enjoyed the feeling of being lost in a crowd.

Then the music stopped, and an emcee came onto the stage and chatted us all up. The crowd started to make that restless, get-on-with-it murmur, and we slid off the dance floor to get a better view of the stage. As I did, I saw a familiar lanky figure standing against a wall.

“Darren!” I yelled. I ran over, still high from dancing, and gave him a hug. Of course he was there—he was the one who had introduced me to The Concept, after all. I looked around for other kids from our school. “Are you here with Becky?” It was an eighteen-plus club, and Becky was a couple of years younger than we were. Club Eternal was notorious for kicking out kids with fake IDs if there was any suspicion that they weren't legit.

Darren looked uncomfortable. “Um, no. Quincy and Jessica.” He fiddled with his ticket stub. “Who are
you
here with?”

“Oh, just some friends,” I said vaguely. I'd already forgotten my made-up story about Gretchen.

Quincy saved me, butting in to tug at Darren's shirt. “C'mon, we scored a table over by the bar. Oh, hi, Kristin.” He brightened when he saw me, and glanced over at Darren before asking, “Wanna join?”

I looked at Darren. He didn't say anything or meet my gaze, and I felt myself coming down from my dancing high. “Thanks,” I said quietly, “but my friends are over there.”

“Who was that?” Julia asked when I rejoined them. “He was cute, in that confident nerd way.”

I gave a pained smile at the description. “Just an old friend.”

“An old friend . . . that you have a thing for?”

“I don't—” I stopped. Who was I kidding? I did. “He has a girlfriend.”

“Don't see him with one tonight,” Julia pointed out.

“Well . . . he's not into me, then,” I said.

“His loss. Plenty of other fish in the sea.”

Were there, in my sea?

Leslie misinterpreted my silence. “If you're shy, I'll be your wingwoman. It'll be perfect. Come hang out with me at the bar. You don't have a stamp, so they won't serve you, but you can at least mingle.”

The opening band started its set, and things got loud again. I joined Leslie in the sweaty press around the bar. As we waited to be served, she nudged me. “Hey, that dude is totally checking you out.”

I turned, scanned the crowd, and saw him. It was Josh.
Pinstripe Shirt from my night out in Whitesboro. My heart did a triple jump in my chest.

“Lara, right?” He slid over, leaning in until I could smell the Pabst on his breath. “What's up? You never called me back after that one text.”

“Hey!” My mind raced to find an excuse. “I'm sorry. Things have been super busy. And I had surgery.”

His eyes widened with real sympathy. “No shit? Well, it must've been minor because you're looking pretty fine now,” Josh said, his gaze drifting down from my face for a moment. Leslie tapped me on the shoulder and I watched out of the corner of my eye as she slipped away after a smiling “See ya later, Kristin.”

After a second of panic, I allowed myself to be flattered that Josh wanted to come back for more. Wasn't this what I wanted? To be swimming in the sea? We shouted at each other for a little while, to at least pretend that we were there for the conversation, but I was glad when Josh led me back out onto the floor.

It was so crowded that we were practically glued to each other. Right away, Josh put his hands on my waist. Then they snaked up my back, and his hips were moving and I could feel his hard-on rubbing against me as we gyrated. It felt gross and amazing at the same time, raw and real.

In between sets, Josh pulled me behind a decorative curtain hiding a little nook in the wall. We could still hear the noise of
the club, but we were hidden from view. In the tiny, enclosed space I had a moment of doubt, until I reminded myself that this was what I had come for.

Josh kept on whispering how hot I was, and I closed my eyes to get beyond the terror of being found out, and to focus on the feel of someone touching me, desiring me beyond any doubt. His hand slid up my skirt and under my panties, and I willed myself not to flinch.

Behind the curtain it was like a sauna. My hair was a mess, my neck sticky with sweat, so I put it up in a ponytail. I stripped down to a tank that I had layered under my top, and reached a hand up to wipe my forehead. And that's when Josh truly looked at me for the first time.

“Shit,” I heard him say. I glanced through the slit of the curtain, thinking that there was a bouncer coming around.

“Are you that . . . ?” Josh was staring at me. The lighting was all wrong for me to see the expression on his face, but I sensed the shock of his recognition. And heard the disgust creeping into his voice.

I recoiled, my heart pounding so hard I could feel it in my fingertips. “No,” I said, so desperately it sounded like a whimper. He couldn't even say what I was out loud.

“You said your name was Lara, but that girl called you Kristin. You're . . . whatshername. Kristin Lattimer.” Josh's voice started to rise. “I remember seeing you at a track meet last year with my sister. She was saying at dinner the other night that she
might have a chance at State because you'd been DQ'd because you were . . . a man.” He spat the last word.

I wanted to crawl into a hole and never come back, but the shame paralyzed me. When I didn't say anything, Josh shook his head, running his hands through his hair over and over.

“Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ
,” he muttered, so close to me that I could feel his breath on my face. “Why didn't you say something?” At first, it was almost like a plea. But then the cap came off his rage, bursting like a shaken-up soda bottle.

“Why didn't you tell me?”
His voice filled the curtained nook. I reached up to cover my ears, but my quick movement must've startled him, because he reached out to grab my left wrist so hard I could feel my bones rubbing against each other. I screamed, partly in pain and partly in fear.

“What the fuck kind of freak are you?” Josh shook my wrist.

“I didn't . . . I'm not . . .”
I'm a girl
, I wanted to say. But nothing came out of my mouth except sobs. Then all of sudden Josh started tearing at my clothes with his free hand, pulling at my miniskirt. There was no room where we were, nowhere to back up, and I could feel the unfinished concrete of the wall pressed against my bare skin.

“Where'd you hide it?” His fingers were thick, and they groped at my waist, gouging into my flesh.

“What? What?” I finally got out between the tears. “I'm not hiding anything!”

“Where's your dick? Did you, like, tie it back or something?”

“I don't have one, I swear.”

“You're lying.” He let go of my wrist to go at my skirt with both hands. I scratched at his fingers.

“FUCK!” Josh yelled.

My eye lit up with an explosion of pain and I jerked at the curtain, pulling us into the flashing lights of the club. It was so noisy that my cry for help got absorbed into the chaos. I scrabbled toward the dance floor, but Josh grabbed me in a rough embrace and backed me toward an emergency exit.

He growled in my ear. “Scream again, and every person in this club is going to find out what you are.”

Behind us, people cheered even louder as the emcee came onstage.

“All right, my friends, time to get this party started! Let's have a hand for The Concept!”

The strobe lights came on again as Josh led me outside. In the alleyway, he shoved me through the piles of garbage and broken-down boxes. After the stifling heat of the club, the cold air and the silence almost felt like a relief.

“What are you going to do?” I whispered, my breath barely frosting the air.

Josh spun me against a wall so we stood face-to-face. In heels I was taller than him, though he had more bulk. I knew I should be terrified, but I'd been expecting hatred and violence since the first text message and the vandalism to my locker.
Now we'd come to the natural conclusion of my story. The worst-case scenario.

I watched the sinewy muscles on his neck for the first sign of a blow. My fists clenched in anticipation.

Then the back door to the club clattered open, and a hoarse voice shouted out, “Hey, you! Hey, Neanderthal!”

I stiffened. I didn't want an audience. Josh swore, and turned. “What the fuck do you want?”

I looked past him. Saw a scrawny figure in a light-gray band T-shirt. And my heart sank.