Parrotfish (17 page)

She snorted. “Well, it’s too late now anyway—we broke up, remember?”

“You don’t sound too happy with that decision though.”

“I’ll get used to it.” She smiled. “You know, Grady, I think I could tell you spent most of your life as a girl even if I didn’t already know it.”

“You could?”

She nodded. “You pick up on things. You care about other people. You aren’t just thinking about yourself all the time.” She laughed. “Maybe if Russell had been a girl for a few years, we’d get along better.”

I smiled, but not energetically. “Maybe. But there’s got to be an easier way.”

Her hand flew up to her mouth. “Oh, Grady, I didn’t mean to make light of what you’re going through. I’m so sorry. I would never want to hurt your feelings!” The hand that had recently covered her mouth reached up and ran along my cheekbone, sending out signals of delight throughout my body.

“I know,” I said, but then I couldn’t continue speaking because my brain short-circuited. Kita
was staring soulfully into my eyes, caressing my face with the tips of her fingers. I couldn’t help it; my eyes began to flicker down to the soft pinkbrown of her lips, which seemed closer than they’d been just a second before.

“Grady, I really admire you,” she said. “You’re such a great person, and so, kind of, adorable.” And then she kissed me. Kita Charles leaned across that little table and kissed me.

When she sat back again, smiling, I felt like I’d been smacked in the head with a fairy godmother’s wand. Everything was different; everything was right; everything was perfect. I was, kind of, adorable.

I looked around the coffee shop to see if this miracle had been apparent to anybody else, but they were all reading newspapers and novels, sharing gossip and mainlining caffeine, completely unaware of the way in which one small event can change the whole world.

Afterward, Kita dropped me off at Sebastian’s house. I arrived at the same moment as the pizza, but Sebastian was far more interested in me. He leaped around me like a puppy, begging for details.

“She kissed me” was all I said. What more was
there to say? Did she like me? Did she feel sorry for me? Did she regret it two seconds later? I had no idea.

Sebastian’s mouth fell open. We ate pizza and decided to watch
Ma Vie en Rose
after all.

M
s. Unger was right about Danya wanting revenge, but, as it turned out, it wasn’t revenge on me. I didn’t hear about it from Eve herself; Wednesday night she called Sebastian and he called me.

Before launching into the story, he asked me what he’d been asking me constantly for two days. “Have you heard from Kita? Did you see her at school? Did she call you?”

“No, no, and no. It was just a spontaneous thing,” I told him. “It didn’t mean anything.” But in my heart I hoped that wasn’t true—I hoped the meaning of it would soon become obvious. If Kita’s feelings for me were one quarter of what mine were for her, I would die happy. But I couldn’t admit it, not yet.

I changed the subject. “So what’s the story with Eve? Is she freaking out that Danya’s mad at her?”

“Mad doesn’t begin to describe it, Grady.
Apparently Danya and her minions are spreading the word that Eve is a lesbian and that you and she were girlfriends before she came to Buxton High. Eve is very upset.”

I didn’t want to hear it. “Why? What’s the big deal? Being a lesbian is practically normal compared to me, right?”

“Come on, Grady. You can understand this. Eve is shy, and she’s hardly made any friends at the high school except Danya’s awful group of ninnies, who she hooked up with before she knew better. She’s not a lesbian, and she doesn’t want kids to think she is. You should get that—you want people to know who
you
really are.”

I grumbled. “She had one friend when she got to the high school. She preferred to look for new ones.”

“Grady, Eve feels really bad about all of that. You know she does. She never wanted to stop being your friend, but she was scared. She didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“Yeah, that whole thing backfired, didn’t it? Anyway, how do you know so much about Eve’s feelings?”

“I just talked to her for forty-five minutes. Look, she took a big chance telling you about Danya’s trick. She must have known Danya would
figure out who told you about it. Don’t you think we owe her something in return?”

“‘We’?
We
owe her?”

“Well, technically you do, but I’m willing to jump in too.”

I sighed. “What am I supposed to do? Wear a sign around my neck that says, ‘Eve is not a lesbian’? Go on the cable channel and declare, ‘I did not have sex with that woman’?”

“That would be amusing,” he said. “But, no. The first thing you could do is to be nicer to your old friend. She really needs you now.”

I grunted. “Where was she when I needed her?”

Sebastian didn’t answer for a minute, then he said. “She’s been there, quietly. Some people are stronger than others, Grady. Be glad you’re one of the strong ones.”

That Sebastian. I never knew what he was going to say next. Was I a strong person? Stronger than Eve—
that
I could see. Eve had always been the kind of person who preferred to follow carefully in someone else’s footprints. Mine, until her unfortunate alliance with Danya Siefert. But if “strong” meant stable, steady, determined—did those adjectives define me? Not every day they didn’t, but sometimes, and more often as the days passed.

“I have to go,” Sebastian said, interrupting my reverie. “You
are
going to have my paper proofread by tomorrow, aren’t you? I need to fix any problems you find and get it turned in by Thursday.”

“Yeah, I was just about to start it when you called,” I lied.

“Good. Don’t forget to bring it to school tomorrow.”

“I won’t,” I promised.

After we hung up, I retrieved the stoplightparrotfish paper from my book bag. It was a ridiculous notion: me, proofreading a paper for Sebastian, the A-plus English student who read Shakespeare for fun. I knew it was just a ruse to get me to read the paper, of which he was very proud.

“The Fascinating World of the Stoplight Parrotfish” was twenty-six pages long with an additional four pages of footnotes and a two-page bibliography. I suspected Sebastian would say he enjoyed doing the work.

Stoplight parrotfish are commonly found among the coral reefs in the tropical waters of the Florida Keys, the Bahamas, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Caribbean Sea.

More about their size, life span, etc., etc.

Parrotfish exhibit three adaptations that set them apart from other fish. First, they have a set of teeth in the back of their throats called pharyngeal teeth, which they use to grind up coral and extract from it the algae known as zooxanthellae, a necessary nutrient for the fish.

Information about the excretion of the ground-up coral, which eventually becomes beautiful white Caribbean beaches. More than I wanted to know about where sand comes from.

A second unusual characteristic of this fish is that it secretes and surrounds itself with a mucus cocoon at night to protect itself from predators.

And what that smells and tastes like. Scientists are a hardy breed.

But the third parrotfish adaptation is perhaps the most fascinating. Depending on fluctuations in population density, these fish may change their gender from female to male.

Okay, this is the part for me. I’m liking it that the young female is an undistinguished gray with a red belly, but it turns a beautiful green with a
golden-yellow stripe down its face when it becomes male.

Nature creates many variations, and gender ambiguity is not unusual. It is normally a device to allow reproduction to succeed. Particularly among fish, gender can be quite flexible. In fact, reef fish that do not change gender are in the minority.

Okay, that is pretty cool. If only I were a better swimmer.

Gender shifting occurs only when it’s necessary for survival.

Now,
that
I can relate to. It’s necessary that I no longer live as a female. Necessary for my mental survival, if not actually all that great for my day-to-day physical life.

The paper goes on to tell about the advantages of being able to switch genders. As Sebastian told me earlier, the females who change to males are called supermales and are dominant over the regular old
born
males. Which is a fantasy I haven’t even bothered to imagine. It does, however, seem that the only purpose for the gender changing is to ensure rapid reproduction, thereby allowing the species
a better chance of survival. So what’s my excuse? Having babies has nothing to do with my reasons for wanting to live as a male. In fact, it may—probably will—hinder my chances of ever reproducing. Sebastian meant well, but alas, I am just not a fish.

Still, I read on to the end, finding and marking one missing comma and one instance of “the” mistyped as “tha,” both mistakes I’m sure Sebastian made purposely so I’d feel useful.

And then, the last page:

Matthew Grober of Georgia State University has measured the number of cells producing isotocin (a hormone involved in reproduction) in female fish that change gender.

Blah, blah, blah. Then:

“The part of the brain that controls sexuality is the same in all animals, including fish and humans,” said Grober. “And animals that change sex in a matter of days, like the bluebanded goby, are ideal systems to understand what drives maleness and femaleness across species.”

And finally, Sebastian’s summation:

Perhaps the study of the stoplight parrotfish and other gender-switching reef fish will eventually shed light on the mysteries of human gender, enabling us to understand what makes a person—both in body and in mind—male or female, or even a little bit of each.

I was momentarily stunned. There were people actually studying these things—what makes somebody male or female.
Oh, Mr. Grober
, I thought,
please keep doing that research! Because if you understand these things, maybe I will too, and maybe my parents will, and eventually so will everybody else. And if you can’t do it, Mr. Grober, how about turning it over to Sebastian Shipley? He’s one smart kid
.

       SEBASTIAN: [into a microphone] Now that I’ve conquered the problem of speaking to fish, I will attempt to translate for you the words of my devoted helper, a stoplight parrotfish I call Malachite due to his astounding coloration. In fact, the color might more accurately be called aquamarine or even turquoise, but I chose the name for its classical quality. Greetings, Malachite!

       MALACHITE: Up yours, Shipley. My name is Frank and you know it.

       
SEBASTIAN: Malachite sends his greetings to us all. Now, would you tell the audience, please, Malachite, what it felt like to change your gender from that of female to that of supermale.

       MALACHITE: Felt like a million bucks, lemme tell you. At last I could stop being barefinned and pregnant all the time. I put on those supertights and I was the alpha dogfish! These days I leave the toilet seat up and everything!

       SEBASTIAN: [hesitates a moment] Ah . . . Malachite says the transition was miraculous. He feels that becoming a male fulfills his biological imperative.

       MALACHITE: I said that?

       SEBASTIAN: Can you tell us, is there anything you miss about being a female?

       MALACHITE: Oh, sure, let’s see. I miss sitting around in the algae all day long with a bunch of fishlets hanging on my scales yelling, “Mommy, I don’t want to sleep in my mucus sack tonight!” Or, “Do I have to eat zooxanthellae for dinner again?” Oh, yeah, it’s a ball being female.

       SEBASTIAN: Malachite says, no, being male is just fine with him.

       MALACHITE: You can say that again, cowboy!

“Hello?” From the thickness of her voice, I presumed Eve had already been crying. It could be a soggy conversation.

“It’s me,” I said, as I had so often during the past twelve years.

She sniffed. “Oh! It’s you! I guess Sebastian told you to call me.”

“He didn’t
tell
me to. He mentioned that you were upset, that Danya’s been spreading stories about the two of us. What a surprise.”

She let out a deep breath. “Why did I ever start hanging around with her? She’s horrible. I know, you told me, but Angie . . .” She stopped and grunted. “Grady, Grady, Grady. It’s not that I don’t want to use your new name—it’s just that you’ve been Angie since we were little kids. It’s hard to think of you as somebody else. It’s confusing. What if I suddenly became Beverly or something? Could you stop calling me Eve overnight?”

“Beverly? That would be hard, I admit.”

“Anyway, I’m sorry about the way I’ve been acting. I felt terrible about it—really, I felt sick—but once I started hanging around with Danya and her friends, it was like I was stuck or something. If I didn’t do everything she wanted me to, she turned on me. I didn’t know how to get out of it, and I was scared of her. God, I’m so tired of
being a big chicken all the time. I wish I could be more like you.”

“Hey, you told me about Danya’s trick. That wasn’t something a big chicken would do.”

“Are you kidding? I was terrified!”

“But you told me anyway, and now you’re paying for it. And I . . . I just wanted to say thank you.”

It occurred to me that for the past month or more I’d been waiting for Eve to understand what was going on with me, and to forgive me for it. But now that seemed backward. Maybe it was my job to understand what was going on with her, and to forgive her for that.

After a long silence Eve said, “So, are you not so mad at me anymore?”

I laughed. “Yes, I’m not so mad at you anymore.”

“Thank God! I missed you so much . . . Grady!”

“I missed you too,” I admitted.