“Good god,
would you please stop singing?”
“You like my singing,” Toby protests.
“Not when
you’ve been screeching in my ears for the last half hour.”
Toby slumps,
arms crossed. “I do not screech.”
I sigh.
“You don’t. I just need a break from the Beyoncé sing along, okay?”
“Kay,” Toby
says, dragging a hand through her tight, black curls. She reaches out and
punches a button on the car’s stereo, shutting Beyoncé off mid-trill. “Mums the
word.”
“Thank
you.”
My hands
clutch the wheel. I tried to relax my grip, but the tension in my neck seems to
radiate all the way down my arms to my fingers. As the sudden quiet wraps
around me like a comforting blanket, I feel myself quieting as well, the riot
of thoughts and emotions pinging around inside settling to a dull buzz.
“I’m sorry
I yelled.”
Toby snorts.
“You don’t yell, more like…whisper forcefully.”
“That was
way louder than a whisper!”
She ponders
for a second. “Yeah, I guess so, but it was definitely a baby yell.”
“A baby
yell as in I sounded like a baby, or the yell was tiny?”
“Tiny.”
“Fail,” I
say, and she smiles. We have this on going joke that I will never be able to
reach a pitch loud enough to be heard over her exuberant, noisy family. Unlike
me, Toby has no problem making her voice heard, no matter the circumstances.
“Funny thing is,” I continue. “It sounded pretty damn loud to me.”
Toby shakes
her head, sympathetically patting my arm. “Of course it did.”
“Was I even
close?”
She shrugs,
losing interest. For her it’s just a joke, a passing amusement. I don’t think
she suspects that I take it more seriously; another reminder that I’m not what
most people considers ‘normal.’
I change the subject. “Do you ever
wonder what you’d be like if you’d grown up with a different family?”
Toby’s head rests against the window, her eyes
half closed, the sun dancing on her chocolate skin. “I never really thought
about it.”
“Yeah, why
would you? Never mind.”
She sees
through my easy dismissal, reaches across and squeezes my hand, the one not
currently hanging onto the steering wheel for dear life. “Do you think you’d be
different if you weren’t adopted?”
I shrug,
nod, and shrug again. “I hope so.”
She sits
up, suddenly wide awake. “What does that mean?”
I wince,
realizing I’ve said something a bit too revealing. Toby and I aren’t supposed
to keep secrets from each other, but I’m not exactly an open book, even to her.
“It doesn’t mean anything.”
“This isn’t
the first time you’ve said something about not liking yourself. Don’t think I haven’t
noticed. I don’t understand, I like you just fine the way you are.”
I shoot her a surprised glance, but
look away fast. Her eyes are deep, and full. Intense. The road before me is an
empty, gray expanse, expecting nothing, asking little. Unlike her eyes which
ask everything, and expect truth. I glance at her again, and see something like
fear, or horror dawning in her eyes.
“You don’t
think I want you to change, do you? Because I don’t! I think you’re perfect.”
Heat creeps
up my neck, and splashes across my cheeks, turning them red. I hope she doesn’t
notice. “No one’s perfect,” I mumble.
“True,” she
agrees. “Perfect is a strong word. But you are
the perfect sidekick.”
I feel the
word ‘sidekick’ like a punch in the gut. Is that all I am to her? I shouldn’t
be surprised. I’ve always expected that she’s more important to me than I am to
her. Always expected that one day she’ll realize how much of a loser I truly am
and I’ll be left all alone. Because, let’s be honest, it’s freaking amazing
that we are friends at all. Toby is everything I’m not: confident, charismatic,
and lively. She may be tiny in stature, but she makes up for it with a dynamite
personality. Next to her I’m like a clunky, sluggish turtle, burdened by the shell
I carry around on my back in case I need to disappear. I can usually be found
hiding behind the pages of a book, or the shield of my feigned indifference. Toby
can be found in the spotlight.
“And I
don’t mean sidekick in the ‘I’m the superhero, I get all the attention and love,
while my loyal sidekick does all the work and gets zero credit,’ way,” Toby says,
correctly reading my expression.
“How do
you mean it?”
“Our friendship works because we are so different. Plus,” She
points a finger at me, “You are awesome.” She points to herself, “I’m awesome. Together
we are full of awesome. Together we are unstoppable.”
“Unstoppable?” I ask, quirking an eyebrow, but
my insides twang with joy at the compliment.
“Well, of course. Look at us! We
are fantastic, sexy, unstoppable machines.”
“I’m not sure that I’ve ever heard
sexy and machine used in the same sentence before.”
She scoffs. “You must be hanging out with the
wrong people.”
“No,” I say. “I’m pretty sure I’m
hanging out with just the right people.”
She smiles.
I smile.
We drive on in companionable
silence.
When we
exit the highway an hour later my nerves return with a vengeance. My heart
pounds, and my chest tightens like a drawn bowstring. I pull the car over,
careening wildly to the side of the road.
“What the-“
Toby squeals, but I’m already throwing the door open, practically falling out
of the car in my haste to escape. I double over in the grass along the road,
hands on my knees, gasping.
“Hey,” Toby
says, coming around the front of the car. She puts a hand, feather light, on my
back. “You need a paper bag?”
I shake my
head, but my heartbeat thuds loud in my ears. I can’t breath.
“You sure?”
I shake my
head again. Toby disappears and I hear her rummaging in the car. She returns
quickly with a small, brown paper bag.
Deep
breath in, deep breath out. Repeat. Slowly, I start to calm down. I crash
down into the grass on my back, ignoring the litter scattered about, not caring
that someone might’ve stopped to urinate, or vomit, on this very spot. Toby
lies down beside me.
“I’m not
sure I can do this,” I say after a while.
“We came
all this way.”
“I know. I
just…it’s harder then I thought it would be.”
“You’ve wanted this for a long time.”
I chuckle, nervous. “Right now I’m
scared shitless.”
“Well, we can forget it, and go
back home. Or we can go see your mom.”
“My mom,” I echo, amazed and
petrified. “What if she doesn’t like me? What if I don’t like her?”
“It’s possible, I suppose,” Toby
says, “but highly unlikely.”
“This is
why I love you.”
Toby turns
her head to look at me, surprise etched on her face. “What?”
I flush, embarrassed.
But I’ve said it now, and I can’t take it back. I don’t want too take it back.
It seems all my secrets are leaking out of me today. I say it again. “I love
you.”
“Is this
some kind of apocalyptic declaration? Because the world isn’t ending, love.
You’re just meeting your birth mother.”
I try to play it cool, like I’m not aching for
her to say she loves me too. “No,” I say, “although it does sort of feel like
the apocalypse to me.”
“Nonsense. Apocalypse would involve
fire, and explosions, and earthquakes and all that shit.” She looks around. “Seems
like an ordinary day in California to me.” Her gaze returns to me, and she puts
a hand on my arm. My skin tingles, heat shooting through my system. “You, on
the other hand, seem to be cracking.”
I laugh, but it ends abruptly when she leans
forward and presses her lips against mine. For a moment, there is nothing but
the taste of her, and the smell of her, and the feel of her. She presses a hand
to my cheek, and I slide a hand into her hair. My other hand finds the small of
her back, drawing her closer. I feel her smile against my mouth before she
pulls away and shakes a finger in my face. “Uh-uh,” she says. “We have a
mission to fulfill. Quit trying to distract me.”
I groan, but the way she’s smiling makes me think
that if this was any other day, any other time, she would curl up in the
sunshine with me and forget about the world. I wonder if I’m dreaming. On the walk back to
the car, our shoulders and hands brush against each other with new electricity.
I’m definitely not dreaming.
“Want me to drive?”
I shake my head, even though I long to let her
take the wheel. My shell is calling, but I refuse to hide this time. “No,” I
say, shoving my hands into my pockets to hide their trembling. “No. I’ve got
this.”
“Hell yeah,
you do!” She squeezes my arm, before marching back to the passenger side. I
take a last deep breath of the warm, spring air, turning my chin up to the sun,
then slip into my seat and buckle up. The engine roars to life, but I just sit
there. My eyes slide shut. Toby watches me; I can feel her eyes on my face. She
leans over the console, and her lips brush my ear. She whispers, her breath,
her words, warm against my skin.
I smile, throw the car into drive
and hit the gas.
Did anyone notice that the
main character’s gender is never specified? Did you also notice that the main
character has no name?
This story began with a question–
could I write a story without assigning the main character a gender? I thought
this would be difficult, but was surprised how easy it was to avoid. What matters
is the character’s heart, their soul. Their story. How much does gender really influence
a story? I’m not sure, but for this one at least, I found it didn’t matter much
at all.
"We all contain mysteries, especially when seen from the inside." ~Every Day, David Levithan
"It was replaced almost immediately with the horrific realization that Adam had no family. Who would she be without hers?" ~The Raven Boys, Maggie Stiefvater
"I will never understand why gender is so important to mating rituals-it doesn't make sense;love is love, attraction is what it is, and why should the arbitrary assignment of genital parts determine whether or not you want to be with a person?-but the fact is, it matters. I hate that, too." -Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List, David Levithan
the air shivering with tension; 
