DECEMBER, THREE YEARS AGO
I was an hour early for the support group. The door was locked and the lights were off, so I crouched on the stoop. I played Final Fantasy on my handheld while I waited. My fingers were numb but my character in the game was named Amanda and she was beautiful and powerful, and watching her kill monsters helped calm me down. The only time I got to feel like myself was when I played pretend.
It was the first week of December, and every house but this one was draped in twinkling white lights like snow and ice. I had only seen snow twice before we moved, and it never snowed in Georgia. It was very cold, though, which was nice. When it was cold outside I could wear thick boots, thick jeans, sweaters, scarves, and hats. I could cocoon myself so that the only visible parts of me were my nose and my eyes and a few strands of brown hair. Nobody could tell if I was a boy or a girl.
“Well, hello,” a voice called from the yard. I paused my game and looked up. A girl a few years older than me in black leather boots strode down the garden path toward the porch, waving. She was tall and long-legged, with a cloud of natural hair bouncing with every step. I put my handheld away and stood, tucking my hands under my armpits. “Are you new? I can’t really tell.”
“I am,” I said. Even my voice was sexless when filtered through my wool scarf. “New, I mean. I haven’t been here before.”
“Good!” she said, beaming. She unlocked the front door and motioned me in. The front room was uncomfortably warm, but I didn’t want to leave my cocoon yet. “I’m Virginia, by the way. Coffee?”
“You don’t have to make me anything,” I said. “I’ll just get water.”
She brought me to a kitchen that looked like something out of the 1940s, all white and blue tile and high windows. I sat and sweltered while she ground coffee beans.
“Listen,” she said, “by all means wear whatever makes you comfortable, but it’s hot as Santa’s butt crack in here and I just know you’re cooking in there. I promise, whatever you’re hiding, in this place, what we see is what you know you are inside.”
I stood blankly for a second and then took off my hat. My hair was damp and stringy with sweat. I unwrapped my scarf, the scratchy wool pulling at my skin like a Band-Aid.
Virginia smiled. “See? You’re gorgeous.”
She sat beside me and took my hands in hers. The size of her hands was the only thing that might have given her away, but next to my bony, pale fingers hers were beautiful and dark and alive. “Listen, a lot of the people you’re going to see tonight are pretty … rough. Don’t let them scare you off, okay?”
“Okay,” I whispered.
“But don’t treat them like freaks either,” she said. “Just open your eyes and see them the way they really are. They’re all beautiful, okay?” I nodded. She squeezed my hand.
I heard the door open and close, and voices drifted in from the front room. A short, round man with smooth, beardless cheeks and spiky blond hair swaggered in. Virginia introduced him as Boone and he waved with a grunt. He was followed by a girl with long, straight, shiny black hair and a ratty, patched overcoat that went past her knees. Virginia introduced her as Moira, but if she heard, she didn’t say anything. The girl looked at her feet while she walked, and I wanted to tell her I understood, but part of understanding was knowing that telling her that would only make her nervous.
“Where’s Wanda?” Virginia asked. She sat forward in her chair, elbows tucked in and hands cradling her mug.
“Couldn’t get a sitter,” the man said. His voice was high and raspy. “Who’s the kid?”
“What is your name, actually?” Virginia said, arching an eyebrow.
“Andrew,” I said. My rib cage started to collapse. My heart thumped in my ears.
“Is that your real name?”
A woman with broad shoulders and a faint shadow of a beard under her makeup entered next. She looked strong and stout, but the longer I looked the more I saw the beauty in her—here a light step, here a brief touch of the hair, here a wide, open smile. Boone said, “Evening, Rhonda,” to greet her.
“Amanda,” I said then. “It’s … I mean it’s not my name, but I always wanted it to be. So, Amanda, I guess.”
“Would you like it if we called you that?” Moira asked. Her dark-ringed eyes bore down on me, but the corners of her mouth turned up in a faint smile.
“I’m not sure,” I said. My chest felt tight but warm and my breathing was shallow. “I think I want that.”
“Well, then, I would like to introduce my friend Amanda to everyone,” Virginia said, squeezing my hand and smiling. My eyes burned suddenly, and when I rubbed my cheek, my hand came away wet. I tried to remember the last time I had been able to cry.
6
Anna insisted on giving me a ride to the party Saturday night. Dad and I had been avoiding each other for most of the week, but he actually looked like he might smile when she picked me up in front of the apartment complex in her family’s green minivan. Maybe the religious bumper stickers stuck all over the van’s backside like wallpaper reassured him I was making friends with the right people.
We pulled up to the house as the setting sun limned the western mountains in red and purple. The house was white and ranch-style and looked like it could be on the cover of Southern Living. A garden overflowed with flowers in full bloom. I knew all of their names: Indian pinks, white rain lilies, Stokes aster, false indigo. Mom had taught me them years before, until Dad found me gardening, and they fought.