"Are you okay?" she asked. "Did she hurt you?"

"No," I said out loud. Silently I added, I think I gave as good as I got.

"Good," she said. "I assume you must have read at least a bit of that diary, or else you wouldn't have fought so hard to preserve your classmate's privacy."

---

 

5. The Stink-Bomb Madonna
 

"I'll be damned if Mallory is going to be the Madonna," Susan complained. "Could you imagine? For ages to come, that crazy girl's face would be hanging in a church!"

I laughed. "She'd have to have a baby, wouldn't she? I mean, in the picture. Can you imagine that?"

Susan scoffed. "And she'd be showing the baby a whoopie cushion or a stink bomb or something."

"Mmm." I nodded. "The Stink-Bomb Madonna. Still, I feel badly about her getting suspended."

"Why?" Susan countered. "She deserved it. She's lucky she didn't get expelled."

Blair came wandering over to our lunch table. She quietly set down her lunch tray and took her seat. Looking up, she gave us both a smile, then picked up her sandwich and started to eat.

I was amazed by the change in her demeanor. Yesterday she jerked around like a hunted bird. Today she was as calm as a... a cucumber? No... cucumbers are cool. Well anyway, Blair was amazingly calm. She seemed another person.

"Blair, look at you! It's nice to see you so relaxed. Are you feeling more at home here?"

"Oh!" Blair cried. "I'm relaxed because Mallory's not here! That girl is crazy! I don't know if you could tell."

"I had an inkling," Susan said drily.

"She terrorized me!" Blair complained. "It was bad enough being a new girl, but I had to be a new girl with her!

"She was always pinching me and telling me lies. Yesterday, before each class, she told me that they wanted me in the office. That's why I was always late."

"After the first time, why did you believe her?"

"Because she swore that it was true. She'd apologize for the last time, and tell me *this* time it was true. The last time she even showed me a slip from the office." Blair sighed. "It's such a relief that she's not here."

She looked at Susan apologetically. "You know yesterday? When I didn't have my books? It's not because I'm stupid. It's cause Mallory took them. Between each class when I wasn't looking."

Susan frowned. "But in History, your book was there."

"Ah," Blair said. "Okay... well... that time I was stupid. But she had me on my last nerve."

Susan gave me a look and rolled her eyes heavenward, but I was glad Blair wasn't the total ditz she seemed the day before.

I was about to say something about Mallory's ingenuity — after all, she'd bugged Miss Overmore's bathroom, and somehow tied her sounds into the auditorium sound system — when Blair and Susan looked with surprised expressions at something over my right shoulder. "Hello," Susan said uncertainly, while Blair helpfully told me, "Oh, it's the... him... man." I turned, and there stood the artist, Mr. Grenadilla. Jordan was at his elbow. Apparently she'd been chosen to accompany the artist around the school. She raised her eyebrows at me... I guess it was a silent greeting. Her face, as usual, was completely unreadable.

"Jordan," Mr. Grenadilla mused, "Could the Madonna of the Future be an Asian girl?"

Jordan shrugged. "Sure," she said.

His gaze went to Blair. "Or a French girl?"

"Why not?" Jordan replied. The corners of her mouth curved for a moment, but so quickly that I wasn't sure if they curved up or down. Was she smiling, or smirking, or making an irritated frown? Was she interested in what was happening, or was she putting a good face on a boring task? It was impossible to tell.

The artist turned his gaze to me, and stopped cold. He knit his brows, thinking. After an uncomfortable pause, he said, "When I look at you, I think TV. Why is that? Could I possibly have seen you on television?"

"She was on the news," Susan offered.

"Oh yes!" Mr. Grenadilla declared, recognition flooding in. "Yes, of course! You were kidnapped, you poor brave thing! And did you really shoot that man? With his own gun?"

"Uh, yeah," I said, reddening. I wanted to tell him that I had a lot of help, but I wouldn't have been able to explain what I meant.

Susan, seeing my discomfort, jumped in to change the subject. "Mr. Grenadilla—"

He cut in: "—Please, girls, call me Theo."

Susan hesitated, then started again. "Theo, you weren't serious about Mallory being the Madonna, were you?"

"Hmmm." After reflecting for a moment, he replied, "Mallory, the girl who loves rude noises? Why not? Do you think she's unsuitable?"

Susan opened her mouth to say something, but for once she wasn't sure what to say. Theo watched her face, and seeing Susan's uncertainty, he nodded.

"Don't worry," he replied. "There is no way on earth that that... young lady could ever be my model. Apart from any other consideration, every time I looked at her, I would hear those obscene sounds in my head, and it would make me too angry to paint anything worthwhile."

He smiled when Susan smiled at his response, and he went on, "I see you and I are on the same page regarding Miss Mallory. But herein lies the difficulty: I really need to work very hard to not fall into this trap: this utterly mechanical, habitual way of seeing people. You see, a painter fixes, freezes, crystalizes a single moment in time. Just one moment, only one. In ordinary life, when you... or I... look at Mallory, we see everything we know of her, everything we've experienced of her, all at once, and even if she had a moment of kindness and transcendence, it would be easy for us to miss it, because our vision would be clouded by our memories."

Jordan crossed her arms and looked at the ceiling. Theo glanced at her and said, "Ah, I shouldn't lecture you. I've bored you long enough... Jordan, you see, is the canary in the coal mine of my intellect. Goodbye, girls!"

Jordan made a strange face... maybe she didn't know what he meant, or maybe she did and was irritated. Either way, the two moved off to consider other potential candidates for Madonna-hood.

"So that's Jordan?" Susan asked, as she crunched into a stick of celery. I nodded.

"I wish I looked like her," Blair said with a frown. "Her face is so perfect and her hair is so straight."

Susan and I glanced at each other. Somehow, there was something wrong in what Blair said. It was so naked and unaffected... It was disturbing, though I couldn't say how.

"Uh, Blair," I said, "You're pretty striking yourself. And your hair is just like Jordan's, can't you see that?"

Blair shrugged and took another bite of her sandwich.

 

---

 

My last class that day was gym, which — even though I'm a freshman, I still take with the seniors. The reason, if you remember, is so I can shower at home, and not risk having my secret revealed.

The seniors didn't want me there, and they didn't hide the fact, but since we always played basketball, I could keep out of their way if I just kept running. I also had to stay on my toes so they didn't hit me in the head with the ball.

They usually saved that stuff until we were well into the class, when my guard was down. Today, though, they were waiting for me. When I walked onto the gym floor, one of the seniors said, "There she is," and several others said hmmph in a way that clearly said Who does she think she is?

I had no idea what their problem was, so I ignored it until a few of the gathered around to bump and jostle me.

"You think you can be Miss BYHS, Donner? Huh? You've got a lot of nerve."

"What are you talking about? What nerve?"

"Don't play dumb, we know you entered the pageant."

Behind the girls who were hassling me, I could see Lace "the Face" scowling at me. According to Susan, Lace was the sure winner this year.

"I hate to break it to you, Donner, but you're not going to win," one of the seniors sneered.

"I know," I said. "Doesn't mean I can't enter."

"You know you can't win?"

I shrugged. "Yeah. So?"

"So? So, it's stupid. That what's so. Nobody enters a contest if they know they're going to lose. What kind of idiot are you?"

"She's a freshman idiot," someone offered, laughing.

"Does that make you a senior idiot?" I countered. I was getting a little angry.

"Oh, she thinks can be saucy, does she?"

"I've never been in a pageant," I told them. "I just want to have the experience."

They echoed what I'd said as if it was the stupidest thing they'd ever heard.

"You can have the experience when you're a senior," they told me. "Miss BYHS is only for seniors!"

"Then they shouldn't let underclassmen enter," I said forcefully.

"You're right! They shouldn't!" Lace shouted back.

The teacher came in at that point, so the girls around me walked away, although most of them managed to bump me hard as they did. They kept it up for the rest of the class. The girls on the basketball team were the worst. Still, they only managed to knock me down twice, and each time the teacher yelled at me!

It was par for the course, but it grated on me more than usual.
 

When class was over, I ran to one of the bathrooms to change — I used the bathroom on the other end of school, the one farthest from the gym. I took the stall on the far end, closed myself in, and set my bag on the floor. I fumed in silence. There really wasn't anything I could do, except sit down and try to calm down.

I groused for about a minute before I spotted the book. It lay on the floor next to the toilet: a bright white book, a diary. It was the kind of diary made for little girls. The cover was decorated with simple child-like cartoon figures of the Hello Kitty type. I wondered what little girl could possibly have lost it there.

Curious, I picked it up. The small book was about half full, and it was definitely somebody's diary. In spite of the cover, the handwriting clearly belonged to a girl my age. There was no way a little girl would write that well.

I quickly flipped through it, looking inside the back and front covers, but there was no obvious clue to identify the owner.

And then I began to read. It felt kind of creepy, violating the girl's privacy that way, but once I started, I couldn't stop.

 

There are two central facts of my existence.

The first is that I miss my mother.

The second is that I am a girl, down to my bones.

 

Well, that was strange. Not that she missed her mother... that was normal. Maybe her mother died, or was gone in some way. But the second thing? Of course she was a girl! If she was a student at BYHS, she'd have to be a girl. I read some more:

 

Sometimes I'm sure that people know.

Other times I'm sure it's just my imagination.

I don't have the same natural feminine act that other girls have.

I don't mean that *they* are acting. They don't act. They just *are* that way. I don't have it. I'm clumsy. I have big hands and a big head and just don't look like a girl. I know I'm a girl but I don't know if other people see it.

I look at other girls and I want to die. I know I'm jealous. I don't want to be *like* them. I want to *be* them. They don't have learn anything. They just walk into life, into every situation, and they already know what to do and how to be.

People like Marcie Donner and her friends. Nothing ever goes wrong for them. They're only freshmen, but they already know everything and everybody. They do what they want and don't care what anybody thinks, but it doesn't matter because everybody thinks they're wonderful.

 

What!? I said to the book. In what universe is this? Everybody thinks I'm wonderful? What about the stupid seniors? Nobody thinks I'm *wonderful*. I scoffed and flipped some pages.

 

When my mother was dying, she made my father promise to LET ME BE A GIRL. She made him swear to it. I don't know what he would have done, if she hadn't made him swear—

 

I stopped reading and sat there thunderstruck. Was this another girl like me? Someone who was born a boy? It didn't sound like she had a very easy time of it, but it also sounded like most of her agony was in her head. Well, maybe. It sucked that her mother died. And then there were passages like this:

 

I know I'm a girl, even if I don't look like a girl. I have long hair, I wear skirts and stuff, but I look like a boy in a dress.

 

That would suck, too, but I felt that way sometimes, too.

I turned the pages faster. There had to be a clue... there had to be something to tell me who the writer was! But look as I might, I couldn't find anything.

The worst part of this puzzle was that I couldn't ask Susan's help. She could probably figure out who this girl was; she'd give the diary a read and her brain would sift out every tiny indication. She was like a detective mastermind, and I had no doubt she'd put her finger on the girl. But there was no way I could ask her. She didn't know about me, and I couldn't betray this girl's secret, either.

After I'd looked through every single page, I glanced at my watch and realized that I'd been reading for forty minutes! As I scrambled into my uniform and shoved my gym clothes into my bag, I realized what I had to do: I had to bring the book to the office. If there was another transgendered girl in the school, Miss Overmore for sure would know who she was.

The halls were empty, and the only sounds were faint voices calling and basketballs bouncing in the gym. I'd nearly reached the office when I ran into Mara, one of the basketball stars, one of the seniors. Her eyes narrowed when she saw me, and then lighted up in cruel delight when she caught a glimpse of the diary.

"Oh, how cute, Marcie-Warcie! Is dat your widdle diary-poo? Let me see it."

"No," I said. "It isn't mine."

"Give it here," she ordered, holding out her hand and snapping her fingers.

"No way," I said. "It isn't mine, and you can't see it."

"Liar," she said. "Give it!" She darted toward me, quick as thought, and grabbed the book with both hands. "It's got to be yours," she gloated. "Otherwise you wouldn't care if I saw your silly little-girl secrets. I'm sure this stuff is comedy gold."

I tried to twist away from her, but she hung on. She was a lot stronger and bigger than me, but there was no way on earth that she was going to get that book.

"Did mummy buy the widdle book for her baby sweetums?" she sneered.

I felt the book slipping, so I kicked her in the shins. First one side, then the other. She grunted in pain, and keeping a tight grip on the book with one hand, she raised her other hand high. I could see one mean slap was on the way. I gritted my teeth and squeezed the book tighter.

She swore in a vicious tone as I kicked her again. "You're gonna pay for that, Donner! You're going to get yours now, you nasty little bi—" She never finished the insult; Miss Overmore's voice cut her off.

"WHAT IS GOING ON HERE? GIRLS!"

Mara let go and sniffed, holding her head up a little arrogantly. "We were only playing, Miss Overmore. I was trying to get Marcie to show me see her wittle diawy."

Miss Overmore's eyes fell on the book, and I thought I saw a flash of recognition.

"That isn't your book, is it, Marcie?" she asked.

"No, Miss Overmore. I found it in the bathroom."

The Principal looked at the two of us, considering for a moment, then said to me, "Go have a seat in my office. I'll be there in a moment."

As I went inside the door, I heard her talk to Mara in an undertone. I couldn't make out the words on either side, but from the tones I could tell that Mara tried to protest, and probably throw the blame on me, but Miss Overmore's voice countered with a relentless, cold, knifelike sharpness that finally had Mara cowed and apologetic.

After her last Yes, Miss Overmore I heard Mara's footsteps fading down the hallway, and Miss Overmore came into the office and sat down next to me.

"Are you okay?" she asked softly. "Did she hurt you?"

"No," I said. Silently I added, I think I gave as good as I got.

"Good," she said. "I assume you must have read a bit of that diary, or else you wouldn't have fought so hard for your classmate's privacy."

"Is she a freshman, then?" I asked.

Miss Overmore hesitated. "I didn't say that. And I wish I could tell you who she is, just as I wish I could tell her about you, but we have some very specific agreements and promises with the families on both sides."

I nodded.

"She could really use your support," Miss Overmore said, "and I'm sure you could sometimes use hers, but unfortunately it isn't possible right now. I know your family might agree, but I'm very sure this girl's family will not. Absolutely, categorically."

"That's too bad," I said.

"Well," Miss Overmore said. "I am going to tell her to leave this book at home. It isn't the first time that she's lost it."

"Really?" I asked, puzzled and surprised. "That's hard to believe..."

"I know," Miss Overmore agreed, "As you can imagine, she would be devastated if anyone knew the truth about her."

© 2011 by Kaleigh Way

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