-----

Author's Note: Here's part one of my Green Arrow Retcon. I'm not sure how long this is going to be so at the moment its just going to start with an origin story. I'm not even sure how long that's going to be. I'm just going to take it one step at a time and hope you enjoy. Green Arrow is copyrighted and trademarked by DC Comics.

-----

Chapter One:

He punched me in the gut, I gasped out in pain.

The others around him started laughing as my mother screamed. I fought back tears and tried as hard as I could to get out of his arms. But there was no use, the guy was built like a linebacker, his arms were like tree trunks. I was going to kill him though. I was cutting to cut his heart out and watch him bleed out on the deck. I was going to make him and all the others pay for what they did to my father.

We were on a sailing vacation. We were three days out of Miami when we got caught in a little squall. We have a small boat but we were able to manage the storm pretty good. Unfortunately when it was over, we were a little off course. My father, Gregory, isn’t a sailor but my mother is. She grew up on it, sailing about Nantucket and other places. She was able to get us out of the storm but by then we were already far from US waters.

My mother is named Jessica, she’s a college professor, she teaches Medieval English Literature. I grew up on tales of King Arthur, Ivanhoe and Robin Hood. Though Arthur was cool I was always had a thing for the Emerald Archer, that’s what my mother called him. It had something to do with some old Robin Hood movie, the outlaw was always depicted as wearing green. When I was a kid, I convinced her to buy me some green tights and she made me a felt hat like Robin’s. I pranced around the house with a toy bow and pretty to rob from the rich and give to the poor.

All that was over now.

We noticed the speedboat coming up fast. It was a sleek silver thing; I think they called them cigar boats. It looked like something a drug dealer used in some dad TV movie. My father was the first one to notice the men with guns. There were six of them, each wielding AK-47s. WE tried to outrun them but you know how it goes. There was barely any wind and they had a fricking speedboat. They caught up to us pretty quick. The men were an assortment of nationalities. I recognized only one language though: Spanish. I was currently taking and failing it. There were two Spanish speakers amongst them and they were bickering.

‘We don’t have any money” My father had tried to scare them off. He reached for the mooring hook that was attached to the inside of the boat.

One of the guys, a huge black man, stepped forward, putting his foot on our book, anchoring the two boats together. “A fine boat like dis” he said, his accent clearly Jamaican. “You got to be kidding me, mon.”

My father shook his head. “There’s nothing.”

That’s when they shot him. One of the Spaniards pulled out a gun and put one in my father’s head and another in his chest. My mother screamed and I froze. I didn’t know what to do. They all jumped onto our boat, two of the men grabbed my mother and held her while a third came toward me. I snapped out of it then and tried to fight. Unfortunately I was a weakling. I’m about five six, maybe 120 pounds when wet. When I tried to fight back that’s when one of them grabbed me from behind while the other punched me in the chest.

They hit me in the stomach again.

“That chica can really take it” said one of the Spaniards.

The others laughed. I spit in my abuser’s face which caused them to laugh more. It caused him to punch me again, harder this time.

“She’s feisty too.”

God I hated it when people mistook me for a girl. Puberty wasn’t kind to me. Unlike most fifteen year old boys, I had yet to experience it. At least not in the way most guys did. My voice never changed, I didn’t grow any taller nor did I get the muscles that my friend Roy got. I gained weight but it was all in my hips and my chest. At first I thought my chest weight was my pecs growing out but it turns out they were actually breasts. That’s right; I’m a boy with breasts and a girl’s butt. My doctor called it Intersexed and told me when I was older I could get the surgery to fix it all. But in the meantime I was some kind of freak, neither boy nor girl. It didn’t help matters that I had shoulder length sun bleached hair and a girl’s face. If the guys didn’t know me, they hit on me constantly.

It was so fricking embarrassing.

“I love them when they’re cute and innocent like this” said one of the other thugs as he reached over and grabbed my face.

“Leave him alone” my mother screamed.

I think she realized her mistake as soon as she screamed it. She clamped a hand over her mouth but it was too late.

None of the guys were laughing anymore. The one holding my arms grabbed my hair. The one squeezing my face sneered at me and ripped my Rockets shirt open. He laughed because it was clear I had breasts. At school no one knew because I wore a compression vest. But on vacation I agreed to allow them to go free. Well not free actually. I was an A cup by now. My mother talked me into wearing a bra for the trip. Yesterday she surprised me with a bikini. I protested but finally agree to wear it but underneath my clothes. My shrink, Dr. Weisinger, told me it might be a good idea to try being a girl, at least during vacation so my mother reinforced it.

That is until now.

“What are you smoking lady” said the guy who ripped open my shirt.

He grabbed my breasts, giving them a good squeeze. I groaned in pain, it hurt like a son of a bitch. I reacted by kneeing him in the balls. HE stumbled back; my Puncher hit me in the gut again. I gasped out, if I wasn’t being held I’d probably fall on my face.

“Put her on her back” shouted the Jamaican, clearly he was the boss. “Teach the little bitch some respect.”

I screamed. My mother screamed. They dragged me to the floor, I kicked and struggled but there was no use. One guy held my arms while the other grabbed my board shorts. He tore off them off it a giant tug. Underneath I was wearing the bikini bottoms but I hadn’t hidden anything. I did a lot of research on the Internet about my condition and how a lot of guys out there tried to embrace it. I found a lot of transgender sites and read a lot of books. I knew all the tricks but the last three days were just me and my parents. I didn’t need to hide anything down there. So I left the gaff down in the cabin this morning.

“What the fuck is this?” shouted the man who had my legs currently spread my shorts in his hands.

“Holy shit we’ve got ourselves a little fag.”

My mother creamed and cried. She told them to leave me alone, to take her instead. The two guys holding her smacked her around. I screamed at them, calling them all a bunch of fucking cowards.

“You want to be a real girl, you fag” he asked, throwing my shorts away and pulling out a knife. “That can be arranged.”

“What the hell is the matter with you” said the Jamaican as he grabbed the man’s arm, stopping him from cutting off my you know what.

“You see It” said the man with the knife. “The little fucker is mocking us.”

“We’ve already done enough thanks to you and your itchy trigger finger” said the Jamaican, pointing to my dead father.

“What the hell are we supposed to do with It, then?”

“Throw him overboard.”

My mother screamed then. She bit the arm of the man holding her and ran for me. She took the guys holding me by surprise. I managed to get free and tried to run to her. But the guy with the knife got in-between us. He stuck the blade in my mother’s chest. I screamed and was grabbed from behind. I kicked and fought. Whoever it was carried me to the side of the boat. I screamed for my mother. She fell to the deck, gasping. The guy with the knife stabbed her again and again. The Jamaican was shouting at him but he wasn’t paying attention.

“What do you want me to do with him?” asked the guy holding me.

The Jamaican sighed. “This has got way out of hand. This was a simple drug run and then you morons had to fuck it up.”
My mother fell to the deck, laying a few feet from my father. I could see she was dead. I started crying, fighting as hard as I could to get away. But the guy holding me was too strong.

“What about him?” asked the guy holding me?

The Jamaican groaned. “Take him down below and lock him in the cabin. We’ll get some gas and burn the boat.”

“No” I screamed as the man carried me toward the cabin. “I’ll find you; I’ll find all of you sons of bitches.”

I’m not sure what happened. I don’t know if it was a burst of adrenaline or what. But somehow I managed to get free. The man let me go and I slammed down on his foot. I went for the man who killed my mother. He was laughing and not paying attention. HE was holding his knife; I snatched it out of his hand and threw it at the Jamaican. My aim was off; the blade only grazed his face. He screamed out in pain and double over. The guy with the knife pulled out a gun and raised it to fire.

I did the only thing I could do. I ran for the side of the boat and dived into the water.

>---------------------------------------------->

I used to be on the dive team. It was the JV squad but it wasn’t any less important. I had to quit when my condition started to show itself. It would have been real hard to explain why I had breasts. I was real upset at the time but at least I had archery to full back on.

I hit the water in a straight dive. It was one of the more complicated ones but I was always able to pull it off. I went down about six feet or so. Luckily we were in the southern Atlantic because the water was nice and warm. Unfortunately I was far from out of danger. Several bullets whizzed into the water around me. One narrowly missed my head. I stayed underwater and swam to the other side of the boat. I poked my head up just above the water, to take a breath. I was about to duck back down when I heard them talking.

“Where the hell did the little half bitch go?” I recognized that voice as the guy who killed my parents.

“Never mind her mon” said the Jamaican. “Get the gas so we can light this thing and get out of here.”

Damn it, they’re actually going to burn our boat.

I ducked back into the water when one of the thugs walked by. I popped back up when he was gone. I was a pretty decent swimmer and could hold my breath underwater for a couple of minutes. I could have stayed out here all day, listening to these morons. But I should have made a break for the shore. I knew enough about the ocean to know the general direction to go. But it still didn’t mean I wanted to go. These bastards were going to burn my parents’ bodies and leave them out her to rot. I couldn’t just stand by and let that happen.

I fought back whatever grief I was feeling and ducked back into the water. Their speedboat was right alongside ours. I swam over, hoping there was enough cover underneath them so they wouldn’t see me. The water was crystal clear today and the brightest blue I’d ever seen. My mother loved the light blue water. That’s why we always went to Florida on vacation. She said it was much better than the cobalt blue water of the Hamptons where she grew up. We were hundreds of miles from the Hamptons now and who knew how many from Florida. After the storm last night we could have been anywhere.

I poked my head up as one of the thugs climbed over into the speedboat. He was rummaging around, looking for the gas apparently. After a few minutes he pulled up a red plastic container, like the one we put our lawnmower gas in. He lifted it up in the air, waving it about so his friends could see it.

“Stop being such an ass and get over here.”

He grunted and left the boat.

I took that as the opportunity I was looking for. I grabbed the edge of their boat and pulled myself over the side. It wasn’t nearly as big as our sailboat and there was hardly any room for the six of them. It was clearly meant for small time transport which meant they probably had a larger boat nearby. I started to rummage through their stuff, which wasn’t much. They had a cooler full of beer and a whole stash of dirty magazines scattered about. Naked women didn’t do anything for me but not without trying. For some reason I couldn’t get it up when looking at magazines like that. I once mentioned it to my medical doctor; Dr. Papp and he told me it was more than likely due to my condition.

According to him, I was more boy than girl. I argued that point on more than one occasion, not only with him but with my parents and Dr. W. My penis was fully functional but I’d never be able to have kids because I had no testicles. They never descended when I hit puberty. Instead I had a pair of ovaries and everything else that made me a girl. Except I wasn’t a girl, at least not as far as I was concerned. It annoyed me that everyone, my parents included, seemed to think the right course of action was to make me a full girl at eighteen.

I tossed the magazines aside, looking for something I could use. I found what I was looking for underneath of the seats. It was an inflatable life raft. We had one of these on our boat too but there’s no way I could get to it now. I tossed it in the water and jumped in after it. I went under again, dragging the unflated raft down with me. It was pretty hard because it was meant to float but I managed. I swam back over to our boat and watched from underwater as they lit it on fire. A small part of me wanted to jump up and scream at them. But instead I stayed where I was and watched as everything I loved burned.

The thugs got back onto their boat. I popped up out of the water as they started the engine and took off. I made sure I got the name of the boat: The Lady Catherine. I committed it to memory. You fuckers are so dead.

I tried to climb back onto our boat but wasn’t able to do so. The gas burned quick and soon the whole deck was a raging inferno. I cried as I swam a few feet away, the heat and flames too intense to be closer. Soon the mast caught flame and fell into the water. The fiberglass of the hull popped and crackled. I tried one more time to get close but it was no use. Finally I let it go, I let my family go.

I pulled the pin for the raft and inflated it. It wasn’t as state of the art as ours but there was enough there to help me survive. I climbed over the side and flopped on my back. I took a deep breath and cried harder than I’ve ever cried before.

My raft got caught in the current and carried me away from everything.

>----------------------------------------------->

I must have fallen asleep because when I opened my eyes, I was lying on my back, a soft surface beneath me. But something was very wrong. I drifted for a few hours; the only sound was the lapping of the waves and the only smell was the salty sea air. But now I could hear the banging on my door and could smell breakfast. I sat up and found myself in my room. I was lying on my bed, the sun was shining through my window and everything was ok. Was I dreaming? If I was it was the most horrible nightmare in the whole wide world.

I got up and stretched. My hair flopped around my ears and my horrid chest swayed a bit underneath my tank top. I wish those had been a part of the nightmare too. I hated waking up feeling them on my chest. I wish there was a way to remove them and the damn things in my stomach. I don’t care if I don’t have any balls, it was better than having breasts.

I stumbled out of bed and across the room to my bathroom. I have my own private bathroom. We live in a large colonial, it belonged to my grandfather. It was one of his summer homes; he gifted it to my mother when she graduated college. My parents meant when my father’s contracting company was hired to do some remodeling. They hit it off, started dating and got married two years later. My grandfather thought my father was too old for her---there was only a ten year difference---he also thought she could do better. He disowned her after that. He still sent me presents and things for my birthday and Christmas but I never him. At least not personally. I don’t think there was anyone in the world who’d hadn’t heard of him.

I stumbled into the bathroom, not paying too much attention as I washed my face, brushed my teeth and stumbled back out into my room. I couldn’t even remember if today was a school day. In my dream it had been summer but a lot of people usually dreamed about summer. Especially if it was like November or something. Was it November?

I didn’t bother to get dressed. I walked out into the hall, wearing my usual tank top and bed pants. I stumbled down the hall; my mother came out of the upstairs laundry room, with a basket in her hands.

“Honestly Jo Jo, do you have to wear that shirt to bed” She said, shaking her head.

Jo Jo was her nickname for me. My real name was…ummm….Jonas, that’s right. I’m Jonas Oliver, fourteen year old, high school freshman. I guess I’m a lot more tired than I thought. I shrugged my shoulders, mumbled a reply to my mother and followed her down the stairs. The kitchen was off to the side of the stairs. It was absolutely huge. It had an island in the center, state of the art appliances and a room off the back. We called it our second dining room and it’s where we ate breakfast. It was really a sun room, all four walls made of glass, three of which faced the large lake we had in the back of our house.

We owned six acres; most of it was taken up by the lake. The rest of it was consumed by the forest. When I was little I used to call it Sherwood and had all my Robin Hood adventures out there. Now I barely went out there, I didn’t have the time.

“Morning champ” said my father as he sat at the table reading his newspaper.

“Morning Dad.”

I sat down at my usual seat and helped myself to the bacon piled there. My mother liked to cook a lot and left it on the table for us to help ourselves. She said when she was a girl she used to have a housekeeper who did the same thing. My mother wasn’t a great cook but she was better than my dad. He usually burnt everything. I sat and ate. Breakfast is my favorite meal because it seems to have all the right foods. My mother makes a large spread too: bacon, eggs, sausage, pancakes. What we don’t eat she usually either feeds the ducks and fish at the lake or she throws into the woods. We used to have a dog, Sparky, but he died a few years ago.

“Are you ready for the big trip, son?” asked my dad as he folded the paper and set it aside.

He picked up his cup of coffee and took a small sip.

“What big trip?” asked, chewing on a piece of bacon?

“Our vacation” said my mom as she ruffled my hair. “The one we take to Florida every year. You know, camping on the beach, sailing off into the ocean.”

Florida, why did that sound so familiar.

My mother opened her mouth to say something else but what came out of it wasn’t her voice, it was a cawing a seagull.

Holy crap, she’s a bird. I backed away in the chair, hit something behind me and stumbled backwards. I smacked my head and blacked out.

>---------------------------------------------------->

“My mother isn’t a bird!” I shouted as I snapped awake.

I wasn’t in my room this time. I was lying on my back, in the big yellow life raft. There were seagulls circling overhead, cawing or whatever it is they do. I sat up and rubbed my neck, it felt horrible. I felt horrible too. My body was stiff and cramped. Sleeping in a life raft was not a wise idea. Sleeping, I’d been sleeping. I moaned, realizing that that ideal little scene was actually the dream. No not a dream, a memory. It happened a few weeks ago, right after school let out. I remember now because after that my father asked me who I was going to take to the End of the Year Dance.

I tried to remember what happened. I was in the raft, drifting along in the waves. The sun went down and I could barely keep my eyes open. It was the raft that eventually put me to sleep. It was sloshing back in forth in the waves, slowly rocking me to sleep. Like a mother with her baby. It had been so gentle and serene. It helped me forget my troubles for a bit. But now they all came back to me. I broke down again, the tears streaming down my face. Those fucking bastards killed my parents, forced me to jump overboard and burned our boat.

My father loved that boat. He called it Danaá«’s Gentle Ride. The Perseus myth was one of his favorites and he always thought Perseus’ mother got screwed. That’s why he wanted to name his boat after her. Her father was a nasty son of a bitch who set her out to sea in a cask. My father thought it poetic that his boat be a gentle journey for the mother of one of the greatest heroes in Greek myth. My father was like that. He may not have looked like a road scholar but he sure acted like one. Or did act like one. God, he’s dead. They’re both dead. How can I live in a world without either one of them in it?

I wiped the tears from my eyes and looked around. I half expected to see ocean. But I’d been too preoccupied to realize that there was no ocean to see where I was. Oh God, I’m not even moving. The water had been so soothing all last night that I never even realized that the raft had stopped. I jumped to my feet and saw sand. Land, I was on land. I jumped out of my little salvation and planted my face into the soft, wet sand around me. Kevin Costner kissed the wet sand in Robin Hood and I did the same. I didn’t care that it was grimy or disgusting. It was the greatest thing in the world.

I looked up and saw I was on a little beach. But more than that I was on an island. It was a pretty good sized one too. I looked left and right, the sand looked like it went about a mile on each side. I looked in front of me and saw dense foliage. It was lush and green and beautiful. But where the hell was I? I remember looking at my father’s chart the other day, right before we set sail. My parents always liked to find little places to set down for picnics. There were a lot of little small islands out there in the world. But most of them were small and uninhabited. I don’t know how any one missed this little pearl. It was a lush paradise. But more importantly it was salvation. I thought I was going to be on the ocean for days.

Right first order of business.

I climbed out of the raft and dragged it further up the beach. I knew there was no way to deflate it without puncturing it but maybe there was a way to salvage it. I dragged it up to the tree line and did my best to secure it. There was a little rope dangling from the one side and I managed to tie that to one of the trees. If all else fails, I might have to sleep in that again tonight.

I took a deep breath and stared into the vast jungle like growth in front of me. It looked pretty dense and unwelcoming. Most of the trees towered way over my head and a lot of the undergrowth looked to thick to traverse through. But that gave me a lot of hope. The first thing I needed to do was find fresh water and if there was this much growth there had to be lots of water somewhere.

There was this TV show that I liked on the Discovery Channel that told people how to survive in every situation. It was called Buck McGrady’s Survival Guide. Each week, good old Buck---an Australian survivalist---would put himself in a dangerous situation and tell the viewers how to get out of it. I had a decent memory, ok it was a super memory and I remembered almost everything I saw or was taught. That’s what made me such a good student. At least that’s what my mother always used to tell me. I remember one episode where Buck showed people how to survive on a deserted island, a lot like this one.

Buck had these rules. He called them Buck’s Rules of Staying Alive. Each episode he adapted the rules for the situation he was in. Rule number one was the simple one: Do whatever it takes to survive. It didn’t matter who you were or what you were used, you had to throw that all out the window. He said it was all about your comfort zone and how that was gone. Everything that you were accustomed to would not be available on the island. But I knew that already. I was used to being outside my comfort zone. After all I was a guy with a girl’s body. How much more out of my comfort zone could I be.

Ok so it’d only been about two months. One morning back in March I woke up complaining about my chest feeling itchy. My mother took me to the doctor and he ran some tests. He did the works and that’s when we found out all about me. It was a little rough at first and I did a lot of crying. We informed the school about it a few days later and I was excused from Phys. Ed. I was still allowed to compete in team sports but I dropped out of both: diving and archery. My archery friends were still made at me for it---I was the best on the team---I only one who was still talking to me was Ray.

Buck’s second rule was finding clean, drinkable water. That one was a given. If there was no clean water, he even showed his audience how to get some. It wasn’t too complicated. Buck’s third rule was prepare to eat the wigglies. That’s what he called anything that might not necessarily be considered modern cuisine. At least not cuisine you’d find at Burger King. As long as it was cooked, it was good enough to eat. On the show he described lots of different fish and sea creatures that were edible. Buck’s fourth rule was about shelter. Shelter was important because it got you out of the elements and was essential to survival. Caves were good as long as there were no dangerous animals already living in them. I knew water and food were essential but to me shelter was the most important. I’ve done my fair share of camping, most of it was in my own wooded backyard but I knew the importance of a good shelter.

Buck’s fifth rule was fire. On the show he grunted about like a caveman, waving a burning stick above his head. But seriously, it was all about the fire. Whoever said it was essential to human life was damn right. To survive anywhere outside of civilization, fire is the key. It cooks your food, it provides comfort and warmth. It can also keep away most predators. Buck’s final rule was about being rescued. It was all about letting people know you were there. There were several ways to do it. The easiest being if you had a satellite phone.

Ok, Buck’s Rules, they were easy enough to follow. I knew them all by heart. But things would have been so much easier if I had gotten back on our boat. WE had everything to survive in a situation like this. My father had been a cautious man. He had the satellite phone and the emergency survival, he even had GPS. All of it was on the boat and all of it was probably in the bottom of the Atlantic by now. None of it could help me now.

So I need to be like Buck. That’s easier said than done.

I set off along the beach, thinking maybe there was an easier way into the “jungle” somewhere further from where I was ashore. It was a good plan and seemed reasonable enough. Walking the beach was kind of refreshing, at least at first. The salty sea air blew my hair and the seagulls were company. But it got kind of tedious after an hour. After two hours, I was dragging my feet, walking like the dead. I couldn’t believe how much beach there was and how long it was. Not only that but it seemed to be in some weird irregular pattern. There were these peninsulas. The first one I came across was small but as soon as I got to the tip of it, I could see at least two more, both of them enormous.

I spent the next two more hours walking to the second peninsula. But it’s there that I struck gold. Well not exactly gold but good enough. There was an area of the jungle that I was finally able to enter. It was matted down; a lot of the foliage looked broken. Something large and violent had come through there. It was the first real sign that there was something else on this island besides me and the damn seagulls. Yeah, they were friendly at first but now they were fucking annoying.

I moved quietly through the jungle, making sure I avoided stepping on anything that might snap or crackle. I was definitely not the kind of person that could fight off a panther or some kind of jungle ape with my bare hands. Not that I expected to find either but I was being cautious. Like father, like son I guess. After another hour, thirst got the better of me. I did fin one little spot of fresh water, about three hours ago but it wasn’t very big and I had nothing to carry it in. I literally only had the clothes off my back and they weren’t much. My t-shirt was ripped down the center, exposing the bikini top I was wearing and my board shorts were not meant for my new lower physique. They were a little big and kept sliding down.

There was something else I didn’t cut on too. There were mosquitoes in the jungle, big ones. They took every opportunity to try to take a bite out of me. There were more of them near the ocean but they started to appear inland as well. It was a good omen though, because if I remembered my Animal Planet correctly, mosquitoes bred in water. Which meant with every step I took, I was getting closer and closer to the Nectar of the Gods---ok, so I was being a little over dramatic but thirst and the possibility of dying does that to you.

Two hours later, the sun dipped below the clouds and I finally found water.

It was a God sent.

Smack dab in the middle of the peninsula was the quaintest little pond I’d ever seen. It was nowhere near as big as the lake in my backyard but it was heaven as far as I was concerned. I tasted it to make sure it was fresh and looked around for dead animals nearby to make sure it wouldn’t poison me. With those two things out of the way, I scooped my hands into the water and drank my full. It was a good thing too because I was so tired I nearly collapsed right there.

I managed to climb a nearby tree though, I knew better than to lay on the ground. After that it didn’t take me long to fall asleep. I dreamed again too, another memory.

Chapter Two:

The boy cleared his throat behind me and I sighed.

When I turned around I saw it was one of the guys from another class. In school we went to all the classes with our homeroom. We stayed in one room and the teachers came to us. Unless it was a lab day then we went to one of the lab classrooms. Even the art teacher came to us, pushing a huge cart loaded down with supplies.We lived in San Francisco but us locals liked to call it "Star City". I'm not sure why. Star City Central---really Jack Kirby Central--- worked things a little differently but I kind of liked it there. It was easy to remember my classmates because I saw them every day. But it was also a pain in the ass because the other students in the school didn’t know you.

The boy fidgeted, his palms were sweaty and he looked like he was about to puke. I groaned because I knew what was coming. It was starting to become a daily occurrence and it was really, really annoying.

“Hi” he said in a real low voice. “Ummm…I was wondering….if you had a date to the End of Year dance yet?”

Yep he was another one.

I’m not sure when the other guys started to notice but everyday it was getting worse and worse. I’m not sure what it was. It was like there was a giant neon sign blinking above my head or something, advertising my freakishness. But to the guys who didn’t know me it wasn’t freakiness at all. To them I was a cute, blonde haired goddess. It didn’t matter than we wore uniforms and that the girl’s had to wear plaid skirts and knee socks. To every single hormone driven jackass in this school I was girl. I’m not sure what it was: my breasts were bound, my face had no makeup and as far as I could tell my butt wasn’t that prominent.

I smiled at him. “What’s your name?”

God even my voice sounded like a girl’s.

He toed the ground. “I’m Mark, I’m from Class C.”

He was a goofy looking kid. He had red hair and a splattering of freckles all over his face. He was a whole head taller than me and looked to be well on his way through puberty. He was definitely in that awkward gangly stage. His neck was too long, his arms and legs were spindly and he looked like his clothes didn’t quite fit right. A part of me was kind of envious because at least he looked like a boy. Me, I felt like the biggest slab of meat in the super market.

I wanted to bust his balls. But that was embarrassing and not just for him either. I hated drawing attention to my deformity. So I smiled sweetly at him, which made him blush a little. I wanted to roll my eyes but I played it cool.

“I’m sorry Mark but my father doesn’t allow me to date boys.”

Mark looked as if someone punched him in the gut. He nodded and slowly slipped away. I felt real bad for him but there was nothing I could do. There was no way in hell I was going to slap on a dress and prance around as some arm candy just to make some half blind moron happy for the night. That’s what they were too, all of them. I couldn’t believe that they all thought I was a girl. Mark was number six this week; I was starting to run out of excuses.

“Ollie!” shouted a voice that came with the thundering foot fall behind me.

I turned around and saw my best friend in the whole wide world, Mia Dearden, come running up to me. We’ve been BFF’s since kindergarten. Mia’s father worked with mine, they co-owned a construction company. My father was the Contractor and her father did all the manual labor. Mia and I were inseparable, like brother and sister. We told one another everything and kept no secrets. When I was diagnosed with my intersexuality, Mia was the first one to know about it. Outside my family, she was the only one who knew about. She was cool with it, she never once judged nor did she want to slap me in a skirt like everyone else seemed to want too.

Mia was spunk personified and not because she had bright pink hair. She was like a firecracker. She was constantly in motion, always jumping from one topic to the next and rarely ever stopping. She talked a mile a minute which annoyed most people but it was one of the things I loved about her. When we were in third grade she started calling me “Ollie” because my last name was Oliver. I thought it was pretty cool. Right around that time I started calling her “Speedy” because she never knew when to stop.

I frowned at her as she came up to me, hugging me tightly.

“Number six?”

I nodded. “You think I should wear a sign, Speedy?”

She stepped back from me and gave me a once over. “As long as it’s green because anything else would definitely not work for your complexion, girlfriend.”

She liked to tease a lot.

“Don’t say that out loud, you’re going to get me more stalkers” I hissed and she giggled.

A group of guys walked by and stared at me. They were upper classmen and their eyes were penetrating.

One of them shouted: “Put on a skirt, sweetie, we want to see those legs.”

They laughed. I ignored them, Mia gave them the finger.

We hooked arms and I slammed my locker shut. I was happy that school was over for the day because I’m not sure how many more times I could live through being asked to the dance. We walked arm and arm down the hall; I was trying to be invisible. But that’s really hard to do when you’re with Mia. She stands out no matter where she goes.

Right before leaving, we passed by the girl of my dreams. I know what you’re thinking and you’re probably right: I had the perfect girl on my arm. Mia was fantastic too: she was fun, energetic and great to be around but dating her would have been like dating my sister. It was yuck city. Don’t worry; she thought the same way as well. But that doesn’t mean we didn’t try. It was only a onetime thing, a couple of years back. It happened at our first boy/girl party. It was long before any of my problems. It was that stupid game, 7 Minutes in Heaven. We were pushed into a closet together and we kissed it. It was a little peck and at the time, we might have felt something but we were only eleven. We laughed it off but I did ask her to the movies the next day. It never went any further after that because like I said, it was like dating my sister.

We decided if we dated then it might really ruin our friendship, so that was the end of it.

“Why don’t you ask her to the dance?”

“Who?” I asked as we passed the girls by.

She smacked my arm. ‘Sandra Hawke you big dummy.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She smiled. “Of course you do, she’s the girl that’s like the Walking Wet Dream for you.’

“I wouldn’t know.”

“You really are more girl than boy.”

I stuck my tongue out at her. She laughed and slipped out of my arm and ran for the front entrance. I gave chase. She was fast on her feet too, all the more reason for her to be Speedy. I chased her down the sideway, weaving in-between other people trying to walk home. Mia was way ahead of me, laughing and taunting me. Every time I seemed to get the least bit closer, she moved further and further away. I tried to catch her but it was no use.

Mia disappeared down the street which suddenly morphed into the jungle.

>------------------------------------------------>

“Mia!” I shouted her name as I snapped my eyes open.

I was flailing so much I nearly fell out of the tree. I caught a branch though, holding myself steady. My heart started pounding a mile a minute and my body was covered in a sleek layer of sweat. I looked about, a little groggy, not sure where I was. Then everything came back to me: the drug dealers, my parents’ deaths, being shipwrecked on a deserted island. I rubbed my eyes and stretched, holding onto my perch with my legs. I climbed into this tree last night to keep myself safe. But my mind was still a bit fuzzy and I wondered what happened to Mia.

Then it dawned on me. She’s back in "Star City" you moron.

I moaned. It was another one of my dream flashback thingies. They were a strange thing again because they felt so real. It was like I was consciously activating in them too. I once read an article in Scientific America where they were talking about lucid dreaming, it had to do with being an active participant in your dream, knowing you were dreaming and being able to change things. It wasn’t as if I knew I was dreaming but I was thinking in it. It was still fresh in my head too. The memory was from the last week of school, a few days before me and my family left on our trip. It was actually the day of my last dream, the one with the family breakfast. I wonder why I kept thinking about that day.

I climbed down the tree and went over to my little oasis. I stripped out of my shirt and shorts and stepped into the water. I could feel the grim of the jungle all over my body and definitely needed a wash. When I stepped into the water, I was surprised how warm it actually was. I was also surprised how green it was. It was drastically different from the bright blue of the ocean. I’m not sure what made the ocean so bright and blue but I knew what made the water here green. I took a deep breath and slipped under the water. It was a good six or seven feet deep and I was able to reach the bottom with a shallow dive. I reached down and scooped one of the rocks of the ground. I pushed myself back up the surface, my hair sticking to my face. I brushed it away and looked at the rock in my hand. It was two or three inches in length and looked like a good skipping rock.

It was bright green too.

There were thousands of them in the little pond. I ducked back down and grabbed a handful of them. I’d never seen anything like them. I swam over to the shore and grabbed the shredded remains of my Rockets shirt---I wasn’t a big baseball fan but I bought it to make myself seem more boyish. I dropped my rocks into it and dipped back into the water to get more. I don’t know why I was so obsessed with them but maybe they’d come in handy.

While walking yesterday I had a long time think and decided that in order to survive this place, I needed to keep myself in peak physical condition. That meant I needed to hone my mind and my body. The only way to do that was to keep myself active. My father used to say, “The best way to keep active is to work with your hands”. So that’s what I was going to do: I was going to make a bow and arrows. Not only was it the best way to keep myself from going insane but it was also a fantastic way to hunt. I convinced myself that whatever trampled that underbrush yesterday was probably good sized and made of lots of meat. If I could find some way to kill something like that then maybe I wouldn’t have to dig for grubs.

I finished washing myself, doing my best to make sure everything was clean. When my hands brushed against my little breasts, a pleasurable shiver ran down my spine. I bit my lip but I wasn’t going to let it rule me. My mother mentioned that lots of young women found pleasure in certain ways. Dr. Papp gave me a pamphlet on young woman and their reproduction. Apparently the breasts were an erogenous zone. There were other zones on the female body too but luckily I didn’t have those. At least on the outside, I’m not really sure what I had on the inside.

After washing, I gathered as many stones as I could. They were small enough and narrow enough that they’d make the perfect arrowheads. Now all I needed to do was find something to use as a knife. I kicked myself for throwing that knife at that son of a bitch. If I had just held onto it I would have the perfect weapon. But I had to throw it and now it was at the bottom of the Atlantic with everything else.

I wrapped the stones in my shirt and tied it like a bundle. The shirt was shot, I’d probably never wear it again but it’d make the perfect makeshift bag. I hefted it in my hand and left it over by my tree. When I left the area, I started to count my footsteps. I’ve decided that the oasis was going to be my base of operations so I really needed to know how to get back to it. Counting my steps was going to help me achieve that goal. I started off my going left, I didn’t know navigational directions but I knew that going left always seemed to help.

It took me an hour walking inland but I finally found what I was looking for.

It was a large rocking mound in the middle of the jungle. I’m not sure where it came from but it was at least ten feet tall and though the jungle covered most of it, it was not all that hard to excess. I found a place where I could climb and did so without a problem. It didn’t peak above some of the taller trees but at the top of the mound I was able to get a good look at my new island home. I was shocked at what I saw. The island was huge, a lot bigger than I originally theorized. The jungle was vast and looked like it covered most of it. Not only that but this little mound was an anthill compared to the huge mountain that was off in the distance.

That’s my goal. I could see the whole of everything from up there. Not only that but it was the perfect place to put a signal fire. But that could wait; in fact exploring this place could wait. I needed something to cut my bow with. I climbed back down the mound and found what I was looking for: a sharp, six inch long piece of rock. It wasn’t the greatest thing in the world but it was good enough. I tested it by scrapping it against another rock and got a spark. More than one use. This is absolutely perfect.

After finding my “knife”, I backtracked toward my oasis. It didn’t take long to find. I counted my way back, taking note of where the rock mound was too. When I got back to the oasis, I started looking for the perfect tree.

I took up archery when I was six. My father thought because I loved Robin Hood so much that I might like to see what it was like to fire a bow like him. He took me to meet a friend of his, John “The Magician” Merlyn. I’m not sure how my father met him but Merlyn, as he asked me to call him, was a world famous archer. He was an Olympic gold medalist and boasted as being the best archer in the world. I was his student for almost four years. He taught me a lot, including how to be a bowyer and Fletcher. Merlyn said that an archer couldn’t be great until he made his own bow and arrows. I made my own bow when I was eight, out of yew. Merlyn had a crop of them growing in his backyard. It was a longbow that I painted green. It wasn’t the greatest thing but it made me feel like Robin Hood.

When I was ten, Merlyn told me there was nothing more he could teach me. He never said it but a lot of his peers thought I was a better shot than he. I think he was a bit jealous. After I left his tutelage I tried to track him down but he was gone. Apparently he went overseas to train. Who knows, maybe he really was jealous. I mean they called him The Magician because he could perform magic with that bow. He was a fantastic shot. I still search the Internet for him, from time to time. But it’s always a lost cause. He clearly doesn’t want to be found.

Unfortunately for me my jungle didn’t have exactly what I was looking for. There were no yew trees and there was no string so I’d have to improvise. I searched for about an hour until I found a tree that I think could work. The limbs were strong yet flexible and they were easy to cut with the stone knife. I found two real good ones. They were both about four and half feet tall, about a foot shorter than I am which makes them ideal for a longbow. A good bowyer takes several hours making a bow but a skilled one can do it in about an hour. I’m not skilled but I’m not bad either. The bow I made when I was eight was pretty good and I still had it, it hung on my wall at home. But I’d made others since then.

The one I made now wasn’t nearly as good because I lacked the proper materials but it was sturdy. I couldn’t find any rope, I could have used shoelaces I supposed but I wasn’t wearing any shoes. I took my sneakers off when I was on the boat, I didn’t usually wear them when we went sailing. So they were now permanent residents of the ocean like the rest of my stuff: my iPod, iPhone and PSP. Most of the rest of the stuff was probably at the house we were renting for the summer. Who knows how long that would stay there?

For the bowstring I found a good substitution. There was a tree nearby that had these long, thin vines. I was able to grab a few, work them so they were nice and taunt and fixed them to my bow. When I was done the bow was very primitive but it held when I flexed the string so I’m sure it would do perfectly.

Next came the arrows. I cut a bunch of smaller branches, making them about twenty four inches long then I went to work on the little rocks. Sharpening arrowheads is a long and tedious process. It took me several arrows to sharpen six of my little green rocks into perfect arrowheads. I tried to make them as close to broadheads as possible. But they looked a lot like the arrowheads that archeologists like to dig up all over the place. They weren’t the greatest but they would do for now. I tried them to my arrow shafts with the same vine I used for the string. Then I went about to feathers for the fletch.

Fletching is just as long and tedious as making arrowheads. It takes a lot of patience and a skilled, steady hand. The only feathers I could find were that of seagulls. So far they seemed to be the only animal on this island besides me and whatever liked to trample the underbrush. I’m sure there were other things too but I had yet to see anything. It was kind of strange but not unheard of.

Six hours after starting, I finished my bow and arrows.

I put them aside and started on my next course of action: looking for wood for a fire. I wanted to gather that before it got dark then I’d go off looking for food. I’m glad we weren’t vacationing in the Pacific because the wood on the ground would have damn and unusable. But because we were in the Atlantic where it was a little less humid, I was able to find some good branches. My father taught me how to build a fire when I was ten. He was an Eagle Scout and he wanted me to be prepared in case I ever got lost in the woods. I used to think he was kind of a dork with all his precautions and things but now I just wished he was here.

I missed him and my mother so much that it ached.

After building up my little fire spot---I didn’t start it yet---I went looking for food. I knew I probably wouldn’t find the thing that did the trampling but there had to something around here that I could eat. I set off going right this time, hoping I’d have better luck because I found nothing going left. I walked for about an hour before I heard some rustling in the bushes. I dropped down, shielding myself behind a tree and waited. It didn’t take long. A chicken came waddling out, pecking bugs from the undergrowth. It was a little bigger than a normal chicken and sort of a muddy brown color. It didn’t have one of those red thingies on its head either.

I took aim. I’m a right handed so I held the bow in my left and pulled the arrow back with my right. Merlyn was all about the kill shot. He used to set up this straw man dummy and marked off the ideal areas. He painted those areas red and told me which ones to hit. He’d shout out arm and then I’d have to hit the arm. Then he’d shout out leg and expect me to hit the leg. I was always good at those shots. It was when he shouted out heart and head that I hesitated. I used to ask him why he wanted me to learn how to kill the dummy.

“You have to learn about the kill shot, Jonas” he used to tell me. “It could save your life one day.”

Looking at the bird down the end of my arrow I sighed. I didn’t want to kill anything. But I couldn’t stop myself from this task. It was the only way to survive. I let the arrow fly and hit the bird in the chest, killing it instantly.I was good at small targets. Most people probably would have taken a few practice shots but I didn't need too. I gathered it up, pulled out my arrow making sure not to break it and carried the bird back to my camp by its feet. I used my stone knife to cut off its head and most of the feathers. Then I stuck a stick through its body and started my fire. It took me about ten minutes to get it going and I roasted the bird.

I ate all of it and doused the flames with dirt. I climbed back up into the tree because the sun was going down. In a place like this it was good to go to bed with the sun and wake with the sun. While I was laying there I couldn’t help but think what I did. Killing a bird was one thing but there was no way that I could a human.