by Michelle Wilder
---
Mike twirled a strand of hair and doodled while he mostly ignored Professor Hubert. As long as he remembered to glance up occasionally he was free to do what he wanted and could finish reading the chapter later. He'd quickly learned that Prof. Hubert tested directly out of the 'Modern European History' textbook.
His absently switched from just hair twirling to also finger-rub his cheek even as he ~also~ drew a tiny, elaborate curly-curve. It itched.
His face itched. Not the french curve. It itched every Thursday.
Electrolysis itched. Before it happened, anyways.
His brain seemed to itch sometimes, too, and what was currently itching around didn't seem to want to be scratched.
He re-read what he'd scrawled and corrected and shaped and re-written over and over for the last half-hour. Order from chaos. Big idea words that were just disguises for not having a clue. Half the problem was Hubert talking away and having to pay a bit of attention in case he asked a question. Half was trying to be clever.
But at least half was... something closer to the brain itch. He drew the strand of hair out full length and then across his mouth so he could hold it in his lips.
"History is presented as progress: a sequence of logical decisions and their predictable, planned outcomes. The parade of dates and events is interspersed (he really liked the word 'interspersed' and underlined it again... have to remember to use it somewhere...) with the occasional extraordinary character who seems to define an era or personify a great leap forward:
"Queen Elizabeth I. Napolean. George Washington. Julius Caesar. Count Dracula."
(Ok. Maybe not Dracula.)
Mike inked out Vlad's name, but he left the little fangs. His castle's location was the only thing Mike could remember from a deadly-dull lecture on the Balkans last week. Count Dracula personified last week for him, at least. Maybe the whole middle ages....
The real point, he thought as he looked at the messy paragraph and pretty good doodle of fangs, was that "history" was... dull.
But it ~wasn't.~ Not if it was your history.... He scratched at a new spot right under his chin as he drew kissy-lips around the fangs, puckering his own lips absentmindedly to match.
~Personal~ history, Mike thought, does not slowly, logically "progress." The things that'd happened to one person - him - seemed to be anything but organized... or something that could be called progress, anyway.
And they sure weren't slow!
Lately, life was more like an avalanche, like a bucket of golf balls poured down a stairwell... it bounced all over, everywhere, and made no sense at all. Not the way history was supposed to. And it was fast!
On a new page, he drew some stairs, and a bucket...
At least it ~did~ go in one general direction... away from the bucket. From the 'defining event.' So things weren't entirely random: they went downhill. (little balls all over the page...)
But the further and further it went, the more random-seeming it got.... With every bounce and ricochet and... and every time one bounced, the more it spread out, too. (dozens of balls at the bottom... dots for dimples...)
That wasn't right. It was totally wrong, really. He tucked his hair back behind his ear and sat up a little.
The random spreading out. He looked at the bottom line of the page. At what his little, round drawings were telling him. There wasn't really a "bottom of the page" in real life. Entropy, maybe, but that wasn't reality for his normal life....
Everything - his personal bucket of balls, really - everything that happened, started in one place. And time. And it went down, sure... Or out, more...
But even after just a few seconds, it stopped being random.
People changed everything. People weren't random.
Practically every ~person~ that one of those balls reached would pick it up and bring it back if they could see where it had spilled from. Or they played with it. Or put it in a pocket. Or they gave it to a dog and she played with it... Or they gave it to someone else and ~they~ brought it somewhere else.
And some of the balls - heck, ~most~ of them - would still be out there, bouncing and rolling away... and someone was gonna move every one of them, sooner or later. And more of them would be brought back. Sure as borsht.
Mike looked at the page again. Tried to put it all... tried to fit it to that itch.
The bucket was still empty, at the beginning. It had still poured it down the stairs. And the balls, even if they ~all~ eventually came back....
Even if a miracle happened and they were all brought back, they'd never be in the same order again, in the same places in the bucket again.
So even after the bucket was full of returned balls, when it ~looked~ the same again... it was really totally different.
And was he the bucket? Or the balls...?
He'd never be exactly the same again, even if he made it all look the same. He was never even what he looked like, ~before~....
History was a bucket of balls that they told you was the truth, but it was just something that ~looked~ like what had really happened. And what really happened wasn't what it looked like, either.
Mike blinked awake again. Looked at what he'd written before, on the last page. History. He scratched with one nail at a particularly irritating bump at the top of his neck, carefully.
There were a hundred little balls... he'd drawn a waterfall of balls. Bouncing balls. He drew a few more bounces.
The next sentence he wrote ran over top of a dozen falling little balls, above the bounces, which he thought was appropriate.
"Change is a river. It looks the same every time you see it, but it's different water."
He looked at it. Wrote underneath it: "Change is a whirlpool."
Water flowing, rather than little balls bouncing....
He liked that more, or thought it was more accurate. Mixing and going around... but a whirlpool was a depressing metaphor. And the bucket looking the same while being different wasn't the only point....
If the bucket still existed, and all the balls did, even spread all over? Was it the same as before? In parts?
Wasn't a river really the same, even after all the water had flowed by, over and over for... ever?
Mike thought a long minute, doodling spirals and stars....
"Things never go back to exactly where they were."
He looked at the page. All the balls, all the activity of bouncing and change. At the spirals that he'd changed into whirlpools....
He looked at the bottom, at the dozen balls he'd settled there. Pushed a few hairs out of his eyes. Then he turned to a new page and wrote right in the middle.
"Is going back in the bucket really better?"
-
End of part Un. (More girly stuff later on... trust me)
---
Hubert's was Mike's last class of a late day and he had to hurry to the bus terminal to catch the last super-express to downtown. He'd be at the stop ten minutes early but ~hundreds~ of students were gonna be out of class in five minutes, and he wanted to be at the front of the queue. The non-express service was about a twenty-minutes longer trip and he didn't have that much time to spare. So he ran... a long hallway, down the big marble staircase, left turn, another hall, more stairs...
As he skipped down the last few steps to the front entryway, a boy coming into the building smiled really wide and held the door for him. Mike started to smile back and then saw.
He muttered a quiet thanks as he slipped through, but didn't look up to see the guy's expression again. He knew it would still be either that same, 'Hi, can I talk to you?' smile, or a confused look... and he didn't want to know which.
Not right then.
He kept running - down the outside steps and away, clutching his bag and books to his chest.
-
On the crowded bus Mike relaxed a bit, staring out the window but not really seeing anything. It was slow, leaving the university, and then they sped along at the limit through the suburbs and past all the small stores....
He hadn't realized how tense he'd become, standing those few minutes at the stop. Or maybe all through Hubert's class, but especially since the boy.
He was still hugging his books.
He'd been the one who spilled the bucket. Wanted all his balls all over the place. Needed.
He pictured the wire buckets at the mini-putt place and realized that those were what he'd been thinking of, not the plain one he'd drawn.
Like a cage he'd kicked over. Down the stairs.
Free all the little balls... Fly, little golf balls, fly!
He hugged his books even harder and stared out the window. He relaxed a bit, too.
-
The stop was just a block and a half from Denise's. It was a nice late fall day and downtown was almost as warm as indoors, even that late. Even the packed bus had been pretty comfortable with practically all the windows open, but fresh air was... better.
Mike knew he was thinking about anything but what he was worried about. He put his stuff down on a bench and took off his sweater.
He didn't know what to do... or what to say when stuff like that happened. He folded the sweater over an arm and picked up his school stuff again, hanging his bag's strap over his other shoulder.
As he walked he rubbed his chin back and forth on the top of his modern history book, and realized he had both arms wrapped wrapped tightly around himself. Again. He forced himself to hold his bag's strap with ~one~ hand, at least.
(If he didn't like that boy, the way he'd smiled, then why was he doing this?)
(~Did~ he like the boy?)
-
The office building was dirty, greyish stone, with stairs up to a small, marble lobby and ancient-looking brass elevator doors. Mike always thought it looked like it should all be private investigator offices, but the signs said there were mostly doctors and lawyers and merchants and such... and Denise's. Modern Skin Solutions.
The elevator made echoing, mechanical clunking noises as it started down. Mike looked at the binder paper peeking out of his textbook. He'd been the one to go to the councillors' offices. He'd read the student handbook looking to find out what student medical coverage might be. Gone to ask...
The inside of the elevator was disappointingly modern compared to the outside doors. Brushed steel and ugly plastic. Mike pushed the third floor button. The top one. There was space for a fourth, but it was just a keyhole.
It was always too hot in Denise's building. He looked at his sweater. It was a nice one, soft fleece, that he really liked. He wondered what that boy had seen? Him? His sweater? His hair? He turned the knob and went in.
The little bell tinkled and Denise poked her head out around her inside office door. He didn't even remember riding up.
"Oh, hi, Mick! Made the early bus again, I see! Have a seat and I'll be with you in about ten, okay?" He could tell she smiled from her voice, though she didn't lean out the inner office door enough for him to see her mouth. He smiled back and nodded and she disappeared. She zipped around on her wheeled chair like a kid. Her chatter started up again.
She always called him 'Mick' instead of Mike. She talked almost continuously with all of her clients and said she needed to to keep focussed and it was like a kind of distraction that made it easier, too. On the clients.
He didn't know if it made it easier, but it sure made it seem shorter, at least, and that was something. At least when she talked about stuff he could follow. Whoever was in with her now could talk back, so it wasn't her face. Mike wondered if it would be easier if he could talk back and they could have an actual conversation, but Denise said he had to stay still and not talk. She always completely stopped when he had to. Sat up and back and kind of glared at him for interrupting her. Her work, not her chatter.
She was a really intense woman, some ways.
Besides, it wasn't ~too~ bad....
The magazines were the same ones, except for a new mail-order catalogue, he thought, but he needed to catch up on his reading that he should have started on the bus, so he picked up Hubert's text and opened it to where his notes were stuck in at the right page. Notes. Yeah, right...
The wrong kind of bucket. Change. Time moves one way, and never reverses. Time's arrow.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
Sometimes you're the windshield. Sometimes you get a $200 gift certificate for electrolysis. Probably the oddest thing any of the freshmen had won during all of Frosh Week, and he'd won it. In a girl's gift bag. A mistake and a fluke. Everyone had had a good laugh, but he'd kept it.
Sometimes you're the bug.
Or a butterfly...
Then, was the gift bag the butterfly... or was his decision to use the certificate? Could a decision ever be random?
And there were huge, concrete stairs up to the Student Services building.... It wasn't random to climb them. Bouncing balls didn't go ~up~ stairs.
Mike read and re-read what he'd written. Or looked at it all until he read one line.
"Things never go back to exactly where they were."
Life never returns to what it was.... (Why was he thinking so much about going back? Did he even want to? Did he ~ever~ want to?)
And the other sure thing is that you can't tell what will happen, either. What the real change will be.
A butterfly wing moved. It happened. It could never be unmoved again.
Maybe moving at all was that mattered. Doing something. Anything.
The ~real~ butterfly effect.
He looked up at the picture across from the waiting-area couch, at the reflective glass. And the boy in the reflection. Man. He was eighteen.
Nothing showed in the imperfect mirror. He was skinny. His mother said he was anorexic, except he was a boy.... And he wasn't. But he ~was~ probably less than 140. Certainly not too skinny.
(And anyway, he liked food!)
He couldn't even see the ~real~ problem in the fuzzy reflection. He started to stand up and look closer-
"Hey, kiddo!" Denise was at the little reception desk writing out a receipt for the lady who was sorting out her purse. No red patches, so not her face. Probably not bikini, either, not in October. He never did see the point in getting any other area done....
Mike put his notes and text back down on the coffee table, picked up his bag, and mentally prepared himself. He was surprised to find he was more relaxed than he'd been on the bus.
(~Really~ relaxed, really...)
-
"You're getting really, ~really~ great results, you know!"
Denise handled him like he was a rag doll, pushing and pulling his chin and head to look closely at her handiwork. ~Close-close~. Lighted magnifying glass and all. And that just inches away.
"You have such perfect follicles! There's very little re-growth coming in, as little as I've ever seen...." She sat up a bit and smiled. "Almost none! I think we're getting something like 90% kill!"
She always said something every time about his follicles and how the needle felt and what it had to do and all, but it was the first time she said his re-growth was so good. He knew what that meant.
She dabbed on cold, alcohol-smelling antiseptic. Mike stayed quiet as she talked, kind of reminding herself (or maybe him) about everything they'd decided over the weeks and months and how it was going and he kind of hummed that he heard her, like usual. It was all like a ritual, almost.... He thought about it being over, too.
She ran her fingers behind his neck and he lifted up as she pulled his hair out from under him and draped it over the top of the tiny pillow and then turned to re-wash her hands. Like always. He even knew from the way she did it she wanted him to turn to the left.
"I think if we work just at overall thinning and blending in from now on instead of concentrating on doing small areas completely the results will be even better, okay?"
Mike stayed quiet and thought. He hated having heavy areas and light areas. He hated explaining. Everyone seemed to notice, after a minute, that he had patches of beard.
He hated having ~any~ beard.
"I'll thin all the thicker bits today, and it'll look less contrast-y that way and the way you're progressing it won't slow things down any...."
-
Denise was rough, pressing and pushing as she worked. She said it helped.
Mike let himself relax and soon even the sharp twinkles of pain disappeared...
-
End of Part Deux, wherein our Protagonist Pupates.
---
"Owie!"
"Oh, sorry, hon! But that one there was just bugging me to death!" She pressed on the spot above and between his eyes to take the sting away.
"You have like maybe twenty-eleven hairs up there that you really need gone!" She pulled at his eyebrow with her thumb and smiled, her normal mouth under her magnified eyes.
Mike realized he'd been asleep, or near enough to sleep that it made no difference, until a tiny spark of pain where he wasn't expecting it had jolted him back. His face felt stiff, almost.
"On my nose?" He didn't ~think~ he had a unibrow....
"It was just a stray hair in the middle there, hon, but you have a few that are all over the place! And since you don't wax or pluck - and you ~never~ should! - in a few years you'll be bushy or have to be plucking them anyway...." She thumbed his other brow and used the cool of the tweezers to point. He assumed.
"Won't I look weird with red up there?"
"Of course not! I wouldn't do that to you! It'll just be the ones that are out grazing in the field instead of keeping with the herd, not a bunch together. And you have great tolerance for it...." She grinned at the explanation. And he knew what she was talking about, when he thought about it.
"Well, okay... I guess."
"Kewl!" She grinned even more at her fake kewl-ness and dabbed at his brow with a cold, damp cotton ball as he closed his eyes against the stinging fumes.
-
It hurt. She was slow and used a lot of ice, but it still hurt.
She alternated with the odd ones on his cheeks after a while....
-
"Six-thir... two and a half hours!?"
The clock on the wall was always behind Denise and he never knew the time until she sat back and up at the end of the session. Some of them had been fifteen minutes that felt like an hour, and some half-hours that felt like a minute. But none had been even an hour! Not nearly! Denise grinned from the sink.
"Yeah, I'm amazed, too! You're just the second client I've had that fell asleep while I worked on her face and the other one was drugged up on valium or something! But once you started zoning, I figured 'what the hey, lets go to town!' and kept going. You're my last client today and we're gonna do them all eventually anyway. And your brows look great!"
She came back with a cold, wet towel and pressed at them before wrapping it around his whole face.
"I got a ton done and ~completely~ cleaned off your chin and lip and cheeks, all just one or two at a time so you wouldn't wake, and all down your neck where they're so random, and back under your jaw is almost done and I blended up both sides...." He heard her washing up and arranging her equipment away as she talked.
"There's always going to be new growth from hairs that were hibernating... but I got so much!"
Mike tried to feel what she'd done. Under the towel, his whole lower face was warm. His eyebrows stung a bit. Sunburn sting. Done?
Denise came back with another towel and switched them. Mike kept his eyes closed against the light. Cold again. Denise kept them in a cooler, specially for comfort.
"Ten minutes of cooling right away brings down the swelling the same way a whole night would, if you don't."
Mike blinked while he tried to figure out what she'd said. Then he mmm-ed that he understood. Denise didn't always make sense, grammar-wise, but then, neither did he. She lifted the cloth and ran an ice cube over his brows, like she sometimes did.
"Am I gonna be too swollen from so much?" Talking under a wet towel felt weird. The ice felt heavenly. He kept his eyes shut.
"Maybe a little more than usual, but I really was all over and didn't do any concentrated work at one time, so I think you'll be about normal by tomorrow. Do you have early classes again?"
The ice disappeared and she came back with a third cold towel and switched them so fast he had to wait to answer. She knew he had a late class on Thursdays and an early one on Fridays. The towels seemed cooler each time. Or he was.
"Yeah...." He was suddenly tired. Really tired.
"Don't fall asleep again!" Denise wasn't worried, it sounded like, but she made it like she was. When he opened his eyes and turned his head, even not seeing her through the towel, he knew she was sitting at her desk, writing up the invoice and his receipt, all normal, talking at her work.
"It's a lot of work, getting two hours of electrolysis, so you need to go have a big supper and then get to bed. And put on this cream just before bed and leave it on." She waved a tiny toothpaste-like tube at him and put it down again. He didn't see her, but she always did.
"And put cool towels on again for a half hour at least before bed, too. Before the cream."
She put the receipt into his folder and slid it back into the top filing cabinet drawer, shut it with a small rumble-clunk and stood up with a smile.
"You're about 95% done, hon! I couldn't even find any to do at the end! So no session next week and I bet we only need fifteen minutes the next! It shouldn't even show then!"
She lifted the towel off and ran her hand over her work - and his face - with a professional's pride. And a huge grin. She squeezed a dollop of the moisturizer she used onto her fingers and started to spread it. It was cool, too.
"It's at the point where most of the time it'll be invisible, normal fine hairs here and there, and you won't even look rough when you grow it for me." She thumb-smoothed his brows with the cream, too, and then reached back and squeezed another tiny dab and thumbed it in, here and there. She sat back and grinned.
"You look really pretty, hon. And less like your caterpillars are shedding, too."
-
Mike had only glanced at the mirror in Denise's washroom. His face looked like it was badly sunburned. Half his face. It had always felt worse than it looked, before, like a scraping, rough shave for the first few hours. But tonight it ~looked~ even more raw than it felt, so he only glanced at it. It was puffy, too. Denise saw her work, not real faces....
-
He worried about people seeing him at the bus stop. He knew it looked weird: red eyes, red face, swelling. Like hives. And acne. He tried to ignore everyone. Everything. The cooler night air felt good. On his face, at least.
He was glad it was at least dark out. He wished there were shadows he could hide in. He wished his sweater was heavier.
He hoped that boy wouldn't see him.
His chest tightened even more. More than hugging his books could help.
-
On the bus, in the warmth, Mike could feel his face swelling. Almost like it was getting stiff. He knew it was mostly an illusion, but it felt real. Denise had said aspirins helped a tiny bit, so he took two from the little flat tin his mom had given him. A travel tin, she'd said, and that it was older than he was and she'd bought it when she was in school, too. He kept it in a little zippered pocket in his bag, safe.
He sat and read with his head down and his face hidden by his hair. He'd finger-combed it forward and knew he looked like a grunge stoner, but at least people couldn't see.
Almost done. Months and months before they thought....
(People wouldn't see it anymore. Wouldn't think he was weird...)
He couldn't help smiling. (Almost done....)
Suddenly, at that thought, he realized that he couldn't really imagine what he'd look like when it was all over.
-
At the dorm, his history reading completed on the slow-service bus, he half-filled his ice cream pail with ice from the floor fridge in the hallway, then topped it up with cold water and settled down to an hour of cooling before an early-early bed time. Even if he was two hours later getting back.
Assuming nothing noisy happened on the floor outside. It should be okay on a weeknight....
Before settling in to see what was on TV, he examined himself closely in his hand mirror for the first time.
He ~was~ really swollen, almost like hives. More than ever before. And there was a lot of red. Everywhere.
Spots even low down on his neck. Spots all the way to the top of his cheeks and from his ears there was a continuous red right under his jaw, all around.... Everywhere where he had beard hair. Had had.
The red was where he ~used~ to have a beard...
And it was ~smooth~. Like, the hairs that were still there weren't even what he saw. Not until he looked for them. And they were soft. Like peach fuzz hairs.
He had to keep looking, examining it. His whole lip, and under, and down his neck....
It ~was~ like a sunburn. But it was ~done~! His hated, painful beard was really gone! Gone! His eyes looked funny with the same burn around his brows, his much neater brows....
Like a clown in a color negative, wherever his skin stretched, it went really pale.
He had to laugh then, and laid back to cool his red, smooth clown skin.
-
He fell asleep without using the cream. Without taking the last cold, wet towel off, either.
It was still cold and wet in the morning, by his ear.
-
He was even more sensitive to touch, but when he checked again after his shower it was a bit better again, and from experience he knew even more of the red'd be gone by after breakfast, though the little rough spots would look even worse for a day or so.
Like standing up was all that was needed for a fast bit of healing. Blood ran downhill, he guessed...
His eyebrows looked... odd. He just wasn't used to them, maybe, he thought....
For the first time since he'd started having to, Mike didn't have to hate shaving. He patted his sensitive face dry and looked in the mirror, and smiled. No shaving. Maybe... never again.
He grinned on purpose and admired the weird patterns of red and pale that still happened. That would go away soon and he'd never have ~them~ again, either.
He'd never be the same again. No beard. No caterpillars. He looked weird now, but after: he'd be perfect!
He felt like he was starting a new life or something!
-
He smiled his odd, red smile all the way to breakfast. Even getting up at seven for stupid eight A.M. classes was okay on a morning like this! Even the cafeteria's idea of what pancakes should taste like was fine!
Even Trevor Harris passing him in the hall and calling him a freak was fine! Trevor called all Arts majors freaks!
Engineers... and who signed up for ~five~ early morning labs?? All he did was study!
-
Logic 102, Critical Reasoning. 8:00 to 10 A.M., Wednesdays and Fridays.
The only philosophy Mike knew before university wasn't even part of Father Bertolli's course. I think, therefore I am. Apparently that was existentialism, part of Intro to Philosophy, 101, over in the Arts theatres.
But wasn't enrolling in an eight in the morning class on Fridays the ~opposite~ of logical, critical reasoning?
As he walked across the quad to class, Mike hummed a song that he vaguely remembered didn't really go the way he was humming it. The morning was chill but he smiled the whole way and hugged his bag tighter for warmth. The text for Logic 102 was small enough to fit inside.
Over to the right he could see the bus terminal. The path to the Arts building was there, too.
Around the Becker building were the stairs and door where he'd seen that boy...
Where that boy had smiled at him.
Mike's smile made the tuneless tune he was humming a little sillier. He didn't care.
-
End of Part Tres, wherein the Chrysalis Forms
---
Logic 102 was taught by a ~priest~ who said ~god~ (small g) was a ~theory~, not a fact.
Father Bertolli also said existentialism was for revolutionary lightweights, whatever that meant.
In just three months in his course, Mike had swung from disbelieving in anything but mathematical proofs to a passionate belief that beauty was the only truth... or perhaps truth was beauty.... He wasn't clear on that one yet, but it was closer.
Father Bertolli hadn't even really talked about God (big G) or Religion (big R), except in the first class for a few minutes right before three students had stood up and walked out. That was when he emphasized the big differences between G's and g's.
Mike loved the class. The student advisor back in his high school had said he'd love it. He did.
He also wished he'd worn an even warmer sweater. Or two. Once he'd gotten over feeling too warm after walking in from outside, he got cold from just sitting there doing nothing except listening. The St. Augustine building never seemed to have a normal temperature, and since it was nicer than usual outside they'd probably turned the furnace off. And the windows in the classroom faced north.
Father Bertolli finished writing something Greek on the board. Ancient Greek. Mike had a prof who spoke ancient Greek. And knew Plato.
"Only seeing shadows of the reality outside the cave, for his whole life, and all his knowledge of the world from those shadows." He looked right at Mike. "What would be the mind of such a man, Mr. Stewart?"
For a monk (he was a monk, too) who was literate in four living and two dead languages, Father Bertolli never seemed to manage two grammatically perfect English sentences in a row. Even if Mike always seemed to know what he meant. What he was really asking. (Probably from practicing with Denise.)
"Umm... That we all know the world through our senses, and not the reality? And he meant since we, our senses, were imperfect and... and we had to use reason to understand the world, from our senses, and so it would be imperfect. Our knowledge of... everything."
"Ah! And why imperfect?!" The old man smiled like a mad actor. Acting mad. Insane. He played at the characters they discussed, Mike thought.
"Well, not imperfect? I mean, I think he meant that it wouldn't be exactly like what was outside, but he thought the thought-world was perfect in itself? Or could be. If we, if the person seeing it could understand enough?"
He wasn't clear on that idea himself. Or how Plato could have thought he could know more than he could see. Or how he could figure out ~which~ thought-world was the real one.
Like how if everyone had those limits, and everyone saw everything differently, then what was so perfect? It'd be like everyone brought their own, personal Leggo blocks and they all had different sized holes and pegs. Even if all the worlds looked sort of the same, nothing would fit.
And Leggo was never perfect even when it did all fit... it was jagged and square....
But Mike remembered things he'd built that he'd kept for months. How wonderful they'd been, made just out of colored blocks. And so perfect.
How fun it was to pour out his bucket of blocks and imagine a whole new thing every day and maybe make something better than you could ever buy.
Leggo block toys were like shadow images of reality. And kids saw the stuff they made with them as perfect.
But kids didn't analyze things the way Father Bertolli said an adult had to. The way logic worked.
He wondered if he could ever see how wonderful they were again. And what had changed so that he'd stopped playing with them? He couldn't remember the last time he looked at that bucket....
His chest felt sore.
-
Father Bertolli went on about Plato's personal faith, even if Plato didn't see it that way, and the filters it put on how he interpreted the shadows ~he~ saw, the limits he could accept as reality....
Mike thought about his own. Leggo blocks, and the changes in the way he saw them... and the way he looked....
The way other people saw hm.
His palm was a warmth that seemed shared between his face and hand - amazing, like he couldn't tell which side was soft and warm and smooth, and which was feeling it.
No-one had commented on his face and he'd almost stopped worrying what he might look like.... Feeling his face like that, he wondered again. He put his hand down, self-conscious of what he'd been doing.
What did people see? Could ~he~ even see?
Crossing his arms, he pressed up against the pain.
-
Father Bertolli made a comment about other philosophies and that some were completely opposite in their definitions of reality.
And he said each might be as true as the others.
A half-dozen hands went up, or at least students started asking questions. How could opposite things both be true?
Mike wondered that, too, and listened.
Father Bertolli smiled at the girl who'd asked the first question.
"If, beside your cave, there is another. Your neighbor watches the same events, but through different shadows. Always different... will not your worlds be different? And yet both ~true~?" He smiled at everyone.
"If in a particular country children are raised being told, say, 'blue' is 'pink,' and vice versa, are you wrong for saying this? For believing this? If all about, blue is called pink, then is ~everyone~ wrong for thinking this? Is blue not ~truly~ pink in such a place?" He looked around all the students. Mike was staring back and Father Bertolli smiled and spoke to him.
"And if you meet a person from that other country, is ~their~ pink less true than ~your~ pink?"
He smiled at the room of "adolescents." He'd told them he though of all his students that way. For an old monk, he had a good sense of humor.
"A philosophy must encompass ~everything~ in the universe, beyond even physics and science. Even other philosophies! But its ~power~ must lie in explaining the smallest things! Why a color is a color. How music thrills the soul. Seeing God's creation in the bloom of a flower, or the eyes of a lover." He smiled.
A boy, smiling at him.
-
He didn't hear the reading assignment. He didn't remember to pick up his books when he stood up at the end of class.
He was only stopped from wandering into the bright hallway by a hand on his arm.
"Have the scales fallen from your eyes?"
Mike jumped. Father Bertolli laughed a little humming note.
"And yet you are now blind.... Why don't you collect yourself a moment, Mr. Stewart. Did my erudition affect you so, or was it something else?"
Mike blinked at him and realized that he'd been about to leave without his bag.
And book.
And he'd forgotten where he was going. Student Services. He looked back at his philosophy professor. Who'd smiled and said, said...
Eyes of a lover.
He had a perfect memory of the boy...
Which... was wrong...
(talk?)
"... you have time? I'm a good listener and only have office hours now today."
He did sound something like Denise sometimes, Mike thought, with an Italian accent, and he smiled. He had to be at a meeting, the lady. And maybe it was important that he get there... but it wasn't for another half hour.
And he was pretty sure it wouldn't take long. He didn't even know what Father Bertolli wanted to talk about.
-
End of Four, wherein the Chrysalis Trembles
---
Father Bertolli held his arm only long enough to be sure he wasn't going to fall down, Mike thought. It was long enough to make Mike feel like he ~cared~ that he didn't fall down, too.
He felt funny sitting beside a professor at one of the student tables, not even on the other side...
He looked at the Jesuit priest, who was a real, live monk....
And realized that if there was ever a better person in the entire world to talk to about what he was feeling, he'd never met them.
Father Bertolli had told them a lot about himself on the first day of lectures. He was a language scholar and an archaeologist, and thought "one God was as true a reflection of creation's beauty as another." (Mike had had to edit the God to 'god' after he'd listened a little longer.)
And he hadn't ~always~ been a priest. He'd hinted he even had a life before.
And Mike liked him. And he trusted him.
He reminded Mike of his grandmother. But Italian. And a man. And he was sitting there. And Mike didn't think he could talk to his Grandma about what he thought he might be about to talk to Father Bertolli about.
And, maybe, Father Bertolli might actually have some answers.
His own private oracle.
He smiled a bit at that, even though he thought he might be shivering, too.
"Father? Have you ever heard of the butterfly effect?" He noticed his professor's expression change and realized that he'd called him Father instead of professor. But he called himself Father.
And besides that, his question wasn't all that bright, either.
Father Bertolli smiled a bit more. Like he'd heard that part.
"Yes. It was a movie a while back, wasn't it? It's an idea of causality, determinism... popularly in meteorology, extrapolated from popularized physics, I believe. That given time and a sufficiently large threshold, the smallest motion - a butterfly's wing - can eventually effect huge change in the environment? Is that the effect you mean?"
The oracle smiled. Mike sat there and blinked.
He realized that he probably hadn't meant to ask about ~any~ of that, really. Except the word "causality." One thing causes another.
He still nodded. Suddenly, he felt even shyer than he'd felt nervous a moment ago.
He had to look at his hands. Anywhere. He still needed to repair his manicure. Some nails were almost chipped bare. And that was part of it. But when he looked up, Father Bertolli was still smiling. Mike tried to, too.
"I don't know if that's really what I meant... I mean, about the whole tiniest start and all.... But starting something and then it becomes bigger and maybe more than I meant..."
But it wasn't bad. Just not what he'd been thinking about. Planning. He'd never planned it, really. Ever.
Not real plans that mattered.
He hadn't planned anything except never shaving again.
He'd never even meant to buy nail polish. Or that ~that~ changed things, too....
He'd never really thought about how changing... would change him even more.
He stopped picking at his thumbnail and looked up.
"I think..."
He had to re-think. Father Bertolli waited, not smiling, but okay.
Mike didn't look up for the second try, after a few seconds. He'd thought about how he had to show his professor some of the same shadows he saw.
"I'm getting my beard removed..."
-
-
"Oh, no! I have to run!" Mike looked from the clock he'd just noticed and started looking around frantically before he saw his bag and book and realized that he'd forgotten them entirely and needed to take them too.... He stood, almost knocking over his chair.
"I have an important appointment in... in three minutes!"
"Wait, wait..."
Father Bertolli wasn't panicked. Or even upset. Mike didn't stop, but he at least heard. He looked at Father Bertolli and tried to replace the chair at the table at the same time and almost knocked it over again.
"Where is your appointment? Unless it's down the hall you won't be on time." He smiled. "Can you call and postpone, or explain? I will add my excuses if it would help?"
Mike 'Wait, waited...'
He'd been on the edge of tears, he realized, but he could think again.
-
Professors - especially ones who were priests and counselors and confessors, Mike supposed (though he didn't speak catholic enough to have more than a vague idea of what that really meant) - made good excuses.
Especially when keeping that ~exact~ appointment with a certain Mrs. Thakur wasn't (apparently) as important to Mrs. Thakur as he'd thought it was.
Especially when said professor explained that the delay was, constructively, about the same issue as the meeting. Topic. Problem.
All of the above.
And especially when he ~really~ didn't want to stop talking with Father Bertolli right then.
-
So... he was re-booked for three-fifteen, which gave him tons and tons of time. Since he didn't have a ridiculously intense class schedule like certain unnamed and rude engineering students.
-
"So..."
Father Bertolli sat back. He didn't smile, but Mike could tell he liked thinking about a problem. Any problem. They'd moved to his crowded, little office, which was also in the St. Augustine building.
"What you wanted, ~intended~, was to take advantage of a windfall to remove a beard you greatly disliked. To start the removal. Correct?"
Mike nodded.
"And what you wanted, ~wished for~, was to also remove a barrier to your self-image? One that would be entirely private?"
Father Bertolli smiled and then nodded along with Mike. Mike had a hard time not freezing up again, hearing it.
"But what has happened is that through this process, you believe your appearance has become sufficiently feminine that people are relating to you as a girl? Some people?" He nodded and didn't smile.
Mike did too. Both.
"And though this is not at odds with your self-image, being seen this way is distressing?" He watched Mike's face.
"Or this change in others' perceptions is happening too fast for your comfort?"
Mike must have done something.
"Or might not even be what you want at all, in the end?"
They both nodded, one after the other, for similar, but different reasons. Mike at the word "might." Father Bertolli at Mike's almost shaking "no" before he nodded "yes."
"And you wonder about your sexuality."
Mike hunched forward.
Almost no "yes" at all.
Father Bertolli sat quietly for several minutes, just touching the young student's hand while Mike shook.
He took his hand away, just an inch. Then he put it back.
"And you have gone to Health Services and told them you are transsexual and cannot afford to pay for the bulk of this... electrolysis. And that you feel desperate to change your appearance and they have agreed to aid you and have been funding your clinical visits?"
Mike didn't look up, but he made a tiny nod. Father Bertolli said it better than he had.
There was silence for a long time. A long time.
Mike thought. And thought. And none of the thoughts were... anything he could recognize....
"And you feel very guilty about telling them this?"
Mike sat very, very still. Then he realized that he'd nodded.
"Even though you ~do~ feel you are a woman, inside?"
Mike nodded again, almost imperceptibly. This time he'd done it on purpose. His hand shivered under his teacher's warm, big one.
"Michael?"
He tried to nod that he could hear.
Father Bertolli moved his hand to fully cover his student's.
"What would you have done if your beard had thickened? If your features coarsen as much as mine?"
After a few seconds, Mike shuddered. Then his whole body jerked.
It was a full minute before he could look up.
---
Later, to his own confessor, Emmanuel Ignatius Bertolli said that he had never before seen such a mask of tragedy.
---
End of Part Quinque: Metamorphosis
---
He'd almost missed his science class.
Father Bertolli had said he needed to go and rest and eat something and said he'd call his professor and cover in case there was anything special happening, which Mike hadn't thought there was. He didn't even think he'd be missed in a class that big.
He sure wasn't being noticed....
Concentrating was out. Listening was almost out. That he could even be there was... about the limit.
He hadn't been able to take a nap. He hadn't been able to stop thinking, moving. He was filled with a nervous energy that wouldn't let him rest, but hadn't made him feel strong, either.
After a frustrating half-hour spent trying to find ~some~ comfortable position, he'd finally just taken his winter coat out of the small closet and gone to the class he was technically excused from.
And forgot his textbook. Not that it mattered, since he didn't think he could follow along.
Scientific Method 102. Biology. Chemistry. Physics. Geology.
Radial Fenistrology too, probably.
Mike doodled a decorative ribbon under the words, and then changed the F to a Ph. Science-ier. Then he changed pens and added a purple, flowery border around the butterflies that topped the page.
He supposed the class was the science version of Intro to Philosophy. Baby-food for the mind... the toothless mind.
Father Bertolli said any philosophy was good, even a little one, if it was honest.
Was a little bit of science worth learning? If it was honest? True?
He looked up at the teaching assistant who was doing the classes on chemistry. The prof had three different TAs to do the different sections this term. Chemistry, biochemistry and then biology, up to the Christmas break.
She had a nice smile. When she smiled, she went from kind of plain to really pretty.
Mike looked back at his paper. Then he felt around in his bag without having to look.
He traced a circle around his pill compact in the center of the page, put it back in his bag, and then drew tiny circles inside its outline. He didn't try to get them properly spaced around the edges. Just added in a few in the middle: 28.
He'd carried the compact for two years.
Julie Harrington found him crying in school on the day he'd found his first for-sure for-sure whisker hair. The day he couldn't pretend any more that the others weren't. It was also the day they'd become friends, and then quickly, best friends.
He'd carried the little compact every single day since two weeks after that, when she'd gone in to the free clinic and told them she needed a prescription. They gave her a box with three little blister packs of 28, wrapped in an elastic. Each sheet neatly fit into his compact.
It was a prescription that she still sent him, every three months, every 84 days. Or had, once. The week before.
He'd always waited outside the clinic while she always went in alone.
Hiding outside so they wouldn't see him, and know.
The TA had the exact-same color hair as Julie, sort of.
Chemistry and biology.
Mike rummaged in his bag again until he found the little bottle he remembered was there too. It was just clear, but he knew he'd feel better, and he needed to feel better right then.
Julie was taking a year off to earn money and decide what she wanted to do, but they still talked at least once a week. He stretched his left hand out and examined his chipped nails in disgust... and finally decided to do it, even with.
What would he have done if his beard ~had~ got really thick? Without the pills. Before electrolysis.
Father Bertolli said philosophy had to be about the littlest things, too. Or that it was about the daily things. Not just Creation and Life and Death.
It had to be about pills and electrolysis and... life, too. 'Little L' living.
The TA girl at the front was writing a long string of chemicals and plus signs on the overhead projector.
"Balancing the equation means choosing the lowest whole molecular ratios so that the masses on the left - the reactants - equal the masses on the right, the reaction products."
Mike didn't understand what she was saying, or even if he understood what she meant to say. But he could tell she enjoyed teaching it.
"Besides balanced weights, all reactions either release or require energy. Some reactions, need ~added~ energy, like in this example, to potentiate the reaction. Some release energy, often as heat. It was by measuring reaction energies that early chemists and physicists first deduced the existence of atomic structure beyond the ideal of Platonic elements..."
Mike decided she was too smart for him - that day, anyway - and looked back to his own work. The clear didn't look that bad, once he'd made sure none of the old polish was flaked totally loose... it was kind of pretty, even, the pink shining here and there, more than his nails on the other hand.
If he hadn't been able to take Julie's pills, what would he have done?
If his mum and dad hadn't been like they were, would he have been like Tyson Greene instead?
He finished his left thumb and carefully screwed the cap back on to shake it and make sure it didn't dry out while he waited. The girl next to him smiled and made a 'I wish I'd brought something to do, too' look when he noticed her looking at him. He made a little smile back that he understood.
Tyson Greene had dropped out of grade 12 in February. Mike thought he was probably failing about every class by then, just from not attending. Julie and Karin'd said they'd heard his home life was really bad since the rumors about him being gay had started to get bad during the past summer.
Mike hadn't known Tyson well. Nobody had, he thought.
He looked at his hands. One looked pretty. One looked...
One looked like the polish was wet, and the other looked... the same. Dry nails, but still with little flakes and sparkles of pink. Still pretty, almost the same, but not... identical.
They'd talked about ~him~, too. Said he was gay or a sissy and all that...
He wrote 'Tyson' under the butterfly at the top of the page. In amongst the flowers.
The overhead at the front of the class had a new equation on it, a shorter one. The equal sign in the middle was arrows. Both ways.
He remembered what she'd been saying. Depending on whether energy was put in or out, the chemicals changed back and the reaction would go both ways. Perfectly.
It was the same stuff on both sides, the elements and all, but they were totally different molecules each side, too.
Were hydrogen and oxygen any different atoms if they were in water? Or after they were split out of water?
Plato'd believed atoms were all there was. Never-changing.
Two years ago, he and Tyson were the same, in school. Then, Julie and Karin and Roxy had known, and then he started taking pills. And Tyson'd been just another boy across the room in some classes.
They'd both changed. Different ways.
Mike stopped.
Doodling. Painting. Listening. Stopped.
Had ~he~ really changed into someone different? Had Tyson? Just from everyone knowing about him?
His beard was almost gone. Was that ~that~ different? Not many people even noticed.
He'd told Father Bertolli, and the man at Student Services. Mr. Hamilton. The girls knew all of everything, even away, from chatting. And his mum and dad knew almost everything too, sort of....
And nothing was different except that his beard was gone, and that he looked a bit different.
If Tyson had looked at him before he'd left, in January, or held the front doors for him... at school...
If Tyson had smiled and he'd known Tyson was gay, like everyone knew, and he'd smiled at him the way that boy had smiled....
If he'd know Tyson could see him as pretty, back in grade nine?
Or if Pia had smiled that way, too? Would he have felt anything? At the same doors, instead of a boy?
Would he have ever thought any of those thoughts in grade ten, about his beard?
Would he have been so afraid of his beard if ~anyone~ had smiled at him and said he was pretty... as he was?
He started to remember that dream, embarrassed that he'd even thought of it, there in class. After two years.
He didn't want to wonder what he'd have done or felt if things were different back then.
Instead, he wrote 'CHEMISTRY'
Then he drew careful, perfectly-the-same arrows above and below it, going both ways. Forward and back.
Chemistry. Sometimes it could go back.
The pills were chemistry. Some of it ~would~ go back.
If he stopped electrolysis, some could grow back.
A bucket of balls couldn't go back.... Was that philosophy?
Philosophy was everything... and he tried to think, using what Father Bertolli had taught him. Honestly.
-
He looked at his nails. His hands were shivering. Shaking. He didn't think he could even do his right hand nails.
He didn't have enough energy left.
If Mrs. Thakur said they wouldn't pay any more, would he go back? Would he be ~able~ to go back? Did that arrow point either way?
He looked just at his right hand. It still looked pretty, without any fresh polish. Was his left hand really different at all, really?
He could look up Tyson Green when he went home at Christmas. He'd never even said hi to him, that he could remember....
Was Tyson going back, in his personal chemistry, when he dropped out?
Or was he going forward?
Was that even the right question, when he didn't know Tyson?
-
End of Part the Sixth. Chemistry
---
"Michael Stewart?"
Mike looked up and nodded. He didn't know if she was Mrs. Thakur or someone else, since he hadn't met her yet. Or know what she wanted. But the lady looked like he was supposed to go with her.
He was still so tired he almost couldn't get up. He'd been sitting there for almost an hour. Since after his last class. Thinking.
-
The lady who'd come to get him wasn't Mrs. Thakur. She just took him to her office.
Mrs. Thakur was a short, dark-skinned woman who looked even older than Father Bertolli. She had grayer hair, anyway, though her face was hard to guess from.
She'd stood up when she saw him and reached out to shake his hand. He was slow, but he shook hers, too. She had cool, soft hands.
"I'm glad I could see you today after all, Michael. Please, have a seat..."
Her office was narrow. A window at the end, a wall of books from her desktop all the way to the ceiling, the desk, and barely room for two chairs. When the other lady closed the door it just cleared the back of Mike's chair. The other chair.
Mrs. Thakur sat, so Mike did too. He looked at the carpet, past her legs. She was the woman who might take the electrolysis away.
But Denise said he was finished, almost.
So he didn't know why this was so important. Just that it was.
He didn't know what he was going to say to her. He didn't even know what she wanted to know. He didn't know what he wanted to tell her, either.
He knew, before, in the morning, but things were different then. He was. He was even different than in his last class.
Mrs. Thakur had sat forward in her chair and was leaning towards him. He looked up.
"Michael, are you feeling quite alright?"
He noticed that she had an Indian accent, or maybe a British one. And a high voice. He thought she sounded like an actor in an old movie the way she pronounced her words so perfectly. And she smiled when she spoke.
If everyone...
"... Bertolli- "
Mike looked up again. Mrs. Thakur had an odd expression.
"Yes?"
If she was talking about him it was about, about... important stuff.
Mrs. Thakur still had the same odd expression, sort of surprised. Not smiling. Then she sat back a bit and blinked.
Mike realized he hadn't been listening. That he was almost asleep.
She blinked again and looked kind of apologetic or something, even though he was the one not listening. Mike tried to smile instead, since it really was his fault.
"I'm sorry. I'm really, really tired. Father Bertolli said I should have a sleep after we talked too long and after I called you this morning we talked almost another hour more, too, and I... he said I should go h- back to the res and try to get some sleep but I couldn't and went to class anyway and now I'm really tired. I'm sorry."
He looked down. Mrs. Thakur had been almost staring at him. He couldn't look at her any more, so he'd looked past her.
Her books were all about psychology. And counseling. And she was a doctor of some kind. Her name thing on the desk said 'Dr. Sina Thakur.' He looked back at her.
He still didn't know what she wanted to talk to him about.
He remembered what he wanted to, though, from before. He took a breath and talked at the floor.
"What I said when I talked to Mr. Hamilton before, I know I said I was sure but I wasn't then and I am now, but I lied to him, even if it's true now, or what I had to say, I thought..." He ran out of air and hiccoughed.
"It's true, now."
He ran down. It wasn't all true. All of the truth.
Father Bertolli said a philosophy had to be about everything. And honest.
He wanted to tell her the lie, like he always told the girls, but it hurt to tell ~anyone~, now. From now on.
Even if she was a counselor, and he told her what he'd told Kevin. And Mr. Hamilton.
Even some of the stuff he'd even told Father Bertolli.
Stuff that he'd wanted to be true so hard he thought he'd die.
His whole chest hurt.
"~What~ is true now, Michael?"
She asked a question from what he'd said, before. The real one.
He couldn't make himself say anything.
Tyson Greene had dropped out because everyone treated him like shit because he wouldn't lie, and ~he~ was getting free help.... She was ~asking~!
Kevin hadn't made him think. Mr. Hamilton hadn't asked him what was really true and what wasn't. Just about Kevin...
"Is it what you talked to Professor Bertolli about? When you called?"
His throat tightened, as painful as his chest, and he could feel his eyes filling up. He nodded to keep from looking up. To keep from having to say he had to go and apologize to Father.
Tried to brush the tears away with his fingers without her seeing that, either. Lying about ~that~ too.
She sat back.
"Professor Bertolli called after you left him and told me he couldn't tell me anything about your conversation there." Her voice was calm.
Mike nodded. Father'd told him. Said it didn't matter what religion Mike was, to him it was a confession. He had to wipe more tears away that he'd loosened by nodding.
"Michael?"
He finally looked up. She'd put a box of tissues closer to him and he nodded thanks as he grabbed a couple.
"Michael," she spoke quietly, "you told Mr. Hamilton you were transgendered, and that you needed help to pay for electrolysis?"
Mike nodded. He couldn't look up. He could barely talk, but ~that~ at least was all true. "Yes."
"But you didn't think that was true when you told Mr. Hamilton? Even though you'd been in therapy for, almost two years?"
He shook his head. Shook it again. No.
He ~had~ thought that. But he hadn't ~really~ thought at all, because after two hundred free dollars of 90% effective electrolysis he'd looked into a mirror and thought that he would rather die than see that hair come back. That he would die.
Like Julie's pills had been... they'd been his life. ~That~ important. He'd had his friends and parents and the pills weren't... everything. Even though he'd thought they were. Like he'd thought electrolysis was.
But he'd started to... to maybe learn what was really important. Since he'd come to university. Who he really was.
Like Father Bertolli said, he'd been looking at shadows and thinking they were real. Or that they were ~all~ that was real.
And not even trying to understand that if he had ideas, they might be wrong ideas.
Like, he'd thought he was the one who kicked over the bucket on a stairs and started everything, back in September. But it was before then. Way before. And he was just a ball, not even the bucket, even.
And his beard wasn't who he was.
A couple of months ago Mike told the same old lie to himself, again. Then he told Mr. Hamilton, so he could pretend a little while longer. Enough to get past the panic about his electrolysis.
And by accident, he'd gone and told Mr. Hamilton almost the truth. Even if he didn't listen to himself.
He hadn't even listened when Father Bertolli had told him.
Who he really was. What he'd been doing.
It'd taken two months to realize it. Two packs of pills, and a hundred phone calls with Julie and the girls. Eight visits to Denise - and her finishing. Dozens and dozens of classes. Talking to his mum and dad every weekend.
Before he'd even realized it.
And he still couldn't stop.
He'd tried.
Smiles. The boy. His TA in Science. The girl beside him there, even. Father Bertolli.
Even Mrs. Thakur.
But there were a thousand memories, too. A million words. Years and ~years~ of frustration and fear as he'd seen his life slipping away. Believed.
Talking for a whole year to Kevin, his free counselor at the same free clinic he had to hide outside of when Julie went in. So the receptionist wouldn't see him and her together... and put two and two together.
Telling his parents, all of them in tears, that he dressed the way he did, sometimes, why he had to... Not telling them about the pills. Because of the lie.
He ~hated~ that lie more than...
He looked up at Mrs. Thakur again. Even though she wasn't smiling, he could see what he needed.
"I didn't know, before." He mashed sodden tissues under his nose, but kept his eyes on her and tried to enunciate, so she could understand.
So he'd be able to talk to Father Bertolli, after. And call home. So it didn't matter if she took away the money.
He kept looked at her, even though it felt like there was a knife in his throat.
She started to cry.
"I had to lie and lie every ~day~ and pretend I was happy, but everything was- was like I was dead.... And now I just can't be like that again.... But it still hurts!"
It took deep breaths to get past the pain.
"It's like everything is happening so fast now and I can't stand it except Father... Father Bertolli said... he said... he said...."
Mike sniffed, tried to breathe. And still tried to look at Mrs. Thakur again, too.
"He said it hurt to tell a lie... and I... I thought... I thought he meant I was lying so long... to myself..." Mike had to gulp air.
"But I... I was lying to ~EVERYONE~! I lied to my mo- my, my par-ents! and my, my friends, Julie, and... and ~EVERYONE!~"
A few tissues.
"An- I don't ~want~ to! I can't... any... more!"
She broke down completely in wracking sobs.
She had to talk to her mum and dad. And Julie. And see Tyson. See if he was alive... she hoped so with all her heart....
Mrs. Thakur put a light hand on her knee as she sobbed. Like she wasn't so terrible... like she wasn't a liar anymore.
Like it didn't matter what she looked like.
She felt the pressure under her breasts ease a bit, too. For the first time in forever.
-
The End.