Morgan Abrams
13 hours until arrest
Every time you have to wait in line, forced to pause with nothing to do but suck air down into aching lungs, your thoughts start racing again. Not even racing anywhere useful – just an unfocused haze of panic threatening to carry you away with it unless you can keep moving. Not even track after track of Ysme Wonder songs pumping through your headphones helps to keep your mind from running a mile a minute. All the caffeine you’ve been chugging may have helped keep you awake but maybe it’s time to consider hard drugs.
Your heart has been pounding in your chest nonstop since messaging Riley.
The day-crowd here isn’t ideal but either you stick with this or you go back to hovering over toilet stalls and your abdomen is already an aching, empty pit. Might as well do something productive with all this fear.
The gymnasium is a vault, the room stretching up above into what must be the next floor, exposed piping running across the ceiling between sky-blue panels and hanging light fixtures. Tall enough for this area of the gym to accommodate both a rock wall and an entire parkour course which twists up and around atop itself with foam block pathways strung from the ceiling or propped up on pillars from below.
The parkour course has fast become your favorite. Scrambling up chest-high walls, jumping gaps, climbing up and down poles. Nice simple straightforward problems of physics with easy answers and which have nothing to with the nightmare that has consumed your life. You’ve done this one enough times at this point that you can turn your brain off and stop thinking human thoughts.
In all the stories you’ve read, it’s the AI characters you’ve wished yourself into the hardest. To be able to just turn off parts of yourself at will when they become inconvenient? If only! You’d turn some parts off for good, frankly.
The best ones were always the super fantastical – stuff like guys getting their minds uploaded into gynoid bodies (absurd premise; even the most advanced neuro-based processors that things like military grade AI run on don’t work like that – some of these authors clearly don’t understand the first thing about AI, cyborgs, or even basic computing). Some of those disassembly scenes, though – they could get you feeling – ow, you banged your arm against a pole again. Fuck.
The stumble as you clutch your elbow sends you tumbling off the cross beam and onto the padded floor below. Someone gasps, as if to underline that your humiliation has not gone unwitnessed. You have to pick yourself up with a hurry before anyone can think to ask if you’re okay. Have no idea how you’d lie your way through that question.
Straight to the back of line for the course you go. With the pause in movement comes renewed flashes of fear over your immediate future. Riley must be pissed it took you this long to message. By the time you realized your phone was busted you weren’t any state to do something as involved as buying a new one.
Not a great start for the inevitable conversation that’s sure to only piss her off more.
When your turn comes again, you take off. Over the wall, between the wedges, up the trellis, over the gap. Everything’s so much simpler on the course. Problem into solution over and over. The body is a clumsy, awkward machine, one you pilot with all the grace of a forklift operator, but at least it mostly does what you want it do.
Better than standing around harboring more vivid fantasies of the kind of thing you could do with a kitchen knife and sufficient bravery.
When Rivka decided to fucking clone herself did she know you’d come out this crazy or was that part an accident? How much of your problem is a side effect of being a glitched from birth clone and how much of it is just Rivka? Should Praxis be putting a warning label on whatever fetal surgery they were testing on you? WARNING: will turn your future child into a basket case!
Fuck her. Fuck Praxis too.
You’re done with all of this.
If Riley has any sense she’ll run away screaming, leaving you free to… you’re not sure yet. You could always try killing yourself again but that didn’t go so well last time. Anyway, you’re too mad right now to want to kill yourself. Staying alive but free from Rivka seems about the right level of spite for you right now.
Maybe you’ll fuck off somewhere. See how far down the East Coast you can get? Or pick your way out west, try your luck in L.A. – that’s supposed to be Rainbow friendly, right? Or what’s the place that replaced Seattle after the ‘Big One’? New Olympia?
At the top of a ladder, your knee quakes, threatening to give out as the foam platform shifts under your foot. Catch yourself on a railing, putting your weight on it. Going too fast, idiot. Slow down. Adjust. Correct. Cross the plank bridge that fucked you before and down the slide to the right, ducking under the gap. Roll, spring up, hustle and over the next edge, using the pole to get safely down.
You hit the finish mat, stumbling onto all fours, panting hard. Wipe the sweat from your face, a fresh wave of nausea returning and with it a tightness in your chest. Dizzy. Vision draining away as you right yourself too quickly. Barely have the time to mentally curse yourself out when the view in front of you abruptly changes. Gravity informs you that you’re on the ground. That bright thing above must be the ceiling light.
Someone is saying something, standing over you. Can feel the concern but no bandwidth to parse the words. Your hands clutch over your stomach as you struggle not to retch. No no no no –
“Hey, are you alright?” I ask, pulling the kid up.
They nod their head, open their mouth to say something and a look of immediate regret passes across their face as they try not to retch again.
From afar I wasn’t sure if they were a girl or a guy, what with the hair and everything else. Up close though, I’m obviously dealing with a boy. I guess it makes sense. We get that type in here now and again. Pushing themselves too hard to look more masculine. He makes a face again, staggering as I struggle to keep him upright.
I try my best to look like the calm, in control adult that knows exactly what to do.
“What’s your name?” I ask.
The kid mumbles back an answer. I ask him to repeat that and he just mumbles more, stammering. I try not to let my frustration show, it’s not his fault that the sum total of my training for this is a single page flow-chart.
“Can you understand me?” I ask, improvising.
He nods. Good sign. I can work with that.
“Can you walk?” This gets a second nod. At least he’s not trying to fight me. “Okay, let’s get you somewhere to sit down.”
I keep a tight grip on him as we walk away from the equipment, not trusting this kid to not suddenly collapse on me. The last thing I want to do today is have to write up an incident report because an overeager teenager couldn’t pace himself and had a medical emergency. It’s going to be my job on the line for not stepping in sooner.
We’re almost to the row of weightlifting benches – the nearest thing to a seat – when this pair of teen girls spot us and start hurrying over. The Asian one calls out the name ‘Morgan’ and the kid in my arms jerks his head up, forcing me to stop and re-secure my hold.
“Holy shit, are you okay?” She calls out, hurrying to the kid’s other side. Looking to me, she asks “What the hell happened? He looks like– uhhhh, crap,” she hurriedly self-corrects in the presence of an adult. Any other situation, I might laugh at that.
“Took it too hard on the parkour course,” I answer. “You know each other?”
The blond white girl that came over with the Asian chick answers first, “We’re friends.”
“Okay, great. Can you two keep an eye on him while I contact Security?”
“Of course,” Blondie answers. “I’ll get Morgan some water, Riley. I’ll be right back.”
The kid – Morgan, I at least have a name now – mumbles something as the blonde runs off. The other girl, Riley, winces, looking up at me. “Do we have to get Security involved?”
“Well, all three of you are obviously skipping school for one thing,” I start.
“We’re homeschooled,” she rushes out.
“Homeschooled,” I repeat.
If that’s a lie, it’s a terrible one. All it would take to bust that lie is an ID check.
“Yup! And our all moms all know each other, so you can like, leave him with us?”
We finally reach the benches and I help Morgan down. The Riley girl sits down next to him, taking his arm in hand as –
the gym guy finally lets go of Morgan. I give his wrist a squeeze in what I really hope is reassurance. The employee stretches his back, hands on the waistband of his pants as he looks down at the two of us. Damnit he’s so not buying this.
“Homeschooled, all three of you?”
“Uh, yeah? You never heard of homeschooling pods?” I twirl my hair around my finger, leaning over a little. Come on man, let it go already.
“Okay, homeschooler,” he still doesn’t sound fully convinced. “That still doesn’t change the fact that your friend here almost fainted.”
I tighten my grip on Morgan’s arm.
Morgan shoots me a look. Time to turn on the charm as I smile up at the gym guy. “Oh, that’s pretty normal for him,” hey it’s not technically a lie, “health stuff, you know? He probably just pushed himself too hard.”
The gym employee frowns, not wanting to let this go. “I have a pretty clear procedure I’m supposed to follow.”
“Relax! We’ll take care of him,” I stress. With an exaggerated sigh and a nervous look at Morgan, I add, “Please? His mom is gonna kill him if he costs them any more doctor bills.”
That at least seems to get through to the guy. His expression changes and he shakes a finger at Morgan. “Fine, but if I see you on the equipment again today, I will call Security, got it?”
“G-g-got it,” Morgan mumbles.
The guy turns to me. “If he doesn’t improve in fifteen minutes, you better take him to Urgent Care, understand?”
I snap off a salute. “Yes, sir!”
Duty discharged, the gym employee walks off. Next to me Morgan mumbles a “Thanks.”
Cass picks this moment to finally get back from buying a water from the vending machine, power walking her way around a group of gym bros. I reach out for the water–
Riley cracks the cap off the bottle and shoves it in your hand. “Just a sip,” she orders. The charm bracelet is hanging around the offering wrist, you notice. A purple eye and a lady bug hang free.
Too frazzled still to be capable of having your own thoughts, you comply. Let the water sit in your mouth a few seconds before swallowing it down. Even if Riley’s not actively holding you anymore, you’re still leaning against her, shoulder to shoulder.
You sign ‘thanks’ to Cassandra, tapping your fingers to your chin and moving them away.
“He says thanks for the water,” Riley translates for you.
Oh shit right, Cass doesn’t know ASL. You’re all scrambled.
“No problem. Um…” Cass sits down on the bench on your other side, body angled towards the two of you. Radiating concern like a neutron star. One arm half raised uselessly for something to help with. “Are you okay?”
You nod your head.
You’ll be fine. Just. Need a minute.
Riley huffs. “No he’s not.” To you, she says, “You look like shit, dude.”
A cold panic has settled into Riley’s chest. The days of silence, seeing you like this now, it’s too close to how things were before you ended up in the hospital.
“S-sorry.” You press a palm against your eye, pain pulsing under your skull. “I– I’m s-s-still taking my-my-my meds,” you get out. Need to cut that worry immediately. You feel bad enough about your phone breaking.
“Okay,” comes the response, not at all reassured.
“How are you– d-d-don’t you have–”
“School?” Riley flashes a grin. “Cass helped me sneak out.”
“I’ve never gotten to break a rule before!” Cassandra chimes in, clapping her hands together.
“Technically you still haven’t.”
“Not the point!”
“Okay, fine. You’re a regular rebel girl now, sure. Congrats.” Riley shares a small smile your way. She turns her full attention back on you, grabbing you by the shoulders to stare you in the eyes, face creasing in disapproval. Confirmation: you do stink.
“How long have you been at this shit? Have you even eaten today, dude?”
***
“Th-thanks,” you manage to get out as you slide onto the café stool. Really didn’t need help just to walk a couple hundred feet but if it makes Riley feel more in control of the situation you can suffer the indignity of it.
She takes the other stool while Cassandra grabs one from another table and drags it over. A pair of chocolate chip cookies wrapped in plastic are pointedly slapped down in front of you with all the weight of an accusation. Cassandra follows it up by pushing a bottle of ginger ale across the table to join the half-empty bottle of water.
Your eyes feel wet, have to rub at them again.
They wouldn’t be doing all this if they knew the full picture.
Fuck.
“You got your brain pills on you?”
Huh? Uh–
Riley’s already rummaging through your backpack – retrieved from a locker on your way out of the gym. “Dude, why do you have all these clothes in here?”
“It’s– it’s not– no.” You lean over, narrowly avoid crashing your head against hers as you pull the thing out of her hands and dig through it yourself. “Here.” Pull out a small orange-tinted plastic container from your med bag.
Right. Migraines. Anxiety. Difficulty focusing.
Yeah actually taking your meds could have helped this morning, huh? Try to get it open but it keeps shaking under your hand. Fucking hell.
Riley takes the bottle from you and pops the cap off. “How many?”
Humiliated, you raise two fingers.
She folds two white capsules into your hand. You manage to get them into your mouth without further embarrassing yourself and swallow it down with a gulp of water.
Cassandra watches the whole time, full attention in a way that makes you feel like a bug. “Are you sick?”
“N-no,” you answer.
“Yes,” Riley says at the same time.
“I’m n-n-not! It’s just– just side effects. And… I s-s-shouldn’t have been. Um. Doing so much exercise on… on an empty stomach, I know,” you say in protest to the look Riley is shooting you. “But-but-but like, eating before noon always makes me feel sick anyway so…”
Really feel like you’re not doing the greatest job selling your case here. It sounds like bullshit.
Riley pushes an unwrapped cookie into your hands. When you hesitate she glares at you. “Eat it.”
“But–”
“Dude, just humor me, okay? I’ve been worried sick and this whole… this–” she gestures at the entirety of you, “isn’t helping.”
Under Riley’s pointed glare you force the thing down, one bite at a time. It tastes like cardboard, crumbling in your hands. Deep breath. You don’t feel sick. You’re not nauseous. You’re not you’re not you’re not.
“Seeing as I went as far as enlisting Cass in my nefarious plan to run to your aid, you wanna tell us what the flying fuck has been going on?”
“Um–” Cassandra raises her hand, shifting her weight on her seat. “I can… go elsewhere if you just wanted to talk to Riley. It’s okay, honest.”
It’s not okay, she’s dying to know too.
Everyone’s waiting for you to say something. Explain things. Riley’s forming theories in her head even as she tries not to get carried away about it. Is trying to project a feeling of control. Cassandra, meanwhile, radiates naked concern mixed with a self-consciousness over trying not to stare.
“S-sorry,” you say again. It’s practically a compulsion at this rate. Hands twist the hem of your shirt. “I– I um. I d-d-don’t know where to start. There’s– there’s a lot.”
Riley raps her fingers against the metal cafe table. “Okay, sure. Then pick one. We got all day, right Cass?”
She bobs her head up and down. “I had the day off already, don’t worry about me.”
Fuck.
Fuck fuck fuck.
Just say it Morgan. Just fucking say it and get it over with. No more lies or avoiding things. If Riley hates you afterward or thinks you’re disgusting, so be it. That just makes certain things easier, in a way.
Just fucking say it. You’re so tired of having to pretend to be something else. Of hiding and crushing yourself down. What did it ever even get you? Everyone in charge apparently already knows!!
They’re both looking at you and they know something is wrong with you and you can’t just not say anything and you want to. You really do. But facing down Jason and his friends alone in a dark bedroom was less terrifying than this.
You didn’t care what Jason thought of you afterwards.
“Y-you um,” have to take another drink. The ginger ale this time. “You r-r-remember uh, Crow? The uh, the–”
Cassandra’s face lights up. “The woman who shoots lightning out of her hands? You’ve seen her videos too? Oh my god, she’s so foulmouthed!”
“Uh. Y-yeah.”
“What about her?” Riley asks.
“Well. Uh. So. Years ago, one of-of-of her first, uh, first. Interviews, right? She had this, um, this little pin on her j-j-jacket. Right? W-w-well people, uh, back then. Thought– thought she was a boy, or uh, a man, I guess, and…”
Blank stares. You’re losing them.
“Well um, it’s a Rainbow thing?” You throw out there, hoping Riley might put it together. Save you from yourself. “It’s um, it’s called uh… b-b-being… transgender?”
“I… may have done some reading on the subject,” she says. Suddenly guarded. Tension in her shoulders. Fuck this isn’t going to go well is it?
“What is that?” Cassandra asks.
“Oh, um…” Riley breaks away from staring at you. Rudely reminded there’s a third person in this conversation. “It’s like… when you feel you’re a different gender than what you were born as?”
Riley looks back to you for confirmation and you nod.
Great. Okay.
She’s putting it together in her head – you can feel it.
You knew it was coming and still, still!
Just say it Morgan.
Just fucking say it.
“Th-that’s– that’s me.” You want to die. You want to sink into the earth. Drown in the ocean. Anything to not be here right now. To not have to live this second between saying it and Riley understanding it.
“Th-th-that’s what I am,” you repeat.
You feel faint again. Sick. Yet also relieved? It’s over. Out of your mouth. They both heard it. You can’t take it back. Little neurons firing, piecing things together like a video game puzzle, and all you can do is sit here and let it happen.
“Oh my god, are we finally talking about this?” Riley says.
Total system crash.
“What,” you croak.
Did– did Riley already know? How many people know about you? What the hell were you even doing, torturing yourself all this time if apparently it was soooo fucking obvious!
Can’t focus, can’t breathe. Someone’s dented the edge of this table somehow how does that even happen? Who does that? Was it an accident? On purpose? Maybe someone else passed out here and any second you’re going to add a second dent and what if they fine you for that? What if you get fined for denting the café table and Rivka gets notified and you have to deal with her again and that’s just what you need right now isn’t it fuck –
I take his wrist, just like Riley suggests. “Am I doing this right?” I feel a little uncertain about doing this. “Are you sure–”
“Dude, I would not be a calming influence for him right now. Just, you know,” she flaps a hand in the air. “Do your yoga shit I guess? I don’t know.”
I look back to Morgan. He is curled in on himself, still breathing too quickly even if he’s stopped making noise since I took his wrist. I scoot closer, trying to find a compromise between granting privacy without making him feel crowded.
“Morgan? It’s okay, you’re safe. Ummmm…” what was that exercise again? Wow his skin feels cold and clammy – oops maybe not the most polite thing to be thinking about, sorry Morgan. What about naming objects? Or… no, I do not know if that is going to help here maybe… oh! “Have you ever been to the beach? My parents used to take me down to Roxbury Cape as a little kid. It’s… not actually safe to swim but, the beach there still looks really pretty.”
I go on, describing the little resort park they used to have there on the big breakwater pier with the cement blocks and all their weird little geometric shapes. How if you looked close enough at the sand you could see all the individual grains of ground glass, or about this hot dog stand where–
You shake off Cassandra’s hand, tucking it in your lap and out of range for anyone else to grab.
“S-s-sorry,” you slump into your seat. Willing the floor to reach up and devour you whole. It cruelly refuses. You’ve never been to the beach, barely ever left the Arcology. The memory conjured in Cassandra’s head, the fading afterimages of the sun reflecting across the water, was almost nice.
“It’s okay,” Cassandra says. An automatic response, still in placating mode. “I think you had a panic attack?”
You had a freak-out is more like it. You don’t get panic attacks. That sounds like something real rather than more of whatever fake bullshit is going on with you.
Riley’s been silent this whole time, watching you. “You feeling better?”
“No,” you admit. Why keep lying at this point, clearly you suck at it. “B-but um, but– I’m not going to-to-to pass out.”
“Was… telling me really that scary?” There’s hurt in her voice. Doubt. You doubted her so there’s something new to feel guilty about later.
Can’t get your thoughts together enough to tell a convincing enough lie. All you can do is nod in the affirmative.
Riley looks away from you, unsure what to make of everything and whether she can press you for answers. Answers you have to give now because there’s no more room to keep pretending otherwise.
“Does anyone else know?” Cassandra asks.
With a wince, you raise your hand. “Um… Brayden does.”
“Brayden knows!?” Riley almost falls out her seat. Scrambles to grab the table for balance. “What? How? When?”
“Halloween.”
That shuts her up. “Oh shit.”
“Yeah.”
“You said that recording was fake.”
“Yeah.” You sip on the ginger ale.
“Fuck, dude.”
“S-sorry. You… y-you knew? Already?”
That gets her to look at you again.
“Dude. I asked you. Twice. Over text and then later to your face, remember?” When you shake your head, she continues, “It was right after all the bullshit with the video from Jason’s house came out?”
“I d-d-don’t– it’s all, um, it’s all mostly a blur,” you admit in a half-truth.
“Okay, well. I asked you. And you said no. Both times. A lie, it turns out. Then you almost killed yourself and tried to fucking ghost me. So, uh, yeah dude. I figured something was up but clearly you didn’t want to talk to me about it.” The hurt building in her voice is plenty self-evident without seeing what her face looks like.
“Sorry.”
“I don’t– fuck man, it’s not a– whatever.” She waves your apology away like a cloud of smoke.
“Um…” Cassandra looks between the two of you. “What are we talking about? What about Halloween?”
“Did Brayden seriously never tell you?” Riley jumps on the question, eager for the change in subject.
Perfectly happy to let Riley take lead in recounting it, you content yourself with nursing the ginger ale in your hands, feeling the slowly warming beverage chill your fingers. Cassandra even gasps when Riley gets to the part about the fight. She’d only heard rumors, she says, enough to stay well away from anything to do with it as an upperclassman. Brayden had barely talked about it with her apparently and she had been content not to pry.
“…Was that kiss real?” Riley asks you after she finishes, sudden curiosity overriding her better judgment. The question gets you Cassandra’s attention too. Which. Unfair. The two of them broke up, why does she care.
“N-n-no,” you answer. Too fast. At Riley’s raised eyebrow, you shake your head feeling overly warm. “Th-th-that part was fake.”
It’s not real if both parties were disgusted afterwards. Bad enough to be called back to how humiliating it was, or everything that happened afterward.
You’d be happy to never have to think about that night again.
“It explains why Brayden never talked about it,” Cassandra says. You’ll gladly accept the pity she’s feeling if it means she never cross references the story with him. “That’s horrible, I’m sorry all of you went through that.”
“Thanks?” Riley responds, not hiding her surprise.
A void enters the conversation – not yet dead, the gravity of the silence compelling you to say something. You don’t want to know. You don’t want to know but you have to ask. You have to ask the question.
“Do you… um– Riley. D-d-do you think I’m crazy?”
She pulls back from you, scrunching her face. “What?”
“B-b-because of–”
“Yeah, I got that.” Riley rubs her face, stalling for time. Not wanting to set you off again. “Dude… I don’t know? Like, Okay. Serious talk? I can’t say I really get it? Women are hot. Yes. Examples A and B right here,” She gestures to herself and then Cassandra whose face turns tinges red at the implication. “But let’s be real, dude. Being a girl sucks.”
“What?” Cassandra gasps. “No it doesn’t!”
“All that fussing around with clothes and makeup and needing to fucking shave all the time–”
“Those are some of the best parts!”
Riley levels Cassandra with a deeply skeptical stare. “Even all the fucking shaving?”
Cassandra bites her lip, gone sheepish. “Okay, I was thinking more the clothes and makeup.”
“What about how some men fucking leer at you all the time? Or the disrespect? The constant fucking sexual threats? What about never knowing if you’re safe alone and–”
“Okay! Okay that does all stink, yes!” Cassandra blows a strand of hair out of her face as props her head up on the table by the elbows. She straightens back up almost immediately. “But that’s a problem with society, isn’t it? It’s not inherently a woman thing. And beside, women get to be so much prettier? The way their clothes sit and their hair and their voices and the way they smell and…”
Riley is laughing now.
Cassandra’s face flushes red. “What?”
“Dude, are you sure you’re straight?”
“I like guys!”
“Yeah? And how many crushes on guys have you ever had?”
“Um,” she bites her lip. “Just Brayden but–”
“You can be Bi you know. It doesn’t have to be one or the other.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“Bi? Bisexual? Into both dudes and ladies?”
“Oh.” Cassandra goes silent at this. Turning the word over in her head.
Riley turns to you and raises an eyebrow, not even trying to hide the triumphant smirk on her face.
Shaking the thought out of her head, Cassandra puts her hands out on the table, palms down. “Anyway! I don’t think you’re crazy, Morgan.”
“W-why?”
“Animals in nature change sex all the time. And–” she glances over to Riley, “–there are homosexual ones too for that matter. If you look at the science you’d see that it’s all perfectly natural. Giraffes are infamously gay, as a matter of fact.”
Riley blinks, taken aback. “What, really?”
Cassandra nods, looking for all the world like she’s been holding on to this fact for years to spring on people. “It’s true! Researchers tried to pretend otherwise for years and years but actually, it’s this huge problem with the conservation effort where they prefer same-sex interactions, but you can’t even get a paper published in the States if you acknowledge it. What! It’s a huge problem!”
“Careful, Cass,” Riley says with a wry look. “This sounds dangerously like Commie talk.”
She sticks her tongue out at that. “Don’t you know? I’m a dangerous criminal now.”
“I don’t think using a legally encrypted texting app or helping a high school delinquent skip class count.”
It might. Associating with you two could be causing who knows what kind of damage to Cassandra’s future career if the Superintendent is tracking things like who’s gay and who’s transgender.
In the following silence, her confidence starts to falter. Masking anxiety, she smiles, a laugh bubbling out. “Um, sorry if that was too much. I know I have a tendency to talk a lot and some people find that really annoying and–”
Riley doesn’t let her finish. “You know all this stuff about gay giraffes but you don’t know what Bisexual means?”
“I–” Cassandra blinks. Her face turns red and she puffs out her checks in indignation. “Hush, you!”
You frown down at the table, not sure how to respond to any of that. Sure, a clownfish can change its gender but last you checked – while you have felt like a clown a lot lately – pretty sure you’re not one of those.
More importantly, clownfish don’t have to answer to the government.
You poke at the cookie in front of you while they talk, break off a smaller crumb and roll it around between your fingers as it disintegrates further.
Riley is watching you again, worry filtering back in. Trying to figure out how this particular piece fits into the larger picture of what’s put you into your current state.
“I don’t think you’re crazy or whatever, dude.” Riley finally says. “I just… it sucks you didn’t think you could talk to me about it.”
“Th-th-there’s more.”
Better to get it all out now.
Before you lose your nerve completely.
Riley balks. “There’s more?”
“Uh… remember how. The-the-the other day we were um, talking about Ectogenes? And who my, um, d-d-donor parents were?”
With a building dread, Riley replies “Yeah…?”
“It’s– it’s Rivka.”
“Rivka.”
“Wait, your mom is your actual mom?” Cassandra frowns, struggling to square the circle. “But why would she…”
“I’m her clone.”
No one says anything right away.
“Seriously?” Cassandra asks.
“Is that legal?” Riley asks.
“No…” Cassandra bites her lip. Torn between saying something more.
“Wait, wait wait– hold up. Hold the fuck up. If you’re a clone of your mom then that means…?”
“Rivka’s um, sh-sh-she’s trans too.”
“You’re fucking with us,” Riley says.
“Also. She’s um– Brayden was right. She is– was– a T-T-terrorist.”
On one side of the table, Cassandra is covering her mouth with her hands. On the other side, Riley slowly puts her head down on the table and covers it with her arms.
“I need to get high as balls right now,” she says into the table.
You have to admit to yourself, there’s a kind of perverse satisfaction in seeing the others struggle with this same set of information. “Y-y-you see why it t-t-took me so long to um, to um get b-b-back to you.”
“Uh. Yeah. Holy fuck, are you kidding me.” Riley bangs her fist into the table and pops her head up. “What is going on. Holy flying fuck. What the hell happened on Monday?”
“W-well, um–”
At the same time, Cassandra’s phone buzzes and she glances down at it. Picks it up, poised to type. “Is it okay if Brayden joins us?” She shoots you a glance from across the table. “He’s been worried about you too.”
Brayden? Worried about you? Yeah, right.
On second thought.
Maybe he would be. Ugh, that feels weird to acknowledge.
Riley waggles her free hand. “Girl, I don’t know if–”
“It’s– it’s okay,” you interrupt. “There’s… there’s the-the-the whole, uh, the thing. With. The FBI and stuff. And uh – ugh, y-you know. Words. Talk. Discuss.”
The last thing you want to do is talk about any of this. To acknowledge it. Look at it. Think about it. But that’s what Rivka would do, isn’t it? Keep everything secret? And fuck that. Fuck doing anything like she would.
There. You’re angry again.
Much better than wanting to puke your guts out.
Cassandra shoots you a quick smile and resumes typing.
At the same time, Riley is frowning but she doesn’t say anything. Concerned, and fuck you hate making her worry again. Especially like that. You need to get it together Morgan. Stop falling apart damnit. Surely if you just self-castigate enough you can whip yourself back into stability.
”If– if this is gonna be a-a-a um, a thing. Can we… go somewhere else?” you ask the two of them.
Somewhere less public, maybe?
“Sure, let’s go get something real to eat. I’m fucking starving, dude,” Riley declares, leaping on the opening.
“Um.”
Less public? Please?
“Oh! Great idea, I’ll let Brayden know.” Cassandra adds, settling the matter before you can object.
Damnit.
***
The three of you leave together. Riley and Cassandra don’t say anything more about the whole ‘want to be a girl’ thing, even though you can feel it circling their minds. Joining it, there’s a constant refrain on loop in the back of your head wishing you could carve your skin off. You try your best to tune all of it out. A combination of letting the music play from your headphones at minimum volume while they hang around your neck and allowing the wash of static from the Mall to drown everything into unintelligible mush.
Riley and Cassandra start tossing around different fast food places before settling on somewhere with the winning name of ‘SteakShack’. Cassandra updates Brayden via text, pays for the elevator and the three of you pile in. As you rise up floor by floor, you keep one hand firmly on the wall. Still not feeling entirely steady on your feet.
You wince against the renewed intensity of the static buzzsaw in your brain as the elevator doors open but neither of them seem to notice, thankfully. Riley only glances back in your direction once you start to fall behind.
“You feeling any better?” she signs to you.
“Yeah–” You stop yourself from whatever reflex assurance you were about to make and shake your head. This wasn’t supposed to go this way. They weren’t supposed to… to… roll with it. To hear you say you want to be this other thing you aren’t and not only not laugh at you but try to actually make sense of it?
You’ve been psyching yourself up for this all day – no, all week, really, and the reality has been, well it’s been sort of anticlimactic.
A hand reaches out and taps your shoulder. You look up at Riley. She lets go.
“This is real, right? You want to be a–” she hesitates mid sign.
You make the mistake of trying to answer honestly. “I just want to be me.”
Riley frowns for a second, not sure what to make of that. She expected a yes or no answer but it’s not that simple. You wish it was, but that world doesn’t exist. What could you even change? What would you be able to get away with changing?
“If you could hit a button right now and, I don’t know, magically transform yourself into a chick though, you’d do it?”
You nod.
Easy choice.
“Even if it only worked once? Like, you couldn’t change back?”
Briefly you consider just coming out and saying it. That you’d rather be dead than a boy. Better a corpse than a man. But… you don’t want to scare her. Not any worse than she already is. Instead you just sign back, “Even then.”
“Okay.” She’s nodding to herself. Lets out the breath she’s been holding.
“Okay,” she says again, this time out loud.
She gestures for you to wait there and then runs to catch up with Cassandra, busy looking out over the balcony railing and trying to figure out how to get to the restaurant from here. The two of them talk, exchange smiles, nods. Then Riley’s racing back at you. Hooks her arm around yours at the elbow.
“Cass and B-man are gonna catch up with us in a bit.”
“O…kay?”
“Meanwhile, you and I…” She pauses for dramatic effect, as if you don’t know exactly what she’s going to say next. “We’re gonna retail therapize this bitch.”