Monster (Gone 7)

“The antipode of Chicago is not China, it’s the Indian Ocean, about twenty-five hundred miles south of Sri Lanka.” Malik, naturally, to which Shade responded with a little flourish of ta-da hands, inviting Cruz to witness Malik’s obnoxiousness.

Cruz ignored Shade and contemplated Malik, who, sadly, was now wearing a shirt. She’d been describing herself as “gender fluid,” and she was most comfortable with female pronouns, but she had resisted defining herself as the clichéd girl-trapped-in-a-boy’s-body. How much of that was her own reluctance to commit, to define herself, and maybe to suffer the consequences?

Was Malik right? Or was Shade?

Or was this Cruz looking for another multiple choice in a binary world?

“Cruz?” Shade asked, sounding concerned, but Cruz did not answer. Cruz sat looking at the baggie, looking at the dust that might give her power after a life of powerlessness.

What if it makes me a monster?

It won’t, she told herself. There was no monster inside her just itching to get out. She would never hurt anyone.

“Got any peanut butter?” Cruz asked abruptly. “That’s how Shade took it.”

“You two are cra

zy,” Malik said. Then, with a sigh, “Is chunky okay? My little sister likes chunky, so we get chunky.”

After a while Shade and Cruz left, Shade having a gynecologist’s appointment, and Cruz now having decided to actually finish the paper she had so studiously avoided writing. She walked to the city library and studied there, eyes swimming with boredom, mind not even slightly engaged with the books before her.

Is it working?

Finally, reluctantly, she headed home, performing the ritual of defeminization as she went, torn between relief and resentment that the rock had apparently done nothing to her.

It had long bothered her, this need to disguise herself, to try to minimize the triggers that would set her father off. But now it was more than annoying, it was infuriating. Shade accepted her. Malik accepted her. Much of the world, not all, but much of it accepted her. Why couldn’t her parents accept her? She was still the person she’d always been, the exact same child they loved.

Why did it matter so much? Why did people get angry at her for the crime of dressing and acting and talking the way she wished? And like a taunt of her own devising, a voice in her head repeated, like a refrain:

Shade would never be afraid.

She was halfway up the stairwell to her apartment—the stairwell reeking of pumpkin spice since the seasonal latte was back at Starbucks—when she realized she’d been stomping rather than creeping up the stairs. Cruz slowed her pace, tried to slow her breathing, pushed down on the anger that wanted so badly to explode.

She opened the door. Normal sounds—the TV, the dishwasher. She crept in, practically tiptoeing now, feeling the flicker of a simple hope that she could reach her bedroom without hassle.

But there was her father, coming straight toward her, heading for the bathroom. He did not speak, just looked at her. Cruz stepped aside.

She was hungry and wondered if this was a good opportunity to grab a snack to take to her room. The kitchen was empty, and she was just about to snag a box of Wheat Thins when her mother came in.

Her mother, too, did not look at her. In fact, it was as if Maria Rojas hadn’t noticed her six-foot-two child at all. Cruz shrugged. If that’s the game they wanted to play, fine. She opened the refrigerator door, looking for cream cheese, and her mother yelped.

“Aaahh!”

Maria was staring at the refrigerator, frowning, her face suspicious and wary. Maria pushed the refrigerator door shut and turned away, muttering in Spanish.

Cruz opened the refrigerator door again and this time Maria screamed. Manny Rojas came at a run, three feet of toilet paper stuck to his shoe.

“What?” he demanded.

“The door,” Maria said in a gulping panic. “It open all by itself.”

“What the hell are you talking about, woman?”

Something electric was climbing up Cruz’s spine.

No, impossible!

She had left the box of Wheat Thins on the counter. She lifted it, making a rustling noise that instantly drew her parents’ attention.