From the Fan Fiction Unbound Archive,
posted by conTessaofthecastle:
Daphne breathed in the scent of roses and ash so familiar to her. She didn’t want to move, for fear it would disappear again. “I don’t understand,” Daphne murmured. Astoria was real, was here, wasn’t gone forever. “I never found the spell-caster. How did I make it happen?”
Soph.
After the peer review, I’m not sure what to do with myself, so I go back to our room. I want to try to talk to Tess again, to convince her to come out here, even if it’s only for a day. She’s in our room. But she isn’t alone. It’s dark, and I step in and turn on the lamp next to my bed, figuring Tess doesn’t want to talk to me and I should get my book and go. To my surprise, Chris is sitting there. They look up at me.
“Hey,” says Chris. She sounds nervous.
“Soph, Chris and I were talking.” Tess continues to surprise me. Here she is, reserved and refusing to put herself out there all day after opening up to me last night. Then she goes and still tries to figure out someone like Chris.
“Do you want me to leave?” Chris and I both say it at the same time and, since neither of us knows how to answer, we turn to Tess.
“This is Soph’s room, too,” Tess says, glancing at me, and I remember last night. “Do you mind if she stays?” she asks. Chris shrugs. Tess walks over to her bed. “We talked the other night over here,” she says, pointing to my bed. “Let’s move. We don’t have any more chairs.” She sits down and pushes herself sideways across the bed until she’s up against the wall. I sit next to her and Chris sits on her other side, exactly as we were during the power outage, only on Tess’s bed.
“No Hennessy today,” teases Tess. That breaks the ice. I roll my eyes and snort.
Chris giggles and says, “Never again.”
I smile, and we relax.
Tess breaks the silence. “Chris was telling me about what happened with Orly. I told her I wanted to know. The same way she wanted to know about her old boyfriend.” Tess turns in my direction and adds, “I don’t think Soph is going to be critical. And we can agree to keep it to ourselves if you want. Soph can keep a secret.”
Hearing that makes me want to scream with equal measures of joy and frustration. Tess trusts me, so maybe last night was not a one-time thing. But she’s also telling me to keep my mouth shut about it, which kills me. I can do that. At least, I can do that until the two of us are alone.
I say, “Yeah, Chris. I would like to know. I promise not to get pissed.” I want to push my thigh close to Tess, to be able to feel her next to me, but I’m not sure how she will react. Instead I push away from her a few inches. She notices.
Chris’s face softens as she talks. “I wanted to come to a writing workshop to do some work I could use for colleges and to try to publish an article. I didn’t know all this was going to happen.” She puts her head down, shaking it.
Tess lets the silence hang, then asks quietly, “What happened with Orly?”
Chris fiddles with the bottom button on her sweater. “They sent me her name. His name. I don’t know how to say it. Nothing other than his name.”
I’m about to correct her again when I feel Tess’s hand, like a warning, on my arm. I hold my tongue.
“No one said anything about trans girls. Or what that means. Or gave me any warning at all. Then Orly shows up the first night, and there’s all this weirdness about changing clothes, and I figure out that she isn’t really a girl. Or that she’s a girl with boy parts. Like I said, I don’t know how to say it.” She stares at Soph. “Maybe this happens all the time in New York. I don’t know. I never met a trans person.”
I’m probably not supposed to break in, but I can’t help myself. “Chris, what does it matter that you never met a trans girl? I’ve never met anyone from Dallas. So what?”
She’s getting frustrated.
“I didn’t think I was going to be put in a room with a guy without being told.”
“Orly’s not a guy, and why are you worried about boys? They’re just boys.”
“The point is, I didn’t know! What I did know is that I got a roommate who’s a stranger to me and has a—” She stumbles over the word, then says, “A thing. That’s a lot different from being put in a room with a girl you don’t know from Atlanta. If my parents knew about that, they’d never have let me come. And then when I figured out some more stuff about it, it was too late to go talk to Professor Forsythe, because everyone got mad at me—even Yin—all because of a dumb joke that Orly didn’t even care about.”
I’m not sure what she is trying to say, so I ask, “What did you figure out?””
Chris stares at the ceiling. I can’t see her that well on the other side of Tess, but I can tell she’s thinking about what words to use.
She sighs and says, “I researched trans kids.”
Well, that is news.
Tess asks quietly, “What did you find out?”
Chris explains that she first found all the statistics about trans kids and how they have lots of safety concerns. “Then I went and tracked down the rules for various school districts about overnight trips and it turns out lots of them say you can’t tell someone like me about their roommate being trans. It’s like not allowing someone to opt out of having a Black roommate or a Muslim roommate. It would be considered prejudice.” She sighs and shakes her head. “Then Grace gave me a lecture yesterday. She told me I was wrong, and that the professors found out about the carrot thing. Now I’m all confused about everything. I just want to go home.”
“Chris, you say you’re interested in journalism. I know you’re good at it because of the investigation you did for our Maizy Donovan piece.”
Huh? The last I heard, Chris wasn’t involved. But Tess keeps talking without explaining.
“What if you talk to Orly? She might have told the instructors or she might have had a reason not to.” Chris doesn’t say anything, so Tess continues. “Wouldn’t you rather try to get to know her instead of leaving tomorrow knowing you didn’t ask?”
Tess picks up her phone as if she’s going to text Orly and invite her over, but I tell her I’ll go myself. I’d rather let Orly know what’s going on ahead of time.
Orly answers her door holding a book in one hand. She has on that oversized sweater she was wearing the first day. She is not interested in coming to see Chris.
“Why would I?” she asks. I don’t have a good answer, except that Tess asked me to ask her. I tell her that and she cocks her head as if I said something important. She puts down her book and follows me back to our room.
The lights are all on in our room now, and the sky is darker outside. Tess is showing Chris something on her phone and asking her questions. You would think they were friends, like they’d been friends all week.
Tess greets Orly with a smile and pushes over on the bed to make room for her. Chris doesn’t say anything.
Orly doesn’t sit on the bed. “Well, I’m here.”
No one says anything. I guess we are each expecting someone else to go first. Tess wades in. “Orly, Chris says that she was surprised when she met you. Surprised and a little frightened. Right, Chris?” Chris nods slightly. “But we thought maybe if we all talked, we could clear this up. We’re going home tomorrow. It would be nice if we could work this out first.”
Orly is silent. Then she sighs and says, “I just wanted to get along.”
Chris sits up. “I don’t want to know your private life. But I do want to know who I’m rooming with.” She juts out her chin. “You acted like it was a joke anyway, Orly. Besides, I already apologized. Why can’t you just drop it?”
Orly shakes her head and says very quietly, “You need to be honest. You didn’t feel unsafe, and you didn’t mean it as a joke. Believe me, just because I wasn’t intimidated doesn’t mean I thought it was a joke. I reckon you know that.”
I’m about to back her up when I feel Tess’s hand on my arm. I hold my tongue.
“You did it to try and make every other girl uncomfortable with me.” Orly continues. “And you only apologized to me after Grace made you.”
Chris protests. “Look, I wanted a story. I admit that. But I apologized, and it’s still not good enough.”
“Of course it’s not good enough!” Orly raises her voice. “You just don’t want to be in trouble anymore.”
“No, no. I did some research and I understand much more about trans kids—”
Orly cuts her off. “Let me tell you something, Chris, you don’t get to tell anyone else how to walk into a room. I get to decide whether to tell people about myself and I get to decide when I want to do that, whether it’s where I’m from, what kind of girl I am, or anything else. If you want to call yourself a feminist, you need to let me make those choices myself.”
Chris ducks her head. “I think we’re just really different people. I don’t know how you change that.”
Orly says, “You change that by educating yourself. We’re not that different. We’re both Southern girls who want to be writers.”
Chris furrows her forehead. Orly looks at the ceiling, composing herself. She catches my eye, then continues. “I’m not a threat to you, Chris, and you thinking I am is your problem, not mine.”
I think Chris is about to leave, with everyone still upset, when Tess pulls printed pages out of her knapsack. She shows them to Orly and asks if she can read them. Orly shrugs and glances at Chris. I’m not sure what Tess is doing until she reads part of Orly’s memoir out loud.
It’s cold on Christmas morning, the year I turn ten. I can see my breath when I open the front door to let Hallie the dachshund out for her walk. My feet are cold when I step barefoot onto the concrete stoop to call her back in. The morning is waking up, winter sun struggling to climb in the sky. Inside, Mama fusses with coffee and homemade coffeecake even though no one wants to eat anything when the tree is surrounded by packages. Then there will be church, followed by turkey and ham for Christmas dinner at Meemaw’s. Uncle Howard will play Christmas carols at the old piano, and Aunt Gwen will tell me to stand up straight and stop fidgeting. It’s the same every year, and that’s what I like best about it.
Tess stops reading. “It sounds like Christmas in my house,” she says, “except there’s no way I could go out barefoot, obviously. And we have a collie named Felix, not a dachshund.”
“We have a poodle,” says Chris quietly. She looks quickly at Orly. “Named Bella.”
“I don’t have a dog,” I say, “but my Aunt Valentina is always telling me to stand up straight on holidays. What is that about?”
We sit around talking and showing each other pictures on our phones until it gets darker outside and a little less awkward in our room.
Tess.
The conference schedule said there would be a formal farewell banquet on Saturday night. I brought one of my church dresses to wear, because I don’t have anything else. I knew it would be wrong when I packed it, but it feels even more wrong now.
Chris and Orly have gone back to their rooms to change. I don’t know if I handled that right, but I still feel bad that I didn’t speak up for Orly when Chris first talked to me. I’ve pretty much given up on finding some way to be a leader here. Maybe I should just cancel the interview next week. There doesn’t seem to be much point.
Soph, in one of her lacy black bras and matching black underwear, is pulling clothes out of her duffel bag and flinging them all over the bed. I see a black leather miniskirt, a sheer black blouse, and a gold tank top. Little high-heeled, open-toed suede booties land on the floor. Things are still tense between us since breakfast, and even though she isn’t giving me the silent treatment, she’s kept her distance during the day’s activities. Even now, after what we did with Chris and Orly, she’s pretty quiet.
I messed this whole thing up and I have no idea how to fix it. I also have no idea how to stop staring at Soph in her underwear, until she looks up at me and that does the trick. I instantly look away. I stare at my light pink shift dress, plain navy flats, and navy cardigan sweater. I don’t know who I am or who I want to be anymore. Soph looks at the pile of clothes on her bed and then back at me. I’m still wearing the black sweater she loaned me this morning.
“Do you want to borrow something?” she asks with a little smile, like a peace offering. She gives me a couple of outfits to try on, but the skirts are too tiny, and they’re all wrong with my shoes anyway. Finally, I put on my own dress, and Soph wraps a thick leather belt with a double-row of metal grommets around my waist. Then she snaps a leather cuff with more metal on it around my wrist. She has fishnet tights in her bag, which I put on, and by the time she’s finished changing my outfit, I don’t look at all as though I’m going to Our Lady of Mercy.
“I love dressing up,” she says as she adjusts my dress for a little too long. “I wish you could come to one of my school dances.”
Soph texts Orly to come and do my makeup. Orly gives me smoky eyes. Then she pulls my hair off my face with a huge silver metal clip and puts this dark fuchsia lipstick on me, which is more than amazing. Orly also gives me some dangly silver earrings and makes me take off my Pandora bracelet. I’ve never worn this much metal or this much makeup, but it feels more like me than I think I probably have ever felt. It’s funny how wearing Soph’s things makes me feel that way.
By the time Soph is dressed in her own black and gold outfit and Orly has given her the reddest lips I’ve ever seen outside of a movie, we’re all laughing and the tension has dissipated. Orly is wearing a flouncy skirt and a simple black top with an infinity scarf and more dangly earrings. Soph makes us take pictures all squeezed together. I even take some on my phone and send one to Joey.
The three of us go down to dinner, and Soph surprises me. She sits right next to me, and though she doesn’t look at me while she’s talking to Orly and Clover, under the tablecloth she holds my hand for the entire meal.
After dinner, Professor Forsythe stands and announces that she has selected one of the group projects for a reading. “I think you’ll enjoy it as much as I did, for its entertainment value, its cleverness, and the spirited message it delivers.”
Soph’s group reads its project. She didn’t tell me. Each girl tells parts of the story, in song, verse, free verse, and as a blog. Freya has a husband and a wife; the husband’s feelings are hurt, and Freya uses magical implements to find him. She wants him back and is about to use a magic necklace when they discover that they all like each other and it works out. Each of the girls in the group hams up her own part, and we’re all laughing when Soph steps forward to give the conclusion in one of her complicated sonnets.
Thus did Freya find Od to bring him in.
And just as the two of them did marry,
Freya found Stola and love nonpareil,
Love without need for the Brísingamen.
Od, devastated, did flee the women,
Believe his love a corpse to bury.
Only then did Freya react and query.
She loved both lady and gentleman.
Freya believed only charms could mend,
Her bond with Od her new love caused to rend,
Found Od, and prepared a magic amend.
But Stola and Od, quick to each other befriend
Added their own love, the marriage to extend.
The moral is three as well as two can blend.
When they finish, Soph smiles at me, and I smile back, clapping as hard as I can.
* * *
Later that night, back in our room, Soph closes the door and leaves the lights off. I reach for her tentatively. She pulls me into a hug. She kisses me, and I kiss her back. Everything outside this room is complicated, but here I can breathe. I never want to leave this room ever again.
As we’re getting undressed, I hand Soph her belt and I sit on the bed to strip off the fishnet tights. I leave the leather wrist cuff on. I’m thinking about leaving tomorrow, and I ask Soph, “What should I tell Joey about us?”
She turns toward me, startled, then sits down on her bed across from me. She has already taken off her skirt and her tights and is now pulling off the shimmery blouse she had on at dinner. I can barely see her.
“I don’t know, Tess. What do you want to tell him?”
“Can we…” I want to talk to her more about this, but mostly I want to touch her skin while we talk, and I don’t know how to ask her for that. I can feel my face heating up.
Soph must sense it because she says, “Let’s get under the covers and talk.” I’m relieved that she didn’t make me ask out loud.
After we’ve undressed and washed off the lipstick and the eyeshadow, we climb together into my bed. With the door locked and the lights out, I curl into Soph and close my eyes. She’s warm and comforting. The darkness makes it easier to say what I’m thinking.
“I never lie to Joey. I don’t want to lie to him about meeting you. Or about how much you mean to me.”
“Okay.” I can hear the question in Soph’s tone. She doesn’t ask it though.
“I don’t…” I feel selfish, but I also need to tell Soph. She deserves to know, even if it makes her mad.
“I don’t know how I’m supposed to have a boyfriend, you know, a boyfriend in the sense that we have, when there’s you… and I don’t know how not to either.”
“Okay,” she says again, but now I can’t read her tone. I guess there’s nothing I can do to keep her from getting mad again. I need to be clear about this. I say it all in a rush.
“I need to keep being there for him until we graduate. Even though I want… I want to see you again. I—can’t break up with him. Not now.” My voice cracks a little when I say it.
I’m sure she’s going to climb out of bed now and leave me alone. Then she’ll lecture me about how I need to come out to everyone in Castleton and I’m not being fair to her. I brace myself for it. In fact, I push back from her side a little, to give her the room to leave, though I’m sure I will shatter into a million little pieces when she does.
But instead she pulls me back toward her and puts her hand in my hair, stroking it gently. She says, “You never want to see anyone left out, do you, Tess?”
That surprises me. I’ve never thought about it like that. She keeps talking, her voice low, her hand still on my hair. “All week, you kept trying to convince Chris to work with you, to make sure Orly wasn’t left out without making the other girls mad. Then you were the one who said we had to go find Chris when she was missing. No one else wanted to do that.”
“You went with me,” I say, a little embarrassed now. I feel her shrug next to me.
“I went for the Hennessy.” That makes me laugh.
“I think things work better when everyone is part of the group. I don’t always feel as though I fit in and I guess it means something to me to try to make sure other people do too. Just like I can’t leave Joey on his own, not now. He doesn’t have any other friends he can talk to about stuff. Not in Castleton.”
Soph makes a humming noise, as though she’s thinking about something, and then simply says, “All right.”
Once I’ve figured out she isn’t leaving and settle back against her, she tells me that I can be like Freya, the Norse goddess of love and war, who has both a man and a woman in her life, and they all care about each other in different ways. That turns into more kissing.
* * *
From Soph Alcazar’s Writing Journal,
February 16, 2018
I want her to come out, culpa mea,
But I can be Stola to her Freya.