REGAN SAT AT THE kitchen table, poking listlessly at her oatmeal, pushing raisins beneath the surface. Her schoolbag waited next to her chair, ready to be slung over her shoulder as she ran for the bus.
Her mother stood by the sink, rinsing the pot she’d used to make the oatmeal. “Your riding lesson today is with Caroline,” she said. “You like her, don’t you? You said she has a good sense of what you’re capable of, even if it’s not what you’re doing right now.”
Regan nodded, head bobbing up and down like a puppet’s, and she shoved another bite of oatmeal into her mouth.
“Sweetheart, I need you to talk to me. I know we dropped a lot on you last night, but I need to know you understand it, and aren’t going to be eating yourself alive all day.”
“Huh?” Regan looked up from her oatmeal, spoon dangling loosely from her fingers. “Oh, yeah, Mom. I’m fine. I understand what you told me.”
“I’m so glad,” said Maureen, too relieved to question further. It had taken her a long time to understand what the doctors were trying to say; she was a smart woman, but this was her daughter they’d been talking about, and sometimes that had made it difficult for her to see things clearly. “You don’t have to go to school if you don’t want to.”
“We’re having a history test today. I don’t want to have to make it up next week.” Regan slid out of her seat. “The bus will be here in a few minutes. I love you.”
“I love you, too,” said Maureen, and watched Regan collect her bag and lunch and walk out of the kitchen. There was an odd finality in the moment, one that would come back to haunt her over the next six years, long after the search parties had given up combing the woods and the flyers had faded to illegibility in the store windows where they hung, endlessly hopeful, endlessly futile.
The screen door banged behind Regan as she left, cutting across the lawn to the bus stop. She was one of three students who were picked up this close to the edge of town, and the other two, the Ellery boys, were already there. As always, they ignored her, and she studiously returned the favor, staring blankly into the distance. Medical terms and confused, half-formed ideas chased each other around her head like untrained puppies, running into things and going sprawling, making it impossible to focus. It was almost a relief when the bus pulled up in a gout of exhaust and a rush of hot engine air, the door creaking open to admit the trio.
The boys sat up at the front with their friends, fellow princes of the playground. Regan slouched toward the middle of the bus, where a few members of Laurel’s outer circle were already seated, passing scented markers back and forth, whispering, and playing with each other’s hair.
At the very back of the bus, Heather sat alone. For a moment, Regan was seized with the almost irresistible urge to sit down beside her like the past few years hadn’t happened, like they were still best friends, the kind of friends who could tell each other anything. Heather would understand what she was going through. Heather would pull a spare apple out of her lunch bag and start talking about how every flower was different and beautiful and wasn’t that wonderful?
But she had treated Heather shamefully; she had chosen Laurel. So she sat with the other girls, who budged over to make room for her, even if they didn’t welcome her, and folded her hands in her lap, staring straight ahead as the bus pulled away from the curb.
They stopped several times more to pick up more kids. On the third stop, Laurel got onto the bus, mincing down the center isle with quick, sure steps to plop down next to Regan, so close she was almost sitting on the other girl’s knee. “Scoot over,” she commanded, and Regan, long since trained to obedience, scooted.
“What’s wrong with you?” asked Laurel, giving Regan a narrow-eyed look.
“Nothing,” said Regan.
“Then why are you making that face?”
“It’s just my face!” protested Regan. “I didn’t sleep much last night. I had a big talk with my parents.”
Laurel’s nose wrinkled in sudden understanding, or something that must have felt like understanding from the inside. “Did they decide it was time to teach you about S-E-X?” she asked.
“Why would they do that?” asked one of the other girls. “It’s not like Reggie is ever going to have a boyfriend.” Several of the others burst into wild giggles, like the cackling of a flock of crows. Regan curled further into herself, drawing her knees toward her chest.
Laurel, who could be cruel and could be petty and was frequently not a very good friend, held up a hand to signal for silence. The giggling stopped. With what sounded like genuine concern, she asked, “Regan? Can I help?”
And that was when Regan made the decision that would change her life forever, for both good and ill. She sniffled, and looked at the girl she’d called her best friend since kindergarten, and nodded.
“I think maybe you can,” she said.
They finished the bus ride in silence, and walked together to the classroom. Fourth grade was taught by a single teacher in a single room, with the exception of PE and band, which happened in their own spaces. Some of the older kids said that when they reached sixth grade and transferred to the middle school across town, they’d change rooms throughout the day, with a different teacher for every subject. Regan thought that sounded very inefficient, and probably unpleasant, since there was no guarantee every teacher would like you, not when you had six different ones every single day.
But for now, it was one teacher in one classroom, and her desk was next to Laurel’s, where it had always been, and she was happy. She would have been happy if she could have stopped the world right where it was, so no one grew up, and there was nothing strange about her staying exactly the way she was.
Laurel, who could be like a dog with a bone when she thought people were keeping something from her, spent the first three hours of the day slanting sidelong glances at Regan and occasionally reaching over to tug her hair or swipe pencils from her desk in a bid for attention. Regan swatted her hands away and shushed her, eyes on the front of the room. She didn’t want to get in trouble. Not when she was already tired, and her head felt like it was full of bees, and everything was wrong compared to the day before. The day before, she’d known who she was and what her world was going to be; she’d been so sure life had no surprises in store for her.
When the bell rang for lunch she jumped in her seat, so startled she nearly fell over. Only Laurel’s hand grasping her sleeve and pulling her back kept her upright. Regan glanced at Laurel, thanks on her lips, and swallowed them when she saw the bright intensity in the other girl’s eyes. Laurel had been scenting a secret all morning and now, like a hunting dog kept on the leash too long, she was ready to start biting at anything between her and her quarry.
“Come on,” she said. “You promised.”
And that was how Regan found herself at a table in the back of the library with Laurel, her lunch unpacked in front of her, the librarian somewhere up at the checkout desk, where she could keep an eye on the less obedient students, telling Laurel everything.
Maybe she wouldn’t have done that if her mother had insisted she take a day off from school to think about what she’d learned and what it would mean for her future. Maybe she would have realized staying quiet wasn’t the same thing as lying, and that while her body wasn’t any sort of shameful secret, she was under no obligation to share it with anyone, especially not with a girl who had proven, over and over again, that she couldn’t be trusted with anything that didn’t fit her narrow view of the world. Maybe she would have realized that if there was no right way to be a girl, there was no wrong way either.
But Regan was accustomed to trusting Laurel, treating her like a vicious dog that wouldn’t bite the one who held its leash, even as it barked and snarled at everyone else. Maybe that was why she missed the slow widening of Laurel’s eyes, the slow paling of her cheeks, right until the moment Laurel pushed her chair away from the table and demanded, in a horrified tone, “You’re a boy?!”
“No,” Regan protested. “No, I’m not a boy, I’ve never been a boy, I’m a girl just like you, just one whose body’s built a little differently—being intersex is perfectly normal, it’s as common as being redheaded, and we have six redheads just in the third grade. I’m not a boy!”
“You are, though,” Laurel insisted, taking a big step backward. “You line up with the girls during PE, and you come to slumber parties with girls—you’ve seen me in my pajamas!” Her lip curled in clear disgust. “You’re a gross, awful, lying boy!”
Regan leapt from her seat, shouting, “I am not! I’m a girl! My parents said so!” As soon as the words were out, she had to wonder if they’d been the right thing to say, or whether Laurel would care what her parents said about her.
Laurel did not. She took another huge step backward. “Don’t you come near me! If you do, I’ll scream!”
But they were already making more than enough noise. The librarian burst into the room, demanding, “What is all this ruckus about?” as she glared at the pale-faced Laurel and the shaking Regan. Laurel pointed at Regan, beginning to babble about liars and deceitful boys who wanted to get close to girls for wicked reasons. Regan ran.
She brushed past the librarian, who stared in bewildered shock as she made for the door. She ran out of the library, not bothering to wipe away the tears that now streamed freely down her cheeks. The scope of her mistake in trusting Laurel was just beginning to sink in, trickling down through layers of confusion and hurt.
She believed her parents when they said there was nothing wrong with her, because they were her parents and they had never lied to her. If they thought she was perfectly fine the way she was, they must be right, and since she’d been herself since she was born and it hadn’t hurt her yet, there was no reason to think they’d start lying now. She’d just been confused and overwhelmed—was still confused and overwhelmed, if she was being honest with herself. This was a lot to try and wrap her head around at once, and reaching out to her best friend had seemed reasonable and logical. And it had been wrong, so wrong, so very, very wrong. Laurel looked out for Laurel before anything else, and Laurel’s ideas about the world were black and white and starkly drawn, leaving no room for anything that didn’t fit into her little boxes.
For Laurel, there was one right way to be a girl, and it was Laurel’s way, always. Laurel believed in destiny. Laurel believed you had to be what people told you to be. And she’d almost convinced Regan to think the same way, that following Laurel’s rules would be enough to keep her safe and ordinary. But that had never been the truth. Destiny had never been an option.
So Regan ran, and Regan kept running, barely slowing down when she hit the parking lot. She knew she’d get in trouble for leaving school grounds before the final bell, but she didn’t care. Laurel was probably already rushing to the cafeteria to tell all the other girls what Regan had told her. Thinking Laurel would be capable of keeping anything in confidence had been the biggest mistake of all.
Regan ran across the street, into a small residential neighborhood. She’d been there before, trick-or-treating with Laurel and some of the other girls; she knew where she was going. At the end of the block there was a gap between fences through which a skinny girl who had yet to start the pressures of puberty could just fit, shoving herself through into an empty field filled with mustard grass and scrubby thorn bushes. She paused, chest heaving as she fought to catch her breath, then started to run again, loping across the field with the long, ground-eating strides of a child who’d been running for pleasure almost as long as she’d been able to walk.
At the end of the field was a slope, grass giving way to smooth, bare earth, hardpacked and streaked with reddish clay, shadowed by the branches of the nearby oaks. It angled toward the banks of a narrow creek, clear water dancing with catfish and crawfish. Regan slid down the slope on the sides of her feet, stopping at the water’s edge, ragged breaths giving way to angry sobs that wracked her bones and burned her eyes and made her feel as if the entire world was shaking apart at the seams.
Bit by bit, her breath evened out and her lungs stopped burning, and her tears tapered off, leaving her feeling damp and oddly sticky. Frustrated, Regan swiped a hand across her mouth to wipe the wet away, tasting salt. She straightened, looking around. She knew this creek. It ran all the way through the woods; if she followed it long enough, she’d come out behind her own house. It would take hours.
She couldn’t go back to school. Going back to school would mean facing Laurel and her army of giggling girls, all of whom would already have heard and accepted Laurel’s version of the truth. It would also mean facing the adults responsible for her care, who wouldn’t be happy about her unauthorized departure from school grounds. The damage was done. Why not go home?
Regan sniffled, smelling salt, and started along the bank of the creek, heading for the woods, heading for safety, heading for home.