Alex as Well (6 page)

THE ATTIC, AS I’ve already told you, is a room full of shoeboxes. I have been up here before. When I was younger it seemed like a good place to hide and hang out, but it’s hot and stuffy in summer or cold and dusty in winter, and in between it’s plain boring, so I never really bothered with it. But now those two are stalking around downstairs feeling sorry for themselves, and I’m tired of watching them.

Alex is sitting cross-legged.

I’m sick of being disappointed by them, I tell him. I don’t think my expectations are that high. I get that they’re hurt, and it’s a shock and all of that. I do, but it’s just a skirt! What is the big deal? Isn’t this kind of a wild overreaction?

Well, it’s not just a skirt, he says, because if it was, then I wouldn’t be so set on wearing it. If it didn’t matter, then it wouldn’t matter to us either.

But the point is that I’m not asking them to do anything different.

Alex grabs one of the shoeboxes. It’s a bit dusty and dog-eared. Stacked neatly inside are a whole bunch of kids’ craft kits—sew-an-owl pillowcase, fold-up origami racing cars, paint-and-play farm animals—all unopened. I vaguely remember getting these for Christmas one year, when I was about eight.

They always got us the weirdest presents, Alex notes.

Do you remember that book
Fun Science Experiments for Boys
? I’m still not sure why possession of a penis was so important for the science.

Alex shrugs. Well, we didn’t have much fun after all, so maybe a functioning penis was needed for the fun-ness?

There is a box marked ‘daycare’ in my mother’s handwriting, so I flip it open. There are papers inside.

Alex hugs his legs and rests his chin on his knees. You know what she could have done? She could have made some peas or something in a different bowl. She might as well have brought out a pig on a spit.

It wasn’t about the food. It was about respect.

I think that’s really at the bottom of the whole thing. Am I wrong? Is it me?

Is it?

Alex and I stare at each other. He has been rubbing his eyes and his mascara is smeared. His hair is all kinky where I braided it.

What could we be doing differently?

You know, being in the attic is like a metaphor for retreating into my head, because it’s at the top. And all these little boxes are full of memories. Compartmentalised. If you had to do an essay on us, you could say that.

You were a little shit, Alex sneers.

Me? I was the one crying excessively. You were the one punching everyone.

Alex considers. He scratches his head. Yeah, I remember that. I knew I’d get in trouble, but I felt this enormous sense of relief when I pushed someone over.

I nod. I remember that feeling too. I couldn’t help it. It was kind of like sneezing. Alex is right. I didn’t care about getting into trouble. The only thing I ever got praised for—being a ‘good boy’—didn’t ever feel right to me anyway.

They made fun of us, I add.

On the floor below I hear one of them walking along the hall. They knock on my bedroom door. They wait, but after a while they go back downstairs.

I wrap my arms around my torso. My nipples are sore. I put my hand inside my shirt gently. They are poking up like little flesh teepees. They tingle.

You’re seriously growing norks, Alex laughs. I guess if you wish hard enough.

And it doesn’t cross my mind to make a connection between these little buds of breasts and the medication I’m not taking.

The medication that made me want to punch people.

The medication my parents made me take to make me a boy.

It doesn’t cross my mind till much later.

AFTER A FEW days I know my own way around. I have learned my teachers’ names. Nothing has been very hard so far, especially now that I can do my homework on the train. Academically, they’ve put me somewhere in the middle.

I sit next to Amina in most classes. Sierra sits on the other side of Amina every single time, as though it’s a rule.

Amina doesn’t talk. She does her schoolwork. She puts her hand up to answer questions, but not in a sucking-up way. She likes learning. She doesn’t look at me. I can’t stop looking at her. I have imprinted her face in my mind. I can see it when I close my eyes. When I am in bed at night I run a little silent movie of her in my head. Amina frowning. Amina smiling. Amina laughing. Amina serious. Amina sipping juice through a straw.

(I can feel your halo halo halo.)

I have to resist the urge to poke her with my pen. I literally have to hold my own hand to stop myself from touching her. I pinched her arm once. She gave me such a look. Mostly perplexed.

Sorry, that was me, says Alex, sheepishly.

Another day I was just sitting there in maths. We were doing algebra, and it was all quiet, and then I yelled out, ‘RRROXANNE!’ I picked up that particular earworm on the train in the morning.

Me again, Alex confesses.

Turns out, girls don’t do that. The teacher held me back afterwards to talk about suitable behaviour. I just stared at my feet and mumbled in the appropriate places. Because, the truth is, I was singing because I am happy.

Imagine that?

Amina waited outside for me, and as we walked down for lunch she asked, ‘Can you run?’

Sometimes Amina disappears at lunchtime. The other girls have told me that she runs. Laps, I guess. Something like that. It’s been a mystery.

Can we run? Alex asks.

Of course we can run if Amina wants us to run.

‘I s’pose.’

‘Will you be on my team?’ she asks.

Of course we’ll be on her team!

‘Sure!’

‘Good,’ she says, smiling.

You probably want to know more about Amina. You want to know what she likes, what music she listens to, what she thinks about things. I’ve been wondering that too, except I am afraid.

Amina is like a present, with shiny paper, crisp corners and no visible stickytape. I don’t want to open it and discover it wasn’t what I wanted.

I know that’s kind of a boy thing too, isn’t it? I should love her however she is, but what if she liked
Big Brother
? What if I find out her favourite song is ‘My Heart Will Go On’? We couldn’t even be friends after that. I think I’ll just look at her from here, thank you.

I sit with Julia in science. She’s smart, but I think she struggles with some of the technical stuff. Or maybe she is just bored. Sometimes she files her nails under the desk. When I see her I call out ‘Whoolia!’ and she calls out ‘Lexia!’ and we air kiss.

Julia’s lips are a dusty pink. I thought it was lipstick, but that’s the actual colour they are. She has a little tiny mo. She gets it waxed, I know because one day the hair was gone and her upper lip and the space between her eyebrows was a little bit red.

I wonder if I will need to do that. I can ask Julia. She will take me to the girl place for dealing with unwanted hair.

Julia’s beautiful. Curvy. She has thick, unruly hair
that’s always escaping.

Alex groans, but imagine her when she’s thirty with two kids, all hairy and with a huge arse, he says.

You’re such a bitch. You’re not satisfied with her now because of how she might look in fifteen years?

You were thinking it too.

That’s a stupid argument. No one is going to be hot when they are sixty.

Amina will be elegant and regal even when she’s sixty.

We’re going to marry Amina and live with her forever and ever.

Excuse me, are you saying that your heart will go on?

You bet your arse it will!

Mrs Barksdale puts up a picture of a snail on the electronic whiteboard, and I feel dread. It makes me sweat. We’re going to talk about hermaphroditic gastropods. It’s in the curriculum—we did it at Joey’s. Everyone is going to snigger and yell out about how gross it is. I can just tell, and I will throw up.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ Julia asks.

‘I hate snails,’ I say.

But it’s ok. Mrs Barksdale’s taking a different tack. She’s talking about hibernation and suspended animation. Phew!

I sit with Sierra in visual art. We’re making a hen out of clay. The teacher says my hen isn’t very good. Apparently Sierra’s is a masterpiece. I don’t understand why her hen is better than mine.

This one kid didn’t even make a hen, he made the letters to spell out,
squawk!
When the teacher asked what he was doing, he said, ‘Subverting the paradigm’.

You could see her frozen with indecision, because she wasn’t sure if it was really clever, or if he was taking the piss. She gave him six out of ten, a bet each way, the same mark as me, and I actually made the chook like I was asked.

I think about reminding the art teacher about that gallery that literally exhibited the work of a two-year-old, but I don’t think that’s going to make her like my hen any better.

‘It’s stupid and arbitrary,’ Sierra whispers to me, but secretly she’s pleased. I can tell by the sparkle in her eye and the sly way she smiles at her hen when she thinks I’m not looking.

My hen rocks, so I don’t care what the teacher thinks. And I’m subverting the paradigm in ways she can’t even imagine.

We are art, says Alex.

Clucking oath!

It’s hard to talk much in art metal since I’ve been allowed to swing a hammer, but Ty is helping me with my letterbox. Now that I’m a girl, it’s ok to be incompetent with tools.

He likes me. He comes into my space. He shows me how to use the tools and his hands brush against mine. He asks me stupid questions so that we’ll keep talking.
He says to me, ‘you have a really long neck’, and then he blushes and looks away.

I don’t really know what to say to that, so I say, ‘Yeah, you too,’ and then we laugh.

But then five minutes later he starts laughing again, because he’s remembered how I said he had a long neck (which he doesn’t) and then he can’t stop giggling, and then I laugh at him laughing, and he laughs at me laughing at him. Susannah cocks an eyebrow at us, and I suck my cheeks in like a goldfish, trying not to laugh, which sets him off again.

Then he says, ‘You could be a supermodel.’

I curl up my lip.

‘What, you don’t want to be a supermodel?’ he asks incredulously.

‘What’s wrong with being just an ordinary model? Why do they have to be super as well? You can’t just be superhumanly tall, and supernaturally thin, you also have to be
super
.’ I lift up my leg and punch the air, as if I’m flying.

He considers for a moment. ‘You could be, though. If you wanted to.’

Ty’s going to hate you, Alex warns me. Ty’s going to punch your head in. He will be so filled with disgust and rage it will overcome him. He might even kill you.

But right now Ty’s doing the goldfish face and chuckling as if we’re six years old.

We’re in the playground, in our spot under the tree. Sierra has just proposed that we have a sleepover on the weekend. All of us girls. It’s frothing up in my head like a shaken-up soft drink. I’ve only ever had one sleepover, and that was in primary school with this kid who tried to burn the school down. Not on that night, but still.

A slumber party!

Alex thinks we should put our PJs on under our clothes so we can just strip off the top layer. We’ll need to get PJs with puppies on them, or something.

We’re negotiating a venue, with my head going froth, froth, because there are probably all these rules and rituals that I don’t know about.

Then a teacher I haven’t seen before approaches us. Miss Angela, the school librarian. She wears stilettos and a magenta shift dress. She has a smooth Clinique face. She explains that she is organising a fashion show to raise money for the library.

I look out across the quad. Ty sits up near the hall with a group of about five other guys. Now he is standing a little bit away from his group. He has his hands in his pockets, and he’s watching me. He’s like a German shepherd.

There’s a permission slip, because Miss Angela is going to take us out of the school grounds to the boutique that is sponsoring the show. A real stylist is going to choose outfits for us to wear.

Her name is Lien, and she used to be a model. Miss Angela is obviously very impressed, because she goes all
gushy when she talks about her.

There will be a dress rehearsal on the weekend before the show. We will get our hair and makeup done, and there will be a photo shoot for the catalogue. Then there’s the show itself, which will be held in the library. They want our parents to come along.

‘Cool!’ says Sierra, flushing slightly.

‘We can only have three from your year level,’ Miss Angela says, handing the permission forms to me, Julia and Amina. ‘It’s to do with the risk assessment.’

But what she means is that Sierra is too short to look good in clothes. Sierra knows it. I’ve been picked because I’m tall.

You’ve been picked because you could be a supermodel, Alex says.

Sierra glances at me sidelong, all slitty and hateful, as if it’s my fault. She could be a bigger person about it, and be happy that her friends have been chosen, but she’s jealous.

Amina bites her lip. She thinks this selection process is unjust. She thinks fashion is stupid and arbitrary. She should be fighting for it to be inclusive, but she is looking forward to dressing up.

‘Oh, and when you drop this form back at the front office, bring your birth certificate. You haven’t completed your enrolment,’ Miss Angela adds.

I nod. ‘Sorry, I forgot.’

I could nip it in the bud. I could say I’m not interested
in participating, and then Amina would say that too. Julia might do the fashion show by herself, but it wouldn’t be a schism. We could go to the show and support her. We would make up banners and cheer.

This fashion show thing is a schism, and it is my fault because if I said I didn’t want to do it, Amina would too. It
is
stupid and arbitrary.

Alex is looking at me and shaking his head.

What? I challenge him.

This is a bad idea.

I can see where this is going, too. Of course I can, because I am Alex as well. But I want to dress up in gorgeous clothes and strut up and down the runway like they do in the magazines, swishing my tail. I want to dress up with Amina and Julia and giggle and be girlfriends, arm in arm. I want to be beautiful. I want other people to think I am beautiful. I want them all to look at me the way that Ty does.

It makes me more real now that Sierra is jealous of me. Jealousy is a million times more potent than pity.

It’s just clothes, I shrug.

But it’s not, is it? Fashion makes the rules about what women should look like. If anyone should be against such a narrow definition of what is an acceptable way of being, it should be me.

What do you think they’re going to do if…
when
they find out you’re a boy? Alex asks. Why are you giving people reasons to hate us?

But I’m not a boy, I counter.

I beg to differ, Alex says.

You just keep on begging, I reply.