Symptoms of Being Human (19 page)

We eat roughly a metric ton of Starbursts and watch five straight episodes of
Doctor Who
. Dad comes in after an hour and tells me he has to leave, but that he'll be back before dinner. I tell Mom she can go with him, but she insists on staying. She
doesn't come in, though. She sits in the waiting room, “catching up on her magazine reading.”

I text Bec, but she doesn't reply.

When dinner comes, Dad pops in to say hi, then leaves us alone again. Before he closes the door, he gives Solo this look that makes it completely obvious that he now thinks Solo is my boyfriend. I wonder silently if my parents will ever understand anything. Nurses come in twice to give me meds and check my vitals. Solo eats my Jell-O.

Finally, a nurse comes in and tells him he has ten more minutes before visiting hours are over. When the door shuts behind her, Solo turns to me, his eyes serious.

“I want to say something,” he says.

I say, “Okay,” but I'm not sure I want to hear it.

Solo glances at his lap and presses his lips together, like he does when he's playing video games, then looks up at me. “I'm sorry for what I said.”

I frown, confused. “What you said about what?”

“Back at the Reagan Years.” His voice is deeper than usual. “I told you that you—that you
invited
it. By the way you dress. Remember? I told you that you were asking for a fight. Inviting people to . . .” He clears his throat. “And I want you to know . . . that's bullshit. And it was not okay to say that.”

I look at him. His face, usually cheerful—even goofy—is now grim. “Thank you,” I say. “For saying that. And for being here.”

Solo smiles. Then he reaches into the shopping bag at his feet. When he comes up again, he's holding a furry brown bundle. For a moment, I think he's brought an animal into the
hospital—and then I realize what it is: his Chewbacca backpack.

“I want you to have this,” he says, but his grip on it seems to tighten.

I reach out and stroke the soft, plush fur, remembering how Solo made it sound like no big deal that he stopped wearing it; but he kept it. After all the harassment, he kept it.

“No way,” I say, shaking my head. “That's your freak flag. I've already got one.”

He frowns at me, then looks down at the plush Chewbacca face. His frown relaxes, and slowly, the corners of his mouth turn up in a relieved smile. He was ready to give it to me—but I think he really wanted to keep it.

“Solo,” I say. He looks up. “How did you—I mean, you got there right when . . . How . . .”

“How did we know where to find you?” he asks.

I nod. “How did you even know something was happening?”

“Bec called me. She saw on the internet what happened at your dad's fund-raiser. She was kind of freaking out. Said you weren't answering your phone. She told me to come get her, so I did.”

“And you came straight to me?”

Solo shakes his head. “We went to your house, but your parents said you had already left. We got really worried. I wanted to try Bec's house again; I figured you would go there.”

“I did,” I say. “But I went to Bullet Hole first.”

“We checked there, too. We must have barely missed you. But, when you weren't there, Bec just seemed to know where
to go.” Solo swallows hard. “She was acting weird. I mean, I was worried, too—but she was freaking out, like she knew something bad was going to happen.” He looks up at my IV pole. “She was right.”

I stare down at the pale-green sheet covering me. How could she have known?

“Did you know she had a transgender sister?” I ask. Solo nods. “Maybe that has something to do with how she reacted.”

Solo blinks at me as if he's processing the information. “Maybe,” he says. We sit quietly for a minute, and then he reaches into his bag again. “Last Starburst?”

We split it, and Solo promises to come over and watch more
Doctor Who
with me once I'm home.

When he leaves five minutes later, Solo is wearing his backpack.

I'M FINALLY DISCHARGED THURSDAY MORNING.
Mom arranges for a substitute to take her classes so she can stay home with me. Each time she comes to check on me, she insists on throwing open the curtains to let in the sun, and then I have to get up to close them after she leaves; the light bothers my eyes. Finally, I snap at her, and she stops.

I'm afraid to watch TV or go on the internet. I don't want to hear what they're saying about me, and I don't want to know how badly my situation has impacted Dad's campaign. So instead, I finish season seven of
Doctor Who
, and then Solo brings the next two when he stops by after school with my Government homework. I ask about Bec, but he hasn't heard from her. He acts nonchalant about it—she's pulled this disappearing act before—but there's something in his eyes that tells me he thinks this time is different. And so do I.

That night it takes forever to fall asleep—and when I finally do, I have horrible nightmares. They're dark and heavy and vivid, but the details evaporate when I wake, and I'm left only with the looming sense that something terrible is going to happen. At one point I wake myself up shouting, and Dad comes in and gives me a sleeping pill.

On Friday, two detectives show up at my house, but I refuse to see them. Dad argues with me—even lays a whole guilt trip on me about preventing future incidents—but I just shut down and stare at the wall. Eventually, they go away.

By Saturday I'm able to come downstairs and eat breakfast with Mom and Dad. I want it to be normal, but it's not. Dad always watches the news in the morning, especially this close to an election. But today, the TV is off—for my benefit, I'm sure—and the silence is unbearable. On top of that, Mom and Dad are acting strangely, leaving a wide berth when they pass each other in the hallway. I hear them arguing at night.

I'm sure it's about me.

I can't fight the feeling that this is all my fault. That I caused this. That somehow, I provoked
him
to do this—I don't want to think of his name—by humiliating him in front of his friends, by rebreaking his arm. By refusing to just be normal.

My dad was right; I shouldn't have put my most personal thoughts out in public, where they could be read by anyone. I feel so stupid for not realizing what a risk that was—not just to me, but to him, and his campaign. I'm sure I've damaged his chances at reelection. I'm ashamed, too, that my parents have to keep taking care of me; I'm a burden to them now, a broken thing, a weight dragging them toward the edge of a cliff. And
they can't bear to let go, so I pull them down with me.

Doctor Ann says guilt and shame are normal reactions to what I've been through. She encourages me to do my own research online and talk to my parents about it—but I'm not ready for that. The most important thing, she says, is to interrupt my thoughts when I'm feeling those things, and to identify that they're not true—that they're just a reaction to what happened. Post-traumatic stress.

It's hard to believe her.

I see Doctor Ann on Saturday, then again on Monday. I don't feel better, really, just
clearer
. In my head, I understand what's happening, and I can see the steps to getting through it. But in my guts, in my heart, I'm lost. Like I'm out in the middle of the ocean, swimming as hard as I can with no hope of land and no sign of progress. I see no shoreline, only an infinite, unbroken horizon.

And the dark, dark water beneath.

At dinner Tuesday night, the silence is too much. Dad shouldn't be home. He should be out at events and press conferences, and my mom should be with him. I'm not ready to face all that myself, not yet—but that shouldn't hold them back.

Dad eats slowly, saying nothing. Mom pushes cooked carrots around her plate with her fork. I have to do something, to say something, or things are only going to get worse. Finally, I clear my throat. They look up at me, surprised and expectant.

“What do the polls look like?” I ask.

Dad glances at Mom, then back at me. “Riley, that should
be the last thing on your mind right now.”

“I'd rather not think about the first thing on my mind anymore.”

Dad blinks, swallows.

I put down my fork. “I want to talk about something else, something real. I want to know.”

Mom strokes her wineglass nervously with her thumb. “Honey, what's going on—it's not your fault.”

“Just tell me,” I snap. “I'm not a child. I can handle it.” Then, more softly, “Please.”

They exchange another glance. Finally, my dad looks me in the eye and speaks. “Gutierrez is up twelve points. The pundits are saying it's going to be tight.”

I nod. I figured as much. Then, still looking Dad in the eye, I say, “Is it because of me?”

Dad's mouth drops open slightly, but he recovers quickly. “No, it's . . .” He shakes his head. “That's how these things can go. It's a conservative county. Any kind of story like this . . .” He trails off, looking at my mother for support. One part of me appreciates that he's trying to protect me—but another part is angry at him for thinking I'm too weak to face the truth.

Mom reaches for my hand, but I withdraw it. The hurt in her eyes just makes me angrier; she thinks I'm weak, too.

“You're more important to us than all of that,” Mom says.

“Far more important,” Dad echoes.

I nod, feeling heat start to build up behind my eyes.

Dad clears his throat. “I know you're still processing all of this. And I don't want to push you. But if you don't talk to that detective soon, they won't be able to—”

I stand up abruptly, cutting him off. “I'm not doing this right now.”

Dad's face goes red. “You can't just give up like this.”

“Oh,” I say, my voice breaking, “and what about you? It's okay for you to give up?”

“What?” he says.

“You should be out campaigning, not sitting here, interrogating me about things you can't fix.”

His face goes white, and when he replies, the words come out in choppy bursts. “Riley, whatever you think, I'm—I'm not giving up.”

I clench my fists. “Well, I'm not, either.”

Mom intervenes. “Stop it,” she says, gripping my dad's arm so hard he winces. She looks at me, and there's a ferocity in her eyes I've never seen before. “Okay. You don't have to talk to the police. But you need to talk to
us
.”

I look at the two of them sitting there, Dad confused, Mom scared. I think I ought to feel sad, or ashamed, but all I can feel is the heat in my face and the tension in my jaw. I take three long breaths. When I open my mouth to talk, the words won't come out, so I just shake my head.

Mom rises from her chair, walks over, and puts her arms around me. Dad gets up, too, and places a hand on my back. We stand there like that for a long time, not talking.

Finally, I push away. “I just need to be alone right now,” I say. And then, pretending not to see the defeated look on my mother's face, I turn and head up to my room.

I put an old Trespassers William record on the turntable, lie back on my bed, and try to lose myself in the ocean
of echoing guitars—but my brain won't be quiet. My dad is losing ground in the polls because of me. My best friend—girlfriend?—won't return my calls. And the guy who did this to me is walking around free, while I'm holed up in my room, hiding from reporters and the police, isolated from everyone. I consider calling Solo, but he'll only try to cheer me up, and that's not what I want right now. I wish I could blog—but that's out of the question. Even if my anonymity hadn't been stolen, it would only take one cruel message to break me into pieces. And I can't fall apart. Not again. So I turn off my phone, shove my laptop under the bed, and bury my face in my pillow.

I recognize what's happening—I'm isolating myself, just like Doctor Ann warned me I might. I'm withdrawing, closing myself off. I'm acting like a victim—and I hate that word. I hate it.

I have to do something.

But I don't have the courage to leave the room, let alone face my blog—and the thought of accidentally coming across some news article about what happened makes me physically ill. Still, I can't just lie here; I have to do
something.
So, more out of rage and desperation than a genuine desire to heal, I reach under my bed, retrieve my laptop, and fire it up. And, with a couple of carefully crafted Google searches, I start doing the research Doctor Ann prescribed.

I find dozens of websites about violence against trans and genderqueer people—but after half an hour of browsing, I end up back on QueerAlliance.org, reading personal stories written by survivors. Just like Doctor Ann said, many of them went through the same things I'm going through now: the
numbness, the isolation, the nightmares. The guilt, the shame, the lack of appetite. It's weird; part of me is comforted by this information, but another part is angered by the thought that I went through this . . .
unthinkable
experience only to come out the other side as a stereotypical victim. A statistic who perfectly fits the profile.

And then I find a story dated June of this year—a month before I went to Pineview. It's about an eighteen-year-old trans man named Eduardo who was suffocated by his ex in an Orange County motel room. When I read the name of the motel, a shudder runs down my spine; it's three blocks down from the old hardware store where my dad used to take me when I was a kid. I've driven by it dozens—maybe
hundreds
of times.

I drove by it that night.

I put a hand on my head, feeling the tender spot where it struck first the windshield and then the hood of my mom's minivan. And that's when it dawns on me: I'm one of the
lucky
ones. Because I survived.

I'm surprised to feel a hot surge of anger rising in my throat.
I
survived—and yet, thanks to my famous father, my story has been all over the news. But what about Eduardo's story? How is it possible that a murder like this happened so close, and that I never heard about it on the news? Why wasn't this a headline?

There are dozens more, but the story that affects me most is about an eight-year-old trans girl in Ohio whose father beat her to death with a chair after she told him, “You know I'm really a girl inside, right?”

I have to wipe away tears to read on.

According to one site, over three hundred acts of violence have been committed against trans and genderqueer people this year in the US alone—and thirty of the victims were children and teenagers. I can only assume that Andie Gingham is one of them—that is, one of the thirty that were actually reported.

The thought that I might be number thirty-one sends a bolt of cold shooting through me.

But the feeling only lasts a moment, and then it's eclipsed once more by anger. A deep, slow-burning rage—at Jim Vickers and his accomplices, yes—but it's bigger than that. It includes Eduardo's ex. Andie Gingham's dad. The father of that eight-year-old girl. And, somehow, it includes me, too. For sitting here, unable—or unwilling—to do anything about it.

But what can I do? Me, who can't even face talking to my parents, let alone the police. I consider Mike/Michelle's invitation to speak at the Trans Health Con this weekend, and I shake my head. I don't have the courage to leave my room. How could I possibly stand in front of an audience of brave, out, genderqueer adults and claim to be some kind of “online community builder”? It's absurd.

But then I think about my blog and my fifty thousand followers—however unintentionally it came to be, it's an undeniable number. And even though it's only a virtual crowd, when I imagine those fifty thousand faces looking at me, I feel invisible bands begin to tighten around my chest. I remember vividly the
real
crowd of reporters outside the hotel that night—all those faces, all those microphones and cameras—and the pressure builds until I can't breathe. Until I just want to disappear.

My phone buzzes on the bedside table, and I flinch. The display shows Park Hills PD calling for the fourth time today; I never should have given that officer my cell number. Ignoring the call, I slide off the bed and go to the window. I peek out through the curtains and see a news van still idling on the curb across the street.

Just when I want to be left alone—isolated, Doctor Ann would say—I'm surrounded instead: by the police and the media and my parents, and by the overwhelming thoughts swarming around in my head. I can't go on like this. I need to talk to someone—someone other than Doctor Ann. And although Solo has been amazing to come see me every day, he's not the one I need. I need Bec. Now. And, since she won't return my calls, I'll have to go to her.