Chapter Thirty-Four. Daye
Daye
“I think I have everything I need.” Rory closed his notebook with a thump, making Daye’s hair stir across her face. It should have felt coarse and chaff-like by now, with summer close enough to touch, but the strands slid across her skin, smooth and cool.
The June sun slanted pink and red through the wood beams of their fortress.
They had been there for hours—escaping Mrs. Matthews’s mop, which seemed to stalk them from room to room.
Most of these hours were spent kissing in a tangle of hands and teeth, but for the last one, Rory had been taking notes while she looked at the sunlight changing slowly, bleeding from noon white to the soft cerise of sunset.
Spring had passed in a blur of days: waking with Rory’s body pressed to hers, going to sleep with his hands tangled with hers, and every hour in between crammed full of Rory, like a cup filled to the brim.
He had gone to the city only once, three weeks ago, and came back two days later, clutching her close and saying, “I just couldn’t stay away. ”
Sometimes the last year seemed like a murky dream to her.
Did all those days in the forest really happen?
Did she really spend hours upon hours with her palms full of birds, listening to the soft shushing pines and the rustle of feathers?
It seemed impossible that he was ever gone, that there was ever a time in her life when it wasn’t Rory and her.
At other times, the whiplash of it made her branch-bones ache.
“Daye?” Rory nudged her shoulder softly.
She turned her head his way.
“I think I’m ready,” he said. “We could do the transition whenever you want. Tomorrow, if we manage to find all the plants we need before sundown.” They would.
Rory had been growing most of the harder-to-find stuff in the garden for the last couple of years, and as for the rest …
they knew every flower patch and shrub within walking distance. It would take no time at all.
“We should do the transition early this season anyway,” he continued. “To make sure the extra weeks we managed to get in the spring transition really are a sign that the experiment is working, and not some kind of a fluke or some cumulative effect of starting late in the winter. Don’t you think?”
She nodded. She wasn’t about to argue with that. The promise of not dragging from season to season, not being too-hot-too-cold-too-tired-too-green was tantalizing, even without the way Rory’s smile ignited when they talked about having sex, flaring bright enough to light his whole face.
“Okay.” Rory nodded enthusiastically back. “Though I really believe that we got it this time. I’ve been tweaking the formula for three seasons now, and I’m going to add a few little things but … but this really might be the solution we were looking for.”
Daye smiled back. For a moment, her mind flashed to the yellow envelope of photos, still tucked on Rory’s shelf. If she checked again, she wondered, would she look more like the girls there? Had she started looking less … other, and somehow hadn’t noticed? Would she fit in the pictures now?
“What do you think?” Rory’s voice jarred her from her thoughts. “We could do it tomorrow. The last day of spring is only three days away anyway. Or do you prefer to wait for the official beginning of summer?”
‘No,’ Daye signed. ‘Tomorrow is good. No reason to wait.’ While Rory’s seasons were rigid, orderly beings, bordered by solstices and equinoxes, the angle of poles and the movement of stars, for Daye they were a fluid, permeable thing; a tide, undulating up and slowly washing away.
For her, summer wasn’t a few days away; it was already here, all around her.
Buffeting her spring body slowly, lovingly, relentlessly.
Coiling green in her bones. Not uncomfortable, not yet.
Not with Rory’s experiments holding the rot at bay. But perceptible nonetheless.
“Okay,” Rory said. “Tomorrow, then.” His smile seemed to add, and then … , only Daye couldn’t imagine the then that came after. How would it be, the fitting closer together? A new cavity in her body, ready to be filled? Intended for filling?
The sun sank a little lower, the reds bleeding to purple between the trees, painting Rory’s lips from lush cherry into a dark purple slash.
‘Rory,’ Daye signed, her fingers moving almost of their own volition. ‘Have you ever found out if I can come to the city with you?’
“Oh.” There was an uncomfortable note in his voice that made her know the answer already.
Really, she had known all along, hadn’t she?
“Yeah,” Rory said quietly. “I did. I’m sorry.
” He gathered her to him, her arms to his chest and his lips pressed to her temple, dragging along the skin there as he spoke.
“But it doesn’t matter anyway. I’m here now, and I’m not going anywhere. Promise.”
She nodded, her emotions too tangled to tease them apart. Rory’s lips trailed lower, tracing the shell of her ear before retreating again.
“Um, Daye? There’s something I need to ask you.”
She looked up, meeting Rory’s eyes.
“I was wondering, when we do the changes tomorrow so that we could, you know …” He trailed off, flustered, and signed sex with his hands instead. “If there are any other changes we should make.”
‘Like what?’
“Like … maybe, um. Like maybe you would want to make your body more like other girls. Women. Um—” He faltered for a second, cheeks growing red.
Then looked up, saw Daye’s confused stare, and forged on before she could say anything.
“If you might want breasts.” The words came out in a rush, almost too fast to follow.
‘Breasts?’ Daye mimicked the curves of flesh with her hands.
Rory flushed even deeper, but nodded.
Again, Daye’s mind flashed to those pictures, to the ways the girls’ sweaters curved. What did they look like without clothes? Did they just have one rounded bump in the middle of their chest? Two? Was it soft? Hard? What did it do?
‘Why?’ she settled for asking.
Rory looked like a swimmer, steeling himself for a winter plunge. “We’re seventeen now. And seventeen-year-old girls have new stuff. Like breasts. And I didn’t know if you’d want them.” He took a deep breath, the next words coming slower, softer. “Do you? Want them?”
Daye didn’t know. She couldn’t imagine how it would be to swim or climb or thread between branches with a lump before her.
Why would she want that? But still, for a moment, the glint of the mirror in the dim hallway was all she could see.
Not real, Wynne’s voice seemed to whisper in her ear.
Not real, and never coming to the city. Not real and staying here.
‘Do you want me to have them?’ she asked instead.
Rory took her hand in his. He seemed to pick his next words carefully.
“Wynne always condensed these sorts of changes to the transition. So instead of growing a little taller every day, you grew all at once every three months. But it was still close to how your body would have worked anyway. Gradual.” His fingers absentmindedly played with hers.
“Only she never did these changes. I guess because we were too young then, or because she never thought about it? And by the time I thought about it, I was too embarrassed to ask because of, well, how I feel about you.” He twined their fingers together.
“So, yeah, I want you to have them. Because it’s what your body was supposed to do on its own, should have been doing on its own, if …
if it was possible. And I want you to have all the things any other girl your age is supposed to have. ”
But I’m not a girl, Daye wanted to sign, unsure if it was a statement or a question. But Rory still had both her hands in his, rendering her inadvertently mute.
“I know it’s a lot.” He pressed a kiss to her knuckles, his eyes so earnest, so full of love. “And you don’t have to decide now. But will you think about it?”
The last rays of the sun cast bluish, bruised shadows all around them as she nodded. Neither of them was sure what it was that she had just agreed to.