29
Sasha
We go back to Lillian’s house at a less frantic pace, close together on the empty sidewalks.
She talks about her memories of the places we pass.
Little things, details, not what you’d tell to make yourself look interesting.
When she asks where I grew up, I find some slivers of reality for her.
Some of my stories are off-limits because they’re famous, ones I always tell the same way.
About Augustus and I putting on musicals together as children and how my dad knew right then that we were destined — he always used that word — destined for stardom.
I can’t tell her any of my touring stories.
How Augustus and I were once so behind schedule we took a helicopter to the stadium and had them lower us onstage.
Augustus was too shaken up to sing, so I did a solo song.
I can’t tell her my fake stories about Isabelle and I falling in love, and if they were true, I wouldn’t want to.
So I tell her one I’ve never told before, that I couldn’t tell anyone else.
I tell Lillian about meeting Lark.
When I was eight, there was a fair set up on the beach near where I grew up.
This was before we signed with the Channel, before me, my dad and Augustus moved down the coast to be closer to their studios.
It was before my dad’s brain tumor took him away.
Unlike Augustus, I’ve been outspoken about the cancer.
I’ve started a foundation.
So I leave these things out of what I tell Lillian.
I wanted to ride the Ferris wheel, but Augustus claimed Ferris wheels were boring.
That disdain was the stage he was at — one he never grew out of.
Augustus went to find a roller coaster so that later he could pretend it hadn’t scared him.
I called Augustus my older sister when we talked at Falafel ’Til Dawn, but I don’t remember what name I gave him, so I simply stick wit.
“my older sister.”
The fragility of these deceptions frightens me, but I don’t know what else to do.
Dad got a phone call that was relevant to his efforts to make me and Augustus famous, so he sent me alone. It was crowded and anyone who wanted to ride alone got paired off, and I wound up with someone who made me do a continuous double take.
Gender performance seems to inundate beaches. It’s narrowing in the most literal sense, all bodies cut down to a few select pinnacles of desirability. It drives away people who don’t slot in smoothly. It perpetuates itself with polished skin and whatever fashion the clothing industry handed down to beachgoers that summer.
This person, Lark, didn’t fit into most of the performances. And those were the systems all around me, so Lark didn’t make sense to me. There were cis gay characters in movies and on TV, and there were pride parades around the city. My dad would complain about them blocking traffic and say.
“Now there’s an example of celebration without accomplishment.”
Yet he liked celebrating birthdays just fine.
These are the things I tell Lillian, that no interviewer or show host has ever gotten out of me.
Lark was friendly and pointed out landmarks down the coast while I was confused about their face and their shoulders and their makeup and how the hair on their sunburnt, white chest spilled out over their blue bikini top. I couldn’t speak at all as my mind tried to figure this human out. I was confused by the stories I’d been told about how there’s types of humans.
Halfway through, I interrupted them midsentence and said.
“What sort of person are you?”
“My name’s Lark. I’m the sort of person who loves how puppies always step higher than they need to. Who still listens to loud music when my parents fight even though I’m twenty-four and I’m only home for the summer. I’m the sort of person who spends hours playing with the magnet words on fridges.”
“Are you a boy or a girl?”
“No,”
Lark said matter-of-factly, not reprimanding. I’d asked a multiple-choice question and the answer wasn’t A or B, it was False.
“I’m genderqueer,”
they said.
Clearly, I looked baffled, because they explained.
“That means I’m not a girl or a boy. Or at least that’s what it means to me. Those feel like very small boxes I don’t fit in. It’s like if someone said you’re either a square or a circle, but you’re a triangle. But they don’t believe in triangles. So they say that’s just a funny version of a square. That’s not true, is it? Triangles are a different thing entirely. So are hexagons, or ovals. You might pretend to have four sides. People will probably make you try to have four sides, but you’re still a triangle that’s being squeezed and torn up and pushed around.”
That made sense to me, though I was iffy on what a hexagon was.
Lark waved at a friend far below us, smiling.
“Today, I’m winning. I’ve got my own number of sides. I’ve got people on my side. What sort of person are you?”
Kids mostly know what sort of answers they’re expected to give. It’s part of surviving. I remember thinking they were asking the same thing I did, boy or girl, but then suddenly I could tell I didn’t have to say I was a boy. This was the first time I had been given that permission. So I didn’t say it.
“I like to sing,” I said.
“That’s one of my favorite sorts of people.”
Lillian and I pull up at a crosswalk and she tries to track stand while she punches the button. The yellow lights start flashing, though there are no cars out for them to stop.
“Did you already know then?”
she asks as we cross.
“Not at all. It was just one of those memories that stayed clear in my mind that I kept replaying, and I didn’t think much of it. I assumed I remembered some things better for no particular reason. Seven or eight years later, I slowly figured out why it had stayed with me.”
When I started to sort it out, I dedicated a song to Lark that I usually dedicated to Isabelle. Apparently, it caused a bit of a murmuring among the most committed cohorts of Admirer fans. Who was this Lark? Was I cheating on Isabelle? But Lillian doesn’t even listen to Admirer, so there’s no way she’d know an obscure fan theory based on one incident.
We’re getting close to Lillian’s house now, riding slower and slower through the night.
She’s holding one hand out to coast along like it’s out the window of a car.
“It’s like when you’re younger and you’re obsessed with being friends with someone and only later you realize you had a crush on them.”
“Yes! Except not a crush in this case. At least I don’t think so. If I met them now, I probably would. But Lark gave me words for a feeling. And they were the first person I ever met who didn’t automatically assume I was male.”
There are still lights on in Lillian’s house. I can just see her mom through the plants that are either hanging in baskets or growing upward to cover most of the glass. She’s curled up on the couch watching TV in the living room.
“That was one of the best stories I’ve ever heard,”
says Lillian. She hesitates, like she’s about to invite me in, then just says.
“Goodnight, ride safe.”
That’s best. Her mom’s around, and I want to avoid personal questions. Or if I can’t avoid them, I at least need time to prepare.
I thank Lillian for the night, for showing me somewhere remarkable I never would have found on my own.
She’s already opened the porch door, carrying her bike expertly up the steps, when she turns back to me.
“I’m going to see you at school tomorrow, right? You’re not going to vanish again?”