Ninth Grade
(age fourteen)
Most emergencies didn’t last long enough for people to have to sleep in the safe rooms, but one of the storage rooms next to the gym had a bunch of cots just in case. When the bleachers got too uncomfortable, Am dragged one out, then flopped down on it and refused to move further.
The storage room also had some shitty emergency snack bars, which people dug out and passed around, but Am ignored them.
She ignored water. She didn’t sleep exactly, but she dozed, and she fended off her family’s concern, and she brooded.
Now that the first shock was over, she had all the time in the world for another kind of grief, one that oozed in more slowly and did not let go.
What was the point of getting up and doing other things, besides the fire, in a world where people like Elaine could just vanish forever? She had Kelli, but if Elaine could vanish forever then Kelli could too. Anyone could.
A speaker somewhere played news updates, curt and factual.
The fire was being contained. No deaths yet.
The therapists and their clients had escaped with minor injuries, but a few firefighters had been taken to the hospital.
On behalf of everyone, Inspiration thanked those firefighters for their courage and their sacrifice.
The cause of the fire was a fuel leak. Fuel fires were especially dangerous and Callisto Central Administration thanked everyone for their patience with the necessary safety procedures.
“I heard it was a dare that got out of hand. You know, one of those groups of kids just out of school,” said one of Am’s father’s friends.
Kids a few years older than Am and Kelli were a known problem.
When people aged out of the school system with no career prospects, they tended to go to extremes.
They either dived into a hobby and didn’t come out for years, or they started a family as fast as they could; if neither of those options appealed, they milled around in little gangs, getting in trouble, not quite knowing what to do with themselves.
Groups of kids like that were often responsible for crimes like vandalism, public drunkenness, indecency—not arson.
“Someone’s really got to get a handle on those kids. Or the other theory I heard is gang activity. You know, actual gangs. You didn’t hear it from me, but I heard the Brimstone Syndicate’s been trying to get a foothold around here, lately.”
Nobody had mentioned Elaine’s name. Nobody said words like vengeance or justice or because the system failed her, or even, do you think it might have something to do with that girl who died?
Maybe it was good that they didn’t. It meant nobody would trace the crime back to Am and Kelli. But it also meant the whole point of the fire—the thing Kelli had started it for in the first place—was a point no one would ever get but the two of them.
Am’s father sounded doubtful. “Why would a syndicate bother with a therapy center?”
“I don’t know. For the drugs?”
“There’s got to be a better way of stealing drugs than by burning down the whole building.”
Am had planned carefully how to get scissors and nails, how to strike the match, how to cover their tracks. But she was beginning to suspect she hadn’t thought the rest of this through.
After eight hours they were allowed to leave the stupid gym and go back to Basic Housing.
But then they had to stay there until the full all clear.
No wandering around, running into a sector that was still missing some of its air.
No interfering with the firefighters—who had put out the fire by now, but who still needed to repair the fuel lines and mop up the toxic mess.
Am blinked her eyes open long enough to trudge the short distance to her family’s apartment. Then she curled up under the blankets in her bed and went back to sleep. She didn’t even take off her clothes.
She dreamed about Kelli. Awful, filthy, smoke-filled dreams.
Dreams where she was a boy.
Am didn’t want to think about this. It was the stupidest possible thing to think about at a time like this, but that moment in the maintenance tunnel had seared it into her brain.
In her grief, in the exhilaration of the fire, she’d needed Kelli like she needed air—and needing Kelli so badly had shocked her into realizing she needed something else, too. She’d needed it all along.
She’d read at least some of the books on that data chip.
She knew what gender dysphoria was. Maybe it was a wild weird mental health symptom brought on by the shock of the fire, but maybe—more likely—it had been happening her whole life.
She’d asked Kelli about being a boy before, after all.
She’d gotten so excited when Elaine wanted to be one.
Maybe, in a weird way, this explained everything.
Am had spent her whole life trying to be as ungirly as it was possible for a girl to be.
She’d hated being pretty or ladylike, hated makeup, hated clothes.
She’d hated her body more and more with puberty, dreaded the thought of letting another girl see the whole thing, even though other girls’ bodies had started to feel like the best things ever.
She’d loved girls, but she’d always been the roughest and the wildest of them; she’d loved to prove she could do anything a boy could do.
But the books weren’t shy talking about how hard it could be, living the life of a lesbian in a world like this. Elaine had died, in part, from how hard it was. And being trans, by all accounts, was even harder.
Am couldn’t sleep anymore.
She pushed herself out of bed and lumbered out to the living room. She felt like a zombie, barely coordinated enough to walk, but she got there. She plunked down onto a chair next to the window.
“Amelia!” said her mother, hurrying over. “You’re up!”
“Nngh,” said Am.
“We’ve been so worried about you,” said her mother, wringing her hands. “I can’t imagine how you’re feeling. First your friend, and then a fire like this—”
“I don’t want to talk, actually,” said Am. She said it in words, so it was an improvement on the grunts and growls from before.
Her mother hesitated. “Do you want to eat anything?”
“Later.”
“When you do want to talk, we’re right here, okay?”
“Sure.”
No adult would ever understand any of this. Bruno might try, if he was here, but Am was pretty sure Bruno’s laxity with the law did not extend to actual arson at an actual mental health clinic. She and Kelli were going to have to sort this out on their own.
Am looked out the window, which overlooked a little courtyard with some benches and swings.
She watched the children on the swings. Some very young indeed, some older than her.
She watched the boys in particular. Boys of sixteen or eighteen, with their flat chests, their stubble, their spread-kneed posture and their flippant air.
She hated them. She’d always hated boys.
Running around, being rude and telling gross jokes, growing muscles, getting in trouble, fighting, wrestling, competing.
Picking up girls. Matthis Hahn and his ilk had always acted a lot like Am, except just a little bit meaner, a little less considerate of whether the girls they picked on would still like them the next day.
And the teachers had been fine with that.
Boys will be boys, they’d said. The teachers had let the boys run around and be mean, but they’d given Am stern looks whenever she did even a quarter of that.
How was that fair? Why should boys get away with being boys, when Am couldn’t?
For fuck’s sake—all this time, had she only been jealous?
There was no way of knowing what Elaine would have grown up to be: boy or girl, straight or gay, or maybe something in between all of those. The only person who could ever have figured that out was Elaine, and she was gone now.
But Am was damned if she was letting that happen to her.