transcect

  Suicidal ideation

  [colpse]

  They were in the kitchen. They were alone in the kitchen. Vio’s leg was in the sink, her skin pressed against the cold of the metal. The jeans weren’t bunched on her knee anymore. She was in a dress, a summer yellow, and it sat coyly just below her waist, fluttering out over her knees.

  And David was standing feet from her.

  He was in the same as he had been, in the same white t shirt, with the same sweaty hair, and his hand was creeping onto her thigh, settled right at the edge of her dress.

  “Is there blood?” he asked. And Vio looked down, past the fluttering yellow of her dress’s hem, and saw a trickle of blood, deep red, rolling down her ankle. It didn’t hurt. Really, the blood was just coming slow, and it didn’t hurt in the slightest. David’s eyes were on it, and on her, combing her thighs and her breasts and her face, and then back to the blood coming gently down her leg. His fingers slipped towards it, then paused.

  “Go on,” said Vio.

  And David settled a finger below the trickle, catching a drop of the pooling blood. His hand was warm and rough against her skin.

  “Go on,” said Vio again. And David looked at her, his eyes firm and his hair soaked with sweat, and he put his finger to his lips and tasted her. Vio watched hungrily, hungrily as he moved the finger from his lips, as he leaned back towards her, his hand pressed against her belly now, his other cupping her cheek, his eyes fire.

  “Go on,” said Vio.

  * * * * *

  “Everyone up!” called Lucy. Loud. Heavy.

  His head was throbbing.

  “Everyone!” called Lucy again, her voice hitting sing song. “That’s right! It’s time! It’s morning! You were both-” Anna threw a pillow with surprising aim across the bedroom, nailing Lucy mid-sentence. Seb, from beside her, pat her on the shoulder.

  “Good throw,” he groaned. Anna gave a half grunt in reply.

  “We’ve got things to do! Pces to go! Breakfast to eat and clinics to visit!” Seb blinked, trying to imagine why any of them would need to visit the clinic. None of the girls had had sex, had they? He had been drunk but not that drunk. Besides, they were all in the same room, and there… well, Seb hadn’t had sex with any of them.

  “Clinic?” Anna’s voice sounded about as good he felt. Lucy nodded and spread the blinds, and Anna and Seb both groaned.

  “Yep! Margot’s already up and showered, and we’re going to get breakfast at the dining hall. All of us. And then we’re going to talk about what the hell kind of mess Vi just got into!” She said it all with a kind of chipperness that made Seb even more nauseous than he had been before. Breakfast? Mess? Margot already up and showering, good for her. And then, back around.

  “Clinic?” he repeated, and his voice sounded worse than Anna’s. Lucy came and bounced onto Anna’s bed. She grinned at the pair of them.

  “Yeah, well, you need a tetanus shot,” she said. “Do you know what happens to girls with tetanus?”

  “The same thing that happens to boys with tetanus?” offered Seb.

  “Lockjaw,” said Lucy, matter of factly.

  “Luce,” mumbled Anna, her face half buried in a pillow, “I’m pretty sure tetanus kills people.” Lucy nodded, as if she had thought of that too.

  “Exactly,” she said. She cpped once, loudly. Both girls flinched. She cpped again, and Seb sat up, rubbing his eyes.

  It really shouldn’t be morning yet.

  Amendment.

  It really should never, ever be morning.

  “God,” he said.

  “Re-fucking-tweet,” mumbled Anna into her pillow. Lucy smiled at Seb, and Seb closed an eye to prevent blindness at the earnestness.

  “We’re going to talk about everything from st night, and I’m going to kick your ass,” she said, all prim and proper, and Seb had to ugh. Lucy grinned. “Mess. So, so, so much mess, Vio Collins.” Seb didn’t have the heart to correct her this early. Or at all. He flopped back into the covers, and Anna groaned. Lucy bat the comforter.

  “How bad’s my ankle?” he asked. Now that he remembered, now that he could pce a throbbing pain besides the ones in his head and every single joint in his body, there was a dull pain in his right leg. Somewhere just a couple of inches above his foot.

  “Bad,” called Margot, reentering the room, a towel wrapped into her hair. “We looked while you were still passed out.”

  “And thus the clinic,” supplied Lucy again.

  “The shot’s a real bitch,” said Margot. “Like, really not fun. I accidentally put my hand through a nail when I was a kid and I remember the pain of the shot more than the pain of the nail.” Seb turned into the sheets.

  “That seems a tad dramatic,” he said. Tetanus couldn’t be that bad. Couple more hours of sleep, rid himself of the hangover, and then he’d prevent lockjaw. Or death. Whatever.

  Lucy bat the comforter again.

  “Up!” she called. Anna groaned again. “Up!”

  “You’re insufferable, Lucy,” said Anna. “What’s another hour?”

  “The dining hall switches to lunch in two, and if Vi’s going to get into the clinic before and we’re going to have a full brunch-”

  “If I sit up will you tone it down?” asked Seb. Lucy nodded. Seb pushed himself up on his hands. “Do we have water?”

  “And Gatorade,” offered Margot. Seb let out a little whine of approval, and Margot grinned. “Blue or yellow?”

  “I literally do not care,” said Seb, holding out both hands. Margot twisted to Anna’s desk, picked up a bottle filled with blue liquid, and tossed it to Seb. “I love you so much.” Margot waved a hand through the air as if to say ‘yeah, yeah’, and Seb cracked the bottle.

  “Anna,” called Lucy, sing song again.

  “I want to move in with someone else next year,” said Anna into the sheets. Lucy rolled her eyes.

  “Think about how nice it’s going to be to have bacon and eggs and coffee and a shower.” Lucy crinkled her nose. “Actually, you both should have a shower.” Seb, shielding his eyes from the sun, shrugged.

  “Did you forget that I don’t actually live in this hall? No towel, no soap.”

  “You can borrow mine,” said Lucy, shaking her head. “Soap, I mean. I have spare towels. But if we’re going to spend the whole day in the car together, you’re going to shower at some point.” Seb blinked.

  “The car?” Lucy rolled her eyes and hopped off the bed.

  “Do you think I’m chipper just for fun?” she asked.

  “Yes,” replied Anna and Seb in unison.

  “It’s Spring Break,” said Lucy. “And no hangover will prevent the fact that we have a whole week of nothing but the beach from brightening my mood. Not even Vio’s festering wound!” She gnced at Seb’s ankle and shuddered. Then, she pounded the bnket. “Up!”

  * * * * *

  Seb, as it turned out, was not at great risk for tetanus. The clinic doctor seemed vastly more concerned at the potential of infection, given the depth of the wound—at least a centimeter, which crified nothing for Seb—and the retive amateur work of cleaning it, something Lucy harrumphed at, and Seb had walked away with both a tetanus shot, precautionary, and an antibiotic, necessary. And then it was off to the dinning hall, Seb doing his best not to feel completely and entirely out of it.

  No food, no water, a swimming brain just now starting to pull out of the morning lull, the worst hangover he’d ever nursed, and the memories. The memories and the dream.

  He felt a little queasy thinking about all of it. 11a.m., but he hadn’t yet given himself the full rundown of the night. Oh, he had the highlights. The highlights were seared into his brain. Cam arriving. Being talked into the party. Going to the party. Seeing David. Flirting with David. Almost kissing David.

  And the vision of him. Him in his t-shirt, running a hand through his messy hair, Seb’s leg… well, Vio’s leg, in his p, his eyes peering into hers. It made Seb shudder to even think about.

  And then there was the dream.

  But first, before any of that, before Lucy could jump down his throat, something he promised to let her do, Seb needed food. He needed a mountain of food and a gallon of coffee and some other extravagant amount of Tylenol, whatever the measurement of that that would get him over this headache. A bottle. Maybe two.

  Anna informed him, after he verbalized that measurement, that it would probably kill him.

  Two birds.

  “More eggs!” offered Lucy, settling herself back at the long, stretching table. She and Margot had managed themselves on one side; the retively unscathed side, opposite to Anna and Seb, who both seemed liable to keel over at any moment. Or, at least Seb felt it, and Anna looked it. Lucy slid a pte of piled eggs, wrapped by bacon, towards the pair of them. God, she was so chipper.

  “You were drinking too,” said Seb, eying her. “How are you this awake?”

  “You sober up fast when you have to manage people,” said Lucy. Seb looked back to the eggs. The scolding was coming. Imminent. He had half avoided it in the Uber on account of Anna, who Lucy spent a good deal of the ride coaxing out of throwing up, only to ter request that the driver pull over so Anna could do just that. But, eventually, they’d have to talk about the Vio of it all.

  The David of it all.

  He’d nearly kissed him. He nearly kissed David, and that felt horrific and awful because he hadn’t been him st night. David had no idea that, beneath the makeup and the top and the wig was pin old Seb, a boy he would never kiss. And Seb had flirted with him, flirted with him all night, and now, now there was penance to be paid. Stupid. Stupid stupid stupid.

  Honestly, he was just grateful that Lucy had managed to get him away before he’d actually gone through with it. Seb already had enough to nervous about.

  “I’m getting more coffee,” croaked Anna, swiveling gracelessly off the bench. Seb held up his mug, and Anna stumbled off with it.

  “I’m going to have to move to Rome,” said Seb, to no one in particur. The whole country was toxic at this point. Wherever he went, someone would know, surely. Someone would have…

  Okay, he was being dramatic, but he was thinking very, very hard about the bus stop.

  “It’s going to be fine,” said Margot, gently. “Cam didn’t think a thing of it.” Seb cringed.

  “Cam’s not the one I’m worried about,” he said.

  “We’re going to figure it out,” said Lucy, matter of factly. “And it will be tricky, if for no other reason than, well, the name and the face and the fact that, apparently, you can’t be in the same room as the man without tripping over yourself to touch him.”

  “I’m much better in css,” offered Seb, and Lucy rolled her eyes and grinned.

  “I’m sure Seb is a master at not touching David Oliver, but Vio…” She shook her head. “Didn’t help that he was like, magnetized to you too.” Seb felt the heat rise in his face. He felt pretty bad about that, all things considered. David, Vio… Seb.

  He blinked, briefly remembering that Vio had a commitment to Seb as well.

  “I still owe you after you somehow roped me into having a crush on myself,” said Seb. Lucy took a bite of eggs.

  “I think I’ve paid my debt,” she said. “Given that I had to chaperone the pair of you for like, at least an hour.”

  “It was not that long,” said Seb, defensively.

  “It felt that long,” countered Lucy. Seb frowned into his pte of bacon. He’d grabbed a bagel over Lucy’s protestations, too.

  “Sorry,” he murmured. Lucy let out half a sigh and grinned.

  “You aren’t actually expecting me to scold you, are you?” she asked. Seb frowned.

  “I don’t know,” he murmured. Maybe it was just the hangover, but everything he had done st night felt scold worthy. Everything felt like it had earned a rebuke of some kind, whether from Lucy or from something else, and that it hadn’t yet come, even as Lucy had promised it, was starting to wear on him.

  Where was the punishment? Where were the consequences of what he had thrown himself into?

  The better question, he supposed, was when.

  “It’s going to be okay,” said Lucy, softly, now fully switching. “I promise, Vi, we’re going to figure this out.” Seb squeezed his eyes shut. Correct her. He ought to correct her. He ought to have corrected her before.

  It was what had put them here, wasn’t it? Going along? Letting himself be carried by the feelings, letting the feelings spill out into the open, letting himself indulge? And that name… that name felt like an indulgence now. Vio. Vi. She was someone he could not be, someone who’s entire identity had been, would be, had to be a rejection of Sebastian, and there was no rejecting Sebastian.

  Nowhere exemplified that more than the clinic. He’d had to pass across the insurance card his parents had given him, the one they were paying for, the one with SEBASTIAN COLLINS typed out in big, bold lettering. That was who he was. That was who he had to be to go to school here, to stop himself from getting an infection, to keep a retionship with his parents. Seb.

  He worried that he had already figured it out. He worried that Lucy’s promise to help, promise to help him figure out what the hell to do was all for naught. That he’d found the answer st night, somewhere between the near miss kiss and the Uber ride home, imagining himself as her forever, imagining the life he could have had if he had, earnestly, been her from the start. Imagining, precisely, what life could have been for Vio Collins.

  But he couldn’t say that.

  “Yeah,” he said, instead. Margot took a heavy sip of her coffee and then nodded.

  “We will have to figure out something with David,” she said. “I mean, it didn’t seem like he knew-”

  “We need to head him off,” confirmed Lucy. Another heavy breath from her. “Look, with the names Sebastian and Vio, and with how much that boy likes Shakespeare, well…” Seb blinked, jolting back to the other problem at hand, the one he wasn’t entirely trying to sort in his head.

  “The names?” And he only registered now that she’d said it earlier. Anna settled beside him on the bench. No, actually, settled was far too graceful of a word to describe how she sat. More of a plop. She slid a coffee in front of him. Lucy pursed her lips.

  “You’re in a Shakespeare css,” she said, ftly. Seb frowned and shook his head. Lucy grimaced further. “You cannot be serious.”

  “Lucy, I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Seb. Lucy let out a heavy breath.

  “No appreciation for the cssics!” she cried. Seb flinched at the loudness of it. More coffee. He took a sip. Lucy bit her lip and shook her head. “Seb and Vio are… well, they’re interconnected as names.”

  “Okay” said Seb.

  “No,” said Lucy, shaking her head, clearly aware that Seb had no idea why that mattered. “No, like…” She frowned. “Okay, for starters, can I just say that I’m sorry for this? Like, I didn’t know this was going to be leaving the room, and now that it has, well, I feel a bit like a bitch, and honestly, it is funny-”

  “Spit it out, Luce,” said Seb, sitting forward. He was a little nervous now. Lucy rambling? Never a good sign. She twisted her thumbs into her palm.

  “Right, well…” she let out a breath. “I don’t suppose you’ve ever read Twelfth Night?”

  “Never heard of it,” said Seb.

  “Right,” said Lucy. “Well, Twelfth Night is about a woman who dresses up as a man for safety. She crashes on the shore of an isnd, and, you know, it’s like, way back when it was dangerous to be a woman.” She paused. “Or, like, more dangerous to be a woman.” She paused again. “And, it should be said, a lot of iterations actually imply that she is a man, like a trans man. Gosh, sometimes they just state it! Mostly queerer readings, and mostly in pces not-”

  “Lucy!”

  “Right, right,” said Lucy, catching herself. “Sorry.” Another heavy breath. “Well, the girl in Twelfth Night is named Vio.” Seb blinked.

  “You named me after a cross-dresser?” Lucy grimaced.

  “Okay, don’t be mad yet, because it gets worse,” she said.

  “Worse?” Seb couldn’t imagine worse, but Lucy’s grimace deepened.

  “Worse,” she confirmed. “In the py, her twin brother’s name is… well, his name is Sebastian.” Seb could feel his eyebrows hit his hairline. Lucy closed her eyes and shook her head. “Don’t look at me like that yet, because…”

  “Because it gets worse,” finished Seb.

  “In the py, Vio dresses as a guy named Caesario. Totally makes him up.” She swallowed. “But, in the re-tellings, the modern ones, they have… well, they can’t have her use the name Caesario. And they’re looking for more hyjinks, so they… well, they have her dress up as Sebastian.” She shook her head. “Totally out of line, in my opinion, but, like, yeah…” She sort of faded off, clearly trying not to look at Seb. “I’m so sorry.”

  “You named me after a cross-dresser?” repeated Seb. It was… well, it was almost comical. It would have been comical, really, genuinely comical, if it wasn’t just about to blow up his entire life. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.

  “And David likes Shakespeare,” whispered Lucy.

  And there was the hammer. David liked Shakespeare. David, most certainly, had read Twelfth Night, and David, most certainly, could put together an association between the names Vio and Sebastian, and David, most certainly, would have no trouble snapping Sebastian like a pencil.

  “Fuck,” whispered Seb.

  He hadn’t thought about the night enough. Not with his head pounding, his ankle throbbing, and his body aching for food. There hadn’t been time. There hadn’t been enough fuel to get him anywhere close to breaking down what had really happened, but it was here now. It was running through his head at breakneck speed, and he was trying to remember if he had entirely, completely sacrificed himself for a single night. Had he said something to give himself away? Had this whole thing, this whole ruse, provided David the chance to drop him like a stone?

  David would know. Maybe not through the alcohol induced haze of Friday night, but he would know eventually. He was too smart not to. He was too clued in to all of the things he needed to be too clued in to, and that would be the end of it.

  Fucking Shakespeare.

  “We’re going to figure it out,” said Lucy, quietly. Seb looked at her.

  “How?” he asked. Because the answer to ‘how do you convince the boy that already has all of the ingredients to put this thing together’ didn’t seem to exist. They couldn’t take any of it back. They couldn’t put Vio, name and face and social circle, back into the box that it had emerged from. David had those. He would always have those.

  Lucy sat forward, drumming her fingers.

  “I’m working on it,” she said, and Seb put his head down onto the table.

  Working on it. Working on an impossible problem, one that didn’t, really, have a solution other than wishing catastrophic brain trauma upon David Oliver. Working on it as if he didn’t have everything he needed, as if he wasn’t so close to the answer already. And when he did…

  ‘Dropped like a stone’ was the charitable guess on what would happen. The more realistic guess, the one steeped in what Seb knew of boys and masculinity and what happened when you infringed upon their masculinity, was a kind of head trauma of his own. Even David, kind, sweet David, was a man. And manhood needed to be fiercely defended, and the idea that Vio had tricked him, the idea that it had been Seb the whole time, that Sebastian Collins had stripped away bits of his masculinity, could change which David he saw.

  David Oliver was straight, and Sebastian Collins had nearly tricked him into a kiss. And that was oversimplification, but accusations of infringement didn’t work on a scale of nuance. They worked on what they had. And what they had, in this case, was a boy who had almost kissed another boy while thinking he was a girl. And it didn’t get more cut and dry than that.

  This wasn’t the dorm room. This wasn’t Seb being Vio for them, for himself. It was different. And maybe David would have been okay with him dressing up, with him infringing on his own masculinity, but him infringing on David’s too?

  “Oh, god,” said Seb, quietly. “I’m so fucked.” Lucy reached across the table and took his hand.

  “We’re going to figure it out,” she whispered. Anna and Margot both nodded.

  “It’s going to be okay,” said Margot.

  “I’m going to die,” said Seb. It felt true. It felt so, so true, so catastrophically true. He couldn’t see a way out. His mind was clear now, free of alcohol and sufficiently fed, and it was ripping through the memories of the night before. Vio and Cam. Vio and the girls. Vio and David. Vio in the crop top and jeans, wig pstered to her head, hair cascading down her back, and he couldn’t see a world where it didn’t come out.

  And when it did…

  Sebastian wanted to run. He wanted to run and to never come back, to never look at Garnd State ever again, to leave it all behind, to go and go and go. The bus, the road, whatever. He would literally run if he had to, literally walk from here until there was a pce where no one knew who he was, where no one would hurt him for that, where no one would see the painted face of Vio on top of his.

  He wanted to run.

  He sank down towards the table, letting his forehead rest on the edge. He should have known. He should have known that if he indulged this, if he really, really indulged this, pyed with fire, he would be burned. And now, with the echoing memories of her leg pressed up on David’s thigh, his hands wrapped around her waist, he had been burned.

  He needed to leave.

  “Can we go?” he whispered.

  * * * * *

  Lucy’s beach house, or, he supposed, Lucy’s parents’ beach house, was nicer than Seb had even expected. He made a mental note that, if he ever talked to David ever again, and David wasn’t breaking his bones during that conversation, to tell him that Lucy really was rich. He’d been half joking when he said it before, but this house, something that they only vacationed in, was at least twice as big as the Collins’ house. Seb was shocked that the staircase didn’t spiral.

  There were enough bedrooms for them to all have their own, and so Seb settled his suitcase on the second floor in the room with two twin beds. Lucy had occupied her parents’ bedroom, which came with an overhanging balcony that you could see the ocean from, just a hundred yards away, Anna the room across the hall, and Margot had taken the downstairs option.

  All three of them had immediately decamped to the hot tub, a prominent feature on the back deck, and left Seb alone. Intentionally, Seb suspected.

  Which was fine. Really, it was fine that they wanted to leave him alone to wallow and swallow all the fear that was consuming him. In the drive over, two hours east, he’d said almost nothing to the three of them. Anna had, at a couple of points, tried to initiate some kind of conversation, clearly trying to steer him out of his shell, but Seb had deflected. Comforting, talking, none of it would get him out of the grave he had dug for himself. None of it would solve the problem.

  And there was that bus. Sunday, 11 am, heading north, heading away from everything. He’d thought about it on the ride over, about that release valve, the ‘pull in case of emergency’ release valve. Because, god, there really wasn’t an emergency bigger than this, was there? If there was a time when Sebastian Collins needed to go, needed to disappear into the long stretches of I-95, it was now.

  It would be brutal and hard but he’d done a mental calcution of the money he had saved up and the bits and pieces of his life that he could sell, and he figured he could find a pce to stay for a few nights, long enough to try to find work. A room somewhere. Or, god, he could stop somewhere before New York, somewhere that looked good, somewhere that wasn’t filled with oversized quarterbacks and sprawling, unnatural wns and buildings made of clean, white stone. People said nice things about Richmond.

  He’d pick up a couple of essentials this week; a phone, something not on his parents’ pn, along with a better jacket and a pair of new shoes, both of which had been on a long list of things he needed to do and yet had never seemed urgent before. And then, when he got back to campus, he’d sell some things at the little flea market in town, whatever he didn’t need, and he’d be gone.

  That was the solution. That was the solution none of the girls could think of because they were thinking of burying him deeper. That was the actual solution, the one that didn’t end in him dead.

  He unzipped the suitcase, the one with all of the relentlessly Seb attire, the ill-fitting t-shirts and the heavy cargo shorts and the baggy jeans, the kind that Danny would never say a word about, and started at. Then, he flipped it closed.

  He needed a walk. He needed to put his feet in the sand.

  From the deck below, a few giggles reached his window.

  Seb sighed. It felt impossible to face them. He had, in the car, already known that he would not tell them of his pn to leave. He couldn’t. There would be a harebrained pn, some kind of perfect escape route that they had crafted, and they would pitch it until it, somehow, made sense. Until it somehow worked its way far enough into his brain to be the answer to the impossible question.

  And then, just like st night’s had, it would fall apart.

  So, this week, and no weeks after that.

  Downstairs, through the kitchen, and out onto the deck, where all three girls were settled in the hot tub, their hair thoroughly strewn, their faces unmade, and, yet, still beautiful. Seb pushed away the stinging in his throat. They looked up as he exited.

  “Coming in?” asked Lucy. Seb shook his head. The idea of joining the three of them, of sitting in the boiling water, made his brain prickle.

  “I was going to go for a walk,” he said. “Down by the beach.” Anna jumped, water sloshing out.

  “We’ll come,” she said, quickly. Seb shook his head again. He didn’t want them to come. He didn’t want to be with them. He didn’t want them to be witness to Sebastian Collins, to stand next to him on the beach, their feet in the sand next to him. He wanted to be alone. Alone.

  “No,” he said. “No, it’s fine. I won’t be long. I just want to stick my feet in.”

  “It’s beautiful at sunset,” said Lucy. “I mean, the sun doesn’t set over the water or anything, but it’s pretty! We can all-”

  “Really guys,” said Seb. “It’s fine.”

  He started his feet again before they could protest further, heavy footsteps on minated pnks until he reached the little set of stairs, and he took them in a second, and then it was just sand beneath his feet.

  One hundred yards to the beach, and he had nowhere to go. He just… he couldn’t look at them right now. There was a swirling jealousy rotting the inside of his throat, and he could not stand to put it on them. They got to be. They got to be.

  His steps quickened.

  Past a set of dunes, dunes he nearly tripped over in his rush to get to the water. He wanted to wash away. He wanted to go stand with his feet in, his knees in, up to his neck in the bellowing waves of the Atntic, and he wanted to wash away.

  As a kid, he had come to the ocean twice. Never a beach as nice as this one, never as clear and empty, never backed by the wooden walls of beach houses. And he had always feared the water, always been scared of it. He had liked to stand on the shore, to watch the water crash down on nd, watch it pull away bits of South Carolina, erasing the beach in slow, methodical pieces. He had liked that because he could always stand far enough away from the water to be safe. He liked that there was the distance between him and the chaos.

  And then his feet touched the water, felt the cold, and he slowed.

  New York.

  New York brought its own problems, didn’t it? New York, where he knew no one, where the little money he had bought less. And wherever he went, Sebastian would still be there. On the insurance card, and on the bank account, and in the flesh. And New York might not kill him immediately, but eventually?

  He stood, the water ankle deep, waiting for it to swell rger, waiting for the caps to smash down twenty yards in front of him and hurl water towards his knees. And he imagined wading out deeper and deeper into the ocean, deep enough that the waves could colpse on him, colpse him, take his body away like they did the bits of sand and shells, beat his body smooth like they did the stones.

  He imagined dying. He imagined drowning, imagined everything fading away, all the problems that had been swirling and holding him, New York and Garnd and all of it, disappearing. He imagined everything that was Sebastian Collins, every corner of his life and his being, and he imagined them sinking to the bottom of the ocean.

  The ocean could wipe him away. It could wipe away everything. He could disappear into it, wash out to the deepest parts of the Atntic, away from the shore and Garnd and the life he was in the process of destroying, away from his family, away from the dread.

  The remnants of a stronger wave pped against his ankles, and the wound, wrapped in gauze, stung in the salt. He closed his eyes.

  She had been real.

  Vio had been real.

  He had been Vio, in that chair, seated across from David. And she had been confident and stupid and real, and she had felt oh, so wonderful, and the memory of the night, of the wound, of her, caused a rattling breath.

  There had always been the dreams of being a woman. The yearnings that he could never put a name to, or perhaps just didn’t want to. He had imagined it. He had imagined it for years, imagined himself as Keira Knightley standing on the deck of a wooden ship, imagined himself as a girl.

  And now, the dreams were repced by memory. It wasn’t something fanciful he had cooked up in his bedroom. Vio had been real. He had been Vio. Right now, the water was stinging at his ankle, reminding him that he had been her. Not in a dream. Not in his imagination. In the flesh.

  And the ocean would beat that away, too. It would beat away the memory, beat away the good, beat away the girl who had emerged from inside her, the girl Vio never knew she could be. It would beat away Vio.

  Vio opened her eyes and watched the capping waves. The ocean offered finality. It offered an end, a close, an answer to the tugging part of her that had always wanted to flee. It promised silence.

  Vio didn’t want silence.

  She had known. She had known from the start, from even before then, if she thought about it long enough. There had always been the tugging, pressing feeling, and she’d held it at arm’s length because she had to. Because the women on those forums, the ones where she’d learned to copy Keira’s voice, had spoken of lives bathed in pain. Joy, too, but pain. Lost families, lost friends. Blood. And to listen to herself, to listen to the part of her brain that screamed, was to sign up for her own set.

  Her parents. Her parents would think her an abomination, and the insurance was in their name, and this was a fucking state school in South Carolina, and she still only had about five hundred dolrs.

  But she was going to have to run anyway, wasn’t she? She was going to have to run, and if she was going to have to run, she might as well run as Vio.

  She bit back her breath, let it out, and turned from the water, back towards the beach.

  On the dunes, her blonde hair blowing in the wind, her legs folded neatly below her and her eyes on Vi, was Margot. She gave Vio a little wave, a pcid look on her face. Vi gathered herself and started towards her. It was only when she was within a few feet that she finally said, “Hi.” It came out half gargled, half swallowed by the wind.

  “How’s the water?” asked Margot.

  “Cold,” said Vi. She settled herself down next to her.

  “Lucy said it would be,” said Margot.

  “You didn’t need to come down,” said Vi . Margot gave her a look, her eyes firm.

  “I’m not stupid,” she said, quietly.

  “I know,” said Vio. They sat in silence for a few long seconds, the wind picking at the stray strands of Vio’s hair.

  “I told them I was coming down to put my feet in,” said Margot.

  “Thanks,” murmured Vi. It made her feel like shit that they were worried. Guilty. Guilt that, even if she wasn’t pnning on dying, she was pnning on running, running and not telling them a thing.

  “Wanna talk about it?” asked Margot, gently.

  “Are you going to let me say no?” asked Vio. Margot grinned.

  “Probably not,” she said. “I mean, I’m not saying you need to dig it up or anything, but I came down and you were staring out at the ocean for, like, a full five minutes.” Vio put her head onto her knees and stared out at the water.

  “I didn’t realize it was that long,” she said.

  “Well, I didn’t time it,” said Margot.

  “Everything’s just so fucked,” said Vio.

  “Yeah,” agreed Margot.

  “I feel trapped,” she said. And it felt revetory to say that, to vocalize it. It had been true the whole time, but to say it out loud… “I just feel trapped.”

  It wasn’t even that she was trans. There was, of course, the twisting knot seeing them in the hot tub, the three of them born the way she wished she was made, but it was more, too. She had been so free at the party, felt so right, and now there was this feeling that it could never happen again, that she could never interact with David, that she could never be Vio without running the risk of showing the world.

  And the world. What a world it was. Her family and her college and her state and her whole fucking country, and she wished she could just ignore it, just be Vio, just pop up at a party and be the girl and not worry about any of the consequences. She wished there was no awkwardness to be had around it, no pain, no blood-soaked paths she would have to walk to be Vio again, permanently, but it was only blood-soaked paths.

  “You are trans, right?” said Margot, with a sort of pinness, and it jolted Vio back. Then, she ughed.

  She was so relieved that someone else had said the word first, that someone else had confirmed it before she had to. She knew that had to know, knew it had to be kind of, sort of on their minds, but to have Margot actually say it, actually bring it up, lifted a massive weight off her.

  “That’s kind of forward of you,” said Vio. Margot smiled.

  “I found it easier to just be asked straight out.” Vio blinked at her, and Margot giggled. “Oh, no, I don’t mean that I’m trans. I mean, at least I don’t think so.” She pushed a hand through her hair. “When I was in high school, I was…” She frowned, considering, then shrugged. “Well, I was brutally depressed for most of it. And suicidal.” And that came as pin as the question had. Margot pushed ahead before Vio could ruminate on it further. “Not that it’s the same thing, obviously, but, like, I went to a couple therapists who sort of dodged around things in our opening session. You know, kinda prodded me to get me to say more about it. It was like they were afraid if they brought it up, if they asked me straight out, it would make it worse.

  And then I went to one and he kinda just put it on the table. You know, was like ‘You think about killing yourself, don’t you?’ And, I don’t know, it was a lot easier to just say ‘yes’ than it was to come out and say ‘I think about killing myself’. And it helped. It felt like I didn’t need to be weird about it, because he had said it so pinly and so easily, and then I wasn’t, like, terrified of admitting it. It was just nice. And… I don’t know, I wished everyone in my life would ask me things like that.” Margot swallowed and grimaced at Vi. “And for what it’s worth, I’m going to ask you the depressed question, too.”

  Vio ughed at that, too.

  “That’s fair,” she said. She swallowed the rest of the ugh. “I didn’t know.” Margot shrugged.

  “It’s not exactly riveting material,” she said. “Teenage girl is depressed. Teenage girl gets on Lexapro. Teenage girl is no longer depressed.” She grinned. “It also is a bit of a downer, if I’m honest, to go around telling people I used to fantasize about dying.” Vi gave her a half smile. Margot sighed melodramatically. “Okay, well it’s a downer for most people.”

  “I’m very sympathetic,” said Vi.

  “I’m worried about that, yes,” said Margot, and Vi bumped shoulders with her.

  “It’s… it’s going to be fine, I think,” she said. Vio didn’t want to die. Seb, maybe, and maybe if things got worse from here, but it was better to be Vio in New York than Seb in the Atntic. “At least that bit.”

  “And the other bit?” asked Margot, an eyebrow raised.

  “Which bit?” asked Vi, innocently.

  “The bit where you’ve actually been a girl this whole time,” said Margot. Vio shrugged and dug her feet further into the sand. “Oh, boo!” Vio ughed.

  “What, are you going to make me say it?”

  “I’ll at least hear you say ‘yes’,” said Margot, leaning back onto the dune, smiling. “I mean, things can only get better if you say it out loud.” Vio certain that wasn’t true. But she was pretty sure they couldn’t get worse.

  “Yes,” she said, with a heavy breath. She’d barely hit the st sylble by the time Margot strangled her in a hug. “God, Margot!”

  “I’m so proud of you!” she squealed, a complete departure from the mature, grounded voice she’d been holding, and Vio couldn’t help but giggle.

  “Margot,” she said again, smiling. Margot pulled back, beaming at her.

  “Thank god,” she said. “I was worried you were going to drag it out.”

  “I feel like I have been,” admitted Vio. Then, thinking of Anna and Lucy. “Do they already know?” She gestured back in the direction of the house. Margot shrugged.

  “It’s not been a difficult guess,” she said. “I mean, Anna figured a while ago, and I figured when there was the whole voice thing, and I think it sorta clicked for Lucy st night?” She smiled. “I mean, no one will push you on it if you’re not ready, but it does sort of feel like you’re a very bad guy and a very good girl.” She closed her eyes. “Not what I meant.” Vio giggled.

  “Yeah,” she said. “There were, um…”

  “Clues?” offered Margot.

  “More like massive blinking signs,” said Vio. “The whole Vio thing, really.”

  “That did tip me off a little,” said Margot, nodding along. “That and the fact that any time you had to be Sebastian again, you looked like you wanted to throw up a little.” Vio looked down at the t-shirt currently fpping into the wind.

  “It’s not my favorite,” she said.

  “We really can teach you makeup and stuff, you know?” said Margot. And Vi felt a little pang in her chest. If she stayed. If she stayed, they could, and Margot thought she would still be here.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “God, Lucy’s going to be insufferable,” said Margot, ughing. “Oh, she’s going to want to mother you even more than… well, even more than she did st night.” Vi let out half a ugh, then reigned it in. Last night.

  “Fuck,” she said, shaking her head. “Fuck me.” She set her eyes back on the ocean. “What the fuck am I going to do?” Margot’s hand settled on hers.

  “Well,” she started, “there’s nothing you need to do today. Or tomorrow. This week is, like, just a freebie. We all know, and we all love you, and if you wanted to go into town as, well, as yourself, no one would even bat an eye. And we have time to think. Like, at least a week to come up with a pn.” She grinned. “Besides, David’s already stabbed you. It’s not like it can escate from there.” Vio closed her eyes and ughed at that, a real one.

  “Good point,” she said, even though it wasn’t.

  “He really is a good guy, you know?” said Margot. “Not like… it’s not that I don’t get why you’re worried.” She took a breath. “David’s a best case scenario kind of guy, I think. Like, he really would never beat you up or anything.” Vio swallowed and nodded.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “Seriously, Vi, I know… well, I know it’s scary,” she shook her head, blonde hair flying everywhere. “Are you going to come out?”

  “No,” said Vio, almost too quickly for her own good. For one, she wasn’t even pnning to be here long enough for that to be a possibility. For another, coming out would have scared her shitless in the best of circumstances. Even if st night hadn’t happened, it would have involved being out at this school. And she knew there were gay people, and there probably were trans people, too, but she’d never seen them. They kept things hidden. Sure, Lucy had mentioned the boys in theater, but that was different. They weren’t in her csses, and they weren’t out on the quad, and as far as she could tell, there was a pretty damn good reason for that.

  And then st night had happened, and that meant coming out would require a sort of second confession. She would have to fess up to being at that frat party. And, sure, maybe David Oliver was cool, and maybe that went fine, but there had been at least a half a dozen other guys who had come up to her. And if she was out so publicly, and they recognized her, recognized that they had hit on the girl who had been the boy and now they… “Definitely not.”

  “Right,” said Margot, slowly. “Right. And so…” The implied question. ‘If you’re not coming out, what’s the pn here?’ Implied question, ungivable answer.

  “I’ll figure it out,” she murmured. Margot squeezed her hand.

  “We’ll figure it out,” she said. “Not just you.” Vio nodded.

  “Okay,” she said. Deep breaths. “Okay, we’ll figure it out.” They sat in silence for a long few moments before Margot spoke again, the wind pressing heavier against them.

  “If you need to talk about the other thing,” said Margot. “We can. I mean, I don’t know. I’m sure it’s more symptom than cause-”

  “You’re such a psych major,” said Vio, grinning at her. Margot rolled her eyes.

  “Well, duh,” she said. She took a breath. “But I meant more as a friend, I guess. Just like… you know, don’t walk off into the ocean, right?” Vio leaned her head on Margot’s shoulder and nodded.

  “I won’t,” she promised.

  * * * * *

  Back to the house, over the spit of sand that separated the dunes from the deck, where Anna and Lucy had abandoned the hot tub. Vio decided that she needed a shower, that she needed to wash the bits of sand from her feet and her back and her legs, and Margot pointed to a little wooden stall on the side of the house.

  “Outdoor shower,” she informed her, happily. “I’ve always loved them.” Vio gnced at her, eyebrow raised, and Margot giggled. “It’s nice! You can look at the sky while you shower. Plus, you don’t drag sand in.”

  “Right,” said Vio, deciding that, in the scheme of things, arguing over the merits of an outdoor shower, which didn’t seem like an effective way to get clean, was not on the table. “Can you grab me a towel?”

  “Surely,” said Margot, and Vio smiled.

  “Thanks,” she said. She went around the edge of the house, towards the stall, and slipped inside. Keys and wallet out of one pocket, and she slipped them onto a little holder next to the shower. Then, phone.

  Messages.

  She had been so wrapped up all day, that checking her messages had been set on the backburner. That phone pertained to that life, and the people calling and texting were calling and texting him, and while she hadn’t gotten over the hump at breakfast, she’d known enough not to care.

  Still.

  She picked through them. One from her mother; she’d received an email after Vio had visited the clinic from the insurance, and she wanted to know what had happened. That one she probably owed some sort of response to. A couple texts in a group chat of high school friends she hadn’t responded to in nearly a month, both mildly funny jokes. And then…

  David Oliver.

  David Oliver had texted her. Or, perhaps more accurately, David Oliver had texted him, and that was sort of weird, because David Oliver had only ever texted Seb to set up study sessions or for notes, and it was Spring Break. Vio held her breath.

  David: hey

  Oh, well that cleared up what kind of conversation he was looking for, thanks David.

  Vio closed her eyes. Did he know? Was he texting because he had already figured it out? Maybe he really was setting up a study session, and the topic for study would be ‘what do the insides of Vio Collins look like.

  David Collins had never texted before. He had never, ever texted before.

  And yet.

  The night hadn’t been wonderful just because she had been Vio. That had mostly been it, but there was more to it than that. There was the David of it all. David Oliver had surpassed all expectations, every time she set them. She had expected the dumb jock, and she had gotten him instead. Sweet, helpful, kind David Oliver. And maybe he was still that guy. Maybe he was better than the kind of guy who would kill her on sight.

  It was a hopeful guess.

  The better, safer py was to py dumb.

  Seb: hey

  She paused, wondered if it was smart to leave it at that, and then plunged forward. Take control, right? She should try to take control.

  Seb: lucy said you guys met up st night

  Seb: how was the party

  She let out a heavy breath. Okay. Okay okay okay. Pusible deniability at least. Force David to make the guess if he had put it together. Force David to actually come out and ask her if he had worked out the truth. That was the best option. Make it as hard as possible, make him really think that he was going crazy, that his brain had rattled into something ridiculous. No confessions until asked.

  David still hadn’t responded, and she refused to be the kind of girl who waited around for him to text back, even if she knew that wasn’t what Anna meant whenever she repeated it to Margot, and so she turned on the shower and stuck the phone in the cubby.

  By the time Margot had come back to throw a towel over the top of the stall door and slide a bit of soap under as well, Vi had spent a nice three or four minutes standing perfectly still in boiling water, her eyes periodically drifting back to the cubby, waiting for it to light up.

  “Lucy says the hot water runs out after, like, fifteen minutes, so don’t waste it!” called Margot.

  “Thanks,” said Vio. She leaned back against one of the wood panels.

  Her mind had started running through all the things those girls on those forums had been doing. Not just the voice stuff, but other stuff. There had been medical things, too, things that would make this body more patable, things that cost money and time and effort, and she was wondering exactly what bits of that were achievable. Five hundred dolrs, probably no insurance, given that she’d gotten a text over a simple anti-biotic, and then what? And then what? She’d be in New York.

  She made a mental note to try and find one of those forums again this week.

  Her phone buzzed, and she jumped to it, ignoring the water spilling down her back.

  David: yeah! met your friend vio

  David: was sort of hoping you might be able to give me her number

  David: i think we sort of hit it off

  Vi felt her stomach flutter.

  If that was just ‘sort of hitting it of’ for David, she wanted to know what really hitting it off was like for him. She pressed the phone to her chest and closed her eyes. Okay. She needed to focus. He did like her, and it wasn’t some hallucination, and that really wasn’t news but there was news.

  David Oliver didn’t know yet.

  David Oliver hadn’t figured it out yet. And, well, that came with its own problems, but it calmed, briefly, the tempest brewing in her stomach. David hadn’t figured it out yet, and he didn’t hate Vio, and he didn’t hate Seb, and, yeah, there still felt like a ticking bomb had been strapped to her chest, but whatever. She’d take the ticking over the actual explosion right now.

  But Vio didn’t have a phone number to give David.

  Seb: I can give her yours

  The second she sent it, she wished she had considered more before sending. What number was Vio supposed to text him from?

  Okay, stupid question, because Vio shouldn’t text him at all. She was running! And even if she wasn’t, she needed to not be interacting with him more! That was the whole fucking point!

  Too te to take it back though. She could just tell him next time she saw him that she, or rather Seb, had given Vio his number, and if she didn’t text him, so be it. Vio wasn’t interested, and David would just have to suck it up.

  David: cool cool :)

  David: see you back on campus

  Vio, briefly, considered that fessing up and telling him now, admitting what she had done, might be the easiest thing. That it was understandable, really, and that if she told him, there might be leniency. She could text him and apologize and then, maybe, someone else would be the one to snap her in half.

  But Vio wasn’t that stupid.

  Seb: cool cool

  Vi closed her phone, turned off the water, and grabbed the towel, having used the soap exactly zero times.

  Inside, the girls had mostly dispersed; Margot was sitting at the kitchen counter and waved as Vio returned, but said nothing in particur to her. Vi took the stairs to her room and swung the door shut behind her.

  She was exhausted. Exhausted. The night had caught up with her, and the day hadn’t been much lighter. She still carried a bit of a limp, a bit of a headache, and all she wanted to do was lie down and sleep. Tomorrow, in the light of morning, she could respond to her mother and talk to Anna and Lucy. Hell, by then, Margot might have done the work for her.

  God, she might have already.

  The room shared a bath with Anna, and Vi pulled out the pstic bag of toiletries she’d brought from her suitcase and entered. Anna, clearly, had already set up, toothbrush and a startling amount of products littering the counter. Not that it mattered much. The bathroom had more than enough counter space to go along with a pair of sinks, a massive shower, and an even rger mirror, which spanned the whole wall above the sinks.

  Marvel in the morning, Vio, marvel in the morning. She tugged the face wash she’d brought out and started the sink. Then, up to the mirror.

  She blinked at her reflection.

  Right.

  Hi, Sebastian.

  Back down to the face wash.

  Saying the word had done nothing. Admitting it, proving that she could, deciding that, ultimately, what she wanted to be, who she was, was Vio, had done nothing. She would still wake up tomorrow and look in the mirror, and unless the girls were there to turn her back, to twist the dial on femininity, or she got a lot of money very quickly, none of that was going to change. She was going to look in the mirror, and she was going to see Sebastian.

  New York Vio would need to learn quick.

  She rubbed her eyes.

  It had been so easy then. The demarcation had made it so easy. Well, no, it hadn’t, but pretending had given her something. Some kind of excuse. Lucy could work her face, and Margot could coach her into a cute outfit, and Anna could brute force her into a pretty voice, and it was fine because it was for the room. Vio had been free to desire in the room, free to want it, to want to be feminine, and she hadn’t been expected to know any of it. And now…

  God, there was catching up to do. An impossible hill, really. It all felt like an impossible hill. Desire to look pretty, meet skills.

  She rubbed her eyes again.

  Anna’s makeup bag, deep purple and instantly recognizable, sat at the far end of the counter.

  It wouldn’t even be taboo anymore. And Anna wouldn’t care. Vio took the surprising amount of steps to the opposite end of the bathroom, unzipped the bag, and peered in.

  And immediately regretted it.

  There was too much in here. Too many products, too many things that she didn’t know, too many things that she could never get through, and, god, when did they teach these things? When had Anna acquired the skills to pce blush, or eyeliner, or, fuck, lipstick? Vio let out a half sigh, rubbed an eye again, and then snorted. Well, she knew one bit of makeup. She’d watched the girls reapply mascara too many times not to.

  Even if it was the thing that drove her bonkers.

  It took her a long minute to find the tube, pale pink with a bel that read ‘Better Than Sex’, but she managed. Then, she unscrewed the cap, stared at the mirror, and did what she did all of st night, what she’d been doing for the better part of a month.

  She copied the girls.

  When she’d finished, her shes had been coated in thick bck, clumping slightly on the outer edges. She blinked. Stared. Sebastian was still there. He was still in the mirror. But, despite that, it was marginally better. Marginally.

  And that was it. That was enough for now. For now. She returned to her sink and washed her face, washed away the traces of mascara, washed away the bit of Vio she had plumped onto her face, brushed her teeth, and limped into the bedroom, set to colpse into sleep.