CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: Cold OpenCRASH!

  Jamie woke up.

  “The fuck was that?”

  ***

  Forty five minutes ter, Jamie and Sam were sitting at the kitchen table, frowning and talking to a member of the LAPD.

  “Do you know of anyone who would have a reason to throw a brick through your window, Ms. Howard?”

  Sam and Jamie looked at the cop like he was an idiot.

  “Well, at first, I thought it could be a telemarketer trying to get in touch with me regarding my car’s extended warranty. Then I thought it could be a gzier trying to drum up business, but I don’t think so. I think if it was, they would have tied their business card to the brick, not a message that said ‘die pedo scum,’” said Jamie.

  “What Ms. Howard means to say,” said Christopher Roen, standing nearby, making a cup of coffee for himself, "is that she has no idea who would have a reason to throw a brick through her window. And given the nature of the death threat’s wording, it’s very probable that this was a hate crime due to Ms. Howards marginalized status as a transgender woman.”

  “I mean, you’re a celebrity, Ms. Howard. Do you have anyone who you might consider an enemy?”

  “Ms. Howard, don’t answer that,” said Roen.

  “Why, on the grounds that it might incriminate her?”

  “No, on the grounds that Ms. Howard was going to make a joke about how I was someone she considers an enemy, because she is incapable of treating moments of consequence with the requisite gravitas.”

  “I’m sorry,” said the cop. “Who are you again?”

  “Christopher Roen. I’m an attorney on retainer with Garden Alpha and co-worker of Ms. Howard and Ms. Culver. They called me immediately after Ms. Howard called 9-1-1.”

  “Why would you call a wyer right after calling the police?” asked the cop, to Jamie. But it was Roen who answered.

  “Because despite her inopportune frivolity, Ms. Howard is a highly intelligent woman,” said Roen, “and knows that any interaction with w enforcement, no matter how benign, is fraught with legal peril that could nd both herself or the company we both work for in legal jeopardy.”

  The wyer sighed, looking into the living room to see the crime scene team gathering up the st of the evidence.

  “Look, officer…”

  “Officer Morgan.”

  “Officer Morgan. You have the physical evidence, the video from the video doorbell, and Ms. Howard’s and Ms. Culver’s statements. Is there anything else that you need to proceed with your investigation?”

  “No,” said the officer.

  “Ms. Howard, do you have any questions for the officer?”

  “No,” said Jamie.

  “I do,” said Sam. “How the hell did they get your home address, Jamie?”

  “We don’t know, ma’am,” said the officer.

  “I have two theories myself,” said Jamie. “One is that they saw our house in the background of the clip where I freaked out in front of the reporters and went searching on Google Street View for it.”

  “And the other theory?”

  “It was listed on one of those ‘Maps of the Stars Homes’ that street vendors sell.”

  Sam was gobsmacked.

  “You’re telling me you got doxxed by a souvenir?”

  “I’d ask to be taken off, but I’m worried about the Streisand Effect,” said Jamie.

  “Officer Morgan, are we done?” asked Roen.

  “I think so,” said the cop. “I just have one more question - Ms. Howard, Ms. Culver, what is your retionship?”

  “Just friends and co-workers,” said Sam. Then she paused and thought. “Also, technically Jamie’s my ndlord. And neighbor. And business partner. And mentor, sometimes. Even if sometimes our friends joke about us being de facto married.”

  “Really, who?” said Jamie.

  “Julia. She made a joke a while back about how you were my wife, and that we should have known that you were a lesbian when we went on one coffee date and then I immediately U-hauled.”

  “I mean…” said Jamie, “that is–”

  “Officer Morgan, I believe we’re done here,” interrupted Roen. “This event has undoubtedly been stressful on both of them.”

  ***

  Later, after the police had left, and Sam had taped a piece of cardboard over the broken window, the three sat down at the kitchen table.

  Christopher had removed his gsses, and was massaging his temples in frustration, while Jamie was cooking eggs for breakfast.

  They sat in silence for a while, then finally, Jamie said something.

  “Chr–”

  That was as far as he got, before Roen started speaking.

  “God fucking dammit!” said Roen, and then proceeded to hit the table with his fist, causing his coffee to spill a little out of the mug, and his gsses to jump up a quarter of an inch.

  Sam and Jamie were very surprised by this. In the time they had worked with him, Roen had never shown this kind of anger. Nor had he really reyed very strong emotion of any kind.

  Roen closed his eyes and pced his face in his hands, elbows on the table, as Jamie brought over his ‘thank you for saving our ass’ breakfast.

  “You don’t deserve this, Jamie. Nobody deserves this.”

  “You’re right, but I don’t think that particurly matters, do you?” said Jamie. “It happened. We’ll repair the window, we’ll get some more cameras for the house, maybe get a house-sitter to watch the pce while we’re away.”

  “I’ve been an idiot,” Roen said.

  Christopher Roen calling himself an idiot was the second most shocking thing to happen to Jamie today.

  “Chris, you’re the smartest person I know. And I’ve personally met Ken Jennings,” said Jamie.

  “When I first heard about your project, I told Mr. Marsters - Daryl - I told him that he should cancel the project and do a show that didn’t challenge anyone. That it was too risky, too dangerous. I told him the endeavor was ‘ill-advised.’”

  “Which, as we all know is Christopher-speak for ‘fucking crazy’,” said Jamie.

  “Jamie!” said Sam.

  “No, Jamie’s right,” said Roen. “That’s exactly the sentiment I intended those words to convey. I thought the idea was ‘fucking crazy.’ I thought that Americans were too dumb, too noxious, too unwilling to leave their comfort zone or be self-critical enough to make the program a success.”

  Jamie sighed. “You’re right. This was stupid from the word go.”

  “You misunderstand me, Ms. Howard. I see now what everyone around me has been saying all along. Your show is necessary. I would even say that it might be a moral obligation.”

  “What?” said Jamie and Sam, in unison.

  “It is clear that someone wishes to do you harm - has done you emotional and financial harm - and why? Because you are something that you’ve had no choice in, and you are speaking openly about it without shame, in an effort to give a voice to others like you who may be voiceless. To give in to this act of terrorism would be to incentivize this act of wanton barbarism. I get now what Ms. Bryant has been saying this whole time. Your story, and others like it, must be told.”

  Christopher Roen rose to his full height, pced his gsses back on his head, and straightened his necktie, and looked Jamie in the eye.

  “Ms. Howard, though we may have diametrically opposing views of the world and how we interact with it, though our personalities may be as incompatible as oil and water, though at times I have found you personally irritating, I am proud to stand beside you in this endeavor in whatever capacity I may be of service.”

  Jamie started tearing up at that, and before Roen had a chance to react, she had grabbed the wyer in a rge hug.

  As Roen was unused to this level of physical contact between cordial co-workers, he made a quick calcution in his head, realized that Jamie was experiencing a rge level of emotional vulnerability in this moment, which previously had been masked with humor, as was her habit, and decided to accept the physical contact.

  “There. There,” he said, with all the warmth of an android trying to show sympathy to a small child, and patted Jamie on the back. He then spent a few more moments attempting to indicate with his eyes that Sam should probably intervene to extract him from this uncomfortable dispy of humanity.

  Sam found this amusing enough to do no such thing.

  “You’re a good friend, Chris,” said Jamie. “A damn good friend.”

  “And you as well,” said Christopher Roen.

  A long pause then.

  “We still annoy the hell out of each other, right?” asked the wyer.

  “Oh yeah, totally. Like two siblings on a long road trip,” said Jamie.

  “Are we there yet?” asked Roen.

  ***

  After the brick incident, there was a need for a girls’ night out if there ever was one, so Sam, Daria, Erin, Julia, Sheri, and Chandra, and of course Jamie went out on the town.

  It took at least two drinks before Jamie would try her hand at karaoke, and even then only promised that she would do songs by contraltos like Shirley Bassey, Fiona Apple, and Amy Winehouse. Jamie wasn’t confident that she had the vocal range quite yet to try anything above that, despite prompting.

  It turned out that Jamie, having avoided situations for most of her adult life where alcohol would cause her to say stupid things like, “I want to be a girl,” was a bit of a lightweight, and by Jamie’s drink number four, the crew decided to move on, once again, to Dockweiler Beach. But this time, they brought their own wood to burn in the firepit, and started making conversation as the night wound down, sitting around it.

  Erin thought it would be a good time to ask the production team for the time off that she and Julia discussed.

  “Yeah, Erin,” said Daria. “Of course you can take the time off to attend your wife’s thesis defense. What’s it on?”

  “‘An Experimental Investigation into the Acoustic Properties of Squeaky Shopping Carts’,” said Julia.

  Everyone except Erin stared at Julia.

  “My field is physics and acoustics,” expined Julia. “So, for example, let’s say you wanted to build a bridge. You don’t want that bridge to deafen drivers every time you drive over it. Or if it’s a drawbridge, every time it opens or closes. Or even after twenty, thirty years. Shopping carts get so much use they make a very good proxy for long-term architectural projects that are expected to st a very long time.”

  “I should introduce you to a colleague of mine sometime, Julia,” said Jamie. “Ken’s a sucker for obscure knowledge like that.”

  “Oh? What’s his line of work?”

  “He hosts ‘Jeopardy!’”

  “I walked into that one, didn’t I?” said Julia.

  “Yes, you did,” said Jamie. “Little bit of revenge - Sam told me about your U-Haul comment during Zimmel.”

  “Well, it’s true,” said Julia. “Everyone can see it. You’d make a great couple.”

  “Oh yeah,” said Sam. “We would. We kinda do.”

  Jamie shook her head.

  “But just, you know, as a ptonic couple. Sam’s just not attracted to me, physically.”

  “It’s mostly the smell,” said Sam.

  Jamie looked at Sam, who realized with horror what her drunk-self said.

  “Oh lord,” said Sam.

  Jamie scooched away from her in embarrassment.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Did you know? I mean, I shower, I wear deodorant, I–” Jamie quickly sniffed her armpits. “Is it farting? Do I fart too much? I can get some Beano. Oh god, I’ve been eating nothing but Mexican food for three out of the past four weeks.”

  “It’s the pheromones,” said Sam. “The pheromones and… men have a stronger body odor. You can’t help it, it’s pretty much all men.”

  “All men smell?”

  All the other women around Jamie nodded.

  “Yeah, you’re not a man, but you’re… still on ‘default man settings,’ endocrine system wise?” said Sheri. “HRT will change it, but… yeah.”

  “If all men smell, then why would women–”

  Chandra cut Jamie off.

  “Because most straight women kind of like that smell. Maybe not B.O., but like… that musky smell? Drives me crazy when I’m close to my boyf–”

  Chandra stopped mid-word.

  “Oh, this is just a night of revetions,” said Daria. “You have a boyfriend?”

  “Maaaaybe,” said Chandra.

  “Anyone we know?” asked Sheri.

  “Maaaaybe,” said Chandra.

  “Does Pranav know?” asked Jamie. “It’s gonna break his heart, I think he has a crush on you.”

  “Pranav knows,” said Chandra, rolling her eyes.

  “Well, good. Workpce drama is the worst,” said Jamie.

  “Hold on one second,” said Sheri. “Sam, can I borrow you for a bit?”

  “Sure thing.”

  ***

  Sheri and Sam went off for a one-on-one walk-and-talk down the beach.

  “I have to ask, Sam, is it just the smell?”

  Sam looked back over at Jamie, who was getting smaller as they walked further.

  “Well, no,” said Sam. “But that’s the big one. She’s also like… very masculine.”

  “That’ll change, you know that, right? I mean, the smell was the first thing that I noticed changed on HRT. And I haven’t had facial feminization surgery or impnts yet, and I look, well, I’m clocky but I look like a woman in transition, right? And Jamie’s going to get hormones, going to get FFS, going to get a neovagina if she wants it. Even if she wasn’t doing this show, just because she’s, well, rich, and can pay out of pocket.”

  “I guess. What are you getting at?”

  “Look, I get we’re all… very drunk right now, but you are crazy about each other, romantically, not just ptonically, and if you can get over the sexually thing - which you will because Jamie’s going to get the best doctors in Mexico - you’ve got a shot kind of love that I will probably never have in my life. And it’s killing me inside that you’re right next to each other and still don’t see it.”

  Sam closed her eyes and sighed, listening to the beach.

  “Sheri… I just… I don’t… I’ve known Jamie as a woman for all of a month, and we’ve got so much history and… you’re right. Maybe someday, when she’s… more she, but then I think to myself, that’s a bit selfish and a bit rotten to pce so much on physical appearance and…”

  “Then tell her that. Tell her, at the very least, what you feel, Sam. Tell her that you’re not ready, because she’s not ready, because biology and instinct is a bitch. But tell her.”

  Sam breathed in the salt air, closed her eyes, listening to the waves, and searched her thoughts. It was obvious. If there was any woman that she’d want to grow old with, it was Jamie, even if Jamie didn’t look like a woman - or smell like one - now. And Julia was right. What they had was as close as any married couple. Sam couldn’t love Jamie physically. She just couldn’t. But she loved Jamie emotionally. And maybe it was time for her to say that.

  “I guess if it’s just… that we’re not sexually compatible, but… are fine on everything else… yeah,” said Sam. “I mean, what did Walter Scott say about retionships? ‘Oh, what tangled webs we weave, when first we practice to conceive.’”

  “Are you going to be okay?” asked Sheri.

  “Yeah. Yeah, I think I am.”

  Sam’s stomach filled with butterflies, but she took a deep breath, grounded herself, thought of exactly what she was going to say - knew exactly the right words, it would be perfect, it would be great.

  Her mind was made up. She was going to tell her. Tonight. On Dockweiler Beach. And then this wasn’t going to be girls’ night. It would be their night.

  And so she turned around, and headed back towards the firepit.

  Only to see Jamie and Daria making out by the fire.

  ***

  Sam ran down the beach, away from the fire pits, until she was out of earshot and line of sight, then started picking up rocks and hurled them dramatically into the ocean. Because fuck it, it may be cliche, but she was already on the beach, and the rocks were conveniently located next to the ocean.

  “Of course, of course that would happen, you absolute weapon!” she said to herself. “Think about it, Sam, you basically told her that you didn’t find her attractive, which, even for an early transition trans woman, is never a good feeling. My god, you even told her she smells. On a day which started with a fucking death threat thrown through her window, of course she’s going to look for comfort wherever she can find it! And if that means making out with Daria, who has been talking about how thirsty she’s been since you’ve known her, and hell, maybe now that I think about it, maybe she was coming on to me, but I can’t think about that right now, because fuck me but I should have known and everyone was telling me what was right in fuck of my fronting face this whole time!”

  Sam wished that this was television.

  If this was television, this would be the moment that Jamie would come running up the beach to tell her that she made a mistake, that it was a comedic misunderstanding. Or that she’d encounter a kindly old person who could have a heartfelt story about how they and their deceased spouse had fifty good years together with a story that was just like hers and Jamie’s, or fuck it, she’d even take a extremely problematic ‘magical minority character’ like a Bagger Vance or a Morpheus, or what’s her name, the psychic Whoopi Goldberg pyed in ‘Ghost’.”

  But this wasn’t television. It was real life. And she just messed hers up. There was no miracle edit, deus-ex-machina, no special guest star to whisk her away from the pit of self-revulsion in her stomach. As Gil Scott-Heron (kinda-sorta) said, "The revulsion will not be televised, brothers, the revulsion will be live.”

  She took out her phone, ordered an Uber, and got the hell out of there.

  ***

  Sam’s head throbbed, and she rolled out of bed, still in the same clothes she was wearing st night, when she headed over to the patio doors.

  There was a bottle of painkillers and a sports drink left outside her door. She looked across the yard to the back patio doors attached to Jamie’s kitchen, only to find that Jamie was also drinking a sports drink and looked like death warmed over. She hadn’t even shaved.

  Sam tentatively crossed the yard, and then headed to Jamie’s back patio doors, where Jamie met her and let her in.

  “If it’s all the same to you, Sam. Let’s just get breakfast delivered today,” Jamie said. Jamie sniffed herself. “God. I do stink.”

  “I think we both do. Tell you what, you go freshen up, I’ll order breakfast,” said Sam.

  Jamie nodded and was about to head back to her room, when Sam added one more thing.

  “And Jamie?”

  “Yeah?”

  “If… you and Daria–”

  “Oh, god, that was a mistake. That was a really stupid decision,” Jamie said. “I just, Daria just… we were drunk, and I just had a death threat earlier that day, and I was feeling low, and you had just called me smelly… and she was there and I think I made a joke about how I’d make out with the first person who didn’t think I smelled like a sewer and…”

  “I’m so sorry, Jamie. I really am. You don’t know how much I truly regret that!”

  “No, no, I’m smelly. Maybe someday I won’t be, but right now, I stink. It doesn’t matter. We’ve got to get ready for the flight back to Mexico in a couple of days, we need to reorganize the shoots around Erin’s days off, and I need to find someone to repair the window and someone who can house-sit during the repairs.”

  “Yes. I nearly forgot about the window. Did you have anyone in mind?”

  “For the repair? No. But I think I know someone who might need a pce to stay and would be happy to house-sit for a while.

  ***

  “Do men stink?” asked Pranav. “Like, yes, I’m a doctor, I know about the endocrine system, but…”

  “Yes. You’re my stinky little Pookie, and I love you for it,” said Chandra. “But let me continue. So, Sam and Sheri go off for a one-on-one talk, and then… and you understand, we all have enough alcohol in us that we should be concerned about a spark from the fire pit igniting the vapors emanating off of us, and then Erin and Julia start making out because of course those two can’t keep their hands off each other, and Daria says something along the lines of ‘they make it look so easy’, and Jamie’s like, ‘you know, in nature, lesbian sheep are incapable of coupling up because both of them go motionless when they’re interested in one another’ which is, fuck if I know where she got that bit of trivia from…”

  “She’s a game show host. She picks up a lot of trivia in her line of work,” suggested Pranav.

  “...right. Anyway, Jamie talks about how she always felt comfortable if the other person made the first move, and Daria’s like, ‘what, like, just walk up to a girl and say “wanna make out?” and hope it works?’ and Jamie’s like, ‘yeah, just, “wanna make out?”’”

  Chandra finally stopped to catch her breath. Pranav was running just a moment behind in parsing the information being reyed to him, and then finally, he spoke.

  “Wait. Wait. When Jamie said, ‘yeah, just wanna make out?’, was she merely quoting what Daria was just saying, or was she genuinely asking Daria to make out?”

  “I honestly don’t know. I know Daria took it as a question, though, because she said, “Okay.” And then they just kinda… started going at it.”

  “Wait.”

  Pranav held up his hands.

  “Wait.”

  Pranav got a very concerned look on his face.

  “Jamie and Daria?”

  “Yeah. And then, when they come up for air. Jamie kinda… realized what she had done, and Daria realized what she had done, and by this time Erin and Julia have finally pried themselves off of each other, and are now paying attention, and I’m sitting there, like, ‘should I do something’?”

  “And that’s when Sheri rejoins the group and is gring at Jamie and Daria, and Sam isn’t with her, and Jamie starts breaking down in tears with… I don’t know. Guilt?”

  Chandra took a deep breath of air.

  “Right. So that’s what happened with us. What did you and Daryl get up to?”

  Pranav shrugged.

  “We got beers and watched the Lakers at a sports bar.”

  “That’s it?”

  “We did decide to strip down to our waists and wrestle in a giant pit of motor oil at half-time, but other than that…” said Pranav sarcastically. “No, Chandra, that was it. We just hung out and watched the game. It was a good time. No drama.”

  Chandra scrunched up her face.

  “Well, where’s the fun in that?”

  ***

  It was a bad idea.

  Daria knew it was a bad idea.

  She did it anyway.

  Not the kiss.

  The kiss was a bad idea too.

  But calling her mom, asking for advice.

  That was a bad idea.

  And now, here she was, talking to her mom, asking for advice.

  “Just so long as you didn’t get this Jamie girl pregnant,” said her mother, a statement that, on its own, consisted of so many misconceptions and outright bad information that it could fill a Texas textbook.

  “Well, what do I do now? Because there’s no way that we can just ignore this. It happened. We kissed.”

  “Did you like it?”

  “Yes. Mainly. Though Sam was right though, she did smell a little bit.”

  “She smelled? Why did you kiss a girl that smelled?”

  “It’s an endocrine system thing. She didn’t smell as bad as I thought she would though. She’s on hormone therapy.”

  “For perimenopause?”

  “What? No - Jamie’s a trans woman very early in her transition.”

  “Ah. And this Sam, that’s her boyfriend?”

  “Sam’s a woman.”

  “So her girlfriend, then?”

  “No. But they’re very close, but not in that way.”

  “God, these retionships you young people have are so complicated. Back in my day, we dated the old fashioned way. By pcing our car keys in a fishbowl.”

  “Mom, I did not need to know that.”

  “It’s how I met your father, dear.”

  “MOM!”

  “No no, hear me out, Daria. The point is, do you think that your dad was the first man I dated? The first man I kissed? Oh hell no. Are you in love with Jamie?”

  “No, I… wouldn’t say that. We’re just friends. I think. Oh, are we just friends now?”

  “Are you and Jamie dating?”

  “No, we… just kissed.”

  “You just kissed. Then it’s just a kiss, Daria. You were drunk, it was a fun thing, and hey, you got your first lesbian kiss out of the way.”

  “But what if I ended up ruining our friendship? Or worse if I ruined up our working retionship. What if Sam got jealous?”

  “Wait, I thought you said that Sam wasn’t her boyfriend.”

  “Sam’s a woman.”

  “Girlfriend, then. If they’re not boyfriend/girlfriend, or girlfriend/boyfriend, or girlfriend/girlfriend… if they’re not dating each other, why would Sam be jealous? She’s certainly got no right to be. If she liked it then she should have put a ring on it! Do you know who told me that?”

  Daria smiled and rolled her eyes.

  “No, Mom, who?”

  “That nice Beyonce girl. She was part of Destiny’s Child. Do you remember Destiny’s Child?”

  “Yes, I know who Beyonce is, Mom.”

  “Point is, if Sam gets upset about you doing some harmless french-kissing with Jamie, and Jamie gets upset about how Sam is upset, then that’s their problem to work out, not yours.”

  “That’s… actually good advice,” said a genuinely perplexed Daria.

  “And worst case scenario, I hear that a lot of lesbians are into communism these days.”

  There was silence on the line for a full thirty seconds, as Daria tried to puzzle out what the hell her mother meant by that.

  And then it hit her.

  “Mom, do you mean, ‘polyamory’?”

  “Yes, that. One of the two. I don’t know. The one where you all share everything together equally.”

  ***

  “Is that the window there?” asked Bradley, pointing to the covered up window in Jamie’s living room.

  “Yeah, that’s the one. I figure I’ll get someone round to fix it when I come back in three weeks on the next filming break.”

  Bradley looked at the window with a keen eye.

  “You know, it doesn’t look too bad. Your frame is completely fine. It’s just the gss, which looks to be, what, 3/32 inches thick? You could probably fix this yourself with a trip to the home improvement store.”

  Jamie waved her hands dismissively.

  “Ha. No - when it comes to DIY, I’m DOA, Bradley.”

  “Want me to take a crack at it? It’s completely shattered, it would be pretty hard for me to make it worse, at any rate.”

  “Wait, you could do that?” asked Jamie.

  “Well, you’re letting me stay in a massive house in Santa Monica for three weeks without paying rent, so… I figured I should at least do something in return.”

  “Bradley, just looking after the pce is all I could ask for, but yeah, if you want to try. Have you ever repced a window before?”

  “Once. It’s not that hard.”

  “Neat. Now, if only retionships were so easy to fix.” said Jamie, sitting down on the couch, sighing.

  “True,” said Bradley, who also sat down, and thought about how much time and energy and love he wasted with Jett.

  ***

  Sam and Erin were engaged in a side conversation over ptes of horrendously expensive burgers and fries at a ‘Chili’s Too’ at LAX.

  “Thanks for switching seats with me, Erin,” said Sam. “Five hours sitting next to Jamie in close proximity… after… it would be…”

  “Sam, I get it,” said Erin. “Look… do me a favor though?”

  “What?”

  “Sit next to her on the way back. Like you usually do.”

  “Do you think that’s a good idea?”

  “The two of you aren’t going to get back to normal if you both think everything has irreparably changed. And you know, deep down, it hasn’t. Sam, what happened that night on the beach - you have to know that’s an anomaly. A statistical outlier. Spiders Georg.

  “You think so?”

  “Do you think Jamie would normally act like that? Or Daria for that matter? I mean, the alcohol, stress, sleep deprivation, early transition shpilkes…”

  “Shpilkes?”

  “Yiddish. For anxiety.”

  “I thought that was ‘agita’.”

  “Common mistake. ‘Agita’ has its roots in Italian, from agitare, to agitate, and can also refer to indigestion. Shpilkes is from the Yiddish, where it means ‘pins’ as in ‘pins and needles’, and can also refer to excitement and anticipation, which is why I used it.”

  Sam blinked.

  “You learned that from Jamie, didn’t you?”

  “That girl has picked up a surprising amount of trivia in her career.”

  ***

  Rafael’s skin was starting to itch, just thinking about ‘Rose’, the stifling angora sweater of an identity that he was about to put on again the moment the pne nded in Merida. But still, he was more concerned right now with someone else.

  “So Jamie’s okay?”

  “Jamie’s… going to go through some things, sure, but physically, she’s okay. She was in another room when the brick came through.”

  “Are we even supposed to know about this? I only heard from Bradley, because he’s apparently house-sitting for Jamie, and when I asked him why, he got evasive but then eventually kind of expined the whole thing.”

  “I think if Jamie wants the contestants to know about it, she’ll mention it to the contestants herself,” said Sheri.

  “Yeah, I’ll try to let Jamie say what she wants to say when she wants to say it. Maybe she doesn’t want to mention it at all. I wouldn’t bme her. God, I remember when I first came out to my friends. The teasing was non-fucking stop, so much so I told them I was just going through a phase, and went back into the closet until graduation. Which of course, my parents heard about and took the wrong way and thought it actually was a phase and– sorry, I shouldn’t be dumping my trauma on you. We were talking about Jamie’s.”

  “I have chosen, as a career, people dumping their trauma on me. Don’t mind Jamie for right now. Truth be told, I think she’s more upset about something else that happened, that had nothing to do with the death threat.”

  “There was a death threat? I thought it was just a brick.”

  Sheri put her hand to her forehead.

  “Yeah, well, that’s another thing you’re not supposed to know. How are you holding up?”

  “Not great. I’m going to be honest with you. I’m bringing my testosterone with me. I’m probably going to drop out soon, and when I drop out, I don’t want to spend one more second than necessary as ‘Rose.’”

  “Rafael,” said Sheri. “Why are you even doing this to yourself?”

  “Because my parents aren’t going to believe that I’m a man until I have shown them how much it hurts to be a woman. And they’re not going to believe it hurts unless there is video evidence,” said Rafael, determined.

  “Rafael, there’s a possibility you could show them all the proof in the world. That you could show them everything, and that they still wouldn’t believe their own eyes. Parents are… weird that way.”

  “What did yours say, when you came out to them?” asked Rafael.

  “I believe the exact words were: ‘We have no son.’ Which, you know, is literally accurate, but that wasn’t what they meant by it. They meant ‘fuck off, faggot.’”

  It was a cold reminder to Rafael that while his parents were pretty darn bad, others had it worse. It didn’t make him feel any better about his own parents, though.

  “The point is, you’re clearly suffering, and you might be doing it for no good reason.”

  “Maybe. But I have to try to see how far I can go.”

  “Maybe there’s something else there?” asked Sheri.

  “How so?”

  “Rafael, from what you’ve told me, you live with your parents who constantly question who you are at every avaible opportunity. That has to be hard. You shouldn’t have to prove to anyone who you are. But by the same token, you shouldn’t doubt who you are because other people around you are blind, ignorant, or hateful.”

  “You think I’m doing this to prove I’m trans… to myself?”

  “It’s only a possibility. And lord knows you wouldn’t be the only trans person who had thoughts that maybe they were just faking the whole thing. Hell, I thought I was ‘just faking’ for years before my egg finally cracked.”

  “So you think that I’m having an existential crisis?”

  “No, I think you’ve gotten an idea in your head, and you’re determined to see it through.”

  Sheri sighed.

  “And men can be so damn stubborn sometimes.”

  Rafael ughed.

  “Thank you.”

  ***

  Victor ended up in the window seat to Oscar’s aisle seat.

  “Vic! How’s it been?” greeted Oscar as he was loading his carry-on into the overhead bin.

  “Oh, you know, same ol’ same ol’, Oscar. I’m gd to see you. And yes, I uh, mean that sincerely.”

  Oscar raised an eyebrow.

  “Trust me, no one is more shocked than I am,” said Victor.

  In the other aisle, Jacob and Gooch were boarding. Gooch gave a double fist-to-chest bump and a point to Victor, who returned it.

  Oscar looked at the silent but meaningful interaction between the once-isoted Victor and extreme extrovert Gooch, and raised an eyebrow. Then he turned back to Victor and sat down.

  “Yeah, I get that I’ve been ruffling some feathers, I’m gonna try to be a little better this time around,” said Oscar.

  Victor tilted his head.

  “What happened to you that you’ve suddenly become self-aware?”

  “Probably the same thing that happened to you that made you become less antisocial.”

  They then looked at each other with worried confusion.

  “You don’t think it’s the…?” said Oscar.

  “Nah. Couldn’t be,” said Victor.

  “I mean, maybe it might have had an effect on you…” said Oscar.

  “I mean, if either of us is repressing anything that got unlocked by changes to hormones, I would imagine that it’d probably be you, more than me,” countered Victor.

  “So we agree. It’s not the Zolodex?” said Oscar.

  “No. Couldn’t be. Not in a million years,” said Victor.

  They both stopped and looked straight forward. For quite a while.

  “In-flight entertainment has added a few new movies since st time,” said Victor, finally.

  “Any recommendations?” said Oscar.

  ***

  “So, who’s going to drop out next, you think?” asked Gooch.

  “Honestly, Gooch, probably either Rafael or I will,” said Jacob, buckling up and plugging in his headphones to the jack in the armrest. “It’s fun, sure, but I kinda just want to get back to my old life. What about you, how far are you pnning on going?”

  Gooch adjusted his neck pillow that was shaped like a goose with a little fluffy knife in its mouth.

  “You know me. I’m pnning on going just a little too far with it. Just enough to get that ‘oh my god’ reaction when I tell the story.”

  Jacob sat and thought about that.

  “You know, Jude…”

  Gooch’s head whipped around. Jacob never used Gooch’s first name unless it was serious.

  “...normally, I’m with you for crazy-go-nuts adventures down the wacky hole, but… I don’t think we should be messing with this stuff as much as we are. I mean… this stuff… you heard Dr. Vadekar. It could be permanent. I just don’t know. I feel like we’re starting to meddle in forces we don’t quite understand. I mean, what if this is a huge mistake?”

  Gooch pced a hand on Jacob’s shoulder.

  “Meddling in forces we don’t understand is the first step to understanding those forces. You know I was never good at learning things via school. I learn from my mistakes. And if I stop making mistakes, I stop learning.”

  “Jude, do you want to get tits? Because this is how you get tits.”

  “I don’t know. I mean, think about it. I could get to second base any time I wanted. What straight guy wouldn’t jump at that opportunity?”

  ***

  Jett sat next to one of the camera crew, and any thought they might be interested in conversation ended when the camera operator quickly put in earplugs and a blindfold. So, Jett took out his Garden Telpha, put it in airpne mode, and listened to podcasts.

  ***

  “You still haven’t told your family, Ethan?”

  Leonard sighed and took out his dog-eared paperback of the test Richard Osman novel from his carry-on before sitting down and buckling up in the uncomfortable coach seat. At least he got the aisle seat this time.

  “Please, Leia, call me Eine, I need to get into Game Face.”

  Leonard sighed.

  “Okay, Eine. But the question remains, you still haven’t told your family?”

  “I don’t see a reason why I should have to,” said Eine. “I’m a grown adult and I can make my own decisions.”

  “You don’t think they’ll figure it out if you start to grow tits?”

  “That’s not going to happen in the next three weeks. And if it does, I’ll just wear baggier clothing.”

  “Right, okay. It’s just… you’re starting to worry me, Eine.”

  “Trust me, I know what I’m doing,” Eine said.