Chapter 6: 16 Days Earlier

Tammy:

Tammy was up all night. She hadn’t told a soul about what Hope had said to her the other day. About the pregnancy. And JC. And what those awful guys on the swim team had done. Hope made her promise not to. It wouldn’t have made a difference: Tammy wouldn’t tell anyone anyway. It would be like outing someone. Some truths can only be spoken by the truth sayer themselves. But Tammy hadn’t been tossing and turning, worried with the weight of Other People’s Problems; she hadn’t even tried to go to sleep. She’d been too busy online, researching things. Not just for Hope, maybe for herself as well. A little shot at redemption under the gun of all those stupid things she’d once done for JC’s deceptive smile.

She’d learned this night that there was a word for what JC had done to Hope, and that word was ‘stealthing’. She’d learned that it was a crime and, if there was video of it, it was actionable. She learned about revenge porn and coercion and how alcohol pretty much takes away a person’s ability to consent. She also learned that — given that Hope was only 17 — making a video of her engaging in any form of sexual activity at all was also illegal. If she could get that video to the authorities (school or police), that’d be the end of JC McMillan. There was no chance the fishheads would just give it to her, and the fact that everyone at school hadn’t seen and shared it already meant that they were playing pretty cagey with who they showed it to. Tammy had only one option left open to her. 

Tammy cornered Juanito the moment he arrived in school. He looked different today. At least, different than he looked the last few days. He still wore the skirt — the short, black corduroy skirt the school ‘recommended’ Tasha Alvarez to wear — but he wore black jeans underneath it. And a masculine shirt with a wide collar, underneath a red tank top. 

“You look nice,” Tammy opened. 

“Thanks,” Juanito replied. Then added very shortly after, “I hear you crashed the girls-only health talk yesterday.”

Juanito rocked on his heels and seemed to swell with emotion, pride even, when he spoke. 

“I figured they can lie to themselves about who we are,” Tammy expressed, flicking her finger back and forth between her and her trans friend, “but I’m done lying and I’m done lying down.”

Juanito’s face flushed as red as his top at that, Tammy noticed. 

“Listen, I need to talk to you about something,” Tammy explained. 

Juanito leaned against the wall and placed one thumb inside his belt, letting the fingers dangle freely and casually over the edge of his skirt. 

“What’s up?” he asked his friend. 

“You used to date Christopher right? Fishhead Christopher?”

The flush drained from Juanito’s face, which sagged like his shoulders at the mention of the name. 

“‘Tasha’ used to date him,” he replied, invoking his own deadname and looking away. There was a distinction, Tammy knew, between who they made you be and who you were really. She’d never been happier that her parents let her change her name legally to ‘Tammy’ before this new tranche of bullshit the school was parroting from the White House. 

“And did Tasha ever see the lock screen code for his cellphone?” Tammy asked, playing along with the distinction. 

“What are you doing, Tams?” Juanito asked, growing serious. 

Tammy quickly filled her friend in on the video of Hope and JC. She left out the part about the stealthing and the pregnancy. The video itself ought to be enough to persuade him. 

“That’s so awful,” Juanito declared after Tammy had filled him in and sworn him to secrecy. Tammy resisted the urge to point out it had been him who was gossipping about Hope only the other day.

“I know, right!” Tammy replied quickly. “And I figure they’ve gotta be keeping that video in their close circle only. And Christopher is the sluttiest one of that friendship group, so if anyone is gonna have it—”

“—Sluttiest after JC, you mean?” Juanito hit back, and shot Tammy a very meaningful look. 

“Yeah. After him. I guess.”

Schools are a place of secrets, confidences and rumors. A place where people experiment, try on different identities like they’re costumes at a party, before eventually settling on the different parts of the ones they like and incorporating them into their day-to-day. Tammy had experimented a lot before she’d settled on her current look and her current being. Only she knew the details of those experimentations, but her closest friends had seen more than most. The way a person talks about someone, the way they look at them, or after them; the way their whole demeanor changes when that person walks into a room. Juanito and Sparkles knew Tammy had once had a crush on JC McMillan. In the beginning. Before she knew what he was about. And they knew he’d broken her heart when he started dating Erica Stevens (for about five minutes). They didn’t know why. No one did. But there were rumors. And confidences. And secrets. 

“So do you know it?” Tammy asked, deflecting. “The lock screen number.”

“Yeah,” Juanito sighed. “It’s 69-69-69.”

“Of course it is,” Tammy replied, shaking her head and rolling her eyes in disappointment. She waited a tactful couple of seconds before asking her next question. “So, do you think you could get it from him? The phone? Just for a few minutes?” she asked. 

“I don’t know, Tams,” Juanito replied. “He might have changed the code.”

“Come on,” Tammy reasoned. “He won’t have changed it. He’s a complete asshole. That shit is funny to him.”

Juanito’s face fell further. Tammy watched his fingers tightened around the waistband of his skirt. 

“Christopher dumped you for Chastity!” Tammy pointed out. “Like that wasn’t the biggest joke in school.” 

Everyone knew that girl was anything but her namesake. 

“I don’t think he’d just give it to me,” Juanito replied. 

“Not even if you flirted with him a little?” Tammy asked. 

“Euww, no!” Juanito replied. It was a big ask. Tammy knew Juanito hadn’t talked about any boy since Christopher. She was pretty sure her friend was a-sexual right now. Which is what made the next thing she asked so difficult. 

“Would he give it to Tasha?” Tammy asked, speculatively. 

Now it was Juanito’s turn to look disappointed. She removed her thumb from her waistline and brushed down her immaculately neat and tidy skirt. 

“Tammy, no,” he replied, jumping ahead to what Tammy was proposing. It had been obvious, really. Blunt. Like a weapon. Dress up like Tasha. Flirt with Christopher. Get his phone. Tammy asked herself if she’d do it were their places reversed. To get back at JC for what he’d done to her, what he’d made her—- 

She’d kind of already decided she wouldn’t. 

That was why she was here, after all. 

“No, you’re right?” Tammy replied, putting her hands up quickly and reassuringly. “I’m sorry. It was wrong of me to ask.”

“I’m not that person anymore,” Juanito said, folding his arms and looking away. “I don’t think I ever was.”

“I’m sorry, man,” Tammy reiterated. “I just— I wanna get that video so bad. I really wanna nail those assholes.”

“Why does it even matter to you?” Juanito asked, grudgingly. “You don’t even know Hope Davidson. But you do know me. And I thought I knew you!”

Tammy hung her head. “I’m really sorry, Juanito. I shouldn’t have asked.”

“You really shouldn’t,” Juanito replied, his face flushing a different shade of red from before.

Tammy watched as her friend walked away from her. 

Rue:

The morning hit Rue particularly hard. His father alternated shifts at the farm, but on weeks when he had a late shift (like this one), he’d always wake Rue up and put a mug of coffee by his bedside. The smell, he said, helped him to wake up. This morning there was no coffee and Rue had slept unintentionally late. The clock read 07:32 when he finally opened his eyes. 

“Shit!” he swore, and jumped out of bed. He sprayed himself down with some sports deodorant and threw on a clean t-shirt. He’d have time to shower at school, maybe. In recess, if he was quick. 

When he got into the kitchen, his mother was preparing eggs at the stove. The pans were clean now and the washbasin was empty. His uncle was seated at the table in his father’s usual chair. Had he stayed over last night? There were no sheets on the couch. 

“You didn't wake me?” Rue shot accusingly at his mother. 

“Thought it was best to let you sleep,” she replied. 

“You don’t have to go into school today,” his Uncle Esteban explained. 

“We going on that protest?” Rue asked, sitting briefly and picking at a piece of toast. 

“This evening,” Esteban replied. 

“Then I have to go to school,” Rue returned. 

“Let me give you a ride in,” his uncle offered. 

Rue looked again at the tidy couch. Then outside to his uncle's pickup. 

“I’ll get the bus,” Rue replied, rising. 

“You'll be late if you do,” his mother informed him. 

“Let me take you in, son,” his uncle offered again. “I wanna talk to you about a few things on the way.”

Rue looked towards his mother for support, but she already had her back turned to him and was poking at her eggs. 

The ride was much shorter in his uncle's pickup. The bus set down at least eight times before it got to Sherman High, and there were more stops where people could hail it if they were waiting. 

“You probably have a lot of questions,” Esteban said as he and Rue pulled onto the highway. 

“I don’t even know where to start?” Rue opened. 

But that wasn’t true. He did. There was only one question that mattered.

“My papi came into the country on a work visa, right?”

“That’s right,” Esteban replied, eyes still on the road. “Same time as your mother.”

“But he stayed longer?” Rue asked. 

“Alvaro never was very good at organization,” Esteban replied. 

“So he’s an illegal?” Rue repeated. 

“According to the letter of the law?” Esteban raised the caveat. “Yes.”

“Uncle Este, these are letter-of-the-law times,” Rue pointed out. “The President says he won’t split up families,” Rue added. “Says he’ll send us all back to Mexico together.”

“You’re a citizen,” Esteban reassured him. “Your mom has a legal right to be in the country. The courts will never allow him to take back birthright citizenship.”

“They’re taking it back from the native Americans,” Rue spat back. “If you can even believe that! Birthright is a white man’s law, and you know it.” 

“Look, we’ll get him—”

“Did you stay over last night?” Rue interjected, suddenly. 

“At the house?” Esteban inquired, his brow knotted. “No. I left late when your mother went to bed and came back early to check up on you— both,” he added a second later. 

“Cos your truck was in the same place in the driveway this morning,” Rue challenged. 

“It’s a driveway,” Esteban replied, pulling the vehicle off the freeway and onto Sherman Road. “There’s only so many ways to park it.”

His voice had an innocent tone, but there was something about it that Rue couldn’t quite settle on. An undercurrent. A small eddy that swayed the direction of the words, making them bob and float, half-concealed, half-dangerous. 

“What time is the protest?” Rue asked, shifting gears in the conversation. 

“We’ll go right after school,” Esteban replied, sighing. “I’ll pick you up if you like.”

“Sure,” Rue replied, curtly. Then added, “Is Mama coming?”

“I’ll ask her, but I don’t think so,” Esteban answered. “Manuela hasn’t been on a protest since the noughties.”

“Well, I’ll ask her,” Rue said, digging in his pocket for his phone. 

Esteban pulled the truck over to the side of the road where Sherman High’s front entrance was. 

“Son of a bitch!” he cried, his fists tightening on the wheel. 

For a moment, Rue thought he was talking to him. Then he followed his uncle’s gaze to a group of students gathered around a black SUV. One of them was Aust. Rue had forgotten that today was the day Aust was back from suspension. 

“What is it?” Rue asked, pulling his hand out of his pocket without the phone. 

“That kid,” Esteban said, pointing across the road at Aust. “He was there yesterday at the farm.”

“With the cops?” Rue asked, quickly. “You’re sure?”

“I’m sure,” his uncle replied. 

“Son of a bitch,” Rue cursed, and pulled himself quickly out of the car. 

Aust:

Some actions are thought out in advance, meticulously planned to account for every detail. And Aust was both a planner and a thinker. In lockdown he’d read ‘The Art of War’ by Sun Tzu; he treated it like a handbook for manipulating people and getting what he wanted out of them. He saw people as characters in a book—malleable, predictable, responding to manipulation like ink being drawn from a pen. Yet still he lacked the charm and wit and spontaneous likeability of JC McMillan. That wasn’t what this was about, he told himself as his cousin’s black SUV rolled up on the captain of the school swim team in the Sherman High parking lot. This was about that other thing. 

“It’s time you and me had a talk,” Aust said, stepping out of the vehicle. 

His cousin and two other, older guys stepped out of the car with him; the five fishheads there were caught unawares and looked now like goldfish, suddenly aware of the smallness of their bowl when the net comes down. 

“There he is,” JC said welcomingly, flashing a disarming smile and raising his hand to Aust’s shoulder. “Man of the hour. You really saved my bacon the other day.”

“I shoulda let it cook,” Aust returned. 

“I'm sorry, I didn’t have time to square it with you before,” JC joked. He was speaking in a funny voice and out of the side of his mouth like he was some stand-up comedian confiding a close secret to his audience. Aust knew JC would try something like this. Laugh it off. Make it a joke. Make Aust’s bone seem not worth picking; broken and tasteless and devoid of any nourishment. 

“Oh I’m sorry,” Aust said, feigning regret and doing a really convincing job of it. “I didn’t know you were looking for a favor.”

If JC was nervous as he glanced between Aust’s older, broader friends—arms folded, lips pressed—his eyes didn’t show it. But his voice did.

“Yeah, just a favor,” he said, his speech cracking a little. 

“Well a favor’s a different thing,” Aust said, placing a possessive arm on JC’s shoulder and angling his own so that JC’s arm slid off it. 

“Just bad timing then?” Aust went on. “Didn’t have time to fire off a text? Let me know? Beforehand?”

“Edwards blindsided me, man,” JC explained. 

“So you gave him my name?” Aust announced, loud enough for everyone in the parking lot to hear. “And he gave you a pass.”

You didn’t come at a man like JC head on. He was too smooth. Too slippery. But attacking his character, his good name — publicly and undeniably — that was something he really cared about. And Aust had him now. Cornered. And everyone was listening. Including JC’s own following of fishhead friends. It was about time they found out what Aust already knew: they were the next heads on the block next time the cleaver came down for JC. 

“I didn’t think Edwards would suspend you, man,” JC admitted. 

“No, but you knew he wouldn’t suspend you,” Aust pointed out. 

Aust had him where he wanted him now. Hooked. Flailing. Waiting for the blow that would leave him gasping.

There was a part in the Art of War, where Sun Tzu talks about not cutting off your enemy’s line of retreat. Because that forces them to come out swinging. To fight like their life depended on it. JC was almost ready to do that when Aust spoke again. 

“It’s alright, man,” he said, removing the arm from JC’s shoulder. “You’re forgiven.”

Aust smiled at him and then JC smiled back. But it was a different smile than the one he had greeted Aust with a few moments ago. A politician’s smile. A politely defeated smile. 

“So we’re all good?” JC asked warily, his gaze sizing up Aust’s friends and then his own, smaller-but-more-numerous friends. 

“Sure,” Aust returned. “I’m happy to do a favor. So long as you’re happy to do one in return…”

There it was. The stunning blow. And JC hadn’t even seen it coming. Aust reclined into his own magnificence. In front of all these people, with the facts of JC’s betrayal and his character revealed, how could he refuse any favor that Aust asked. And he would ask. Not now. But soon. Aust bathed inwardly in the glory of his moment. A well-planned double victory that shot JC down and got him to publicly admit he owed Aust one. A satisfying moment that soured all too soon.

Some actions are thought out in advance; other actions ferment in the heat of the moment with almost no planning at all. They’re harder to predict for, and the sense-drunkenness they bring seems random and chaotic to all but the actor. The first thing Aust knew about being acted upon was when he was skittled from his stance of superiority and found himself careening out of control towards the floor, jaw first. It was only by blind luck that JC caught him before he cracked his skull on the sidewalk. He steadied himself, then turned to face his attacker. 

“You like to pick on Latinos?!” Rue admonished, standing tall, but still giving up four inches to the now stable Aust. “Why don’t you try picking on me?!” 

Rue tried to shove Aust again, but someone held him back from behind. An older man — another Mexican that Aust didn’t know. The man spoke in Spanish to Rue, so quickly that Aust struggled to separate the words, never mind translate them with his remedial Spanish. But the altercation was drawing a crowd. Some more Mexican students, drawn by the concentration of people, the confrontation that it brought and the shouting in their native language. 

Rue spoke in Spanish again to the large group of people. He was nodding towards Aust, who was just about able to pick out a few words. ‘penderjo’, ‘policía de inmigración’ and ‘granja’. ‘Granja’, Aust was fairly certain, meant ‘farm’; he could guess at the rest. 

“Look, it was a legitimate bust,” Aust replied, holding his hands up. “If those guys hadn’t been undocumented then they wouldn’t have been arrested.”

“Those guys?!” Rue exclaimed. “My Papi was one of ‘those guys’!”

Rue made another attempt to lunge towards Aust, and was again held back by the other man. But the other Mexicans who had gathered behind him were not so restrained. And their eyes made promises that their fists would keep. On the other side, Aust’s older SUV friends had taken up a defensive position with JC’s fishheads. At least he could count on fair numbers if this thing popped off. Which it looked like it was about to. It was as the jostling and hostility began that Aust heard the voice speak up. Calm, authoritative and behind him. 

It was JC. Stepping out in front of the two groups of young men and throwing his hands up in the air and speaking what sounded to Aust like flawless Spanish. He couldn’t make out the words, but he could see their effect on the Mexican students. A visible relaxing in the shoulders; glances between Aust and JC; the mild ripple of laughter that Aust had no doubt was at his expense. But it seemed to be taking the sting out of the situation. It was a band aid, Aust knew. Plastering over the cracks in the wall between them, the wall that he knew would one day collapse and crush whoever was on the wrong side of it. But it didn’t matter. JC had infused just enough humor into the melting pot to buy him time. Time that the principal and other faculty had used to come out into the parking lot and disperse the students to classes (and Aust’s non-school friends back into their black SUV). 

“Thanks for that,” Aust said grudgingly as he and JC melted back into the general throng of students heading to class. 

“Nada,” JC replied coolly in Spanish. Then added, “I’m always happy to do a favor for a friend.”

Hope:

Some days didn’t seem so bad. Everything that had happened had still happened, but the future seemed somehow still bright and full of promise. 

And some days were black dog days. 

Hope’s therapist called them that. Days when the depression was so crushing that everything drifted listlessly like a dream. They squeezed from Hope the last glimmer of optimism and pressed it cold, hard into stone. 

The morning blurred past her, everything fuzzy and on the edge of her vision. There were people and classes and conversations, but nothing really stuck and everything was distant, detached, desolate. Recess brought the revitalization of coffee, but lunch just brought noise, and it wasn’t long before Hope was losing herself in the near-empty corridors down by the Shop section of the school. She wandered a little, appreciating the hug of her headphones, then finally slumped down against the wall and surrendered herself to the jaws of that black dog day. 

Before, it had just been a secret between her and the Clearblue stick. But the stick didn’t have lips and emotions and desires-to-do-something. Tammy had all those things. Now another person knew: now, it was real. Even her mom still didn’t know about this part. The old girl knew something must have led to the Incident. Something more than what had happened between Hope and JC McMillan. In a way, Hope supposed that’s what the therapy was for. To get her to talk about the reasons why her mom had found her like that. But she couldn’t. She hadn’t. Not to any professional nor anyone who knew her personally. But the kindness she had found in Tammy yesterday — the kindness of strangers, as her English teacher Mr Nimzike might say — that changed everything. Now someone else knew. Now it was real. And that was really scary.

“You mind if I sit?” 

The words were muted and unreal. 

Hope slid her over ear headphones back a little. 

“You mind if I sit?” Tammy repeated. 

Hope shook her head slowly and moved a few feet further along the Shop corridor from where Tammy sat down. She stopped her music, drew her headphones down around her neck and turned to her new companion. 

“How’d you find me?”

“I asked around a little,” Tammy replied. “That senior — Ruben, I think his name is — he said to try here.”

“So, I tried to get hold of that video they made of you,” Tammy launched right in. “For evidence,” she added. 

You did what?" Hope asked. She wasn’t angry. Today wasn’t a day for anger. Today was a day for quiet acceptance, and she said it with the tranquility of a handful of Xanex. A xanquility. She’d have to remember that one. 

“I figured if we could get evidence of what they did,” Tammy went on, still a couple of gears faster than Hope had the energy for, “we could get the school to step in and take some action. Or the police!”

“I don’t think the school will take action against their star swimmer,” Hope countered. “Or the police.”

“We have to do something!” Tammy protested. 

“There’s no ‘We’,” Hope announced, shaking her head slowly. “This is happening to me, not you.”

“Yeah, but you don’t have to go through all this alone,” Tammy offered, a wide-eyed, near-desperation to her expression.

“That’s sweet,” Hope replied. “But I don’t need anyone’s help.”

The words hovered between them, distant and destructive – she could almost see them. A vanguard obliterating every bridge, every watering-hole-respite between the two of them. 

“I don’t understand,” Tammy replied. “Why did you tell me if you didn’t want my help?”

Hope smiled. 

“I didn’t tell you for you,” she responded. “I told you because I needed to tell someone. I needed to say it out loud. To speak my truth.”

And now that you've told me, it’s my truth too," Tammy said, smiling. But not like Hope.

“You can’t get pregnant,” Hope returned; the words were missiles. She watched as something in Tammy folded inwards, buckled under its own reluctant absurdity and collapsed. Silence followed. For a long time it sat between them, dust drifting across the ruin of a fallen friendship 

“I wish you never told me,” Tammy said eventually, settling into her rejection. 

“I’m sorry,” Hope hit back calmly. “Is my pain too much for you?”

“No, it’s not that,” Tammy responded, ignoring what Hope knew she had thrown down as bait. “It’s just that my neurodivergent brain sees a problem and knows it has to fix it.”

“What’s that?” Hope clarified. “A ‘neurodivergent brain’?”

Now it was Tammy’s turn to smile, only not like Hope. 

“It means my thoughts work different from yours is all,” she explained. 

“Is that why they skipped you two years?” Hope asked. “Cos it makes you smart?”

“Maybe,” Tammy replied. “My ASD makes it easier to study, to focus sometimes, to understand math and science. But it’s harder to understand people.”

“We are bothersome,” Hope parried. 

“But it’s the ADHD in me that means I gotta fix things,” Tammy added. 

“I don’t think I’m a thing that can be fixed, Tammy,” Hope batted her truth away. 

“Everything can be fixed, Hope,” Tammy replied. More silence. More dust. Then it was Hope’s turn to speak. 

“Is that why you’re—” as soon as she opened her mouth, Hope knew she should have thought more about how she wanted to finish that sentence. She waved her finger up and down in the air, gesturing to Tammy’s whole body. 

“Trans?” Tammy offered. 

Hope nodded. 

“Not all neurodivergent people are trans, Hope,” Tammy replied. 

“No,” the other girl admitted. “But are all trans people neurodivergent?”

Tammy laughed. 

“I don’t think so,” she dismissed. 

Something grew in the rubble between them, fragile but reaching—like belief. Hope liked this girl. This girl-who-was-not-quite-a-girl, but was more caring, more considerate than many of her girlfriends, who had deserted her at the first sign of trouble. It was trust. And, on this black dog day, it was a kind of peace too. 

“I tried to kill myself about three weeks ago,” Hope announced suddenly. 

“You tried what?!” Tammy asked, suddenly growing agitated. 

“I took a bunch of pills,” Hope admitted. “I thought they might get rid of it. The pregnancy. Went and sat out on the porch and just waited for it to happen. But then I changed my mind. Couldn’t go through with it. I fell and cut myself on the screen door getting back into the house—” she held up her bandage for Tammy to see. “Needed six sutures. Nearly bled out in the hallway in a pool of my own vomit. That was how my mom found me. An hour later. That was when I took that week out of school.”

Hope studied Tammy’s face. The girl looked horrified. But there was enough of the kind, considerate girl from before that made her feel her new friend wasn’t about to freak out or run away like her Christian friends had when they found out she’d had sex with JC McMillan.

“That’s deep,” Tammy replied in the end. 

“As time,” Hope responded, looking into something ahead of her that wasn’t quite there yet.

“Why did you tell me?” Tammy asked after a moment. 

It was a fair question. Given their earlier conversation. 

“Because I don’t want to go through this alone,” Hope confessed, and reached her bandaged arm towards where Tammy was sitting. 

“You won’t!” the other girl promised, and took her hand and with it built a bridge across the doubt and hurt. 

When the black dog days bite, they crush the last glimmer of light out of the world. But sometimes they press so hard, they crush stone into diamond.