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  “It could happen.”

  Kate sighed.

  “As I was saying, Princess Anastasia was the hapless victim of her guardian, Vorlich—an evil, white-haired Scottish woman with a dark and sinister past. Insert all kinds of eerie, druid-like, occultish undertones here.”

  “Druids?”

  “Why not?”

  “In Canada?”

  Shawn shrugged. “It’s lesfic.”

  “Okay. I’ll give you that one.”

  “Vorlich uncovers the love affair between Anastasia and Felix—and flies into a jealous rage.”

  “Felix?”

  “Her name is really Felicia—but she goes by Felix.”

  “Right.” Kate nodded. “Androgynous names. A very important story convention . . . Shawn.”

  “Hey.” Shawn feigned umbrage. “I did not create this name to be cool or androgynous. It was just easier to spell—and it kept me from getting beat up every day at school.”

  Kate studied her for a moment. “What is your real first name, anyway?”

  “You know what it is.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  Shawn sighed. “Shoshana.”

  “Like Rosh Hashanah?”

  “No.” Shawn corrected her. “Like Sho-sha-na. It’s Hebrew for Rose.”

  “Your name is Rose?” Kate smiled.

  “Yeah, yeah. My name is Rose. Go ahead. Yuck it up.”

  Kate touched her on the arm. “I think it’s sweet.”

  “Oh, thanks. Sweet. Just like these zombie bunnies.”

  “Stop it. Tell me more about the love affair between Felix and Anastasia.”

  “Well, it pretty much follows the plot of every lesbian zombie love story.”

  “Which is?”

  “Girl gets girl. Girl loses girl. Girl eats other girls—literally and metaphorically. Girl gets girl back. Girls live happily ever after in some exotic location, free from the curse of reanimation.”

  “The familiarity of the story does elicit a certain margin of comfort.”

  “Right. It’s no different from any book by Laura Ingalls Wilder.”

  “Only with flesh-eating bunnies?”

  “Right.”

  “And hot, girl-on-girl sex?”

  “If you’re lucky.”

  “I feel so foolish. I never noticed the similarities.”

  “Pantyliners.” Shawn tapped her chest with an index finger. “We know some things.”

  Kate smiled at her. “I have missed this, you know.”

  “Missed what?”

  “These dialogues.”

  “What do you mean? We talk all the time.”

  Kate shook her head. “Not like this.”

  They resumed walking. Allie and Patrick were now racing along a split-rail fence, flanked by beds of bright orange daylilies.

  “You, know, I’ve been thinking about quitting.”

  Shawn was surprised. “Your job?” She tired not to sound as hopeful as she felt.

  Kate nodded.

  “Why?”

  “I could give you a dozen reasons, but they all end up in the same place. I’m just not happy.”

  Shawn started to say something, but didn’t. Kate noticed.

  “What?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “I doubt that.”

  Shawn bumped her shoulder. “I wanna hear what you have to say before I express any opinions.”

  “Does it occur to you that maybe I want to hear your opinion?”

  Shawn looked at her. “Do you?”

  Kate’s nod was so slight it was barely perceptible.

  “I don’t want to be selfish.” Shawn had a healthy appreciation for the value of caution, especially where Kate was concerned.

  “Maybe I want you to be selfish.”

  “For real?”

  “I think so. At least, for now.”

  Shawn sighed. “This is always a lose-lose proposition for me. You coerce me into telling you what I think, then you hand my ass back to me on a platter.”

  “I don’t do that.” Kate looked out across the lake, then back at her. Intently. “Do I do that?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be so fractious.”

  “I know.”

  Kate waved a hand around in frustration. “I’ve never been very good at listening to feedback.”

  “So I’ve noticed.”

  “I’d like to change that.”

  “I hear that twelve-step programs can be great little ways to jump-start the process.”

  “Be serious.”

  “I am being serious.”

  “Are you going to tell me what you think, or not?”

  “What I think, or what I want?”

  “Aren’t they the same thing?”

  Shawn shook her head. “Not in every case.”

  Kate sighed. “Okay. Let’s start with what you want.”

  Shawn still felt a little wary about saying too much. She decided to wade in slowly—just like the rotund, wannabe swimmer down on the beach below them, who kept dipping his big toe into the water every five seconds to see if the lake was warming up.

  It wasn’t.

  After five or six tries, the big man in the blousy, blue trunks gave up. He collected his striped towel and his flip-flops and headed back toward the inn.

  Shawn doubted that she’d have any better luck, but decided to take the plunge anyway. After all, Kate was asking for her opinion. No. Kate was asking what she wanted—that wasn’t the same thing. She decided to go for it.

  “I want you to come back.”

  Kate raised an eyebrow. “Back? Back to where? Atlanta?”

  “No. Back to me.”

  “You want me to move to Charlotte?”

  “It doesn’t have to be Charlotte. We could live anyplace. I could live anyplace.”

  Kate didn’t reply.

  “Was that the wrong thing to say?”

  “Is it what you want?”

  Shawn nodded.

  “Then it wasn’t the wrong thing to say.”

  “What do you think?”

  “Nuh uh.” Kate held up a palm. “This is your inquisition, not mine.”

  Shawn sighed.

  “Now.” Kate wasn’t finished yet. “Tell me what you think.”

  “What I think?”

  Kate nodded. “You said that what you want and what you think are not necessarily the same thing. You told me what you want. Now I’d like to hear what you think.”

  This was going no place. Apparently, the round man in the baggy blue trunks had been right. The water was still too cold.

  Shawn tried to buy some time. “I’m not even sure I understand what we’re talking about.”

  “New York. Me.” Kate glared at her. “Us. Ring any bells?”

  “A few.” Shawn didn’t bother mentioning that the bells she was now hearing sounded more like the ones that tolled in advance of a funeral procession.

  She tried a different approach.

  “So that word ‘inquisition’ bothers me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I feel like I’m being cross-examined.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “I mean it.”

  “So now we’re arguing about semantics?”

  “See?” Shawn held out both hands in appeal. “That’s exactly my point. We’re arguing. Which, I might add, is always what happens whenever you ask me to tell you what I think.”

  “It does not.”

  “Does, too.”

  “Why do you always use words like ‘always’?”

  Shawn didn’t respond.

  “You know absolute statements like that piss me off.”

  Shawn was tempted to point out that the list of things that pissed Kate off could fill several volumes. But she didn’t. She kept silent.

  “Well? Are you going to say anything?”

  It was worth noting that keeping silent usually pissed Kate off, too.

 
“Wanna hand me that platter?”

  “What are you talking about?” Kate looked around. “What platter?”

  “The one that has my ass on it.”

  For a moment, Shawn was afraid that Kate might slug her. But she was wrong. Kate smiled. Then she started to laugh. Loudly. Loudly enough that Patrick and Allie heard her and raised their heads from the rich swath of fresh goose poop they’d just discovered.

  “How much more time do you have left on your break?” Kate asked. She was still smiling.

  Shawn looked at her watch. “About ten minutes.”

  Kate grabbed her by the hand and started walking toward the inn.

  “Where are we going?” Shawn was more confused than ever.

  “Back to our room.”

  “Our room?” Shawn practically had to trot to keep up with her. The dogs were racing along behind them. “Why?”

  “Because I just thought of something I want,” Kate explained.” And if we hurry, we’ll have just enough time to take care of it.”

  Shawn was still confused, but not crazy. She tightened her hold on Kate’s hand and followed her back to the room.

  Essay 2

  I’ll never forget the day my parents sat me down and explained to me that I had been born with “ambiguous” genitalia. Really? I’ve never felt ambiguous a day in my life. Well, maybe just that one time at Christmas when my Aunt Tootie took me to Toys R Us to redeem a gift card and asked me to choose between Western Barbie (who kinda looked like Jennifer Aniston, but came with a really cool, prancing Palomino), or the remote controlled Special Ops Spy Car with Rockets and a Rear-Firing Cannon.

  I stood there staring down into the depths of that bright red shopping cart for so long that Aunt Tootie, who really had the patience of Job, finally started cracking her wad of Dentyne to let me know she was thinking about getting annoyed.

  In the end, I went with the Barbie—but only because I liked the fringe on her shiny white outfit and, like I said, the plastic yellow horse was pretty awesome. It looked a lot like Mr. Ed. My aunt never found out that, later, when I got Barbie alone in my room, I cut off most of her hair and re-named her Wilbur.

  Even then, my tastes were pretty eclectic. At least, that’s how my mother described them to her guests when I showed up at one of her Tupperware parties wearing a pair of mukluks, and a camouflage jacket over a pink tutu. I’ve never been afraid to take a fashion risk.

  Growing up, it didn’t much bother me that I had a penis. (In fact, it’s really just a super-sized nub, but I’ll talk more about that later.) I mean, I knew I was a girl. Mostly. I didn’t even know there was anything unusual about me until I was ten, and I saw Melissa Boatwright in the shower at the Y. I learned some other useful things about myself that day, too—like it suddenly became clear to me why I wasn’t really interested in boys the same way most of my friends were starting to be. You see, Melissa was three years older than me, and she looked pretty great stark naked and dripping wet. And unlike my Western Barbie, I had no desire to cut off any of her hair to make her look like a guy. I thought she was just fine the way she was.

  That’s when I went home and asked my mom to explain just what was up with my body—and why didn’t I look like other girls “down there.”

  She gave me one of “those” looks—the ones that always meant we were in for a long conversation—and said we’d talk about it later, when my dad got home.

  Okay. That meant it was a bigger deal than I thought. For the very first time in my life, I felt afraid. Why was I different? Why hadn’t anyone ever said anything to me about it? What was this going to mean? And why did my nub get bigger whenever I thought about Melissa in the shower?

  That night, after we ate our pot roast and creamed spinach, my parents pushed their plates back and faced me with identical pairs of folded hands.

  “Pumpkin,” my father began, “there are some things that mom and I never told you about the day you were born.”

  I glanced over at my mother. Her face had that pinched-up look it got whenever Sally Struthers was on TV talking about sick babies in Africa.

  I looked back at my father. “What is it? And why does Mom look so scared?”

  He shot a nervous glance at my mother and cleared his throat.

  I knew it was bad now. I was sure he was going to tell me that I was adopted. That had to be it. My whole life was a sham. How would I ever hold my head up in school? And how would I ever break the news to Wilbur and Mr. Ed?

  We were orphans now.

  My eyes started to fill up with tears. “I’m adopted, aren’t I?”

  My father looked surprised. “No, honey, that’s not it.”

  “It isn’t?” I wasn’t sure I was ready to believe him. I mean, he’d waited all this time to tell me whatever it was.

  “No.” He looked over at my mom again.

  She took up the explanation. “Sweetie, when you were born, the doctors weren’t sure about whether you were a little girl, or a little boy.”

  Okay. That one stopped my surge of panic.

  “Why not?” I asked.

  My mother leaned across the table and reached out to push my bangs away from my eyes. “Well, honey. You know how little boys have penises, and little girls have vaginas?”

  I had a pretty good idea where this was headed now. I nodded.

  “It seemed that you were born with both,” she said.

  “And,” my father chimed in, “the doctors wanted us to make a choice about which sex we wanted you to be.”

  “But,” it was my mom’s turn to talk again. I felt like I was watching a tennis match on TV. “We didn’t think that was our decision to make—so we decided to wait.”

  Wait? Wait for what? Wait for my nub to drop off, or for me to have to start shaving?

  “You gave me a girl’s name,” I said. “And you bought me dolls.” I said it like I was Matlock, cross-examining a witness.

  “We also bought you trucks and guns,” my father corrected. It seemed like he’d had time to prepare for this conversation.

  “And your name is a family name, that could work for either a girl or a boy,” my mother added.

  That was true. At least they hadn’t named me after Aunt Tootie. Then I might have had a reason to use one of my toy guns.

  I looked down at my lap. “Is this why I have a big nub?” I asked.

  My father chewed his bottom lip. Nobody said anything for a moment. I could hear our dog, Rex, getting a drink of water in the kitchen.

  “Yes, honey,” my mom finally replied.

  I sighed. It was true that my big nub was—unusual. I knew that now. But it was a part of me, and I was used to it. Plus, it was feeling pretty good these days. I didn’t think I wanted to have it go away. My panic started to creep back. Is that what this conversation was about? Were they going to make me lose my nub?

  I knew that right then, I probably looked a lot like Rex, whenever Mom got the vacuum cleaner out.

  “Can I keep it?” I asked.

  “Oh, honey,” my mom was starting to cry. “Of course you can keep it.”

  Dad was now staring at something fascinating in his own lap. Maybe all this talk about losing nubs was making him think about his own?

  Gross.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Is there anything else you’d like to ask us about?” My mom was still leaning toward me.

  I shrugged. It occurred to me to ask if they ever thought that Joey Heinz, who lived in the apartment upstairs, looked just like the Unabomber—but I knew this probably wasn’t the kind of question she meant.

  “Not right now,” I said, instead.

  My father had apparently finished contemplating the crease in his trouser leg.

  “Just know you can always talk with us about this,” he said, “or anything else that worries you.”

  My mother nodded in agreement. “Don’t ever let anyone make you feel like you’re odd or strange. You are a perfectly wonderful and normal person.”
/>   Right then, I realized how lucky I was that she didn’t know about Western Barbie’s new hairstyle. I’d grown tired of the buzz cut, and colored her head with a black Marks-a-Lot. She had a beard and sideburns now, too.

  “Can I go outside and play until dark?”

  “Did you finish your math homework?” she asked.

  We were doing long division at school—and I hated that stuff worse than creamed spinach. I looked down at my plate. I’d done a pretty good job hiding most of it beneath what was left of my Parker House roll. I knew it didn’t really fool my mother, but she usually let me get away with it.

  “I did most of it,” I said. “I need help with some of the harder ones.”

  Mom started to protest, but Dad interrupted her. “You can go out and play—but when you come back inside, we’ll sit down and solve the rest of your problems.”

  I pushed back my chair, and raced for the front door, not wanting to waste any more of the soft, warm night.

  It was only later, as I fell asleep wrapped in the snug awareness that my parents would always do exactly what they promised, that I realized how lucky I was to be born me.

  3

  An Obscure Object of Desire

  Junior wasn’t talking. He pretty much just sat back on his plaid throne and let Quinn figure things out.

  They’d moved one of his big, Dorito-stained recliners out of the warehouse and set it up on the pontoon. It reposed there proudly, dead center on the carpeted area beneath the red canvas awning, like a makeshift captain’s bridge. It looked sort of good, too—almost like it came with the boat as part of some luxury package.

  The way Quinn saw it, these damn boats were just like double-wide trailers on floats—so why not trick one out with real furniture?

  When she suggested the idea to Junior, he didn’t say much. He just stared at her and plucked at a stray chin hair.

  She took that as a “yes.” Montana helped her haul the big chair outside and drag it down to the dock so they could move it onto the boat. They also took along a full-sized Weber grill that had seen better days.

  Quinn loved hot dogs, and so did Junior. It was another thing they had in common.

  Now they were out for their first motorized tour of the islands.

  While Quinn got the hang of driving the boat—which was really more like aiming it in the general direction you wanted it to go—Montana sat on the bow, cleaning the grill racks with steel wool. Quinn didn’t bother to suggest to her that it might make more sense to do her scraping at the back of the boat. Ancient flecks of carbonized meat kept billowing across the deck in rust-colored swarms. Montana sat with her long legs spread-eagled, riding the swells like a pro. She was wearing cutoff jeans and a loose-fitting tank top. Her short blonde hair glowed like a second sun.