Beast(67)

I yank a portion back to cover me. “Even he cannot help us now,” I whisper.

“You need to get dressed and go home, Jamie,” Mom says in a low voice. Her feet slam out of my bedroom, and she yanks the door shut with a bang. Oh shit.

“Are you grounded now?” Jamie sits up and fumbles for her bra.

“No, I am dead now.”

Jamie flies out of bed—the bra that took me twelve tries to remove clipped in place with her one practiced snap—and scans the floor for her shirt and skirt. Lucky her, her underwear’s on. Mine is hiding and I creep upright, gathering the sheet around me like half a toga, to get a new pair. I’ve been as naked as I can possibly be with Jamie, and yet I don’t want her to see me in broad daylight. I’d like to think everyone has this reaction the morning after, but I don’t know.

All dressed, Jamie throws her head down to her knees and shakes her hair out, combing it with her fingers. She stands and it tumbles down her back. Ready to go, she waits for me. “I’m scared,” she whispers.

“Me too.”

“My parents are going to kill me.”

“Maybe we can go to each other’s funerals.”

“Here’s hoping,” she says, and reaches up to kiss me goodbye.

I kiss her back. “See you soon?”

“That would be awesome, but I’ll probably be on lockdown for the rest of forever.”

“Send me a pigeon.”

“I will. You too.” She heads downstairs and turns into the bathroom. Her things gathered and back on, Jamie pauses in the foyer long enough to take one last picture of me before my execution.

“Very funny,” I say.

She winks, opens the front door, and escapes.

“Dylan! Downstairs!” Mom immediately yells.

My knuckle jumps into my mouth and I bite it. Fuck. I’d rather have a roomful of cracked-out monkeys rip each and every hair out of my entire body, one by one, than go downstairs and face my mom. There’s no postponing this. Only thing I can do is go downstairs, get yelled at, get grounded, and wait for it to be over. And maybe sneak out to see Jamie a couple hundred times so I don’t go crazy missing her.

By the time I land in the kitchen, Mom has paced an oval in the floor. Stuck in her very own racetrack.

I sit in a chair. “I thought you were coming home tonight.”

“As if that excuses what you’ve done.” She sniffs and grabs a crumpled tissue from a pile on the counter. It doesn’t go to her nose or her eyes; instead she squeezes the life out of it. “You didn’t return my texts and I knew something was up. I just knew it. I came home early.”

“What about your big meeting?”

“You’re more important than a meeting. The promotion can wait.”

My shoulders sink with guilt.

“I tried to give you space, tried to take a step back, and I come home to my son in bed with a transvestite, no, wait, she’s…” Mom looks tired. Her eyes flick high as she thinks. “Transgender. I’m sorry, I get confused. Bottom line, you’re grounded.”

“So it’s worse because she’s trans?”

“I would ground you no matter who was in your room last night, because you lied to me,” she says, simmering. “You said you were going to order pizza and watch TV by yourself, and clearly that didn’t happen.”

“Fine.” I rearrange my face to look more conciliatory. I’m already embarrassed as shit and feel bad she missed her big moment. Just chew me out already.

“Go ahead, be flippant. You are not equipped to deal with this.”

“What the heck does that mean?”

“She’s a very confused young person with a complicated history—”

“You keep saying that,” I interrupt, risking more jail time. “If Jamie were your definition of a girl, would you still say she’s confused? Would you keep saying she’s complicated? I don’t get it. We’re no different than any other fifteen-year-olds.”

“You have no idea what the world is like.” Her fingertips fly to her temples and press so hard, her nails turn white. “And Jamie looks like a tall, skinny boy made out of spindles and wearing a skirt,” she attempts to mutter.

“No, she doesn’t. She’s amazing.”

“I’m sorry. You’re right, it shouldn’t matter. I’m just worried you two will never fit in. It’s hard enough for you, Dylan.”

“So what? I already know plenty what it’s like to fit in nowhere. To make people run away, to have everyone think you’re dumb because you can hang a hat on your teeth, to grow up without a dad.”

“Don’t you dare bring your father into this,” Mom shoots at me. “God only knows what your dad is thinking about this up there.”

“What would he think?” I ask, barely scraping the air. He had a front-row seat from my blue ceiling.

All she does is shake her head, shake her head.

“Mom?”

“He would not be pleased—that’s putting it lightly.”

Feels like a knife through the chest. My broken bones throb along with my heartbeat, ricocheting up my spine. “Okay” is all I say.

“It’s not okay! Dylan, please, what is going on?” she erupts. “I know you don’t have any condoms in your room, so we’ll—”