Birthday(3)

The attendant laughs, nudges the raft with a sandaled foot, and suddenly we’re wrapped up in dark, screaming motion. The raft careens through the tube, riding so high on the walls whenever we turn that it feels like we might go flying. Eric laughs manically, shielding his face with his arms as water sprays us. I laugh too. The excitement builds and builds, eclipsing every other emotion, until finally I yell into the darkness: “Eric! I want to be a girl!”

“All right!” Eric shouts.

And I can’t believe it.

All right? All right. He said all right.

I just let my body laugh, let the laughter twist and erupt out of me like poison flowing out of a wound, and suddenly I feel weightless. A circle of light appears, blinding at first, expanding at the speed of sound, and then we’re bathed in sunshine, tumbling, flipping over the raft into the pool below.

I’m the first to the surface. I tread in place for a moment, ignoring the rushing water, the screaming children, the music blaring over the park’s PA. I told him. I told him. It’s all right.

Eric comes up a moment later, flailing and gasping for air, his eyes hidden behind a wet sheet of curly hair. I grab his arm and drag him to shallow water, sputtering and laughing at the same time.

“That was rad!”

“It was awesome!” I say, splashing as my arms fly into the air.

All right. All right. He said all right.

“What’d you say in there?” he asks me, panting. “I couldn’t hear.”

“Oh,” I say, my insides tightening up.

He didn’t hear.

He doesn’t know.

I’d had a vision as I’d gone down the waterslide, or a cloud of competing visions, all paradise in their way: Eric telling me I’m normal, Eric telling me I’m not normal but he understands and he’ll still talk to me and keep my secret, and distantly, but shining gold and warm, a vision of myself as a girl, walking happily next to him at school as if it’s the most normal thing in the world. The visions flicker out like heat ripples on pavement.

My stomach keeps twisting, but it’s useless to try to stop it.

I slowly wade my way out of the pool. Everything’s spinning. I run to the nearest trash can, brace my hands on the rim, and throw up.





ERIC



The birthday cake sits in my lap, bouncing with each bump on the interstate. One side has been carved away, and most of it is behind us in the water park trash can. Morgan tried eating some, claiming he was okay, only to throw up again, and the sight—and smell—cost the rest of us our appetites. So we all decided it was time to go home.

I watch I-75 roll past, carrying us north from Georgia back into Tennessee. My cheeks and shoulders glow with what will probably be a sunburn, but feels warm and nice for now. My older brother, Peyton, sulks in the seat next to me. Apparently he met some girls who were willing to talk to him and Morgan puking interrupted this once-in-a-lifetime miracle. Dad bobs his head to Johnny Cash on the classic country station while Mom looks totally lost in the latest Patricia Cornwell novel. I have a book in my backpack, the story of Radiohead, or I could relisten to the Mountain Goats album Tallahassee, but I don’t really feel like reading or even listening to music.

It’s hard to focus on anything really. I just keep thinking about what was up with Morgan today, and what his big secret was. He’s been kind of … far away ever since his mom died. It’s selfish, and I want to be there for him, but it’s more and more like he’s never present. He was always quiet and kind of thoughtful, more of a listener than a talker, unless something made him mad, but nowadays I’m lucky if I can get him to do more than grunt and chew his thumbnail in response to half the things I say. Who knew you could feel lonely with someone right beside you?

Morgan’s been my best friend since forever. His mom taught both of us to read from the same copy of Go Dog Go. He told me the moment he figured out Santa wasn’t real. I joined the peewee football team, even though I hated football, because Morgan was the quarterback. I even asked to be left tackle on the offensive line because taking hits for my friend felt like the most natural thing in the world.

We’ve spent our summers climbing trees, wandering dry creek beds, and laying in fields watching clouds scud by. We’ve slept in the same bed every Friday or Saturday night since preschool, talking until late into the night about music (my Mountain Goats phase was preceded by a two-month obsession with Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, and Morgan’s managed to turn me onto some of the metal bands he’s into, like Atreyu, and, if he’s in the right mood, all the hippie girl music like Kate Bush and Tori Amos that his mom loved and he doesn’t mind admitting he loves too), movies (Almost Famous for me and a tie between Mulan and The Royal Tenenbaums for him), and everything else. We used to share everything.

And then, at the start of the summer, I remember I noticed a girl in a different way. I was riding my bike to Morgan’s house, and as I sped through his trailer park, I passed a girl I vaguely recognized as the older sister of someone in our class—a high schooler, in a one-piece bathing suit and cutoff shorts, and she was standing in a kiddie pool spraying the mud off her legs with a garden hose. I’d always thought girls were pretty before, and I’d sort of liked being around them sometimes, but watching this older girl bathing was the key in the lock that turned everything else on.