None of the Above(60)

“Oh, please please please a girl puppet.”

“What color should her hair be?”

“Brown, like yours,” she said with utter certainty. “With green eyes.”

My eyes misted again as I helped Lucinda cut some yarn, and she pasted it in an unruly pile above two green sequin eyes. She frowned, and picked at the eyes.

“It doesn’t look right,” she said.

“Are you kidding? I have brown hair and green eyes. It’s perfect.”

“Okay,” she said doubtfully. Then she smiled up at me, sunlight and apples. “It’s for you!”

“Thank you, sweetie.” I laid the puppet gently onto another folding chair. I blinked, and forced a smile in return. “Now let’s make one for you.”





CHAPTER 35


“Wait until you get to college and meet some real boys,” Gretchen told me a couple of days later.

“Yeah, about that.” I paused. “I’ve actually been thinking about taking a year off.”

“What?”

“To keep my scholarship, I have to go back to school, which I’m not sure if I want to do in the first place. But even if I do end up at State, there are ten people from my class going there, too. It’ll be like I’ve never left.”

“Are you f*cking kidding me?”

“Taking a year off would be perfect—I could reapply to some places that are farther away. I don’t have to run Division One, I’ve decided that. And I can definitely get a Division Two scholarship. Some of the smaller schools, maybe they’d be fun. Be a big fish in a little pond. There are thousands of colleges—”

“Kristin, listen to me.” Gretchen cut off my babbling. “You can’t hide from your diagnosis for the rest of your life.”

I crumpled up the piece of paper I was doodling on and sighed. “I know. But don’t blame me for trying?”

“Whatever. You’re still coming with us to Club Eternal a week from Saturday, right? Because if you don’t show up, I will personally hunt you down and drag your ass out.”

“Fine,” I said, but only because the club was in Syracuse, and I knew Gretchen probably would resort to bodily harm.

“Good. And the next thing you need to do is come with me to one of the national AIS-DSD meetings,” Gretchen said. “You’d be surprised at how normal and well-adjusted people are, once they settle into their diagnosis.”

I snorted. She made it sound like getting used to having AIS was like moving into a new apartment.

“Sure, everyone has issues at first,” she said. “People fall apart. Some people start drinking. One woman did heroin for a little while after she was diagnosed. But that’s what those meetings are for. You realize that no matter what they’ve gone through, people can heal, as long as they have someone to show them the way.

“The meetings are like a big reunion, with lots of food and mingling. In the evening there’s drinking. There was this woman one night who’d had a couple of glasses of wine. She got up on a cocktail table and yelled, ‘I am intersex—hear me roar!’”

Gretchen laughed, but I shuddered. How comfortable would someone have to be with herself to do that in front of strangers?

“Was she old?” I asked.

“Dunno—maybe in her forties?”

“So I’ve got twenty years to get used to it.”

“Now that’s just crazy talk. There’s a teenage support group too. Not just in the US. I’m sending you a link to some of the stories on the UK website. Add that to your homework list. Required reading, due next weekend.”

I groaned. “What, am I going to have to write a book report?”

“No, but class participation counts.”





CHAPTER 36


Now that the play was over, Jessica and Darren resumed their normal carpool routine, though they offered to have me join them.

“No, it doesn’t make sense,” I said, back to excuses. “I’ve always got doctors’ appointments and things to rush to afterward. Thanks, though.”


The clinic had been thoroughly Christmasfied, though the decorations were low on the Santa-and-elf scale, being more heavily weighted toward Nativity scenes and lambs.

“Can’t they diversify a little bit and put up some Hanukkah stuff?” Jessica complained at lunch.

“Why do you care? You’re as Jewish as the Dalai Lama,” said Darren.

“It’s the principle of it. Don’t impose your religion on other people.”

“So let me get this straight.” Darren leaned back in his chair. “You’re saying that if I got your sister a present for Christmas, I’d be imposing my religion on her? That’d save me a mint.”

“Don’t be an *. By the way, Becky’s not into diamonds. She’s more of a sapphire girl.”

“Yeah, I’ll keep that in mind if I win the lottery,” Darren muttered.

The tips of his ears turned pink. I couldn’t tell if he felt embarrassed talking about Becky, or about money. Maybe both. Jessica’s eyes flicked over to me.

All of a sudden I became acutely aware of being an intruder, a last-minute interloper into their clinic. I didn’t want to be a doctor, or a nurse. I was just looking for another place to hide. After one last bite of my turkey sandwich, I packed up.