August 25, 2003:

 

Harrison was sulking again. Harrison was always sulking. Perhaps that came with the territory when dealing with a nine year old, but it was still annoying. He wasn’t the only one who was having to move out of the old Gravelly Lake house. Sure, it was his birthday, but that didn’t mean that he had to sulk about it. The movers were carefully stepping around him as he sat on the bottom stoop of the stairs, silently half-crying, which only made their job more difficult. That half-crying business was the big ‘tell’ for when that little brat was just sulking. He wanted attention—to make a big scene, as if that would stop us from moving into Grandfather’s castle now that he had passed away.

Mother was directing the movers to not break her ‘fine glasses’—more like wine glasses. She had generously elected to wear a shoulderless pink tube minidress that flattered the figure brought about by her many hours-long rendezvous with her personal trainer. She had made sure not to skip on the afternoon wine glass affixed to her dominant hand, either.

Father wasn’t home—he was working up in Seattle, doing something with the family businesses or whatever it was that he did for work. The old man was rarely—if ever—home as it was, so it was not as if he needed to be here to supervise anything.

I, on the other hand, was busy losing myself to the world of Narnia for the nth time.

“It’s not fair!” Harrison blubbered with a mumble, “I don’t wanna move!”

Dropping my book of witches and wardrobes on my chest, I sat up from laying on the couch—the lone piece of furniture yet to be moved out of the living room—and huffed dramatically, “You’re going to be moving a lot, eventually, you might as well get used to it, Harrison.”

“I don’t wanna get used to it! This is our home, Beth!”

Harrison had for me but one of those looks that a little prince speaking truth to the power of the world would have. It was difficult to think of a way to change the mind of someone who had declarative eyes such as his, let alone when they belonged to an obstinate nine year old. With a sign, I shook my head, “We have a new home now, Harrison. Grandfather’s castle is bigger, you will have many more nooks and many more crannies to play in and explore.”

“Grandpa’s house is weird. And cold!”

It was hard to argue there, “True as that may be, it’s where we’re going to live from now on. Who knows, maybe Father will still own this house by the time you turn eighteen and he’ll give it to you?”

Harrison’s entire body language drew to a still, as if he was somewhat placated by the notion.

“You think?”

“I don’t see why not. I don’t see a ‘for sale’ sign outside, do you?”

“No?”

“Well then, better start asking Mother and Father to keep you in mind then, shouldn’t you?”

Harrison was lost for a verbal reply. He just looked at me, like his brain was preoccupied thinking something over.

The poor boy was disshelved, his green tee shirt loosely hanging off of his left shoulder like it didn’t fit. Harrison was always a small, frail thing—it matched his personality, in a way. Suddenly, the boy’s eyes widened.

Following Harrison’s line of sight, I turned and watched as two large, non-descript men in dirtied overalls got into place to pick the couch up from each side.

“Annabeth, sweetie, get off of the couch and let these fine gentlemen do their job?”

“Doesn’t Cassadine Castle have its own furniture?” I asked, giving the big college-age boy holding on to the far end of the couch a sarcastic look, daring him to lift while I was still laying on the couch.

Mother paused for a moment, as if lost in thought, “Ah! Well, true, yes,” turning to the two men, “Nevermind then, boys. Go ahead and bring what you've taken out already back in!”

The men shrugged and then walked away from the couch to find something big and heavy to carry back in from the moving truck, while Mother herself followed after the bewildered men so as to ‘supervise’ them. I imagine she only wanted to appreciate them for their bodies, given how foreign a concept ‘fitness’ appeared to be to Father.

Turning back to Harrison, still on his stoop, “See? You’ll even have furniture, baby brother!”

Groaning, Harrison rose off of his perch at the base of the staircase and stomped off upstairs to his bedroom for one last lie down in his bed.

I imagined that he was not going to take kindly to sleeping in a new bed tonight. 

 

***

 

September 03, 2003: 

 

Should one pay mind to the word of my mother, one would be educated on the supposed importance of the first day of middle school. As she sent me off with the fully loaded lunch card that I now fiddled with in my hands—goodness forbid I should take lunch home from school—my mother had imparted me with the wisdom that this was the year that all of the boys and girls would begin to take notice of each other. I found the concept of being made my mother’s own doll for playing ‘House’ to be more than a little annoying, but I had learned years ago to simply not speak back to her when she was going on one of her usual rants about romance.

Slipping the lunch card into my pocket, I dug into my backpack and pulled out my copy of Pride & Prejudice, for a little indulgence.

If the rowdiness of the school bus was any indication, middle school would not be all too different an experience from elementary school, where the boys were all insufferable in ways that not even Harrison could match. At the very least, my baby brother had had the good graces to only be insufferable on occasions when—in any other family—he might have been afforded the freedom to take offense to being slighted by either of our parents’ overbearing and heavy-handed behavior. 

There was not even a half mile between the two schools I had attended in my prolonged twelve years. The two prisons—one of blue and gold and the graduated incarceration being of red and blue—existed on the same mile-long road that led to yet another of the many lakes in this vexing village. 

I had cleared the Narnia series numerous times since I had willed myself to begin reading on my own when I was seven, but I still found the juvenile series a comfort to return to when I had little place else to escape to. Truth be told, sometimes a girl just needed to read something of a palette cleanser after reading the Jane Austen catalogue for a third time.

And then, like on this first and only first day of middle school, the cycle would repeat. Like a Phoenix rising from its own ashes.

“Middle school is the time to start making connections, Annabeth,” Mother had repeatedly told me over the summer, “Try to make some new friends, dear.”

Books were all the friends a girl needed, as far as I had been concerned. Books didn’t make fun of you for not exactly fitting in, after all. Instead, they helped you escape the mundanity of a life you had no say in.

Absorbed in my page-turner about brilliant young women and men with lessons in humility to learn, I barely even registered the bus making a stop and picking up yet another load of kids. Slowly cranking my head to my left, I realized that I was sitting in one of the few seats that could still sit a second person. Looking up, I watched as the seats at the front of the bus began to quickly fill up. 

To be subjected to a lack of personal space, privacy and an unwanted conversation with some insipid bimbo seemed too cruel a fate so early in the morning. 

Eventually, the flood of new kids ended and I was spared the annoyance of having to sit next to someone. The school bus doors closed and the driver slowly leaned onto the gas, pushing the bus forward. 

Returning to resting my right temple on the window, I let one of the last sunny days of the summer season magnify through the glass and warm my head. I was not sure that I had recognized it in years passed, but this year, it felt as if the way that the sun remained strong so early in the morning was like an advertisement for the beauty that even a school day could begin with.

Then, through the slightly cracked window, I heard a panicked yell: “Wait!! Aaah, crap!!”

Turning, I bore witness to a tall, awkward girl in an elaborate, old style of dress—that consisted of a lavender blouse, a long, black skirt and a black tie wrapped around her neck that was capped off with a shiny pendant—chasing after the bus, waving her right arm as her left slung her backpack over her shoulder.

The girl noticed me reservedly watching her run and yelled at me directly, “H-hey, tell the driver to stop!!”   

I had no question that I was going to regret my kindness—or perhaps ‘awkwardness’. Standing up, I shouted at the bus driver from the back, “Hey, there’s one more student!”

The bus reached an easy stop, allowing the girl to catch up and crawl on board.

It was just my luck that the haggard, dark-haired Asian girl stumbled her way towards the back of the bus in her dirtied beginner’s heels—how she managed to run in them, I have no idea—and dropped with a plop beside me.

“Oh, thank gawd,” the sweaty thing wheezed, “I thought that I was screwed!”

“No,” I whispered, unable to be bothered to speak very loudly, “You’re just lucky enough to have to go to school, like the rest of us.”

I felt horrifically underdressed in her presence, given I was wearing—with protest—a pink dress with a white belt—a big, gaudy, white belt!—picked out by my mother—at my age?!—to celebrate the first day of middle school. I was not sure if my dearest mother—Darcy Woods—had grappled with the fact that we were no longer in the seventies.

Still red in the face, the sprinter girl laughed with that awkward tomboy voice of hers, “One girl’s trash, I suppose.”

“True, yes,” she was a talker, I was beginning to fear.

“I'm so excited, though. About today, I mean, you know?”

“I do.”

“It’s like—middle school! Wow!! We’re big kids now, you know? That’s just—holy crap!”

“Comparatively, I suppose. Then again, are we not back at the bottom rung?”

“Huh?”

“There are two grades above us, are there not?”

“Ooh, yeah, no, I getcha. Still! This is going to be so cool!”

Having had enough enthusiasm for the morning, I returned to my classic and left the girl to her own devices.

“Hey, whatcha readin’?”

With a belabored sigh, “Pride & Prejudice.”

“Ooh, sounds mature! You must be ‘The Mature Type’!” The Capitalization and scare quotes were unmistakable in her voice, which took on a noticeable poshness for added affect

There was no hiding the dryness in mine, “How do you figure?”

“You've got that gloomy scowl! And! You're reading a book about the gendered politics of being a woman! Although, things have changed a bit in the nearly two hundred years since Jane Austen originally published her seminal work. Doesn’t quite apply to me, y’know?”

Who the hell is this girl? Turning, I found myself face-to-face with the upbeat girl for the first time, up close and personal. Her freshly trimmed mop of black hair—while disheveled from her chase—perfectly framed a pale face with the widest, goofiest smile I had ever seen a girl wear. It was as if she knew that she had me read-to-rights.

A strange, warm feeling filled my chest as I found our faces perilously close to one another, slightly inching closer and then back apart with the rock of the bus.

Horrified, I quickly turned back to my book to forget about the girl but somehow had forgotten how to read in the few seconds that had passed.

The girl just giggled on, for whatever maddening reason.

“I'm Megumi Burmen, by the way!” The terrible girl extended her right hand for an introductory shake.

Horrified by my lack of composure, I extended my right arm across my body while keeping my eyes on my book, damned useless as it was, “A-Annabeth. Or Beth is fine.”

Megumi took my hand in hers and shook it. For some reason, it felt as if Megumi had the hand of a girl who knew which way she was going.

“You can call me Megu, if you like! Grandma does, ‘cause I'm named after her!”

“O-okay, Megu…mi…”

The terrible girl just laughed again, with that awful, carefree laugh of hers.

I had the feeling I would be hearing it a lot, from now on.

 

***

 

September 03, 2003:

 

Stepping through the first door on the right in the sixth grade wing, I entered my math class, took a breath, and then headed for the desk closest to the door that I entered from. 

If I was lucky, there would be no Fascism of the Seating Order.

My first period of the day—a ‘red day’—was sixth grade math. The strange girl from the bus—Megumi—entered just after I did, apparently sharing this same class with me. The enigmatic, chipper girl grinned excitedly as she slid into the chair to my right. It was eerie how I couldn’t seem to shake her.

Not long after we sat down, other students began to file into the class. The teacher, an older white man whose beard and mop of hair had long-since familiarized themselves with the color silver, sat behind his desk at the front of the classroom, attention totally given to the boxy desktop monitor that was surrounded by piles of paper.

Only the first day of school and it seemed like he was already behind on paperwork.

The bell rang to start the day, which led the lanky old man to stand up and shuffle on over to the classroom door to close it.

The concept of a male teacher was foreign to me, at least in practice. Not a lot of men taught elementary school, I had found throughout my twelve years. To make the newness of a new school even more overwhelming, I was now challenged by the world to figure out what having a male teacher was like, and if I could work with him.

I hoped that he was unlike Father.

“Okay, hi, yeah, good morning, kids,” shuffling back up front, the old man—khakis and a checkered blue-and-white dress shirt—sounded like an utterly bored hippy, “Welcome to sixth grade math! I'm your teacher, Bob Farmer. I've been teaching for over thirty years, so you're getting your money's worth.”

While I got the joke, not one of the thirty-plus kids in the classroom laughed.

“Anyway, the printers are giving me a hard time, so go ahead and get to know one another while I fu—fanangle with my computer some more.”

Mr. Bob Farmer had neglected to take attendance before returning to his computer, but I wasn't going to complain.

Megumi turned and twisted in her seat to face me, “Hey! So, like, what do ya do for fun?”

I was going to have to entertain her, wasn't I? “Mostly read. Or go for walks.” 

At the old house, I used to like to go down to the beach and watch the water, too.

“Whatcha read? Other than, you know, old white people books?”

“New white people books, too, I'm afraid.”

Megumi burst into a fit of giggles, like I had just said the funniest thing in the world. It was uncomfortable, given how I had meant my reply to mean.

“I've been reading a ton of comic books lately—American and Japanese, you know?” I didn’t read comic books, but that didn’t stop Megumi from grinning at me like a fool. “I'm gettin’ into this one manga called NARUTO, it's art is SO cool! And it's got blood and stuff, too!!”

I nodded along, like I knew what the hell a ‘manga’ was.

“Ooh, and, like, big fan of anime, too! My dad brings tapes and laser discs back from Japan when he goes there for business trips. Have you ever seen Ghost in the Shell? The main character is this badass woman who—”

A pair of snickers from the girls sitting at the table in front of us broke Megumi's concentration. What she said next stuck with me: “Hey, girls can kickass, too!”

The immature girls just kept giggling at Megumi, having turned around partially in their seats but not even having the spine to look her in the eyes.

Megumi's words had a sentiment of conviction to them that—I feared—I had not yet properly appreciated about her. The fact that she was willing to stick by her interests—interests that were rather atypical hobbies for a girl—was something that struck me as admirable about her.

It made the quick look of insecurity that flashed across the free-spirited girl's face when she thought nobody was watching all the more upsetting to me.

 

***

 

September 03, 2003:

 

“Now, god forbid I mention it, but does it not read as criminal to anyone else to assign homework on the first day of school?”

Megumi was such an odd girl. Sitting next to me on the bus ride home from school, it was perplexing how her selection of a vintage sense of fashion seemed to clash with that tomboy vibe of hers. I half-expected her to try out for the soccer team when it was time for tryouts and yet she never seemed uncomfortable in her outfit of choice, which meant that she had selected the get-up herself.

Why did a girl who acted and moved like she could Bend It Like Beckham like to wear beautiful, vintage clothes?

“Like, what do you think, Bethy?”

“Just Beth—but, I suppose that I must concur with your criticism. It's the first day, let us ease into our surroundings, at least!”

“Exactly, my Five-Dollar-Word Friend! Oh my gawd, have a heart! Is empathy lost upon these former children? Were they—perhaps—the sort to ask about homework when they, too, were once students?! O’, Cruel Fates!!” 

I nodded studiously, part of my brain kicking myself for getting caught up in the rambunctious girl's rhythm. After just a day around her, it felt like I could imagine Megumi leaping atop a desk in the middle of class and reciting some line from some movie about ‘seizing the day’—or some such—just to draw all the attention onto herself.

The churn in my gut that the free-spirited girl inspired with her breathless chattering left me wanting for breath. 

“Hey,” the way that Megumi Burmen dragged the word out was painfully captivating, “since we have all these classes together, what say you come over to my place and we make this a team effort?” The devilish grin that broke onto her face was too cruel, “I'll let ya cheat offa me!”

The alternative was returning home to the dreary Cassadine Castle and dealing with Mother and Harrison and all the annoying questions about my first day of middle school that they would surely have, “Uh, yeah, sure? Just gotta call my mom and let her know when we get to your place?”

Too many moons had passed since I last took to visiting a friend’s house. One’s pool of friends dries up—not unsurprisingly quickly—when one begins to refuse to subject oneself to play dates orchestrated by one’s mother. I felt confident in my suspicion that Darcy Woods would set up play dates primarily so as to sit around with the other moms and drink wine. To have time for that but no care for one’s own daughter was something that I had felt uniquely an insult the more I took to the familial affection shown in the many books that I read.

After getting off of the bus at Megumi’s stop, I followed the girl back to her home with very few words of my own to give. Megumi—on the other hand—seemed to have nothing but an entire catalogue of things to talk about and it felt as if I was her audience by lifetime appointment.

The Burmen house was a short distance down and around the block from the bus stop, but the walk was nevertheless densely packed by the girl’s unbridled joy for the spoken word. There was nary a moment to stop and process my own feelings.

Whatever those feelings might be.

Megumi lived in a two story house—covered in plastic slats colored a regionally appropriate forest green—with a ranch-style fence—mid-construction—in front of her front yard. As we passed by the fence, I could appreciate the smell of the freshly cut wood and the shininess of the metal wiring that ran between each slab of wood. The fence looked sturdy enough for something not yet finished.

“Dad’s still building it,” Megumi smirked, turning back to face me as I slowed to appreciate the fence, “He said it helps him unwind after work.” I was impressed by how she managed to walk backwards in such a long skirt.

“What does your father do for work?”

“He does something in tech, I think. Computers and stuff. He brings home video games he works on sometimes, too. Mom’s a realtor—she just brings home brochures. It’s lovely—that’s sarcasm, by the way.”

“That explains the, uh, castle?” I pointed to my left with my thumb for effect.

“Ooh, yeah, it’s a pretty nice house, ain’t it?”

I mean, not as nice at the literal castle that I lived in, “It’s really nice—looks like a big yard? It must be fun to be able to run around in it!” My relative lack of experience with having friends had conditioned me to be like a fish out of water. How the hell did other kids do this socializing thing?

“I mean, basically. I got the place all to myself.”

“No siblings?”

“Naw.”

“What about friends?”

“Oh, I got one, I imagine,” Megumi’s cheeky grin threatened to eat me alive.

“Y-you mean, just me?”

Turning around with a theatrical little motion, “Don’t sell yourself so short, Bethy! You seem like a fun gal. Besides, we just moved to the neighborhood!”

Not being able to see what kind of face Megumi was making left me with an unpleasant feeling in my stomach. 

Once inside the Burmen residence, Megumi and I doffed our shoes as she called out: “I’M HOME!!” Before turning to me, “Want somethin’ to drink?”

“Megumi?!” Called back a voice that was quickly confirmed to be her mother’s as the woman entered the room, “Oh! Who’s this?” Mrs. Burmen was clad in a set of black slacks and a navy blue blouse that gave the appearance of a woman who had been at work recently. She kept her dark hair short and combed over, almost like some sort of boy. Mother would have referred to her with a term that I assumed—judging by the disgust in her voice any time I had heard her say it—was rude.

It was hard to read the woman’s tone—a terrible thing to be on the receiving end of.

“This is my friend, Bethy.”

It seemed ill-conceived to correct the girl while her mother was staring awkwardly at me.

“Oh, why, hello there…Bethy, was it?”

“Uh, I mean, Beth or Annabeth is okay. Not ‘Anna’, though.”

Mrs. Burmen merely nodded—her gaze trailing behind the rest of her—before turning back to Megumi, “Honey? Can I talk to you for a moment? In the kitchen?”

With a little hop in her turn, “Hey, Bethy! My room is the second on the left upstairs, go ahead and meet me up there, yeah?”

“Oh, uh, sure?”

By the time I had reached the top of the stairs, Megumi and her mother had already crossed over into the kitchen. With all of my focus, I tuned my ears in on their conversation: 

“Megu, you know that this is something you should have talked to me about first.”

“Mom, I’m going nuts not having any friends! I can barely ever meet up with those kids from that one group and even then, none of them are like me! Besides, they’re all kinda boring, anyway! And I’ll have you know, Bethy’s not like that!” 

“Honey, your father and I—you have to understand, moving again—if this goes south—isn’t just something that we can do with a snap of our fingers.”

“I know, I know! It’s okay, I won’t let Beth find out. I just—I need someone my age to be friends with. Real friends!”

“I know you do, honey. I know this—these last few years haven't been easy for you and I’m proud of how you’ve handled yourself. Just be careful, please.”

“I will, I swear—”

The opening of a door somewhere in the kitchen interrupted the conversation. Crouched down on the summit of the staircase, I fell backwards—with a thud—in surprise as I heard Megumi shout: “Oh hi, Daddy!”

“What was that noise?” The voice of the man I could not see asked the question with a plain curiosity that I would have never recognized in my father’s voice. He was always so much more on edge, like the simplest question was offensive. 

This man was unknown to me and yet already the more inviting alternative to a father whose touch was never comforting and always unnerving.

Scrambling to my feet, I raced to Megumi’s room with as light a step as I could take and hopped onto the edge of the bed, doing my best to look as innocent as possible. Catching sight of my surroundings, I found the room relatively plain. White walls, a bed with plain, navy blue sheets and comforter, and a desk covered in various books and knick-knacks just right of a small television set sat above a short three-drawer dresser with a missing bottom drawer. Megumi’s closet doors were shut, but I imagined it was stuffed full of clothes that could not fit into the dresser set against the wall just outside of it.

Through the crack of the opened bedroom door, I could just barely make out a voice saying, “Oh, that’s probably just my new friend. She’s up in my room!”

The rest of the Burmen family conversation remained unknown to me thanks in part to the numerous attempts that my heart made in pounding its way out of my chest.

 

***

 

September 03, 2003: 

 

Handing me a black, cordless phone, Megumi grinned from ear-to-ear, “Have you ever played Marvel vs Capcom? It’s hella fun!”

“Oh, umm, my little brother likes it, so I’ve played it a bit.”

“Ooh, nice! Are you any good?” Why did it always feel like Megumi was teasing me with the look in her eyes? The tone of her voice? The devilishness of her grin? It was suffocating!

“Umm, not really?” It was a lie: I didn’t even know if I was good, my only competition had been the default setting of the game’s CPU and a nine year old.

“Well then, hopefully we can settle things after you call yer mom!”

Nodding, I dialed on the phone. After a few rings, Mr. Howard picked up, “Hello, Cassadine Castle. May I ask who is calling?”

“It’s Annabeth, Mr. Howard.”

“Oh Ms. Annabeth, shouldn’t you be returning from school?”  

Turning back to face Megumi, I was greeted with a playful grin and a thumbs up, “I’m at a friend’s house, actually. Could you tell Mother?”

“Of course, dear.”

A few moments passed before Mr. Howard spoke back into the phone, “Your mother would like the address and phone number, Ms. Annabeth.”

With assistance from Megumi, I passed the information along.

“Thanks, Mr. Howard. I’ll be back home by six. Goodbye!”

Hanging up the phone, I handed it back to Megumi and could feel my shoulders melt right down the side of my body.”

“Who’s Mr. Howard?”

“He keeps our house.”

“You have a housekeeper?”

“Well, like, he oversees the staff. Oh, umm, sorry, I guess I didn’t explain?”

Megumi just stared, waiting for my response.

“Umm, you know Cassadine Castle?”

“You mean that big castle at the edge of town?”

“Yeah.”

“What the heck, you’re rich?! Like, rich enough to have a staff for your castle?! The castle that you live in?!”

“I suppose? I don’t really have a frame of reference for these things, I’m sorry? Like, we only just moved into Cassadine Castle. My grandfather passed away and my father’s the eldest son, so—you know? We used to live in a home on Gravelly Lake, but Father moved us into Cassadine Castle a week ago.” It was beginning to dawn on me that there was a gap between me and Megumi that was almost like what I had read about in books. “Yeah, uh, I guess? The Woods family is—”

“—wait, so, like, you’re really from that Woods family? The richest family in town?!”

“Uh, yes, sorry, I didn’t mean to mislead you.”

“N-no, no, you’re fine! Sorry, I just—I’ve heard a lot about your family, so it’s kind of like meeting a celebrity.”

“I, uh, would rather you not treat me any differently. I have always attended public school, too, after all.”

“Y-yeah, no, I get it. It’s no fun being the different one, I mean.”

Perhaps it was unwise, but I couldn’t stop myself from digging deeper, “Does that have to do with what your mother was getting at?”

“O-oh, you—?”

“—overheard? Yes, I’m sorry, I just—I was curious.” That was something of a lie: I had been caught up in Megumi’s rhythm since the moment we first met. It was impossible to not want to dive deeper.

“Oh, umm…sorry, this is weird. I’m not supposed to tell people about it.”

Megumi’s look of disappointment was the kind of face that could make one forget their own suffering, “Oh, right. No, I get it. You barely know me, after all, and I wouldn’t want you to get in trouble with your parents.”

“I’m—I’m really sorry, Bethy—”

“—just ‘Beth’—”

“—Nothing about this changes anything between us, I swear! I just—I can’t talk about it.”

“Did talking about it before make you guys move?”

“Huh?”

“Overheard that, too. Sorry!”

“Oh, no, you’re fine. I mean, yeah? Kinda? We moved because—well, it was just safer.”

“Oh, uh, I’m sorry?” What the hell did she mean by ‘safer’?!

“I—well, I’m just glad that I met you, at least.”

Something about the weight of those words weighed on me, “Oh, jeez! Megumi, I am not s-so…all that!”

“N-no, no! You’re honestly really cool, Bethy! You just—you got that sorta badassness to you? Like, you don’t care what other people think?”

“I could say the same about you, Megu!” My heart wouldn’t stop pounding, “I mean, you just—you’re like a main character or something?”

“That’s a funny way of putting it,” for the first time, it felt like Megumi was the one becoming dyed the color of blush, “I, uh, I mean—wanna play some of the game?” Megumi pointed haphazardly to a rectangular black game console that was plugged into the front of her television set.”

Betrayed by words, I nodded with a clumsy fervor. 

 

***

 

September 03, 2003: 

 

It was strange, eating dinner at someone else’s house. Dinners at home were always a drag when it was just me, Harrison and Mother. Anytime that Father found his way into the dining room was on the rare occasion that he was even home before eight at night. Those dinners were always colder, less inviting than even the annoying whinging of Harrison or Mother’s drunken babbling and ‘advice’. 

You learn to just not talk back to adults, eventually. There was significantly less drawback in just taking all the stress out on one’s younger brother when the moment presented itself.

The Burmen house was nothing like that, however. In the house populated by half-unpacked boxes and furniture that looked haphazardly placed, I found that even with the awkwardness of being watched by Megumi’s parents—through unassuming quick looks out the corners of their eyes—didn’t make it any less obvious that this was a family that loved one another.

It was that very love that probably led the two adults to be so cautious of me.

“So, Annabeth,” oh gawd, this was going to be awkward, “Where do you live?” How do adults even come up with what questions to ask their kids’ friends?

“Cassadine Castle, just to the south of town, ma’am” I idly kicked my feet beneath the table, looking to burn off some nervous energy.

“Oh!” Lisa Burmen’s suspicion finally faded as the genuine surprise took over her expression, “Are you—?”

“—She’s a Woods girl, Mama!” Megumi butted in, seemingly unaware of how tense the scene was, “I just found that out on the walk home, so, like, obviously it just makes our friendship all the more realer, since I didn’t spend all day suckin’ up to her ‘n stuff!”

Megumi’s self-satisfaction bled through her lips and into her words, as if she was trying to prove something to somebody. Her parents? Either way, the way she took the spotlight off of me helped ease the tension in my shoulders a considerable amount.

“It’s a gorgeous property,” Lisa recovered, lightly dangling the fork in her hand as she mused, “We used to drive past it when I was growing up, just to see a real castle in person. Beautifully kept grounds, too.”

“That’s the realtor in you speaking,” Jim laughed, eagerly engaged with the conversation, even if he wasn’t saying more, “I bet you’d love the commission on that place if you ever got to sell it.”

“It’s, uh, been in the family since my grandfather bought it during the Great Depression, and I think, uh, my parents aren’t too keen to let it out of the family, you know?” I had read Steinbeck and was certainly no stranger to Lee.

“Oh, no, of course,” Lisa snapped back to attention, hiding a wry grin, “I wouldn’t think of it. It was brought over from Russia, right?”

“Think so?”

“That had to have been a herculean task, I—”

“Mama, aren’t you going to ask me about my first day of school?” Megumi seemed eager to change the subject and for that, I silently thanked her.

“Oh, right, yes,” out of the corner of my eye I could see Jim stifling a chuckle at his wife’s expense. It seemed rude in theory, but something about the way the man’s lightly bearded face took a round shape and a warm color made me wish Father looked like that when he spoke to Mother, too.

“How was your—?”

“It was BORING, other than meeting Bethy!” Just Beth! “She stopped the bus from driving off WITHOUT me and it was, like, such a relief!” 

“Oh gosh,” Lisa gave me a quick glance that didn’t look so awkward, “I’m glad she was there to help you, dear. Anything else?”

“We sat next to each other—” more like, Megumi sat next to me— “—in class and at lunch, it was really nice.”

I hated how she sounded so thankful to be near me. What was I, her only—well, okay, yes: I was her only friend. It was awful—what if I messed that up? What if I Megumi decided she didn’t—

“—and then, wouldn’t you know, we had art class together, too? It was so cool!”

It seemed like a cruel fate, but somehow, Megumi had every single class together. Even our electives were together.

“That should make doing your homework together easier. Speaking of which, did you have any homework today?”

Megumi turned a new shade of white, “Ack! Yes? We did it…”

“We did,” I confirmed, tossing the girl a lifeline.

“See?! We did!!”

Lisa smiled, amused in a way that didn’t seem condescending, “I see,” before turning to Jim, “I suppose we have nothing to worry about, then?”

Jim’s amused look preceded a slow shake of his head and a grin that seemed like the sort a good family man would make. Rather than say anything, the man filled his mouth from his plate. His light blue dress shirt’s sleeves were rolled up a little and I could see the cheap watch he wore on his right wrist had started to fray a little at the point where the leather strap connected to the ends of the watch itself.

The Burmens were just normal people.

I liked that more.

 

***

 

September 03, 2003: 

 

“Think we can squeeze in more gamin’ before you gotta leave?”

“I’m not sure—Mr. Howard will probably send the car for me soon. It’s twenty minutes ‘til six, after all.”

“Darn, yeah, true,” Megumi’s legs idly kicked on-and-off the edge of her bed as we talked. She seemed a little lost now, knowing it was nearly time for me to leave.

Distracting her seemed the polite thing to do: “Dinner was good.”

“Yeah! Mama and Daddy are really good cooks,” shifting her expression and voice, “‘When you’re in college, you learn how to cook or you suffer!’ is what Daddy always says.”

“My mother rarely ever cooks. I don’t think she’s even been in the kitchen since we moved into Cassadine Castle. She doesn’t even need to go in, since the wine cellar is where all the wine is stored.”

“Your mom sounds like a handful.”

“Tell me about it.”

“So, like, does that mean…?”

“Mean what?”

“That, like, you wouldn’t want me to go over?”

“Oh, uh, I mean, it’s just…well, your house is probably a lot more fun than mine ever will be. Harrison will probably spend the whole time trying to annoy us, too.”

“Brother?”

“Little brother, yes.”

“I see, I see,” Megumi seemed lost in the moment, considering her options, “I guess that sucks. My parents won’t be home all the time, though, so I think it’d be kinda hard to hang out unless we did it at your place some times?”

Who said I wanted to hang out with you more, airhead?

“‘Sides! I wanna see Casanova Castle!”

“Cassadine Castle!”

“Yeah, that!”

A sigh betrayed me, “I mean, I guess, if you want to? You could probably walk home with me after school—”

“—on Friday?”

“Uh, yeah? Sure? Even if Mother isn’t home, the castle’s got a full staff to keep it going. Plenty of adults for your parents to feel better about leaving you with.”

“AWESOME!!!” I wasn’t sure that I would ever get used to how excitable this girl was, “I’ll tell my parents!!”

“Oh, uh, I mean, sure—?”

The ring of the doorbell reverberated throughout the house, signalling what the four people throughout the house likely knew it to be: it was time for me to depart. Megumi escorted me to the front door, like she was trying to squeeze every last bit of juice out of an orange. By the time we stood in the living room, a view of the opened front door in plain sight, Megumi wrapped her arms around me from behind and rested her chin on my right shoulder.

It was the first time that I noticed just how much taller than me she was.

“Thank you for being my friend, Bethy,” the girl’s whisper felt honed in, as if all the pretense of her usual swashbuckling was dried up, “I hope you don’t think of me as too weird.”

“B-bimbo,” I whispered back, lifting my arms up to take hold of her hands in my own as they wrapped around my torso, “D-don’t make such a big deal out of it! Friends are th-there for you to be weird with!”

Megumi’s soft giggle was the last thing I could remember hearing as Mr. Howard, waving, beckoned me to join him on the front porch, and then took my hand as he guided me to the back seat of one of the castle’s black limousines. 

The inside of the limousine was vast and utterly empty without Megumi to join me.

 

***

 

September 03, 2003: 

 

“Hey, wanna play a game with me?”

“I’m busy, Harrison.”

“You’re just laying on your bed, staring at the ceiling!”

“Precisely. Now, if you don’t mind, please leave me be.”

“Gawd, you’re no fun!”

As Harrison stomped out of my bedroom, I continued to take in the ceiling far above me. No matter how much I grew, I would never be able to reach up and touch it without standing on something. It made my new bedroom in this castle feel unwelcoming. 

It was nearly fifteen minutes until seven at night. I would have to go to sleep in a little over two hours and then see that girl all over again in the morning. Hanging out at Megumi Burmen’s house had been an unforgettable experience. She destroyed me in video games, we did homework, and we even ate dinner together. These were all mundane things that I knew kids did in movies and television shows, but experiencing it—willingly subjecting myself to it—had been surreal. It produced a feeling in my chest that was terribly foreign to me. A smile tugged on the corners of my lips, even though I did not have much reason to smile. 

It felt terribly as if a spotlight was being shone on me. I hated how exposed I felt, even as I thought back to the way Megumi teased me.

Was I…gay?

No! No, no, no, Father and Mother would—

—I knew the way that Father scolded Harrison for not acting like a boy. His lack of toughness was always “For girls, like Annabeth.” 

Besides, I liked girly things! I liked pretty things! Sure, I was hardly fond of the boys I had known, but boys that age were all annoying little finks—the books I had read had confirmed as much. I couldn’t be gay, I was—what did it even mean, to be gay?

But…I'm not. I like boys—I think? No, I knew that I did. Megumi is just—she's just interesting. She's more interesting than all the other girls. That's what it is!

I'm not gay.

 

***

 

September 04, 2003: 

 

The lunch bell rang throughout the—woefully too small—halls of Gravelly Lake Middle School and with as much fervor as I could, I packed up my bag and sped walked out of science class to make my way to the other side of the school before the library closed for the day.

One Ms. Megumi Burmen was not far behind, either: “Hey, Bethy! Wait up, girly!”

The cheeky brat was never far behind, “If you wanna follow, then you better keep up!” I needed to ditch Megumi before she found out what I had my sights set on, but the girl exuded the resilience of a plucky kid’s movie protagonist and to escape her seemed futile even to attempt.

Each half-glance back at the girl—that soft, wavy lavender skirt of hers swaying back-and-forth with each firm step behind me—only confirmed my suspicions.  

Hauntingly, I feared that Megumi’s skirt matched the pink one I had elected to wear today.

After passing through multiple halls, I reach the end of my trek to the school library, tucked neatly in the middle of the eighth graders’ hall. Fortune favored the foolish, as the door was still open. The librarian was blessedly helping two girls locate something in the fiction section, which granted me exactly the lack of a curious eye that I needed. Making my way over to the non-fiction section, I quickly scanned the shelves, walking at an even—if quick—pace. Even with Megumi toiling behind me, idly prattling on about how hungry she was, I was unimpeded from reading the titles of each book. 

Not a single book on gay people. Damn.

The library did have computers with internet access, but what if I was caught by someone? What if the computer knew to notify someone of what I was looking up?

“Say, what are you looking for, anyway?” Megumi’s face craned around my left and right into my view, mere inches from mine. 

Stumbling back, I crashed into a half-height shelf behind me, knocking over the books on display on top and causing enough of a commotion to get the attention of the librarian, a middle-aged woman whose name I had not bothered learning yet.

“You girls okay over there?”

“Yes, ma’am!” I choked out, pulling myself up and just barely hanging off of the top of the half-shelf while I caught my breath and found my footing.

“You okay?” The smugness in Megumi’s voice as I was already mid-motion into reclaiming my footing irritated me like no other. 

I hated how much I loved how much she irritated me.

“I’m perfectly fine, Megumi,” never show weakness to this girl, she’ll have you eating right out of the palm of her hand like a pet.

“So, what is it?”

“What is what?”

“What you’re looking for, Bethy.”

“A book.”

“Well gee, I wouldn’t have guessed, given that we’re in the library. What kinda book? Maybe I can find it?”

“Don’t you have detestable cafeteria food to scarf down?”

“Don’t you have high-priced Castle Food that your Castle Servants packed for you to scarf down? Hmm?”

“Yes, I do! Which is why I need to find this book without distractions.”

“Then let me help!”

“You can’t!”

“Why not?”

“Because you’ll think that I’m—you’ll…” Why was it so hard to put this feeling into words? Why did just being the object of her attention make it so hard to focus? To breathe?!

Megumi lowered her head, “You can trust me, Bethy.”

I hated how serious she looked and sounded. Megumi wasn’t supposed to look so—so hurt!

I said something I should not have: “How can I trust you when you can’t trust me with your secrets?”

The heartbreak was evident most painfully in Megumi’s face. What I hadn’t prepared myself for was how much it hurt to see her lower her shoulders as the full weight of what I had said settled in.

“Oh…yeah…you’re right, Beth…”

Where was the ‘y’?

“I’ll leave you be, then.”

Where was the ‘y’? Why was Megumi walking away? Why was she not retorting with some cheeky remark? Why did she look so wounded?

As Megumi walked out of the library, that lavender backpack with cute accessories pinned on it slung over her shoulder, I couldn’t help but feel the most hellish pain in my stomach.

 

***

 

September 04, 2003: 

 

It was the bus ride home. For one reason or another, a single other space was available: a spot on the seat on the other side of the aisle in the far back.

Megumi sat there in silence, having no words for me, just as she had throughout the previous few hours since our spat in the library.

The complicated fears churning through my stomach like spoiled cream was only made worse by the extra inches between us.

Why was I so fucked up?

 

***

 

September 04, 2003: 

 

The primary dining hall of Cassadine Castle was an oppressive hall that stretched fifty feet by one hundred forty feet. It was a large, rectangular room where the ceiling was overwhelmingly high in that way that made one feel as if one was peering up at a dinosaur, which is why I had so intently kept my view aimed downward any time—after the first—that I had entered the hall. I had learned the virtues of doing so years before at a family function, where Mother had pressured me into a pink dress that had attracted all of the typical comments of infantilization that came from grown relatives and their business compatriots serving as the stray plus-one.

Father and Mother insisted on eating in the hall—as opposed to one of the smaller, homier kitchens that Harrison—by way of my presence—and I preferred to eat in—especially on days in which Father was joining us.

It was a funny thing, to ask the house staff to deliver the expensive meals prepared by a high-level chef into a smaller, mostly mundane kitchenette tucked into a west corner of a Russian castle, but the ridiculous of the request paid for itself in the peacefulness that came with a small, intimate, and decidedly more middle-class appearing environment. 

The decision to move our branch of the Woods family into Cassadine Castle had been made by Father purely as a power move, to show his brothers and sisters that he would be assuming his position as the new head of the family, even at the cost of moving his children out of the more modest beach house—if one could ever call a beach house ‘modest’—that his pithy nine and twelve year olds had known all their lives.

Harrison sat across from me at the grand dining table—outfitted to seat six souls on either side—looking positively miserable. Mother—herself situated to my right—had sought to equip the boy in another uncomfortable polo and tan slacks, devoid of the personality a nine year old boy would prefer to show off with some graphic tee and jeans or shorts. Whereas Mother sought to craft me into something feminine and presentable—hardly outside of my ability to appreciate, even if I loathed Mother’s forcing me into the role—it seemed as if her plans for the family baby were marked by the appearance of presentability over the comfort and fulfillment of soul.

If the boy wanted to wear a Dragon Ball Z shirt, I would have simply said “let him.”

Mother and Father sat at the opposite ends of the grotesquely long dining room table. The length of the table combined with the length and acoustics of the hall lended themselves to little communication between the two, which I assumed had been intentional on Father’s part. The old man—more gray than what had once been blonde—rarely had more to say than singing of his triumphs at work, or with the family businesses, or criticizing his wife and children. 

Harrison and I had never said it, but I liked to think that we both recognized that sitting in the middle of the three seats set up on each side of the dining room table had been a mutual recognition that they were ostensibly the least horrible ones to choose from.

For all the ways in which we terrorized one another, we were—after all—closer to one another across the table than we were to either of our parents to our left and right.

“How was school today, Annabeth?”

“Fine, Mother.”

“‘Fine’? Is that all you have to say?”

“Nothing of interest happened, is all.”

“What did you learn today?”

Nothing about being gay, of course, “It takes three months to grow tomatoes.”

“How lovely,” with barely a turn of her head, “And you, Harrison?” The briefness with which Mother engaged on any level was always a sign of the superficial nature of her interest in being a parent. I knew more about her glory days of peaking in high school as the captain of the cheer squad than she would ever know about my years in elementary school and middle school and probably even high school combined.

Lest she tried to drive me into becoming a cheerleader so as to relive her youth vicariously through me.

Harrison mumbled, “It was boring.”

“What about your friends, sweetie? Did you have any fun playing with them?”

What friends?

“The other boys just make fun of me,” probably because you’re a crybaby, “I don’t like playing with them, anyway, so I went to the library and read.”

“A man needs to know how to talk to other men, Harrison,” Father’s harsh timber always made my heart skip the slightest beat any time that he unexpectedly broke his silence, “You need to learn how to get along and be a man among other men now, before it gets harder when you’re older, son.”

Harrison just looked down at his plate of half-finished chicken and peas and said nothing. I wasn’t sure I could see him breathing, even though he was clearly still conscious. To be fairer to Father than he probably deserved, what he said was not untrue. The unfortunate fact was, little boys were dreadfully inhuman in their inability to properly socialize without being annoying little brats and I could not fault Harrison—the sulking, pouting nuisance that he was—for not so easily fitting in with them. What child would choose playing with third grade boys over reading a good book, anyway?

Father cleared his throat, “Understood?” and then returned to checking his business section of the newspaper.

“Y-yes…”

“Then sit up straight and say it like a man, goddamn it!!” Father’s voice boomed out and echoed throughout the hall and his fist rattled the plates and utensils as it slammed down on the dining room table.

After a quick gasp, Harrison’s face turned red as he began to silently sob. Mother had nothing to say, but did have all the brussel sprouts in the world to shovel into her mouth. 

It took me five seconds to realize that I had stopped breathing at Father’s outburst. By the time I had found the wherewithal to pick my fork back up, I found that I couldn’t lift it very high, for my right hand shook with a strange jitteriness. By the time that my lips parted just an inch so that I could wordlessly mouth “What the?” I realized that I had not been breathing, either.  

Something about the exchange left me feeling a pain in my stomach that spread into an acidic sourness in the back of my throat. The earlier awkwardness of things with Megumi had left me feeling sick, but the manner in which Father actively put his weight down on Harrison felt somehow worse in a way that I could not recall feeling before. Did the age of twelve and the advent of middle school bring with it a new perspective on the world around me that I had never considered before?

“Stop sobbing like a little girl, Harrison!” Father’s volume remained restrained, yet the anger in his voice remained seething. 

Risking a blink of my own eyes to clear them of whatever was blurring them, I looked up from my plate to find my baby brother red as a beet, face covered in tears and snot and contorted into some awful shape that sent my eyes instantly back down to my now unappetizing dinner. 

Harrison broke into an audible stream of sobs at the provocation, which led Father to only violently thrust out of his chair, stomp over to Harrison, grab him by the arm, pick him up and carry the screaming child out of the dining hall.

I sat in my seat, unable to eat, as Mother poured herself another glass of wine and continued eating without saying a thing.

The sound of a nine year old being hit filtered back into the dining hall, followed soon by the shrieks of horrible pain typically accompanying such things

Noticing that I wasn’t moving or making a sound, Mother finally spoke up between gulps of her wine, “Your father’s just trying to help Harrison learn an important lesson about life, Annabeth, don’t worry and just finish your dinner.” Mother paused for a moment, to look at me, “Actually, you’ve eaten plenty enough, dear.” 

Father finally returned to the dining room what felt like an eternity later, without Harrison.

Mother decided to pretend like nothing had happened, “Will Harrison be joining us for the rest of dinner, dear?”

“I sent him to his room,” was all Father had to say as he slid back down into his chair to my far left and resumed picking at his dinner while reading the newspaper. His voice contrasted Mother’s feigned warmth and melody with coldness and an uninviting harshness.

After I was excused, I stood outside of Harrison’s room and listened to him sob into his pillow until he fell asleep.

 

***

 

September 05, 2003: 

 

The west-wing kitchenette was a small kitchen separate from the main kitchen and was on the ground floor of Cassadine Castle, but tucked away in a small corner of the castle for the purpose of what I could only assume was if someone wished to remain out of the way of crossing paths with anyone in the main section. It could be accessed from a separate, less grandiose staircase that ran up and down the western side of the castle and thus spared anyone from the banality of using the main staircase and exposing oneself to the others throughout the house. Since moving into Cassadine Castle, I—and by extension, Harrison—had preferred to make the kitchenette the primary base of operations for any meal. In opposition to the main kitchen’s sleek, modern look, the kitchenette traded the luxury of space for a warm wood cabinet interior and soft lighting that kept the space significantly homier and more inviting. 

A bowl of breakfast cereal tasted far better in a slightly cramped room with a table that seated only six and a sink and refrigerator that looked like they were installed in the early 1980s than in a dining room built to show off and hold grand dinner parties with the upper-class and their grotesque love of excess. 

Harrison had immediately followed me down into the kitchenette upon hearing me open my bedroom door. His legs took small steps, while his eyes remained firmly facing down at the red carpet laid over the dark hardwood floor.

Turgid feelings about what had happened the previous night remained bubbling in my gut like a pit of boiling tar. Harrison was a nuisance that I could seldom stomach, but what Father had done seemed a measure too long for my tastes. Even the next morning, Harrison remained cowed and devoid of his usual spirit.

I did not care for it.

As Harrison reached for the cereal left atop the counter, I placed my hand atop the box to keep it on the counter, “Let’s get you something warm for breakfast. I’m going to be making eggs, anyway.”  

A thin shade of color returned to Harrison’s cheeks as he let go of the box and watched me dig through the refrigerator, “Pay attention, yeah?”

With the carton of eggs open on the counter, I took out a single egg and cracked it on the side of the bowl that I had retrieved from the cupboard and then carefully split it open above the bowl. Now inside, the gooey yellow goop took a moment to settle.

“Now, you try.”

Taking care to stand behind Harrison, I watched as the boy took an egg from the carton and did his best to replicate the cracking of an egg on the rim of a bowl.

The first attempt produced no cracks.

“It’s tricky, dear. All about the angle and the amount of—”

The second attempt from Harrison Arthur Woods to crack an egg on the rim of the bowl shattered the egg over the rim of the bowl, leading to the smooshed egg yolk to slide down onto the counter surface, “Oh, crap!”

Turning a grimace into a forced smile, I handed Harrison paper towels, “It happens to the best of us, baby brother.”

After cleaning his mess, Harrison looked to me for approval before reaching for another yet. After receiving my nod, Harrison reached for another egg and attempted to crack it, his prior experience leading to him being far too pensive.

“It’s okay, Harrison,” taking the boy’s wrist in my hand, I positioned it just right, “See this position? Now, with just a little—” guiding his arm through the motion, Harrison watched with awe as I brought the egg to the rim of the bowl and helped him crack his egg. “See?”

“Y-yeah,” the quietness from the previous night remained in Harrison’s voice, but a hint of awe resounded, stoking the fires of my hope. 

“Now, remember to use both hands and you can push in on the—” following my lead from earlier, Harrison moved the egg over the bowl and used both of his thumbs to push into the crack, splitting the egg open and allowing for the yolk to plop down into the bowl to join its brethren. 

“Good!! Good work, Harrison!” I felt betrayed by my face as it took the form of a bright smile at the sight of the joyful expression that Harrison wore when he turned toward me, “Now you try again, by yourself!” 

With exacting movement, Harrison reached for another egg and then successfully cracked it on the rim of the bowl before repeating his successful thumb press to empty the egg shell out into the bowl.

The boy caught himself nearly repeating a very gooey mistake for the fourth egg as he stopped himself mid arm swing to temper his excitement and employ a more careful arm motion. A fourth egg soon joined the other three in the bowl.

Handing Harrison a fork, I took the boy by his right wrist yet again and gently guided him into the proper motion for stirring the eggs, “This is how you scramble them, which is how we usually eat them.” Mother had spared herself from cooking since we moved into Cassadine Castle, not that I had not been perfectly capable of making my own breakfast since I was eight or nine, anyway.

Eventually, I let go of Harrison’s wrist and watched the boy stir away, breaking down the eggs into a light yellow batter.

“Next, we turn on the stove, grease the pan, and then pour the eggs into the pan once it has had a little time to warm up,” by the time the pan was ready, I had grabbed a rubber tipped tool—that had never learned the name for—and watched Harrison carefully pour the eggs into the pan.

The eggs sizzled upon hitting the hot pan.

“Now, you stir them using this thing—whatever it’s called—but be careful of the heat. You don’t want to burn yourself, of course, but if the eggs get too hot, they get rubbery. There’s a careful balance between too runny and just right, you know?”

Holding the handle of the pan with his left hand, Harrison began a tepid stir with the rubber tipped wood stick that grew in confidence as I nodded my approval of the job he was doing. A few minutes of stirring later, the eggs—for two!—had been stirred and chopped into nice little chunks.

“Next, we turn off the stove—voila—and then, you just scrape out however much you want onto your plate and then mine.

Harrison seemed to take painstaking efforts to make sure that he did not short change me on any of the fluffy yellow goodness.

Picking up my plate, I stabbed a piece of egg with my fork and brought it up to my mouth, not even waiting to take a seat at the table.

Once my taste buds registered the taste and density of the eggs, it occurred to me that perhaps Harrison was better off letting his future wife do the cooking.  

 

***

 

September 05, 2003: 

 

The anxiety over the Megumi episode had been just as crushing at seven-something in the morning as it had been the previous day.

As Megumi got on the bus and approached our seat—the same seat that we had both sat on two days prior—I forced myself to smile and patted the left side of the seat.

Megumi looked miserable, but it was also the only seat left available—so she reluctantly took it. 

I was a learned young lady who had read many books that featured spats between friends—if that was where this strange detour in my life had taken our acquaintanceship. My studies had no doubt prepared me for mending the fence between us, surely. 

“Be so kind as to join me, Megumi?”

Megumi joined me on the cramped bus seat with nary a word to give me. Perhaps it was what I deserved?  

“I apologize for my behavior yesterday, Megumi. I was out of line.” I provided Megumi no time to think up a reply, verbal or facial, “Can I make it up to you? It’s Friday, we did discuss you coming over to my house after school, yes? I have a television in my room—and quite the growing DVD collection—so if you’d like we could—”

“—girl’s night?! Slumber party?!”

The sullen thing had suddenly lit up like the warmest candle on a chilly night. It provided that nagging voice in the back of my mind no shortage of joy that my offer had been so warmly received. 

“Of course! I mean, if you think your parents will be okay with you staying ov—”

A shadow cast over the young girl’s face yet again, like a prodigal student of the piano stripped of her fingers, “I don’t think my parents will be okay with me sleeping over, actually.”

Salvage it, Annabeth, “Well, that doesn’t mean that we can’t still treat the afternoon like one!” 

The spark of whatever emotion appeared on Megumi’s face and in Megumi’s eyes was one that I did not know a word for, but without any word to describe it, my heart still knew it to be a joyful one, and for that, I felt what surely had to be that very same emotion blossoming in my heart, too.

Surely Harrison would not make a scene two days in a row, either.

 

***

 

September 05, 2003: 

 

“Wow, so this is what a castle looks like in person?”

“What, doesn’t everyone live in a castle?”

“Omigawd, Bethy! You’re such a bad liar!” If the use of the nickname had not eased my anxiety, the giggle that Megumi followed her retort with did the trick.

Megumi had seemed to have forgotten about the lingering questions over the previous day. Throughout the school day, she had returned to her usual self—or at least, whatever approximation of her usual self that I had come to know in just three day’s time—and pestered me like it was her calling to do so.

Even as she followed me from my bus stop up to the very front steps of Cassadine Castle, it remained difficult to process the feelings this inspired in my chest. Megumi’s presence at Cassadine Castle was an odd merging of two different worlds. The castle was a horrid gulag with a turgid sense of oppression that kept me from ever opening myself up so freely to its awful claws. To invite in such a free spirit seemed akin to clipping a bird and housing it in a cage, helpless to do anything more than sing and soil.

And yet, it was when I was near Megumi that I felt myself incapable of not wanting to claw out my own chest and expose my beating heart to her. The turning, twisting tar that melted the very inside of my gut was one that could only be cooled by the high-pressure fire hose that was Megumi’s bombastic personality. She climbed the front steps of the castle like a dancer freed from a four hour car ride, full of life and excitement for the next step in the journey that was her life. 

I envied Megumi.    

The disappointment on her usually bright face remained with me any time I closed my eyes. Perhaps what had tormented me most, though, was the strange vacuum of sound that had only filled the moment I had made peace with the girl. Either way, with Megumi’s smile now mine to see again, I was only reminded of what I had to lose should Mother and Father disapprove of her.

I invited the eager girl to open the large double doors atop the front steps of Cassadine Castle herself. I half-wondered if the experience was like an amusement park ride to her. What did it mean to Megumi to be invited into the grand castle of the girl she called her only friend? 

What would Megumi look like, excitedly pushing through the busy crowds, fake mouse ears atop her head as she looked back at me, her hand pulling me by mine?

The grand foyer of Cassadine Castle was a wide open space with a two sided staircase that led up to the second and third floors. House staff regularly filtered across it while attending to their duties for the day. I had taken to watching them from up above, leaning against the railing, just to see what their lives looked like from the view of a king or queen: they looked so distant and different from up so high.

Was distance how the wealthy kept those without so dehumanized in their minds?

As if by the stroke of an author’s pen, Mister Howard just so happened to be passing through the grand foyer towards the kitchen as Megumi and I entered through the front doors.

“Welcome home, Miss Annabeth. Who might—oh, is this not your friend from the other day? Miss Megumi?” Mr. Howard’s face and voice played all the expected roles of pleased host as he instantly turned on the charm. His re-dyed light brown hair was slightly erratic, likely from crossing about the castle all day.

“Yes, Mr. Howard. Megumi and I are going to be up in my room getting our homework out of the way before the weekend.”

“Should I send up refreshments? Snacks?”

“That would be lovely, Mr. Howard,” with the faintest of polite smiles, I waved a goodbye and—for what madness I knew not which—took Megumi by the hand up the left side of the staircase and into the west wing of the castle, hoping to avoid more questions than was necessary. 

Megumi and I safely made it into my bedroom without any other delays. As I dumped my backpack on my desk and dropped into the rotating chair, I let loose a sigh of relief and then motioned to Megumi to enjoy a sit on my bed, “Help yourself.”

The idea of Mother coming in and ‘introducing herself’ to Megumi as a way of butting into my social life filled me with a dread not too dissimilar from the dread I felt after the scene in the library the prior day. 

Kicking her legs off the edge of my bed with an idle grace, Megumi slipped her backpack off of her shoulders and then propped herself up, hands down on the bed, “I can’t believe you have, like, a butler?”

“It’s taking some getting used to. Father retained the house staff after Grandfather passed and we moved in. It is, how should I say, not something I care for, even if the castle probably requires it.”

“Yeah, I can imagine. Your life wasn’t all that different from normal before you moved into this castle, I guess?”

“We were hardly wanting for more, to be clear. We lived in a much smaller house on Gravelly Lake and while we had a nanny, it wasn’t like she was around all the time. Again, I’ve always attended public school, too.”

“Aah, yes, roughin’ it on THE LAKE.”

“Your candor is lovely, Megumi.”

Megumi smirked in a way that didn’t take up too much real estate, taking a moment to let our light giggles run their course. Finally, Megumi took a dramatic pause before asking, “So, like, uh, what do girls do when they hang out, anyway?”

“I was hoping you could tell me, to be honest. Experience escapes me, I fear.”

“You don’t—you haven’t hung out with friends before?”

“Not really. Not unless I was dragged to a ‘playdate’ by my mom. I’ve long since ceased being young enough to be dragged to any of those, too.”

“Am I to assume that I am somehow an exception?” The cheeky grin that spread across Megumi’s face was almost infuriating, but I kept my emotions in check.

“You are a…” the words eluded me for a moment, “Well, you are worth at least a little of my time, yes.”

“Hah! Don’t try to play yourself off so smugly, girly, it’s okay to admit that I’m your first friend!” The triumphant tone of self-satisfaction that I had so missed had only brought me back into the depths of irritation with Megumi. Who was she to sound so—so—

Megumi crossed the room as if she owned it, appreciating the bookcase I had filled with so many books, DVDs and knick-knacks with more intimacy, “Woah, you really do read a lot. Of Mice and Men?”

“Droll, to be honest. Horribly depressing ending, if that’s your thing. Mother had been positively aghast when I explained that it was not much of a children’s book when she asked me how I enjoyed it.” 

“Don’t they make you read this book in school or somethin’? Did she not read it?”

“I’m not sure if it was taught when she was going to school, but even if it were, I cannot imagine my mother paying any attention in class.”

“Hardly a high opinion of the woman, have we?” Even her wry chuckles drew from me this unstoppable desire to wrap my hands around her neck and—

“—to be fair, she deserves it.”

“I’ll take your word for it. Sorry, I’m prob’ly speakin’ out of line and all, it’s just that my parents are really cool. Well, Daddy’s kinda lame, but Mama’s real cool and Daddy brings home cool video games and takes me to see cool movies. Have you ever seen the X-Men movies?”

“Cool by association, is he? And no, not for Harrison not trying to win over Mother’s permission, at least.”

The warmth of a grin from Megumi Burmen could melt an iceberg, “Somethin’ like that, girly.”

Taking a moment to compose myself, I sat up straight in my chair before deciding that it was stupid to sit while Megumi stood, and stood up myself, “So, fancy anything to watch?”

Megumi moved her eyes down to the shelf that I kept the DVDs on, since Harrison so often complained of not being able to reach the upper shelves, “Legally Blonde? What’s that?”

“Reese Witherspoon movie—ditzy bimbo transfers colleges to Harvard to become a lawyer to impress her ex-boyfriend and win him back.”

“Why’d they break up?”

“Guy’s a boar—and I mean the animal, although I suppose he’s a ‘bore’, too. I’m trying not to ruin the film for you, though.”

“So, like, she tries to become a lawyer?”

“Yeah.”

“Does she?”

“Dunno, I only got, like, twenty minutes into the film before a storm cut out our power and I just never got around to finishing it.”

“Wanna change that?”

I wondered if I would ever understand how her mere smile was enough to bring my own smile to life, “Sounds like the time to do so.”

Retrieving the DVD case off of the shelf and loading the disc, Megumi helped herself to a pillow from my bed to sit on and—wishing not to be so lame as to sit in the only chair in my room—I joined her. 

Something about the little movements that Megumi made seemed to bristle with an infectious enthusiasm. It seemed terribly rude to not share in it, so I allowed myself a smile—and the awkwardness of my own nerves to peek out—as we settled in for the DVD previews.

“God, I’m glad you can just instantly skip commercials now,” I hummed, reaching desperately for something impressive to say to fill the silence.

“I mean, sometimes you get some good stuff in these commercials!”

“An optimist, I see.”

“An experienced connoisseur, I would say.”

“Pfft.”

“What? Really! I once saw a commercial for Star Trek: First Contact and that movie is insane! It’s, like, zombies in space!”

“Zombies in space? How are they supposed to hear you screaming?”

“I dunno girl, but it got me into Trek when I was, like, eight! My parents thought I might find it boring, but I’ve been collecting the series by recording whatever episodes I can off of TV. There’s SO many shows!”

“I’ll have to take your word for it,” the main menu finally appeared on screen, so I clicked play and turned back to Megumi, “Hey, Megumi?”

“Yeah?”

“I really am sorry about yesterday.”

A look that defied definition softly touched Megumi’s pale pink lips, “It’s okay, Bethy. I don’t want to think about that right now. And besides, I like spending time with you like this, just fine.”

There was something so very, very sad about Megumi’s voice and it was that very sadness that allowed me to recognize the sadness in my heart that I had been so resistant to acknowledge.   

Just what was it about Megumi that her parents feared she would reveal to me? The idea of there being something terrible about such a happy girl seemed incomprehensible to me. There was simply no way such a smile could hide a secret dark enough to scare me off.

I’m not gay!!!

I needed to know what this was between us. What it was about Megumi that drew me to her so frighteningly powerfully. To do that, I would need to grow as close to her as I could, even if that meant risking the possibility of Mother’s annoying interference.

I would have to ingratiate myself to Megumi’s parents, more, t—

“—wait, did you tell your parents you would be coming over to my house?”

Megumi’s eyes bulged out their sockets like a water balloon squeezed in the palm of one’s hands, “Oh, crap-o-la! I forgot!!”

Hopping off of my pillow, I sped walked downstairs to find a cordless phone. By the time I returned, I found Megumi had been discovered by Harrison.

“Can I help you, Harrison?” I asked, slowly approaching Megumi as Harrison sat on the edge of my bed, listlessly kicking his feet back-and-forth.

“You don’t normally bring friends over.”

“Neither do you. Your point?”

“Nothin’, just bored.”

“Well, be bored elsewhere. Megumi and I are watching a movie.”

“Can I watch?”

“It’s a girl movie.”

“So?”

I rolled my eyes before giving Megumi a look.

Uncharacteristically reserved, Megumi shrugged her shoulders.

“Ugh, fine. If you make any noise, I’m kicking you out. Understood?”

Harrison—still kicking his legs—simply nodded lightly. 

The last thing I needed was Harrison getting in the way of whatever this situation with Megumi was. Turning back to the television, I pressed play on the remote and held my breath.

 

***

 

September 05, 2003:      

 

“Huh, I didn’t expect her to be so smart,” the comment slipped from my tongue as the credits ran. “Perhaps I am not the only blonde to break the stereotype.”

“Stereotypes aren’t everything, you know. I think it’s really cool that she’s, like, so herself about something as boring as being a lawyer. What’s the point of life if we’re just playing by other peoples’ rules all the time, anyway?”

It seemed terribly vulnerable of me to be so intrigued by this girl. Megumi Burmen defied my own preconceived notions of what it meant to be a girl. In my brief exchanges with other girls my age growing up, I have never been so challenged like I was with Megumi. Her cheekiness provided frustrations that, while aggravating in the moment, were readily offset by her unexpected perceptiveness. I had never been so matched by another girl in understanding a character’s motivations and what she represented as I was by Megumi just moments ago.

No, not ‘challenged’—matched. Megumi understood stories and what they meant. She was aware that stories held meaning beyond just entertainment—meaning to us, the people by whom art was created and for whom art was experienced. It tried me ever so much to admit that Megumi Burmen, challenging as she was, was in fact a sharp mind worthy of my respect.

“Yes, yes, I know, Megumi,” and then, with a dramatic gesture of my right hand, “I just don’t have much to go off of, if you’ll remember.”

“I suppose that’s true, going by what you’ve told me,” Megumi hummed back with a rolling of her eyes before turning back to Harrison, who was still sitting on the edge of my bed, wordlessly. 

His eyes were locked past us and onto the television screen, like it was meant to sear itself into his mind.

“I’m surprised you stuck around,” I said, body still half-way turned back to face him.

“That…was really nice. Can we watch it again sometime?”

Weirdo, “Yeah, sure, whatever. Mind giving us girls some alone time?”

“Huh? Why? There’s nobody else to play with!”

“We need to do our homework and you’ll just get in the way,” it technically wasn’t a lie, “So go to your room and play video games or something.”

Dropping off of my bed, Harrison huffed and puffed and then kicked his feet as he shuffled out of my room.

I got up to close the door behind him, “Sorry about that.”

“Oh, no, it’s fine,” Megumi seemed lost in thought, “Boys can be like that.”

“Yeah,” dropping my knees back onto my pillow, I turned to Megumi as my right hand picked up the remote, muted the TV and then pressed eject on the DVD player, “Harrison didn’t bother you while I was grabbing the phone earlier, did he?”

Megumi fiddled with a juice box that Mr. Howard had delivered earlier, “Huh? Oh, no. Kid’s kinda just, well, you know how kids are.”

“Unfortunately, I too, was once nine.”

A laugh between girls was shared and it left my chest feeling terribly alive with thumping.

“Okay, okay, let’s try to get all this homework nonsense out of the way so we don’t have it hanging over our heads for two days, shall we?”

“Sounds good to me, Bethy!” Megumi leaned back, grabbed her backpack, and immediately took all the mad glee in the world as she shook its contents out in front of her.

It was a character trait that did not surprise me in the least. Perhaps it was ill-advised to think of such a Bohemian girl in such fantastical terms, but if a mind could create fantasy worlds with dragons and witches, perhaps the real world could produce a soul that took unrestrained glee in such whimsy and unapologetic silliness. 

Perhaps the real world was just as much an escape as a book or a movie?

 

***

 

September 06, 2003: 

 

Cassadine Castle was a massive land at the southern edge of the small military town of Gravelly Lake. Unlike the lake house I had spent the first twelve years of my life in, the fastuous castle—brought by the recently deceased Alan Woods to the United States during the Great Depression—was unfortunately not on the lake that named our little hamlet. Instead, Grandfather had deployed his considerable wealth to install a small lake and dock behind the castle.

The body of water was neatly visible from a small unused bedroom on the top floor of the castle. I suspected that I was not the first member of the Woods family to hide within the bedroom. Upon discovering it, I recognized right away that the room was kept considerably dusted, despite being far too small for any member of the illustrious Woods family to make their own. Perhaps a member of the house staff snuck away to it for reprieve during the day? As deeply hidden within the various halls of the castle as it was, it certainly made sense for any staff looking for a little getaway spot of their own during the tedious day.

From what I had gleaned so far, the majority of the staff left the castle around 9PM. At least one of the kitchen staff remained later, on the off-chance that their services were needed for Father—who so often returned home late—or any guests that he or Mother might be hosting. 

Cassadine Castle was a castle in which the mere thought of it in any context inspired the phantom symphony of Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565 by Johann Sebastian Bach to whisper into ears of one’s heart.To be stuck in such a terrible, unwelcoming castle until so late at night seemed cruel. 

I certainly hoped that they were being well compensated for their time.

“Hey Bethy, are there fish in this lake?”

“Huh?” Such a plain question from Megumi was enough to bring me back to the moment at hand, “Oh, good question. I don’t think so? I think people are supposed to swim in it?”

“‘Swimming with the fishes’ would take on a whole new meaning if there were fishies in there!”

“You always seem to find a way with words, Megumi,” it was impossible to not hum in amusement whenever this girl made a joke.

“I watch a lotta TV and movies,” Megumi sassed back, kicking the surface of the lake with her bare foot as she sat on the edge of the dock, “Gaaaaaaaaawwwwwd, I wish I could take a dip.” So curious, this girl was. She seemed unlike any girl our age I had ever met.  

“Bring your swimsuit next time, I sure we could—”

“—uh, I can’t swim.”

“Why Megumi, I had taken you for the active sort. Are you meaning to tell me that you have never learned to swim?”

“I mean, I know how to swim, I just can’t. It’s, like, a health-related thing.”

“Oh…I apologize…”

“Hey, not your fault.”

“I mean, for the tone I took?”

Megumi took a beat to just smile a small, wistful smile, “It’s okay, Bethy. I get it.”

Watching Megumi watch as the sun and sparse few clouds reflected off of the surface of the lake, I wondered what it was about her that seemed so different. Sure, she was a lively girl who seemed oblivious to—or simply above—the expected frailness of women, but every so often, Megumi would show me a quieter side of her, one that was lost in her own thoughts, I wondered with curiosity as to just what it was that captured her attention so.

Sitting beside Megumi, I kicked my tennis shoe across the surface of the water, “Megumi?”

“Yes, Bethy?”

“What are you thinking about?”

“Nothing,” her words were carried by a whisper and her smile was faint, but I knew she was holding something back.

“You don’t have to coddle me, Megumi. I know that I can be—what I mean is, I—” what was I doing? What was I trying to say?

“It’s awfully warm today. I’m going to miss the summer warmth.”

“The leaves around town are already beginning to change colors.”

“They look beautiful.”

“Yes, I do agree,” a beat, “Megumi?”

“My parents told me that I can’t tell you, Bethy. I can’t tell anyone.”

The deepest of fears settled in me, “You’re not…sick, are you? Like, gravely, I mean.”

Megumi giggled in a way that I had never seen someone giggle before. It was not light—it felt very much heavy with whatever was on her mind, “I’m not dying, if that’s what you mean.”

“Then what? What is it?”

“Can’t say,” so quiet was this girl. So clear minded, her awful words were.

“Forget about your parents, Megu! I—” my voice caught in my throat, coming out as a strained crack, “—Megumi, I don’t know—I’m just…”

Megumi turned to me, a sign of worry worn on her face, “Are you okay, Annabeth?”

My hand moved on its own, grabbing Megumi’s left hand, “I don’t get why, Megumi, but—”

Megumi’s face took an unexpected pink hue as her eyes opened wider, “Oh. Oh! Are you—?”

Before I knew it, I did something that I did not understand why my heart commanded me to do. When I pulled my face away from hers, Megumi leaned back on the dock, stunned.

The world around us grew black as the stagelights were dimmed and the spotlight framed to capture only Megumi Burmen. There was no audience to hold its collective breath in respect for the actresses, nor could we have heard them if there was one. 

Nor could I remove my hand from hers, even if I wanted to.

 

***

 

September 06, 2003: 

 

“I—I apologize for earlier,” the words stumbled out of my mouth while my eyes burned a horrific stare into the forest floor, “It was—please, don’t tell anyone about it. Especially my parents. I promise never to—”

Megumi, walking across a fallen tree—like some great acrobat on a tight rope—huffed dramatically, “I never said I was upset with you, Bethy.”

We were in the forest to the east of Cassadine Castle, having walked five minutes from the dock into the depths of the thicket of trees. Neither of us had said anything until just now.

“B-but, I—”

“—and I have been teasing you for a reason, I suspect.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s complicated, Bethy. Besides, we’re practically teenagers, these things happen at our age.”

“I—well, I cannot disagree. I have read several books—”

“And I am well read in my own ways,” Megumi held out her arms straight to keep her balance. She looked like an airplane with legs, “Was that, you know, something you’ve thought about doing before?”

“Huh? Oh! I mean, I—I don’t know. I mean, the idea certainly hadn’t escaped me, I mean.”

“Hmm~! I see!”

“Why are you acting so—are you teasing me again?”

“When am I never, Bethy?”

“Ugh! You are so frustrating, Megu! Why are you always so—so—!!”

“Vexing?”

“Yes! Vexing!”

“Can I let you in on a little secret?”

“Wait, what?”

“It’s not quite the secret that I’ve been holding back from you, I should clarify.”

“Then, what is it?”

“You’ll have to keep this to yourself, still.”

“Okay, okay, just tell me!”

Having reached the trunk of the fallen Douglas Fir, Megumi quickly turned on her heel, held her hands behind her back, and leaned down toward me as I looked up at her. She wore the most terrible grin I had ever seen on her and it infuriated me all the more.

And then the rotten girl did the same thing to me that I had done to her just minutes earlier.

After a number of seconds I could not count, I stumbled back onto the forest floor that was so covered in soft, rich soil in shock. My jeans were surely covered in soil, but all I could think about was the feeling of static electricity that remained on my lips.

“Wh-what?” The sounds remained caught in my throat, but my sensitive lips did not get the memo and moved anyway.

Towering over me now, Megumi grinned that devilish, cheeky grin of hers, backlit by the fiery sun behind her. As her lips moved and my ears refused to work, I nevertheless processed each word the little devil said without fail.

“I like girls, too.”

 

***

 

September 06, 2003: 

 

“I see we’re the type of girl to buy multiple copies of the same kind of jeans,” Megumi’s bemused voice remained in the forefront of my mind as I slid carefully out of my bedroom in a new outfit.

I regretted the mess that I was leaving for the staff member that did laundry, but I was in no frame of mind to attempt to do my own laundry, a habit I had developed before moving into Cassadine Castle. 

“You in there, Bethy?” Megumi asked, waving a hand in front of my eyes.

“Huh? Oh, yes, I am,” it was hard to speak with clear intonation, my throat felt like a swamp of garbled sounds, “What were you saying?” I didn’t wait for Megumi to reply before making my way down the hallway to return to the backyard before anyone saw us. It took seven steps before I realized we could simply go back into my room now and I immediately turned around, leaving a very confused Megumi to sharply turn back and follow me inside without a worry.

I locked my bedroom door, just to be sure.

“You’re, uh, not too shocked about what happened, are you?”

“I don’t know what I am, Megu!”

“I mean, I think you’re a lil’ ga—”

“—Don’t say it!” I had used more volume than I had meant to.

“O-oh, uh, right. Sorry,” the way Megumi shrunk at my outburst had wounded me terribly.

“I—I’m sorry, it’s just—you know what happens to—to—”

Megumi grew a restrained smile very quickly as she stepped forward towards me, pinning my back against the back of my bedroom’s dark wood door, “Yes, Bethy. I’m well aware.”

“H-how long?”

“Have I known?”

“That’s…complicated? I mean, I wasn’t sure until—”

“—until?”

“I was not sure until…meeting you, I think?”

“What?”

“I mean, it’s complicated. The more we talked on the bus, it was just—gawd, even when I first saw that awful scowl on your face when I was looking for a seat—”

“Hey!”

“It’s a compliment!”

If I had been a beast, I would have growled.

“God, you’re even doing it now!”

“Megumi, please stop—ugh, listen, we cannot—we cannot be—” I lowered my voice, just in case it carried, “—lesbians!”

Megumi stumbled back, snort-laughing, “Gawd, you’re so melodramatic about this!”

“Megumi, I—I don’t care to call myself a homophobe, but you must understand how the rest of the world—how my parents would react t-to—to this!”

Megumi’s face took on a wan, but amused look, “In all honesty, it feels rather small in the face of everything.”

“How in the world is this small to you?” 

“I hope that I can explain it to you, someday.”

“What do you mean?”

Megumi twirled around carefreely, before landing on the edge of my bed, “HI♥MI♥TSU!”

“What?”

“Nevermind, nevermind,” Megumi shook her head, like she had not a care in the world.

It was infuriating.

“J-just promise not to tell anyone!”

“I wouldn’t care to kiss and tell, Bethy,” I hated her devilish smile. I hated her evil, all-swallowing black eyes.

And I hated myself all the more for wanting to jump right into the abyss, straight down to the Hell at the very bottom of it.

 

***

 

September 06, 2003: 

 

The sunlight filled the front courtyard with endless light that made the world around us seem both articulately designed and infinitely expansive.

“Why me?” It was a simple set of just two words, yet it felt like they carried with them weight and meaning that I did not quite understand until I said them.

“That, my dear Bethy, is an amazing question that I shall turn right back on you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Have you already forgotten that you are the one who kissed me first?”

Just hearing the word made me feel dirty and shameful: “I’m…not sure. I don’t know.”

“Are you sure? Surely you can think of a reason. Search your feelings, you know them to be true!!”

“I don’t know what you’re quoting, but you’re annoying when you do it!”

“Good! Now, answer! Chop-Chop!” I loathed the way she so expertly clapped her two hands together in sync with her words.

“It just…felt like I had to.”

“‘Had to’? Or ‘wanted to’?”

Shaking my head as we walked down the path toward the front gate of the castle grounds, I took a breath and then exhaled with force, “Ugh, I don’t—what does that even—?”

“Well, it might help you not feel so conflicted if you could just put what you’re trying to say into words. Or would you rather disagree with that notion?”

“N-no, no, I—that makes sense. Megumi, how are you so—? Whatever. Fine. You have your own thing, I guess. Something bigger than being a—a you-know-what.”

Megumi just laughed in a hearty way that made me feel like a child talking to an amused adult. I loathed it, but it felt like it was not out of step with the rest of my relationship with the horrible bitch, “Annabeth, girl,  you can say the word. There’s nobody around.”

“I don’t even know, I mean, it’s probably just a fluke. It’s not like I don’t—I don’t know.”

“I don’t recall ever being told that I need to have my sexuality straightened out in middle school, Bethy. It’s okay if you’re still figuring things out, we all are!” 

As we reached the small side gate meant for entering and exiting the castle grounds by foot, I waved at the guard on duty in the box, received a polite wave back, and then turned just in time to watch the main gate opening.

There was a combination lock on the smaller gate that I realized that I had not yet memorized the combination for. Tragic: I could get locked out at night and never return to this dreadful castle.

It sounded like a plus, honestly. I had memorized the way back to the old lake house, I could probably walk it in two hours, if I wanted to.

Megumi followed me out the main gate, which promptly closed behind us once we were out and about, making our way down the half-mile—or so—paved road that led to the main road and then from there another half mile to the park that oversaw Union Lake. The road that connected to the main road was pinned on both sides by lovely Douglas Firs that helped make the castle difficult to see from anyone passing by on the main road, sparing me from the humiliation of being seen leaving such an extravagant relic of a bygone era.

The warmth of the sun just barely clipped over the treelines, providing a fairly cool relief in the shadows cast by the beautiful behemoths as we followed them away from the castle.

“Megumi?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you like it?”

“You’re going to have to be a bit more clear, dear.”

“Liking…girls, I mean.”

“Oh, that? Why wouldn’t I?”

“B-but, it’s—”

“I am very well aware, Bethy. It’s why I’m not exactly shouting at just anyone.”

“R-right…”

“I know other people like that.”

“Huh?”

“I know people who are, you know, attracted to the same gender as them.”

“Wait, you do?”

“Yeah. They’re pretty normal, for the most part. I mean, some of them? Annoyin’ as crap, but they’re otherwise normal, you know? Being attracted to the same gender as you isn’t a death sentence, you know?”

“I mean, you’ve seen the stuff on TV and in the movies, right? AIDS and stuff?”

“Yeah, but I’ve also seen the people I know in real life. Being bisexual isn’t horrible, you know.”

“‘Bisexual’?”

“What, you never heard of it?”

A shake of my head from side-to-side was my only answer.

“It means liking both boys and girls.”

“Th-that’s a thing?”

“Damn, girl! You REALLY need to read more books—wait, were you trying to look that up at the library the other day?”

My throat nearly turned inside out as I lunged forward, “O-oh god, yes?! I mean, I was trying to figure out just what the hell was going on with me.”

“Damn, you’ve REALLY been feelin’ it, huh?”

“I—Megumi, please! Your voice!”

Rolling her eyes, “Oh please, Bethy. It’s fine. What we feel about one another is nobody’s business.”

“Wh-what we feel—Megu, are you saying—?”

“I mean, are you really going to deny it after everything that’s happened today? All week?”

“This is absurd, Megumi! We’re—we can’t—”

“I’ll be miserable if I pretend that I don’t like you, Bethy,” the plainness of her statement, of her voice and of the expression on her face tormented me. 

The whispering spectre of what Father did to Harrison was still so fresh in my mind, even if I hid behind my veneer of confidence and disaffection. No burying my nose deep into a book could change what I knew lied beneath the surface of the Woods family.

Nor could it change what I knew was waiting for me beyond the gothic gates of Cassadine Castle, now but a small sight in the distance as we stood just on the side of the main road.  

The terrible girl stood next to me, in her dorky lavender long-sleeve dress shirt with that dorky tie of hers and that horrible, no good, lovely ankle-length skirt.

Mother and Father would never approve. The world would slur us and shame us.

But if I were to remain locked in the towers of Cassadine Castle for at least another seven tortured years, did I not deserve to enjoy the fantasy while it lasted?  

Selfishly, I took Megumi’s hand and crossed to the other side of the road before us.

 

***

 

October 31, 2003: 

 

“So, this is the mysterious Megumi I’ve heard so much about?”

Mother reminded me far too much of the sort of woman I had seen in the many books that I read. Raised to relish in the privilege she was given, Darcy had taken to marriage into the illustrious Woods family—in 1979, at just nineteen years old!—with increasing indulgence as Father rose up through the business world. Now, after Grandfather’s death and Father’s ascension within the family, Darcy Woods had acquired even greater wealth and status and drank herself as stupid on it as she did the most expensive wines in the family cellar.

Mother had insisted on finally meeting Megumi. I had worked hard to avoid it for however long that I could: never informing her when Megumi came over to visit or when I would go to her house to visit. It allowed me to keep the two worlds in my life separate, as I preferred. 

Mother had never made any attempt to ever accompany Mr. Howard when he would pick me up from the Burmen residence, either.

Megumi, dressed as a vampire for Halloween, arrived with her sharply-dressed mother to pick me up. An event was being held in town and to attend it with Megumi was the reprieve from the house that I had anticipated with great interest. 

It was four in the afternoon and yet the sunlight was already dimming. The short days of autumn were without question the worst part about this time of year. Even the growing number of drizzles had some charm to them, but less light for the day? Horrible.

Megumi had traded her usual skirts for black slacks, joined by a magnificent cape with a tall collar. The fake teeth with fangs that she wore made her speech sound even funnier than usual, but I secretly relished how fitting the mishap was for her. 

I hoped that Miss Lisa would not see us holding hands, later.

Mother had insisted that I dress in a terrible cheerleader costume. I felt terribly exposed in ways that stretched beyond just the chillier nature that came with the aging of the year deeper into the autumn season. I did my best not to memorize the details of the costume, should I someday be able to burn it.

“Hiya, Mrs. Woods! I’m, uh, Megumi!” Her jaunty little salute turned into a half-wave half-way through bringing her hand up to her brow. 

Lisa stretched out for a polite handshake, “I’m Megumi’s mom, Lisa.” She wore the costume of a greaser, her short hair slicked into the sort of pompadour characteristic of the archetype. I had never seen a woman dressed like a boy in real life before, but I was left fascinated by seeing Lisa so comfortable in her own skin. 

Or perhaps, in, what I could only assume, was her own bisexuality.

Mother politely returned Lisa’s handshake, “I’m Annabeth’s mother, Darcy. Welcome to Cassadine Castle! I love your costume.”

I felt like a mad woman, the only one in the room who could tell when Mother was lying through her expensive, whitened teeth.

“Thank you, Darcy. And thank you again for letting me borrow Annabeth here, I know that Megumi has been looking forward to today for weeks now.”

“Of course, Lisa! Annabeth goes on about Megumi all the time!” Yeah, because you pry details about the girl out of me like a dentist asking me about my eating habits, “I’m sure Harrison will miss trick-or-treating with her this year, but I understand that Annabeth is at that age and needs to be around other girls.”

A flicker of recognition twinkled in Lisa’s eyes, signalling that she was probably beginning to pick up on the thinly veiled way that my mother spoke, “I’m sure that Harrison would enjoy getting away from his sister for once.” It was hard not to tell how much Lisa was grinning through her teeth.

“Harrison, the dear boy, absolutely adores his big sister. I’m sure he’ll make do without her, though.”

Lisa went for the throat, “Well, we won’t keep you any longer. We need to get going to make it to the town center early enough for good parking, too!”

Pushed forward a smidge by her mother, Megumi took me by the hand—a terribly exposing act—and pulled me out and away from the front double doors of Cassadine Castle, down the front steps and towards her mother’s 2001 Subaru Outback.

Megumi pulled me into the backseat, so that we could more easily interact. Whatever Lisa and my mother had to say to one another, I did not hear by the time the door of the back passenger side was shut.

“Wow, you were really not exaggerating about your mom!”

“I am heartened that I am not mistaken in my assessment of her bitchiness.”

Megumi let out an exaggerated sigh and leaned back on her side of the back seat, behind the driver’s seat, “Thought I was gonna sweat through my clothes!” 

“I wasn’t aware that vampires sweat.”

That intoxicating grin returned to Megumi as she turned her head to her right, “Hmm~! Only when around the lush mothers of their lush prey!”

In a moment of weakness, I rewarded that one with a snort-laugh.

Pleased with herself, Megumi risked it all by retaking my hand, before Lisa returned to the car.

It was worth the risk. 

 

***

 

October 31, 2003: 

 

The town center of Gravelly Lake was a collection of mostly decades-old buildings that—if they could have spoken—would have regalled one with tales of the mood of the town during World War II and the Civil Rights Movement. While maintaining the pride of its original building, the town’s biggest grocery store, Alan’s Grocery, was always on the up-and-up trying to improve and keep the building up to code. Founded and owned by the Woods family during the 1930s, I could recall Uncle Allistair at the previous Thanksgiving dinner opining about the newly added extension to the building—one that came at the cost of purchasing the land of the neighboring Ross family’s bakery. 

It came as little surprise to me when Uncle Allistair had then ranted about meeting with the city council about trying to keep a certain international big box retailer from trying to open a store up on the other side of town. Contradictions were a terribly familiar trait of the man.

His eldest daughter, Penelope, had cheekily butted elbows with me and silently mocked her father’s impassioned raving. A secret between girls, kept even when Mother had asked what we two girls were giggling so feverishly about. 

Having babysitted Harrison and I on occasion, Penny had been the closest thing I had known to an older sister. Now a senior in high school and recently reaching eighteen years of age, the occasional visit or phone call to discuss literature—or even more traditionally ‘girlish’ things—had been the occasional reprieve that kept me from the occasional meltdown. Since meeting Megumi, our visits had been non-existent with few occasions to miss them. Perhaps a ring or a bike ride over for a hello would not be so difficult? Megumi would have to tag along, if only because she would clearly need to not go a day without me, of course.

Accompanied by Miss Lisa, “Don’t grab anything that’ll melt!” keeping a respectful distance behind us, Megumi and I fled into the entrance of Alan’s Grocery to escape the light drizzle that had picked up.

“Dang, of course it had to rain on Halloween!”

“Lovely state for trick-or-treating—or events that require the outdoors,” I sassed, brushing a lock of hair out of my eyes.

“You’re not, like, freezing in that thing, are you?”

“Eh, your jacket’s doing the trick keeping me warm.”

“Your mom’s a psycho for making you go out in a cheerleader outfit for Halloween.”

“I didn’t even want to dress up, to be honest.”:

“But, it’s Halloween! You gotta!!”  

“Eh, I’m a little old for it, don’t you think?”

“I’m twelve, too, Bethy! What’s that make me?”

“Yeah, but you actually look good.”

“Wow,” Megumi’s face took on a very un-vampire pink, “You think?”

It was an awkward feeling, this tension that clearly existed between us now that the truth was out in the open, “Uh, I mean…come on, don’t make me—”

“—Oh, Annabeth?” A familiar voice called out.

At the front of the store sat three cash registers, with a customer service desk tucked against the wall behind the third. In the middle of these leaned a tall, beautiful young woman with long gold locks left casually cascading down the front of her shoulders. If there was any member of the Woods family that did not try me, it was her: Penelope Woods.

“Oh, Penny!” I called back, zipping Megumi’s puffy lavender jacket up a little more, “Are you working? On Halloween?”

“Guilty as charged. It lets my co-worker spend the night with her kids. Where’s that quiet baby cousin of mine? Are you not here with Harri?”

“Oh, no, just slipping in with my, uh, friend, Megumi and—” Lisa had already disappeared into the store in search of whatever miscellaneous things she needed to pick up, “—her mom, wherever she is. That’s nice of you!”

Penny shrugged, “Eh, it’s whatever. Kinda fighting with a friend, anyway, so it’s not like I had anything better to do, anyway. How’re things going for you two?”

“We’ve stopped at a few of the stores and gotten some candy or whatever,” I shrugged, waving the plastic pumpkin in my right hand by its handle, “Saw some cool costumes from some of the older kids, too.”

Customer-free, Penny had all the time in the world for our misadventures and nodded respectfully, “Cool, cool.” Spooky music played over the intercom, an upgrade from the strategically placed radios throughout the store that I remembered from my younger days, “That’s a cool costume, Countess.”

Surprised to be addressed, Megumi stood up a little taller, “Huh? Me? Oh, uh, thank you! My mama helped me make it!” Watching how Megumi interacted with people other than me was always fascinating. It was like feeling your hand at all times, except when someone took it, it suddenly felt different. The surprise of learning that something you thought was limited to only one thing suddenly being revealed to be capable of something new was illuminating. 

It was strangely hopeful.

Pulling up a purple bucket with little cartoon ghosts and jack-o-lanterns on it from the other side of her register, “You girls want some of the goods, yeah?” Penny shook the bucket as she held it by the rim, jostling the plastic-wrapped sweetness within to whisper a little chorus of noise.

“Heck yeah!” How Megumi could swap from shrinking back in bashfulness to blossoming back into her boisterous self was a beautiful sight unto itself. Rushing over to Penny’s register—with me shaking my head with amused incredulousness as I followed behind—Megumi dunked her hand in for her lioness’ share of fun-sized sugary sweetness just before dumping it into her bucket. 

Upon taking my own handful, I thought better, and grabbed a second, “For Harrison.”

“Hey, don’t gotta explain nothin’ to me, girly. I’ve been eating my fair share when nobody’s looking, too. Even snuck a little treasure trove for Henry for whenever he stops by with his friends.”

“Oh, right. Henry.”

“You two really ought to hang out more, you’re the same age. He could use more than just hanging out with a sister who’s six years older than him.”

With a shrug, “Maybe. He’s kinda…well, uh…”

Penny held up her hands, “Hey, I get it. Kids his age usually are. Just don’t hold it against him too much, yeah? He’s had a rough go of it.”

“Yeah. I know, I know how it can be.”

Henry Woods was Penny’s younger half-brother. He was a tasteless frog who made friends with contemptible oafs, so I elected to avoid him when possible. He was in Phys Ed with Megumi and I and when his little friends had made a disparaging remark about how plain Megumi’s gym clothes were in comparison to her usual outfits. Henry hadn’t made a single attempt to stop them for my sake, simply standing behind the gaggle of jackasses, avoiding eye contact.  

Megumi was a clear improvement on my social life that Henry would not have been able to match, anyway. It was easier to simply leave Henry to drown in mediocrity. 

Sure enough, as more customers—some in costume—began filtering their way into the store, Lisa stepped her way up to the front registers, “Oh, there you two are. Did you want to grab anything?”

“Oh, uh, I think we’re good, Mama. We got tons of candy, though!”

“You weren’t bothering this lovely cashier for extra, were you?” Lisa asked, clearly knowing her daughter well.

“Huh?!” Megumi balked, as if this was a recurring issue for her.

“Oh, such a cute kid—let alone a friend of Beth’s—need not even ask,” Penelope laughed, gently tossing a fun-sized bag of a certain rainbow-flavored candy into her bucket with terrifying precision.

“Woah! Thanks!!”

“Oh, you know Beth?”

“Penny’s my cousin, ma’am.”

Eyebrows raised in bemused surprise, “Oh, right. Makes sense a member of the Woods family would work at their own store.”

“Eh, it’s nice to have some pocket change,” Penelope scanned and bagged the handful of items that Lisa brought up with a practiced familiarity that allowed her to uphold full eye contact with the older woman the entire time.

Sparing a faint smile of politeness, “Thank you for keeping the girls out of mischief, then.” 

Quick on her feet, Megumi held up an offended hand to her chest, “I would never!”

“Yeah, sure, whatever goober,” Lisa picked up her plastic bag and peered out a front window, “Looks like it’s cleared up out there. I’ll put this in the car, if you two want to head to the next thing.”

“I think I saw, like, a fish-catchin’ stall down that away,” Megumi gushed, pointing left, “I wanna try!”

“No bringing home animals, Megumi,” Lisa called back to her daughter, very little in the way of a bite to her voice, as she walked out the sliding double doors of the store.

Penelope just shook her head, probably as amused by the Burmen girl’s free-spirit as I was.

I bet Megumi had that effect on a lot of people. 

 

***

 

October 31, 2003: 

 

“Man, fish-catchin’ is some bullcrap!”

Megumi had failed to catch any fish, despite using her allotted three flimsy net stick things to try and lift a fish out of the kiddie pool and into the bucket used for temporary housing. She had not been very happy about it.

“The lady looked like she was going to take pity on you and just give you a fish, Megumi, why didn’t you just let her?”

“What's the point if you don’t win it yourself?”

“Getting a fish?”

“Eh, I didn’t really want to take care of a fish, anyway. I’m saving up my political capital with Mama to get a cat someday, anyway.”

“Do you really want to be cleaning up a stinky litter box all the time?”

“...damn, I hadn’t considered that, actually.”

“I suppose that fish isn’t looking so bad right now, after all?”

“You know, you make an excellent argument, Counselor.”

“Counselor? What am I, Elle Woods?”

“Hey, which of us is a blonde girl who wears pink and argues real well?”

“Which of us is the bimbo?”

“Bethy! You wound me!” Megumi mimed pulling a stake out of her heart, “It is only fitting that a beautiful young lady such as yourself end the eternal night of the vampire!”

A giggle had little trouble surfacing, “Omigawd, Megu! Stop!!”

When I was with Megumi, the world stopped being anything except Megumi and me. 

“Only the kiss of a beautiful princess can save me now!!”

“Yeah, you’re more of a frog than a vampire, anyway!”

“KERO!”

“What?”

“Nothin’,” Megumi giggled, dramatically whisking her cape over and around us.

Lost to the outside world, Megumi did something that would remain a precious secret between us girls.

With Megumi’s cape eventually retracted, I regained my bearings: we were standing between two small canopy tents just feet away from Nance Hardware. 

“Ooh, the hardware store! Have you ever seen their train set up?”

“Uh, no. I’ve never gone in before, just drove past on the way to the grocery store. Why does a hardware store have a model train set up?”

“Daddy says it’s ‘cause Mr. Nance hates Mr. Johnson.”

“The toy store guy?”

“Yeah, I don’t get grown ups, either. Anyhoo, wanna check it out? It’s so cool!!”

Despite her smoothness, Megumi had a side to her that got so caught up in the wonders of the mundane that I could not help falling in line with, “Yeah, sure!”

Led by her slightly bigger, but oh-so-warm hand, Megumi and I circled around and through the few tents between us until we reached the front of Nance Hardware. Turning the knob on the old building’s door and adding a little extra oomph from leaning in on her shoulder, Megumi opened the door and pulled us inside. The building seemed no bigger than two normal houses put together and was densely populated by shelves full of items and packed closely together with little in the way for space to linger on any one aisle. 

Before I could take in the entire sight of the store—or even memorize the face of the old man who sat on a stool at the front counter to my left as he smoked a cigarette and read a newspaper—Megumi pulled me to the right and around a brief corner to show me an elaborate miniature field board populated by little trees, homes, people and an articulately crafted model train that was choo-chooing around the board.  

The entire display, I finally noticed, sat just behind the store’s front display glass window: the set-up was the clear pride and joy of the store, as opposed to the hardware and farming supplies that the store was supposed to be selling. Mr. Nance surely must have confused his clientele on any number of occasions. 

“Gawd, it’s so cool, Bethy!! The little miniatures are all painted and have these cool details on them! The trees even look soft!! But the train? Holy cow, is that an ETS 'O' Sequoia Lumber Co. 2-4-4-0 Mallet? That thing looks like it’s made of heavy metal! I bet you could throw it at someone’s head and BAM!! Give ‘em a real headache!”

“It’s pretty impressive. Must’ve taken a while to figure out what to put where.” 

“It’s, like, Legos for old people or somethin’! Daddy and I would always build really cool stuff together. He says that the fun part of building models and stuff is that you don’t hafta do it immediately, you know? You can take your time and think about it and do it at your own pace, ‘cause it’s not like food and goes bad!”

“That’s…actually a smart analogy. Comparing it to food, I mean.”

“Right? So, like, when Daddy and me got into putting Gunpla together, he taught me how to add the decals—y’know, the little sticker things—and stuff! Then he taught me how to do my own custom painting, if I wanted.”

I pretended to know what ‘Gunpla’ were, “That sounds fun.”

“I can show you sometime, I mean. Well, you probably saw some on my book shelf in my bedroom, but Daddy’s got a bunch of way cooler ones in his office.”

“Plenty of time to check them out sometime.”

As Megumi prattled on about her love of models, Lisa walked past the display window and caught sight of us, “Oh, that’s where you two were!” Entering the shop, Lisa waved hello to the old man behind the counter minding his newspaper and then turned to us, “You girls are missing all the festivities!”

“Mama, Bethy’s never been inside and seen the train model display!!”

All I had in me was a shrug.

Lisa didn’t have anything to say, “You two might want to get back out there before the stalls start closing up shop for the night. The darkness isn’t going to make it easy, you know?”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Megumi turned to me and gave me a look.”

“It’s a lovely model, but I think we can afford to browse around outside a bit more,” as nice as the reprieve from the cold was, the smell of whatever nature that was inside of this store left me wanting for fresh air.

“Okie-dokie,” Megumi sighed, stood from her hunched over position and did a dramatic pull of her cape to shield herself, before pulling me by hand out of the hardware store.

On the way out the door, I heard Lisa say, “Thank God we don’t own chickens, I’d hate to have to haul feed bags around all the time.”

Yeah—there definitely was not a single chicken at that house.

 

***

 

October 31, 2003: 

 

Driven back to the castle just barely before 8PM, I shuffled into the carefully warmed foyer of the main entrance, wiped my shoes on the carpet and approached one of the hosting rooms just silently enough to overhear Mother entertaining guests. Mr. Howard slipped out of the room with an empty serving tray in hand just as I was making my way towards the main staircase.

“Welcome home, Ms. Annabeth!”

“Thank you, Mr. Howard,” I smiled, dragging my tired body and my bucket full of candy up the steps, “Does Harrison still wake?”

With an amused smile, “I do believe that Harri is still awake, yes.”

“Lovely to know,” I rattled the jack-o-lantern bucket in my right hand a little, “I brought him some spoils of war, I fear.”

“I’ll give you two a moment before I remind your mother that it is Harri’s bedtime.”

“Thank you, Mr. Howard.”

Ascending the stairs, I dragged myself over towards Harrison’s room and knocked on the door, “Knock-knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“The Tooth Fairy!”

“Ugh, go away Beth!”

“Fine, no candy for you, then!”

With a speed greater than the sound of his own steps, Harrison rushed to his door and opened it, “You may enter!”

“Wise decision, kid.”

Entering Harrison’s room was a sight to behold. Harrison had exercised more thought than I had—or had thought possible he could—in sprucing up his bedroom and making it look a little more Harrison than just a creepy old castle bedroom. Toys and books were adorned everywhere, with the spare Dragon Ball and Pokemon poster liberally posted around the bedroom to add color.

“Impressive set up, baby brother.”

Harrison rolled his eyes as he produced a spare pillow case, “Where are the goods?”

“Why do you have a spare pillow case in your bedroom?”

“I was going to steal some of your candy for leaving me behind this year.”

The boy’s wit was as undeniable as his poutiness was, “For that, I should keep what I brought you, but, I’m impressed, so I’ll let it slide.”

It took little time to divvy up the boy’s rations and even less time for him to find a place to hide them from Mother.

“You’d have more candy if you had gone out with friends, you know.”

“I don’t have friends, Beth!”

“Yes, I am reminded of this constantly. Make some.”

“All the other boys ever do is make fun of me!”

Couldn’t fault the lad there, “Then make friends with girls.” It had worked out for me, albeit now she was technically my—well, something more.

“I hang out with you and Megumi!”

“You sit silently when we watch TV or play games, hardly ‘hanging out’. Besides, you need to learn to talk to girls your own age and you’ll have a leg up if you start now, as opposed to whenever you start dating them.”

“Ugh, jeez, you’re just as bad as Mom!”

So, this was what Megumi had meant when she said I had ‘wounded’ her and pulled that imaginary stake from her heart, “Let us not go comparing anyone to Mother. I am simply trying to say that you will be much less alone—and much less an annoying brat—if you learn to make friends with girls over boys. Understood?”     

Face sour as it was, Harrison huffed and puffed and then sighed, “Okay, okay, I’ll try.”

He should be more agreeable like that more often, if not for his sake, then for mine.

Turning for the door, I was immediately greeted by Mother opening the door—without knocking—and entering, “Oh, Annabeth! I see you’re home! I hope you didn’t give Harrison any candy, it’s so late at night!”

“I did not,” I lied.

“That’s good. Harrison can have some tomorrow,” Mother commandeered my bucket, straight from my hand, “I hope you have not eaten too much, yourself.”

“Oh, not really,” I loved lying.

“That’s good, you need to watch your figure,” Mother dug through my bucket of medicinal goods and fiddled with unwrapping a piece for herself. Every word out of her mouth was underscored by the stench of wine. Turning to Harrison, “It’s time for bed, sweetie. Did you brush your teeth already?”

“Yeah.”

“Good, now go on and get into bed,” Mother hit the light switch before I could even exit the room.

Turning to Harrison, I gave him as much a look of “Don’t tell her about your stash” as one could do in a dark room and then slipped past Mother to head to my room to prepare for a shower.

I needed to wash the ick of Mother’s words off more than I did the hours I spent in the elements themselves.

 

***

 

November 01, 2003: 

 

The rainstorm pounded Cassadine Castle without relenting. When I had awoken that morning, I had scowled at the sight of the storm and threatened to research whether it was possible to destroy the concept of ‘rain’ itself. As I stared out my bedroom window, now dressed and fed, I percolated on the thought further. 

Delivered to us by her parents before they set off on a lovely Saturday to themselves doing whatever adults did at home, Megumi and I barged into Harrison’s room and immediately commandeered his PlayStation, “We’re going to play for a little while, don’t mind us.”

As was typical, Harrison remained behind silently and watched from behind while Megumi trounced me in fighting games, before we returned to my room for privacy.

Privacy that was robbed of us by Harrison, of course. 

“Didja see any cool costumes yesterday?”

That was new.

“Huh?”

“When you two were out last night.”

“Oh, uh, yeah? None as cool as Megumi’s, though.”

“I saw.”

“You did? Me?”

“I was watching from the top floor. I really liked it, it was cool! You looked like, you know, like a vampire and stuff! It was really pretty, but in a cool way?”

It was weird as hell hearing a nine year old boy say ‘pretty’ in reference to clothing, but I played it cool, “Megumi’s got a cool sense of fashion, yeah.”

“I mean,” bashfulness was always a sight on the girl, “I just like trying out cute clothes. I used to dress really boring all the time, but I wanted to, uh, make a few changes for middle school.”

“Really? I mean, I guess I’ve never seen you in anything casual outside of gym class, but I figured you were always like this?”

“Nope, tee shirts and jeans or shorts were more my speed before. I mean, I still like casual clothes, but I’m, like, making up for lost time, I guess?”

“That’s so cool, Megumi!!” Harrison’s enthusiasm took his voice up in volume and pitch, which surprised Megumi. As weird as Harrison was, it had been a little sad how he had never let himself be so open around Megumi before. I wasn’t sure of the last time I could remember him smiling so wide around someone outside of the family.  

“Uh, thanks, Harrison?”

“You can call me Harri!”

“Uh, okay, Harri,” Megumi’s withdrawing into herself seemed so unlike her. Was it because Harrison was a boy? She seemed to get along with some of the less awful boys at school well enough, though.

“Girls are so lucky, you get to wear really cool costumes and clothes and stuff!”

Neither Megumi nor I knew how to immediately respond to that.

“Beth also had a really nice costume!”

That was definitely weird, right?

“If I could have, I would have worn something like that dress that Beth wore a year or two ago. The fairy princess one?”

Okay, this was getting weird. Turning to Megumi, I saw the girl sitting still, like a rock. Harrison was creeping her out, clearly. 

“Harrison, how about you go back to your room and find something else to do, yeah?”

“What? I don’t wanna!”

“Harrison, just—oh my goodness, you’re annoying Megumi. GO!”

“What?!”

“I said go, you big baby!”

“W-wait,” Megumi took my hand in hers. It was a cold and awful feeling, like touching raw chicken. Her hand shook terribly so, too.

“Are you okay, Megu?”

“Y-yeah, no, it’s—it’s not Harri, I’m just—I’m fine. Probably.”

The poor girl seemed like she was going to vomit, but I restrained myself. Getting up, I walked over to my shelf, “Let’s put a movie on, then. Something light?”

“Can we watch Legally Blonde again?”

“Huh?

“Y-yeah, Beth. I’m okay with that, if Harri wants.”

Slow and tepid, I reached from the DVD and plucked it off of my shelf. The mood in the room was off, but not in a way that my expansive vocabulary could quite pin down. Megumi seemed to be shrinking in on herself, while Harrison blossomed with an excitement one would have typically assigned to Megumi

It was all very, very strange.

 

***

 

November 01, 2003: 

 

By the time the movie had ended, the rain clouds had poured out their hearts and souls and gone right home. The outside world beckoned us back into its embrace, one that could never be trusted too much this time of year. Trying to get as much space between Harrison and us, I dragged Megumi outside and into the woods behind the castle for a little stroll.

It became apparent that Harrison had waited but five minutes and then followed us outside, although he seemed to be keeping his distance for fear of retribution. 

“Are you okay, Megumi?” I asked, carefully. 

Taking precise steps on the softened forest ground, Megumi took a moment more than usual to respond, “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“You can tell me, you know.”

“Huh?”

“About, you know, what it is that’s really bothering you. Does it have something to do with that other secret of yours?”

Megumi remained silent.

“Aah, so it does,” with careful precision to seem more free-spirited than I was, I stepped over a puddle with a jaunty little step, “I know that I can come across…how should I say…judgy? I want you to know, though, that—well, I think we share a pretty big secret between the two of us as it is, don’t we? A secret that I would certainly never break, I mean.”

It seemed a terrible crime for a spirit like Megumi to lock her eyes on the forest floor in whatever weird shame she felt. Her pain made me feel a helplessness that was all too familiar to me. I could never stand up to Mother and Father, but Megumi? Could I not at least lift her up?

“I’m sorry, Megu, you don’t have to—”

Suddenly, Megumi shot a look back: Harrison was still quite a ways away, zig-zagging through the streets aimlessly and waving around a stick he had found on the group like a sword or a wand. Then, Megumi turned back to me, suddenly deadly serious: “Promise you’ll never tell a soul?”

“I’ll sooner kill myself,” I replied, surprising even myself with the seriousness of my whispered reply.

“Come over to my house tomorrow. I’ll tell you then.”

Megumi finally picked up speed, walking deeper into the woods like a heated knife through butter.

As I picked up my own pace to follow her, I found myself having little care for the sight of her back when giving chase. It made us feel strangely distant. The sight of her eyes, as I stood beside her, was much more comforting. 

 

***

 

November 02, 2003: 

 

Cassadine Castle had been modernized internally so as to provide the comforts of modern technology—and the living that came with it—to those that resided within its stone walls. The chambers of the castle were never too warm, nor never too cool. Grandfather had apparently spent a small fortune making sure that the castle could retain its external appearance of aristocratic majesty, while suffering none of the drawbacks.

It was in that way that the Burmen house remained more or less untrifled by the notion of putting on airs. You got what your eyes bought when you visited Megumi’s house: a common middle-class house with a standard heating system throughout the house, but also the comfort of a central cooling system that needed to run only three months out of the year. Lisa and Jim Burmen worked hard for their home and had little guilt about spending their double income on securing a comfortable climate during the less savory months of the year.

I found myself respecting them for that, even if they still had a degree of privilege that others would not have in being able to afford such a thing. 

Sitting in Megumi’s room with her proved enlightening in ways that I could not have expected. As the girl sat before me in her climate-controlled house, I learned that even a seventy-degree fahrenheit house could still feel frosty. Chills slowly nibbled at my joints as I sat crosslegged on Megumi’s floor, trying awkwardly not to be too needy. 

Finally, after staring me down for an eternity, Megumi spoke: “Okay. So. You promise you won’t tell anyone?”

“I promise, Megumi. I really do.”

“Not even, like, Harri?”

“Pfft, please. We’re not so close that I would just tell Harrison a loved one’s secret without their consent.”

Foolish Annabeth, admitting that Megumi was a loved one.

“And you promise you won’t, like, get weird about this?”

It was a simple question that I knew that I should have foreseen, but it still wounded me in a way that I did not expect it to be able to. It was a sensation that I knew that I would have to try to work out and try to understand at some point, but as the weight of the question and the look of Megumi’s face and the tenseness in her shoulders radiated before me, I found myself with a clarity of strength that I had never felt before: “I promise, Megumi. I—I care deeply for you.”

Looking like she was about to vomit, “I really, really hope you mean that, Bethy. If I ever lost you, I—I wouldn’t know what to do—”

“—you won’t lose me, Megumi,” even if it was a lie, I wanted it to be true, “Ever.”

“Do you—so, you know how we’re—you know, bisexual? Or at least, like, definitely like girls?”

“Yes, I do,” even if I still had a horrible dread anytime I thought about being found out.

“Do you know what ‘LGBT’ means?”

“I might have overheard it on TV once, I’m not sure.”

“It stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender.”

“What, like, gay people? Or, different types of people who aren’t, I don’t know, ‘normal’?”

“Whatever even is normal?” Megumi asked, suddenly sidetracked. “Whatever. Basically, yeah, fine, they’re different ways of being queer. ‘Lesbian’ is usually used for girls who only like girls, ‘Gay’ is usually used for boys who only like boys. Bisexual—bi, whatever—is used for people who like both. Us? Us.”

“And…’transgender’? Is that like those guys on Jerry Springer? Did I remember that right?”

Megumi grew silent, even down to the beating of her heart. I had once watched Father angrily toss a newspaper into the roaring fireplace. The color drained from Megumi's  face not unlike watching that newspaper be burned to ashes in a mere  few seconds.

“Are you okay, Megumi?”

“You promise?”

“Megumi, please, I’ll never hurt you! Just say it already!”

“‘Transgender’ means, like, you were born one gender on the outside, but you’re another on the inside.”

I could feel my brow furrowing as I processed Megumi’s quivering voice, “What, like The Phantom of the Opera?”

“Huh?”

“Uh, like, I mean—shoot, you’ve never read it? Or seen the musical? It’s about a guy who is born kinda…okay, maybe it’s crass to refer to people as ‘deformed’, but basically, his body is born ‘wrong’. A better example escapes me, I apologize.”

Megumi sat there, on her knees, on the floor of her bedroom in a quiet, unbreathing contemplation. 

“I mean, trans people aren’t ugly, if that’s what you mean.”

Anxiety filled my chest, but I kept it at bay, “I’m sorry, I’m not trying to—I’m sorry, please just educate me on what I’m doing wrong.”

The mood of the room was suffocating. Megumi’s voice had sounded so insulted, in a way.

“Trans people…are…like…you know, someone called a ‘girl’ at birth who has the brain of a boy. Or a ‘boy’ at birth that has the brain of a girl.”

“Are you…saying that you wish to be a boy?”

“N-no, no, God, no!”

“Then what?”

“Oh my gosh, Bethy! Bethy!! Annabeth!!”

“What?! What?! What, Megumi?!”

“I’m the opposite!”

“What? You don’t want to be a boy?”

“Yes!”

“Then don’t be!!”

“I am don’t being—not being!!”

“Okay, then what are you—oh, my God!”

“Oh God, now do you get it?”

“You mean, you—?!”

“Continue that sentence, please?!”

“You mean, you used to be a—a…boy?”

Megumi reached her hands above her head, grabbing at the air as she slowly formed fists, “In so many words!”

“B-but…wait…that doesn’t—” The room was spinning, melting into a thousand puddles of bright colors—nothing made sense anymore. Megumi was so—yes, she was goofy and dorky and kind of a tomboy, but even so—surely none of those things made her some sort of former boy? She liked all the things Mother would have approved of. Her sense of fashion was undeniably feminine and graceful, even if that personality of hers seemed so far divorced from any form of timidity! “I’m sorry, I just—I’m having a hard time believing that you used to be—I’m sorry. You don’t even look—”

“—I’m on, like, puberty blockers and stuff, but even then, kids our age hardly look all that different from one another, you know?”

“I’m sorry, Megumi. I’m not sure I follow—well, no, no, what I mean is, you sound a lot more knowledgeable about these things than I am.”   

“Yeah, I mean, I’ve had to read books and stuff. Gawd, they were boring!”

“Do your parents—I’m sorry, that’s a stupid question. And they’re okay with—okay, that’s also a stupid question.”

“We moved to Gravelly Lake from Seattle so I could have a fresh start. Nobody would know about, you know, me. Also, my grandma still lives here, you know? Mama’s mama. It just made sense, after I told my parents about how I felt when I was, like, ten.”

“So you just, like, told them that you wanted to be a…a girl?”

“I mean, yeah? My parents knew trans women, so they had a vague idea about it. They took me to a doctor, we bought some books on it—heck, I even used the internet a bit. Some of the things people say about trans people are really, really mean. But, like, Mama and Daddy understood me, I guess? I don’t think they hate me for being a girl, I mean. They don’t make me feel bad about it. They’re kinda, what’s the word, paranoid about it, I guess?”

“Is that…why you were not allowed to tell me?”

“Yeah. Mama says it’s not safe for girls like me to just tell people about what—who I am.”

“How do your parents know so many? Of these…what was it? ‘Trans people?”

“I mean, you’ve met them, right? My parents? You know how they are, like, a little…different?”

“I mean, yeah? I guess they’re a little…well, I’m not sure I should say ‘different’, given my primary source of what parents are like in the real world are my own.”

“No, no, I understand what you mean. Still, you’ve read enough books and seen enough television and movies. You know that my parents are a little…different.”

“I mean, I suppose I do?”

“So, like, don’t tell them you know this, but…well, they’re like us.”

“They’re…like, they like both?”

“Yup.”

“I mean, I guess I kind of suspected that with your mom. She seems really different. More, like, the sort of girl you see that’s…not really like a girl?”

“Yeah, I mean, she’s a bit gender queer? Like, still a girl, but it’s like a roulette on what kind of girl she is any given day or week.”

“That’s—so, she’s a little more like you one day or me on another, given how she’s feeling?”

“I mean, I guess? She got really back into dresses when I started dressing like a girl. I guess she wanted to make me feel less weird about it, since I was just starting out?”

A mix of feelings brewed within my gut. In the brief time that I had known the Burmens, it had been apparent to me just how much they got along as a family. The way that Lisa treated Megumi was more like what I had read in fictional stories: a loving respect that seemed so very distant from the aggravating relationship that I had with my mother. In a way, Megumi and Lisa had an even better relationship than the fairy tales of fictional characters.

“Annabeth?”

“Huh?”

“You were lost in thought again. I haven’t…freaked you out, have I?”

Had she? “Oh, uh, no, no—I’m sorry, Megumi. I’m just thinking a lot about something.”

“D-do you…have questions? For me? About me?”

“Err, well, I mean…I guess I’m just, like, curious. How did you know that you were a girl?”

“It was…very painful, trying to be a boy. The older I got, the more I learned about the world…it just, like, really felt uncomfortable? I didn’t think like a boy, I didn’t relate to them. I mean, I like cool action stuff—I’m probably more passionate about the kinds of shows boys like than they are, even—but, like, I just didn’t get them, you know? Girls were always a lot easier to make friends with, but even then, when they would reject me for not being one of them…it hurt me even more. One day, I tried looking up how I felt on the internet and…well, I got a lot of weird stuff, but at least I knew, you know? I knew, yeah, okay, this is who I am. A lot of people don’t really get it and they’re, like, you know, the trans version of homophobic? ‘Transphobic’, I guess? Whatever! Basically, I just knew, I had to try. So, I talked to my parents and they took me to doctors and stuff and even when the doctors were weird about it, my parents still believed me, you know? So, like, they kept taking me to doctors. They asked their trans friends that they met at their group thingies and…yeah. Eventually, they got a doctor to start treating me like a real patient. I’m on puberty blockers so that I don’t have to look more masculine as I grow up. Then, when I’m old enough, they’ll let me take estrogen so that I can look feminine and grow, uh, breasts. Like women do, you know?”

In the small, spinning box of a microwave, a bowl of ice cream would spin and melt every single second it was exposed to the horrifying, melting waves of heat within. In less than even a minute, precious ice cream would become a puddle of goop, melted and without real worth to the precious child that might wish to taste it in its full, glorious frozen form.

My brain felt so very much as if it had spent a minute in a microwave.

It was a lot to take in, but what cut through all the fear and anxiety and complicated words was an unenviable sense of envy. Like a flaming blade through my flesh, I was split down my body as a single phrase echoed in my mind: “My parents still believed me.”

That was really the crux of it, at the end of the day. For all the ways in which I felt different from the other kids growing up, what separated the beautiful mess of a girl before me from I was that she had been afforded parents that understood and believed her when she had gone to them about her feelings about who she was.

Mother would never understand me when I put in the effort to talk to her. Father most certainly never would have, either, had I even bothered with him.

This strange attraction I had towards Megumi was not because she was ‘secretly a boy’. I had not been confusing my feelings for her based on whatever the doctors had told her she was when she was born. When I saw Megumi, when I thought back on Megumi, I saw and I remembered only the ways in which she was more girl than I. Megumi made being a girl the most joyful part of her existence. Or was it her innate girlness that made her existence so joyful? Either way, when I remembered the fierceness with which Megumi Burmen would navigate every little interaction as herself without a single apology to anyone that she did not respect, it felt like being bathed in a spotlight that burned away any and all of my defenses, exposing to the entirety of the world my festering insecurities. 

I had never felt like a girl in the ways that my peers or Mother and Father had expected of me. Beneath all of the confusing feelings I felt and all the ways in which I did not fit in with the other girls and even the boys, I felt different. Had it merely been a result of my love of literature? My preference for the quiet escape of a good book over the company of rowdy friends? Or had my love of books been a result of my rejection from other children for not being able to embody the precise image of a girl that they had been raised to expect?

What I knew now, after having Megumi lie down and expose herself to a knight’s blade, was that I finally understood who I wanted to be—who I had always been: For the first time in my life, I felt like a girl.

For the first time in my life, I loved being a girl.    

 

*** 

 

December 21, 2003: 

 

The benefit of doing one’s homework on a Friday meant that Saturday and Sunday remained days free of the reminder of a return to school. Yes, Sunday’s always meant that it was a school night, but given that we were now in the middle of Christmas break, it did not much matter either way.

Of course, Megumi and I had been assigned at least one project due after the return from break, so our torment continued at least one more day. Somehow, we had spent Friday breaking ground on the project and then Saturday wrapping it without much problem.

I had taken Megumi for a goof at the beginning of our relationship, but each time I saw her approach to homework, I was reminded that she was brilliant. There was no dragging her feet with this girl: she was efficient and sharp and would undoubtedly go places.

Any time I let myself ponder too long on the subject, I followed Megumi’s natural work ethic and her good grades to the logical end: the future.

What would become of Megumi, in the future, when she was a brilliant woman with a career and all the money in the world? Did she seek to become a mother some day? Would she marry a man? She couldn’t get pregnant, so how would that work?

Would she ask me to be with her for all of eternity? Gay marriage was not allowed, according to everything that I had read. Father and Mother would often say disparaging things about homosexuals. There was no way that I would ever be able to be with Megumi in the future. What we had now was but a fleeting dream.

Could a trans woman and a cisgender woman still get married because of the ill systemic treatment of trans people?

So many different questions remained forever in my mind, silenced only temporarily by the words of others.

The sight of Megumi standing up off of the floor and stretching drew me back out from my own thoughts, “Big stretch!!”

“Finished, are we?”

“Yup!” The popping of the ‘p’ sound was such a Megumi thing to do, “What about you?”

“I’m done, too.”

“Heck yeah! Now we have a whole week of uninterrupted shenanigans we can get up to!”

An amused smile was impossible to hold back, “You really are an amazing girl, Megumi.”

Pink soaked upward and through the pores on the Burmen girl’s cheeks, “Oh, gosh, Bethy…I, uh, thank you.”

“For what?”

“For…you know, not treating me any differently.”

We had barely talked about it the past two months, “I should be the one thanking you, Megu.”

“Huh? Why?”

Standing for a stretch of my own, “I think I’m a better person for having met you, is all. Let’s not make a big deal out of it.”

“Oh…”

Little time passed between finishing our project and an uninvited Harrison slipping into my room, “You’re done, right?”

With a roll of my eyes, “Yeah, yeah, we are.”

With how clingy Harrison was, anytime Megumi and I hung out at Cassadine Castle, it meant we were constantly kept from discussing certain things. It was annoying, of course, but I hardly prevented Megumi and I from being close.

Strolling over to my bed like he owned the place, Harrison took a seat on the edge of my bed and winced just slightly, before zeroing out his facial expression again. Father had hit him again, two nights earlier. I had not said anything about it, yet again. All I could think about was how, if he had taken his anger out on me, would it have prevented me from being with Megumi? Somehow? 

“You okay, Harri?” Megumi asked, her voice a cautious whisper, a trait that still mystified me. 

“Huh? Oh, uh, yeah,” Harrison’s voice betrayed him, but Megumi let it slide. What would there have been to say, anyway? There was nothing Megumi could have done to prevent what had happened.

What had been done.

Shaking my head to snap myself back to attention, I took a quick look outside: the clouds were gloomy, but it was an otherwise uneventful day for the weather. Turning to Megumi, “Mother Nature appears to be tepid at the moment. Fancy a walk, Megu?”

Megumi replied first with a wistful smile, “Yeah, sure.”

“Don’t go making a mess in my room, Harrison,” I ordered, on the off chance he was not simply going to follow us outside.

“‘Kay.”

A walk-in closet was the one part of living in such a dreary castle that I had unfortunately come to appreciate. Briskly stepping inside, I let my hand trail against the row of hanging close on the right side of the closet until I touched a pink jacket optimal for the winter season and lifted the hanger off of the bar.

By the time I was zipped up and out of the closet, Megumi was herself equipped with the lavender puffy jacket that she wore with such great familiarity.

Moments later, we girls had rejoined the outside world for a stroll down by the chilly lake behind Cassadine Castle.

There were days when, devoid of Megumi’s presence, I would sit on the dock, watching the water move. The lake stretched far, connecting to another forest on the far side, something like one hundred fifty feet across. I had never ventured that far into the forest before, although I considered doing so with Megumi some day, just to get lost in a world as far away from Cassadine Castle as possible.

“You okay?”

“Huh?”

“You’re zoning out, Beth.”

Megumi, bold as ever, risked placing her hand on mine as it rested on the dock board.

Feigning a smile, “Oh, I’m fine. Just thinking about the forest across the lake. I wonder what it’s like over there? I think we should give it a walk sometime, don’t you agree?”

“Sure, that sounds like a lovely idea,” the concern on her face lessened not one iota, “But what’s really bothering you? Is it Harri?”

So, she noticed, “Perhaps.”

“What’s wrong? I noticed that he seemed to be in pain?”

“It is…” the words were difficult to find, “...Harrison is hurting, yes.”

“Why is he hurting?”

“Our father…you know?”

“Did your dad…” it was like she was trying not to speak the words, “...is your dad abusive?”

I knew that even trying to make a single vocalization with my mouth would not end well, so I simply let an exhausted smile take root on my face.

“Holy shit, Beth!” No ‘y’. That was twice in a single conversation now. Megumi was serious.

“There is nothing that can be done about it, Megumi,” I managed, my voice a strained whisper that hurt even at a low volume.

“And your mom?”

“Mother knows, she has simply chosen not to interfere.”

“Why?! Harri’s just a kid!”

“Your parents never hit you?”

“Do you seriously think they would let me be me if they were the hitting sort?”

We both knew that I was not that naive, so I simply did not reply.

“How long?”

“A few times. Father’s grown more and more of a loose cannon since we moved into Cassadine Castle. Or maybe I just don’t remember my younger years very well, I could not say.” Even to me, my voice sounded like it was lost in the forest, resigned to my fate.

“Is it because of how he’s, you know, a little…fruity?”

“Huh?”

“Harri, Beth. Come on, surely you’ve noticed it.”

I lied, “Harrison’s a brat, he runs afoul of Father’s temper sometimes. He’ll need to toughen up if he’s to be a man.”

“Jesus Christ, who fed you that horse shit, Beth?” With each escalation of my own denial and retreat, Megumi seemed to resemble the cheeky, annoying girl that so vexed me and instead took the form of the woman she would undoubtedly become when she was no longer a child. “If Harri’s, like, gay or something, he sure as hell can’t help it if he’s different from the other boys.”

“He’s nine, Megumi. There’s no way he’s—”

“—Annabeth, don’t feed me that horseshit, you don’t even sound like you believe it yourself.”

Rats, she was right about that.

“Beth, you have to do something!”

“Do what, Megumi? What am I supposed to do? Call the police? Do you seriously think they would take my word over the word of the wealthiest man in town? No! They won’t! And then, when I fall face-first in the mud, what happens then? Things get worse for Harrison! God knows what will become of me! What if they prevent me from seeing you? What if you’re—!!”

My vision had bled into a horrible red as my voice shrieked. The rush of emotions and adrenaline was totally foreign to me, like a pressure valve finally let loose. Megumi did not shrink back at my outburst, but the hurt on her face only grew more evident as I lost my breath and covered my snot-covered face with my palms in shame.

As she took me in her warm embrace, I could selfishly think only of how much I would miss Megumi if ever I was to lose her.   

 

***

 

December 21, 2003: 

 

The surface of the lake remained silent and unmoving, save for a pair of ducks that landed on the surface for a pleasant little swim and quack. Megumi had managed to peel herself off of me after I had ceased my weeping and we had begun walking alongside the lake’s western edge, a little further from the castle than we had ever ventured before.

After crying so much, I had emptied myself completely. I felt little now, the anxiety put all out into the world. Still, the release had loosened my body enough to make each step a little quicker than I was used to.

“Are you doing okay, Bethy?”

“I’m better, if that’s what you mean.”

“Well, close enough, I suppose. I’m sorry for making you cry.”

“Don’t be, it isn’t your fault. I needed it, really. I could not tell you when the last time I wept was.”

Megumi was without words, perhaps out of respect.

“Anyway, I’m just glad that I didn’t scare you off with that little meltdown.”

“You won’t get rid of me that easily, Bethy.”

Was that the desperation of a trans girl who needed a friend or was it the love of a girlfriend who was not quick to fall out of love?

The thought of either made my stomach want to empty itself, so I pushed them from my mind, “Do you really think that Harrison might be…gay?”

“I mean, it’s either that or…well, you know?”

I did not like knowing what Megumi was implying.

“All I’m saying is,” Megumi’s voice took a diplomatic tone that, while keeping my emotions at bay, still left me with a terrible dread, “I think the way that he is different should not be punished.”

“Father punishes him for his disobedience.”

“You mentioned the phrase ‘toughen up’ before, did you not?”

Words were too difficult when my hands were so heavily painted red.  

“Beating a kid isn’t going to make him tougher, it’s going to make him break down easier.”

“And how would you know that? Your parents love and respect you.”

“While I wouldn’t call them friends, I do know other queer kids. Like, there’s regular get-togethers organized by parents of queer kids, you know? I’m the only trans girl, so that’s kind of a pain, but most of them are also just really annoying.”

“What makes me different?”

A horrible smirk spread across Megumi’s face.

“God, you’re such a bitch, Megu!” My face took a shade of red that, if I could see it, I suspected would have been stronger than the red on my hands.

“What I’m trying to get at is, I’ve seen what happens to kids whose parents suck. They’re…different, you know? In ways that I think you’ll probably understand someday. Either way, what your dad is doing is…” the words seemed to escape her as Megumi took a moment to think, “...what your dad is doing isn’t parenting. Parents are supposed to prepare you for the world, right?”

“I…well, yes?”

“You prepare someone by building them up, showing them how to be their best self. That’s what Mama and Daddy have been doing for me, since I started transitioning.”

I loathed how perfectly I understood her words.

“What your dad is doing—what both of your parents do to you—is, like, tearing you down? Destroying what you’ve already built of yourselves and then—” tears began to escape Megumi’s eyes, falling down her cheeks like stars.

“—Megumi, please, don’t push yourself!” On instinct, I reached out partially for Megumi before withdrawing my right hand. If we were caught, I feared that no display of intimacy would be perceived as anything but what it truly was.

Megumi wiped her face clear and then, with a great old inhale, continued walking further along the lake with a jaunty little step.

As we approached a small beach left naked by the shallow tide, Megumi stopped to take a look at the lake.

Stopping to join her, I cozied up as much as I could plausibly get away with on the off-chance that we were spotted, but that was not reason enough for Megumi to not take my hand in hers. I appreciated her courage that so easily eclipsed mine.

“You know,” Megumi smiled, “As fun as the idea of living in a castle sounds, it really is no place for a child to grow up.”

“You think?” I asked, my heart exposed by the moment.

“Yeah, I do. This lake here? Even though it is winter and all cold and gray looking, it’s really beautiful, right?”

“Right.”

“Well, I think a lake should be visited, not owned. Shouldn't everyone be able to see this lake?”

“I’ve never really thought about it, but I do see what you mean. I mean, do we not have public parks and lakes?”

“Exactly! You get it!”

The excitement in her voice and the joy on her face was its own kind of beautiful. It was in moments like these that I wished that I knew how to tell Megumi that.

“Megumi?”

“Yes?”

“Do you like your house?”

“It’s better than the apartment we used to live in up in Seattle. It’s got a nice, big backyard, too! It’s not—” Megumi waved her left arm across our shared view as her right held my left hand “—all this majesty, but you know what?”

“What?”

“It’s not just a house.”

“It’s not?”

“No, silly! It’s a home!!”

I had read the word ‘profound’ in a book before. I could not recall which book it had been, but I remembered looking the word up in a dictionary and learning the cold, textual meaning of it. Today, held by my Megumi, I learned the warm, practical meaning of the word ‘profound’. 

“Hey, Bethy, why’re you cryin’ again?! Bethy, is everything okay?!”

Standing on my tippy-toes, I leaned towards Megumi and took another risk.

When I pulled back from Megumi’s face, the goofy grin on it had made the risk all the more worth it.

 

***

 

December 21, 2003: 

 

After grabbing a quick bite to eat from the kitchenette, Megumi and I snuck back up to my room, careful not to be spotted should my Mother wish to invade our privacy. Fiddling with a chocolate coin, Megumi followed me back into my room.

Once back inside, I was immediately shocked by what I saw: Harrison, in one of my old dresses.

“What in the—”

“—it’s not what it looks like, Beth!”

Turning to Megumi, like a boat looking for its moor, I found the girl immediately putting her right hand over my mouth to silence me.

If Mother or Father were to barge in then the entire scene would only get worse, after all. With all my strength, I reset my voice: “Harrison, what is the meaning of this?”

“It—it just looks really pretty, so I wanted to see what it felt like to wear it?” It was a dress that I had not worn in at least two years, if not more. As awkward as he looked in it, it fit the boy well enough, especially with that unruly hair of his having grown out since the beginning of the school year.

Megumi turned and locked my bedroom door before turning back to face Harrison, “Hey, uh, Harri?”

“What? Like, I’m sorry, I’ll take it off—”

“—n-no, no, you don’t have to!”

“What?” I shout-whispered to Megumi, only to get a shush motion in return.

“Are you sure?”

“Y-yeah, yeah, you’re fine. So, you like it, right?”

“Umm, yeah? It looks nice. I feel kinda dumb wearing it, though.”

“Aah, I can fix that,” Megumi proceeded to help herself to my spare combs and hair brushes, carefully crafting Harrison’s hair to look a little less haphazard. “Voila!”

Faced with his reflection in the full body mirror Mother had insisted that I have in my room, Harrison grew a new shade of blush and smiled weakly.

“W-wow…”

“Yeah, I’ve picked up a thing or two over the, uh, years.”

As I watched the scene before me unfold, I could think only of the ways that Father would harm Harrison if he were to catch him in the dress. I had seen television, I had seen films—and I had seen so many things on the internet. I knew what people like Megumi faced. I knew what gay people faced, too. The harm, the ridicule, the suffering—if I allowed Harrison to face those same things, would I not be damning him to a cruel fate?

But then, I remembered Megumi’s words. I saw the look on Harrison’s face, the livelier sway of his body. I could not help but remember how much more interested he was in hanging out with me and Megumi. The answer was staring me right in my face.

I turned away, unable to face it.

 

***

 

December 24, 2003: 

 

The annual Woods family Christmas Party, held to gather the full extended family as a show of force to its many business associates both within Gravelly Lake and across the state. Father and Grandfather had learned to leave the planning of the event to the womenfolk in years passed. Following Grandmother’s death, the organizing had increasingly fallen to Mother, who thrived in the role of socialite. 

The wives of Father’s many younger brothers came running in droves, insisting to assist, either sincerely or as part of some social battle that seemed ridiculous. The relationships of the women of the Woods family confounded me with their triteness.

It was hardly the first year that Harrison and I had attended the affair. I wasn’t sure if it was because of the fear that now laid in my soul for both of us, but the party looked and sounded different than in previous years. It seemed a little bigger, the crowds of attendees spread throughout the castle seemed a little denser. Their laughs and their crackles and their giggles and all the other little noises they made as they drank and ate themselves stupid while gossiping and cutting deals all seemed less confusing now and more nauseating.

As I sifted through the various bundles of conversing people in the library, I recalled a memory that I had lost. It had been four years earlier: Father had said awful things to Mother simply because she had told him some bad news. I could not even recall what the bad news was, simply that it had set him off and I had entered the kitchen looking for them, just in time to see Father throw a wine glass into the sink, shattering it.

Even now, a part of myself loathed Mother for making me pity the memory of her and the absolute mess of red, teary eyes she became.

As the memory returned to me in the split-second it takes for another memory to return to one, I adjusted my path to avoid both Father and Mother, each the center of separate groups of family and business associates, laughing up a storm over some trivial story being told.

Harrison was planted in an arm chair, miserably sat and miserably wrapped in a dress shirt and slacks that seemed big enough to swallow him whole. I still remembered the casualty of his body and the liveliness of his voice each time he snuck into my room the prior two days, just to spend time with me and Megumi, where he could wear that silly dress of his—of mine—like it was the most normal thing in the world.

Each time I saw him wear it, I felt anger and sickness. Anger, for the way that he was so forcing me to protect him, and sickness, for the powerlessness I felt in being able to successfully do so for very long. 

It was only a matter of time before Harrison was exposed, and if it happened, it could ruin my relationship with Megumi. What if she was outed and driven away from both me and the school? What if she was forced to move, yet again?

What truly marked this Christmas Party differently from previous years that I had now taken on a burden. With age came new and bigger burdens, ones that rang true in ways that I could not imagine being surpassed. 

In the distance, I spotted Cousin Clive retrieving fruit punch for his little brother, Elliot, and wondered with idle fascination if there was some deep dark secret that they held together, or if I had simply been unlucky in that regard. I hoped that there was.

After all, miserably loved company.

 

***

 

December 24, 2003: 

 

“Annabeth, be a dear and go find your brother,” I had barely had a chance to sneak some punch before Mother was on me like a wildcat, ushering me away from anything with even a little sugar in it.

Checking the armchair that I had last seen him in, I confirmed that Harrison was once again missing. As usual.

“He’s probably just gone back up to his room.”

“Then go and bring him back downstairs, dear.”

The rules that she played by made so little sense to me, but I nevertheless acquiesced so as to get away from the bloviating party for a little bit.

Trekking up the main stairs—expertly avoiding conversations happening on the stairs themselves—I reached the second floor and found my way to Harrison’s room.

“Knock, knock! Are you in there, Harrison?”

Not a peep.

Opening the door, I poked my head inside to find the lights off and no indication that the boy was hiding in his room, busying himself with video games or television, “Where is he?” I let myself whisper, each syllable being replaced with the realization that Harrison was likely doing the one thing he should not have been doing today of all days.

With as little suspicion as possible, I sped walked over to my room and found that the door was locked. 

Great.

“Harrison, let me in!” I half-shouted, knowing that my voice wouldn’t stick out over the chatter and music filling the castle.

“Uh, I’m not in here!” A muffled, obvious voice called back.

“I’m alone, you brat! Now, let me into my room!”

A beat passed and finally, the door cracked open, Harrison’s eye just barely visible. 

With little time for games, I pushed my way into and around the door and then locked it behind me: Harrison was once again in the pink dress.

“What are you doing?”

The boy had nothing to say for himself. 

“Harrison, get out of that right now. If someone sees you, you will never be able to wear it again. You know what Father would do.”

Nothing, at first. Then tears.

Stepping over to the boy, I leaned down a little to comfort him. It was not easy, initiating physical contact, but I knew that it was something that was expected of me as the older sibling and as a girl. Nurturing and loving, things I had learned less from Mother’s doing and more from her saying and from the examples I had seen on television. The boy eventually ceased his sobbing after a few minutes, but I still did not know how to feel. These were complicated feelings that I was not prepared to deal with. I was only twelve, for goodness’ sake!

While Harrison redressed in the privacy of my closet, I sighed, and sat on the edge of my bed: “What the hell am I doing? Where is this going?”

When the miserable boy finally exited the closet, he looked barely put together. Admittedly, the clothes that Mother had picked out for him were dreadful.

I lent him my advanced taste and straightened his appearance out before shooing him outside of the bedroom.

Harrison’s little problem was not going to go away anytime soon, I suspected.

 

***

 

August 25, 2004:

 

Harrison was sobbing uncontrollably as I held him. It was beyond me just how I was managing to keep my cool, but as I held onto him for dear life, on my bedroom floor, I wondered if how tightly I was gripping onto his body was just hurting him more.

Father had found Harrison in my room while I was retrieving snacks from the kitchen. Harrison had been in The Dress. It was his tenth birthday, of course he wanted to wear it and spend time with me and Megumi.

Thankfully, Megumi had not yet arrived. 

Harrison had been stripped out of the dress forcibly when I found him, having followed his screams from the other side of the castle. The dress was gone and all that remained was a blubbering mess of a child, on the floor of my bedroom, covered in bruises on her arms, shoulders, and back.

There was no need to even confirm with the staff, I knew that Megumi would be turned away at the front door by Father or Mother’s order. There would be no allowing guests over for the foreseeable future, not while the bruises remained.

I would have to convince Mother to take her child to the hospital to be seen, just to make sure there was no internal bleeding—I had read about that once, in a novel.

And then, after I inevitably returned from the hospital, having gone with Harrison, I would later that night, use the phone that I had asked to have in my bedroom to call Megumi and apologize for canceling. 

And then have to lie to her about why we had to cancel the little celebration that only the three of us would attend.

But for now, I would continue to sit on the hard floor of my bedroom in this horrible castle, holding the sobbing mess that I knew was my little sister. 

 

***

 

August 01, 2010:

 

A soul-piercing thrust sent me jutting back, deep into the pillow of Megumi’s pillows at the summit of her bed. I could feel with each lightning-fast stab that my very soul was being pierced so cleanly that it healed the moment she pulled back. Not a single wound remained anything but beautiful as the bright golden heavens within my soul was treated like a pin cushion for the story she weaved.

“God, I love how you can barely hold your cries back, Bethy,” all these years and Megumi still found new ways to agitate me—to make me follow her lead on the dance floor no matter the time and place. 

Another horrifically blissful strike, as she held me so wonderfully on my side from behind, sliding in-and-out of my pussy with a conqueror’s fervor. 

It was our little game: we would spar with words, but when the duel became heated and there was little denying what we were both feeling, she would storm the castle that was my heart and pin me to any wall, counter, couch or bed she could and ravage the heart I hid so dearly.

“F-fuck, Megu!”

“Yeah, there’s that slutty little moaning that makes me even harder!” It left me aghast each time how Megumi Burmen so devilishly whispered in my ear, just before nibbling on it. She knew that she would devour me whole in unbridled cannibalistic lust and I would let her. To be sustenance for her was the height of my soul’s desires, revealed only in moments of my most horrifying vulnerability. 

Each kiss by the tip of her throbbing, raging, warring cock was like being dipped into the moltening volcano of the hottest pit of hellfire. Each time I surrendered myself to the weakness in my heart, I was cast into pools meant surely only for branding sinners. 

The throbbing sensation of Megumi filling the condom she wore inside of me was nearly enough to liberate me completely—to cast away the shackles around my heart for ever, melting them in those same hellfires and liberating me from all the horrible things the story of my life had taught me was my duty. 

Sliding her cock out of my, Megumi slid the soaked condom off of her cock and tossed it with an expert’s littlest attention into her trash bin’s liner, “Fuck, that was good. Wanna clean me off?”

Dazed from my own release, I was brought back to the sight of the woman I loved kneeling above me, that lady knight’s grin drunkenly spread across her face. When a thick, heavy and so terribly hot droplet of semen dropped from her still hard cock’s tip onto my lips, I suppressed the urge to scream as it branded me in hellfire.

With a gleeful grin of my own, I took my right thumb and spread the splooge across my lips like balm and then licked them clean.

Megumi had her answer and with it lifted me by my armpits up so that I could take her heaven-piercing saber once more into my mouth and surrender a little longer to the deepest of my desires: to be entirely hers, forever.

As Megumi released down my throat for a time I had long-since forgotten which number it was, I lifted myself up onto my rear and began to suckle on her left breast. It was just barely noticeably bigger than her right. I dreamt of the day she would get the breast augmentation surgery she had so often confided in me that she wanted. I dreamed of the day that she would feel comfortable finally embracing me fully in a hug, so that our breasts might touch and our hearts might finally become just that much closer.   

I dreamed of the days that would never come, where I would be able to meet Megumi before an altar, celebrating and locking our love forever before all of our loved ones.

I dreamed of the grumpy moments as we waited at airports for our delayed flights to finally board.

I dreamed of complaining about the heat of the summer evening on our front porch as we watched the night sky attempt to impress us with its many stars and many stories.

I dreamed of the life we would never have, because I was the eldest daughter of the Woods family.

Turning to Megumi, as she so beautifully fell to her side on her bed, next to me—so drunk off of her content as she was—I let go of the last true smile that I knew that I would ever make and said: “Megumi, there’s something that we need to talk about.”

 

***

 

December 24, 2013:

 

I had given birth to a boy.

A Japanese boy, weighing an even seven pounds.

In books, I had often read scenes or just the mere mention of a birth occurring in the home. It had always seemed like a horrible way to give birth. To have fallen into such a silly trope felt almost appropriate for such an avid reader, like me. There she was, Beth, with her collection of over five hundred novels, giving birth in a fucking castle kitchen.

It was mortifying.

The soft beeping of the machines remained in the background of my mind as I sat in the hospital bed, exhausted from the ordeal, but now properly cleaned up and being monitored by my doctors for any stress-related damage. 

It was somehow more embarrassing that I honestly felt pretty great now. In fact, I felt amazing. I had not only cheated on my husband—my abusive, rotten husband—but I had done so with the woman I had left for him. 

And then, she had impregnated me.

Ten years of keeping Megumi’s secret, now likely tossed down the drain. There was going to be no denying that the baby was not Mark’s son—just as there was no denying Megumi the right to co-raise her child.

Ten years I had loved about you, Megumi, and through it all, the ultimate reward was this little gift for my sacrifices, feeding gently in my arms. 

 

TO BE CONTINUED…