23. A Girl of Two Worlds
987 4 38
X
Reading Options
Font Size
A- 15px A+
Width
Reset
X
Table of Contents
Loading... please wait.

Ester let her head hang as she walked to the school library the next morning. When she saw her friends huddled outside, she forced some energy into her step and smiled. They wouldn’t understand what she was going through, and Ester didn’t really want them to pry.

“Hey Ester, get enough to eat?” one of the girls asked.

“Huh?”

Lilly chuckled and explained, “You’re looking a little pudgy, girl.”

“I am?”

Ester glanced down at her body. Lilly jabbed her in the arm with a finger, causing Ester to flinch.

“Much softer than you used to be,” Lilly continued, “You know that girls can go to the gym too, right?”

“It’s just the magic,” Ester protested, folding her arms and slouching a little.

“Relax, we’re just having some fun,” another girl insisted.

“Yeah, I’d kill to have an ass like that.”

Ester glanced involuntarily down at her butt. After a moment, she saw Thomas and the other guys doing exactly the same. Her face started burning, and she turned so no one else could see it. The other Girls burst into laughter.

She tried to smile. Lilly was right; she was just being a little uptight about this. There wasn’t any reason to be annoyed by their antics.

One of the Boys said suddenly, “Now there’s someone we haven’t seen in a while.”

Ester turned to look and her heart sank. It still took a moment for her to recognize the dark boy with his shorter wiry hair, but it was him. Anton was standing just a short ways away, his hands in his pockets. Even from this far, Ester could see how sad his expression was. But there was something else. He wasn’t looking at Ester as much as he was looking at her body, the same way the other Boys in the group were.

“I need to go,” she told Lilly.

“Huh? What’s the problem? Weren’t you two practically dating already?”

“No! Drop it, Lilly.”

She took off away from Anton.

“El!” she heard him cry out after her, but she just picked up her pace.

Ester made it to her next class and plopped down in her chair, not looking at anybody. Why had she done that? Why had she run?

All she was doing was pretending that Anton didn’t exist. It was exactly the treatment that Sue was giving Ester. How was she any better for treating Anton that way?

But then she remembered the look in Anton’s eyes when he saw her body, and shivered.

Ester wasn’t feeling any better by the time lunch came around. How could she go from being so happy one day to being so miserable the next? Did normal people have to put up with this?

By the time she finally sat down at the lunch table with April and her friends, Ester had managed to mask her feelings a little better.

“Are you alright?”

Or not.

“I’m fine,” she said, smiling softly.

Nobody looked convinced.

Somebody else added, “It’s… just that we’ve been talking, and Ester… you’ve been kind of putting on a lot of weight over the past few days. Are you okay? Is something wrong?”

“Oh? Oh! No, nothing wrong,” she insisted, relaxing, “It’s just the effects of magic. I have no idea what it’s going to do to my body before it’s finished. This is just one of those things that’s happening, you know?”

Some of the people at the table relaxed. April turned to them and said, “Told you guys, everything is fine. She’d have told me if something was wrong.” Ester nodded, trying to ignore the ache in her heart at April’s naivety.

“Still,” Deula said, “If there’s anything going on that you want us to know about, we’re here for you, Ester. You do know that, right?”

“I know,” Ester insisted, still smiling, “Thank you. But really, guys, you don’t need to worry about me.”

Everyone returned to their meals after that. Ester felt relieved, both to not be at the center of conversation anymore and that they had wanted to make sure she was okay. That was still going to take some getting used to.

When she and April went to dispose of their trash, April said, “I feel like I barely see you anymore.”

“I’m sorry,” Ester replied, forcing herself to chuckle, “I’m trying to reconnect with my old friends, that’s all. Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere.”

“No, I know that.” April dumped her trash and leaned up against the wall. “I just have so much stuff I want to do with you, but we’re so busy with school and homework. We really need a day to just do sisterly things. If you still want to.”

She flashed Ester her toothy grin.

“I do,” Ester insisted, looking away, “Thanks for thinking about me, by the way. My old friends were teasing me about my weight earlier. I’m glad that none of your friends did.”

“They teased you?” April asked, frowning, “That’s not right.”

“No, it’s fine. That’s just the way they are. I just mean that it can be exhausting to put up with all the time. It’s nice to have people who care, though.”

“Ester, if they were your friends, they’d care about you,” April told her, “They certainly wouldn’t be making fun of you.”

“I told you, it’s fine,” Ester replied, folding her arms, “You don’t know them. That’s just how we act around each other. Anyway, you said we needed to pick out a day to do our girly sister shit?”

The bell rang just then, and everyone started standing up at their tables. April furled her brow and gave Ester a stare that said “I want to keep fighting about this,” but instead told her, “We’ll figure it out later, okay?” Ester nodded and retreated into the crowd, blending in and leaving April behind.

The rest of the day seemed to take forever, but Ester wasn’t really looking forward to getting on the bus and confronting April again. If she wasn’t able to respect Ester’s old friends, Ester didn’t really want to talk to her.

Ester sighed when the last bell of the day rang. She wasn’t any closer to figuring out how to make April understand. How were they supposed to be sisters if they didn’t get along?

“We’re not supposed to be sisters,” Ester reminded herself, finding her locker, “It’s just the magic. I shouldn’t even be spending time with her at all. It’s probably making the effects worse.”

But she groaned. What was Ester supposed to do? She couldn’t just ignore April. She was to smart not to realize that Ester was avoiding her.

And spending time together sounded like so much fun.

“God damn it,” she thought, closing her locker and storming off toward the bus lot.

April was already on the bus when Ester arrived. Ester sat down beside her, and April gave her a weak smile but said nothing more. That didn’t stop Ester from fidgeting the whole ride home.

When they were off the bus and walking to her house, April finally asked, “So what’s really wrong, Ester?”

“Nothing is wrong.”

“Something is bother you.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

April sighed.

“Then you don’t have to,” she said, “But I want to you know that you can trust me. I’m not going to judge you, and I won’t tell anyone else. Not even my parents.”

Ester grunted.

April continued, “I’m serious. I hate the thought of you feeling like you can’t trust anyone. Especially me. I want to be here for you. You’re like a sibling to me.”

Ester grimaced, but nodded. They stopped on the front porch of April’s house. While she got out her house key, Ester chewed on her tongue and turned over words in her head.

“I feel like I have no idea who I am anymore,” she said while April unlocked the door, “I’ve changed so much so quickly. And not just my body. Even when it was just starting, the magic made it impossible for me to fit in with my old friends. My entire life was taken from me almost overnight.”

Once they were inside, April pulled Ester over to the kitchen table and sat her down.

Ester continued, “I miss being able to just fit in, you know? I don’t even recognize myself anymore. And because it’s a curse, I actually like myself now. I don’t want to go back to the person I was. But I hate that I had to lose myself in the process.”

She sighed and buried her head in her hands, finishing with, “I know that you want to help, April, but I don’t see how anyone can really understand what I’m going through. Even the people I’ve met online haven’t gone through this exact thing.”

April sat down next and took Ester’s hand in her own.

“Please don’t take this the wrong way,” she said, “But did you ever really fit in with your old friends?”

“Of course I did!” Ester cried, pulling away, “You don’t know who I was before I met you.”

“But I know you were still a pretty cool guy,” April replied, “Maybe the magic has changed who you are, Ester, but I don’t think it’s changed you as much as you think it did.”

“Trust me,” Ester said, “You said that you wanted me to trust you. Trust me.”

“Please just hear me out.”

Ester looked away, but nodded.

“Thank you,” April said, “I know that I’m only a freshman, but I’ve heard plenty about the Boys and Girls. I’ve seen the way the Girls treat other girls. It’s really cutthroat, Ester. It’s so over-the-top, I can’t imagine how anyone can be truly happy surrounded by that all the time. I certainly don’t understand how you could have ever really fit in with them.”

“Like I said, you didn’t know me.”

“But I know you now, Ester,” she insisted, placing a hand on Ester’s arm, “And I know how happy you are. Look, I don’t know any trans people. But when you came to live with us, I looked some stuff up. I saw a lot of people talking about how they didn’t really know their personality until they started transitioning. They finally started to feel like ‘more of themselves,’ if that makes any sense.”

“What are you saying, April?”

“I’m saying I think that you never really fit in, you just thought that you did.”

“That’s not… you don’t… that’s not fair, April!”

Ester stood up and walked away, folding her arms. She stopped in the doorway to the living room. After a moment, April stood up and placed a hand on Ester’s shoulder.

“Was there really never a moment where you felt like you didn’t really belong with them?”

Ester didn’t respond.

“At all?”

Ester nodded, admitting, “All the time.”

There were tears in her eyes as she continued, “It was so constant, April. Being friends with them was absolutely exhausting. I… I hated it. I hated it so much. But I needed to belong. I needed a place to belong.”

April cut her off with a hug around the neck.

“You have me, now,” she said, “And all my friends. Your my sister, Ester. You never have to feel alone again.”

“Thank you,” Ester croaked, tears streaming down her face, “I never want to leave you.”

A weight was melting off of her shoulders as she cried. April pulled her back into the kitchen, clutching her close to her chest and rocking her slightly. Ester managed to reign in her emotions and her crying became the occasional sniffle.

“Do you feel better?” April asked.

Ester nodded, but said, “I’m still afraid of losing myself to this curse.”

“I won’t let that happen,” April cooed, running her fingers through Ester’s soft hair, “I’m going to protect you, sis.”

38