Vera

Shortly after I got home, Rosalind came by to pick me up in her truck. “You know what the most annoying part of this is?” She was saying nearly as soon as I sat down “I won’t even be able to be myself at the Perez household. They’ll still expect to see that nice boy Teddy from next door all the time.”

“Are they going to have a place for you? I mean, you need somewhere you can sleep that is secure.” I asked, this point had bothered me later. As far as I knew they had room for Javi and his little sister and no one else.

“Yeah, Javi said I could stay in the basement if I wanted. We have all our camping equipment and stuff down there anyway.” She took a deep breath to calm herself and then turned her phone off so I did likewise. “When you possess my mom, can you like see if there’s any way out of this? Like a way to make her see reason?”

“I’ll try, sure. So far though, I’ve not really gotten impressions that clearly. But then, I haven’t possessed anyone as long as I will today. It’s going to take a couple hours for you to get everything, right?”

“Probably not that long. Just some clothes and my computer really, maybe a few keepsakes.” Rosalind pulled the truck over a couple blocks away and we got out. “We’re going to sneak into Javi’s backyard. I can’t take a risk of having her see either of us before we get started. It’d be much harder for her to believe that she saw me come in and then took a nap.”

“You’ve really thought this out.” I said, impressed that she was being so careful.

“It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a few days now. Even if the stuff that happened this morning hadn’t. I’d probably still be in this situation in the days to come.” Rosalind then led me through the back alley between houses where the garbage trucks pick up. She turned her phone back on and texted Javi who opened his fence gate for us.

“My parents will be home in about an hour. So we need to get started now.” Javi said.

I took a seat on a backyard patio chair directly in the sunlight. “I’m ready when you are. I’ll tell you when I’m settled in.” I looked at the shadow floating a couple feet away and directed it to the house next door. Controlling it felt in some ways like controlling a video game character. It took no steps that I noticed, just floated a foot or so off the ground. And I could not discern temperature or wind with it. It glided through the front door of the Cole household without even the slightest resistance.

I saw Cathy there on the couch looking annoyed at her phone. I went in and took control, again feeling no push back to suddenly disconnecting someone from their agency and free will. This power was more than a little frightening.

With my Vera-self, I nodded to Rosalind and Javi to get started and it was incredibly strange when the door opened tentatively a moment later in the Cole house. I waved at Rosalind with her mom’s hand. “Do you want me to help?” I asked in her voice.

“No, that’s okay. We can’t really risk her getting any scratches or bruises while we’re moving stuff.” Rosalind said and ran up to her room, probably eager to get away from the sight of her mom being piloted by her… girlfriend? I dunno, whatever it is that we are to one another.

I remembered then that I actually had another mission. I started looking in Cathy’s head. Her feelings towards Rosalind were mixed. I could tell there was some love there but it was being overshadowed with suspicion and fear. She had spent so much time on this one little niche issue. It seemed like it started with her own discomfort in her gender. But then that was twisted into this belief that suffering was women’s lot under patriarchy and that therefore, no man could ever understand the pain of being a woman.

Over time her beliefs seemed to take new shape. What had started as a distrust of men and male privilege became directed at trans women and moved from doubt to outright loathing. At the point she was at now, she actually seemed ambivalent about men and saved all her vitriol for forums and subreddits where she could have her misplaced anger for one rather small marginalized group echoed back at her from the other ravening ‘gender critical’ ideologues.

It felt like taking a bath in grease. The thoughts were so abhorrent but the longer I stayed with them, the more they began to stick to me. I could lose myself in this woman’s mind, in her unreasoning hatred. I knew enough to see that there was no way one could logic her out of this mindset. She was in deep and probably wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she was ever able to admit that all the pain she’d caused over the years was done for no better reason than pure malice.

I didn’t want to stay in there a moment longer. I tried to focus on her memories of Rosalind as a child, but even they were tinged with the fear ‘what if this baby boy turned out like one of them?’ I could hear Rosalind and Javi moving stuff in the background and I turned Cathy around to say “Your mom is fucked up. I don’t really like being in her brain. Can you guys…” And then I lost the connection.

I looked around, now entirely in my Vera self. My shadow was no where to be seen. A dark storm cloud had occluded the sun. Usually March in the desert can be counted on to be all sunny skies, but that was not in the cards today. I pulled the patio chair I’d been sitting on over to the fence and stood on it to see over into the Cole property across the street.

Rosalind and Javi had run out into the front yard with whatever had been in their arms and Cathy was yelling at Rosalind. A sedan pulled into the Perez driveway and I saw Javi’s dad get out right as the sound of a smack echoed through the neighborhood. When I looked back across the street, I could tell that Cathy had just slapped Rosalind.

Benny Perez barreled across the street and stood between Cathy and her daughter. Both Rosalind and Javi took off for the Perez household while Benny seemed to be having words with Cathy. I climbed down off of the patio chair and headed into the house. Rosalind was setting the last of her things down and I ran up to her and hugged her.

“I’m so sorry, there was a cloud. I wasn’t able to keep the shadow out. Are you okay? What happened?” I said all in one breath.

“It’s fine. It was bound to happen eventually anyway. She just asked me what I thought I was doing and I told her that I didn’t feel safe there.” Rosalind returned my hug and turned to Javi who was watching his dad gesture wildly at Cathy across the street.

I turned Rosalind’s cheek to me and took in the red outline of a hand print on her cheek. “Why did she do that?”

“I think she just lost it. Seeing me go like that, she called me a few choice slurs and I didn’t even see the slap coming.” Rosalind didn’t look pained or even particularly upset, just shocked that it came to that so quickly.

Benny came through the door then and closed it behind it him with more force than was probably necessary. “Teddy, you can stay with us as long as you need to. I suggested that Cathy take a little time to think about what she’s done and that she was lucky that I wasn’t calling the cops on her right now. Javi, help Teddy get set up downstairs.”

The three of us walked down into the basement carrying bags of Rosalind’s things, wanting to put some space between ourselves and the drama that had just unfolded outside. Javi pulled some old lawn chairs out and spread them around for us to sit while he looked for the inflatable mattress. I couldn’t tell if Rosalind wanted to talk about it or if she wanted to distance herself as much as possible. It couldn’t have helped that Benny had been deadnaming her so much.

We were unable to talk for a few minutes anyway once Javi got the electric air pump for the mattress going. I used this time to perform a little experiment. There was a box of camping stuff that Javi had pulled out and sitting on top was a high-beam flashlight. I indicated to the others that I wanted to turn the lights out a sec and then did so. I turned the beam full on me and cast the shadow. How had I been so stupid?

I turned the overhead light back on and Javi finished with the air pump. “I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of this before. I can cast a shadow with any intense direct light, not just the sun. I guess it just didn’t occur to me before.” I felt like such an idiot. If I had been better prepared, Rosalind wouldn’t have had to go through all of that.

“Don’t worry about it, Vera. Honestly, that was probably the best outcome I could’ve hoped for. Having Benny see her hit me like that means that I don’t have to convince him of anything.” Rosalind didn’t look like she was happy about what had happened though. I wanted to tell her about what I’d found rooting around in Cathy’s mind, but this did not seem like the time. She was already looking pretty hopeless and telling her that her mom has a terminal case of brain worms was only going to make things worse.

“I should drive you home, Vera.” Rosalind said without much intonation in her voice. I followed her into the back yard and through the alley to her truck. We got in the cab and Rosalind just sat there in the driver’s seat unmoving.

“Do you wanna talk about it?” I asked her. She just moved over and rested her head on my shoulder. I noticed a shift a moment later, and didn’t have to look to see that she had changed forms. Not a great idea to do it now, but I could see why she would want to.

“After this year, I might not ever see them again, you know.” She finally said. “It’s so weird to think that I’ve known these people my whole life and then over nothing; they’re just gone. I mean, the interim, this point I’m at now of figuring out where and how my life will continue after is one thing, but it seems trivial compared to the fact, that no matter where life takes me; there’s a good chance my moms won’t be in it.”

I didn’t know what to say to her. I didn’t want to come off as one more in a line of fleeting acquaintances in her life, but I wasn’t ready yet to tell her that I would be with her in those lonely moments far into the future. I didn’t know if that was true, we’d not even been gotten to college yet and who could say what kind of people we’d be by the time we left. So, instead I held her and patted at her hair and kissed her forehead.

After a little while, she started the car up to take me home. “Are you okay to be driving like that?” I asked.

“Probably shouldn’t. I wouldn’t know what to say if I got pulled over. But I’m not speeding or anything.” I guessed that was as good an answer as any, but I had been more concerned that she was driving while in such emotional distress.

When she pulled in next to the curb in front of my house, I leaned over and kissed her lightly on the lips. She kissed me back with more intensity. We grappled there in her truck for a few moments, before I remembered how weird it would look if my dad saw me out in the front of the house making out with some strange girl in ‘Teddy’s’ truck.

I broke off the kiss and she looked hurt. “My dad… you know, he could see. It would be a problem.” She just nodded. I hugged her then and told her that I was sorry for how everything had happened again. She flashed me a wan smile.

“I’ll get by. Goodnight, Vera.” And I stepped out of the truck and watched her pull away.

When I walked into the house, dad was eating at the coffee table in front of the tv. I sat down next to him and cuddled up. I didn’t even care that he was watching some mind-numbing police procedural. If I had learned anything today; it was that I really took for granted how great my dad is.

“What’s this? My little girl have a rough day?” He asked while still keeping an eye on his tv program.

“Yeah, Ro… Teddy got kicked out or something. Now he’s staying with Javi and it’s a whole thing.”

“I believe that, his mom looked ready to explode the other day. That’s too bad, Teddy’s a good kid.” He paused then and the show went to commercial so he turned his full gaze on me. “Is there anything I should know about with you two?”

“I don’t know, Dad. It’s complicated.” I was frustrated. I wanted so much to tell him about Rosalind if only so that I didn’t have to misgender her constantly whenever we spoke about her. I decided that as soon as she was feeling a little less glum, I would ask her if I could tell my dad.