Snow has been missing for thirteen hours, but it’s not like anyone’s counting. She never wanted to become that girl, the one who ran away and stole clothing from thrift stores, but here she is. She’s considered knocking on her brother’s door and begging him to take her in, but she doesn’t want to be that girl either. She knows there are people looking for her; there are text messages on her iPod from her mother proving it. But they’re looking for Monty, and so Snow can’t help them. Monty’s dead.
It’s chilly, but warm enough that Snow can get away with wearing a thick sweatshirt. Before she ran away, she left a note for Lynx on is bunk, so he wouldn’t worry. But nobody knows where she’s gone, and she likes it this way.
Snow wears feminine clothing: she stole these from a thrift store after running out of babysitting money. This, she spent on food and a second-hand pair of sneakers. But her hair is short from her mother cutting it off in her sleep, and this makes Snow sick to her stomach. She’s only twelve years old. Although everyone thinks this is too young to know her identity, she knows it isn’t. She’s been out all day, using her bicycle as transportation; everywhere she wants to go is too far to walk. In just over a year, she can apply for a learner’s permit, and then she can practice driving places by herself.
Her iPod is making a ringing noise. Her father, wondering again where she’s gone. Already, she’s seen helicopters flying overhead, large search lights, but this was mostly the night before when it was dark. She ran away last night at eleven o’clock, and spent the night in the lobby of the closest restaurant. She’d have gone to the Glory Hall, but it’s too far without a vehicle, and she doesn’t want to get strangers involved. “I already told you guys,” she mutters to herself, hating the sound of her voice, “I’m not coming home.” If her parents won’t accept her, she isn’t going home. She keeps cycling, getting hungry. In her small backpack, she has a few snacks, but they’re nearly gone. Snow almost has no choice but to find her brother. He’ll help, if he has to. There’s one small problem, though. Snow has no idea how to get to his house.
Yesterday, Snow went for a walk with Bryony and Slumber the Lancashire Heeler. It was a nice walk, and they even had time to go the park on the way home. Even Bryony can understand Snow’s identity, and she’s only nine, so there really isn’t an excuse for her parents not to. Snow sighs, stopping grudgingly to wave down a woman walking by. “Excuse me?” She needs help, and can barely read a map. It’s embarrassing, but something about diagrams is just too hard for her to understand. “Do you know how to get to Village Street? I think I’m lost.”
The woman is maybe around her parent’s age, and has black hair. She looks Snow up and down, noticing the scuff marks on her shoes and the rips in her jeans. “If you’re riding your bike, it’s going to take you another forty minutes.” She imagines she looks strange to the woman; the older generations are always the most judgy about trans people. “Do you want a ride? I live just down the street.” Snow can’t ask for this, and anyway, it could be a trick. The woman maybe knows her parents, and will just take her home. Snow isn’t assertive enough to stand up to people like that.
Forty minutes is a long time, and Snow isn’t great with directions. But she can’t risk the woman trying to return her to her parents. She sighs, one foot resting on the ground beside her bicycle. “It’s okay, I don’t mind biking.” She could use the exercise, anyway. “Can you just draw me a diagram on how to get there?” The woman looks a little suspicious, Snow thinks, but she agrees to help anyway.
“Alright,” says the woman, and pulls up a map on her phone. “You’re going to continue down this road until you get to Glacier Highway.” She points, with a long, manicured nail. “Then it’s pretty much just following the highway until you get there. But it’s all the way across the city.” She raises an eyebrow, giving Snow a disbelieving glance. “Are you sure you don’t want a ride? I really don’t mind.”
The girl shakes her head. “No, I got it. Thanks.” And before the woman can protest, she rides away.
When Birch first got introduced to drag, he’d let Snow do his makeup. Sometimes she’d do her own, too, and it felt a lot better dressing up with somebody else. It was more comfortable, because she could use the excuse that it was just dress up, even if it wasn’t. But there was something about dressing up, about seeing yourself in the mirror looking girly, that made Snow feel good. She misses dressing up with her brother. Just once, she wants to do it again.
Snow wonders if the police are looking for her, and suspects they probably are. Her parents care, but it’s not in the right ways, and so it doesn’t really count. When she arrives at Village Street, nearly an hour has passed, and she’s very hungry. Her brother’s building is short and has little units, but it’s expensive to live there. Everywhere is expensive, here. But Birch says he gets extra money from the government just before Christmas every year. When Snow arrives, she realizes she doesn’t know the code to get inside. “Uh…” She fumbles through her pockets, but her iPod is nowhere to be found. It must have fallen out during her trip. “Crap.” Once, when she was about ten years old, her father washed out her mouth with soap for saying the word crap. There are much worse things she could be saying.
Birch and Grace live on the third floor of the apartment. Snow can see their unit from here; it has a large leaning balcony on the side of it. Grace is on the balcony, taking photographs of nature or something Snow can’t see. Briefly she considers calling to the woman, but that’d startle her, and anyway she’s not even sure Grace remembers her. The apartment number is… 313? 311? Crap, Snow doesn’t remember. This leaves her no choice. “Hey! Grace!” They’ve met twice before, and both times were quite brief, so Snow won’t be surprised if Grace doesn’t remember.
She looks around, nearly dropping her camera, which Snow feels bad about. Eventually, her eyes settle on the girl, who looks a mess from her tiring ride. Her legs feels like jelly, and her hair is all sweaty. Hopefully, she’ll be allowed to take a shower. “Monty? What are you doing here?” She doesn’t know the truth. This hurts Snow, but it shouldn’t. Birch won’t out her, because he knows how it feels. “I’ll be down in a minute!” Snow drops her bicycle onto the lawn, and looks again for her iPod. It really is missing, and that was the only form of communication she had.
After a few moments, Grace appears in the door of the complex, her feet bare, her face confused. “How did you get here?” She lets the girl in, but not without giving her a subtle glance. Snow has been getting many of those today. “Are you okay?” Grace is considerate, friendly, it’s really a shame what happened to her. She bounds down the carpeted hallway, seeming cheerful, but her eyes are dark and tired.
“I rode my bike.” Snow feels awkward, and it might just be the anxiety. She can tell Grace the truth, she knows that, but she’s still uncomfortable. “Um…” They take the stairs to the third floor. Grace chattering, Snow working up the nerve to speak. “I kind of go by Snow now….” She leaves it here, like a tester, almost, to see how the other girl will react.
“Oh!” Grace smiles, opening the door to her floor. “I’m sorry! I’ll remember that.” They’ve arrived; Grace opens the door with a flourish and leaps inside. Almost instantly after this, she falls to the floor.
Birch sits at the kitchen table, not doing much of anything. Snow never understood how he doesn’t get bored. “You ran away,” he says, bluntly and without acknowledging her arrival. “Lynx texted me. Are the police going to come knocking on my door looking for you?” He seems angry. But maybe that’s just him. Birch often doesn’t speak kindly, even when he’s speaking kind words. Snow is used to his grumpiness. This is how he’s been as long as she can remember.
“Um-” Snow removes her shoes. She’d like to hide out here, or anywhere warm really, until things boil over. “Maybe?” She has a feeling they might. “Mom and Dad sent out a search party.”
“I know.” He gesticulates. “Come in, I guess. You’re already here. There's food in the fridge if you're hungry." He’s not a very hospitable man, but Snow can deal with this. His house is a million times than her parents’. “By the way,” he says, and throws a hand toward a small pile of clothing, “I got you some clothes. Dunno if you’ll like them, but they were on sale.” This was nice of him. Once in a while, these thoughtful spots poke out from his uncaring façade.
Grace has disappeared into her little bedroom. “Thank you,” says Snow. The clothes are nice: glittery and bejewelled and very feminine. When she tries them on, she feels gender euphoria for the very first time. “I love them.” Birch is not a person who appreciates hugs or physical affection, but when his little sisters hug him, he tends to put up with it. “You’re the best!"
They’re both expecting it when the door buzzes. Obviously, Snow’s parents gave the police the address of her disowned son’s house, and she wants to think it’s out of love, but really they just want to be the victors in the fight. When Snow looks outside, she sees the men in uniform on the front step, and feels nervous. They’ll make her come home. Or worse, she’ll get in trouble for running away in the first place. “Oh no.” She sounds small and scared, like a baby. She feels like a terrible troublemaker. "Don't let them in."
Birch sighs, and opens the door. Snow was hoping he wouldn’t. But from the very start of her adventure, she knew deep down that eventually she’d get found. The officers storm upstairs, their guns in their holsters swinging, both of them rather tall with large bellies. Why do policemen always have large bellies? Birch looks them up and down when they arrive. “What do you want?”
That’s not a nice way to greet authority figures. You should be respectful and polite, Snow wants to say, but then they’ll know she’s here, so she keeps her mouth shut. The dark-skinned police officer steps inside the apartment, his boots dirty and worn, his hands behind his back. “You’re Birch Whitby, right? “ He doesn’t respond, just stands. “We’re looking for a boy named Monty Whitby. He ran away from home last night and his parents are very worried. They said you're his brother and might know his whereabouts?”
Snow feels like her heart will beat right out of her chest, it’s so loud. She wants to scream I’m not a boy! Nobody listens. “Hmm.” Birch pretends to think, and then shrugs. “Nope. Sorry.”
Here’s the thing about Birch. He’ll throw other people under the bus without feeling bad about it, but he’s fiercely loyal to people he loves.
The shorter officer frowns, looking around the unit. He’s not very good-looking. “When we arrived, we saw a bicycle in the front that looked like the one belonging to Monty. He’s not in trouble; his parents just want him home. If he’s here, we’d just like him to cooperate.”
“Look, people,” Birch leans against the wall, his hands over his chest. “I don’t know what you want me to tell you. There’s no one named Monty here. I don’t even have a brother named Monty. So if you don’t mind leaving, so I can get back to my day-”
They don’t leave. But they look a bit less suspicious. “May we come in?” One of the men raises an eyebrow, stepping further inside without waiting for an invitation. “If Monty isn’t here, you won’t mind us coming in to look around, will you?” They enter, giving Snow little time to find a hiding spot. Finally, she settles on a dark spot inside the linen closet. How fitting. Still, though it’s dark and hard to be noticed here, she worries they’ll look, and that she’ll have to return home. She doesn’t know where she’ll go from here, or what will happen. But eventually, she’ll go home of her own accord. Things just have to settle down a little bit first.
Voices are muffled from inside the closet. Snow makes out the officers speaking to her brother and Grace, and then she hears footsteps down the hall. Once she’s sure the men are gone, she shows herself. “I’m sorry.”
Birch shrugs. “If you’re going to stay here, you’re going to have to help with housework.” This is all he says before walking into his small bedroom and shutting the door.
. . . . . . . . . .
It’s Gray’s birthday. Not actually, of course, it’s rare they get to celebrate on their actual birthday, but it’s close enough. Gray is seventeen, and recovery is exhausting. Every day, Gray is supposed to write down one new food they’d like to try, and then actually try a new food once a week. It isn’t as easy as it sounds. This week, they’re supposed to try oatmeal, and this has been a fear food ever since they can remember. Even just looking at it ties their stomach into knots. But Gray doesn’t want to die, and they don’t want to be sick anymore. They just want to be a normal teenager, but that’s going to take a while.
It’s almost time for Rome’s Second Degree initiation. A mere week away, he’s been busy studying and actually refusing to attend parties with his friends. It must mean a lot to him. After this, he’ll not only be fully initiated, but he’ll be also able to teach others the arts of Wicca. Gray just wants to turn eighteen, so they can join the coven officially.
Gray’s close friend, Josephine, stands up for them when the school’s Mean Girls decide to be particularly nasty. This is Gray’s final year of high school before graduating, as they began school young. This also means they’re the oldest in their friend group, and still, all of their friends act like older siblings. This also means Gray struggles in school – they’re a year ahead than they probably should be, but that’s nothing they can worry about now. Anyway, after this year, Gray’s taking a year off studies to work on music, and….well, they’ll go from there.
“Hey.” Jo waves her hand in front of Gray’s face. “You’re still coming over after school? I want you to meet my sister.” This is a strange request, but Gray’s friends insist they need to date, they never have done it before. Apparently, this is a big deal, to be a both a virgin and never have gone on a date in high school, but everyone is obsessed with relationships these days. There are so many other things to worry about in life. Still, there are times Gray wonders if there’s something wrong with them: they’ve never been in love, and never even had a crush, not a flicker of one. Rome says this is normal, and that the world is so infatuated with romance and it’s silly, but he dates around a lot, so it’s hard to take him seriously sometimes. Even Josephine has a boyfriend, and she’s only sixteen.
“Uh.” Gray doesn’t really want to go, but this would be rude to say. Quickly, they work to come up with the best generic excuse. “I don’t think I can, I promised my dad I’d help him with something tonight.” This isn’t completely a lie. Gray’s supposed to be home for their birthday dinner. Josephine doesn’t know Gray’s birthday. Gray is fine with this.
“Oh.” Jo looks baffled, but continues eating her mysterious school lunch. Lunchtime is always difficult for Gray. “Okay. Another time.” On Gray’s section of the table, there’s nothing but crackers, carrot sticks, and a banana they try to work up the courage to eat. They can pick it up, look at it, put it back down. That’s as far as they’ve gotten. So many people don’t understand the anxiety Gray gets from certain foods. And that’s understandable – Gray doesn’t even get it. It’s the texture, mostly, that puts them off foods, and Gray knows it’s irrational, but it’s still so hard to beat. At the hospital, they started cognitive behavioral therapy. It was very hard, and there are still several sessions left.
“Happy birthday,” said Lyron that morning when Gray woke up. “Have a good day at school.” Gray doesn’t have enough fingers to count the times they’ve been singled out for having two fathers. It doesn’t matter: Gray’s fathers are loving and supportive, and Gray was clearly wanted. That’s an argument Rome likes to use when people say homophobic things, or when they find out he’s adopted. (“At least I was wanted,” he retorts, “you were just an accident.”) And every time, it shuts people down.
After school, Gray’s father Abbe picks them up. He drives a second-hand station wagon, copper colored, the same vehicle he’s had since Gray came to live here. “How was school?” He waves at Gray’s friends; there aren’t many of them. It’s not a question Gray gets asked every day, because most days are the same, and Abbe knows this. His car is old and rattles when he drives.
“Meh.” Gray wants to play guitar. They’ve been working on a new song, and have actually been thinking about sending a demo to record company. Maybe that’s a stupid idea, though, because Gray doesn’t feel they’re that talented, and anyway the music industry is so tough for passive people. “Same as every day.” Sometimes, Gray wishes they had a more androgynous voice. It’s easy to look that way, but opening their mouth gives them away every single time. Most of the time they wear suspenders or vests, and that keeps enough people questioning for Gray to be satisfied.
Gray really wants a pet. A kitten, probably, or a lizard. For their birthday, their parents took them to the ASPCA to look around, and Gray fell in love with a black Persian cat. Arriving home, they see it, fluffy and curious, lying modestly on the floor inside the door of the mobile home. “Oh, wow!” Gray drops their backpack, letting the cat sniff their hand. “It’s Oreo!” This was the name the cat was given at the shelter. “You guys got me Oreo?”
Following his child inside, Abbe smiles. “We’re very proud of how hard you’re trying in recovery. We thought you deserved him.” Lyron nods, kissing his husband before giving the cat a scratch. “Happy birthday,” adds the man. Gray feels loved. This is something they often feel in their household, but today is different.
"Thank you!” After a not-so-good day at school, this is just what Gray needs. They sit on the floor, and the kitty instantly comes to snuggle them.
