“So, homeschooled, right?” Gemma asked beside me.

  “I— How did you know?”

  “You’re staring at the locker in front of you like it killed you in a previous life.”

  Joy and Gemma had helped me ice my legs; the ice chest even had “cryo-sleeves” that held cold packs to my legs from mid-calf to mid-thigh and Pinky had come over to commiserate and help so the assistant coach could focus on someone else. After fifteen minutes of cold treatment—to reduce inflammation and break up lactic acid in my overstressed muscles—Joy had let me go with instructions to hydrate but wait half an hour before eating anything.

  Apparently my puking had likely been caused by most of my blood diverting from my “center” to the non-existent muscles in my limbs during my overexertion and needed time to settle back.

  Coach had addressed the class while I and a few other girls were icing, talking about returning times and congratulating girls who had at least kept up their recorded fitness levels over the summer vacation. Those who had lost significant levels (like Gemma) were warned it would be factored into their individual programs. Joy had reassured me that I wouldn’t be graded on my far-below-average start, but by how much progress I made during the year.

  And that was what gym was going to be; heavy on the daily calisthenics and running, with other gymnasium and track-and-field sports and the obstacle course for variety. And with monitored diets and sleep and sports participation or out-of-school exercises factored in. They weren’t going to kill me—just make me wish for death. Nauseous and aching, I’d almost cried.

  After the icing I’d been steady on my feet again but slow and Gemma and Pinky had walked me back, where we’d found that Gemma had been assigned a locker just a couple spaces down from mine. Pinky’d headed for her end of the locker room, leaving Gemma to make sure I stayed vertical.

  And leaving me unable to strip down.

  Changing for gym I’d actually led the herd, anxious to get in quick and get it done. At the door to the locker room an assistant coach had just checked my name off a list, handed me a combination lock with the combination, serial number, and assigned locker number on a tag and told me to put my school clothes and bag in after I’d changed and keep the tag (the skort had a little pocket for it). I’d been out on the gym floor before most of the girls arrived. But now with eighty girls showering and dressing, the locker room was packed and I didn’t know where to look and couldn’t raise my shirt.

  “Hey,” Gemma said. “We’re all girls here, every shape and size. But if you’re self-conscious, you can work it like this.” After pulling off her shoes and socks she whipped her shirt off, turning her back to me to follow it with her sports bra and wrapping the gym towel around herself beneath her armpits, then turned back. Reaching beneath the towel, she pulled her skort and panties off without showing any more skin. “See? Now you.”

  I couldn’t do it. I had to do it.

  But inside me was a former teenage boy made deeply, deeply self-conscious of his body and how unappealing he’d looked to the opposite sex—to girls. And there was also an adult male who would have found the oldest and most developed young women around him very attractive—and would have been so mortified to see what he obviously shouldn’t be seeing that he’d have exited the locker room at speed. It didn’t matter that I was a girl now and wasn’t The Bulk anymore; it all still left me paralyzed.

  When I still hesitated, Gemma sighed, looking around. “Okay,” she said quietly. “We’re running behind so it’s just you and me on this row bench now. I’ll stand here—”, she turned her back, standing between me and the open aisle to the showers as a shield, “—while you do it.”

  Right, so, no pressure.

  Get a grip. By now it was practically my motto. I’d survived major heart surgery and lost a hundred pounds in one year because it had to be done, and I could do this. Nodding without her to see, I followed suit. Shoes, socks, t-shirt, and sports bra off, towel on, skort and panties pulled down and quicky put away. “Okay.” I pulled out the netted bag May had put my shower gel, cap, and shoes in, slipping on the shower shoes as Gemma turned around.

  “Great.” She gave me a saucy wink. “Let’s go.”

  The girls’ showers weren’t like showers I remembered from my high school days, just one big room with towel hooks and shower heads around the walls and in the middle. Instead, there were two long rows of open stalls, thirty showers separated by tiled shoulder-high (to me) dividing walls, entered in the middle. Following behind Gemma and finding an open stall, I put on my shower cap and hung my towel and showered off fast. Rewrapped and back at my locker, I followed Gemma’s lead reversing everything; panties and undershorts and tartan skirt went on under the towel, a turn away to put my bra on, and after that everything was easy as long as I kept my eyes on my locker.

  “Thanks, Gemma.” I knew I was still blushing.

  “Don’t mention it. Public nudity is an acquired skill. Touch up your makeup if you need to and let’s go eat, you need the fuel.”

  I bit back a groan. I’d have to do this again tomorrow, and every school day after that. It’s like physical therapy, I told myself. Do it every day, you can get used to anything.

  **********************************

  I got stopped three times on the way to lunch by girls asking how I’d earned the Gold Whistle (yes it needed to be capitalized) on the first day of school. Telling them “I threw up completing the mile run dead last,” tended to end their curiosity about me. Pinky, who’d waited to remind me we were sitting at Delia’s table, and Gemma, who’d decided to tag along, were in stitches by the time we reached the cafeteria. The traitors.

  Built to house the whole student body at once rather than in shifts, in and out in one hour, the cafeteria was huge and also packed. Four serving lines, two each with server aisles between them, loaded with surprisingly decent and healthy entrees (mostly sandwiches) and big fruit and salad sections (but no desserts), moved students along quickly. To drink there was only water, milk, and fruity drinks, no sodas, and I hadn’t seen a single soda-machine on the campus. The assistant coaches helped in the serving line, encouraging healthy choices that would fit our diet plans.

  I grabbed a smoked turkey sandwich with lettuce and tomato, an apple, a yogurt, and water, and Gemma almost made me drop my tray by inserting “Call me Gem,” in her running observations about the school—her response to my mini-rant about our skirted gym uniforms. (Really, who wore those?)

  “That’s your nickname?”

  “Yes, and don’t make a big deal out of it,” she said brightly. “Not everyone does. You’re a homeroom sister, I half-carried you back from the track, call me Gem.”

  “Call me Hemingway?”

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  She flashed a smile. “Sure.”

  “And sit with us?” I looked at Pinky, suddenly not sure if someone I invited would be welcome at Delia’s table.

  “Plenty of room,” was all Pinky said, choosing a cob salad for herself. “Sure, sit with us.”

  Delia’s table was easy to spot, in the middle of the cafeteria where boys and girls were mixing about evenly, the taller boys making me feel even smaller. Delia sat at a half-filled table that was the center of focus of a bunch of the diners around it.

  The round eight-seater table and chairs were all one piece, the seats being little round things attached to the table and resting on a single leg, the whole thing designed to be folded up and rolled away if someone wanted to use the room or just to clean the floor. Smart. With her little sister Tracy and Brad and a boy I didn’t know flanking them, Delia had staked out half the table, presumably keeping the other half clear by sheer force of social privilege. Seeing us coming she didn’t wave, she “gestured.”

  Join us, our humble subjects.

  As wobbly as I still was, the thought made me smile. Pinky obviously had the same thought; she mock-curtseyed before taking her seat. “Such an honor,” she quipped, putting her tray in front of her and tucking her bag down by her feet. Just like before, I could tell Delia didn’t like Pinky’s poking but she didn’t fire a comeback.

  Which was twice now I’d seen Pinky poke the resident queen bee with no reprisal. What was up with that?

  “Hi Pinky, April.” Delia said once we were settled. She eyed my golden prize. “How did you win the whistle?”

  I groaned. “I came in last place running the mile in gym and threw up doing it. Apparently, that shows Spartan grit.”

  “Don’t listen to Hemingway,” Gemma said. “I’m Gemma, hi. I was with her most of the run and she was dying on her feet all the way, should’ve dropped out after the second lap. Pretty sure she finished the last two on sheer bloody-minded stubbornness, we had to ice her legs after before she could stand.” She shrugged. “She plays the game on Hard Mode, just the kind of stupid stubbornness that Hadley likes. Ask her what club she plans on joining.”

  “What club?” Brad asked, taking a bite of his subway sandwich.

  “Self-Defense Club?” I offered. Gemma had innocently asked on our way here and snorted at my answer, I couldn’t think of why. Now Brad choked and Delia pounded him on the back, rolling her eyes.

  “What?” I asked. I didn’t get it. The school required every student to join at least one club, and starting next Monday Club Hour was the final hour of the school day with every club meeting two, three, or five days of the week. From the school catalogue, I’d gathered that while some of the clubs were just ways of scoring additional college credits through specialization, clubs like Sports Club and Chess Club were pushed as part of that whole “well-rounded” human being thing.

  I’d almost pre-registered for the Chess Club but decided it would be cheating and, well, cheating. I had decades of tournament experience even if I wasn’t a National Master so it wouldn’t be fair, but that was beside the point; sure, I couldn’t imagine that Self-Defense Club would be popular, but . . . “What’s strange about wanting to learn how to protect myself? You should see my mom, I’m not getting much bigger than this.”

  Pinky snickered. “You thought gym was intense? We call Self-Defense Club Fight Club. It’s like self-defense boot camp—they’re as heavy into fitness as gym is, and they start by teaching you how to punch and take a punch, move on to teaching you every dirty trick in the book, and when you’re old enough train you in tactical shooting. Girl’s Fight Club trains you to be a Dangerous Bitch. Rude, but that’s what they call themselves, it’s on their t-shirts. Girls taking Fight Club are usually looking at something like a US Marshal or Secret Service career after college graduation—if they’re not planning on becoming a mixed-martial arts mutant or something. Delia’s big sister was Fight Club, and you did not mess with her.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah, oh. I suggest Choir? All singing, no getting hurt.”

  Delia had been listening to Pinky’s short rant and now she surprised me. “I don’t know,” she said. “Jane always tried to get me into it, and she said they don’t try to crush you, they tailor your training to your physical abilities so any girl who wants to be a real Dangerous Bitch can get there. If you’re already playing on Hard Mode and think it’s worthwhile, I say go for it. Maybe you’ll learn enough to kick Lizard’s ass like he deserves.”

  “Lizard?” I suddenly had a very, very bad feeling about the direction of the conversation too many people around us seemed to be paying attention to.

  She shrugged. “Yeah, the clit-licker’s been texting that one of our new tenth-year students is a little voyeur. That at the party you snuck up on him and an ‘unnamed other’ while he was receiving gratitude for demonstrating his skill and stayed to watch the whole show.”

  Translation: you peeped on two kids while one was sucking the other one off. It felt like I’d been dumped into ice water and what was this? Delia had seemed, well, maybe sharp-edged but nice, but to pull a complete social ambush like this was just wrong. Was this her indirect payback to Pinky? Beside me my big sister had gone white.

  And suddenly I was angry. Really angry. I was not going to be labeled the little voyeur; that was not how it had happened and I wasn’t going to put up with this kind of social shit again. I took a sip of water to make sure I had my voice under control and inhaled.

  “Facts are important, don’t you think? Fact, I didn’t sneak up on anybody. I walked in on them before I knew what was going on. Nobody warned me about your gardens, they really should have. And, fact, it was over before I could get over my shock to leave, so if it was the whole show then Lizard’s endurance doesn’t match his skill that I’ve heard so much about now.”

  My comeback didn’t faze the queen bee at all—in fact she quirked a satisfied smile, nodding. “I figured it had to be something like that. Lizard Boy’s so full of himself he thinks any attention is positive.” She shrugged and turned to Tracy. “So are you sticking with Art Club and Debate Club this year?”

  And that was it; the conversation moved on as I stared. What just happened? Really, what just happened?

  Beside me Pinky still looked like she was about to faint, and I grabbed her hand under the table. “Hey, it’s alright,” I said quietly, and I suddenly realized it was. It hadn’t been a stab in the back, or even in the face. Delia’d led by calling Lizard a clit-licker, which, okay kind of crude but signaled her opinion of his party trick up front. And he’d been texting it, so with a day for his story to circulate, how many Hadley students had heard it already? It was like the line from that Mark Twain address we’d read in homeroom; “A feeble, stupid, preposterous lie will not live two years--except it be a slander upon somebody. It is indestructible then of course.”

  Lizard had tried to slander me right out the gate as a “little voyeur,” and I didn’t have to ask why; kids could be cruel for no reason at all, I remembered that all too well. But by throwing it down right here, where everyone around us could listen in, Delia’d . . . positioned herself to stomp on it, no matter how I’d reacted. If I’d melted down, well I’d have looked pitiful and she’d have been my social rescuer, but the outcome would have been the same; squashed lizard.

  I hid my grin. And my comeback hadn’t been bad; after all, what was Lizard going to do? Try to get Pinky or one the others to testify to his actual stamina? Not going to happen.

  No, the smartest thing he could do now would be to shrug it off; if I had just come in on the tail end of his party game (which I had), then anything I had to say about his lasting power was pure speculation. By not contesting my more truthful story, he “saved” his own reputation. Weird. I wondered what Papa had to say about all this (for sure he’d gotten the same text Delia had, even if re-texted umpteen times first) and turned to ask him.

  And realized I knew where he was. He wasn’t right behind me, but he was in that direction—I guessed in the boy’s hall outside the cafeteria. And I hadn’t seen him at all, just known what direction to look.

  And now I felt like I was going to faint. That— That can’t be right.

  With everyone’s attention off me I dropped Pinky’s hand, closed my eyes and, turning, opened them to find myself looking at the left-hand doors to Boy Country. Still outside the hall he’d moved right to left behind me, headed towards the front of the school. “I just realized I’ve got to check with the office,” I said to everyone, wrapping my unfinished sandwich and putting everything in my bag. “Tomorrow, Delia?”

  “Always welcome,” she said as if it was no big deal to eat in her presence and went back to talking to Tracy and Brad. I hoisted my bag and wound my way through the tables at a fast walk—I had an excuse.

  Leaving through the closest girls’ hall doors, I spun right and headed towards the entry hall, my sense of Papa’s relative direction moving with me. Back in the garden I’d known it was Papa returning before I’d seen him. In gym class I’d known where he was on the other track without seeing him in the pack then either. I’d just known.

  He was a changeling. Either that or I was becoming “sensitive” to other people like Mrs. Thompson was. One possibility was a lot scarier than the other.