Chapter 13: Waiting, Part 1

The first twenty-four hours of waiting were the worst.

Not because anything happened, nothing did. The quiet was the problem. The silence. The way the apartment felt empty even when it was full, the way the clock kept ticking even when I wished it would stop, the way my mother kept looking at her phone like she was waiting for a message that wouldn’t come.

“I can’t just sit here,” she said on Friday morning, pacing the kitchen in her robe. “There must be something we can do. Someone we can call.”

“We called everyone,” Maggie said. She was sitting at the table, a cup of coffee in front of her, her eyes still heavy with sleep. “The lawyers. The advocates. The reporters. Everyone said the same thing. Wait.”

“Waiting is impossible.”

“Waiting is all we can do.”

My mother stopped pacing. Look at me. I was sitting on the floor in the living room, my back against the couch, Judge’s head in my lap. He’d been clingy since the hearing, following me from room to room, pressing his nose against my hand, whining softly when I didn’t pet him enough.

“What are you thinking?” my mother asked.

“I’m thinking about Dad.”

“What about him?”

“I’m thinking about all the times he lost. The cases he argued. The ones that didn’t go his way. I used to think losing meant he’d failed. But now I’m not so sure.”

My mother sat down on the floor beside me. The carpet was rough, the same cheap carpet that had been here for years, the same carpet that had seen everything this family had been through.

“Your father didn’t believe in losing,” she said. “He believed in learning. Every case he lost taught him something. Every argument that failed made him a better lawyer.”

“Do you think he’d be proud of me? Even if I lose this?”

My mother was quiet for a moment. The rooster clock ticked. The judge sighed, his whole body relaxing against my legs.

“I think your father would be proud of you no matter what,” she said. “Not because you’re winning or losing. Because you’re showing up. Because you’re asking the questions. Because you’re not letting fear make your decisions for you.”

“But what if I’m wrong? What if the school board is right? What if I’m just a teenager who doesn’t know what she’s doing?”

My mother reached over and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. Her fingers were warmer than the morning, warmer than the carpet, warmer than anything else in the room.

“Then you’ll learn,” she said. “And you’ll try something else. And you’ll keep trying until you figure out what works.”

“That’s what Dad would have said.”

“I know. I learned it from him.”

Eli came over at noon.

I texted him that morning, told him I needed to get out of the apartment, needed to be somewhere that didn’t smell like coffee and fear. He’d offered to pick me up, to drive me somewhere, to do anything that would help.

“You look different,” he said when I climbed into his car.

“Different how?”

“I don’t know. Lighter. Like something changed.”

“Maybe something did.”

He drove to a park near the school, a small park with a few trees, a bench, and a view of the mountains in the distance. There was no one else there. Just us. Just the sun and the dirt and the sound of a fountain that was probably supposed to be soothing, but mostly just sounded like a leaky faucet.

We sat on the bench.

Eli didn’t stare. That was one of the things I liked about him, the way he looked at my face instead of my body, the way he treated me like a person instead of a spectacle. He’d been doing it since the first day, since the cafeteria, since he’d stolen a cucumber slice from my sad salad.

“How are you holding up?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I’m trying not to think about it.”

“About the decision?”

“About everything. The hearing. The suspension. The fact that seven people are deciding whether I’m allowed to be myself.”

“That sounds exhausting.”

“It is.” I leaned back against the bench. The wood was warm from the sun, warm from the August heat, warm in the way that everything in Phoenix was warm in the summer. “But I’m getting used to it.”

“You shouldn’t have to get used to it.”

“No. But I do.”

Eli was quiet for a moment. The fountain gurgled. A bird landed on the grass nearby, pecked at something, and flew away.

“Can I ask you something?” he said.

“You can ask me anything.”

“Do you ever regret it? Starting this? The nudity thing, I mean. Do you ever wish you’d just kept wearing the coveralls?”

I thought about the question. I really thought about it. I tried to imagine myself back in that bathroom, standing in front of the mirror, the coveralls on the floor, the tan line fading.

“No,” I said finally. “I don’t regret it.”

“Not even a little?”

“Not even a little. The coveralls were a coffin. They were comfortable and familiar. But they were keeping me from breathing. From feeling. From being alive.”

“And now?”

“Now I’m breathing.” I looked down at my hands. At the bare skin. At the fingers that had written so many words, had typed so many texts, had held so many things that mattered. “Now I’m feeling. Even when it hurts. Especially when it hurts.”

Eli nodded slowly.

“I think I understand,” he said. “Not completely. But enough.”