Snowsisters Read online

  I reach for her hand, squeezing it tightly in her lap. “Oh, Tess.”

  “Joey didn’t want to do anything about it, but he couldn’t move his jaw. He texted me from the emergency room. His dad drove him to the hospital and left him there. I could barely understand what happened when he tried to explain it. He told them in the emergency room that he fell down the stairs at my house. If he didn’t, Soph, the police would have gotten involved, and I can only guess what Joey’s father would have done. They had to wire his mouth shut. He had to wear one of those collars, too, because his father sprained Joey’s neck with that punch.

  “I was afraid for Joey to go back to his home, but his mom came to pick him up and take him. They wouldn’t let him leave without a parent. His mom didn’t say anything to the people in the emergency room. Joey’s father acted as if nothing had happened. He was sixteen, Soph. He had no place to go. He still doesn’t. He doesn’t have any money or any other family he can live with. So, we figured out that we could be boyfriend and girlfriend for now. If we acted that way, his dad would leave him alone, and Joey would be safe until he left home.”

  I squeeze her hand and start to speak, but she interrupts me.

  “You don’t understand it, Soph. I know.” She says it matter-of-factly, not as if she’s mad. “Joey and I don’t have anyone else to talk to. We researched it on the Internet. I know there are schools with openly gay students, even public schools. Gay characters are on TV now and not just as a joke or mentally ill. But Joey and I also looked up what gay teens should do. We need to keep ourselves safe, and that means not coming out until we are in a safe place. Joey’s home,” she pauses, “maybe my home, too, they are not safe. Our town is not safe.” She takes a ragged breath and is quiet. Then she adds, “We don’t have gay clubs at school or youth groups or LGBTQ community centers in Castleton. We don’t talk about this kind of thing. My family isn’t going to be happy if they find out. My MeMe…” her voice trails off.

  “Isn’t there some place that you could go?” I ask. It makes no sense to me that in this day and age they have to fake a relationship.

  “No, Soph, there isn’t.” Her voice is flat with resignation. “I know New York is different. But not everyone gets to be from a big city where no one cares about this kind of thing. And even in big cities bad things happen, like that shooting in Florida. Don’t you know that people like us…?” She pauses as if she doesn’t want to say the words. “Kids often end up homeless because they have to escape their families? They run away because home isn’t safe. Some of them kill themselves, Soph.” Her voice is soft.

  Hearing this, I realize that I haven’t spent much time thinking about it before now. “Tess, I’m sorry. I did know that. I’ve read it too. I didn’t think… Well, it doesn’t seem real to me. I guess, I mean it didn’t seem real. I’ve never known anyone in that kind of danger.” Without meaning to, I begin to cry. “I’m so, so sorry, Tess.”

  She continues, in her quiet, calm voice, and I feel her begin to rub my back gently, in small, even strokes.

  “Next year I’ll either be in West Point, if I can make it in, or I’ll have enlisted. I can come out there. And maybe my family will be okay with that. I don’t really know.” She stops talking.

  “Are you sure, Tess? I looked up stuff about women in the military and then gays, and it looked scary to me.”

  “I know the military has problems,” Tess says in that calm voice, “but it’s the best option for me. I know it isn’t always going to be easy. But, Soph, it’s a free education. And then a job. It’s my only chance to go somewhere other than the farm—to see different places, try to do things differently than they do at home. Maybe if my family sees me trying to do my best—” She catches herself, then starts again. “My dad says, ‘if you work hard, the army will reward you.’ I know I can work hard. I just need a chance to prove myself.” She shrugs. “Maybe I can change some people’s opinions. Maybe if I do a good job, I can even win a few fans.” I smile at her joke.

  Tess is serious and thoughtful, unlike most girls our age. At first, I thought that she was old-fashioned. Then I started to think she was just conservative. Then I was just shocked that she’s gay and disappointed that she’s in the closet. But now I understand. She isn’t in denial. She has a plan. She’s strategic.

  She’ll keep quiet now and she and Joey will be safe. I think she must be using her fan fiction writing to organize her feelings without having to tell anyone she’s writing it. It’s a lot to consider, and I don’t much want to think about any of it. The feel of her hand on my back makes me want to go back under the covers with her and block out the world.

  Tess withdraws her hand and turns on her side. I turn on my side, too, so that we’re facing each other. She reaches her arm out to me. I pull the covers back up over us, close my eyes, and lean into her. She feels soft and warm. She also feels fragile, like that expensive Danish china my mother’s always telling me not to use; but I know now that underneath, Tess isn’t all that fragile. She pushes her forehead close to mine.

  “It’s—it’s a hard world, Soph. It’s hard for everyone in different ways.” She kisses me again.

  Tess.

  I am sure I figure out before Soph does how little time we have left. Soph is so optimistic, it wouldn’t occur to her that we might be on borrowed time. This morning we’re going to review our group projects with the faculty and then, after lunch, there’s a peer review of our individual writing. Tonight is the final banquet, and tomorrow we go on a tour of Minerva College in the morning, everyone does a final reading of their individual work after lunch, and then we leave.

  I don’t say anything, even though I find it really hard to climb out of that bed, put on clothes, and leave the privacy of our room. As we’re getting dressed, my cheeks heat up, knowing Soph’s watching me. I put on my fleece pullover, then look down at it. Pink, like most of my clothes. I pull it off again and throw it on the bed, then draw in a deep breath for courage and ask Soph, “Can I borrow your sweater? The black one you wore the first night?” Soph is confused at first, then smiles. No, she grins broadly, like a kid at Christmas. She rummages through her bag. When she finds the sweater at the bottom, she throws it to me.

  “Why black today, Tess?”

  I shrug as I pull it over my head. It smells like a mixture of her citrusy soap and her, “I don’t like pink that much,” I say, and that startles her.

  “Tess, your whole wardrobe is pink. Why do you wear it if you don’t like it?” Her hands are frozen on the button of her jeans, and she’s clearly perplexed. Yeah, I imagine Miss “Have my new boots overnight-shipped from L.L.Bean” wouldn’t understand. Funny, today I find that endearing, whereas last night it was irritating.

  “Because Mom buys my clothes and her choices are either Walmart or JC Penney. I don’t care and, even if I did, no one would listen to me. This is what we wear in Castleton.” That’s something I never would have said to Soph when we first met.

  “But…” She’s still confused about something, I can tell. She’s obviously trying not to make assumptions, which I think is harder for her than she realizes. Finally, she spits it out. “But what about the pink nail polish?”

  I inspect my fingers; the shell pink Molly painted on them the day I left is starting to chip. I shrug and say, “My little sister likes to paint my nails.”

  She laughs and comes over to fiddle with the sweater, though really, it’s to kiss me again. She says the sweater looks good on me, and then we turn to go down to breakfast. And it gets awkward once more.

  Soph grabs my hand and starts out the door, and I have to pull my hand out of hers and shake my head at her. “Soph, please? I can’t tell anyone.”

  She freezes instantly. She starts to try to convince me, but stops herself, puts her hand in her pocket, and walks out the door in front of me. She’s silent until we sit down in the breakfast room and she says g
ood morning to Orly. I feel mean and small and guilty, but I turn to Keisha and smile at her when she asks me if I slept all right. Soph and I don’t say another word to each other for the entire meal.

  * * *

  From Soph Alcazar’s Writing Journal,

  February 16, 2018

  A father who could break his own son’s jaw.

  I’ve only read about the bad things they saw.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  From the Fan Fiction Unbound Archive,

  posted by conTessaofthecastle:

  Daphne opened her eyes cautiously. The noise and the pulsating wind gusts from the space-shifting spell died away as she looked around. She was in the little house on the hillside outside the Portal of Arden, where she had stopped the night before.

  Soph.

  I don’t get it. Tess and I, we should be able to hold hands here. No one’s going to tell her family. Joey’s father will never know. Last night, this morning, I thought she was perfect for me; now I think we’re too different and she’ll never catch up. So we head down to breakfast, and I sit somewhere else. I want to talk about it with someone and I bet Orly would understand. But I can’t tell her, of course. I owe that to Tess.

  I go over to Orly anyway, noticing that she’s sitting between Janaye and Gabriela. I sit next to Gabriela and listen to them talk. I’m relieved to hear that they are talking about their writing. Janaye’s tone is warm and interested.

  I don’t see Chris. But I don’t want to think about Chris now. I’m thinking about Tess, when she told me her home and her town weren’t safe. She was resigned, but I’m mad about it. I also remember Mom telling me to be safe before I left New York. I didn’t agree with what she was trying to tell me. But now she’s starting to make more sense.

  I look across the table at Tess. She won’t look at me. I wish she didn’t look so good in my sweater.

  Tess.

  That morning in the final group session, Keisha, Peggy, and I are all at a loss for words. We have a story about Maizy Donovan finding out her chief editor, George Golden, isn’t paying her the same amount of money as the male reporters. Ultraman can’t do anything to help her by using his superpowers, but only by standing up for her and telling the chief editor that her work is just as valuable as the men’s. We have screenshots of the old comic strip to illustrate it and the whole thing is pretty good. Except it’s not the assignment we were given. I emailed the whole thing to Chris last night, mostly because I thought I should. She never answered. Celestine finishes with another group and comes to sit down, and I figure this is when we’re going to have to come clean. But just as Celestine is pulling out her chair, Chris comes across the room and drops down at the table.

  “Hey,” she says, “sorry to be late. I just finished up Maizy’s undercover investigative piece and I emailed it to everyone.”

  Sure enough, Peggy pulls up our piece, to which Chris has added a whole section, complete with screenshots of the actual transcripts from a real court case about pay inequality from the 1970s.

  I don’t have any idea what to say. Neither does Peggy. Even Keisha is surprised. Celestine looks from one of us to the others. Then Chris starts talking as though she’s been working with us all along.

  “So, I wanted to use Tess’s idea of having Maizy be involved in something that happened at the beginning of the comic strip, but I wanted to work on a real investigative news story. I did some online research and found out that in the early 1970s, a group of women reporters at Newsweek magazine discovered that they were being underpaid compared to the male reporters. They sued the magazine for an increase in their salaries. I did all the research on the case and wrote it up for Maizy to give to Mr. Golden. I think it ties in nicely with Keisha’s explanation of the working environment for women at that time and with Peggy’s descriptions. It let me go into the history of a real news story and do some solid background research. Did y’all know that Newsweek was owned by a woman and she ended up settling the case because she didn’t want to come across as a hypocrite?”

  Celestine asks a few questions, but she’s excited about how the piece came out, and she tells us what a good job we did of meshing our different writing strengths.

  “I wasn’t sure you four would end up on the same page,” she says, before she goes to meet with another group. “I’m pleased that you were able to put aside your differences and work together in the end.”

  After she leaves, no one knows what to say. Then I pull my phone out of my pocket. “Can I get your number?” I ask Chris.

  * * *

  From Soph Alcazar’s Writing Journal,

  February 16, 2018

  Is nothing what I understand or think?

  I’m wrong about so much, even the pink.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  From the Fan Fiction Unbound Archive,

  posted by conTessaofthecastle:

  Astoria stood in front of Daphne. The hood of her heavy cape was flung back to show her golden hair, unmistakable anywhere. She held a mug of some steaming beverage in her hand. “You’re home,” Astoria said. She carefully set down the mug and came closer.

  Soph.

  I’m relieved to be with my group for the final session this morning. I like the way our piece came out. The ballad is a hodgepodge, with stanzas by each of us, in our respective styles. We adapted the story of Freya, who cried golden tears when her husband Od disappeared. In the real myth—duh, oxymoron—Freya put on her magical cloak and flew around the earth to find him. When she discovered that he’d been banished and turned into a sea monster, she stayed by him to console him. But he got killed, and Freya was so pissed off that she threatened to kill the other gods until they put her husband into Valhalla, their heaven for warriors. We made Freya marry both a husband and a wife. She meets Od early and he puts her amber necklace of love, the Brísingamen, on his own neck to make Freya fall in love and marry him. On her wedding night, she meets another goddess, Stola, and they instantly fall for each other without the Brísingamen. Od is inconsolable and runs away. Although the Brísingamen effect has worn off, Freya misses Od and uses her feather cloak to change into a bird and find him. She intends to use the Brísingamen to bind Stola to Od, but when she introduces Stola and Od, they find themselves attracted to each other without it and they throw a three-person wedding. Freya has children with Od and romantic love with Stola, the moral being that, in relationships, you offer different things and obtain different things from different people.

  Gabriela, Yin, and Ellen each took the voice of a character, and I got the narration stanzas, because we agreed that my formal style worked better for me as a storyteller than as a participant.

  When we show Grace the whole thing, she brings Professor Forsythe over.

  I hope that Professor Forsythe likes it. I’ve almost given up on her, but Professor Forsythe is still my best hope for getting into Minerva College next year. The week is almost over, and still she hasn’t seen anything I’ve written. I like the way she speaks to us as a group; she isn’t casual, but she never lectures from a podium or with notes. She says smart things, from the heart and the mind combined. I’ve even forgiven her for forgetting everyone’s names at first.

  So, when Professor Forsythe puts on her rimless reading glasses and begins to read “Freya Reimagined,” I’m on the edge of my seat with my legs jiggling. Yin nudges me as if to say, “What are you, five?” I put my hands in my lap and lean back, holding my legs still. I watch Professor Forsythe’s face, her brow furrowing and relaxing, her mouth pursing, then smiling.

  “Marvelous. Creative. Funny, but you have a real point here. I see Homer and Swift, but also some Steinem and, well, who’s the comedian it recalls? Maybe Ellen DeGeneres. And from what we’ve seen and read from each of you, you’ve played to your strengths stylistically in your individual voices.” I swear she looks at me for a split second. Then she continue
s. “I have to move on to the other groups now, but I recommend that you each think about why your own style works in each role and contrast it with each other’s styles.” She leans back and smiles. “I wonder if you’d like to read it aloud after dinner. It would be a nice way to cap our final night.”

  I’m so excited that I can barely wait for the break to text my friends.

  [From Soph to Gordon, Lally, and Mibs] Great news!!!

  This time, all three are around.

  [From Gordon to Lally, Mibs, and Soph] Wutz her name?

  [From Soph to Gordon, Lally, and Mibs] Not that.

  [From Gordon to Lally, Mibs, and Soph] Then wut?

  [From Soph to Gordon, Lally, and Mibs] Group project so good we’re reading it to everyone 2night.

  [From Lally to Gordon, Mibs, and Soph] U Rock.

  Mibs sends a smiley face.

  [From Gordon to Lally, Mibs, and Soph] Wutz up with the other things?

  This brings me back to earth. I want to tell them about Tess. I could use the support. But I can’t explain.

  [From Soph to Gordon, Lally, and Mibs] Nothing much.

  * * *

  At lunch, Tess and I steer clear of each other. Last night was so great. So was this morning before breakfast. I thought we connected in so many ways. Is Tess ashamed of me? Herself? Us? I want to say something, but I can’t in the dining room or the lounge. I’ll have to wait until tonight. We have a few minutes before the group session, so I take out my phone to text my friends, but none of them responds. I decide to try Freddy.

  [From Soph to Freddy] Hey—you there? How was the bunny slope?

  Freddy responds right away.

  [From Freddy to Soph] Awesome—did what you said. Instructor was *nice*.

  [From Soph to Freddy] Now what?

  [From Freddy to Soph] Wut?

  [From Soph to Freddy] What happens now?