George Read online

  Kelly gave an exaggerated sigh and headed off to the coat closet to join the group of girls huddled around Maddy and Emma. Ms. Udell turned back to where George had been, but George had already disappeared to her seat.

  As promised, Ms. Udell didn’t share the names of the students in the play until the final moments of the school day, at which point she distributed scripts to the actors and gave some advice on how to memorize their lines.

  Kelly would be Charlotte. When she found out, she jumped nearly out of her seat and whooped with glee. Then she turned to smile at George, but George had turned her head to face the closet, shielding her eyes from view with her hand. It was bad enough that she wouldn’t be Charlotte. Now she would have to listen to Kelly talk about it, and possibly nothing else, for the next three weeks.

  Ms. Udell continued to read the cast list. Chris would play Templeton. He let out a deep “yeeeeah” and pumped his fist in the air. Maddy, Emma, and several other kids would play the barnyard animals, and most of the rest of the kids who had tried out would be narrators. Kids from Mr. Jackson’s class would be playing the parts of Wilbur and Fern. George’s name wasn’t said at all.

  George knew she couldn’t have possibly expected to hear Ms. Udell call her name. Still, her heart sank. She had genuinely started to believe that if people could see her onstage as Charlotte, maybe they would see that she was a girl offstage too.

  When her row was called, George grabbed her book bag and got away from the other kids at the closet as quickly as she could. She packed her math workbook and her science reader.

  Room 205 headed down to the yard for dismissal. George didn’t pay attention when the class stopped to regroup. Several times, she bumped into the backpack in front of her.

  The moment the class stepped onto the school yard, Kelly dashed out of the girls’ line and over to George.

  “How come you’re not in the play?” she asked. “Ms. Udell said everyone who tried out would get a part. And I thought for sure Ms. Udell would make you Wilbur. You were so good this weekend. Rehearsals are going to be totally boring without you.”

  Another voice chimed in: “Yeah, George, how come you’re not in the play?”

  George cringed, recognizing Rick’s voice behind him. Jeff almost never talked directly to George unless he had something really mean to say, but George wasn’t surprised to see them both there when she turned around.

  “Last week, you were all crying about the poor little spider,” Rick continued. “And we saw you go out and audition. How bad did you have to be for Chris to get the part?”

  “I’ll bet he read the stupid spider’s part by mistake!” Jeff smirked. “He’s such a freaking girl anyway.”

  Jeff guffawed, and Rick laughed alongside him.

  “Don’t listen to them.” Kelly tugged at the elbow of her best friend’s shirt, but George stood, stuck in place. The hairs on her arms stood straight up, and the back of her neck tingled.

  “Or maybe he just read it all backward,” said Rick.

  “Knio! Knio!” Jeff made a horrific sound, attempting to oink backward. Rick joined him, and they snorted across the playground toward the gate, where parents sat in cars in a line down the block.

  She didn’t exhale until Rick and Jeff passed through the gate. They didn’t know her secret, or else they wouldn’t have dropped it so quickly, but their guess had been so close that George’s cheeks flushed with shame. She relaxed her hands, which had formed into fists, but her teeth were still clenched.

  “They’re jerks,” said Kelly. “You’re not a girl.”

  “What if I am?” George was startled by her own words.

  Kelly drew back in surprise. “What? That’s ridiculous. You’re a boy. I mean”—she pointed vaguely downward at George—“you have a you-know-what, right?”

  “Yeah, but …” George trailed off and looked at the ground. She kicked a small rock that skipped into a tuft of grass. She didn’t feel like a boy.

  They stood together in a heavy silence. Kelly’s brow furrowed in thought. After a few moments, she spoke. “You know, I thought about whether I was a boy once. Back when I wanted to be a firefighter and I thought all firefighters were boys. Is it like that?”

  “I don’t think so, Kelly.”

  The lines in front of the buses had mostly disappeared and the drivers were only waiting for the final okay to start their routes. They had begun to turn over their engines, and the air filled with heavy rumbling and the fumes of diesel exhaust.

  George had a sudden frightening thought and grabbed Kelly’s arm just above the elbow. “Don’t tell anyone.”

  “I won’t.”

  George’s grip on Kelly’s arm grew uncomfortable. “Not even your dad.”

  “Not even my dad.”

  They ran to their respective buses, the soles of their sneakers slapping on the blacktop, calling “One-two-three!” and “Zoot!” behind them.

  The school bus left George at the corner and drove off, its engine straining to pick up speed. George walked the half block to her house and turned up the driveway. She fumbled with the house key, balancing her book bag on one knee while she turned the key to the right, but the door was already unlocked, and pushed open easily. Mom sat on the couch.

  “You’re home!” said George.

  “What’s this about?” asked Mom. Her expression was flat. George’s denim bag swung slowly in the air, hanging from one crooked finger. The zipper was open.

  George’s heart pounded, and for a moment, she thought she might burst on the spot. She took a deep gulp of air.

  “I was feeling under the weather today, so I came back home to do some cleaning,” said Mom. “Your closet was a mess … and I found these. Did you steal them?”

  “No!” George’s face was hot. “I … I collected them.”

  “Don’t lie to me. Where did you get them?” Mom pulled out the copy of Seventeen from last October, the smiling twins on the cover unaware of Mom’s tight grip.

  “I found them in different places.”

  Mom eyed George, her eyebrows thick and heavy. She stood, with a deep sigh.

  “George, I don’t want to find you wearing my clothes. Or my shoes. That kind of thing was cute when you were three. You’re not three anymore. In fact, I don’t want to see you in my room at all.”

  “But I didn’t …,” George began, but Mom ignored her.

  Mom disappeared to her bedroom with the denim bag in her hand. George remained by the front door, her mouth slightly open.

  She couldn’t believe her friends were gone.

  The days passed George by in a haze of unhappiness. She dragged herself through her daily routine. She dragged herself out of bed in the morning and to the bathroom. She dragged herself downstairs and dragged her spoon through her cereal and up to her mouth. She dragged herself to the bus stop, through the day, and back home again.

  Kelly didn’t call once that week, and George didn’t call her. They didn’t even eat lunch together. Kelly ate with the other lead actors and talked about the play. When Kelly did look George’s way, she gave George an awkward, forced smile. George ate lunch by herself that week.

  On Thursday, she sat down without looking, and realized she was directly across from Jeff and Rick. She spent the entire lunch period staring at her lunch tray and listening to them snicker about Mrs. Fields, the kindergartners, and, of course, George.

  At home, Mom didn’t say anything about George’s bag, or much of anything else, either. She went about her day with a stony face and rigid movements. George tried to avoid being in the same room with her. She ate her dinner as quickly as she could, skipped all but her favorite shows on TV, and spent as much time in her room as possible. And she couldn’t stop thinking about her magazines.

  Saturday morning, when there was a heavy knock knock on her bedroom door, George expected Mom. Instead, she was surprised to see her brother holding up two video game driving wheels. “Wanna play Mario Kart?”

  Scott
hadn’t asked George to play video games in months. They used to play almost every day. George would come home after school to find Scott on the couch, watching wrestling and ignoring his homework. They would play until Mom got home and yelled at them to turn off the TV and get their homework done. Now Scott usually came home just in time for dinner, if not later.

  “Why?” George asked, still deep in her fog of misery.

  “If Mom catches me on the couch playing video games, she’ll make me do chores. But if I’m playing a game with my kid brother”—Scott ruffled George’s already messy hair—“she’ll call it fraternal bonding or something, and maybe let us play a few more rounds.”

  Scott’s reason seemed selfish enough to be genuine, so George joined Scott in the living room and took a seat on the right side of the couch. They selected their cars and drivers. Scott drove as Bowser, the reptilian archvillain of the Nintendo game series. He loved being able to knock into the smaller characters and send them flying. George selected Toad. She liked the happy sounds the little mushroom made. When she was alone, she sometimes drove as the princess, but she didn’t dare choose her in front of Scott.

  A creature in the sky floated down with a checkered flag in its hands. After a brief countdown, the race was on. The pack of characters vied for the lead, throwing obstacles and running through one another while invincible. Scott and George made their way through the maze.

  At the announcement of the final lap, they were in first and second place. The computer players were nearly half a lap behind. As they turned into the last long straightaway, George shot a red shell into the void ahead of her. The shell whooped along until it slammed into Scott, sending him spiraling in the air. On-screen, Bowser pumped his fist in anger and slowly puttered back onto the road. He was a heavy beast, and took a long time to gain speed. Toad zipped past and into the lead. The finish line was just ahead, and George crossed it moments before Scott caught up.

  Scott roared like a dinosaur and shook his wheel in the air. George giggled.

  “You know,” Scott said, “that’s the first time I’ve heard you laugh in about a week.”

  “Yeah,” George said.

  “Girl problems?” Scott asked, his eyes focused on the television screen as the cloud creature announced the start of the next course.

  “No,” George said. She knew that wasn’t true. Being a secret girl was a giant problem.

  “What about Kelly?”

  “I’ve told you,” George said through gritted teeth, “she is not my girlfriend.” She bit her lip as she veered around a sharp corner.

  “I haven’t seen you on the phone with her all week.”

  “Just forget it.”

  “Are you two having a fight?”

  “NO!” The wheel felt moist in George’s clammy palms.

  Scott laughed before knocking a car into a pool of lava.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Sure sounds like you’re having a fight.”

  “Shut up, Scott.”

  “Whatever. She’s not my girlfriend.”

  “SHUT UP!!” George turned to her brother, turning the wheel along with her. Toad screamed his way down a ravine as the lower half of the screen fell into a deep, dark hole. “See what you made me do?”

  Scott pulled into the lead for the final lap. George climbed into fifth place by the time she crossed the finish line, but it still put her third in the overall rankings.

  They played the third round in deadly silence, racing through the final lap as competitively as if they were in the Indianapolis 500. They were battling for first and second place when Mario came through. He shimmered with invincibility and ran through both Scott’s and George’s cars, sending them flying into the air and falling back down to the track at a dead stop. They hobbled over the finish line, booed at the defeated music that played on the television, and vowed together to crush Mario in the fourth and final round of the match.

  Scott bumped into Mario with his massive force, and George used her speed mushrooms to plow through him at top speed. They laughed their way across the final line. They came in fourth and sixth places, delighted that Mario had ended dead last.

  Scott and George played another game of Mario Kart, and another, until Scott insisted on switching to a shooter game. He promised George that it was fun and that she would enjoy it. She didn’t, and after a few minutes, she left Scott to kill everything in sight.

  The school yard filled with kids on Monday morning. Younger boys played kick the rock and ran about wildly, while older boys crowded around electronic gadgets that were hidden in the bottoms of backpacks during the school day. George leaned against the chain-link fence, watching some girls from her class jump rope. She knew the rhymes they sang, but no one would ask her to join. Boys didn’t play jump rope.

  “Hi,” a small voice spoke behind George. It was Kelly. She wore a faded blue shirt with a smiling whale on it that read I’M HAVING A WHALE OF A TIME.

  “I’m sorry I got the part of Charlotte.” She twisted the toe of her sneaker into the blacktop pavement.

  George shrugged.

  “Are you mad at me?” Kelly asked.

  “No.”

  “Good.”

  Kelly took a deep breath. “And I’m sorry I ignored you last week.” She scratched her neck. “And you know what? If you think you’re a girl …”

  George braced for Kelly’s next words.

  “Then I think you’re a girl too!” Kelly leaped onto her best friend and gave her a hug so big they both nearly toppled over. The openmouthed surprise and joy on George’s face only made Kelly smile harder.

  “So you’re, like, transgender or something?” Kelly whispered as best she could in her excitement. “I was reading on the Internet, and there are lots of people like you. Did you know you can take hormones so that your body, you know, doesn’t go all manlike?”

  “Yeah, I know.” George had been reading websites about transitioning since Scott had taught her how to clear the web browser history on Mom’s computer. “But you need your parents’ permission.”

  “Your mom’s pretty cool,” Kelly said, her eyebrows lifted. “Maybe she’d be okay with it.”

  George shook her head and looked down, staring at her shoelaces. Even without closing her eyes, she could see her denim bag hanging from Mom’s long finger, swinging slightly. The words It’s not cute anymore echoed in her mind. She told Kelly about her bag of girls’ magazines, and about Mom taking it.

  “But that’s not fair!” Kelly was indignant. “You didn’t steal them! What right does she have to take them from you?”

  “Sometimes transgender people don’t get rights.” George had read on the Internet about transgender people being treated unfairly.

  “That’s awful.”

  “I know.”

  After an awkward silence, Kelly showed George some pictures she’d taken that weekend at the park. Many of them were close-ups of leaves, and some of them were quite striking. The ways the light hit different parts of the leaves made them look three-dimensional.

  Kelly drew her camera out of her pocket. Then she started giving out directions as she circled around George, shooting away. “Smile more, like you just got a present. Now surprise, when you open the gift. And joy, like you just got what you always wanted.”

  George frowned. “Could you take pictures of the face I’m making, instead of telling me what face I should have?”

  “I’m just trying to provide a little artistic direction. Never mind.” She put her camera back in her pocket and joined a group of girls playing hopscotch. George leaned against the fence and looked up at the cloudy sky.

  When the bell rang, the playground formed into girls’ and boys’ lines for each class. Once upstairs, George settled into her seat and began the assignment written on the board. It asked her to find as many words as possible that she could create from the letters of the word PERFORMANCE. George stared at the three words on her page: PERFORM, MORE, and FOR. She refus
ed to write down MAN, even though it kept smacking her in the face, blocking her view of other words. George still had the same three words on her page when Ms. Udell began her morning announcements.

  “As you are aware, our play is fast approaching. It’s time for us to kick into high gear. We will be limiting our traditional academic endeavors to the forenoon hours.” Ms. Udell ignored the blank stares she received from the class. “The time after you ingest your midday nourishment will be entirely devoted to theatrical pursuits.”

  “I think she means no work after lunch!” Chris called out.

  “I most certainly do not!” Ms. Udell held a stern look for a moment before breaking into a grin. “But I do mean that we will be in the classroom only until lunchtime. The auditorium echoes, and I want the cast to get some experience projecting their voices properly. Plus, the crew needs to put together our set.”

  The class cheered—some for the play, but most because they would have less classwork. Kelly cheered loudest of all, but George remained silent. She didn’t want to go into high gear. She didn’t want to think about Charlotte anymore. She wanted the play to be over and done with. The only good part of Ms. Udell’s plan was that it meant the class would skip afternoon gym.

  Ms. Udell quieted the students and continued. “That does not mean that we won’t be working hard in the mornings. In fact, we’ll need to be twice as efficient. And I’m sure I don’t need to remind you”—Ms. Udell eyed Jeff, Rick, and then Kelly—“that students who cannot keep their attention on their studies in the morning will be sent to another classroom in the afternoon to complete them, as well as additional written assignments.”

  The morning passed in a drone of vocabulary, fractions, and reading. Not another word about the play was said until lunch, when the long lunchroom table burst into a flurry of excitement. Kelly said she knew all about voice projection, and she would be happy to help anyone who needed some coaching. No one took her up on it.