Xoraxorel

  1.

  Madaline moved in a week ter on Tuesday morning. She pulled up in a dated, but sleek, bck sports car stuffed with boxes, as her speakers made the air in the street throb to the drumbeat of Icky Thump by the White Stripes.

  Amber, alerted by the noise and not because she'd been waiting by the window, hurried out of the comfortable, two bedroom house in a grey hoodie that had grown far too rge on her small frame.

  "Hey!" said Amber, waving, so nervous that she had to restrain the urge to bounce on the balls of her feet. "How was your drive?" she asked, as Madaline stepped out of the car into the chilled driveway.

  “Fine,” said Madaline, closing her car door, and pulling off her sungsses. She was wrapped in a bulky leather jacket and a pair of leather pants that were a little roomier than the ones she'd worn the day they'd met. "Where's Simon?" she asked, not moving towards the house.

  “Should be right behind me,” said Amber, puzzling over the simple statement on Madaline's shirt, "Break the Eggs".

  The door creaked as Simon joined them. “Hey, Maddy, still waking up the neighborhood?”

  Madaline wrinkled her nose at the truncation of her name and popped a knuckle with the thumb of her free hand, the opposite was occupied by a cup of coffee. “That was the neighbors, not the neighborhood. Besides, if I have to be awake right now, so does everyone else, it's only fair.”

  Madaline half strutted, half strolled up the sidewalk, her eyes flickered to Amber and away, she stopped, shaking her head, and opening her arms. “Loosen up, little brother, please? You’re doing me a solid, I’m doing you a solid, whatever bad blood is between us, can’t it… just be over? Come on, we were kids.” She licked her lips and her thumb popped another knuckle,“I was a kid.”

  “We were in college and you're still acting like a kid and I’m only three months younger.”

  “Oh, your birthday is in October?” asked Amber.

  “That’s when the world was blessed with me,” said Madaline, responding without really looking at Amber, but giving her head a theatrical little bow.

  “Remind me what solid you're doing me?” said Simon, holding his ground.

  Madaline reached into her jacket and retrieved a wad of crisp bills.

  He took the money and pocketed it. “That’s not a solid, it’s payment."

  Madaline groaned. “Come on, be the bigger man, I mean I would, but that’s kind of a whole thing with girls like us, we kind of refuse to.” She sighed, “Alright, while I'm here I’ll do the dishes. Everyone hates the dishes.”

  “Damn right you will," Simon grumbled, but his face softened just slightly.

  Madaline held her arms back open.

  After a moment, Simon gnced around as though to check if anyone, other than Amber, was watching and accepted the hug.

  Their embrace was so light and so brief that it was clear neither was interested in extending it beyond the symbolic signing of a token truce.

  Amber struggled against the urge to ask exactly what kind of bad blood had passed between them.

  “Seriously though, thank you, this is a big convenience, if I'm going to be in the US, I'm happy to be coming back here.”

  Madaline’s phone went off in her pocket. She pulled it out, returned a short message and stuffed it away.

  “Do you need help?” Amber asked, peering into the back of the car.

  “Not really, it’s not much. Most of my things are in storage.” Her eyes darted to Amber before they bounced off her face.

  The boxes went inside, mostly containing computer equipment, office supplies, and various desk detritus. Then two grocery bags of hygiene supplies and two garbage bags of what Amber was certain was primarily bck clothes. A small set of weights followed. Last was one more cardboard box from the back of her trunk, Amber caught a glimpse of a heavy, green lock box partially covered by a bck shirt sitting inside.

  The room Madaline would be occupying was upstairs, right next to Simon's. The day after they'd returned, Amber had successfully cleaned it out, relocating the many items stored inside to the small attic, which was closer to a crawl space.

  She'd then checked Madaline's room over for any fws, being sure to vacuum and dust before dressing the bed Simon's roommate had left behind.

  The roommate had also abandoned a long wooden desk that took up much of the wall that separated Simon's room from Madaline's, as well as a rolling chair.

  When everything was inside, Madaline rapped her fist twice on the desk and decred it perfect, without dey she began setting up her work station.

  By the time Amber started getting ready for her shift in the afternoon, the room had all the spartan style and fre of a stripped down dorm.

  When she came out of Simon’s room, dressed in the absolute peak of barista fashion she peeked back in to find Madaline already at work, her face locked into that bored expression, her eyes sweeping back and forth across three monitors as her long fingers snapped rapidly across a glowing keyboard.

  “Um,” Amber knocked, “You’re all set up? Everything's good?”

  “Yep, I should have everything I need, I’ll have to check in at the office a few times a week, but unless there's a major crisis they should just let me stay here.”

  “Are you like a hacker? All the leather and computers made me wonder?” she asked, trying for a joke.

  Madaline brokered a short ugh. "They ironically call me an in-house IT consultant. I code, I debug, I bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.”

  Amber was thrilled when Madaline's expnation descended into bullshit, she knew she wouldn't follow anything more technical. She'd never graduated beyond the basics taught in high school and any curiosity she held was effectively curbed by the desire to avoid testing Madaline's patience with her ignorance.

  Madaline took her fingers off the keyboard and spun the chair slightly, angling her face indirectly towards Amber. “You told mom you’re a barista, yeah?”

  "Yeah, I serve coffee.”

  “That’s good, the world runs on it,” she drank from her cup, as though to demonstrate Amber's contribution to society. Finally after a moment she turned her head and looked directly at Amber in her uniform, taking it in.

  Madaline pressed her tongue to the back of her teeth and shook her head slightly. “Should just open my eyes."

  Amber pulled back from the door frame, now that Madaline was looking at her she had the instinctive urge to hide her uniform.

  Madaline gnced down at the ground for a moment, giving something some thought. She rose and went to the door, standing on the other side of it, keeping the threshold firmly between them. “Do you like it?”

  “Um, yeah, it’s- you know-” Amber vacilted, pinching the hem of her shirt and scratching at it with her thumb. “They gave me a job when I needed it and people don’t misgender me much anymore."

  “I don’t doubt that.” Madaline chewed her lip for a moment. “You don’t need to be ashamed of having a shitty job and if you hate it, it’s okay to hate it. It's okay to say you hate it.”

  “It’s not that bad. I don’t-” She stalled out, as her anxiety began nipping at her over how awkward she was being.

  She took a deep breath and tried to find the appropriate response, what she needed to say to extend the conversation, it felt like searching for something along a cliff edge in near pitch darkness. She failed, so instead she simply offered Madaline one of her well cultivated smiles.

  Madaline hummed and pulled back as Simon came up the stairs, dropping in her seat and swiveling around to continue cttering keys at high speed.

  “Amber, are you ready to go?” Simon asked from the stairs.

  Amber drifted away from the door.

  2.

  5 minutes after departing in Simon’s car:

  “Um, she’s kind of intense, but she seems really nice.”

  “Nice isn’t a word I’d ever apply to Madaline, she can be-” Simon sought a word to describe his step sister. He seemed to discard several as inadequate before rebooting the whole statement. “She’s just not like us.”

  “How so?”

  He wiped at his mouth a little, before squeezing the steering wheel. “Look, just, you need to tell me if she does anything or... says anything weird to you.”

  Madaline’s voice echoed in her head, Good girl. Amber wondered if that counted as something weird, it had made her feel funny, but it also felt nice, but then there was...

  “She has a weird sense of humor.”

  “What did she say?”

  Simon’s voice and gnce was so stern Amber immediately wilted under it, “Just when we met... she called me your test conquest, you know, and, then she said to you, um, that you were batting out of your league, which, um, weird for different reasons.”

  His look darkened.

  Amber quietly gulped down some air.

  “But- but it’s not like I don’t know I’m not your first girlfriend or that it bothers me, really I don’t ever think about it." The words spilled out of her in a haste to expin herself.

  His fingers drummed on the steering wheel.

  This conversation wasn't going well, she shouldn't have said anything.

  “And as for batting out of your league,” she waved her hands at herself before csping one to the sleeve of her coat. “Just, that’s crazy, you know, I’m such a mess. All the time. Such a mess all the time, and that’s nothing compared to how I was when we met and I guess she doesn’t know that so- or- or- or- maybe I just don’t get the joke.”

  Simon thought this over, slowly his face rexed and Amber grew more at ease in response.

  “There’s no joke to get, Amber, none that either of us would find funny, just Madaline running her mouth, because she thinks she’s smarter than she is.” He cpped the steering wheel, making Amber jump slightly, but then he sighed and rubbed at his temple. “But apparently that’s all going to be behind us now, so-”

  “That would be good.” Amber took another breath and held it for five seconds, but in that five seconds was another thought. She shouldn't bring it up, but she also couldn't not mention it, it felt so wrong not to mention it. It made her feel queasy.

  Amber had desperately tried to come up with a reasonable expnation, she'd sought one for the st week, but hadn't been able to think of anything that fit. If she'd been able to think of something, then she wouldn't need to ask, but thinking about it had gone the way it had, so here she was.

  "Simon..."

  He gnced at her.

  Amber pinched and pulled at the sleeve of her coat. "You, um, Simon, honey, why did you misgender her and use her old name?"

  "What?" he asked, hints of a dagger sheathed in the word.

  Amber shrank herself down in her seat. "You- You did, the first time you mentioned her-" The only time, I swear it's the only time I can remember- the only time, it's like she didn't exist until a week ago. "It was like a few months after we started dating, you know. You- you said you had a step brother, named... not Madaline. But she's- she's been transitioning too long."

  Amber had at first snatched at the idea that Simon maybe hadn't known back then, that maybe Madaline hadn't been out, but Madaline certainly made it sound like she was a very public lesbian by her sophomore year, and with her good retionship with her parents she would have gone home for the holidays. Simon had to have known.

  Each time Amber had taken up the issue and thought it over, every attempt at working things out, at understanding, had terminated with that thought, going no further than that idea, that image: Madaline going home from college during the winter holiday, going home to Cynthia and Tom and maybe even enjoying Simon's company in a period before they'd had to struggle to not be at each other's throats. That thought had made everything so much worse; each time she'd reached it she'd had to push down the whole set of musings on what Simon had done, so she could keep up with her responsibilities.

  The worst instance of all had been when she'd been stupid enough to think it over when working in the crawlspace, the boxes and the narrow walls full of pink insution that looked like cotton candy had seemed to slowly press in around her, threatening to crush her. It had gotten so bad that she felt like she was suffocating, in spite of the fact that she was well aware she was actually hyperventiting, she'd scrambled out and ended up in the bathroom dry retching.

  No crying though, not a single tear.

  Amber listens to the sound of the tires on the road, taking quiet deep breaths, holding them and letting them go.

  Simon said nothing through several turns.

  Just say it was an accident, or even say, no you didn't, that I'm remembering things wrong.

  Simon wiped his mouth once more and cpped his hand on the steering wheel.

  Amber flinched.

  Simon sighed, "Yeah, I did, didn't I?"

  Amber said nothing, unsure how to feel, now that he admitted it.

  "It was a shitty thing to do, but I was," he ground his teeth, "I don't even remember how we got to talking about Madaline when that happened? Do you?"

  Amber shook her head, "You were telling me about your dad and mom, but I don't remember. I don't remember why she came up. But you, you called her..."

  Simon nodded, "Mmmhmmm. I remember. I was so mad at her. She... hurt me really really bad. She and I used to get along when our parents first got together, we weren't best friends, but we occasionally hung out, pyed games, when she wasn't getting brought home by the police. I'm the first to admit she's got a way about her."

  "A way?" Amber mumbled.

  "Of getting people to like her, even when it's obvious you shouldn't. At least she does when she's not smashing things up for fun, Hurricane Madaline, I called her that a couple times too. She liked that, but then she-" he shook his head, face scrunching up in anger. "She did what she did." He cpped his hand again. "I did that cause I was angry, I didn't even want to say her name. So, I used her deadname instead."

  "Deadname," Amber repeated. "That's a really good way to put it." Her head bobbed up and down, appeasing.

  "I could say an awful lot of mean shit about her and at times I have, and it's all true, she earned it, except that, that's the one thing I've said I wish I could take back, especially cause I said it to you."

  "Well, it's not good to do, but- but- you don't see her that way? Right?"

  "I can't see her that way, any more than I can see you that way. I've never known her as male, I've never thought of her as male and the only reason I could do what I did is cause when she got her name officially changed in high school, she and her friend held a very illegal document burning in the backyard while drunk on booze stolen from my dad. She screamed it, goodbye and fuck off... well you know. Heard it from my room. The whole neighborhood did. Next week Cynthia was fishing her out of the drunk tank with a broken nose and bloody fists."

  "Somebody broke her nose?"

  "Yeah. Look, even right after... the things she did, I never would have said it to her face and if she knew about it, I'd owe her an apology, but she didn't, she doesn't know. But you do and that hurts me even more, and I promise, under no circumstances will it ever happen again. No matter what she does." His face was stern and reassuring. "Do not tell her, like I said, apparently everything is going to be behind us now."

  Amber nodded, "Okay, Simon, I won't, I promise."

  They were drawing close to the coffee shop. She felt a little bit better now. Everyone was entitled to a few mistakes, especially if they weren't repeated.

  And Madaline, seemed at least a little inclined to try to rebuild something like a peaceful retionship with Simon, her finding out would just hurt her and probably make that impossible and it was two years ago.

  Telling on him, ruining that for both of them, when he was so clearly full of remorse over a mistake he'd made one time, that he'd never done before, nor would ever do again, it would be unfair.

  She looked over at Simon, there was one more thing, something she hadn't pnned on asking now, she knew it was better to wait until ter, but the conversation had thrown gas on the need to know, the mingling curiosity and dread.

  Earlier, when Madaline arrived, Simon had confirmed the conclusion Amber had reached from avaible fragments, that Simon and Madaline's issues were nothing as simple as friction from conflicting personalities, instead at some point there had come a day that had totally wrecked their retionship. A specific action or series of choices that had bsted things apart, like dynamite stuffed in a solid wall.

  Amber knew what it was like to be Madaline in that situation.

  She looked straight forward as she asked very carefully, “Simon, honey, what did she do?”

  “She- Something-,” he scowled.

  Amber cringed.

  He shook his head, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Okay, honey,” Amber said, her finger going at her sleeve rapidly. “You don’t have to. You’re right, sometimes it's better to just let things go, to forget.” She popped on her smile.

  “Yeah,” he muttered. “This is your stop,” he put the car in park. He sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Look, we just have to put up with her in the house for a little while, things will be fine, ” he said, as though reassuring Amber. “Just don’t give her a chance to fuck up.”

  Amber tried to work out how she would avoid doing such a thing with absolutely no context for what fucking up was, but she'd already pushed his patience as far as she could expect it to go. .

  “I love you,” he said, kissing her. “You're good with the bus home, right?”

  “Yes,” she nodded. "I love you too." She hustled out of the car so he could get on with his day, relieved that the conversation had gone so well.

  She moved towards the doors of her employment, checking her phone, she saw she still had another ten minutes before she was allowed to clock in. She decided to spend it out in the cold, grey day, letting the bitter air ground her.

  Yes, she reaffirmed, forgetting was the right choice. Even if Simon had not implored Amber to not thoughtlessly, cruelly even, destabilize a familial retionship that had once been close, maybe even loving, it would still be the right thing to do.

  Because, maybe just maybe, by Madaline staying with them, it could be close or even loving again. And maybe just maybe, if Simon and Madaline could at least get back to a pce of pleasant tolerance, if things went well, if Amber didn't screw up, if Amber didn't ruin things, then maybe... maybe...

  Maybe she and I could be friends.

  The thought made her a little dizzy. She pressed her forehead to the rough brickwork. That unusual voice popped into her head, just there to drop a quick comment and leave, like it had a couple times before. I should tell her anyway. It hissed coolly.

  Amber's stomach lurched.

  No, that was crazy, letting Madaline know would ruin everything. Furthermore, the idea of Simon being transphobic, even mildly, was patently ridiculous.

  If Amber hadn't herself heard him deadname Madaline, she didn't know if she could believe it.

  He and Amber had been dating for two years. He loved her, he'd never treated her as anything other than a woman, even before the estrogen had time to do the magic it had.

  Had he not, from the moment he sat down with her, been her staunchest ally? Had he not helped her? He'd paid for her name change, he'd bought her clothes and a new phone, he'd invited her to come stay with him when her options were so limited. Did Amber not have the comfortable life she now enjoyed, all because of Simon's kindness, his basic benevolence? He had done everything for her and now, he was asking for a kindness in return.

  He wasn't asking her to lie to Madaline, but to not ruin something good, to forget, and wasn't that fair?

  If Amber was charged for all the stupid things she had said when she shouldn't have said them, they'd have to lock her up in perpetuity.

  And on the heels of that thought, the memory surged back so strong she swore she could almost smell pine and Christmas cookies in the oven and-

  Mom, Dad, I really need to talk to you about something, it may sound a little strange, but I need you to know and I really feel so much better now, if you could maybe just read these, you'll see-

  She slowly pressed her entire face into the bricks and held her breath for over a minute, until she grew lightheaded.

  Amber had a party trick that was no use at parties, but that was okay, she never went to parties. She was very good at forgetting things when she needed to.

  Of course, some things were simply too big to outright forget.You can forget the old phone you left in a drawer in a basement, not think about it for years, or ever again, but an elephant in the room, that took a little more finagling, as her dad would have said.

  But those things she couldn't forget, either because they were too massive or too important to go around with no knowledge of, or both, those things she could fade instead.

  She could shrink the elephant to a manageable size, blunting it's tusks, softening its trumpet, then down to the basement it went, until she needed to acknowledge its existence; like when kind, accepting mothers of tall, beautiful trans girls ask her questions that she'd prefer go unasked. Sure, occasionally, an elephant might make its way upstairs for any number of reasons, but it was still a miniature elephant and it just took a minute to put it back where it belonged.

  Internally, Amber went to work boxing the vestiges of a very bad day, back up, then she boxed up what Simon had called Madaline alongside it and stowed both, deep below, out of sight, out of mind.

  Amber blinked, quickly pulling her face from the wall, rubbing dust from her nose, she gnced around hoping no one had seen the bout of inappropriate behavior, yes, it was fine, she was alone and away from the windows, no one had seen, no customers, no coworkers, good. Everything was okay, everything was under control.

  What a silly thing to do.

  She tittered a little and rubbed at her arms, being sure to stay on top of her emotions, before ratcheting her smile onto her face and rushing to punch in.

  Xoraxorel

  so we might better understand and enjoy the consequences as the hyper acceptable persona she walks around with begins to crack and the truth begins to slip out

  [colpse] So there aren’t many scenes like this with Amber and Simon alone, certainly not so long and going forward things will primarily focus on Amber and Madaline, often alone together.

  -Thank you for reading, take care.