After several minutes of being held, words come in the pce of tears, Amber's story:
A small town. Not a fundamentalist family, but conservative.
Her upbringing was traditional, sheltered, controlled.
In Madaline's opinion Amber had grown up in a minor police state.
Even her choice of media and use of the internet had been heavily surveilled.
Few if any friends throughout school, she’d blended into the wall, cataloged as; quiet, small, bookish and worst of all, according to her father, kept under his breath until it wasn't, growing up she’d been effeminate.
"I don't know, I think around like twelve, maybe, he started saying I was like a girl, he'd get mad cause I- well... like he did it when I was younger... like he'd call me a girl, when I'd cry, before he um..." a vacant expression, like a chalkboard swiped clean, Amber blinked and went on, "talked to me about crying, but it kind of became like... I don't know a running theme around twelve, which, I mean it's funny, a little right, like him calling me a girl made me so ashamed, the idea still does actually, like anyone else does it and it makes me feel so good, but, you know not... not him. Not dad."
Madaline doesn't consider it that weird. She also believes, even if Amber doesn't think of it in such terms, that the man scared the absolute living fuck out of her for her entire childhood.
"I think it's because, I guess around twelve I was supposed to... See, dad was really," Amber spread her hands out first vertically and then horizontally. "And he wanted me to be too, but when I got older, it just wasn't happening, so, I guess even then I looked more like mom. You know, before that he could ignore other stuff about me, he could..." Once more the vacant expression fell over her.
There is a jukebox that exists in Madaline's head and it does what it wants, even when she would prefer it not to, especially when she would prefer it not to.
As Amber went bnk, it spun up Comfortably Numb, not the original by Pink Floyd, which with it's somber eariness would have at least been somewhat tonally suitable, but no, her cunt of a jukebox instead went for the discoesq cover by Scissor Sisters.
Madaline ignored it, watching Amber carefully, waiting.
The jukebox made it through the snowed up dystopian delirium of the song's opening before Amber bounced back, blessedly when she did the needle bounced off the record and the jukebox went quiet.
Amber blinked a couple times and looked away, embarrassed, "Sorry, I just- I just totally lost my train of thought- what, what was I saying?"
Fuck Fuck Fuck.
The thing about Madaline's moments of inspiration is that though inspired they might be, that doesn't necessarily mean they're good ideas.
Madaline didn't let her panic register on her face. Don't fuck this up, be careful, be so fucking careful. Madaline considered trying to find a way out of this for the night, buy herself at least 24 hours for that consult she should have had, try this again ter when she was better prepared. Except what would she say? Sorry, princess, I lost your train of thought as well? Anything she might say to Amber might be interpreted as a ck of interest or annoyance and if she did would she be able to get her to start again even if Amber needed to?
"Until you were twelve he could ignore certain things about you," she said in a steady casual voice, helping Amber pick up her thread.
"Um, yeah," Amber nodded. "He, um, he could ignore things or... correct my behavior, but being small was like, you know, he couldn't ignore that."
Correct, what the fuck is correct and did that lunatic seriously expect a twelve year old to suddenly shoot up to six feet?
After her carefree childhood, it was off to university, far from home, where she'd remained isoted and been too overwhelmed by the unaccustomed feeling of freedom to really do anything with it.
And, of course, eternally behind everything was the quiet but constant background agony of her dysphoria, going unrecognized and unnamed for her entire life.
It seemed things would always be the same, but then in November of her Sophomore year she’d grabbed a series of pamphlets off the tables of several on campus student groups, just looking for something quick to read while she ate lunch.
The second one she read was from the same transgender support and advocacy group that Madaline herself had infamously breezed in and out of.
While her time at Mis U clearly wasn't some old Arcadia for Amber, she visibly grew more at ease when talking about school, as though the increased distance from the topic of her father relieved some of the strain.
Madaline jumped on this, getting her to slow, keeping her talking while providing her a break.
"Shark Tank?" Madaline asked. "You got the pamphlets from the fucking Shark Tank table, right?
"Shark Tank?"
"Mis U Transgender Support and Advocacy."
"Yeah, that's right, pretty sure."
"Four years, four fucking years, I fought tooth and nail to get people to call the group the Shark Tank, by the time I was a senior it was picking up, at least among the members, which believe me, I had to, ah, socialize a lot to make that happen. You do know that Mis U has one of the rgest trans student poputions in the entire country? Whole area does, actually. It's queer as fuck out here, must be something in the water."
"Is that why you called it the Shark Tank?"
Madaline ughed a little at that, “Wait, was this in Akley Hall? Where you got the pamphlets?”
“Yeah,” Amber ughed.
"I-" For a moment, as a painful thought occurred to her, Madaline slipped off the high horse she was trying to stay on top of, but she swung her momentum and cmbered back on, “I manned or womanned that table several times, I literally could have been sitting there that day.”
“Oh, well, um, I don’t really remember anything about anyone who was there, I didn’t talk to anyone, just kind of kept my head down, but I really don't think you were.”
“Why?”
Amber looked at Madaline, then looked away. “I think I’d remember if you were sitting there.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Madaline said, giving her a friendly grin.
“Well, you’re um,” Beautiful, striking, gorgeous, “Pretty- memorable.”
Madaline smirked, “If you were through Akley a lot, we had to have passed each other more than once, but go on.”
Amber had read the pamphlet, then the other two from the same table, then she reread them, over and over, first frantically, then slowly.
The pamphlets from the other groups went untouched, her lunch had gone uneaten, but she reread those three so many times she'd missed her st css.
As it grew dark outside, she'd sat there, her mouth dry, her chest aching like it might burst, but also relieved, because the word, transgender, now given a proper expnation, it sounded like her, this was her and though transgender people were often stigmatized, according to science there was nothing wrong with them.
She hadn't even understood what she was feeling before, it had been like someone had opened up her heart and expined the aching empty slots inside her.
She knew why her reflection made her feel sick.
Why starting at puberty she'd felt physically so wrong, like she was walking around with a low dose of poison.
Why in middle school biology she'd been seized by the overwhelming sense that half the popution was born lucky by cosmic lottery, because of course if given the option, everyone would choose to be born female.
Why when she saw women, she never looked at them the way she was supposed to, instead fixating on their beautiful clothes, while hers always felt at best utilitarian and at worst ugly.
Why her one period of near comfortable friendship, three short months, had been with a group of girls.
She'd wanted so badly to belong with them, but understood that she didn't, an understanding reinforced when her father had... expined things to her after a student teacher conference when he learned of her new friends.
She'd known these things and many more and could not, would not, unknow them.
Gender dysphoria, her pain had a name and it could be cured or at least treated.
By the time she went to bed that night she was nearly certain of what she wanted, nearly certain that she was her proper pronoun set, that she wanted another name. It came so easy, five letters that meant her.
“Why Amber?”
Amber gave a little shrug, “Why Madaline?”
Madaline spelled out her name.
"That's not how you-" Amber started.
“I found it in a list online, my brain took a look at the spelling and decided it wanted an incorrect pronunciation, it fit right and it was almost like the instrument, mandolin, Mad a lynn, and I changed it on my school documents before anyone corrected me.
Amber giggled slightly. “Seriously?”
It made Madaline grin and pinch the bridge of her nose.
“My only excuse was I was stoned out of my gourd when I was looking and now I walk through life having to correct people on a pronunciation that goes against the rules of English, which often seemed to have been made up by somebody higher than I was,” Madaline nudged her, “But why Amber?”
“Oh, um, it worked and I liked the color, though my favorite color is pink, so I guess I should have picked Rose or something.”
Madaline hummed at this, “You make a way better Amber than a Rose.” She patted Amber’s leg. “Keep going.”
The story continued and what came next was the part that actually amazed Madaline. Amber had found that pamphlet in early November. A month ter she’d been on hormones through a local informed consent clinic.
Alone, not talking to anybody, she’d jumped on what she’d needed, on impulse she called it. Just gone and gotten started, no anxiety, no fear, well, not enough to stop her. No one to talk to either, nobody to help her along nor to slow her down, she’d just gone for it. Madaline had never heard the like of it. The speed at which she’d progressed from the realization to actually doing something about it was so unusual.
“I got my scripts filled and took that first dose and I just felt so much better, everything felt like...” she trailed off.
Madaline can’t keep from smiling at her, thinking back on her own first round of estrogen, stolen from a medicine cabinet at a party she’d gone to at 15. “Yeah,” she concluded.
“It felt like it fixed something broken in me, something I’d only just started to understand was broken, and I mean um, like I was sure, but I wasn’t sure, not really, not until I took those pills and its like oh, that’s all I have to do, just let myself be a girl, because I am.”
Amber smiles at her and its so real it's almost soul crushing in it's beauty. "Those first few weeks, it felt like everything was going to be alright, that they'd keep getting better. I felt so alive. I was actually starting to think about trying to talk to some people."
Amber’s bottom lip slowly puffed out, the muscles in her jaw quivering. She shook her head and when the motion stopped the smile was gone. “But I- I made a mistake, like I knew that trans people aren’t always accepted, that there are people who don’t understand and bigots, transphobia and stuff, you know, the pamphlets talked some about that, but I got this idea in my head and it was like another moment of impulse or maybe I was just riding on the impulse that got me to the clinic."
Madaline's fingers tried to squeeze into a fist around her apple.
“My parents always said they just wanted to make sure I was happy. They...” She shook her head again and her volume began to crank up once more, "They told me that over and over and over," she spat the st word with a swing of her fist in the air and then seemed to realize how loud she was getting, so she took several deep breaths and returned to a more moderate tone. "I should have thought it through, I should have been more careful, I shouldn’t have told them, not- not so quickly." She chewed at her lip, for a moment her face boarded on indignant, as though she fully, under no uncertain terms, got that what she'd gone through was a fundamental betrayal, but when she looked back to Madaline she'd returned to that anguished appeal for Madaline to understand. "He called me a girl, all the time- I just," she ran a hand through her hair, then just as quickly smoothed it back when she realized the disorder she'd created, "I don't know, it made so much sense, I felt so much better and I just thought, cause they said they wanted me to be happy, so I thought I could just- I thought if I showed them the pamphlets and, you know, it's like you were right Dad, that's what's been wrong with me I'm actually your daughter and they have these meds and I can fix it and I feel so much better and-" her breathing picked up again.
Madaline wrapped her in another hug until she slowed back down.
"I was so stupid, but," she gave another little marionette shrug. "But I guess in the end... waiting probably wouldn't have changed what- probably wouldn't have changed if they wanted me."
It had been Christmas Eve, presents under the tree, stockings hung with care including one with Amber's deadname embzoned on it, there were cookies in the oven. Her dad had seemed like he was in a good mood, until she used the word transgender and told them for Christmas she wanted to be called Amber and for them to try to use she/her pronouns. And, of course the pamphlet's, she'd tried to show them the pamphlets.
How this had gone was fairly self evident, but Madaline internally unfurled a checklist of things transphobic parents say when their kids come out to them.
“They told me I was confused.”
Check.
“That I was a man.”
Check.
“That the school had indoctrinated me.”
Check.
“That they weren’t going to help pay for my….” a choked breath, “perversion.”
Check.
“I tried to expin over and over. I tried to- I kept- I kept trying to get them to read the pamphlets... the pamphlets..." she trailed off.
Madaline watched it happen again, like someone ran killl
It went on for far longer than the previous occasions, but not forever, it couldn't have been more than ninety seconds, but after the first minute she did something that forced Madaline to try to bring her out of it.
Still shut down, Amber's jittering hand slowly crept to its owner's face, touching the right side with her fingers, almost a caress; cheek, bottom lip, eye.
Madaline's blood went cold.
"Amber, princess?" Madaline said softly.
Amber snapped back with a blink, she gnced around, "Sorry, I... Sorry, um, what was I saying?"
Madaline was about to throw on the breaks, they could continue this another night, but before she could-
“Um, right, um so they told me I had to choose between getting to come home and help with my school and keeping my car, I had- I had to choose between those things and my- my perv-”
“Living as yourself,” Madaline interrupted.
Various ultimatums, check, check, check. They’d hit all the major chords, all but Jesus had appeared.
Amber was already enrolled for the spring semester, the down payment so to speak was done, no take backsies, but any future fees would not only mean the anticipated accumution of considerable debt, but the immediate costs would be Amber’s to handle without any familial help. Between it and the cost of living and the cost of her transition, which was actually just an additional major increase to the cost of living, well, it had been too much for Amber to handle by herself, Mis U was not the cheapest school to start with.
“They told me, they loved me, but they- anyway I couldn’t give it up, I couldn’t, I couldn’t go back-” Amber says, evidently waiting for Madaline to call her stupid for what she'd done.
Madaline doesn’t think she’s stupid, Madaline thinks sticking to what she needed under that pressure was very brave.
“Before... everything happened..."
Everything? Jesus flying fucking Christ!
"I'd gotten some Christmas cards from my aunt and my grandparents and they'd sent me some money and I had that plus some left over after Christmas shopping. I got dad a- well, it doesn't matter. Anyway I couldn't stay, so... I walked to the bus station," she giggled. "Wasn't even sure they would be running, but they were and I used the money to get me back to school. So I spent Christmas in my dorm that year." A short vacancy occurred, but she bounced out and back in. "Forgot my phone," she added like it was a cursory note.
Didn't have her phone. Arms screamed in Madaline's head, she wasn't going to ask, but...
The fuck of it was that it was perfectly possible that everything Amber had said so far was the limit of it, but...
The questions hung over her mind like storm clouds.
What else, Amber, what else did they say, what else did he do?
There was that word that Amber had used in the bathroom, it was such a strange choice, it worked, but it felt unnatural in the sentence, part of it was the way she'd said it. The weight she'd given it. Like the word had a physical presence, a density, gravity even.
Did they tell you wanting to be a girl was inappropriate? That the way you were behaving was inappropriate? That you were inappropriate?
Madaline suspected there was a strong chance that the word, inappropriate, might constantly circle about Amber’s brain, like a shark around a small boat, waiting for any opportunity to strike.
But then there was the even worse ideas; the image of a man much rger than Amber, rge and angry, standing over her as she offered up her pamphlets, like she'd been holding out a token to a belligerent deity, a boon in return for being spared his wrath.
Because the thing was, Madaline herself had stayed in the dorms through winter break one year and she knew the Mis U dorm policies, she'd made a habit of regurly blowing them to hell; international students were usually assumed to stay, but everyone else, you had to get approval way in advance. You weren’t allowed to just come back on Christmas Eve.
It was perfectly possible that she'd told the housing management of her situation and they'd let her stay, but everything Madaline had seen of the girl implied she’d have been more likely to lie.
What else did your parents do, Amber? Did they take your phone, is that why you left it behind? Did they try to lock you somewhere?
Then there was the way she’d touched her face.
How’d you look when you showed back up at school? Like you needed a crisis intervention center? Maybe a doctor? And when they tried to get you to go, tried to get you to talk to someone, what did you say to get them to just let you go back to your dorm? I'm not sure, but somewhere in there did you also tell them that they didn't need to be worried about the state you were in, because see it was actually you, careless, clumsy, you. Not paying attention on your way out, silly thing that you are, why you just tripped and fell down the stairs.
The thought seethed inside Madaline, like bile rising in her throat, but she swallowed it; she couldn't know that for sure, it might have been worse or it might have been exactly as Amber had told it, she wasn't going to press it, she was only here for what Amber decided to tell her:
She told her of a hellish schedule.
Her one stroke of luck had been getting a marginally better job at a coffee shop off campus, the one she’s still at.
That spring she'd taken as many hours as she could from both her new job and from the dish room of one of the school's cafes, work she'd retained from the previous semester.
In other words Amber spent her spring semester working her ass off and studying, doing her best to keep her grades up, hoping for a miracle.
“For the first couple of months, you know, I just kept thinking, they’ll change their minds, they'll call the school and try to get a hold of me. I guess they had the same idea as me, cause they never did.”
Amber had avoided buying anything that wasn't a necessity, including food.
A new arm went off in Madaline's head.
For sustenance she'd relied on her proximity to the university cafeterias where a meal pn was included with her tuition.
The reminder of the god awful overpriced scam of a meal pn made Madaline feel a little better and the arm quieted. Except there were the days you worked off campus and what about when the cafes were closed or too far or you didn't have enough time, but the even bigger issue is that you look back on that time and you don't seem to talk about it like you realize, even now, that you were in fact deprived of a necessity.
"It didn't bother me too much, I wasn't very hungry, cause I was kind of, pretty... upset... and I was kind of overweight anyway," Amber shrugged. "You know... I needed to make myself..."
Don't say appropriate.
"Better."
Madaline pockets this conversation for ter.
When she'd left home for freshman year she'd had a cheap ptop to do school work on and a Nintendo Switch with a handful of games, the Switch and games had been sold in January, the ptop near the end of the semester.
"Took me forever to save up to buy the Switch in High School, mowed a lot of wns." Amber said it with notable cheer, as though recalling a fond memory, but for just a moment once the sentence was out, Amber started glowering, nearly fuming, but then it was over, the dark look came and went from her face as though she'd been under a fast passing cloud. "But it's not like I had time to py anymore, so it's not like I needed it. Still, I miss Cuphead and Mega Man,they were good for when you need to shut things off, but God, there was so much blood work that first year."
All the money she'd saved was put towards her doctors appointments, towards her transition and items to facilitate it: hormones, cheap fem cut clothes, cheap makeup, fem marketed hygiene supplies.
“I thought about saving up to try to get back in for the fall, but when it came down to it, with the way things were, the hours I could manage, how much I was being paid, I could either pursue my transition or I could maybe, maybe get back into school in the fall.” Amber shook her head. “The idea of waiting, slowing down was-”
“Intolerable,” Madaline said.
Amber nodded.
But even in those dire circumstances came the amazing part again, under such pressure, a crucible of a schedule, wandering each day through an emotional wastend, Amber did it and she did it alone.
She bought a high end home IPL, she started doing yoga, she voice trained, she taught herself makeup, she did everything short of surgery, she did everything totally alone.
“The pamphlets had some good resources I'd already been looking at, how to stuff mostly, I imploded my whole life for this thing that made me feel better, so why wait on any of it, I just kept going, I learned so much so fast.” She giggled. “I don’t think my brain has ever really recovered. But keeping on with it, trying to make myself… feminine, it was the only thing that made me feel better.”
“The thing you couldn’t give up you mean?”
“Yeah, I guess that makes sense.”
“Hmm, what was your GPA when you left?”
“3.8”
“Good girl. Very impressive”
Amber grew warm, her skin vibrated.
“What was your favorite part?”
“Of what?”
“When you were doing all this, what did you enjoy the most?”
“Oh, makeup, I was really into make up for a bit, that and voice training.”
“You are a rarity.”
“Am I?”
“Oh yeah.”
Amber asking that was near enough confirmation for a question Madaline was going to be compelled to ask. For now it could wait.
Call her stupid or shortsighted, but even knowing the answer, having been given all of the facts, Madaline herself would not appreciate all the consequences of Amber's upbringing for quite some time.
“With a lot of trans women you have to stand there with a cattle prod to get them to voice train.”
“Well, I was always kind of good at pying with my voice, so I guess I had some background. Worst was the IPL, it made my face hurt and trying to get like my back and stuff on my own was a pain,” Amber self consciously touched her face, no vacant expression this time, instead seeking for loose hairs that may have grown when she wasn't looking. “Trying to figure out how to dress was kind of upsetting for a minute too.”
Madaline nodded.
“Like, you know, there's stuff you want to wear, but, I was still on the boy's floor for one thing, though my roommate was never home so I kind of had a single, which was helpful, cause I was basically having a very productive nervous breakdown.”
She says it like it's a joke.
Madaline doesn’t think it's funny.
“And then there’s the fact that the stuff I want to wear, it’s not really appropriate yet, so I use the money I’ve got for some used girl clothes so I can feel comfortable and just, you know, nothing too extravagant. Nothing that calls too much attention to myself.”
Madaline took note of her hard switch into the present tense, how she pulls a little at the baggy grey sweater she's wearing, looking down at it, frowning.
She'd also noticed that after two years Amber hadn’t seemed to evolve beyond that point. It wasn't just how worn the clothes were, nor that many of them were a little too big.
Rather, it was extremely odd that for someone as developed in so many other respects as Amber was, that her entire sense of style seemed built around dressing down.
It also wasn't an attraction to any sort of butch chic either.
They were preferable to her male clothes, but Amber had expressed that they weren't really what she wanted (in other words she didn't like them) and that they were good for not calling attention to herself ( in other words they were good for minimizing herself). In a sense she was staying so safe in her choice of presentation that it verged on boymoding.
Here, Madaline can't help herself:
“It’s been two years, don’t you think it might be time to try something more adventurous?”
“Well, I guess I’m a little closer now and I think about things, sometimes, but I don’t really have the money to afford it and Simon likes how I dress, he helped me buy some stuff when I moved in, it was sweet of him.” Amber wiped at her eyes as though to get rid of tears that weren’t flowing. “He really helped me so much… Do you… I mean if you think I should try something more adventurous, that it might be a little more appropriate now… I pass right? Sometimes I think I do and Simon says I do a lot of the time, but I get worried.”
Madaline literally bites her tongue. A lot of the time? Figuratively, she bites her tongue clean off to prevent a rant.
With her rant swallowed, she looks Amber over to give herself time to consider telling Amber what passing actually is and means, telling her that she is incredibly beautiful, but that worrying about passing beyond a security perspective is ultimately to concern yourself with a beauty standard held by people who should burn in fucking hell. Madaline decides to save it for another time.
“Yeah, Amber, I’d say you pass, completely, nobody mistakes you for a guy. Ever. Under any circumstances.”
Amber beamed at the reassurance.
“I do think you’d benefit from a wardrobe upgrade though, it might help boost your self esteem.”
Amber gave a shrug, “I still can’t really afford it.”
“Right, well, we can look at potential solutions."
Megan would probably throw her some of her old clothes, some of her smaller stuff might work, she burns through looks fast enough, although given some of the selection that would be avaible...
A little flickering heat, like a pilot light, lit in Madaline's stomach, it was almost immediately put out by a rolling wave of self contempt at her own ck of self control.
Fuck, no, everything else aside, I do not gutter brain while a girl is trauma dumping, the fuck is wrong with you, okay, we'll back burner Megan's excess wardrobe if we can't figure something else out.
Madaline put her hand back on Amber's shoulder, "Amber, I’ve got to ask, those five months you were back at school why didn’t you come,” to see me “to any of the support groups?”
Amber actually ughed. “You know what the funny thing about asking for help is?”
“What?”
“You have to be able to talk to people and I had trouble talking to people before, but after my parents I just couldn’t, so I kind of kept to myself. I was lucky I found my doctor at the clinic before- well you see what I mean.”
“What about online, did you try to maybe reach out to anyone?”
“I don’t really talk to people online, I just got a bluesky on impulse a few months ago, and I posted a few pics of me and Simon, but I don’t really use it, I kind of suffer from the same issues online that I suffer from with people in real life.”
Madaline said nothing, the facts of the expnation Amber had just given ricochet around her brain for about 30 seconds. “Wait? What?” she blurted.
Amber looked taken aback by her sharp tone, uncomfortable.
With too much haste and too little thought, Madaline took Amber's wrist and rubbed a thumb over it to reassure her. Don’t fucking scare her away. Don’t shut her up. You fuck this up she might not be this honest with anyone ever again.
“I’m sorry, I heard you, it just surprised me. That’s unusual. You’re still not talking to anyone online?”
Amber shook her head.
“Okay, that’s okay, princess, I just wanted to make sure I understood what you were saying.”
Madaline’s head swam. It was so hard for her to imagine. Plenty of trans people were isoted, but she firmly believed that even those that ended up as shut ins, would in the long run reach out and make some connection online, eventually they talk to someone. That Amber was so far into her transition and yet still so isoted was unimaginable to her.
Amber went on for a little longer, but at this point she didn’t need to say anything else about what those five months had been like, what they had entailed. The images rolled through Madaline's head like a st time on sequence at the start of a TV show.
Amber slowly growing more herself, more and more beautiful even as the rationing cut away at her. Dressing down in baggy fem cut hoodies as the weather grew warmer, scurrying in the shadows of various lecture halls, running frantically from job to job to dorm to css to job and yes there was her transition reted activities and the joy she got from those, but far more common when she wasn’t working, wasn’t studying, would have been her, alone, unbearably upset, but unable to cry or else rocking and rattling herself to pieces obsessing over the imperative her fucking parents had managed to upload into her when they'd... hurt her very badly.
It was the same one that had haunted most woman, trans and cis, to one degree or another across the centuries; you’re not good enough so become perfect, be pretty like we want, keep your body and mood light like we want, be appropriate or else no one will ever love you, and in many ways Amber had bent her transition, her life around that edict. Even if it was one she could never dream of applying to other women, it was probably always in her head, screaming the standards at her.
The irony of it was sickening.
The story was all there, the details self evident, there was only one thing left.
Madaline quietly took a deep breath and asked, “How did you and Simon meet?”
Don’t say Eating in Akley Hall Courtyard. Don’t say eating in Akley Hall Courtyard. Don’t say eating in Akley Hall Courtyard.
“Um, well in the spring I had Geo 201 at 3:10 in Dyer."
Fuck, thank you Satan, thank you so much, I swear I will always do your good wor-
"So I usually made sure to get a box lunch at Akley and ate in the courtyard."
Madaline kept her face calm and comforting, meanwhile inside herself she let loose with a torrent of screaming, she howled and raved in an agony of appalled frustration at this twisted cosmic joke.
But she'd forgotten the hand around the apple, she was trying to form a fist again, this time her forefinger pressed so hard that it pierced into the fruit's flesh.
Amber caught sight of Madaline's death grip, “Are you… okay? Did your apple do something to offend you?” She was trying to joke, her face made it apparent that she thought she'd maybe said something wrong.
Madaline unlocked her grip, “Yeah, sorry, I'm fine, I just- we must have passed each other so many times, it's weird to think about,” Madaline gave her a smile, as though they were sharing a funny bit of trivia.
Except it wasn’t funny and it wasn’t that weird, hadn't that been the second thing she'd picked up about Amber, thing one anxious, thing two, how hard she worked to make herself even smaller, to go unseen, to ensure the universe went undisturbed by her presence. At least it means that at the time this was going on she was at least getting one regur meal.
Amber goes on, finishing the story:
Simon introduced himself, started asking to sit with her.
"He sits with me a couple times and then he um," she hesitates, "Clocked me. It was my nails, I think and I'd started wearing just a bit of makeup when I'd go out. He asked me my pronouns and I couldn't handle going any other way when someone asked directly like that, I was scared at first, but I couldn't not introduce myself as myself."
The future couple continued to sit together regurly, it didn't take him long to ask her out.
And she says yes, because of course she does, he was doing the one thing that at the time anyone would have needed to do to nd a date with Amber, he treated her like a girl and wasn't Simon just a perfect fucking gentleman. A few more dates follow. He never takes her to super busy pces, but he also never seems to be ashamed to be seen with her. He's nice to her, not only treating her like a girl, but treating her well.
Madaline in her state of, call it, heightened irritation figured Amber likely had a seriously uninformed concept of being treated well, but yeah, compared to the kind of attention Amber was used to receiving in her close personal retionships, Simon had probably seemed heaven sent.
She has to work very hard to try to keep a handle on the part of her that is dying to point this fact out, her brain providing a string of tantalizing statements to convey the information, the fvors included:
- The Simply Factual, as in: Please, Amber, I don't mean to patronize you, but I think you might have a seriously uninformed concept of being treated well.
- The Irate, as in: Are you fucking kidding me, how the fuck does he get away with it, treated you well? What was it? What did he do? The bare fucking minimum of treating you as what you are? Jesus fucking Christ I could fucking scream. Seriously I want to fucking strangle him awake, it drives me fucking crazy, how did this fucking happen. What the fuck did I do to deserve this, cause you sure as shit didn't. Seriously what the fuck?
- The Flirtatious, as in: Princess, I think you might have a seriously uninformed concept of being treated well, so how about, Friday night at 9:00, you get into a bck dress and then into my car and I will take you to somewhere Simon should have taken you and one or two more pces he likely doesn't want you to know about; we'll stick to the area of campus to be fair, we'll do just enough to make sure you can do a proper scientific method compare and contrast.
She has to kill each of these as they appear in her brain, factual and flirtatious go down easy, especially as one of them is highly inappropriate for the current circumstances, once again, the poor girl is trauma dumping, never mind the other issues involved. There was another little fsh of contempt for herself over her brain producing the line at all.
The irate is the one that goes down the hardest as it's the one she most feels the immediate urge to let loose; it seriously gets under her skin how this girl had been right under her nose, walking through her stomping grounds and Madaline hadn't noticed, but her step brother had.
Madaline takes a mental step back and tries to remind herself that she has no proof whatsoever of ill intent on Simon's part and as much as she hates to admit it and oh god, she hates to admit it, while probably not what Amber needed at the time, Simon likely served as a grounding force when Amber had likely been circling the drain of a highly dangerous downward spiral.
Stop being a crazy bitch and be thankful that since you didn't notice her, that he did, because it could have been worse, right? She could have been found by someone even worse, someone actually bad for her, right?
It takes a second, but based on what she knows and what she's seen, Madaline finally admits that this is probably true. With her prominent pride and her sense of indignation already fired up, accepting the fact feels like sucking a lug nut off a tire before forcing herself to swallow it.
By that point in the semester it had been clear that Amber wouldn't be returning in the fall. For around two months she'd scrambled to find a pce to live; something, anything that didn't end with her on the streets or worse back at her parents; a tough job, trying to find a pce to let you room when you have limited funds that were about to be even more limited as the work in the school cafe was seasonal and only for students, as well as no friends, trouble communicating with people, and of course an ongoing mental health crisis.
Fuck, it was tough to find a roommate in the best of times.
No worries though, Simon had been graduating, Simon had a good job lined up, Simon had offered to let her move in with him, to help her out and Amber gratefully accepted and then they were boyfriend and girlfriend and then two years went by...
“And things have been really good,” Amber smiles with her doll smile. “Oh,” she says with a little ugh, “then you come in and have your line about wanting cake.”
With that, it was done. Madaline could tell it was by the few long breaths Amber took, she could feel it was so by the slowing beat behind Amber's thin, just short of bony wrist.
The story had been told and had been told with all the gory details Amber was willing or capable of providing.
All was quiet, the television hummed out its disuse. Madaline wondered if Amber had been given any opportunity to really y everything out in the st two years. But of course the answer would be no.
Simon would perhaps know a censored version and maybe he had his suspicions but even then, would he actually understand? Not enough.
Though in reality, Amber didn't understand, she did not understand either the full scope of what she'd really gone through nor what she had done. Speedrunning both her self realization and her transition on a shoestring budget, while maintaining her grades, while going through such a period of awful turmoil, all alone.
Counter to her anxious demeanor, doing what she'd done took commitment and brains and well, irony of ironies, all things considered, it took balls. Did Amber understand how impressive it was? No, of course she didn’t.
“You did so much on your own, you’re amazing,” said Madaline.
“Simon helped a lot. I’d be lost without Simon,” Amber reassured her.
“Right, well, still it's very impressive. You should know that.”
“Sorry, about just kind of going on about all that. Thanks for listening to me.”
“I asked, you can feel free to trauma dump on me anytime you need to and you don’t need to apologize. You should feel proud, not ashamed.” Madaline brushed a strand of hair from Amber’s face, gazing at her.
When Madaline forced herself to look away she fully took in the apple she'd selected so long ago before she'd sent them down this route, it dawned on her that this was in fact sweet fruit and not a stress ball.
Somewhere between her head and her stomach she suddenly ached with furious hunger.
She bit into the apple, chewed, swallowed, then did it again.
They sat in silence as Madaline devoured her apple, stripping it with her teeth down to the core.
Their silence was apparently comfortable enough now for Amber to break it, vocalizing a stray thought she hadn't intended. “Why do you call me that?"
“Call you what?”
“Princess?”
Madaline bit her core in half.
Amber wrinkled her nose in a mixture of disgust and fascination as the taller woman chewed and swallowed.
“I give some people nicknames, I call you princess cause you obviously are one and if nobodies told you of your obvious royal pedigree, somebody should have.” She stops herself from gncing upwards.
Amber’s real smile peaked out. Madaline was now certain that she could tell the difference.
All of Amber's smiles, true and false, reach up to her eyes, so that's not a reliable gauge.
Instead, imagine someone suddenly lighting a match in front of their shadowy face; scratch, pop, fre, and it's there, you see it, her whole face, eyes and everything brightened while carving her features into sharper definition.
The real ones also always featured at least a glimpse of teeth.
Once you get a handle on it it's easy to see, the false smiles are pretty, they're nice, but they're also dull in comparison.
“I like it," said Amber.
“Good. Thank you for being honest with me.”
Another real smile.
Madaline considered the half a core in her hand, she took a deep breath, blew it out between the circle of her lips very slowly, before tossing the half a core back, eating it.
“You're not supposed to eat the core, cyanide.”
“Cyanide hasn’t met the likes of me."
“You’re so weird.” Amber had gotten even closer.
“You have no idea,” said Madaline in her best Lion King impression. She licked the sweet juice off her fingers, Amber watched her.
Madaline deyed for a moment and then asked the question, “Do you have any friends Amber, right now, real life or online, by the sound of things I assume not online, but any friends?”
“Oh… well… you know, Simon.”
“Simon's your boyfriend, it’s not the same thing.”
Amber nodded, fumbling at her wrist, her wonderful smile was gone. “There's El.”
"Who's El?"
"One of my coworkers."
“Do you hang out with her outside of work?”
“No, I guess not,” she said, a little shamefaced.
Amber thought through a couple more acquaintances, people she was on good terms with, that seemed to like her in very specific circumstances, she discarded both of these as not what Madaline meant either.
Madaline nodded, she grabbed the remote and pressed py, starting Fullmetal Alchemist back up. She could feel Amber looking up at her. She was hoping that given the ground of their conversation Amber would make this just a little bit easy on her. She, for instance, could say the words hanging on her face as she looked at Madaline: There’s you, we’ve been hanging out almost every night for the st little bit, you know, are we maybe friends?
Madaline waits, she looks over at her, Amber's lips are just slightly tight and for a moment she thinks Amber's actually going to say it, but then she watches as the anxiety wins out, killing the question before it can be said aloud.
Amber turned back to the screen in serene acceptance of Madaline being cataloged with the others, a positive retionship, but no, they did not count as friends.
Madaline retrieves her vape pen. She hits it and with a thin cloud rolling slowly out of her mouth, she speaks. Her words come casually, carelessly, to hide how carefully she is managing the statement. “I’ll be your friend.”
“Really?” Amber said, snapping back to Madaline, then blinking up at her, like a gazelle staring in disbelief at a Lioness.
“Yeah,” said Madaline, nonchantly. “If you have no other friends, then I guess that would make me your best friend.”
Amber watches her as she clenches her teeth before utilizing such an unMadaline term that the absurdity of its appearance in her speech whips Amber up into a hurricane of ughter.
“We'll be besties.”
Amber begins to ugh and keeps ughing, eventually she doubles over, her narrow shoulders shaking.
Madaline smiles, warmth like from a shot of rotgut hits her belly and spreads; unrestrained and hard and golden.
Amber finally manages to stop. “Um, you mean like, seriously? Right?”
“You can ugh all you want, everybody knows I'm hirious, but I’m not joking. I’ll be your bestie.”
It sends Amber into giggles again.
When she’s done Madaline pulls Amber closer to her.
“Thanks Madaline, if you're serious... I'd like that so much.” Amber leaned into her, stopping just short of wrapping her arms around her and cuddling her like a teddy bear.
“I am, it's my pleasure.”
With Amber so close for so long, Madaline's nose clearly identifies the enjoyable smell of citrus coming off of her; a wonderful mixture of oranges and lemons and limes, but there was also a hint of something else hidden beneath that she was unfamiliar with.
In time, after their retionship grew far more intimate, Amber would identify the scent for her as night lilies.
As they sat there watching the episode, Madaline reassured herself multiple times that this will be fine, that she has everything under control, that she can manage this, but when it's time to hang it up and go to bed, when Amber waved to her from down the hall before entering Simon's room, that's when the jukebox inside Madaline's head clicked on once more.
The jukebox in her head does whatever it wants and it's a fuck.
So a record goes down, the needle drops and it begins to skip, repeating a line from the chorus of 10 Years Wasted by Felons For Fridays, it pys over and over, denying her the release of the panicked guitar solo.
She carries it with her into her own room, then into bed and then a while ter down into sleep:
“I've got this sinking feeling…
I've got this sinking feeling…
Fuck this, fuck my life, fuck it all,
My good luck's gone bad!”
Xoraxorel