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Amy 5: Komori Sisters United Against Evil! by Amy Komori The original characters and plot of this story are the property of the author. No infringement of pre-existing copyright is intended. This story is copyright (c) 2010 Amy Komori. All rights reserved. Chapter One: The (Stupid) People's Court I still did not skate, not even on weekends. Not because I was afraid of Patrick or Mike or Little Josh. I was. People just had other plans for me. And by "people," I mean the people of our home state, as well as Mrs. Komori. The first Tuesday in October, while I was still pondering the infinite mysteries of my newly awakened female reproductive cycle, Mrs. Komori took a half day off work and came and got me out of class. I knew it was coming because we'd been duly informed a while back, and so I spent all morning with a stomach ache. A nervous looking girl with impossibly lush red hair came to third period Science and gave the teacher a blue slip then hauled ass like she'd left something on fire back in the office. "Amy," the teacher said. This is it, I told myself. My stomach griped as I took the slip and read that my guardian was there and I should come immediately to the office and sign out for the afternoon. I went back to my desk, gathered up my books, saw Ashleigh Bodine giving me the evil eye, shot her a bird (shielded by my body so our teacher couldn't see) and walked double-time downstairs. Mrs. Komori was sitting in the outer office and she smiled when she saw me, a sympathy smile meant to cheer me up. "Leaving us so soon, Amy?" the older secretary asked. It was a stupid thing to say, but she meant well. I mean, of course I was leaving. But she was one of those cheerful cherubic-type women, the short dumpling kind who wore Santa Claus stick pins in December?she was wearing an orange pumpkin one, actually?and always tried to joke with you when you looked down. I'm pretty sure my usual tan skin was looking a bit sallow so she took pity on me. Still, I couldn't help but think the only reason she knew my name was because she'd filled out the blue slip. "I guess," I breathed as I signed out. "Hope you feel better, babe," the secretary said as Mrs. Komori held the door open for me. Behind us, the red-haired girl was sitting on her hands, trying not to let anyone see her face. "I'm sure she will," Mrs. Komori replied. "She thought I was?" I said. "Sick. I know. Let's get this over with." "I was thinking the exact same thing. This is worse than any doctor appointment." I couldn't believe how whiny that had come out. I was in worse shape than I thought. "Which reminds me," Mrs. Komori said. "In light of your recent... um... development, I wonder if I should make one of those for you. What do you think?" "Um... maybe they do that stuff for you in prison?" "Crazy! You're not going to prison." "That was a joke. I thought I'd bank some good humor now, because I probably won't feel like joking later." "That's a fantastic idea. Maybe we can use this kind of thinking- ahead-ness in your character defense. You know, at your trial." We drove downtown to the courthouse?this big stone building with a domed clock turret, the whole thing super-historical and locally famous, built in the late 19th century-- and couldn't find a parking spot for the longest time. Mrs. Komori and I both started to get nervous now; the last thing either of us wanted to do was be late for my court date. Finally, a guy in a huge shiny black pick-up waved to us to let us know he was leaving. Mr. Chivalrous, helping out the damsels-in-distress, I guess. We took his spot, went up the concrete steps towards the building. Just before we went in the double doors, I stopped, looked around at the sunny fall afternoon, still warm but no longer humid. I took a huge, deep breath. My last taste of freedom, I told myself melodramatically. "In you go, Honey Bunny," Mrs. Komori said, using my outlaw handle to put me in my place. In the lobby the receptionist told us where to go. Upstairs, to the juvenile court room. We rode an elevator up, sat around with a lot of other parents and kids, went in after someone said, "Komori," and in we went, into this small courtroom. The judge shuffled some papers and read for a few moments while I fidgeted. Then there was a discussion between the judge and some of the other adults present, who I thought were probably court officers or something. I had trouble following the conversation because some of it was in legalese between the judge and Mrs. Komori, who seemed pretty fluent in it. And I couldn't figure out the judge's deal. Sometimes he seemed on the verge of making a joke and I'd start to relax, and then he'd look at me all pissed and make my heart stop with fear I was going to end up in YDC. Finally, the judge asked, "Ms. Komori, do you admit or deny the charge against you?" I didn't know who he was talking to at first. Ms. Komori? Mrs. Komori? Then I realized everyone was staring at me. "I... admit the charge?" "You sound a little unsure." "Yeah... yes sir. I'm sure. I admit." "All right, your plea is so entered. Since we're all here today, we'll move to the disposition phase." The judge told us he had leeway in sentencing, and that our state's juvenile court wasn't based on punishment but on changing behavior. Therefore, he decided I needed three months' probation, plus I was banned indefinitely from that particular convenience store by owner's request. He added, "Contingent on the successful completion of your probation, your record will be expunged on your 18th birthday. Do you understand what 'expunged' means, Amy?" "I think so." "You either do or you don't." "Then I do... sir?" In practical terms, all of this meant once a month until after Christmas, Mrs. Komori would have to drive me to the courthouse downtown and we'd meet with my probation officer and discuss what I'd done. So if I wanted to steal any more porno mags, I'd have to do it at Waldenbooks at the mall. And then when I was finally legally an adult, I wouldn't have a record. "Do you think I'm being a little harsh?" the judge asked me. I looked at Mrs. Komori. Why was he asking me my opinion about the sentence? What was I supposed to do? Review it? Thumbs down, dude. That wouldn't fly, so I fudged it with the classic three-word response so popular at Delacroix Junior: "I don't know." "Well, you should know. Your guardian is trying her best to teach you right from wrong. I think you're basically a good kid who has gotten some mixed-up ideas in her head. I want you to be a little scared here. It'll do you good. Three months and hopefully you'll understand that what you did was serious business." He looked at me and I knew he expected a polite reply. "Yes, sir," I croaked. On the way home, Mrs. Komori said, "We got pretty lucky in there, Amy." "How so?" "If they had done a complete background check on you?" "Oh..." Mrs. Komori meant there were still some loose ends. If I had done something serious enough, the whole paper house she'd built for me would've come down around my ears and there was no telling what would have happened. A non-person? Deportation? Experimentation? I had no factual basis for these horror movie fantasies but my imagination went apeshit on me. I needed to toe the line, or walk it or draw it. Whatever you did to the line to show you were a proper young citizen and had learned your lesson. "I think we'd better extend your house arrest, too," Mrs. Komori said. "School and back, no skating. Anything else, you ask special permission. I want to make sure we get you clear of all of this before you get any more opportunities for trouble." And that's why I had to sit out. Weekends were strictly for studying and doing things with Mrs. Komori. Running errands, cleaning house, doing laundry, working in the yard. I was a junior high student and a personal assistant and I dreamed of flying off the vert and punching Patrick, Mike and Little Josh in their stupid faces and reclaiming my spot above the coping. One day, I promised myself... Meanwhile, my big sister was going to classes at the huge university just off downtown, not too far from where we lived. While she was carrying a full load to start her freshman year, she could have been home in plenty of time for dinner each night. Frequently, she wasn't. Sometimes Emily was off doing social stuff, but recently?in fact, since right around the time I started school?Darla had been conspicuously missing. No more three phone calls an hour, no more cereal bowls and messes I had to clean up as if I were her stupid mother. No more scary presence and menacing eyes. Mrs. Komori, with her ace detective-like skills of observation, noticed almost the same time I did. "Where's Darla these days? Are you two taking any of the same classes?" Mrs. Komori asked one rare night when Emily joined us for dinner. Emily stopped eating and her fluid mind came up with a story quickly. "She's been kinda sick." Among her many skills, Emily was an almost professional-level liar (and she worked at it), but this time I don't think her mom believed her. I sure as fuck didn't. Mrs. Komori let it drop because she probably thought Emily and Darla had a falling out and they'd mend it eventually, so the less said the better. I wasn't so sure. Emily studied, went to shows, painted portraits of me for her studio painting class, ran around looking frazzled. She seemed like a biology-based perpetual motion engine. All black hair and long limbs, darting in and out of our lives at will. If my own metabolism hadn't been amped up into a state a hummingbird would envy, Emily would have exhausted me. Instead, she fascinated. But there was this undercurrent of darkness to her energy. More than once she came in with extra books in her arms and a secretive air. One evening she left a pile of them on the kitchen counter near the phone. Being a nosy little bitch and wondering what I might be missing out on, I peeked at their spines. Holy shit, I thought. What are they teaching college freshmen these days? I mean, I was all for a liberal education, but she had "The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion" by some guy named Sir James George Frazer, plus some broken-backed soft covers with words like "Rituals," "Spells" and "Ceremonies" in their titles. I shuddered. "What are you doing?" I almost jumped out of my pants. Emily brushed past me and picked up her books. "Why are you reading this stuff?" I asked. "Nothing you need to worry about, Honey Bunny. Don't you have like some algebra homework to do or something?" She quick-stepped out of the kitchen. I half-expected to open her bedroom door one night and find her surrounded by flickering candles, an evil tome bound in human flesh open on her lap. And I wondered if that spooky someone who had been in our house a billion times happened to own just such a book. But that was stupid, right? Despite how consumed I was with my daily performance in the twin roles of "Pariah Schoolgirl" and "Delinquent on Probation," I couldn't stop thinking about those books and how close Emily was playing things now. Chapter Two: She Said Doe With the leaves changing from green to yellow and red, showering our yard and scuttling along the street gutters like dry little goblin skeletons, it was hard not to revisit the intense fear I'd felt in the immediate aftermath of Toby's disappearance; not all of it had been school-related, and Emily's reading material reminded me of that constantly. Halloween was in the air, "X-Files" and "Milennium" were on TV and magical undercurrents were in play all around us. I could feel them in tiny nerve signals making me jumpy. Jumpier than usual. One night, Emily slipped into my room. She'd been out with friends, a weeknight show with the Enemies, Seven Brothers and this new band which didn't even have an official name. They just called themselves Project A, and Emily knew the drummer. "Amy?" I rubbed my eyes. She smelled like smoke and alcohol. I breathed it in deeply. Is this a dream? I swam upward through sleep, tried to find the surface, wakefulness. "Can we talk?" "Sure..." Okay, talk. I could at least pretend to listen while I dozed. I was barely conscious, but what Emily told me definitely woke me the hell up. "Remember back when you were a guy?" "I vaguely remember something about that, yeah..." "When you first started, you know, changing? You said something about Darla then. Do you remember what it was?" "Kinda. I'm not sure I'm completely awake, dude. And that was like somewhere between my hair turning black and my junk going up inside me and turning into flowers. I think I'm supposed to skate today so how am I?" "Okay, you're totally babbling, so I'll let you go back to sleep." By the time Emily shut the door, I was fully awake. What I said about Darla that time... As a result, I didn't sleep at all the rest of the night. And furthermore, because of that, school was complete hell the next day. I had a dull headache and kept nodding off in my classes, so the teachers called on me even more than usual with questions I barely had any trouble answering, which meant even more resentment building among my peers. I couldn't eat lunch. We were having hamburgers, which were nasty; I wasn't too sure the soggy patties were even made of meat. Ashleigh Bodine had shoved me hard against the wall outside our science class and her little group had tittered as they passed. Payback for shooting her that bird. But I was used to foul food and equally foul bitches by now. My appetite was gone because of Emily's midnight visit to my room. Only a complete idiot would have failed to put this stuff together. My slow burning sex change. The Toby thing. The person who seemed to have it in for us both was also known for her interest in the paranormal and magical esoterica. Emily's metaphysical reading list. The question she'd asked. Emily was on the case and she wanted me left out of it. At least for now. I went outside and sat by myself on this low brick wall that ran between the main class complex and the P.E. building. If we finished our disgusting food quickly enough, we usually got a little bit of free time. Most of us spent it playing out our various rinky-dinky social dramas against the backdrop of these weathered red bricks, remnants of the original school that had been torn down to make way for our more modern one. Even with most of the first lunchers still eating in the cafeteria, there were a few kids out. Some were studying, some were frantically finishing the fourth period homework they should have done the night before, others were idly chatting. Just sitting there, thinking about how weird Emily had become, worried for her, trying to decide what to do. Should I demand she tell me everything? Tattle like a baby to Mrs. Komori? Then I heard this little sound, a barely-audible human noise kind of like the one Cindy Lou Who made in the Grinch cartoon. I was pretty sure it wasn't someone talking to me. Couldn't be. Hardly anyone talked to me these days unless they had something disparaging to say. Well, not the teachers. They were generally happy with my performance, if not my anti-social tendencies. So they usually said supportive things, which went in one ear and out the other. 'Um." Now I was getting annoyed. Someone was deliberately interrupting my thoughts. I turned, squinting against the mid-afternoon sun. This dark figure with a fiery halo all around her stepped up and sat down beside me, right on my left hand. I jerked it out from under her ass. Actually, she didn't so much sit as fall serendipitously into a sitting position. You know, rather than eat asphalt below the wall. "I-I was... trying to step off," she said. It was the same girl who had brought the blue slip from the office. Her deep red hair, a mess of soft coils, was unmistakable. She wore a puckered peasant top and a long skirt and stuck me as intensely girly in an oddball way, nothing like Ashleigh Bodine and her ilk. In fact, she kind of reminded me a bit of Darla. But this kid was so gawky and awkward and it was kind of endearing the way she'd managed to sit down perfectly on the brick wall while trying to do something else, apparently. Plus, she hadn't hurt my hand, which was definitely in her favor. "Are you okay?" I asked. Not that I really cared all that much. "Uh huh. Um... Someone told me you like the Breeders." "Huh?" "You don't? Like the Breeders?" She looked a genuinely distressed. A rumor turns out to be false? At Delacroix Junior High? How could the administrators let this happen? "Actually, I do, but who?" The girl opened the five-ring binder she held and inside were pages of dense blue ink, shaped like verses or poems. She quickly paged past them, too fast for me to read. Then she found what she was looking for: the CD booklet for "Pod," by, you know, the Breeders. If it had been "Last Splash," I wouldn't have been as impressed, but it was "Pod." Their first one. I considered "Last Splash" a fun listen, full of awesome tunes, but "Pod" was something special and had more of my favorites. It was Emily's number one album as well. The girl smiled happily, her face turning dark pink, a whole constellation of freckles beaming at me. "I like the Breeders, too." "That's really great and all, but I was kinda thinking about some important?" She frowned and looked a little lost. Her eyes darted as she looked for an out, or something more pleasant than my scowling face. "I'm sorry. I'll leave you alone if you?" "No, no. That's cool. What's your favorite song?" "I like 'When I Was a Painter.'" "Rad. I like 'Doe.'" "I love Kim Deal. She's my hero. I like to write poems and stuff and when I heard you liked the Breeders, I wanted to see if it was true 'cause I thought I was like the only kid in school who liked them." "What do poems have to do with anything?" "I wanna... It's stupid. Nevermind. I better go." "Stay. I wanna know about the poems now. You write poems? Can I read them?" "No!" Her green eyes went so wide I almost fell off the wall and her inadvertent shout rang across the campus. I started laughing and this weird ass girl blushed until I finally apologized. "I-I'm Sarah McAvoy," she said. "I'm?" "Everyone knows who you are. You're Amy. Amy Komori." An exaggeration. Our school was way too large for many people to know me by sight. Reputation might be another matter, but there were a few other fucked up guys and girls in the mix, too. I wasn't even the only one who was considered sexually transgressive. In other words, a slut. Or a whore. There were jock whores and all-purpose whores. I was a skater whore. Oh, one more thing might have differentiated me from the other outcasts?apparently, I was the only Asian kid who was openly racist against whites. Ashleigh Bodine and Denise confirmed it with various recreations of my Bratmobile performance. These kids didn't miss a trick! But flattery aside, Sarah McAvoy's garden path way of talking was really starting to intrigue me despite myself. "You were gonna tell me what you do with your poems. I mean, other than not let me read them." She looked hesitant, afraid to tell me. She said, almost too softly for me to hear, "I wanna write songs." Then we were surrounded by all the other first lunch kids and Sarah hopped off the wall and practically ran away, leaving me sitting there wondering what the fuck was her deal. The rest of the day I kind of drifted through my classes, present in body but not in spirit. I didn't see Sarah again for a while. Chapter Three: The Legend of Komori Hollow I went home that afternoon on the school bus because Mrs. Komori had to work late. Lurching along, bouncing without seatbelts, my ears filled with the roar of the other kids and the driver threatening to call our parents if we didn't behave. The best part was none of these kids seemed to know me, so I could just be anonymous and think. But I stupidly got off two stops early?bad guess?and hiked it home, crunching leaves with my Vans and wondering about Sarah McAvoy and her red hair. As I approached our neighborhood, she changed to Darla in my thoughts. I mean, they did look at least superficially similar. And once transposed with Sarah McAvoy in my brain, Darla took hold of my imagination and began shaping it towards fear. Maybe it was a Halloween feeling, strengthened by the golden sun sitting so much lower in the sky than it had when I first started school while summer died. Long tree shadows reached for me as I passed under them. I missed the chaos on the bus. Surrounded by churning, almost mindless monkey house energy. At least there I was physically in my element. Here I was a lonely wanderer through a suburban waste. The Last Girl on Earth. Darla. Creepy crawly Darla, gooseflesh and that someone-is-watching- you feeling. I mean, intellectually, I knew Darla wasn't responsible, that I was only freaking myself out. Even so, I couldn't seem to stop doing it. I kept imaging what would happen if she suddenly stepped out from behind the purple-gray trunk of a pine tree as I approached it. Or was simply sitting in one of the metal chairs on our patio when I came down the driveway. What if... What if I turned around and saw her following me one or two yard- lengths behind, just plodding along, matching my foot speed, neither falling back nor drawing nearer because she knew in the end I wouldn't escape? I made myself turn around. No one was there. A car zipped by in the distance. Then I froze in place. This was just like one of those movies! So of course she wasn't there, because when I turned around in relief, she'd be looming over me like a psycho killer. I swallowed and felt my heart going doom-doom-doom-doom so loudly I was sure Darla would hear it. Would she reach into my chest and rip it out, silence it forever? Or could I just not turn around, just start walking back the way I'd come? That would totally neutralize her; no one did that shit in movies. They always just smiled as if safe and turned around and died. No, don't be stupid. She's not behind you. That's not her hot breath you feel stirring those buzzed hairs?prickling now?on the back of your neck. I twirled and jumped back, almost losing my balance and falling on my ass. No Darla. Just a long suburban street with mailboxes. I felt so very stupid, a refreshing stupid. Feeling stupid at that point was better than a whole roll of Mentos. Amy's Dumbness: the Fresh Maker. I turned down our alley. Now there were so many places for Darla to hide. Small utility sheds, detached garages, privacy fences, large garbage cans with the recycle logo printed on them. I barely swung my arms as I walked stiffly along, my eyes scanning. Then our driveway. No car, no Bronco II. No one on the patio, empty chairs. Nobody home. I let myself in and as soon as I was in the inky kitchen, I started slipping into total panic mode. I tried to walk softly, silently. Nerves warned me someone in the house, or some subtle difference in the air. Maybe I detected breathing so low I felt it rather than heard it. Or a heartbeat. Someone who wasn't supposed to be in there, like the Shape from "Halloween," or some horrible revenant would present itself as something or someone totally ordinary at first, only to become twisted and horrific in the shadows and snatch me away to Hell forever. I was going to die. Death in the afternoon. The light. I had to find the light. Every time I blinked, I saw afterimages, dancing squares, the sunlit windows dancing in front of deep shadows. I stood in the living room doorway and felt around the wall, trying my best not to actually step into the room. My hand slid along the wall, feeling every little bump. I was on the verge of hyperventilating when my fingers finally found the wall switch. I flipped it up, the lights came on. Emily was sitting huddled on the sofa. I screamed, loudly. It felt like I'd been hit right on top of my heart with a sledgehammer. "You scared the shit out of me," Emily said. "What the fuck is wrong with you?" "W-why were you sitting in the dark? W-where's your truck thingy?" Emily frowned. "Sit by me." I dropped my book bag and climbed onto the sofa next to Emily. "Everything we talk about stays in this room, okay?" she said. A conspiracy. "Who would I tell?" Seriously. Who? Sarah McAvoy? "First. Do you want to be a guy again?" I startled. "Oh fuck yeah. More than anything. I mean, I fucking had a period, Emily. And knowing me, I'll probably do it again." "Okay, if that's what you want, cool. But there's something I want, too. You may not like it, but I really need you to work with me." My breath came in stitches. A guy again, if that's what I want. So it was possible. To no longer have to put up with being teensy and weak, flimsy with bones apparently made out of cardboard tubes from the center of paper towel rolls. No more Ashleigh Bodine and Denise and their whole vicious tribe. No more Patrick, Mike and Little Josh. No more school. More importantly, my old life back. Or at least a close semblance. "Fuck yeah, Emily. I'll fucking do anything you want, anything you ask!" So true, even in circumstances where getting back my guy junk and XY chromosomes weren't at stake. After all she'd done for me since this craziness began, I would gladly obey Emily. Without question, without hesitation. Well, without much question or much hesitation. Our love might have changed into something different than before, and might never become what it had been again, but it was still our love. We still wore our sisterly power beads and would, somehow, inside like forvever-memories long after the cheap plastic they were made of clogged some foul-smelling landfill. Emily took my head in both hands and looked straight into my eyes. "I want to save you. Because I love you more than almost anything." "A-and I?" "But I also love Darla. And so I really need your help saving her, too." Chapter Four: Can I Play With Darla-ness "Darla. That's why you've been reading all those fucked up books. They're the same ones she has." "Had. But mostly, yeah. She had like--" "She did something to Toby, too, didn't she?" "Maybe. Probably. I don't know. He may have gotten away." "But you totally believe she did this to me, right? Or-or at the very least, had something major to do with it?" "Yeah. And if it is true, we have to... I don't know what we have to do. Convince her to change you back." "And I'll be Martin again?" "Kinda. Maybe. But maybe not. But we're getting ahead of ourselves, Honey Bunny." Emily told me the night Toby vanished, she thought about what I'd said back when my changes were just starting. Two boyfriends erased in one year, one by a sex and race change and the other simply gone. What they had in common besides impeccable taste in women was Darla's hate and jealousy. Emily kept hanging out with Darla because she loved her like a sister, but things had changed. The trust was dead and Darla had become furtive, frightening in a way. "And you saw her the last time she came over, right?" "She looked kinda sick, like she'd had the flu or something." "Amy, she's wasting away. It's beyond weird. The last time I saw her she looked like total death." "The last time you saw her?" "A couple weeks after you started school, maybe. Right after Toby disappeared, things started changing. And I think she knew I was eyeballing her for signs. All those weird books she used to have and all the incense and candles and shit? One day, that stuff was all gone from her room. Nothing but bare shelves. It was just so weird, as if she'd just moved in or something and hadn't unpacked her stuff." "Yeah." "Anyways, she hasn't been returning my calls forever now. Her mom says nothing's wrong, everything's fine. But there's no way, Amy. No fucking way. She's not even taking classes. You can feel it, can't you?" "Yeah, I've been really freaked out lately. I mean, more so than usual." I told her all about my feelings walking home, coming into the house, turning on the light. "But I just thought it was like the power of suggestion or something." "Oh shit, Amy. What if... what if she was following you?" I glanced around the room, out the window. Nothing but the sunlit yard and the shadows crawling across the dry grass. Emily held up her power beads, grabbed my arm and held it against hers. Our sister bracelets, colorful orbs around our wrists. I breathed deeply, tried to slow my racing pulse, the thoughts running wild in my mind. Almost simultaneously, Emily and I stopped breathing and just listened. A whirring of cars somewhere in the distance, like the tide at the Gulf, something so constant we usually didn't hear it at all. I couldn't hold my breath anymore, so I breathed super shallowly, trying to make no noise. A clock ticked somewhere in the kitchen. Stillness, ambience, a feeling that any possibility could be real. The fantastic was somehow more real than the sofa, more real than my discarded inline skates, more real than Sarah McAvoy's binder full of shy girl creativity. Then Emily took a loud breath through her nose. The moment had passed. No one had followed me, no one was listening outside. We were two sisters, alone. "Another thing," Emily said, whispering, her dark eyes shining. "And this is pretty fucking scary, too." "What?" "Well, I'm thinking we need to figure this out and figure it out quick. Because, Amy, I don't think we have much time." With all the same melodramatic emphasis as if she was been telling me a campfire ghost story, Emily explained it this way: There was a belief within magic systems that whatever you did came back to you, three- fold. It was like some kind of pumped-up karma. But Emily didn't chalk it up so much to anything mystical. She said the three-fold thing was just mumbo-jumbo, New Age, Wiccan stuff to explain things that actually had a basis in quantum physics or some non-Newtonian something or other we were still decades away from defining in mathematical terms and teaching in university classes. It was kind of like how people said they found babies in cabbage patches, or the stork brought them before they learned about the sperm and the egg and all that. We couldn't call it superstition, Emily said, but belief, and it was a pre-scientific explanation whatever else we called it. To her, it was a simple matter of cause-and-effect. You couldn't get something without giving something. The bigger the thing you received, the more it cost you. That's why we lived in a world where someone could turn a Caucasian guy in his 20s into an Asian girl in her early teens and not, say, turn the sky green or reverse the poles or declare herself Empress of the Known Universe with wholesale powers to bend and shape all of reality. Even magic, as fucked up as it seemed, was bound by certain universal laws. It couldn't completely defy physics. It could make the improbable probable?inevitable even-- but not the impossible. The cost was too high. "So basically, what Darla's done is costing her. It's eating her up," Emily said. Her voice quavered a little. And to be honest, it pissed me off. Sympathy for Darla. I tried not to dwell on it for now. After all, they were friends long before I entered the picture. "What do we do?" "I think... we need to confront her. Try to make her see the light again. Together." "When?" "Tonight." Chapter Five: Spy Girls Shouldn't Play with Dead Things Spy Girls. That's what we'd become, the two of us. Two Fox Mulders, only with ovaries. No Dana Scullies here. We were secret agents locked into a life-or-death struggle with the forces of darkness. Literally. Waking life seemed banal by comparison. I felt more, saw colors deeper and with more vividness. Dinner that night was yakisoba, one of Mrs. Komori's family recipes, gleaned from a magazine in the years before Emily's birth. Ordinarily, I loved yakisoba. Noodles, pork, cabbage?and Mrs. Komori's special innovation, sliced bell peppers. I'd even pitched in to help make it before. But neither Emily nor I had any appetite. Mrs. Komori took it gracefully and didn't show any disappointment at our poor showing in the eating department. "Where's your Bronco?" she asked at one point. I looked at Emily, Emily looked at me. "Uh... I left it at school." "Isn't that expensive? I mean, the parking decks?" "No, you paid for my semester parking pass. I can park there whenever." "Weekends, too?" "Yeah, whenever." "That might come in handy sometime." "Yeah, like today." Then Emily was up from the table. She put her dishes in the sink and jerked me up by my armpit, her fingers really digging into my shoulders. It hurt. "I need Amy to help me with a drawing for class." After dumping my dishes in the sink, too, I followed Emily to her room. The seat of the Big Mystery, as far as I was concerned. I hadn't been in her room since she started doing her magic research. It was hardly changed. A floral yukata hanging on the wall, a poster of Klimt's "The Kiss" all gold and sensual on the other, some little kimono-wearing dolls on the bookshelf among the novels?stuff like "Fight Club" by Chuck Palahniuk and everything Tom Robbins had written up to that point. A CD player on top of her small TV, CD cases?Breeders, Pixies, Jane's A, Frente, They Might Be Giants-- strewn around, clothes on the floor. And all those books, those freaky books. Actually, they were under her bed, but she dragged them out. "Look, these were really helpful, but to be honest, most of these only hint at the truth. It would be pretty dumb of them to actually publish the real stuff. It's mostly handwritten and passed around from person to person, or coven to coven. A lot of people who actually self- describe as witches? They don't even have a clue. They think it's like all glamours or whatnot, love spells and luck spells and shit like that," Emily told me. "So what are we gonna do when we confront Darla?" I asked in a squeaky little voice that made me blush as soon as I heard it. "That's the one weak part in my whole scheme." "Oh fuck. 'One,' she says" "Yeah, that's kinda my opinion, too." Emily sat on the floor, thumbing through one book after another while I sat on her bed and chewed my fingernails, trying to think. I was scared, but also excited. What if we did pull this off? I could be peeing standing up again by morning's light. I'd have a couple of testicles full of sperm instead of ovaries packed with eggs. Speaking of, I might even wake up with wood. That would be so fucking sweet; it had been so long I'd almost forgotten about wood. And I wouldn't have to go to Delacroix Junior High. I'd have the status of a college town dumbass again, only unemployed. But even that was vastly superior to being a junior high kid. On the other hand, if we failed, Emily and I might both be turtles or salamanders or something, living out the rest of our too short lives on the pebbly bottom of a terrarium in Darla's house. I almost laughed. "We'll wait until Mom goes to bed, then sneak out and do this motherfucker," Emily said. "I want this to be over," I said. "I want to be a guy again." "You really hate being a girl that much?" "It's not a matter of whether or not I hate it. I hate the way people treat me because I'm a girl. Especially because I'm not like this little miss... I dunno... whatever they think a girl is supposed to be. It wasn't like I was even the most macho ass-kicker dude before, but being small totally fucking sucks. Even if I were still a guy, this would suck. But really it's a matter of what I'm supposed to be." "Yeah, but you couldn't skate before. I mean, like you do now. I mean, if Mom let you. You know what I mean." "I'm not saying it doesn't have its good points. You seem to enjoy it." "Kinda. I definitely don't hate it, but it's not as if I haven't wondered what it'd be like to have a dick. Sometimes I think it'd be pretty rad to be a guy. I think a lot of girls think about it." "I dunno." "I mean, yeah, sometimes I wish I were a guy. I don't know. Being a girl is pretty... well, it's good and it's bad. It's hard. And it's easy." "Shut up. I don't really care. I was born a guy. Inside, I still am. So I think it'd be a good idea for the book to match the cover or whatever. Do you really wish you were a guy?" "Just sometimes. Did you ever wish you were a girl when you were a boy?" "Not really. I was curious, I guess. I kinda thought if there was like a way to do it for a day, I probably would. Just to understand girls better." "Just to play with yourself." "No, nothing like that. Okay, I probably would have at least tried." "So you did wanna be a girl." "No, I didn't. I was pretty content. Really, I never gave it that much thought. I think this conversation has lasted longer than the sum total time I spent thinking about gender or whatever in the entirety of my life before... Darla." "Well, I think having a dick would be kinda neat. At least for a day. I'm still super-curious about how they work and how it feels for guys and shit like that. But it's not like I really wanna be a guy. I still think guys suck, but I don't really think girls are any better. Our suckage is different but it's suckage all the same." "I didn't realize girls were so fucking mean." "You didn't know that? Holy fuckin' shit, Honey Bunny. You're so na?ve." "What about 'girl power' and all that shit?" "Marketing campaign." Emily kind of looked at me thoughtfully. At times like that I could never read what she was thinking about, but I'm sure she always saw right through me. Her dark eyes got a little wider and she started singing-- softly at first, then a little louder-- that song from "Annie:" "It's the hard knock life for us, it's the hard knock life for us. No one cares for you a smidge... when you're in an orphanage.." while she mimed scrubbing the floor. She rolled over on her back, kicked the air in mock frustration, sat up and did these frantic, robotic arm movements that I think were supposed to be something the kids did in the movie version. The whole time she did all this crazy choreography, she sang what must have been half the "Hard Knock" song; while her speaking voice was pretty sexy, her singing left a lot to be desired apart from enthusiasm. I'm pretty sure she didn't even remotely have the lyrics right. Except for one thing. The hard knock life. Yeah. I didn't want to laugh, so I clamped my lips shut as tightly as possible. A real struggle, but I won. Finally, Emily just stopped and said, "Be whatever, Honey Bunny." She'd half exhausted herself and was breathing hard. She leaned back against her bed, her legs out and crossed, long as railroad tracks, long as the interstate. Her feet were bare and her toes stroked the low TV cabinet. We sat like together quietly for a while, then nerves and boredom went to war with each other and we watched TV so we wouldn't have to think. "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" was on. Outside the sky went from deep indigo to black as we watched Linus suffer his umpteenth disappointment in the pumpkin patch. After that, the Garfield special, with pirate ghosts. Time just seemed to stretch into infinity. By this time tomorrow maybe I won't have to worry about these particular hard knocks anymore, I thought. People's opinions about what girls do and don't do, or any of that shit. The more I thought, the more I realized just how inadequate that Tom Petty song was. Fuck Tom Petty. That amused me. Somehow the orphans from "Annie" seemed wiser to me now than a classic rock star. In fact, he seemed kind of like an asshole by comparison, part of the whole problem. I looked at my big sister. Her face seemed impassive, but every so often one of her dark eyebrows would flicker. Troubled. Behind those eye her powerful brain was working, no doubt seeking the solution to Darla and me both. But there were all those other thoughts in there, distinctly girl thoughts. What made her the way she was? Nature or nurture or both? If I stayed Amy, would I become more like her? Had I already? And if I became male again? I didn't think I'd be Martin anymore, at least not the Martin I'd been before. I might look and sound just like him but I'd know the difference, and so would Emily and her mom. I'd found new levels of emotion and depths of feeling I'd never known before. I'd discovered a slight affinity for things like sundresses and beaded bracelets and barrettes in my hair. I'd been talked down to. Been arrested. Learned to skate. I'd fought a Cold War with other girls. A boy had tried to kiss me. I'd been objectified, belittled, admired. People had responded to me, reacted to me, listened to me as a girl. And through all of that, symbolized by my gift of blood, I had the potential to become a woman. Or not. For all the negative things Emily had told me tonight, I had to admit she made the prospect of staying a girl seem pretty goddamn attractive. It's like she didn't even appreciate what a bad ass she was not only for putting up with all of it, but also for carving out her own way of being in the face of it. Mrs. Komori, too. Even that bitch Ashleigh Bodine had her own circle of power, even if she misused it. So whatever else happened, whether I came back from Darla's the rod or the water, I'd be someone new. I could no more become the old Martin as that Martin could become child-Martin or baby-Martin again. We grew up, or?in my case-- we grew down. But we never stayed the same person. Experiences molded us along with our abilities and our limitations. People and their bullshit received ideas defined us, but like Emily and her mom, we further defined ourselves in relation to that. We accepted it or rejected it, we accommodated it and found our power in whatever way we could. Emily painted, Mrs. Komori was super-competent at her job and really wise, Amy skated. If I had Martin's soul in this Amy- body, I'd have at least a bit of Amy's soul in my Martin-body as a result. Super Spy-Girls always get their woman in the end. Mrs. Komori finally went off to bed and we waited another hour just to make sure she was asleep. After that, Emily and I put on jackets?she wore a fairly new hoodie and I ended up in this old plaid flannel button-up coat Emily had worn four or five years before when she was around my size and everyone was dressing like Nirvana. We went out the back door as quietly as we could and set off on foot for Darla's house, a few blocks away. "This would be a lot faster if you hadn't left your Bronco at school," I said. "No shit, Sheila Sleuth. I didn't really feel... like competent to drive at the time, though. You think I could drive now?" Emily showed me her hands. They were shaking. "Maybe not. I could have, though. I still remember how." "If you could reach the pedals, maybe." "Ouch. Shouldn't you have brought some of those books?" "None of them were the actual book of magic or whatever she used." "So all that stuff you told me earlier? You just figured that out on your own?" "It's in the books, Honey Bunny. Just not the actual formulas or whatnot. You can't get those... other books in bookstores and libraries." "But Darla got them." "Fuck if I know how. Anyways, she's the one who knows how to work this stuff. I only know about... how to work it." "We are gonna die." "Probably." It was close to midnight, and there weren't very many cars out. We passed under streetlights, listened to the wind rustling. A dog barked. And then we were close. Emily knew the area intimately, and I got my first clue just how near we were to the mystery's heart when I heard her breathing pattern change. More nasal, harder. Now I started to dread the inevitable moment when Emily would identify Darla's house and we'd have to go through with this whole insane thing. "Down the alley," Emily said. We slipped between the houses, a typical suburban alleyway turned graveyard by our bizarre errand. When we got to Darla's house, Emily carefully opened the gate in the chainlink fence, both of us holding our breath. A light was on in a back room as we entered the yard and tried to stay in the shadows. "That's her room," Emily whispered. I nodded, but I doubt Emily saw me. I wasn't looking at her; I had my eyes fixed on that square of red light, curtains drawn. We reached the house, pressed ourselves against the rough brick. A large A/C unit was next to my leg. I could feel the cool metal even through my jeans. Our sneakers crunched on dead leaves and pinestraw. The curtains were almost sheer, so we could actually see into the room, through a red haze as if we were squinting. No one was in there, the door was shut (a big picture of Tori Amos on it). "Now what?" Emily asked. "Why are you asking me?" Then Emily let out a little peep as the bedroom door opened. And there she was: the Elusive One. Our Darla, through the red curtains. Freaking hideous, a hairless scarecrow, and she wore this ratty bathrobe draped like a shroud. I looked at Emily, and she had this stricken expression that scared me almost as much as the sight of Darla did. And when I looked back at Darla, she was staring right at us, her eyes lit like twin beacons of cold fire. "Oh fuck," Emily gasped. Darla took a step towards us. She hesitated, as if struggling with herself. Then she was at the window. She tore down her red curtains and they fluttered to the floor behind her, danced briefly on an air current and settled there like a bloodstain. She raised the window and pushed out the screen. Her face looked angry, but just for a moment, I thought I saw something trapped and sad in her eyes. "What are you doing here?" she hissed. "We-we want to talk to you," Emily said. "There's nothing to talk about." "What you did to me?" I started. "Oh fuck, what I did. What I did, what I did, what I did. Well, guess what, Marty-girl. When they tell you to be careful what you wish for, they don't know the fucking half of it. Not a tenth of it." "What did you do to Toby?" Emily asked. I looked at her, shocked. I wanted to keep this about me for now. If we presented a united front, Darla might crack, might reverse my sex change or tell us how to do it ourselves. Toby could go fuck himself as far as I was concerned. "You both better go. If you really know what's good for you, you'll go." "What did you do to Toby?" "I didn't do anything to him! I started to... But I didn't have enough... enough... They wanted too much!" "You tried to turn him into a girl or?" "No, no. That was a special. There's a reason I did what I did to Martin, okay? I-I knew it would cost a lot, but I didn't know how much." "You can undo this, right?" I'd found my voice. I had to know. "I could have..." "Could have? You can! You did it so you can undo it. Emily read in the books?" Darla was already falling back, looking past us. Her eyes widened and her face paled. Emily and I turned together, afraid something or someone was coming up behind us, all violent intentions, something horrible beyond horror. Nothing but the night. Black trees, a security light giving off an ugly pinkish glow, a halo of light on the alley, the flickering blue glow of a television coming through the window of the house across the way. Emily grabbed my arm, her fingers digging into my little bicep, painfully, through my coat sleeve. I tried to unclamp her fingers, but she was pulling me around, making me look. Darla's room was empty. There was only her robe settling in the center of the floor, on top of the red gauze shade, her furniture poised as if in silent contemplation of something it had witnessed that we had not. Or waiting, as if the old Darla might walk into the room, be the same curvy, whiny bitch I'd met when I first started dating Emily. I looked up at Emily. Tears were running down her cheeks. All the light bulbs in Darla's room burst at once-- then the security light behind us-- with a photographic pop-flash and this overwhelming sense of sadness swept over us from the open window, like air rushing out, melancholy like the sound of a piano playing minor chords in an echoing concert hall. It just seemed to flow over and through us both. I ached, disappointed, cheated somehow, regretful beyond measure. And then something intensely malevolent came from without, from another space, a sense of something alien and other, its victory tattoo drummed on our nerve endings like a billion tapping fingertips. We broke, running, Emily pulling me along, and I felt this spreading warmth down the insides of my thighs as we sprinted for the fence. Sneaky Spy Girls no more, we reached the fence, Emily landing low on the links with a springy clang, then her hands on top, vaulting over, landing heavily and tumbling, rolling with a loud wheeze and girly gasp of dismay and pain. I thought for a second she'd broken her neck but she was up almost as fast as she'd fallen. I was a half step or so behind, but thanks to all my time on the half-pipe vert, I hit the fence top in mid-leap? it bent under my weight then rebounded, catapulting me upward, my arms and legs churning the air. By now my airborne instincts were well-honed, so I landed gracefully in the alley, spending my accumulated kinetic energy not in an ankle- shattering impact but almost delicately, kind of like a dancer, in a few light steps?only I didn't have time to admire my balletic artistry. "Go go go!" Emily said, her voice a rasp. She was doing that low- volume yelling thing. We flew headlong down the alley. I was trying to catch my breath, running as in one of those dreams where your legs get heavier and heavier and there's something on your tail. Like a deer Emily ran, leaving me far behind. I might have more grace now, but she had stride-length. Then... she came for me. Realizing I couldn't catch her, Emily turned and ran back, stopped in front of me. She bent over, her hair a black veil with grass in it, hiding her face and she was breathing hard. We were together again, in someone's yard, near the curb. Under street lights that made everything brighter than that haunted alley. Some cars were parked along the street. Normal houses. Normal night. Normal world. "Oh... fuck... Amy," she said between breaths. "I almost... peed... in... my pants!" I looked down at my jeans. "Not... almost... for me." I don't clearly remember much about the walk home, other than how funky my wet pants felt. I walked with my legs a little wider than usual, which gave me this kind of lumbering gait for someone so small, no longer the Ballerina of the Back Alley. I kept waiting for it to rain in my socks and shoes. Emily kind of sniffled a lot. And we held hands. The next day, Darla's mom called Mrs. Komori. Darla had vanished. I overheard the conversation in snatches. Cancer? Wasting away. Was it cancer? Gone. Run away. Sick with fear. I quickly left the room. Emily shut down, and we didn't see her all day. Her door stayed shut. Soft sobbing sounds from inside. Emily had been Darla's best friend, her leader, her better self in so many ways. And her obsession. Just before supper time, Emily's door opened and she joined us at the table. Mrs. Komori and I stopped eating, our forks poised halfway to our mouths. "Welcome back," Mrs. Komori said, finally. Emily half smiled, leaned over in her chair and hugged her mom with one arm.