Amy 21: The Spoon That Amy Once Had free porn video

Amy 21: The Spoon That Amy Once Had Copyright 2013 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) 2013 Amy Komori. All rights reserved. Chapter One: The Water Boils I didn't hear from Patrick for about a week. It might be comforting or whatever to say I thought about him a lot during that week and felt guilty about what I'd done to him, but I can't honestly say I felt anything about him. Patrick thoughts were few and far between. It's not that I felt proud my plan had worked or anything-- worked except for the part where I was going to try to make Patrick feel good about himself instead of hurting him-- it's just that I didn't think about him. Until he called. It was a Thursday and what I was doing was studying for our weekly Friday quiz in pre-Calc. Accelerated Basic Pre-Calculus was its scientific name. It was a fucking chore and I hated it especially because Sarah and Lena were already in AP Accelerated Calculus. This was the first time since my return to school I'd fallen behind them as far as curriculum went, but at least I was still AP in everything else! "Amy, pick up," Mrs. Komori told me. It took her a few minutes to get through to me because I'd been lying on the floor with my headphones on, listening to Cibo Matto again while I dealt with vectors. I was heavily into Cibo Matto that week for some reason, but then again, who needs a reason to love Cibo Matto? Especially "Stereotype A," although to be completely honest, most of my friends preferred their first album. I couldn't get the songs from this one out of my mind and the best way to deal with it was to listen to the actual recordings as opposed to my brain versions as much as possible. Then, if I was really lucky, they'd imprint in my mind and when I took the quiz the next morning, all I'd have to do is dial up the song to remember the math concept. At least, such was my plan. Lost in it as I was, Mrs. Komori actually had to come into my room and tap me on the top of my head. I took off the headphones and shut my textbook feeling kind of extra- spacy. "Oh, sorry." "Phone. It's Patrick." Oh shit, I thought. Now a lot of those mysteriously absent feelings came flooding in, kind of like when you dig a hole at the beach and strike water. Saying his name had been Mrs. Komori's hand digging in the sand, and that made me the beach, I guess. And the water consisted mainly of this intense dread of even hearing Patrick's voice. "Thanks," I told her, feeling anything but grateful. Mrs. Komori left me alone and I picked up the phone with a shaky hand. "Hello?" I asked into the phone in this unsure way. It took Patrick a couple of moments to say anything. And even then it was just, "Amy." "Patrick?" I asked more by way of trying to get him to speak to me than anything else. "Yeah. Uh... can we talk?" "I think we are." "Look, I-I'm not mad at you..." "Oh?" "I was. Believe me, at first I was super pissed." "Okay..." By not just coming to the point, he was making things worse. In a way, I would rather he just screamed at me. This was more like he was building to something, all prelude with some really extra-shitty surprise still to come. "But after I kinda cooled off, I went online and read a lot. Well, maybe not a lot. But I read some stuff and I kind of understand now why you did it." "You read?" "I asked Jeeves about you." "About me?" "Not you specifically. Like... you know... being..." "Gay?" "Yeah. I just never thought about it. I mean, yeah, I thought about it. Like making fun and shit like that. Like it was fun calling you and Michelle dykes." I had to stop him before we reached whatever he intended for our final destination because it seemed like we were going to crash headfirst into it. And explode. Or be thrown through the windshield and come out looking like red, wet confetti. "Look, I don't know where you're going with this, but maybe you should sto--" He must have sensed my anxiety, because he sped up. His voice got really fast and he didn't take a breath. "No, I mean, I know now that's not cool. Like, it's wrong. I won't do that anymore. And I just want to say even though what you did was also wrong and everything, I think you did it because you were scared about what people would think and you were kinda... I don't know..." That was perceptive of him. Really. I was shocked and kind of touched. Then I felt the tension seeping out of me and I had this fleeting sense that everything was going to be cool after all. Sounding a bit more cheerful and assertive, I said, "Well, I was. I guess I still am." "Well, I want to tell you not to be down on yourself. Like don't hate yourself because of it, okay?" Oh my god, I thought, he's pep-talking me! He called me to give me a pep talk? Actually, that totally murdered the moment. I mean, the very idea he was going to give me advice started to make me feel a little angry at him because it was going to force me into this stupid corner where to get out I'd either have to play stupid like I didn't know all of this stuff already, or else I'd have to go defensive and justify myself, even though it was like he was telling me he didn't think I should have to. I told him, "I don't hate myself." "Really?" "Yes. It's just--" "Look, it's cool you like girls. I mean, I know it's not like you need my approval or anyone else's or whatever. You have to be yourself. You have to be true to yourself." Full on lecture, dude. At least he isn't approving of him, I thought. I had to roll my eyes and make a face even though no one was there to see me do it. Okay, I told myself he didn't mean that to sound as condescending as I was taking it, so I gave myself a ten count before I said the next thing, which was just, "I've already been over this with my sister." "Really? She told you this?" "She tried. I didn't listen. I had to figure it out for myself." "Oh." "And now I know. But thanks for... you know... whatever it is you're trying to tell me." "Oh," he said again, and at that point I took a deep breath and let it out so silently he couldn't hear me over the phone. Everything's cool, I told myself. The worst was over and now we could-- "I... I kinda have something else to tell you, too. And this is kind of hard to say." Oh shit. My stomach dropped. That's what I got for assuming the worst was over. The worst was still to come. And I had to step into it. Step I did: "What?" "Well, I... still like you." Yep. The worst. The worst was now upon us. Now I was totally chilled like someone had just shown a tombstone with my name on it and we were back to suspense, fear and agony again. I was too sick to my stomach to even feel anger. "Patrick..." "I mean, I still like-like you. And even though I feel that way and even though I totally support who you are, I really don't think we should be friends or talk anymore." And that totally stung. Sharply and surprisingly. I was expecting some big argument about why we could still somehow be together despite his having a dick and my being into vaginas, but instead he bombed me with this whole thing about not being friends. I couldn't hide the hurt he'd dealt. I sucked in a little gasp of air that I was absolutely certain Patrick had to have heard and felt little tears come to my eyes. "Why can't we be friends?" "I think you know why." It was my turn to speak fast. "No, I don't. I know what I did was shitty, and I've already apologized a million times. Just be mad at me for a while and then--" "That won't work. I have to not be mad at you but I also have to not be friends with you. It hurts too much." "What about at the skatepark?" "You can still go there and I can still go there and maybe sometimes we'll talk or whatever. We just can't be friends or joke around like we used to." "Oh. Okay, then." "Okay." There was this really awkward silence. I was really aware of the phone in my hand. Like super aware of it. It felt gross and slick and dead and I wanted to punch Alexander Graham Bell. After a while, I said, "I guess I'm going to hang up, then." "Okay." "Bye." "Bye, Amy--" I hung up because I had this feeling Patrick wanted to say more and I couldn't let him. I lay there for a little while next to the hated phone and my headphones. I didn't actually cry after that. I mean, it was the most horrible sensation, just like I was nothing more than a ripe melon and Patrick had taken a big wooden spoon and scooped me all out. And I also felt like the worst person in the world. Crying might have filled me up again. But there had been just those little tears and they were easy to wipe away. After a few minutes, I heard the door open. "May I come in?" It was Mrs. Komori. I got up and opened the door more for her and she came on tiptoes and sat on my bed with this sad smile on her face. "You guys broke up, huh?" she asked. I wiped an eye again, more from feeling for her than anything else. I smiled and nodded. "Do you want to talk about it?" she asked. I shook my head no. Then, because I felt like I was pushing her away, I said, "I... I think it's okay." "Amicable?" "Kinda. He says we can't be friends." "Oh. That's not very amicable sounding to me, Amy." "Well, he said it in a nice way. Not angry." "Oh." I got up and sat on the bed next to her. Even she was taller than I was. She was kind of fidgeting. She wasn't really my mom, although she'd taken over that role. Sometimes we didn't know how to relate to each other, though. After all this time, and even though I sometimes got the idea she would really love it, I still couldn't let myself be her daughter exactly and I wasn't sure why that was. Maybe because I knew she knew I'd been a guy once. But I loved her like a mom. Or at least a pseudo-mom. I really did. "So," I said, "How's work these days?" Mrs. Komori laughed and we ended up talking for a while. Actually, we ended up talking about Cibo Matto. Chapter Two: Turn Off the Heat Now it was officially a break-up. Losing Patrick even as a friend really sucked and I went from not thinking about him at all to thinking a break up is kind of like a cold. Okay, so some are like bronchitis or pneumonia and linger and linger, making you feel like you want to die. This one was just a cold. It wasn't the worst feeling in the world, but it was just kind of nagging. I felt sad about it, but the sadness wasn't this deep depression. It was more like the energy loss of a mild cold, not so much I couldn't go to school and risk infecting everyone. But at school, I had to deal with the whole Gina/Michelle/Dallas situation. And if losing the friendship of a fake boyfriend hurt, losing the friendship of a very real friend you thought of as a sister was like having your whole fucking head chopped off. Although come to think of it, maybe that didn't hurt as much because at least in a guillotine it was over in a flash before you were even aware of it. If Michelle and I broke up, the death would linger and I'd revisit it every single time I saw her, which would be every single stupid day until summer at least. After all, we usually all sat together at lunch. I mean, unless some of us had other things to do, like school or club related things or some of us sneaked off campus to go to Burger King or Chic-Fil-A or something. Only the Friday after the breakup proper (and I had aced the pre-Calc quiz, I was pretty sure), we were all in the lunchroom, but Michelle and Dallas were sitting at another table. "Check that out," I muttered to Sarah. "Why aren't they sitting over here?" she asked. "I don't know. Did Michelle ever say anything to you?" I asked Gina. Gina just said, "Nope." "Fuck." That made me so mad at her. Michelle, that is. Not Gina. "She told me she was going to." "Well, she hasn't." I pushed my chair back and started to get up. Sarah's green eyes went wide. It would have been funny because I just happened to be looking right into them when they did, but I was too pissed to laugh. "What are you doing?" Sarah asked me, looking kind of terrified. "I'm going to go speak to them," I told her, my own eyes half shut as I tried to look as cool as I didn't feel. "Don't, dude," Gina said. "It's not a big deal. I'm totally over it." "You are not." "I am." "I don't think you are." "I think I know if I am or not." "Okay, then, I'm the one who's not over it." When you're pretty short and pretty thin and you have the kind of face I had, it's not easy to be intimidating. But I had my ways. I could glare out from under my bangs with these narrowed eyes and just the slightest flare to my nostrils and certain people would know to duck and cover. Having been beaten up twice by Heidi Fleegleman had taken away a smidgen of that, but there were still some people who remembered me as that girl who kicked that dude's ass back in junior high. And even if they didn't, people at our school liked few things better than a girl fight. So when other kids who knew Michelle and me both and had this inkling of tension between us started noticing me and what I was doing, you could feel like this huge wave of excitement pass through the whole lunchroom. I noticed big smiles and people whispering excitedly as I passed. It was hard not to notice even if I wasn't trying to look at them, just keeping my eyes on Michelle and Dallas. Luckily, no one else was at their table, which was this round one near the windows that looked out on a small grassy area where some kids who were through eating already were just kind of hanging around, some talking, some doing homework. Oh, and a brick wall behind which was the seniors' parking lot and then the dusty practice fields where the football and baseball teams practiced and not so long ago I faked being a cheerleader. Anyways, I pulled out an empty chair and sat down. Both Michelle and Dallas kept talking as though I was invisible, although Dallas' eyes did flick over at me. "So," I said with completely insincere friendliness and cheerfulness. "What's up?" They stopped talking and turned to me. Michelle just shrugged and said, "Nothing. What's up with you?" "I don't know. I was just kinda wondering why you haven't called Gina." "Oh. I don't know. Just kinda busy." "Hm." "What's that supposed to mean?" "Just 'Hm,'" I said, raising my eyebrows all nonchalantly. Michelle frowned. "No, you said it like it meant something. Like you don't believe me." "Michelle," Dallas said softly. Okay, at this point the emotions talking to Patrick caused seemed miniscule by comparison. My heart started pounding really hard and I felt like a hand reaching up through my neck and kind of grabbing the back of my skull and I wished I was anywhere but at that table, but somehow I held myself together. "I believe you. Why would you think I don't believe you? Unless maybe you were lying or something and you weren't ever going to call Gina in the first place." Michelle made a really weird face and I could tell I was starting to piss her off, which wasn't too difficult to do in the first place. That's when Dallas got up out of her chair fast and fell back into Mr. Armbruster, one of the science teachers who had lunch room monitor duty. "Whoa, whoa," Mr. Armbruster said, helping Dallas stay on her feet. "Everything all right over here, ladies?" Ladies. Ladies was a room with toilets in it. Ladies played gin rummy or bridge and wore wide-brimmed hats and shapeless polyester dresses. Calling us ladies didn't mean he thought we were bathrooms or old women or anything like that. It was supposed to be ironic and diminishing. It meant baby girls, less than boys. If he'd said "gentlemen" to a table of guys about to start screaming at each other, it would have elevated them, promoted them to his comradely equals, but Mr. Armbruster was totally putting us down and making us cute or something equally repulsive and small. He said it that way that made Patrick's condescension from the night before seem like complete sincerity and inside I was telling him to go fuck himself, but all I said was, "I think so." Mr. Armbruster turned his full attention on me. "You think so, or you know so?" Oh my fucking god, he was going to play lunchroom cop. My scalp prickled and the prickling went all the way down my back and then returned to my scalp. It was at times like that I absolutely hated being 14 again. What could you do when adult authority loomed up over you like a big pink faced plaid shirt-wearing cologne addict? He had big pores all over his nose and the hairs inside his nostrils were starting to gray and his whole presence was just totally overwhelming at the moment. "Everything's fine," Michelle said, coming to my rescue. "Well, from my vantage point things seemed a little confrontational. Do you ladies have something you want to talk out?" I looked at Michelle with my eyes narrowed. She glanced at me, then back at Mr. Armbruster. "We kinda do, and we kinda are." "Where were you running off to?" Mr. Armbruster asked Dallas, and I realized he didn't know any of our names. Michelle and I shared a little conspiratorial glance, so I understood at once she knew it, too. Even when we were pissed at each other we were soul sisters. "I have stomach cramps," Dallas said, which I figured wasn't a lie. She always had headaches or stomachaches lately. Mr. Armbruster figured it for something else, namely her period, which put him off his cop game. Ha, we are not like you, are we? I asked him in my mind. His pink face darkened slightly and he suggested Dallas might want to go to the school clinic and talk to the nurse. Dallas nodded feebly and she was off. You could almost see the raincloud following along. "Okay, you two talk out your problems calmly, okay?" Mr. Armbuster said. Both Michelle and I nodded. A lot of our anger had mutually crossed from each other to him and we both slumped a little in our chairs as he lumbered away. "Fucking dick, dude," I whispered. "I know. Asshole," Michelle agreed. I kept whispering, "Why aren't you and Dallas sitting with us?" "She's still really pissed at you for some reason." "Why? Did she say?" Michelle took a deep breath through her nose. "You know," I whispered. "Tell me." "Fuck, dude, you do not tell her I told you." "Okay." "You do not even do anything." "Okay, tell me." "I mean it, dude. If you fucking so much as breath a word of this to her I will never fucking talk to you again." "Okay," I said. God, I was dying to know. Anxiety was making me have to pee. "She's in love with you, Amy." At that moment, everything in the lunchroom seemed to just stop. For me, anyways. No one had heard what Michelle said but me, so it's not like everything went freezy all Matrix style or anything. It's just all the noise dropped away and there was just Michelle's face staring back at mine and she looked so serious and unlike herself I knew what she'd said was true and not just some bullshit joke she was using to play with me or something. Then where I was and who I was all came flooding back and Michelle said, "The whole thing with Patrick really hurt her, okay?" "But... I don't like girls," I lied, kind of lamely I thought. "Well, one girl likes you." I wanted to crawl under the table. I settled for sliding down in my seat until my eyes were level with its top. "Oh my fucking god. What a mess." Chapter Three: Take My Soul After that, even though my bladder was about to burst and it was making me all squirmy, I spent most of the remaining time in lunch period sitting with Michelle and begging her to tell me what to do to make things right with Dallas, but she only told me I should just leave her alone for a while and she'd get over it. And I finally got her to make up with Gina. We had to just gloss over that because explaining why they'd had their little fight in the first place would have required telling them about Dallas. Not that we didn't all know now that Dallas was bi. But apparently Dallas didn't want anyone but Michelle knowing about her interest in me, which was understandable considering Dallas was kind of only Michelle's friend in our group. And Michelle felt if Dallas heard other people knew, she'd also know immediately where they'd learned it and Michelle would be short one friend. I knew myself well enough now to know I couldn't just leave things well enough alone. I was going to have to fix things with both Patrick and Dallas. Hovering over the pot while I finally did my thing is where I came up with that little gem of an insight. Fixing things. That's what I was thinking about later that night when Emily called and asked me if I wanted to go to a yard sale that weekend at my old parents' house. My old parents, or actually, more accurately now, Martin's old parents. The suggestion sucked all the air out of me for a second and made me feel like an empty balloon. For the second time in the same day and for the third in two, it was like I was having some fucked up out of body experience. Then something came rushing in, this huge amount of an emotion I totally recognized this time as curiosity. Curiosity was a welcome relief. I heard Emily's voice over the phone, "Amy? Are you there?" "Holy shit," I said, and then hot tears just dripped down both my cheeks like someone had turned on a faucet. I rolled over on my bed and grabbed a tissue from the box on my bedside table. Not so fast there, Amy. Apparently, Ms. Curiosity had brought a friend. The friend was Ms. Pure Unadulterated Horror. "What? Are you there?" "Yes. Hold on." "Are you crying?" "No." "You are." "Okay, I kind of am. I'm just like... I don't know..." Curiosity and her friend Horror were fighting in my stomach now. That was an old life that I'd been chopped off from, and my new life was what I had, all I had, now. At the moment it wasn't going so well, but it was where I lived. Seeing the parents who'd done kind of a half-assed job of raising the guy I'd been and now would never be again... I told Emily, "I'm... I'm kind of half wanting to and half wanting to punch you in the face right now." Emily said, "Well, I just happened to see the address in the paper and I just started wondering whatever happened to them after Martin left." "Well, I won't lie and say I never did. I still have all these useless memories of like Christmases and all that shit with them. It wasn't all bad. Some of it was pretty good. But it doesn't really matter now, because I'm Amy now. I can tell you how Martin felt about all of it, but I can't feel it myself." "But you're wondering, right? How they went on with their lives and all? What they think of yo--his disappearance?" "Yeah, in a sick, morbid, twisted, fucked up way. Oh fuck, it's like visiting a graveyard or something to see an old friend." "You can pour out a 40 on your old lawn. To my dead homey, whose life I used to inhabit." "His old lawn." "Sorry." Well, it seemed Curiosity was a lot tougher than Horror. "What the fuck," I said. "Okay, I'll go. I'm not going to like tell them who I am or anything and you can do all the talking." "If they even remember me." "They probably will." Now that I had made the decision, I felt a little sick to my stomach. Martin had been squeezed down into a teensy-tiny seed through this gender change and I'd unfolded through the soil on the other side, with his memories and knowledge intact but no real use for it, no real way to put it to use. When you went back to the start or close to it, you didn't get to avoid all the old mistakes. You just made brand new ones. And while I was a continuation of his life, I didn't really relate to him any more than he had to himself as an infant or anyone does to their most remote states of being. I looked deep in my heart for him, tried to remember the early days of turning into a girl, of turning into not just a girl but into Amy Komori. I thought about how at first I thought I'd be a guy in a girl's body, and I'd just act it out, like a role until I was physically old enough again to do something about it. It hadn't worked out that way. The longer I stayed like this, the more I became this, or it became me. Until I wasn't posing, I was living. So rummaging around inside my soul for Martin, I kept coming across just Amy. Sometimes I thought of all that old guy shit as useless furniture, but for tonight, all the Martin bits were more like those frozen dead bodies bobbing in the Atlantic when the rescue boat came back to pick up Rose in that stupid ass Titanic movie. If you knew their faces and names, you could recognize their corpses. This dead guy was Martin's first bike, this dead guy was the time Martin got kicked out of Sunday school for saying something smart ass and how he apologized with sincere tears in his eyes, this one was Martin's best friend from elementary school. The Amy I was now steered her little boat and poked and prodded them to get a look at them as she slipped through the cold night towards a female destination. I wouldn't grow back up to be anything other than a woman. I knew that now. I was paddling there for myself now with my own two hands, with my own decisions. And they were all girl decisions. I felt sad for those frozen corpses, with their pale, familiar faces, but that's all they were. The useless dead. Emily was a warm, living body. So were all my friends. Even Heidi. Even Dallas. I was going to cling to life, not jump into the water and perish of hypothermia just to be with Leonardo DiCraprio. Except I was curious enough to go back to Martin's old house and look closely at one or two more corpses before I hailed a passing steamer... Or something like that. I realized Emily had been talking to me for a while, so I came back into the conversation and heard her saying, "I'm serious. We don't have any idea what happened to his parents after he disappeared. Aren't you curious at all?" "That's why I'm going." "I'll come at 7 tomorrow, okay?" "Okay." She hung up. So I was going to Martin's old house to see Martin's parents at 7 on Saturday. I wiped my face with my hands and stared at the ceiling. Great. I was in love with two girls, one of them one of my best friends and the other my worst enemy, I'd hurt a guy who could have made a great friend, too, just to live a lie, another kind-of friend had fallen for me in the worst way and I was going to see the parents of the guy who'd given birth to me. Which one of those could I deal with? Well, the yard sale. That was easiest. I was Amy now, a stranger to those people. And who knew? Maybe confronting them, even if I planned to keep my new identity a secret, would somehow jar something loose and I'd know what to do about all the other things. Okay, the moment I thought that, I realized I was reaching. But it had to work better than doing nothing. "Was that your sister?" I heard Mrs. Komori call from another part of the house. "Yeah," I answered. Poor Mrs. Komori. She was way more a mom to me than Martin's mom had ever been to him. And yet I still called her Mrs. Komori, and not mom. Why was that? I spent the rest of my lonely Friday listening to music and not thinking about Patrick and Dallas. Or even Gina or Lena. Weirdly, Sarah didn't even call. Usually she did, but I just imagined she was busy with her mom or else was doing something with Guitar Genius Boy. If her mom let her. Feeling kind of menstrually moody after a hard end to my week, I listened to some Tori Amos before piano started boring me. I don't know when I fell asleep. The next morning I was rudely awakened by Emily, who was shaking me like a maraca. "Get the fuck up," she said. "Stop!" I shouted, instantly, angrily aware, no trace of sleep dullness whatsoever. I did have horrible bed head, though. Not only did I catch a glimpse of it in the mirror as I jumped up and went to my undies drawer and selected something fresh to wear, but I could feel rooster tails bobbing all over. This would never do. I started to say, "I'm going to shower first and--" Emily interrupted impatiently. "No, we're late enough as it is." She was already in my closet pulling some jeans off a hanger. When I saw the ones she'd picked, I warned, "Not those." "Why not?" "I don't like those. They make me look stupid." "Nobody cares. We're going to a yard sale, you dunce." Then she saw why they made me look stupid. In a dopey, romantic daze a few weeks before, I'd written GINA on one of the legs in ink, which rendered that particular pair of jeans unwearable until someone invented a perfect ink- remover. "You're so stupid, Amy," Emily scolded. "Tell me something I don't know." "You go through all the trouble of inventing a fake relationship--" "Look, I wrote Sarah's name on my sneakers and no one cares." "This is HUGE. Why would you do this?" "Because! I don't know why I do half the things I do!" "Chill, Honey Bunny. I was just messing with you." "It's too early in the morning for messing with me and also, I'm freaked out enough as it is because of what we're on our way to do." I went to the closet and pulled out a huge pair of camo army pants, ones I usually wore skating. We were long past anything even resembling modesty with each other, so I dropped my pajama bottoms, stepped out of my stale undies and into the new ones and then on went my big-ass pants. I had to hold them up with one hand. "Grab me a belt." I had a bunch of belts snaked over the top of my desk chair and Emily was closest. She kind of gave them a look, then frowned back at me. Annoying hesitation. "If I choose the wrong one will you bite my head off?" "No. Oh fuck it, I'll do it." I went to the chair, stepping on the hem of the army pants and almost falling, which made Emily snicker. "This is how I'm going to confront my past," I told her gloomily. "Smelly from school and my hair sticking up." I grabbed a black rivet belt and looped it through my pants and then through the magic of friction and having a bony pelvis, I had two free hands again. I stepped to my mirror and clawed at my hair but it didn't help. All I could do was make it look shitty in a different way. I dug in my jewelry box until I found some white plastic barrettes and pinned my hair into submission. Thick and glossy and black, it now looked somewhat presentable. I pulled off my tee and bare-chested, I went into a dresser drawer and pulled out a tank. Once I had that on, I slipped into a red hoodie and then went to look for some socks. "You look like you're about 12," Emily said. "You look like a really intensely gay 12 year old boy. You know that, don't you?" I decided it was best to ignore her as I slipped beaded bracelets onto both my wrists. I plopped my gay 12 year old boy-looking ass onto the floor and pulled on the socks. Emily reached down with a helping hand and pulled me to my feet. "Ready in three minutes," she said. "A new Amy Komori record." "Not hardly," I told her. "I do this shit a lot faster when nobody's standing there watching me." And anyways, it had been more like eight. The Komori sisters, together again. Despite how inferior or inadequate she could make me feel next to her towering Emily Komori awesomeness, I'd really been missing my big sister. Looking at her now, so much taller than I'd ever be again, her own black hair long and straight, hanging down on either side of her round face, all I could feel was warmth. Wow, I thought. That is someone I really admire. And it was true. I wanted to be like her. I wanted to be her. And together we left my room and the house where she'd grown up and I was growing up and we were off to face a past that wasn't even mine anymore.