The Queer Rebels

Chapter 6: Healing

The static from the speaker crackles and then goes silent, leaving a vacuum in the air. Our flashlights are still on, but they're lying on the control panel, beams turned uselessly away from us. Between the green light that still glows from the reader and the flickering fluorescent light on the station's platform in the distance, the compartment is bathed in twilight.

I look down at Marcy's hand, which still rests in mine. When I look up at her, our eyes meet, and she doesn't pull away.

We are alone and, for the moment, we are safe.

But as I feel a wave of relief, her brows knit, and I can sense her worry.

"Who are they?" she asks. "And... how did you know to run?"

That's just like Marcy. Steering the conversation where it needs to go.

"Well," I start, giving my brain a moment to catch up with my tongue, "when I was in the counselor's office, the scribe warned me and gave me this card–told me to run. When I got to the basement, there was another orderly. He didn't tell me his name, but..." I lean in close. "Marcy, he had biotech. That he could control. Himself."

She assesses me, eyes scanning my face. "How is that possible?" she finally asks. She shifts in her seat, finally taking her hand back from mine.

"I don't know," I admit, clasping my hands together, already missing the feel of her palm against mine. "But I saw it. And also"–my voice drops–"he said that he was like me. Is like me. I've never met someone like me before."

Marcy leans forward. "You're certainly one in a million, Charlie."

She squeezes my forearm, sending a rush of heat through my chest. The way she says my name, so matter of fact, with such certainty, I think I could love her just for that. But I fell for her long before she knew my truth.

I think I fell in love with her at the same time that I realized that I was different from other girls.

We look at each other and then out at the black horizon beyond the train station. As we wait in the darkness of the train driver's compartment, it reminds me of one night so many years ago.

It was towards the end of our first year in the dorms. We had snuck out to a bonfire party, the kind that happened every Friday night. A huge fire crackled as waves crashed in the distance. Someone played a guitar, and we drank spiked punch from plastic cups. Half the kids from our dorm block were there, and eventually the authorities broke it up. Adults shouted, and kids ran, laughing. It was a game.

Marcy and I had broken off from the main pack of retreating teens and ran into the dunes. Panting, we collapsed onto the cold, hard sand. I'd never seen the night so clear before. There wasn't even a wisp of fog to obscure the sky. As alcohol buzzed in my ears, a bright streak flashed across the sky. A falling star.

"What did you wish for?" Marcy asked.

I didn't know what to say. It had happened faster than my brain could process it, and I hadn't actually wished for anything. So I deflected. "What did you wish for?"

She nudged my shoulder. "I can't tell you that!"

"Then why did you ask me?" I nudged her back.

We both burst out laughing, a raucous roar louder than the ocean's crashing waves.

When the fit ended, in the silence that followed, Marcy rested her head on my shoulder and whispered, "If you were a boy, I'd totally have a crush on you."

Warmth spread through my 15-year-old chest. "If I was a boy, I'd have a crush on you, too," I whispered back. The words surfed over the currents of the sea breeze and washed away with the current.