Ciel Read online

Page 3


  I feel all the blood in my body rush to my face and I turn fire-engine red. There is not a drop left for my fingers and toes, that start trembling as if it were the middle of winter. Some kids behind me, maybe from my old school, start to giggle.

  “No.”

  “What’s your last name?”

  “Sousa.”

  “I see. I hadn’t gotten to the S’s yet. Alessandro Sousa?”

  For a split second, that seems like an eternity, a wave of contradictory thoughts washes over me. Then I answer in a voice so strong it surprises me.

  “No. It’s Alessandra, with an A. There was a mistake at registration.”

  Madame Walter takes off her glasses and looks at me, surprised. Then, before going back to her attendance sheet, she adds, “I thought it was strange, a girl and a boy going to the bathroom together. With your voice, if you had short hair, I would think you were a boy.”

  ♥♥♥

  After Madame Walter said that terrible thing, I heard a few bursts of laughter, and looked down to hide my shame. Stephie acted as if nothing had happened. I suppose she was relieved that the teacher didn’t make her stay after school, but she must have been embarrassed at how Madame Walter said she thought I was a boy in front of the whole class. Sometimes I think I’m sabotaging her efforts to not be noticed. During the class, a little voice in my head kept telling me I should stop being her friend, to keep from ruining her life.

  When the bell rang, I said good-bye as fast as I could and went to my ethics and world views class. I was still in no mood to talk about what happened. Not right away, in any case. My feelings were still too hurt.

  Back home, Virgil is crashed out on the sofa, his feet in the air, watching cartoons, the way he always does. He looks away from the screen long enough to say “Hello.” I’m pretty lucky with my little brother. The only time he gets mad is when he wants to follow me and he can’t, like when I sleep over at Stephie’s, or go to the LGBT+ Youth Center (twelve years and older only).

  Ever since he was little, he has been calling me his “sibling” instead of brother or sister. At the house, he likes to wear my dresses, and sometimes he asks me to style his hair. But only at the house, never at school. He loves to try all kinds of things, even if he continues to identify as a boy.

  I push away his stinky feet and make room for myself on the sofa. We watch TV for a few minutes. Then I break the silence.

  “I want to make a new video for my YouTube channel.”

  “Cool! Can I be your cameraman again?”

  “The last time I let you film, it looked like there was an earthquake, the picture was jumping around so much!”

  “The wind was blowing. It wasn’t my fault.”

  “Yeah, sure. I thought I’d go back to the park, like last time. It’s a good place.”

  “Right now?”

  “Right now. What happened at school is still fresh in my memory.”

  Virgil isn’t happy about having to turn off the TV before the show is over, but I promise to buy him licorice after the shoot, and that’s enough to get him leaping off the sofa and putting on his shoes. I send a text to my father to tell him we are at the park, so he won’t think we’ve been kidnapped. Then I go into the bathroom and make an attempt to fix my hair, and apply some styling cream, which always looks good in a video.

  I lock the door on the way out as Virgil rushes down the metal stairway to the street. I catch up to him a minute later.

  “What happened today at school?”

  “Actually, things went okay, except I didn’t see a single bathroom that wasn’t either for boys or girls. I had to wait till everyone was in class before I could take a pee while Stephie guarded the door, and we were both late. Then my French teacher told me that if it weren’t for my long hair, she would have thought I was a boy.”

  “She’s mean!”

  “I don’t think so. She didn’t even realize that might hurt my feelings.”

  “Then why do you want to make a video?”

  “Because I’m tired of everyone acting as if people like me don’t exist.”

  ♥♥♥

  The sky is cloudy, but I read on the Internet that it’s better that way if you want to film. Too much sun gets in the camera’s eye, or something like that. We spend ten minutes looking for the best spot in Maisonneuve Park. It’s one of the biggest in Montreal, but you can’t get lost because the Olympic Stadium tower is your landmark. The Stadium is south of the Park, and we live north. To find my way home, I just walk in the opposite direction from the tower.

  Virgil is starting to get impatient. “How about there?”

  “No. Look at that bush, it’s ugly.”

  “What about over there?”

  “With that big street in the background?”

  “Then up on the hill!”

  “There are no trees or anything.”

  I’m a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to my art (and when it comes to torturing my little brother). But it’s important. Since he admires me, I need to maintain my status as a legend, and that means taking my YouTube pastime more seriously than it really is. That way, other people will take it seriously too. I read that on the Internet as well.

  Virgil points to a clearing surrounded by lilacs, red maples, and apple trees. To make him feel good, I congratulate him, because the place is perfect. Well, “perfect” is a big word. Let’s just say it’s adequate. To be perfect, it would need chairs, a little table with a water glass, and a fox in the background.

  I check my phone to make sure my hair isn’t too much of a mess, then I hand it to Virgil, who sits in front of me. He counts down, “Three…two…one…. Action!” But we both know I’m going to spend the first few minutes saying silly things and making faces, to warm up. Maybe more than a few minutes today, since I want to talk about a subject that’s important to me. Most of the time I talk about easy things, like the trouble our dog gets into. Not that Borki isn’t important, but today, it’s different. Finally, I’m ready. I dive in.

  “Hi, this is Ciel, from Ciel Is Bored. Today was my first day of high school, and…uh, I think it went pretty well.”

  I take a deep breath. My lungs feel completely empty. Then I launch in for real.

  “But, actually, no, it was a complete mess. I discovered that my new school doesn’t have any washrooms I can use, since they are all separated into boys and girls. I had to hold it in the whole day. But then I couldn’t stand it, and I waited until there wasn’t anyone in one of the girls’ bathrooms, and I went there. Because of that, my girlfriend who was with me and I were late for class, and that was the excuse the teacher needed to make comments about me. First she thought I was a boy, then she said that if I’d had shorter hair, she wouldn’t have thought I was a girl, not with my voice.”

  I take a moment to catch my breath. I think I went too far with my tirade, because my cheeks are hot and the muscles of my face are tense. That doesn’t happen when I talk about Borki. Sitting in front of me, Virgil encourages me to continue.

  “I’m really sick of comments like that. And sick of not having washrooms adapted for us. Why do all girls have to be alike, and all boys the same? We’re not copies of the same model.”

  I stop and think. I am going much farther than I planned to.

  Then I look into the camera for my conclusion.

  “Well, it’s easier to ignore those things, and force everyone to fit into two different boxes, one for girls, the other for boys, and too bad for the rest. This is Ciel, from Ciel Is Bored.”

  4

  Practical Advice in Case of a Zombie Attack

  I open my eyes at 5:33, two minutes before the alarm is set to go off. In the dark, I stare at the red dots that flash between the hour and the minutes. I feel more tired than usual, but my special power to wake up before the alarm has not deserted me. Tho
ugh it was a lot easier during the summer when I didn’t have to go to school after my paper route.

  I turn off the alarm clock, then push aside the blankets to look for my phone. It’s Tuesday. My last email to Eiríkur is a week old, and he hasn’t answered. I know that’s normal, coming from him, but it’s too long for me. I even wrote him a message on WhatsApp last Friday, giving him the link to my latest video. I worked fast to edit it and take out the worst parts, and post it as quickly as possible, so it would be up-to-date. Sometimes it takes me weeks to upload a video, because I’m lazy. Which is why I understand it when Eiríkur takes his time answering me.

  On Friday, I gathered up my courage and went to see my teachers before class to ask them to change my name on their class lists. I will be Alessandra in French, social studies, science and technology, art, and gym, and Alessandro in English, math, and ethics and world views. That’s a little strange, but what can you do? I think it went pretty well. My gym and science teachers were in a hurry when I went to see them, and they just said, “All right, that’s fine.” The art teacher was a little confused and didn’t really understand what I was trying to tell him. If you ask me, he’s always lost. He must have thought I was a cisgender girl. On the other hand, he has never taken attendance, and doesn’t seem to want to know the students’ names. No wonder he couldn’t understand me coming and telling him I wanted to be called by a different name.

  I wasn’t very busy this last weekend. I didn’t do much besides read mangas, ride my bike with my father and my brother, and listen to music. I felt nostalgic for the days when Eiríkur lived just two blocks away. When I wasn’t with Stephie, I’d go to his place and we’d hide out in his room and play video games and read graphic novels all day. Once, for total darkness, we stuck big pieces of cardboard over his window. It was the perfect atmosphere for his zombie game. I’ve never been a big video game fan, but I was happy to share one with him.

  I know I’m going to be spending more weekends by myself, now that Stephie wants to make new friends. We never talked about what happened during French class. And I didn’t dare call her on Friday evening to ask if she wanted to come to my house. I knew she was going to visit her grandmother in Sherbrooke for the Labor Day weekend. She put photos from her hike on Mount Orford on Snapchat.

  I put down my phone and sigh. I spend too much time online! I throw on my clothes and go pour myself a glass of guava juice before heading out on my paper route.

  Every morning around four o’clock, a truck from the newspaper office drives past and someone drops off the pile of papers I’m supposed to deliver. What they do is more like throwing than dropping, since they pitch the bale onto my porch. Sometimes the racket wakes me up.

  That’s part of my morning ritual, opening the front door and having a stretch as the sun begins to come up. I bring in the bale of papers, cut the white plastic band that holds them together, and stuff the copies into my bag. Usually I have time to glance at the headlines in case there’s something interesting. This morning, when I see the word transgender written in big letters, I drop my bag and start reading:

  A young Montreal transgender person wins gold at the Canadian junior swimming championship

  Liam Johnson, a 12-year-old athlete, has struck gold: the boy from the Rosemont district won a gold medal at the Canadian Junior Swimming Championship that took place this year in Whitehorse, Yukon. His participation made waves a few months back, as he was the first transgender person to sign up, which forced the competition’s organizing committee to review its selection process. The committee’s decision to include Liam Johnson attracted international attention, since it meant that transgender youth required no medical certificate to compete in the gender category they identified with.

  This is a triumph for young Liam, who was born with a girl’s body, but who has not undergone a sex-change operation or hormone treatments. When questioned about it, he said he intended to begin taking testosterone soon in order to masculinize his body, a procedure that is unfair to other competitors, according to some analysts.

  (See SOCIETY section, page S-1)

  I feel like tearing up the paper and burning the whole pile. Are you kidding me? The boy wins a gold medal in a national championship, and all the journalists want to talk about are his genitals? That makes me mad! And the way the article talks about the new rules for the competition, as if the committee’s decision not to discriminate against trans people was an act of great generosity. It’s really frustrating. And can someone tell me why the piece is in the “Society” section instead of in “Sports?”

  At least the photo that goes with the story is good. The champion is in his racing trunks, ready to hit the water. A lock of his curly brown hair peeks out from under his cap, next to his right ear. His eyes are alert, as if he were concentrating on nothing but winning. I take a picture of the article with my phone to show it to Stephie later on.

  Then I put my bag over my shoulder and go out the back door into the yard, where my bike is. The article is still running through my head. Liam Johnson? Funny, I’ve heard that name before….

  ♥♥♥

  “Our locker is turning into a regular palace!”

  “I was thinking of installing a solid gold toilet, right here on the shelf.”

  Stephie laughs as she looks at her reflection in the little mirror I hung on the inside of the door. The frame is as green as Georgette the crocodile, and the words Too Cute! are written above it. I found it at the drugstore yesterday and convinced my father that our locker absolutely needed it.

  As Stephie makes faces in the mirror, I ask her, “How was your grandmother’s?”

  “Not bad. We went hiking on Mount Orford.”

  “I saw the pictures.”

  “You haven’t seen this one!”

  Stephie takes her phone from her pocket and shows me a photo of a plate with a slab of gray, floppy meat on it and a salad.

  “Ick, what’s that?”

  “My grandmother got it into her head that I adore calf’s liver, even though I hate it. She wanted to spoil me, so she cooked some for Sunday dinner.”

  “Sounds delicious! Is it just me, or is she always trying to get you to eat something inedible?”

  “She does that all the time. The last visit, she served me blood sausage for breakfast. Blood sausage! Can you imagine? She swore I had told her, once upon a time, that I liked it. Not very likely! I forced myself to eat most of it. Anyway, enough of that. Here’s some other photos of Orford. That’s the summit.”

  I point to a baby-faced boy in one of the pictures.

  “Who’s that?”

  Stephie clutches the phone to her heart, then raises her eyes in ecstasy.

  “Sebastian Fontaine. He was hiking with his parents, and we exchanged phone numbers!”

  I put on a fake exasperated look. “You’re collecting them now? You want me to tell Frank? When’s the wedding?”

  “Never would be too soon!” She laughs. “All he could talk about was his mountain bike. But he’s so handsome. Look at his legs!”

  She blows up the photo of that part of his anatomy and pushes the phone in my face. I deflect her arm.

  “I get it, he has legs, I saw them.”

  Actually, I think it’s funny. Even if Stephie has been going out with Frank forever, and their love will probably survive the downfall of civilization, she can’t help falling for any guy who comes along. She’s a hopeless romantic.

  She gives me an elbow to the ribs.

  “What did you do this weekend?”

  “Not too much…. I edited my new video so I could put it on YouTube. I went biking with my father and my brother. Virgil had friends sleeping over, so I bugged them a while.”

  “Sounds like fun!”

  “Then I harassed Eiríkur on WhatsApp so he’d answer my email.”

  “He hasn’t answered yet
? Forget about him!”

  “He’s busy.”

  “By ‘busy,’ you mean he has too many video games to play?”

  “Give him a chance, the new Zelda just came out.”

  “I don’t think it’s fair that a game would come before you,” Stephie says.

  “It’s always been that way. It’s not that games come before me, but he falls into them and can’t get out.”

  I don’t like this conversation very much. I know that Stephie’s intentions are good, but she’s too hard on my boyfriend. I decide to change the subject.

  “What about your guy? Isn’t he supposed to come see you this morning? Or did he fall in love with someone with legs too?”

  “He texted me. He’s a little late, so he’s going right to class. He had a soccer game last night.”

  “Did his team win?”

  “Since when do you care?”

  “I just want to know if he earned the right to be late!”

  Stephie slaps me on the shoulder and I laugh. I like teasing her about Frank. The two of them are so much in love, they seem to be the only two people on Earth in their sweet little cocoon. I wish I could have gotten that close to Eiríkur before he left.

  The first bell rings. We hurry and close up our locker, then move toward our class. We have French first period, and since we sit together, we go in together.

  Stephie talks away as we climb the stairs.

  “Since you want to know, Frank’s team won, thanks to Frank, who scored two goals.”

  “Some legs he must have!” I tease her. “Did I tell you he’s in science with me?”

  “You sent me a dozen photos of his back during class.”

  “It’s not my fault. He was sitting right in front of me with his friend with the brown hair.”

  “Viktor?”

  “If that’s his name. You know what? I took your advice.”

  I tell her how I had my name changed on the attendance sheets for my Friday classes. Stephie doesn’t understand.

  “But that means you won’t have the same name for all your classes. The students who have more than one class with you won’t get it.”