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“After she disappeared two years later, I was taken into a boys’ boarding school and the woman who took care of me told me to never, ever shower with the other boys, get close to them or even talk to them. She always tightened my pants and cut my hair, and watched me all the time, making sure I stayed as the boy Mom wanted me to be. I was too scrawny at the time, though, so scrawny and innocent for what was going on in that school. I wanted to have friends and play with them, but the boys didn’t feel the same. They hit me and tried to drown me, they pulled my hair and tore my books. I always cried in the corner on my own because Mom told me boys don’t cry. I was so alone and scared and looked over my shoulder with every step I took until…”
Her bottom lip trembles. “A boy rescued me. He was taller, older and had a better build, too. He scared the other boys by just showing up there. He gave them a fright and beat them to a pulp in the middle of the playground. He sat with me when I was reading, a bit behind so he didn’t disturb me. He was silent mostly, but he protected me, he let me smile again, be myself, and forget for a moment that I lost my mom. But he didn’t know I was a girl because I couldn’t betray the promise I gave my mom. No matter how much I wished to open up to him, I couldn’t.” She swallows. “Until now.”
The entire time she speaks, I’m unmovable, I’m surprised I can breathe evenly in the first place.
Joseph is my little Petal.
My little Petal is Joseph.
That small weak boy with no fight in him, the one I wanted to protect because he was about to be eaten by wolves is the same woman sitting in front of me.
Gray eyes.
He had the hugest, most mesmerizing gray eyes I’ve ever seen. Why did I thought they were blue or green? When he first looked up at me with tears in them, thinking I’d hit him like the other bullies, I felt a connection, an inkling, it’s the same one I felt toward my little Petal that day at the hospital’s parking lot. That her smile felt wrong. That’s not how Joseph used to smile before; his smiles used to be carefree, liberating, and contagious.
I might have kept him close for that smile alone.
Then the system robbed him of that smile, that soft innocence.
And now, he’s here. Or she is… or what-the-fuck-ever.
Sarah was the one who kept her hidden in school, making sure to protect her identity as a boy. She must’ve known she’s now a girl, but she never uttered a word about it to Costa or to me to mislead us.
We were looking for a man, but she’s been a woman all along.
Joseph Costa is Georgina Costa.
She interlinks her hands at her lap and watches me through her eyelashes. “Say something.”
What am I supposed to say? I have to kill you? It’s either your life or mine?
Or maybe I should tell her that her mom didn’t disappear, and that her father isn’t just someone who kept her hidden. Maybe I should tell her she’s the Costa heir and her uncle is after her life.
“How did you know it’s me?” I ask instead.
A small smile lifts her lips and I’m trapped it in it for a second, I’m caught hook, line, and sinker. All I think about is to pull her into me and devour that smile, feast on it, cage it and keep it for safekeeping.
“Your eyes,” she says simply.
“My eyes?”
“I might have forgotten a lot of things due to how strange my childhood was, but I never forgot your eyes and that icy color and mean edge. I never forgot the boy who sat beside me as I read and let me pick daisies before telling me not to be a girl.” She laughs, the sound soft and easy. “I wanted to tell you that I was, but I was scared you’d hate me like the others, and I couldn’t afford that.”
“I wouldn’t have hated you.” I don’t know why I say the words, but I just do. It’s the truth and it slips from between my lips so easily, it’s alarming.
I wouldn’t have hated Joseph whether he was a boy or a girl. At the time, he was the only bright thing in my pitch-black life.
My childhood was bitter and angry. I had so much energy I had to purge with fistfights and shower fights. And fights, in general.
After Joseph came, I had better control. He was slowly filling up that bottomless black hole.
Until he didn’t.
Until he left.
My little Petal inches closer as if the distance between us is a burden. Her knees touch my thigh. “You really wouldn’t have?”
