Page 22 of You Weren't Meant to Be Human
Stagger receives the ice pack.
Stagger’s mouth pulls into a sort of frown. Crane hikes up his shirt, shuffles down the waistband of his pants, shows the soft patch beside his navel. Here—put it here.
When Stagger continues to hesitate, Crane takes his wrist and brings him closer until they’re as close as they were in the Camry. The cold makes contact. Stagger’s face is inches away. There we go. Like that.
It’s unbearably intimate, being this close. Helping with a medical procedure so integral to Crane’s continued existence. Intimate enough that he almost bails, is so glad he stopped speaking because he couldn’t bear being expected to put together words in a moment like this. God, when he was nineteen and naïve, in the first months of hormones, he would do his shot and pretend that it was Levi giving it to him. That Levi would take even a baseline interest in the changing of his body, hell, would want to be an active participant in that changing. And the pain, too. Levi wouldn’t let him use the ice pack. That would be chickening out. No, he’d make Crane feel the needle as it went in, every millimeter of it. He’d tilt Crane’s chin up so he could see the wince, grin lopsidedly as it slid through the skin and layers of fat. It’d be so hot. It’d really be something.
But every time Crane does his injection, Levi’s never so much as in the same room. And now it’s Stagger here instead.
As soon as the ice pack begins to hurt, Crane eases it away, offering the closest thing he can manage to a smile, athank-you.Then he disinfects the burning-cold skin, takes a pinch of stomach fat, and pushes the needle in himself.
The forty-five-degree angle is flawless. Stagger lets out a concerned whine but look, look, it’s okay. The bevel slips right through the meat, burying all the way to the hilt. Just like that. He pushesthe plunger, slow and careful, and testosterone cypionate floods under the skin.
A few seconds later, it’s done. Crane pulls out the needle and plasters over the injection site with a Band-Aid.
Crane needs this. Without this, what is he? Sophie pressing her small breasts flat with her hands, then propping them up in the mirror. Wearing her hair long to hide behind it, and flinching from the boys in her class even though they were nothing but cordial to her; wondering, if she walked into the wrong locker room after gym class, would they push her against the bench and fuck her? She was fourteen when she first fantasized about it. It made her sick, even though it was so incredibly tame in comparison to what she would think up later.
(Crane should tell Levi about it. Levi would get a kick out of it, and Crane would finally have an excuse not to feel bad about getting off to being called a girl.)
Without this, what would he be except Sophie playing with matches in the back seat of her mom’s car?
And without the hive, he’s nothing.
Stagger brushes his thumb against the Band-Aid. The knot of liquid sits under the skin, waiting to be absorbed into the body, where it will hasten the growth of dark body hair, and the restructuring of fat, and the swelling of the clit. Can Stagger feel it? Does he want to? Can he feelthis? Crane grabs Stagger’s wrist hard and pushes until the hand is digging into where his uterus might be, into wherever that grub is curled up asleep.
Crane would make a shit father. He can barely handle showering on a regular basis, let alone take care of a creature dependent on him for survival. He couldn’t graduate high school without trying to set himself on fire. He’s not the right person for this, and the hive has to know that.
So why him?
Can Stagger answer that? After three years of service and love and kindness, why would they subject him tothis?
Stagger doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t even give a boar-grunt, or a single clicking, rasping hive-word. He can’t be bothered to respond at all.
Crane slaps Stagger’s hand away. Gets up. Snatches all the medical trash and dumps it into the garbage except for the sharps, which will go into an old milk jug into the trunk of his car until it’s time to dump them at a needle exchange.
This half-dead, half-worm man whose only job is to watch him, keep him on a leash, control him, does not bother to answer. Thisthing, the arbiter of what he can and cannot do, can’t say a single word about why, and unlike Levi doesn’t even have the decency to offer to fuck him instead.
He needs to talk to the hive. Now.
Ten
As a condition of his suicide watch, Crane is no longer allowed to drive. Because of course. Why would Levi or Stagger or the worms agree to let him behind the wheel when he could crumple it around a tree or send it off a sharp mountain’s edge.
Crane is peeved about it on a trivial level. Killing yourself in a car accident has too much uncertainty, too many opportunities to muck it up and survive. Sophie dreamed about it in regard to the whole self-mutilation thing, oh my god did she weigh the pros and cons of being caught in a car fire and being pulled out in just the nick of time. But for this? Not Crane’s method of choice.
Besides, it’s not like he’s going to do it. He won’t have to go that far. The hive will understand.
“There’s someone here,” Levi snarls when Crane nips out of the truck and slams the door. Stagger, attempting to follow through the same door, narrowly avoids getting his thick fingers caught. He protests with an annoyed click. “Hey—”
Yeah, there’s a car at the pumps, whatever. Just don’t let anyone into the back. They’ve done riskier stuff with more people around.
The sky is the dull blue of summer twilight, the first violet streaks of sunset splashed across the clouds, the kind of color the swarm would spend hours recounting to the hive, only to fail to do it justice. The bell rings when Crane shoves his way inside. Jess is nearly asleep at the register—her hair put up with a claw clip since she’s using the ponytail holder to tie back her shirt, some relief from heat that West Virginia infrastructure is not made for—while Tammy does inventory and a bearded trucker type counts out change for a coffee. It’s been on the pot so long it’s burnt.
“Crane?” Tammy struggles to her arthritic feet. “Sweetheart, where have you been? Did you get my messages?”
He doesn’t answer. Levi doesn’t answer for him either, only presents his bite-marked wrist to the man at the counter. “Coffee’s on the house, Larry. Take it and get out.”
“What?” says Jess as Crane yanks the key from behind the register and makes a beeline for the manager’s office.
