Page 68 of You Weren't Meant to Be Human
“No.” Then, “I think I messed up the project.”
“Okay? Let me see it.” Aspen put down the book, the cover featuring two men gazing at each other in a loving embrace, and yanked the drawing closer. “Oh shit. Yeah. This is boring. You have to actually do something interesting.” Sophie was not interesting in any way that wouldn’t get her locked up. “Draw yourself—I don’t fucking know—killing a billionaire.”
“I’m not getting in trouble like that.”
“Fine. Draw two husbands. Draw yourself as a boy. Whatever.”
Sophie yelped. “I’m not aboy, either.”
Obviously, Sophie was not a boy. She was a girl who just had to try very, very hard to be a girl. She was a girl who looked at pictures of transgender men on social media and gotpissedbecause they got to be men and she didn’t. If she really was a boy, somebody would have told her. Somebody would’ve given her permission to do something about it.
“Sure,” Aspen said, unconvinced, and slid their book across the table. “Read some gay porn and get back to me on that.”
Sophie didn’t touch it.
See? It isn’t even a good story.Nothingactuallyhappened.Sophie didn’t make a decision or take a risk. She didn’t look deeper. She didn’t doshit.She muddled through her boring final and turned it in and received her first-ever grade of B.
The world was not made for ones like you.
When the swarm said that to Sophie for the first time, she’d sobbed. They were right. She was miserable and trapped. She wasn’t a boy until the worms finally told her it was okay, because she couldn’t do it herself.
Come with us, come with us, come with us.
The only time Crane decided something for himself was when he put his face into a pot of boiling water.
From the kitchen, Levi knocks on the counter. “Food’s ready. You hungry?”
Crane is always hungry. He gives up on the sketch and motions for Stagger to help him up, which he does. Hoists Crane right up, easy as anything.
Pop.
Crane’s boxers, and his sweatpants, and the floor are wet.
Now, Tammy had told him there was a chance he’d lose control of his bladder at some point. It’s a rite of passage, she explained, the muscles loosening in preparation for birth and the uterus jamming itself into the bladder since there’s only so much room in the abdominal cavity. Granted, she’d said it asyou’ll piss yourself, the last word coming outyerselflike it always does with her, but still. All the preparation in the world doesn’t make it any easier when you find yourself soaking wet and sick with embarrassment.
It’s still coming out, too. Crane holds his stomach, can’t make himself move, can’t see his legs but imagines the trickling mess down his thigh.
Levi says, “You good?” He sticks his head out of the kitchen. “Ohshit.”
Crane needs to go to the bathroom right now, but Stagger won’t let him move. Crane whimpers. It’s mortifying. Let himgo.
That’s when one of those fucking contractions hit again. A pain in the lower back, a cramp at first before it rises to a sharp point, wrenching across his stomach and squeezing out more hot liquid that soaks right through his pants and begins to drip onto the hardwood floor. He tries to shift his weight to make it stop but it just gets worse. Feels like something slippery, slithering out of him.
“I’m calling Tammy,” Levi says.
No.No, Levi doesn’t need to do that. It’s fine. They still have two and a half weeks. Look, the tally marks on the wall say so. It’s not due yet. It hasn’t been forty weeks. Ignore the fact that Braxton-Hicks practice contractions don’t get stronger like these have been getting. Ignore that these have been getting closer together, more frequent; swear to god, this pressure is pushing the baby’s head into the waiting gap in his pelvis and he can feel it lodged there.
He wasn’t timing on purpose. He didn’t want to know.
Levi, ignorant of or just ignoring Crane’s mounting panic, jams his phone between his shoulder and his ear and immediately goes to pack up the food that’d just finished cooking.
“Hey. Where you at? Gas station? Yeah, his water broke.” Cabinets thud as he gathers up Tupperware. “I don’t fucking know, it’s not like he’ssaidanything. I’ll just—fine. Hold on. Crane,how bad is it?”
There is no good way for Crane to admit he has been ignoring actual labor contractions for at least six hours, so he just signs,Bad.
Stagger translates,“Bad.”
“Bad,” Levi says into the phone. “I can come get you. We gonna do it here? Your house?”
