I thought about each time I’d seen the Monsignor. About how Sister Bernadette rushed to his side that morning after Mass. I’d mistaken the fear in her eyes for fear of me, of my sinfulness, when really it had been fear of Kline. Had she been placing herself between him and Deacon Jameson? The few times we were together, the deacon had barely been able to speak, mostly staring at us.
No. Not us.
Me.
My stomach churned more. God, I was so stupid. Appearing in the hallway at the school, interrupting my conversation with Kline . . . I thought he was trying to cover up his guilt and make sure I’d stay silent when really he was probably trying to protect me. Maybe Sister Bernadette or Dima had told him I was bigender, or he figured out on his own that I was a boy sometimes. Or maybe he worried that Reverend Monsignor Kline would go after me regardless.
“Okay,” I said softly, gently, as if I might spook him. “I get how hard this is. I do. But he hurt Michael too. He . . . killed Michael, I’m guessing. And the police were there today. Couldn’t you tell them?”
“If I talk to police now, they’re going to blame me.”
“But DNA—”
“He died in my apartment,” Deacon Jameson said, still sounding broken, weary, and dead. “Wearing my spare pajamas. If police find DNA, it could easily be mine.”
Fuuuuuck. This must be what confessions felt like for my uncle. Hearing shit you wished you could un-hear. Assigning penance and offering absolution so you wouldn’t have to think about it anymore.
Because I didn’t really want to know. And I sure as hell hoped that didn’t make me a bad person, just like my uncle.
Deacon Jameson dropped his head into his hands. “He should have slept in the bedroom. I should have taken the couch. Then I’d have heard. I’d . . .” His voice broke.
This was getting worse by the second. “But you saw his body—after?”
“I saw enough,” he spat. I could practically taste the bitterness. “You know how this will look? Thirteen-year-old boy found strangled to death in a gay deacon’s house?”
“You think that’s better than ‘thirteen-year-old boy found murdered and dumped in a swamp after being strangled to death in gay deacon’s house’?”
“I didn’t dump Michael in the swamp,” he snapped. “I’m the scapegoat, don’t you understand?”
“You know who did move him?” I pressed, almost hopeful.
“People came. People left.” He didn’t look at me. “I went straight to the church right afterward. Confession. Then I prayed. I didn’t leave until you passed out.”
He’s lying, the voice in my head said. He knows exactly who did it. And considering everything I’d heard through the walls, plus all Deacon Jameson’s evasions, I had a guess about who’d helped Kline hide his victim’s body: my uncle. Why, after all this, was Deacon Jameson still protecting people?
I wanted to ask them how Michael was found. Wouldn’t Kline want it to take a while? No, of course not—if Michael’s body was found right away with Deacon Jameson’s DNA on him, with clothes that could be traced back to Deacon Jameson, he really would be the perfect scapegoat. I was slowly starting to understand why they kept saying again and again and again that they couldn’t talk.
“We need a plan,” Sister Bernadette said. “Because honestly, I don’t know what more we can do.”
“All this happened, and you’re still saying you’re not able to help?”
“You misunderstood,” she said carefully. “I don’t know what we can do.”
We.
As in Sister Bernadette and Deacon Jameson.
Not me.
They stared at me. I swallowed. “You have an idea.”
Sister Bernadette cleared her throat. “It’s a bad idea.”
“Please tell me.”
“It’s dangerous.”
“Then maybe we can work with it to make it not-dangerous.”
She seemed to mull over it, exchanging a silent look with Deacon Jameson. “So, you’re bigender.”
“Yeah. So?”
“You used to go out presenting as male? Like sometimes? And you have costumes, right?”
“What does that have to do with anything?” The question was barely out of my mouth when I processed her words. “Oh.”
Because there was one thing I knew from documentaries and books: predators preyed again.
“It’s a bad idea,” she said again. “Forget I suggested it. We’ll think of something else.”
“It’d work,” Deacon Jameson said. “It’d work, and you know it.”
“Don’t push her.”
“She owes me.”
“Don’t go there, Joey.”
He winced. Pain spread through my body. They were fighting over my body. My rights.
Aleks was the beautiful boy. He always looked younger than he was. His face was like a cherub’s, while Alexis’s just looked ugly. He was fearless, unlike Alexis. And he was being objectified, like he had been at the conventions.
Sister Bernadette studied me. “Joey, can you give us a moment?”
“You’ve got to be joking—”
“Please?”
He threw up his hands in defeat and stood, dragging his feet as he slipped into another room. Sister Bernadette stepped toward me. Soon my arms were wrapped around her tightly. She rubbed my back gently. “I’m sorry. We’ll come up with another idea. Something that doesn’t put you in danger.”
“It’s not that.” I sucked in a few deep breaths. “I swore I’d never present as male again.”
“Why?” she asked quietly.
I gripped her more tightly. “Because when I’m Aleks, everyone likes me, everyone wants to sleep with me, Aleks is the beautiful boy, Aleks gets the attention. And girl-me . . . I’m . . . not.”
“Alexis—”
“I hate Aleks,” I blurted out. “I hate that he’s easy. I hate that he can have whoever he wants, whenever he wants. I hate that. And I really hate that I wish I was him all the time.”
Words I’d never once uttered out loud slipped off my lips like water. Feelings I never wanted to admit or acknowledge, because it meant the cosplay girls were right all along. Beautiful boy, ugly girl. Be the beautiful boy instead.
“I’m not sure I understand. I thought you said you didn’t want to be him.”
“I don’t want to be him because I was assaulted as him,” I said. “As Alexis, I’m so ugly, I’m invisible. No one would try anything. It’s safer to have no one notice me than . . . than let it happen again.”
“Alexis,” Bernadette said strongly. She took my chin in her fingers and forced my head up. “Being assaulted isn’t your fault. It has nothing to do with how you look or how you present yourself or how you dress. It has everything to do with the person who assaulted you.”
“But—”
“And this idea that someone can be too ‘ugly’ to be assaulted—you know that’s not true. Anyone can be assaulted. Hiding who you are isn’t going to change that.”
Reverend Monsignor Kline’s face loomed in my vision. Had I been safe with him as a girl? Not really.