Ellis Grey was not a fan of public transit, which meant they had to take a cab to get home from Meredith's school. The hospital was in walking distance of their building. As a young adult, Meredith Grey would use that as proof that her mother prioritized her work over her daughter. When she finished her residency and considered moving to Boston, she came to understand how little choice her mother might've had in the matter. If the market was ten percent as confusing in 1983, it still would've been overwhelming, even for Ellis Grey—especially for reluctant single mother Ellis Grey, who was probably desperate to abandon the apartment that she would've associated with what was likely her darkest period; the six months she spent pregnant with Richard Webber's baby. Meredith would also understand how many uncertainties there were in her understanding of her mother—That was part of why she held onto what she did know as tightly as she could.

In 1986, Meredith knew nothing about real estate. Any memories she retained of those in-between months would spend thirty years surfacing only in nightmares. What eight-year-old Meredith did know was that every intersection represented another minute of her keeping her mother away from her job, and maybe people dying because of her. Her mother wasn't saying that. She wasn't saying anything. Meredith pulled her legs up against her chest, and winced as the fabric around her skinned knee split even further.

"Feet off the seat, Meredith."

She obeyed, and then sat, tensed, waiting for what came next. Her black eye had stopped throbbing while she sat outside the principal's office. Will's parents had offered to take her home, but they hadn't been allowed, even after his mom talked to the principal. He didn't understand; disciplining kids was his job. Her mom was a surgeon. She saved lives. Anything she was doing was more important than Meredith having kicked sand in a bully's face.

"If she yells at you," Will had said, squeezing their interlaced fingers. "Just think of her as a different kind of bully."

It hadn't been bad advice, but her mother's words packed a bigger punch than any playground bully's fist.

When her mother finally appeared in the entranceway, within half-an-hour of dismissal, her only words to Meredith had been, "Did they touch you first?"

"Um." She had to think to get her memory to pause midway through everything those jerks had been saying to Will. They'd come over while she'd been taking her turn at jumprope. Even while they yelled at him, Will kept turning for her, perfectly in rhythm until one of them yanked his shoulder to make him face them. Meredith had tripped on the rope, and by the time she got up, her knee stinging, they had him backed up against the tree. She'd lunged, planning to pull him away, and one of the girls who liked to nod along with boys, even while insisting they were smelly, grabbed her arm. She'd used her nails to get free from her, and groped for Will again. That got her elbowed in the shoulder. It wasn't until one of them said a slurry word that she'd fully thrown herself at them.

"Yes," she said. Her mother held her gaze in the way that always made Meredith look away if she was lying. She held her head up high.

"All right. Stay here." She'd disappeared into the principal's office. When she came out, a threat of five days banned from school had become one, with three days of in-school suspension.

The cab pulled up to their building, and Meredith looked next door to see Will's curtains twitch. They were covered in purple and green swirls, not all that different from what she'd have picked out for herself if she'd gotten to help her aunt decorate her room. She'd smiled at him, cracking the dried blood on her swollen bottom lip.

Her mother took her hand while she climbed onto the curb, and didn't let go until they were inside. Did she think Meredith was going to run away? It wouldn't have been a horrible idea, if her knee hadn't gone stiff at some point since they'd left the school. Mom watched her climb the front steps closely, and Meredith wasn't sure if she should let herself limp to seem sad and injured, or fight against it to seem strong.

"Shower," her mother said.

Meredith froze, midway through dumping the sand out of her Mary-Janes into the kitchen trashcan. "Don't you have to go back teeho'pital?" Her mom's thin eyebrows drew together, and for a second they were both silent. "Back to MGH." Meredith corrected.

"Teeho'pital" was a baby word. She could say "to the hospital" now, or "go to work." Tee ho'pital wasn't MGH, anyway. It was Seattle Grace.

She wasn't little anymore. she knew that old hospital in Seattle wasn't the hospital, she only… sometimes she still walked around an unfamiliar corner at the new hospital and expected to find a row of exam rooms when really she'd discovered the nurses's station. It wasn't her fault that Mom didn't take her there enough for her to learn the differences.

"I have the rest of this shift off. In trade, I'll have to stay overnight tonight. Ms. Lenora will stay through bedtime, and look in on you until I'm home."

Meredith glanced at the clock. Four-forty. It was weird to have Mom home this early. Usually, she'd be in Will's apartment rewatching Labyrinth, not going through part of her bed-time routine. He'd promised not to watch it without her, even if she got grounded. She'd said he could start it, if he wanted, and let it play until the Goblin King appeared. Sarah was stupid. Babies couldn't help being born—it was parents who decided to treat one kid better than another.

Will's mom had told her that was a very mature observation. She liked hearing their opinions on what they watched or read, even when it was something silly. Her mother would listen, or at least let her talk until she ran out of steam, but she wouldn't engage with conversations about anything unnecessarily inane to appeal to the child's purchasing power. That meant anything "for kids" that hadn't existed when she was little. Questions about Meredith's schoolwork usually worked better, and although sometimes her mom could be impatient, their best times came when Meredith was doing homework in the kitchen, occasionally asking for clarification, while her mom read medical journals.

She'd missed Science that day, and she knew Mom was sick of hearing about her trouble with long division, so while she gathered clean play-clothes, she hummed tunes from the School House Rocks record she'd gotten for her last birthday.

"Get your pajamas instead," her mother instructed. "It will be easier if you don't have to change again tonight."

Meredith complied. There were two kinds of easy: things that were efficient, and things that were lazy. Telling the difference wasn't her best skill, but she always knew which one was meant if she heard her mom say the word.

To her surprise, her mom stayed in the bathroom, taking Meredith's arm to help her over the high side of the bathtub. Then, she took the washcloth and ran it carefully over each of Meredith's limbs, stopping wherever she found a scrape or a bruise. Her eyes would go back and forth between the spot, and Meredith's face, not giving her a chance to hide it when the tender spots made her wince. She checked her midsection and chest particularly carefully. Meredith knew that sometimes people got hurt inside their bodies, but that was in big accidents, like the ones where she could hear the police and ambulance sirens even before the phone rang.

"They didn't hit me too hard," she said. Her mom looked up from examining the medium-length scrape on her forearm, and Meredith couldn't tell what the emotions in her eyes meant.

"Is that so?"

Meredith shrugged. She'd been brave enough to raise the topic that was making the air around them so tense, but it hadn't helped anything.

Almost as much sand came out of her hair as had been in her shoes, and Meredith was glad her mother was there to wring it out. Otherwise, she was sure some of it would've ended up in her pillow, and her mom would be upset about that, even though it was Tuesday and the cleaning lady came Wednesday.

The first-aid kit was waiting on the bathroom counter. It held a lot more than Will's parents stocked in their bathroom, but Meredith liked their selection of colored band-aids way more than all her mom's fancy stuff from the hospital, even if the bandaids were "whimsical nonsense." Having preferences for things her mom would disdain made her feel like she had a secret, one between her and the universe. She felt a smile every time she thought about glittery pencils, or library books with ghosts on the cover, even if she didn't always let it spread on her face.

"Don't you have to use peroxide?" she asked as her mom patted her scraped knee with a gauze sponge. She was proud that her voice only gave a way a little bit of how much it stung.

"No. Soap and water are the best for killing germs. What's one word for 'killing germs?'"

"Um." Meredith started to bite the corner of her lip, stopping as soon as her front teeth pressed against the bruised skin. "Sterilizing?"

"Good. Hold your arm out."

Mom wrapped a thin layer of gauze over the scrape, and then moved her fingers to Meredith's chin, tipping it up and then to either side, examining her lip. "A single stitch wouldn't be amiss, but it'll heal without one."

Her attention moved to the puffy bruise that'd formed around Meredith's eye. That'd been the last hit, when the boy she'd leapt on had finally managed to get her pinned. His partner had pressed her shoulders down into the sand so he could draw back and wail on her. Luckily, the playground monitor had shouted his name seconds before his fist connected, and his aim had suffered.

"That was the only time I was scared," she admitted. For the first time since she'd been carried into the nurse's office she gave into the burning heat behind her eyes. "They had me down, and my eye was just…. Bullseye," she whispered, drawing out the s like the end of an explosion. She didn't know how to make the squelching sound she'd heard in her mind, but her mom messed around in people's bodies all the time. She'd probably heard it.

She sniffed, and her mother yanked a tissue out of the box on the counter. Crying was the one thing the rest of the world saw as weakness, but her mother didn't.

"Sometimes your body has no other way to release pain," she reminded Meredith now.

"Di'n't hurt," Meredith insisted, her face buried in the tissue. Strangely, her mother's mouth twitched, like she might be holding back a smile. Did she have a universe secret? That was a dumb thought. All adults had secrets, and her mom had millions of them.

"Or fear, or sadness," Mom added. "Sometimes people cry from happiness."

Meredith almost said really? but her mom wasn't the kind of adult who made things up to tease. If she said something, it was true. What would have to happen to fill her with so much happiness that it couldn't come out in any other way? Sure, sometimes her and Will's rough-housing devolved into tickling, and one of them laughed so hard they teared up, but Mom had said before that that was a reflex. Meredith didn't think it was the same thing.

"Okay." Her mother took a fresh tissue and swiped it across the cheekbone below Meredith's uninjured eye. "I'm going to feel the area around your eye, just to make sure it's a superficial injury. What does that mean?"

"That it's…." Super. Very. -ficial. That sounds like facial. Very on my face? That made sense, but when she'd heard that word before it didn't have anything to do with faces, did it? "That it's very…on the skin?"

"Hmm, not bad. In medicine, superficial means an injury doesn't go below the skin. In other contexts, it means anything that's only on the surface. For example, your principal was superficially nice to me, but below the surface I think he was frustrated that I didn't buy into his interpretation of events."

"You didn't?"

"No, because his explanation seemed far too superficial. What do I mean?"

"That he…um…he only cares about the top part of what happened."

"Precisely. All right. What I'm going to do is called palpitating. I'll take two fingers." She held them up. "And press. It will hurt, and I apologize for that. It has to be done, because a break in the optical bone can be dangerous. Understand?"

Meredith nodded. Her mother took hold of the upper part of her arm, and to keep herself from flinching away Meredith leaned into her grip.

"Eyes closed."

She was grateful for permission to squeeze her eyes shut, even if it made her heartbeat start racing. It'd been terrifying to see that boy's fist descend on her eye. It happened so fast, and it took so long that she could've counted every knuckle. Somehow, waiting for the touch of her mom's gentle, doctor's fingers, familiar as they were, was worse.

Cold. Her fingertips were cold, which felt good. Then she pressed the puffy skin, and it didn't feel good anymore, it hurt. It hurt; was she trying to burst the bruise? Mom pressed again. Did she feel something bad? Was Meredith's eye-bone broken? Did that jackass boy break her eye? Ow, ow, ow, no, not again.

"One more spot, baby."

Meredith gasped, because it hurt, it hurt so bad, and…but…and she couldn't remember the last time her mom called her "baby." Ms. Lorena called her that, sometimes, but she used it for Will, too, and she called Mom "sweetie," so her pet-names didn't have much caché.

"And done." The pressure eased, but Meredith didn't move. "Nothing broken." Her mother actually smiled then. All Meredith could do was stare at her. The smile faltered, and she reached over to the counter to pull down Meredith's pajamas—a cut down set of scrubs.

"Get dressed, and I'll brush your hair out."

Meredith padded into the kitchen while her mom packed the first-aid kit back into the hall closet. The brush was on the island where she ate breakfast, and often dinner if the baby-sitter had plans for after her mother got home. She got into place, and rested her feet on the rail that connected the legs of the stool. When they moved here, she hadn't been able to do that without stretching. Would they still live here when her legs were long enough to touch the floor?

Her mother appeared in the doorway, and then hesitated. She must've been thinking about a patient or something; Ellis Grey did not linger in doorways. When she continued walking it was with her usual confident stride.

Hair brushing was one of the few rituals that'd carried over from the Seattle house. Sometimes, on mornings when Meredith couldn't find her shoes, and the uniform sweater she'd thought was clean had a spaghetti stain, her mom would grumble that she needed to learn to do this herself. She hadn't been taught, though, and anytime Mom worked a double and then saw one of the ponytails Meredith had managed, she'd heave a sigh and point to the stool. One of Meredith's secrets with the universe was that she never wanted to learn how to do her own hair.

"We have good fingers for braiding, you know," Mom commented, finishing off the last few tangles. She held her hand out over Meredith's shoulder. Mimicking it, Meredith made a face at how purple her knuckles were. "Surgeon's fingers like ours are delicate. You're lucky you didn't break one of yours."

"I know how to throw a punch."

"Clearly." Her mother tugged the comb through one last time, far harder than Meredith considered necessary, and then used it to part her hair down the middle. "It's instinctual for you to want to protect people. I understand that."

"Y-you do?"

"Of course. I'm a female surgeon. I'm constantly having to stand up for myself, and for patients."

Meredith twisted her left index finger between the pinchers of her other hand, ignoring the sting of her bruises. She'd been grateful to Will for understanding that her mom could be a bully, but she should've reminded him that she wasn't always one.

"Violence, however, is not the way I do it. Inciting violence is for the people who are punching down, do you know what that means?" Meredith shrugged. Her black eye had definitely come from a downward punch, but it didn't seem like the same idea. "It means attacking someone with less power. Sometimes someone is so afraid of losing, they'll go to any means to defend their position. They think they're entitled, because, for instance, they were born as a man, and have never had to deal with adversity. What's that mean?" she added, securing the end of the first braid.

"Bad things. Like, obstacles but not in real life. I mean. Physical. It's more, like, ones caused by other people. Like if you're Black, or an immigrant, or transsexual."

Her mother paused midway through crossing two strands of hair. "Where did you hear that word?"

Meredith drew her shoulders up, and started to bite her lip again. This time, her mother reached around, and put a finger just below her lip.

"Don't do that. Don't hurt yourself just because you don't have an immediate answer to a question. Pain makes it harder to think, not easier."

"Understood," Meredith murmured.

"Good." Her mother retracted her hand, letting it rest on Meredith's shoulder. "I'm not mad at you, Meredith. Just curious." Ellis Grey didn't say anything that wasn't true.

"You know Fi?"

"From the café?"

"Uh huh. She…She keeps her hair short, not like…yours is short to make it easier if you get called in, but hers is like.…" Meredith raised her hand up above her head to illustrate a buzz, barely avoiding clipping her mother in the face. "Sorry!"

"I get it," Mom said, her voice sounding like she might be going to laugh, which usually only happened if Dr. Cerone came over.

"Well, and, so, she wears a lot of boy's clothes, like vests and stuff, so, and Shelley is kind of like her wife, but also not really, and I asked her if she wished she was a boy. Not, like, because boys don't have to deal with mis…miso-gamy."

"Misogyny."

"That. But actually a boy with…" Meredith swallowed. We don't use silly words for anatomical terms. "With a penis."

Her mother made several more twists before saying, "And what did she say?" Her tone was clipped. Careful. But Meredith was used to examining the edges of her words, and whatever these ones were tinged with, she didn't think it was anger.

"Lots of things. I asked questions," she added. Her mother didn't always want to talk, especially to Meredith, but she was big on questions. Ask. Just be willing to take 'that's not your business' as an answer.

"I'm sure you did."

"Oh…okay. Well, she said, no, she likes being a woman—not a girl because she's an adult—she likes the feel of boy clothes on her body, but actually most of hers are tailored so they're not boy—man's!—clothes they're…um…'stereotypically male styles altered for one woman.'" She was proud she'd remembered the exact words Fi used. Paraphrasing makes it too easy to miss the point.

"And, but, some people do wear the opposite clothes," she continued. "Sometimes, they pretend to be women or men, whatever they're not. They're called cross-dressers. Like 'across.' And then she said there are people who feel like they got the wrong body. Some even get surgery to fix it!" She'd meant to bring that up to her mom right after she talked to Fi, but she'd spent the weekend at Will's, and then Mom had a double-shift, and Meredith hadn't had a reason to think about it.

"Yes, they do."

"I thought you'd know about it, because you know everything about surgeries. Fi said, that's being transsexual, like going from one to another, like trans-portation. And, she said it's not like her and Shelley, because what body someone has doesn't affect who they like, but people act like it's the same, and are really mean about it—like more mad than about being lesbians. Or gay, if there are two men who know they are men, even if they don't have penises. So, but they do face more adversities?"

Her mother nodded, and Meredith couldn't stop herself from smiling.

"And, Fi said, there are lots of other words, too. Everyone all together is queer, which is what that jerk said to Will, but that doesn't make sense. Will doesn't like-like anyone, and he's never said he wants to try my dresses, or be a girl, even though he gets called one, some, and if that was true, I wouldn't care. I told him that, and he said he's a boy. He's not a girl! I told those boys that. I did. I used my words, but they said it again, and then they said another word Fi says is slurry. So, I had to make them understand not to say it, and pain is bad, so now if they think the bad word, they'll think about hurting."

"You just said quite a few things. Let me finish this, and I'll explain why that's not how it works. All right?"

"Mmhmm."

The braid took four more twists; enough for Meredith to decide her mom was going to be mad at her for taking up all this time, and having to doctor her instead of real patients. She also felt like maybe she'd been wrong to be curious with Fi, even though she'd even told Fi she could say none of your business, Meredith.

"Stop that." Her mother had moved around to sit across from her at the island, and grabbed her hands to get her to stop twisting her fingers. Meredith looked up. Mom didn't let go. "All right. First of all, there's a lot more to it, but pain actually interferes with learning, as well as thinking, like I said earlier.

"In the past, plenty of people made the same assumptions you did. It's not entirely wrong. Punishment can help things stick, which is why you're staying here after school for the next week, and not watching TV for two weeks."

Wow. That was a sneaky way of laying out her restrictions. Like a snake sneaky. It was serious, too, because her mom didn't bother with TV, so she'd just unplug everything and put it in the closet. The babysitters would complain, which at least ensured it'd be put back as soon as her sentence was up.

"Meredith, are you still listening?"

"Yes."

"I'll find a lower level psych text that explains conditioning, but for now let's think of it this way: you wanted to get that boy to associate those words with pain, right? But what happens if he associates the idea with it instead?"

"Um." With her mom's hands on hers, Meredith's urge to fidget sent her eyes to the clock. Five-thirty. Not much longer until Ms. Lenora would be here, and this unexpected time with Mom would be over. Meredith longed for the more familiar routine, but didn't want this to be over. "If they think just the regular word hurts? Not slurry? Since queer is both? But, also, I forgot to tell you, they said another one, too, and it was bad."

"Slur. Those words are called slurs. There's not an adjective. Queer can be both. The noun tends to be used as a slur more often than the adjective—What I mean is, someone who wants to be insulting might call them "a queer," but some who says "I am queer" is talking about their identity." Her expression said she was interested in the topic, but she'd never thought about it much. Was intrigued the right word? Meredith had never made her look intrigued before. "Anyway, if that bully hears someone say they are queer, like your friend Fi—or maybe Will one day, if he feels that way—and that triggers pain, how do you think he'll react?"

A lump was forming in Meredith's throat, and she could only get one word out. "Bad?"

"It's possible. People punch down, but they also lash out because they're in pain. Sometimes they can't help it. If they've been hurt often enough, it can be difficult not to see a threat everywhere. Sometimes, they do it because they don't like something about themselves, and maybe they've been hurt for it by someone else."

"But…but those boys weren't queer!" Meredith objected, the unfamiliar word still strange on her tongue. "They're just mean!"

"You don't know what they are. They might not know, either. Remember, you said Will doesn't like anyone that way yet. Fi is right to say who you are is different from who you like. Will… he likes to play some things mostly girls play, right?"

"Uh-huh. We were jumping rope."

"So I was told." Her nose scrunched like she'd smelled something bad. Meredith bet the principal said something about Will. He'd made a face whenever Will said he'd been turning rope, and he kept calling Meredith little lady. "It's possible those boys have been punished for doing something seen as girly. Or somewhere deep inside, they're just afraid of what's different, and that fear makes them angry. Sometimes, it's not even fear they've settled on themselves. It's passed down from their parents. That's why there's still prejudice against African-Americans, even though segregation has been illegal since before you were born, and generations have passed since the Civil War."

Meredith nodded. Civil Rights, and the Civil War both came up during Black History Month in February, and Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry was always on the display at the school library.

"And queer rights aren't something that have been talked about for very long. Not everyone knows that it's not…. Not abnormal to have feelings that don't match up with the idea of one man and one woman having children. Usually, a man and woman who look the same, and who divide the household into women's work and men's work."

"But, Mom, that's so stupid!" Meredith clamped her mouth shut, but her mother didn't snap at her for the word, even though she usually said that stupid is not being willing to work, regardless of how intelligent you claim to be.

"It is," her mother said, firmly. "And minds are changing. Not because of violence, because of acceptance. If you let someone into an empty space, they'll do their best to fill it. I suppose what the men in power think is that those spaces are being taken from them."

"They need to learn to share."

"That's about the size of it." She turned to the clock. "All right. Time for dinner. Macaroni?"

"Really?"

"Do I make things up, Meredith Grey?"

"No."

"Exactly." Her mother stood up and went around the counter. Meredith's hands got cold unexpectedly quickly. "Meredith. You.… Over the next few years, you may hear more things said about certain people. About gay men, specifically. There's an illness that we're still learning about, and it's…. It's not a lot like any of the viruses we're used to. Colds and flus are pretty similarly categorized, and this one is different. Are you listening?"

"Very."

"That's…another time. First of all, it's not something you have to worry about contracting, because you know better than to touch someone else's cuts without gloves. It's passed through blood, and other bodily fluids…but not spit or tears…think of them as being too superficial. You won't get it from the air, whatever anyone says. It affects anyone exposed, but because it was mostly gay men who first contracted it—caught it— people made assumptions."

Meredith leaned on the counter, and then jerked up when she pushed too hard on—palpitated?—her scrape. "Is Will going to get sick? No," she added, in response to the storm that gathered on her mother's face faster than anything she'd ever seen in the sky. "We don't know how he feels, he may not yet, and he's not a men—a man," she stuttered, so eager to break up the clouds.

"That's correct. It's also primarily adults who…." Her mom stuck her head into the pantry, and Meredith collapsed onto the counter, forcing herself to sit up again before her mother turned around. "Will wouldn't be in danger, even if he is queer in some way, because you're children. He'd be more at risk from a contaminated transfusion." She searched Meredith's face. Meredith nodded; she was pretty sure she understood all those words. "A transfusion is when we have to put donor blood in someone's body because they've lost too much."

"Oh, yeah." She'd seen that at teeho'pi—Seattle Grace.

"If someone didn't know they had this, and they donated blood, someone given that blood might get the virus by accident. There is a test now, so it's a very rare occurance. It is how some children have gotten it, and some older people. Sometimes, a mother has it, and it's passed onto a newborn baby through their blood, but the babies…. Those are the only ways a child could encounter it. Will is not in danger. You are not. Even if someone at your school had it, you wouldn't be in any danger. Understand?"

"Yes."

"It's important to know the real details about new health situations, and here the only real risk would come if you touched the blood of someone who has the virus, and it got into a break in your skin, or in your mouth, or eyes."

"And that's why you wear gloves? Because of the virus?"

"Specifically? It has made some of my colleagues more compliant. What's another reason doctors wear gloves? We discussed it earlier."

"Uh…" She knew this. Why couldn't she—"Sterilization?"

"Yes. That keeps us from spreading germs from person to person. There were doctors who dismissed that far more recently than I care to recall."

"Ew."

"Very much so."

"Mom? What's the illness called?"

Her mother's shoulders tightened, and Meredith stiffened, too, until her mother clicked on the stove, and said, "What you'll hear about is AIDS. A-I-D-S- Auto-Immune Deficiency Syndrome. I said, 'a virus,' because that is the easiest explanation. The actuality is a bit more complex. Do you want me to keep going?"

Meredith nodded very hard so that Mom wouldn't think she was actually ambivalent and wouldn't process the information, so she wouldn't waste her breath tonight.

"Patients contract a virus first. What is passed between people via fluids is called HIV, Human Immunodeficiency Virus."

"Um…" Meredith really wished Mom would tell her to raise her hand when she has a question, like at school, because trying to ask and not interrupt was so much harder. "Why is it not called Hive, like you said the other one is AIDS, not A-I-D-S?"

"That's a good question. I'll have to look into it. Both are acronyms, which means abbreviating—shortening— a term using the first letter of each word, and because it is spelled out, and not pronounced, as you noticed, HIV is an initialism, or alphabetism. Why it works that way when it could be pronounced.…Can you put it on a Post-it?"

Meredith ran for the drawer nearest the fridge, which had extra felt-tipped pens and sticky notes. Meredith took her time writing: WHY HIV NOT HIVE? on the pad on Mom's desk, and then transferring it to the next empty page inside the leather journal on the desk.

"Thank you. Continuing, we say that someone who has that is HIV positive. A plus sign. Since you don't have HIV, you are?"

"A minus, which is negative, and is actually good in medicine."

"Correct. HIV lives in the bloodstream, and attacks the immune systemCan you tell me what that is?"

"The body…it knows, sometimes, if something is a disease germ, and it can attack it. With, so, like the flu shot, it gives my body a tiny piece of that year's bad flu, and saying 'hey, watch out for this! Practice fighting it!' And then, if I get a flu germ, the immune system, it knows how to kill it."

"Good. HIV weakens the immune system until someone becomes 'immunocompromised,' and we diagnose AIDS. Staying on this level of understanding, that's a way of saying: Because of HIV, this patient's immune system is so weak, or deficient, that if they catch another illness, often pneumonia, their body won't be able to fight it. In AIDS patients, it is so confused that it will attack its own healthy cells, too."

"That's not a fair fight!"

"No, it isn't."

Having her mother agree with her made warmth spread from Meredith's chest and through her limbs. It was even more exciting than a universe-secret. She wanted it to happen again, but she was also afraid that the next thing she said would be wrong, and the opposite would happen.

"Mom? Can you find me something to read about Auto-Immune…Decif... Deficit…Deceit…the syndrome, and HIV? So, maybe, I can better explain to people why they shouldn't make assumptions?"

She'd chosen a bad time to speak. Her mother had just started pouring macaroni into the pot, and the stream of pasta hitting the water filled their small kitchen with noise. When it finally finished, everything sounded too quiet, and Meredith could hear her mother's quick inhalation before she said, "It will be complicated. I don't know that there's anything written for children. You'll have to be willing to look things up in your medical dictionary."

The thick book with its brightly colored pictures sat on Meredith's desk. The rule was, if she showed her mother the page she had questions about, she'd get an explanation, but not until she'd tried to understand on her own.

"I can do that."

"I know you can. Will you?"

"Yes. If it'll keep people from being mean to Will, or someone really gay, or maybe like Fi, if they make assumptions about queer."

"Being queer."

"That."

"People don't always like being corrected. This won't…. It won't make you friends."

"Why would I want mean friends?"

"Teachers might tell you it's inappropriate to discuss. Often, children aren't told about anything to do with who loves whom, because it is associated with sexuality—with what adults do with their bodies."

"Unless it's making babies?"

"Sometimes even then."

"But…if they don't know how to make babies, what if they do it, and make one by accident?"

"Adoption…. You understand…?"

"Duh, like Heidi."

"Hmm?"

"Will's sister."

"Right. Of course. Adoption. Or abortion. Where a doctor takes the fetus out before it's able to live by itself. At that point, it's just part of a woman's body."

"Fetus?"

"Oh, for goodness sake. Go look it up!"

Recognizing the ten-blade sharpness in her mother's voice, Meredith went to her room and found the section on babies. There actually was a paragraph about what they'd been discussing, except it used the one word Fi taught her that she hadn't mentioned to Mom: homosexual. There were other words, too. And something that looked like the number line she learned about back in second grade. She took down one of the Kermit the Frog bookmarks she'd drawn for herself when Mom said the pack she'd asked to buy was unnecessary and decide to return to the passage. You were supposed to always answer the question you went in with first.

A fetus was a baby that wasn't born yet. Simple enough. Mom didn't like talking about babies. She didn't even fuss over Heidi, who had been adopted from Korea-the-south-one, which made people stare, sometimes. Usually they were smiling and waving bye-bye before they looked away. Not Mom. "I like someone once they can ask questions,"she'd joked to Dr. Cerone, but Meredith knew there was more to it. At least, she knew well enough that she stayed in her room reading until she was called to dinner. On the way, she risked a detour into the office, (Rabbit quiet, mouse quick, rabbit quiet, mouse quick.) and editing her post it note.

WHY HIV NOT HIVE?

LITERACH LITORAT

INFORMATON

She tossed out the first note. Mom would toss it if she couldn't read it, which was a little unfair because Meredith couldn't read cursive well enough to read what the pages said, either. Notes convey information concisely. My journal is for my thoughts, and there isn't anyone who whom I'd want to share those.

WHY HIV NOT HIVE?

BOOKS AND ARTICELLES ARTICLES ABOUT HIV AND AIDS FOR MEREDITH PLEASE

Was it neat enough? She'd wanted to add PAMPHLETS because she remembered that from their Revolutionary War spelling list, but mostly pamphlets were for patients, and—

"Meredith!"

She ran her finger across the top of the blue sticky, closed Mom's journal over it, and ran.

The meal was quiet, but Meredith didn't mind. They'd talked more than they did on most whole days, and she had lots to think about. Her mother didn't send more than a few directives her way until Ms. Lenora arrived and had to be filled in on the TV situation.

"You'll be at the hospital with me tomorrow." Mom informed her. That meant: pack a backpack with enough books and activities to last. I won't be available to entertain you.

Meredith knew it was hard for her mom to have a kid too old for daycare, and too young to be alone. She was sorry enough that when Ms. Lenora said, "Go hug your mama good night, baby," she held on just a second longer than usual.

Mom didn't snap I have to go, Meredith before turning around—that would've been enough—she actually looked back, and then leaned down to Meredith's eye level. "Inciting violence—starting the fight—is not acceptable. But any time someone puts their hands on you without permission, you do whatever you can to get away, understand?"

Meredith nodded.

"Good." There was another pause, and then her mother kissed her forehead and in a sweep of her dark spring coat, disappeared.

"Mmm, mmm. It's hard to be a working woman," Ms. Lenora said.

"Or to be queer," Meredith said. "You face lots of adversity."

"Well. I don't know much about that, Rocky Balboa, but you're not wrong." Ms. Lenora went over to sit on the sofa. "Come here and tell me all about how you whooped those boys' butts for teasing sweet Will."

Meredith grinned and balled her fists, being sure to remember to tuck her thumb. She had surgeon's fingers to protect.

It wasn't her last suspension. When they came from skipping class or some other misdemeanor, the administrators were always a little snide about her mother's refusal to appear. The flinches whenever they had to say "altercation" made the ordeal worth it. Every time she opened the office door more violently, fuming until she met her daughter's eyes.

She only actually needed stitches twice—once a shoe against her leg, and the other an actual fucking bite; both at the hands of straight girls, she was just saying—but her mother always did the full exam. I don't have time for you to bleed internally, she'd said the one time a medley of bruises had been kicked into her side. At least Mom was worried about her, in a roundabout way.

Meredith resented it, her mother's need to confirm that she hadn't started the fights, but she never lost one of those office stare-downs. Sure, sometimes her words packed a… provocative… punch, but, well. Her fists weren't always ineffective, and she never, ever punched down.

A/N: This is in the same universe as As Cool As I Am, but can be read totally separately.

When I figure out the answer to Meredith's question, I'll put it here.