PLAY
FRIDAY MORNING -ADRIAN'S HOUSE
"That's right this man is very dangerous and unstable. We ask all viewers to call the police with any information of his whereabouts to 1-800-PLD-STOP immediately." The red-haired female newscast lady says.
"And remember that this man is wanted in three countries with charges murder, treason and theft. He is regarded as extremely violent and was last seen in the Greensboro and Winston-Salem area. We advice all residents in the Triad to watch out for this man."
The good-natured anchor says.
Adrian punches the off button. He stuffs his book bag with textbooks then heads to the bathroom for a handful of feminine pads and hides them deep in his book bag's inside pocket.
Ever since Adrianna Finch started to dress and act like a boy, this specific time of the month had always meant trouble.
It was already hard to hide her boobs and turn it into his flat chest tightening a bandage around it. She also had to stuff socks in her underwear and work out to seem stronger than she was. By when Adrianna turned thirteen, her mother left her complaining about Adrianna's boyish ways. Her father did not care what she did as long as she was happy so Adrianna continued to dress as a boy (and honestly, Adrianna believes her dad had always wanted a boy in the first place.)
She moved from Houston, TX, to Greensboro, NC, the year after her mother's departure. By then, she was a freshman in a High School where everybody thought she was a boy, and so she made everyone call her Adrian and refer to her as a him.
"Morning Carlos." Adrian says when he sees his best friend waiting on his bike at the curb.
"Hurry up man, we're gonna be late for school. I swear, sometimes you make me think you're a girl."
Adrian laughts at Carlos's joke hiding how much his comment truly hurts him. Hiding under a boy's skin in a girl's body had been fun at first, but as puberty hit and adolecence grew old, it got harder and harder to a point where Adrian had had to search psychiatric help. He had weekly appointments with Dr. Flint. Today afternoon, in fact, he has an appointment with her.
One thing Adrian likes about Dr. Flint is that with her he doesn't have to act like he is a she or she is a he. He can just be himself (which would actually be herself) and for an hour just talk about life as if he wasn't a freak stuck on it. Plus, he can tell her anything because there is a patient/doctor confidentiality pact. Outside the office, to Dr. Flint, Adrian becomes patient number two, zero, eight, seven.
His secret pretty little number. A number not treated as a he or she but just as what it is, a pretty little number.
Carlos's bike is brand new and light as a feather. Though Carlos owns a beauty of a car, he insists on him and Adrian biking to school because using the car for such short distance would be a waste of gas.
"So, meet any hot chicks lately?" Carlos asks.
Adrian breathes in the cool, fresh morning air. "Nope," He answers shortly deciding to avoid the topic altogether. Yes, he was attracted to girls. And yet he would not allow himself to look at any of them or ask any one out because he knows it isn't fair to them not to know his secret. The one he himself hasn't even come to terms with and the one that stops him from living his life fully and beaming a full watt smile. And it isn't as if he chose to live this way purposely. Life chose for him and he didn't have any say. Because Adrian knows he could move again, start over, tell everyone he's a girl. He as a she could meet a guy and marry him and have children and a job and bills, but the he'd just end up being the miserable fake person he'd always dreaded he'd someday become.
Adrian pushes his fears to the back of his brain deciding to lock them up until today afternoon when he'd be ready to spill them on Dr. Flint's lap and let her dangle with them.
At first Adrian had thought Carlos was stupid for wanting to bike to school when they could just ride together in Carlos's car. Now, he welcomed gratefully every morning's biking trip. It was refreshing and it felt good to move your body in ways other than walking from the refrigerator to the TV and back.
Adrian's eye caught sight of the F. Hamilton high, home of the daredevils sign that warranted their high school. He sighed already dreading to set foot on the gold and red halls of the school to another day of pretending that everything was okay and that he was just another boy living a normal life. How he wished the truth could just come out, but he knew it's deliverance could destroy him. And so he biked past the curbside sign and braked by the bicyble rack.
He places his bike's wheel on the holding tubes and laces a chain linking the bike to the red tubes. He locks it safely as he absently listens to Carlos talk about something his little brother did.
Adrian gets up and sees his friend laughing at some joke he just cracked. Adrian laughs too not really knowing what he's laughing about. Instead, he looks at Carlos and wonders, "Would he still be my friend if he really knew who I am?"
FRIDAY AFTERNOON -OUTDOORS CLUB MEETING
The school day's finally over and Adrian sits through a field-trip-orientation oriented meeting in the outdoors club's classroom.
"Thanks," He says when Brooke Davis hands him a recycled-paper green permission slip to a trip to Hightrails mountain.
Brooke moves on after giving him a sweet smile.
Adrian wonders, "Would she like me if I was a boy? Would I dare ask?"
"Remember my buckaroos, you've got to have these signed by next Monday at latest if you want to go to Hightrails with the group." Mr. Whitaker announces in a fake cowboy accent.
An overweight nervous-looking kid raises his hand and asks, "Would it be a problem if I go sir? I mean with my asthma and all."
Mr. Whitaker nods, "Absolutely Sebastian, just make sure you bring your medication with at least two extras and give me or my wife a full asthma 411 before Monday."
Mr. Whitaker cracks his knuckles, "Now, y'all know I'm real nervous 'bout this trip so don't y'all go playing jokes on me once we're up there or I ain't taking nobody up there no more. Do I make myself clear?"
The entire class room nods vigorously, but Mr. Whitaker isn't satisfied.
"It'd be mighty nice if I could get that aloud." Mr. Whitaker says in his well-known deep southern accent.
"Yes Mr. Whitaker,"
"Alrighty then, you are all dismissed and have a wonderful weekend."
Adrian walks out the classroom and into the boys' bathroom. He walks into one of the stalls past the urinals he can never use.
After he's done doing girl business, he washes his hands and hurries out not wanting to miss his appointment with Dr. Flint.
Carlos left long ago because Adrian told him he had to go grocery shopping after outdoors' club meeting.
Adrian walks out to the hall and finds Chris, Brooke, Tom and Sebastian are still in the school. He stays behind them feeling antisocial and bitter. He looked at Tom and Sebastian, both flirting with Brooke and she not noticing one thing. Chris looks tense and nervous.
When Brooke, Chris, and Sebastian have all crowded in Tom's car, Adrian feels it's safe to go out to the bicicle rack and get his bike.
Dr. Flint's office is far out of town so Adrian heads homeward hoping his father didn't forget to leave the car keys for him behind today.
Adrian makes a swift left and bikes harder to dodge a red car coming his way. He crosses to the other side of the street and past an exclusive condo site for the rich people in town. Adrian himself isn't rich though he is upper middle class. His father is a successful sports colummnist for a weekly magazine.
Adrian's white and blue house comes to sight. A leaf falls on his head and clings to his hair. Autumn's clearly on its merry way though it's still hot in the city.
Adrian arrives at home, lets his bike fall onto the green grass of his front yard and walks into his unlocked home.
He runs to the kitchen looking for any kind of snack to cushion his stomach till dinnertime arrives. He scans the kitchen searching for a grab-and-go snack when he sees a platter of cookies, the car keys and a white piece of paper with his father's neat handwritting on it.
Don't forget you appointment with Dr. Flint today. Here's a quick snack for your elephant-sized stomach (just kidding). Take the car.
Daddy
Adrian smiles, his heart warmed by his father's gesture. No matter how hard life was, having someone on your side always made thorns look like cotton.
FRIDAY AFTERNOON -DR. FLINT'S OFFICE
"I wrote a poem about life, 'bout how I feet about it." Adrian tells Dr. Flint.
Doctor Flint takes the piece of paper from Adrian's sweaty hands and reads it.
The kids run, a girl jumps
The bus starts and so they go
A flawless trip it seems to be
Until an unsure girl trips on her feet
She jumps off to abridge life
She jumps off scared of life
Guarding a dark secret
Everyone despises her
Everybody admires him
Everyone hates her
Everyone loves him
And yet
No one knows her
Her identity is his identity
Dr. Flint smiles at Adrian's attempt at poetry. "Is this how you feel? You think everyone hates Adrianna and loves Adrian?"
"Well, mom left Adrianna."
"But that's her oppinion not everyone else's. Why would everyone hate Adrianna and love Adrian?"
"I don't know, you're supposed to figure it out for me and tell me."
"I can only help you figure it out, I can't do it for you Adrian." She digs a red pen into her chin and asks. "What does the bus represent? And who's the girl at the beginning? Is it you?"
"The bus represents, you know, life. The kids are my parents and they run from their families 'cause they eloped. The girl's me, when I was born."
"So you're saying you're parents married and had you. After that they thought life would be perfect, but it wasn't."
"Yeah basically, and then 'the girl jumps off a bridge to life' means how I changed from a girl to a boy to stop that life and start a new one. It's how I saw it."
"It says 'jumps to abridge life'"
"God, I messed up. It was midnight when I wrote it you know."
Dr. Flint takes note of that and changes it to a bridge to life. "Did you show this to anybody else."
"Yeah, I published it on an amateur poet's website."
If Adrian ever listened to a recording of one of his private chats with Dr. Flint he'd sound corny as hell, and he knew it.
"Do you receive feedback on your work from the website."
Adrian shrugs. "Sometimes kids write to you and tell you their opinions on your poem. Or sometimes the website manager asks you permission to use your poetry on other websites."
"What kinds of websites?"
"You know, sometimes when a poem refers to life and you can relate to it in a general way, they use it for fortune telling or hoscopes sites."
"That's an interesting insight into the fortune telling business."
"Oh I'm not saying everybody does it, just some websites. After all it is the internet, you can be named banana-fishnet there and they'll believe you. I mean it's the internet."
Dr. Flint smiles warmly and glances at her watch. "Well, Adrian, I'd love to know more about how my faith in the stars has just been crushed but I have an appointment with someone else right now."
Adrian gets up feeling better than he did when he came in. Being your real you with no fears for an hour, after all, left you refreshed enough to survive a week till the next appointment.
Dr. Flint hands Adrian a ripped piece of paper with a phone number on it. "Call me tonight if you need to talk some more,"
Adrian nods walking out of the room smiling. He's been seeing Dr. Flint for almost a year now, but she always hands him her phone number with a call-me-later-if-you-need-to offer every time their session was over. He steps into the waiting room and sees a familiar girl sitting in one of the pastel pink chairs.
She gets up and stares at him in the eye. He does the same. They're both thinking the same thing. Confidentiality cannot and will not be broken by Dr. Flint, one noisy classmate's mouth, however, can.
"I won't tell if you don't," Adrian says offering a hand.
Courtney Wright takes his hand and shakes it firmly. "My lips are sealed."
Adrian smiles and heads to the door. To be honest, he doesn't understand why everyone talks about Courtney like she was some kind of hungry lion. She's not so bad.
Adrian walks out the room wondering why Courtney was at Dr. Flint's office. He knows he will probably never find out, but it's still fun to wonder.
FRIDAY EVENING -ADRIAN'S HOUSE
Adrian hands his father a black ink pen as he tells what happened in Dr. Flint's office.
Red Finch takes the pen and makes a spiky scrabble on the parent/guardian signature line of Adrian's green permission slip.
"Are you sure you'll be fine with all those kids? Taking showers and all?"
Adrian nods, "Yeah dad, it'll be fine. It'll be fun."
Red Finch eyes his daughter. He's afraid she's trying to look at the plus side of things completety ignoring reality. Things could happen up there, there were just so many things you learnt from people by just living with them.
"Dad, not much can go wrong. It's just an innocent trip." He takes the green permission slip from his dad's big hands and winks. "In any case, you already signed the form so it doesn't matter."
"Alright, I'll trust you on this one, but don't take advantage of my trust son, I'm warning you."
Adrian grins widely hiding his true feelings from his father. The mere act of transforming from a girl to a boy in a daily basis gave Adrian a certain mastery in the art of masking emotions. He could convince anyone he was the happiest guy on earth on the outside while his insides wasted away into an endless pit of despair.
He didn't actually want to go to the trip because he thought it'd be fun. He had more in mind than that. He was going to check out his new home.
Adrian had read stories about people who lived by themselves in mountains. For a year now, he had studied survival skills and even joined his High School's outdoors club. He wanted to collect as much information as possible before graduation. Once that happened, he'd gather up his saved up allowence and summer job's money and buy himself a small property in the mountain and live there for as long as it took him to figure out life.
Right now, Adrian is a sophomore in high school. He listens to kids talk about how they'll move away and go to college. He's as excited as they are to fulfill his after-high school plans and yet he's not allowed to say one word to anybody. Not his classmates, not his friends, not Carlos, not Dr. Flint and certainly not his dad. Just another huge secret to hide, how wonderful.
SATURDAY MORNING -FIELDTRIP DEPARTURE DAY, IN THE BUS
"Did you bring chocolate?" Carlos asks Adrian. Carlos sits at the window side and Adrian on the hall side of the bus.
"Yeah, of course I did." He pats the front pocket of his suitcase. "It's right in here."
"Alright," Carlos says. One thing that makes Carlos and Adrain such good friends is their uncontainable love for smores. They compromised to collect as much of each ingredient as possible so that they wouldn't run out during the three days in the mountain.
Carlos glanced out the window and saw that they were arriving at the rich part of town. The bus came to a halt in front of a white-and-yellow house. The driver smiled and pressed a fat hand to the honk. The honk blasted off. A few seconds later the whole bus heard a little girl inside the house cry, "Earthquake!"
Then they saw Sebastian, Brooke, Tom and Chris rushing out of the house madly. The kids in the bus stared at the out-of-breath group as they hussled their way to the back seats.
After Mr. W said a comment about their savage manners, the bus started off again. Carlos stared out the window and Adrian flipped on his headphones. He turned up the volume to drown out annoying teenager conversations and let himself float away in the sound of his favourite hip hop band.
Next time Adrian opens his eyes, he's staring directly into Courtney Wright's face. She glares at him surprised he's going on the trip. He knows she's wondering is he has told anyone about their encounter in Dr. Flint's waiting room. He can't just blurt out, "Don't worry I haven't told anyone you're seeing a shrink." So he smiles to let her know he hasn't said a word about it. She smiles back for a second and then walks to her seat.
At first Adrian is surprised by her gesture and then remembers that she was in Dr. Flint's office just like him. Maybe she just acted all tough in the outside and was a normal girl with actual feeling in the inside, or else, why would she go to Dr. Flint's?
The bus marches on leaving a cloud of dust behind the dirt trail.
SATURDAY MORNING -IN THE BUS ON THE WAY
About an hour has gone by when Mr. Whitaker takes out his rooster and stands up in front of the bus. "I'm gonna check er'body's here, so say Hooray when I call your name."
"Adrian Finch,"
"Here,"
"Chris Halliwell,"
"Uh huh,"
"Sebastian Martin?"
"Hooray," Sebastian says sleepily.
"Brooke Davis,"
"Here,"
"James Toffey,"
"Hooray,"
"Lennox Toffey,"
"Here,"
"Thomas Vermont."
"You know I'm here,"
"Joseph White,"
"I'm here,"
"Courtney Wright,"
"Here,"
"Oh yeah," Mr. W smiles to his wife and they both look at the only sleeping member of the outdoors club. "And Mr. Carlos Rojas."
"Carlos? Are you here? Carlos!" He screams.
Carlos jumps up in his seat when Adrian elbows him hard in the ribs.
"Jesus," He says rubbing his eyes. He looks on Mr. W's expectant eyes and shrugs, "What?"
"I'm taking up row." Mr. W answers.
Carlos groans "Again? Mr. Whitaker, why do you keep checking? We're all in a bus, where would we go?" Carlos asks as Mr. Whitaker puts his checklist away.
Mr. Whitaker pulls a blue hankie from his Joe-the-explorer suit's pocket and wipes beads of nervous perspiration from his forehead. "Just making sure er-body's here."
"Er-body is here, so stop checking. You woke me up." Carlos says and cuddles on his pillow.
Adrian laughs silently, flips his earphones back on and decides to follow Carlos's example. Closing his eyelids, he allows him mind to float away from the conscious world.
SATURDAY LATE MORNING -IN ADRIAN AND CARLOS'S ROOM
Carlos and Adrian walk into their room and drop their bags.
"This is horrible," Carlos says as soon as he sees it.
"Are you sure we didn't walk into the janitor's room?"
Carlos shakes his head, "I'm afraid not, but hey, at least we have smores."
Adrian drops on his bed, "I guess that's good enough for me." And of course it is. After all, he didn't come here to have a good time. He came here to dip his toes in the cold puddle of wild living.
"Come on, we have to go down. Mr. W said he wanted to tell us something."
Adrian groans getting up. "Oh fine, but after that I do have plans to drop dead."
"More smores for me." Carlos says walking out.
SATURDAY AFTERNOON
"Let's go for a wilderness walk." Adrian offers.
"But I wanna watch the movie." Carlos complains.
"You can watch that movie anytime, come on."
"Fine, but we better do some extreme hiking." Carlos says rubbing his hands together.
"No extreme hiking," Mrs. Whitaker screams from the kitchen. "and no bear hunting either."
"Fine, Jeez Mrs. W, you're like some kind of porta-mommy." Carlos says opening the door.
"Just doing my job." She yells back.
Carlos and Adrian shut the door behind them. A whiff of cool air rushes past them as soon as they get outside and Carlos feels glad he accepted to come out for a walk. It felt nice to breathe some fresh air every once in a while.
Adrian breaks off a branch from a tree and pokes a mushroom with it. "You think it's poisonous?"
"How should I know, do I look like Dora the Explorer?"
"Kind of," Adrian answers.
"Hey! I'm the one who brought the crackers and mashmellows remember?"
"Are you saying you wouldn't give me any?"
"I don't know, what do you guess?"
"I'm thinking this mushroom's not poisonous. It looks like the ones at the store."
"Would you let the mushroom be? Let go climb that tree."
Adrian sighs. "You're like a monkey, you know? Wanna climb everything you see."
"Beats the hell out of watching mushrooms grow." Carlos trots to the tree and hangs from a limb. He pushes his legs up and scrambles up the trunk with incredible monkeyness.
Adrian's still studying the mushroom when he hears footsteps. "Carlos?"
"What?" Carlos asks from one of the top branches of a humongous tree.
So the footsteps where obviously not made by monkey-Carlos. "Is there anyone out there?"
"There's a spider up here." Carlos answers getting back down. "But no humans, why?"
Adrian hears the footsteps walking away and then Carlos jumps down from the tree. "What's wrong?"
"I think I heard someone."
"You're probably just crazy. Wanna go up the tree? I could teach you how to climb if you don't know how."
"No, that's okay. I think I want to go back to the cabin now."
"But we just go here."
"Yeah, and now we're leaving."
Adrian walks diligently back to the cabin till he finally sees it in front of him. He sights relieved not able to shake the feeling that someone had been watching them while they were out. He sees Courtney open a window on the second floor and throw a bundle of flowers out. She sees him and Carlos, sneezes and closes the window. Her eyes and nose seemed red, had she been crying?
SATURDAY NIGHT -ADRIAN AND CARLOS'S ROOM
After a hearthy dinner and a funny movie, Adrian settles on his bed and pats his fully loaded belly. The whole house's quiet save for Brooke who seems to be pretty worked out about some flowers Courtney threw away. After a while the argument settles.
Carlos is sitting on his bed munching on a bag of buttery pop corn. After all they had eaten downstairs and being eleven o'clock already, Adrian wondered where all the food went. He got his anwer three minutes later when Carlos got up and walked to the bathroom. After a couple of minutes of unloading, Adrian heard the toilet flush and then Carlos came out spraying berry-scented mist into the air.
Carlos took off his T-shirt and jeans revealing a muscular body and a happy-faces pair of underwear. "Hope you don't mind." He says, his mouth full of pop corn.
Adrian dismisses Carlos's question with a wave of his hand. Still fully dressed, Adrian slips under the covers, pulls the cord of his lamp and falls asleep.
Carlos finishes the bag of pop corn and two cookies before doing the same.
SUNDAY MORNING -7:01 AM
"Good morning boys." Mr. W says merrily pushing Adrian and Carlos's door open. Neither of them answers.
Mr. W walks to the window and draws the curtains open. "I said, good moring boys." He repeats letting the light in.
Carlos and Adrian instinctively hide from the light under the covers.
"Get up boys, we're going fishing today. Aren't you excited?"
"It's seven AM!" Carlos complains.
"Am I going to have to go through the same argument with every one of you boys?" This was the third time someone tells him the time this morning.
"If you wake us at seven AM you will." Adrian says walking to the bathroom takings his suitase inside to go through his usual morning transformation routine with him.
"I'll sleep some more while he gets ready." Carlos says pulling the covers over his head. "But don't leave without me."
Next time Carlos wakes up his watch reads 7:30 and Adrian is just coming out the bathroom. "What'd you do? Drown?" Carlos asks secretly glad that Adrian took so long.
"Sort of," Adrian answers. "I'll be downstairs eating breakfast."
"Leave some for me." Carlos answers jumping out of bed and walking to the bathroom in a zombie manner.
"Oh please, the pig here's you not me." Adrian says remembering last night.
"Ha, ha Adrian, very funny."
PAUSE
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