When I arrive at the hospital, Farrah is arguing with a nurse. Actually, Brandon is arguing with her, but it’s Farrah’s voice and attitude coming out of him, so it’s all a little confusing.

  “How many times does he have to ring the buzzer before you bring him a damn cup of ice?” he’s saying as I approach the desk he’s standing in front of. Behind the desk, the nurse is looking at him with a weary expression. She picks up a clipboard.

  “And who, exactly, are you in relation to Mr. Beatty?” she asks. “Only relatives are allowed to visit him right now.”

  “Brandon Thomas. It’s right there on that paper. We already went through this when they brought him in here on Sunday.”

  The nurse scans the sheet again. “Brandon Thomas,” she says. Then she looks up. “You’re Mr. Beatty’s son?” she asks. She sounds skeptical, and it’s obvious why.

  “What?” Brandon says. “You don’t think I can be his son because I’m black? You never heard of interracial marriage? What is this, 1958?”

  The nurse sighs. “Somebody will bring Mr. Beatty a cup of ice as soon as possible,” she says.

  “Thank you,” Brandon says. Then he turns to me. “Come on. Grandpa will be very happy to see you.” He looks back at the nurse, as if daring her to say something. She doesn’t.

  “You told them you’re Lola’s son?” I ask as we walk down the hall.

  “Gurl, it was either that or pretend she’s my husband, and as much as I love that old queen, we all know I can do a lot better.”

  “So if you’re his son, and I’m his grandson, that must make you my father.”

  “Do I look old enough to have a child your age?” Brandon says as we stop in front of room 427. “Paloma can be your mother.”

  “But Paloma is younger than—”

  “Don’t you even finish that sentence,” Brandon snaps. “Not if you want to live to be seventeen. Now listen. Lola looks pretty rough. But you just pretend you don’t even notice, okay?”

  “Okay,” I agree.

  “And we’ll keep this visit short,” Brandon adds. “She needs to rest. But she’s been asking about you, so I told her you’d come in to see her.”

  He pushes open the door, and we go into the room. It looks pretty much like every hospital room I’ve ever seen before, except that now someone I know is in it. Lola is propped up in the room’s one bed. He’s wearing a pink robe with a furry collar, and he’s watching something on the television mounted on the wall. He looks exhausted, but when he sees me come in, he smiles.

  “Hey there,” he says, holding his arms out.

  I walk over to the bed and he hugs me. As I hug him back, I can’t help noticing that he smells funny. Kind of musty and, well, old. It makes me sad.

  “You’re just in time,” he says as he lets me go. “They’re about to get on the plane.” He nods at the television, and I see that he’s watching Lost Horizon.

  Brandon sits down in one of the two chairs in the room, and groans. “I never should have brought that DVD over,” he says to me. “She’s watched it a hundred and eighty-nine times since Monday.”

  “When you have a heart attack, you can watch whatever you like,” Lola says. He reaches over and picks up a rhinestone tiara that’s sitting on the table beside the bed, then puts it on his head. “Need I remind you that I am literally the queen of broken hearts?”

  He turns up the volume on the TV as Brandon looks at me and shakes his head. Then we sit and watch the movie. It’s a little boring, since I’ve seen it before, and I’m sort of relieved when, twenty minutes into it, the door opens and a nurse comes in.

  “We need some blood from Mr. Beatty,” he says. “I’m kicking you two out.”

  Brandon and I get up. Lola motions for me to come over to him, so I go over and stand beside the bed. He takes my hand. “James is just trying to get rid of you so he can give me a sponge bath,” he says in a loud whisper. He glances at the nurse, who laughs. “Promise me you’ll come see me again.”

  “I will,” I tell him.

  I lean over and kiss him on the cheek.

  “Careful,” he says. “You’re going to make James jealous.”

  Brandon and I leave Lola with James, and go downstairs to the hospital cafeteria. Brandon is going to stay a little longer, so we get something to eat before I head home.

  “Is Lola really going to be okay?” I ask him.

  “That queen will live forever,” Brandon says. “They just need to patch her up, and she’ll be good as new.”

  I’ve been thinking about something ever since the scene with the nurse at the desk. Now I ask Brandon, “Does Lola not have any real family?”

  “You don’t think we’re a real family?” he asks me. “You, me, Paloma, Lola?”

  “You know what I mean,” I say. “Real as in related.”

  Brandon looks at me as he chews a bite of the chicken salad on his plate. For some reason, it makes me nervous.

  “Your mother left when you were born, right?” he says.

  I nod.

  “Technically, she’s your real family,” he continues. “Her blood is in you. Her genes are why you look the way you do. She’s why you’re here in this world. But you don’t think of her that way, do you? Not like a mother.”

  “She’s more like the idea of a mother,” I tell him. “I never got a chance to know her.”

  “No, you didn’t. And that’s a sad thing. But you got a whole lot of people in your house who love you, so the fact that your mother isn’t one of them, well, it’s still sad, but it’s not as sad as it could be. There’re a whole lot of people who have to deal with worse.”

  I’m not sure what any of this has to do with my question, and I kind of feel like I’m being lectured. But I don’t say anything. Not that Brandon gives me a chance to.

  “My point is, sometimes real family isn’t much family at all,” he says. “You and me, we’re lucky we’ve got blood that does love us. Sure, they make us crazy sometimes, but we know that if we need them, they’ll come through. Not your mama, but the others. Lola, she doesn’t have any of that. She’s alone. But she still has people who care about her. You’re here. I’m here. Paloma will be here when she gets off work. That’s real real. And that’s family. So yeah, Lola’s got real family.”

  He still seems upset, and I’m afraid it’s my fault. I don’t know why, though, so I just sit and eat my sandwich as quickly as I can.

  “I should go,” I tell Brandon. “I’ve got to work at the Eezy-Freezy tonight. I’ll come back tomorrow, if that’s okay.”

  “Lola would like that,” he says. “And don’t worry. That heart of hers is big. It can take a beating. She’ll be fine.”

  I drive, thinking about Lola. I get what Brandon was saying. But it’s still sad. I wonder how his life got like this. Then I feel bad that I’ve never really paid all that much attention to what his life is like outside of the Shangri-La. I just assumed he had, well, some kind of family besides the one at the bar.

  I head straight to the Eezy-Freezy. It’s not super busy, and my dad is chatty. I really want to talk to him about what’s going on with Lola, but that would mean talking about how I know Lola, and where I go sometimes, and how I like to do drag. And those are things I just don’t want to talk about yet. Luckily, he’s got a lot to say himself, and doesn’t notice that I’m only saying things like “yeah” and “uh-huh” in response.

  When customers do come in, I find myself looking at them and wondering what their lives are like. I mean really like, not just how they appear at first glance. The man who orders five soft-serve cones for the family waiting in the car, for example. Does he like being a dad? Does he like being married to the woman sitting in the passenger seat? Is this what he wanted his life to be when he was my age? Or the three teenage girls who flirt with me while I make their cheese fries. Are they really as happy as they seem? What do they worry about when no one else can see them?

  I remember something Lola said to me once: “There are all kinds of drag. Sometimes it looks like wigs and makeup; sometimes it’s just a face someone shows you when they’re afraid to show you their real one.”

  I didn’t know what he meant at the time. Now I get it. You can’t know who someone is just by looking at her. And maybe you can never really know. Maybe people always have secrets that they don’t tell a single other person. Which of course makes me think about Tom Swift. He has a pretty big secret. And I know what it is. But maybe he has other, even bigger ones that he hasn’t shared, and never will.

  When I think about what I want my life to look like, I think about having someone who does know everything about me. Someone I’m not afraid to tell everything to. Someone who knows what I look like underneath all the drag I put on for the rest of the world. And I wonder if that even exists.

  By the time we close up for the night, I’m actually pretty depressed. I drive home more quickly than usual so that I can beat my father there. I barely say good night to the Grands, who of course are gathered around the kitchen table, drinking Nehi and playing cards. I go straight to my room and shut the door.

  I pick up the telephone without even thinking about it. When Linda answers I say, “Is your life the way you thought it would be?”

  She laughs, which takes me by surprise. “Is anybody’s?”

  “Sure,” I say. “I mean, there must be some people who have the lives they always imagined having.”

  “Maybe,” she says. “I must not know any of them, though.”

  It occurs to me that I’ve never asked Linda how old she is. So I do. “How old do you think I am?” she answers.

  “Why do you always answer my questions with another question?” I say.

  “Do I?” she asks. “Anyway, I’m seventeen. Cheating at solitaire and inventing lovers on the phone and everything.”

  “What?” I say. “Am I missing something?”

  “From the song,” she says. “Janis Ian? ‘At Seventeen’?”

  “I’ve never heard it,” I tell her. “I’ll look it up later. I’m a little preoccupied with other stuff right now.”

  I tell her about Lola’s heart attack, and about how it makes me sad that he’s sort of alone. “I just wanted to tell him it would all be okay,” I say. “That’s it. Just that it would be okay.”

  “I get it,” Linda says. “Here. Listen to this.”

  There’s a clattering sound as she apparently drops the phone on a table. “Sorry,” she shouts. Then I hear her strum her guitar a couple of times.

  Blanket Fort

  i want to be your blanket fort

  your safety net, your first resort

  where you can always come inside

  and hang out when you need to hide

  i want to be your lucky charm

  your rabbit foot, your falling star

  the one who can reverse the curse

  when things have gone from bad to worse

  i want to be your weekend shirt

  the one that’s ripped and stained with dirt

  but you still wear it anyway

  because it feels like Saturday

  i want to be the jumping sheep

  you lie and count when you can’t sleep

  the blanket you wrap round you tight

  when something scares you in the night

  i want to be the wish you make

  on candles on your birthday cake

  and when you cast your magic spells

  and drop your pennies into wells

  i want to be the song you play

  when you have had the worst of days

  and turn up high as it will go

  when it comes on the radio

  i want to be your favorite book

  about Peter Pan and Captain Hook

  with dog-eared pages, underlined

  that you have read a thousand times

  i want to be the special gift

  you write atop your Christmas list

  and when it’s underneath the tree

  the tag will read to you from me

  i want to be the drug you score

  the leaf you smoke, the drink you pour

  to fly your soul across the sky

  and leave me here to wonder why

  When she’s done I say, “That’s a little happier than your other ones.”

  “I guess I can’t be sad all the time,” Linda says.

  “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “I know,” she says. “It’s okay. And actually, it is pretty sad. I wrote that for someone who was having a bad day. I wanted to make him feel better. But it didn’t help him much.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Linda says. Her voice sounds funny, though. “I’m sure your friend will be all right.”

  “I hope so too. I think he will.”

  “I should go,” she says. “I’ve got some stuff to do.”

  “Okay,” I say. “Thanks for the song. And, hey.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I bet we can have the lives we want.”

  There’s a long silence. Then Linda says, “Yeah. Maybe we can.”

  Fifteen

  Saturday night, Tom Swift calls while I’m working at the Eezy-Freezy and asks if I want to hang out when I get off. I tell him sure, and he says he’ll come by my house later. I’m getting out of the shower after washing off the smell of grease and sweat when he shows up. I haven’t even changed into my clothes yet. I’m just wearing boxer shorts and a T-shirt.

  He seems a little bit hyped up, and as soon as I shut my bedroom door he says, “Where’s my T?”

  This explains why he wanted to come over. I’m a little disappointed, as I thought maybe he wanted to spend time with me. I get the bag with his T and syringes from my closet and toss it to him.

  “Thanks,” he says, sitting on my bed and opening the bag.

  “Is it doing anything?” I ask. “Do you feel any different?”

  He nods. “Yeah. I can’t really explain how, exactly, but I do. For one thing, I’m super horny.”

  I pull on a pair of jeans. “Right now, or just in general?”

  He pulls the leg of his shorts up and feels around on his thigh. “In general. But I was hanging out with Anna-Lynn earlier, so I’m kind of more worked up than usual.”

  While he injects the T, I go over to the record player and put on record number eight from my mother’s list, the New York Dolls’ first album.

  “What is this?” Tom asks as the first song starts and David Johansen wails crazily.

  I take the record jacket over and hand it to him. The photo on the cover is the Dolls dressed up as women. Kind of. They don’t look anything like real women, but they’re wearing wigs, makeup, jewelry, and platform heels.

  Tom looks at the cover for a minute. “Ugh,” he says as he hands it back. “I hate fake trans shit. They look like that guy from Rocky Horror.”

  I look at the photo of the band. “I don’t think they were pretending to be trans,” I say. “I think it was just a gimmick.”

  “That’s even worse.” Tom sounds angry now. “And what a stupid name. Dolls? Like being trans is about playing dress-up or something. And the music is shitty.”

  “It was 1973,” I remind him. “I don’t think they even really knew what being trans was back then. This is more about being glam or punk. Trying to shock people and make them think about how dumb their ideas of what people should look and act like are.”

  “Whatever. They could still take off the wigs and makeup and live their lives without people giving them a hard time. Not like real trans people, who get harassed every day if they look like that.”

  I decide it’s not worth arguing with him about this. I doubt listening to the Dolls’ lyrics will change how he thinks. And anyway, maybe he’s right. Maybe nobody who ever saw the Dolls perform or heard their music thought anything about trans people and their lives. Maybe they just saw a bunch of guys dressed up like women and thought it was funny, or weird, or cool.

  I turn the record off. Tom is lying on his back on my bed. I go and lie next to him.

  “So, Anna-Lynn got you all worked up, huh?” I ask. I think maybe if I can get him to talk about something else, he won’t be so angry.

  He groans. “We did a little kissing,” he says. “Okay, a lot of kissing. I really wanted to do more.”

  His voice trails off, and I know he’s not saying something.

  “But she didn’t want to?” I ask.

  “Oh, she wanted to,” he says. “We both wanted to. I just . . . couldn’t.”

  I’m not sure what he means, exactly, but I don’t want to ask too many questions. I decide to let him talk if he wants to talk. We lie there for a while. Then he says, “What’s it like having a dick?”

  I laugh.

  “Why’s that funny?”

  “Sorry,” I say. “It’s just that I’ve never really thought about it.”

  “How can you not think about it?” Tom sounds genuinely surprised. “If I had one, I’d think about it all the time.”

  I can’t think of anything to say, so I just say, “Huh.”

  He rolls over and props his head up on his hand. “Don’t tell me you’ve never thought about what it would be like to have a pussy.”

  I make a face.

  “You have too,” he says.

  “I really haven’t,” I tell him.

  He sighs. “If you knew you should have been born with one, you would.”

  Now I feel bad. I decide to try to answer his question. “It kind of gets in the way a lot.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, for one thing, it’s always getting hard at the wrong times.”

  Tom laughs. “Aww, poor baby,” he teases.

  “I’m serious. You don’t know. You’ll just be sitting there in class, looking at some guy’s butt or arms or even his ear, and the next thing you know—boing! And it never goes down on its own.”

  “Right,” Tom says. “You have to beat it into submission.”

  “Ha ha,” I say. “But, well, yeah.”

  He pauses a second, then asks, “What’s that like?”

  I groan. “I’m not going to talk about this.”