BLURB
Finding a girlfriend in high school is hard enough. Finding out your girlfriend wasn't born a girl is even harder.
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EXCERPT
The laughter abruptly stopped when a voice came out of the darkness. “Mia, is that you?”
His voice sounded familiar, and as the figure drew closer, I remembered who it was—Charlie, the equipment guy from the race. He carried what looked to be a sketchpad in his hand, and his face brightened when he saw her. “Hi Mia,” he said softly. “Did I catch you at a bad time?”
The expression on her face turned to stone. “Yeah, Charles, you did. School’s over, just in case you haven’t figured it out. What is it?”
“Don’t be cross, Mia,” he chided. The way he said her name, drawing out the syllables so that it sounded like Meeya, it was almost as if he was pushing her to react. He then turned to me. “You remember me, right?” he asked. “I’m the manager of the girl’s swim team, Mia’s friend—”
“Not,” Mia interrupted, the anger ringing out. “We just know each other because we go to the same school and here’s another FYI—swim season is over.” She tugged on my arm. “Come on, Nolan, let’s go home.”
From the way she spoke—using the proper form of his name combined with barely disguised venom—it seemed one of them was taking the friendship thing too far. Charlie observed us with a smile on his face. Maybe to him, running into us was one big joke. “Hey, don’t be that way, Mee-ya.”
He just had to screw with her name and what was up with that, anyway? This whole situation was beginning to bother me. “That’s not the way friends treat each other,” Charlie continued. He pouted as he spoke, and was this an act? No... after listening to him and watching his body language, slinking around, thrusting out his hips in a feminine manner, this guy wasn’t acting.
“What way should I be?” Mia asked and her voice went up an octave. “And who says we’re friends? There is no friendship thing going on except in your mind. There never was.”
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In a sudden violent move, she grabbed my hand and pulled me upstairs with her. Inside her room, she threw off her jacket and plopped down on the bed. Taking a seat beside her, my arm automatically went around her shoulder. “You want to tell me what’s going on or do I have to guess?”
She shook her head. “Charles is such a jerk. He does this with everyone, insinuates they’ve done something when they haven’t.”
“You mean the boyfriend stuff?”
Water erupted from her eyes and ran down her face at light speed. Her breath came out with a catch in it, as if breathing had somehow become an impossible task. “I’ve never had a boyfriend except you. He just thought I did.”
Thinking about Charlie’s mannerisms, the way he spoke and acted, I didn’t think he was interested in girls. “He’s not into you, is he?”
Mia let out a bitter laugh. She knuckled away her tears and took in a deep breath. Her face had set like stone which reminded me of an islet in the middle of the ocean, isolated and alone. “No, he’s just into himself and his own problems.”
I still didn’t get it. Then Charlie’s words about her letting me in on something echoed in my mind. “So what’s this about a meeting? Is it some kind of secret club?”
Mia didn’t answer me. She went to her desk and pulled out her photo album. Coming over to the bed, she thrust it at me. “Look at this,” she said. “I already did, remember? You look great.”
A note of insistence entered her voice. “I added some pictures. Just look.”
Flipping through it, the pictures sped by, and the one I remembered most was of her wearing a string bikini, showing off her curves. The poses looked professional yet natural, but most of all, they looked totally hot.
“Keep going,” she urged. Suddenly the feeling of entering a kind of twilight world where nothing was what it seemed came over me. Maybe it was her voice—quiet and insistent—or something else. Who knew... but doing as she said, I kept turning pages. Near the end of the album, a picture I’d never seen before stood out— a picture of a boy.
Taking it out of the plastic casing, I slowly turned it over. Mark, age ten, the caption read. The kid in question had dark hair and green eyes, a green so intense it practically leaped off the paper. I noted the chiseled features which included high, sharp cheekbones bracketing a long and aquiline nose. Amid all the angles and plains, a certain sculpted look stood out.
“Keep going,” Mia whispered. On the next page there was another picture of Mark. It showed him at age fifteen, his face a little softer this time, eyes not so angry. He’d changed. Taller and leaner, now— naturally—but the shape of his nose and jaw were different, less angular. His chest also somehow looked fuller... rounder. In this particular pose, the mole on his cheek stood out... the same mole in the same spot as Mia’s and...
Oh, holy crap. Nervous system failure ensued and my hands suddenly lost their grip. The album fell to the floor. You couldn’t call me the smartest guy around, but I’d always figured my native savviness and intelligence would carry me through any difficult situation when necessary. Not now...
“You understand now, don’t you?” Mia asked. Her voice, slightly louder now, crashed through my impromptu examination of the impossible, but the impossible had indeed become possible. This was as real as it got.
“Yeah, I got it,” I said, my voice sounding dull and half out of it, comprehension notwithstanding. This whole thing had suddenly entered into another realm.
“Do you?” she asked. Her voice rang with bitterness, the bitterness of those she expected to not understand, the anger against those she may have initially trusted, and the depression that came with the realization of the world never having been a fair place to start with. “You saw the pictures. My birth name is Mark, Mark Andrew Swarva. Use your imagination."
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AUTHOR BIO
J.S. Frankel was born in Toronto, Canada and grew up there, receiving his tertiary education from the University of Toronto and graduating with a double major in English Literature and Political Science.
After working at Gray Coach Lines for a grand total of three years, he came to Japan at the age of twenty-six and has been there ever since, teaching English to any and all students who enter his hallowed school of learning.
In 1997, he married Akiko Koike. He, his wife and his two children, Kai and Ray, currently reside in Osaka. His hobbies include weight training, watching movies when his writing schedule allows, and listening to various kinds of music.
His novels, all for the YA set, include Twisted, Lindsay Versus the Marauders and it's sequels, Lindsay, Jo, and the Tree of Forever, and Lindsay, Jo and the Well of Nevermore, all courtesy of Regal Crest Enterprises. He has also written the Catnip series (five novels), Mr. Taxi, and The Titans of Ardana trilogy. Future novels include Outcasts, The Undernet and The Undernet 2: Azrael, and The Unlikeliest Candidate.
Social media links: (Facebook) https://www.
(Twitter): https://twitter.
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