Page 12 of The Staircase in the Woods

“Dude,” Hamish said, half pleading. Owen felt cowardly. But sometimes you just wanted to stay out of Lore’s way.

“Just say it,” Lore challenged Hamish.

“Say what?”

“Say you don’t think people like me should exist.”

“Whoa!” Hamish said, laughing a big laugh that was more a defense mechanism than anything else. He held up both hands. “What the fuck, Lore. I surrender. Okay? I don’t know what you are talking about, so I give up.”

“You don’t justgetto give up. You can’t back out of this. You think people like me shouldn’t exist. We shouldn’t have books to read where we see ourselves, we shouldn’t be able to get married or have kids or, fuck, own fucking property; no, you think we should be legislated out of existence.”

“People like you?”

“Yes! A queer woman—”

“Queer? I thought that was a slur…”

“A queer woman,” she said again, louder, “who is pansexual—”

“The hell is that?” Hamish asked. “You bang pots and pans?”

“Hamish, Christ,” Owen protested.

“I’m genderfluid, pansexual, aromantic, AuDHD—”

Hamish’s eyes went wide. “I seriously don’t know what any of that shit means, Lore. They don’t hand out manuals for this stuff—”

Lore held up her fingers and began to count them off, loudly explaining each item on the list, each at higher volume than the last: “Genderfluid, meaning I currently go byshe—or sometimesthey—as pronouns. Pansexual, meaning I’ll fuck anyone regardless of what their gender presentation is.”

“I thought aromantic meant you didn’t have…sexual partners,” Owen interjected.

“No,” Lore answered, sounding freshly irritated. “That’s asexual. I’m aromantic. It just means I don’t form romantic bonds or have those kind oflovey ooh-la-lafeelings for people.”

“See?” Hamish said. “Even he doesn’t have the, the, the fuckin’ glossary, and he’s a lefty like you—”

“Sorry,” Owen mouthed to her, quietly.

Lore ignored him, kept on. “Finally,AuDHD means I meet the diagnostic criteria for the overlapping conditions of both autism and ADHD.”

“You’re kidding,” Hamish said, looking bewildered. “You’re not really autistic, right? There was an autistic kid in Emma’s grade this year and, I mean, that kid wasn’t okay. Sweet kid but, uhh. You’re not likethat.”

“Autism is a spectrum.”

“Like gender,” Owen said, and he realized suddenly it sounded like he was trying to earn, what, brownie points from Lore for having the correct answer? It made him feel suddenly selfish and a little stupid.You should just shut up.

“What, is everything a spectrum?” Hamish asked, but it wasn’t a serious question. He didn’t roll his eyes, but he might as well have.

“Yeah, actually,” Lore said. “Everything pretty much is a spectrum.”

“Everything but politics, I guess.”

Lore was about to lay into him further, her cheeks blooming with something beyond just indignation. She was angry now. Spitting mad. This wasn’t just Lore’s usual heat-seeking missile. She was pissed. Wanted blood. Hamish saw it, too, and quickly stammered out an apology: “Hey, hey, sorry! Sorry. Okay? I’m sorry I voted for Creel. I regret it. It was stupid. I’m an asshole, I get it, but like, relax, I’m not some frothy QAnon fuckin’ Creel-mouth who’s out there burning books and telling people vaccines are poison, okay? It’s fine. We’re fine.”

Owen watched Lore settle back into her seat—but while the hot anger dissipated, something cold lingered. Her mouth formed a stiff line when she said, “No, you’re not a true believer. In a lot of ways, you’re worse. You’re one of thosejust asking questionsguys. Some devil’s advocate dickhead dumbass who passes along someone else’s disinformation and bigotry with a shrug and a wink, and maybe yousayyou’re done with Creel but you’ll vote for one of his Diet Fascist lackeys. You’ll say,Oh,I don’t care about trans people,but what you mean is, you don’t carefortrans people. Even if one of your kids is trans, or gay, or autistic.” There, Hamish seemed to flinch. “You won’t ever vote to help them, and you’ll probably think,But kids shouldn’t be trans or see trans people or have a gay teacher,orWhy do my white kids have to have shame over slavery—hey, it’s not like we personally enslaved Black people,andIf homeless people don’t want to be homeless, maybe they should just get a job,and, you know, whatever helps you sleep at night, Ham. I vote the other way, and frankly I don’t know that shit’s getting much better anyway—the homeless are still homeless and the Middle East is still a fuckshow and Russia is still ruling the roost and the earth is really starting to boil now, so fuck it, whatdoes it matter anyway, right?” She threw up her hands. “Fuck it all to hell.”

At that, she slumped back in her seat, arms crossed. She wrangled her headphones off her neck and popped the cups back over her ears. Music began leaking out from around the edges—a dull throb of something electronic. Her eyes closed as if she was shutting them, and the broken world, out.

Owen and Hamish looked at each other, and each made that awkward eyebrow-raise half-smile combo.

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