Come Out, Come Out by Natalie C. Parker

Author:Natalie C. Parker [Parker, Natalie C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2024-08-27T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter

Nineteen

Fern

In the eighteen years of Fern’s life, the Jensen house had never been a quiet place.

Her sisters had been loud, confident, and demanding, always competing for something—the bathroom, piano time, even roles when Holly and Clover were both in high school at the same time, overlapping their senior and sophomore years respectively. The house was constantly buzzing with songs, conversation, or fights, and Fern, the smallest baby bird in the nest, had learned to be loud in order to get what she wanted. The decibel level of the house slowly declined as one by one the sisters graduated and left home, but even without them, Fern and her mom always had the radio or TV on in the background, something to make the house feel full.

On Sunday afternoon, though, the house was silent. Fern’s mom had taken a swing shift at the hospital, and the maelstrom of Fern’s thoughts was too loud to add anything else to the mix. She’d been lying face down on her bed for she didn’t know how long while her thoughts cannibalized her brain.

She was blowing it. None of her sisters had ever blown a role before. All three of them had sailed into their senior years with the same self-assuredness she’d had only a few weeks ago. They’d made everything look so easy.

Their group text was still active, and they’d been checking in on her—or, in Ivy’s case, offering plenty of unsolicited advice on how to approach a role like Sandy—but Fern couldn’t talk to them about this. As far as Fern knew, none of the three of them had ever had a piece of their heart ripped away. They’d never felt like they were trapped inside their own bodies. Or spent five years believing in a false version of themselves. Like they’d spent so long living a lie they didn’t even know where to look for the truth.

The worst part was that Fern didn’t know what—who—she wanted to be. It wasn’t like there was a Platonic Ideal of Fern in her head, and everything would suddenly feel good if she could just be that version of herself. All she knew was that right now, being this Fern was making her physically uncomfortable—and it was getting in the way of her ability to play Sandy.

Five years ago, she’d only just started untangling these feelings for herself. She hadn’t had any answers then either, but that had been okay because Jaq and Mal were there to make it okay. They’d made the nebulous space of not knowing feel normal.

Fern vividly remembered the relief she’d felt whenever she was with them. How one afternoon, when they were hanging out in the house in the woods, Mal had asked, “Fern, do you want us to try different pronouns? Like, we can have a conversation about you using he/him or they/them and you can see how it feels?”

Fern had agreed, and Mal had turned to Jaq, pretending Fern wasn’t there when she said, “Did you see Fern’s outfit today? I thought he looked amazing in that green skirt.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.