The Santa Hoax Read online

  Aiden was always so nervous and fidgety when it came to school. He liked to read on his own time, just like Julian, but he was a boy. A “real” boy, Julian often lamented. Reading and being smart became a lot more complicated when you were a boy like Aiden was one. Even if Julian was unsure about who he was, he saw how different Aiden had been treated the past few years at school as things began to change. The two of them had known one another since their parents met at a Gymboree session, and they had grown up alongside one another as neighbors until Aiden’s mom got a divorce and had to move.

  “Think about it. If the machines have been conscious all this time, then we’ve been treating them like crap. And they know it,” Aiden said. “So I think that when the machines rise up and go after us, we will start to reconsider our world and how we’ve treated things. How we’ve treated one another.”

  “And that’s ironic, how?”

  “Because the machines were already there, just waiting. They knew the ending before we did.”

  “I guess. But we already use people now. The machines are no different.”

  “Hmmm…. Maybe you’re right. You usually are.”

  Julian smirked, his cheeks red again. Aiden pawed through his backpack and pulled out his notebook. He seemed to be correcting some of his homework, so Julian looked at the bio in the back of Asimov’s book. He skimmed over some details about where he was born and raised, before he realized that Asimov wrote at least 1,700 words a day.

  “Jesus,” Julian said aloud. He pointed to the stat in the book so Aiden could see. “No wonder he has so much in the library.”

  Aiden let out a low whistle at the number. “Kind of makes you wonder.”

  “About what we’re capable of as humans?”

  “Or if he was really a machine!” Aiden corrected with a laugh.

  Julian closed the cover of the book and nodded. Maybe Asimov was both. Part machine, part human. Maybe that’s why I like his books so much. Just the idea of robots made Julian feel better. To think of himself as a machine meant he could be fixed. Someone could put in a new engine or gear or whatever else, and he could run again. He could reboot his system, his hard drive, and start the game again with a new avatar.

  But as Julian soon realized, most people would try to fix him and make him like the girl body he had. Instead of making Julian into a “real boy,” they would turn him into the woman they thought he should grow up into. Julian didn’t want to be fixed that way. He wanted to be like Aiden, with a boy body and boy life, even if that made reading—among other things—difficult. Being a boy and being a girl were both difficult, especially at that age. But Julian knew he would so much rather deal with the boy worries than the girl ones.

  That’s what those sparks were about, Julian told himself. When Aiden and Julian’s hands touched, those sparks were because of their machines. The sparks let them know they were made of the same material, even if Julian often thought he had to be fixed.

  “What would you be if you were a machine?” Aiden asked.

  Julian coughed, startled by the question. “Um. A hot-air balloon, I guess.”

  “That’s not a machine.”

  “But it’s what Jules Verne used to get around the world.”

  Aiden thought about this. “Well, okay, then. I guess.”

  “What about you?” Julian asked, hoping their gears would still be compatible.

  Aiden grinned. “I’m pretty sure I’d be that rowboat.”

  JULIAN BEGAN to use Asimov’s books as a cover whenever he went to the library at night after that. Since those books were in every single section, it was easy to tell his mother and father that he had suddenly become blown away by the sci-fi genre and was on a mission to figure out everything he could ever know. Julian’s father, Damien, seemed thrilled by the new outlet for Julian’s creativity.

  As spring finally warmed and eventually became summer, Julian no longer needed to pester his parents for a ride to the library, so he began to go there more often on foot. He would stuff his backpack to the brim with books and often stay long hours in the study cubicles. Sometimes, after Julian would come home, he’d find his dad home early from town council meetings.

  “Hey, J,” Damien greeted. “How’s it hanging?”

  Julian smiled, liking the old nickname from his childhood. His father seemed tired, like he always was, but also really excited to see Julian after a long day.

  “I’m good. How are you, Dad?”

  Damien nodded, then gestured toward the bag of books. “Have fun tonight?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  In many ways Julian knew his father had always wanted a son. The sports paraphernalia that lined the walls of their small two-story house reminded Julian of this fact on an almost daily basis. But even with his father’s quiet longing, Julian didn’t like sports. Not team sports—like football or rugby—like his father did. Julian liked activities where he got to be alone. He swam and ran, but never on teams. Teams always split people up by gender, and even when he couldn’t articulate why, he had never liked the arrangement. So even if running track meant he was on his own team, inside his own mind, and didn’t have to deal with players—he still had to use the proper locker rooms after. He was still Julia to the outside world and especially to his father.

  But soon Julian realized his father also liked sci-fi as much as he liked sports. Where they had once been at an impasse about their interests, they now had something in common.

  “Who’s your favorite author now?” Damien asked.

  “I don’t know. Still Asimov, probably.”

  “Even after all that reading?”

  Julian nodded. “You should tell me your favorite. Maybe I’ve read them.”

  Damien grinned. He invited Julian to sit next to him at the table and then began a rather long ramble on the Cthulhu mythology for the H. P. Lovecraft series.

  “He’s different than Asimov, so maybe you won’t like him,” Damien said. “But Lovecraft was a profound writer and still worth getting into. I have everything he’s ever done. Plus all of these magazines he sent his short stories in to.”

  From the hall closet, Damien pulled out a large pile of beat-up Weird Tales and began to paw through them. After the two of them had carried on a small conversation, Damien soon moved on to his other books he kept in the basement, like Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game series.

  “He is not the best person, Card—and really Lovecraft isn’t when you break it down—but both of their worlds are interesting. Believe it or not, I use this knowledge a lot in my job. As I’m sure you know, sci-fi is a different world than ours, but it’s still the same. These books talk about the future but also right now. Especially with Ender’s Game. It’s all about strategy. I have to use that in city council or else nothing would get done!”

  Julian nodded. He tried to tell his father more about the conversation with Aiden and the I, Row-Boat novel he had read. There was a distinct generation gap between his dad’s books and Aiden’s books, but Damien still tried to follow along. He smiled more than Julian ever remembered him smiling before.

  “I’ll tell you what, J,” Damien said. “If you read one of my favorites, I’ll read I, Row-Boat. Then we can talk about it.”

  “Okay!” Julian agreed. “I’d like that. A lot.”

  “Good.” His father ran his hand through his hair and then looked down at his watch. His eyes widened as he realized how late at night it was. For summer, it didn’t really matter to Julian what time he was in bed. But his father had meetings all the time, and he hadn’t removed his suit yet.

  Damien grabbed the I, Row-Boat novel from the table and rose to his feet. “It’s getting pretty late, little buddy. I’ll get a start on this—and you think about what you’d want to read from me.”

  “Is there…?” Julian started. He stopped and started so much that his father finally waved to Julian to follow him down the hallway so they could “walk and talk”—a common occurrence in the Gibson household.
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  “What are you thinking, J? I hear the wheels turning in your head.”

  “Are there any books with changes? Like….” He wanted to say from one gender to another, like the parrotfish, but the words couldn’t come out. “Machines to humans? Body swaps? Something like that?”

  His father stopped at the end of the hallway. He seemed to be deep in thought, as if he was trying to figure out a puzzle.

  “I’m sorry,” Julian apologized. “Never mind. The Cthulhu thing sounds good. Maybe I’ll like that.”

  “No, no, it’s okay, J. Just give me some time to think. I’m not Google. Things sometimes take me a while.” His father smiled and put Julian at ease for another moment. Damien snapped his fingers in a hurried exaltation a few moments later.

  “The Left Hand of Darkness!” He moved through the house quickly toward an old pile of books in the spare bedroom, Julian trailing at his heels. He squatted to reach the bottom shelf and then produced a small book with a gray cover and the words The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin on its front.

  “She’s wonderful,” Damien gushed.

  “What’s it about?”

  “Well, read the back. I can’t tell you all the answers.”

  Julian flipped it over and began to read through the first few sentences, his body quivering with recognition. In this futuristic world, men were allowed to have babies. Bodies and genders were completely reconfigured.

  “Like it?” Damien asked, raising his brow. “Is it what you were looking for?”

  Julian could barely nod.

  “Well, I will take your stunned silence as a good sign.” Damien placed a kiss on the top of Julian’s head and ran his fingers through his long hair. “Enjoy it, and we’ll talk later. For now, I really have to go to bed.”

  “Okay,” Julian said. He stepped out of the guest room and began to walk down the hallway toward his bedroom. With a hand on the doorknob, he looked back and saw his dad walk across the way to his parents’ door. “Hey, Dad?”

  “Yes, J?”

  “Thanks.”

  “Not at all! Good night.”

  Julian nodded and closed the door. He wondered if, when they discussed their books, he could somehow tell his father about what had been plaguing his dreams most nights.

  FOR A long time, Julian had more than enough to read to keep him happy—and to keep him distracted. For that entire summer, whenever his father wasn’t in council meetings and while his mother was away at the lab studying, he found himself engaged with one or another book club. Either he talked with Aiden about robots and consciousness or he talked to his dad about monsters and Cthulhu.

  His father’s books, Julian had to admit, were his favorite. They went beyond the standard sci-fi canon and into more obscure works he would have never thought of before. They paid attention to one another’s point of view when they talked and brought up several other aspects about the stories they may not have considered before. Really, Julian knew this was even better than all the English classes he had had during middle school. He wished, in a way, that he could read Parrotfish with his father—but that was jumping ahead too soon. Julian was still figuring out what it meant to be a different gender in stories, before he could even consider relating it to the real world.

  When it came time to discuss the gender swapping inside sci-fi stories, Julian proceeded with caution. He knew, even then, that he was talking about himself.

  “I like that the body can be something different in the future,” Julian remarked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s nice to know there can be change, you know? The character isn’t stuck with the way the body is now.”

  “I wouldn’t say the body is always stuck. We all change and grow. We get older. Even you, J. You’ll be starting high school in the next little while.”

  “I know,” Julian groaned. “Don’t remind me.”

  “I know. High school seems like a large change right now. But don’t sweat it. You’re more than capable, trust me. And don’t let the idea of high school get you down, either. You know, it’s probably good you’re reading sci-fi and not young adult books that idealize high school. It’s more like Lord of the Flies in there than it is Sweet Valley High.”

  “This is supposed to be confidence boosting?” Julian teased.

  Really, Julian was glad his dad was telling him things like this. Julian had figured high school was a way to escape the middle school drudge and the kids’ immaturity—nothing more. The first kisses, boyfriend, and whatever else people his age were supposed to look forward to did nothing for him. Especially boys—in fact, boys made Julian more nervous than anything else. He couldn’t untangle his feelings for them. Was he supposed to like them? He did, at times, get crushes on guys. He sometimes got crushes on girls too. Even though he knew he’d be teased for being a “lesbo” for liking them, dating girls felt more natural—until he looked at a mirror and realized what he looked like to the outside world. Then guys were the only option again, and the only people he had felt any kind of spark for. It was just so weird to him, so foreign. Julian wasn’t sure if he was allowed to want to be a guy—and still date guys.

  More than that, during the last months at school, he and Aiden had often been teased as being a couple. The “k-i-s-s-i-n-g” song was constantly sung behind their backs, and people pretended their names were magical math equations to romance. But Aiden had always treated him like a best friend, like Julian, without ever knowing how Julian felt about his gender. Julian worried, deep down inside, that the teasing would only get worse in high school, and how this would affect Aiden.

  And what would the other boys be like in high school? Would everyone split up again, like they had started to do for gym class? Where would Aiden go—and where would that leave him? Julian tried not to think about it for too long. He had much bigger things to worry about, like how The Left Hand of Darkness was going to end.

  “So, as helpful as all this high school stuff is, I was wondering about chapter eight, where….”

  Damien let out another low laugh. “Don’t worry too much, okay, J? I see the gears in your mind working overtime. But you’ll be fine in high school. You’re smart, beautiful, and like all the right books.”

  Julian’s father touched the side of his face before rubbing a hand through Julian’s hair. Suddenly the gesture made Julian’s skin crawl. Julian was not beautiful in the way his father said he was. He was not a girl seeking validation. And he didn’t want to be touched by someone who thought he was beautiful in that way. Julian clenched his jaw and remained silent, his finger gripping the spine of the book too hard.

  “Anyway,” Damien said, probably sensing some of the tension. “What were you saying about bodies in the future? In chapter eight? Here, let me find my place….”

  Julian drew into himself, thinking quietly, as his father found the right page number. I like that bodies in the future are so much better than what they are now. Men could be pregnant and people could change what they were born into if they really wanted to—without it being a big deal. I wish, Julian thought, that I could have picked who I was going to be, instead of having it dictated by everyone else around me.

  “Okay, I’ve got the page. What did you want to add, J?”

  Julian only sighed. “I don’t know. I forgot. Hey, can we read a book about robots next? I think I’d prefer robots.”

  Chapter Three

  Three Months Ago

  JULIAN’S FATHER was right. High school was more or less like Lord of the Flies, only with more cell phones.

  Within his first week, Julian had never seen so many fights break out over nothing—or so many people fall over themselves trying to get attention from all the wrong people. Even the notion of adult supervision seemed ridiculous inside the high school’s walls. The teachers were only in the classrooms and the offices. They were never inside the hallways or the small corners of the stairwells or around the building by the bleachers at five o’clock. As f
ar as Julian could see, there were two distinct levels to high school life: what teachers didn’t see out of ignorance, and then what teachers deliberately turned their back on. The drugs and the fights were oftentimes what they didn’t see out of ignorance. But stuff like bullying, especially cyberbullying, was what no one saw at all, even if it was right in front of them.

  “It is not our problem,” one teacher said to Julian when Aiden was being constantly harassed online. What had started out as a bunch of jerks texting him all night and day had quickly spread into a Facebook smear campaign. Before he saw the web page, Julian had just known that something was wrong with Aiden but couldn’t exactly prove it. There was no logical explanation as to how all these people had gotten Aiden’s phone number or his e-mail. With evidence in his hands, Julian brought the website to the attention of the technology teacher, Mrs. DeVors, and expected a swift end to the entire affair.

  Mrs. DeVors had been visibly uncomfortable as her eyes flitted across the epithets written online. They went from calling Aiden “poor Jewboy” to “faggot,” and then, well, even Julian didn’t like to read that far. Up until he had found the site, Julian had been so convinced the teasing had been about him—or both of them. They were used to being teased as a unit in middle school, and while that was still terrible, Julian had forgotten one positive thing about it: if they were teased together, they could fight together. They automatically had someone on their side, no matter what.

  But there had been nothing on the Facebook page about Julian. Nothing at all. Now that the bullying was aimed just at Aiden, Julian had no idea how to proceed. Aiden had pulled away from him at the start of high school, probably expecting that the world was against him now. All the evidence pointed to that conclusion, and no matter what Julian did to prove to Aiden that he did care, Aiden was suspicious. The teasing had driven a wedge between them where there only used to be trust. Julian knew finding the actual web page—and getting it shut down—would be the only way to prove to Aiden that he was on his side. Forever.