Parrotfish by Ellen Wittlinger Page A

Sebastian. I’m not a fish.”
    “Do you know a lot of other people who were born girls but want to live their lives as boys?”
    I had to smile; Sebastian didn’t waste words. “No, I don’t, but I know there are some.”
    “I’m sure there are, but I thought you’d like some real evidence here that you are not alone in the animal world. There are other living creatures that do this all the time. ‘Nature creates many variations.’ I’m using that line in my paper.”
    When you thought of it that way, it did seem kind of amazing. “You’re right, Sebastian. I’m sorry I blew you off.”
    “It’s okay,” he said, without a trace of hard feelings. “So, do you want to know more?”
    “Sure.”
    “Well, the parrotfish has a beaklike jaw of fused teeth, which is where it gets its name. Besides its regular teeth, it also has a row of sharp ones at the back of its throat—”
    “I don’t need to know everything about it. Just get to the sex part.”
    He snorted. “Spoken like a real boy, Pinocchio. Okay, some of the parrotfish are born male—those are called primary males. The secondary males are born female, and when they change into males, they’re called terminal males or supermales.”
    “Hey, I like that,” I said. “The ones who change are supermales—like Superman.” I flexed my biceps, not that anyone could see my little muscles pop to attention.
    “Well, Superman only changes his clothes, not his gender.”
    “Okay, okay. Go on.”
    “The females change into supermales in response to population density; that is, they change when there’s a need for more males. The supermales are dominant over the primary males. They apparently get more than their share of the girls.”
    “Wow. And you just happen to be doing a paper on this fish?”
    “Yeah. Life is full of surprises, huh?”
    “Tell me about it.”
    “Are you gonna be in school tomorrow? I’ll bring the pictures I got off the Web.”
    Sound of me plummeting back to earth. School. Tomorrow. Crap . “Um, I’m not sure about tomorrow. I mean, I’m feeling a little sick.”
    “Yeah, but staying home isn’t going to cure you, is it?”
    What a know-it-all . “Sebastian, how come this doesn’t throw you like it does everybody else?” I asked him. “Aren’t you freaked out by me at all?”
    He barked out a laugh. “Are you kidding? I want to be a scientist and a filmmaker. You’re, like, my perfect subject!”
    “So you’re mostly interested in putting me under a microscope.” Great .
    “Or maybe in front of a camera. But that’s not the only reason. You know, I liked you before, too. I always thought you were a very cool person.”
    I thought about that. At least this one weird, geeky little guy thought I was cool. It was a start.
    “Okay, I’ll meet you at the lockers tomorrow,” I said.
    “Come early,” Sebastian said. “I’ve got lots of pictures!”
    “Hey, Sebastian,” I said before he could hang up. “Do you by any chance have an aquarium?”
    “Grady,” he said, sounding a little hurt, “what do you think I am, a dork?”

 
     

Chapter Seven
    T uesday was not much less awful than Monday, especially at the beginning. The news about me seemed to have gotten around the school, and most kids just wanted to stare. People who’d never bothered to glance in my direction before suddenly needed to gawk openly. They studied my walk, they watched my face, they looked for the clues they hadn’t picked up before.
    I decided not to bring up the subject with my other teachers. My math teacher, Mrs. MacCauley, was about ninety-eight years old and never remembered anybody’s name anyway. She usually just pointed at us, although she’d called me both Andrea and Andy a few times, so maybe she was smarter than I thought. Mr. Ludlow, my Global History teacher, called us all by our last names. Being Ms. Katz-McNair had always seemed weird, but becoming Mr . Katz-McNair somehow seemed even more bizarre. A mister was a