Vengeance(9)

I continued to fight back the tears. “I want to believe you, I do. It’s just that . . .”

“Just that nothing.” Hannah let me go and got up off the bed. “Now go get ready for dinner. All those clothes I’ve jacked for you and you’re sporting sweat pants and my old Beatles T-shirt. Go put on a nice dress.”

“Who all is coming?” I asked.

“Sebastian, Crispin, Nigel, and Shayne.”

“Oh boy,” I said, thinking of the individuals she had just named. “It’s going to be a long night.”

Hannah chuckled. “Yeah, but a fun one. Bet you’ve never had a Thanksgiving like the one you’re about to have.”

“That’s for damn sure.”



* * *



Less than four hours later, we were all sprawled across the living room with stuffed stomachs and chilling to “Don’t Dream It’s Over” by Crowded House. Sebastian started belting out the words, and the next thing you know, everyone else had joined in, including me.

I was a bit tipsy because Hannah had allowed me a little bit of wine at dinner. I ended up getting up off the sofa and started doing an impromptu dance to the slow song before breaking out into the second verse. It took a few seconds before I realized that everyone else had stopped singing. They were all staring at me.

“Get it, girl!” Crispin yelled out.

“Work it now!” Nigel added.

Everyone in the house was transgender except for me. Nigel and Sebastian were female to male and Hannah, Shayne, and Crispin were all male to female. I loved, loved, loved their confidence and wished that I had it myself.

I started singing louder and dancing even more. Being around them made me feel comfortable. They all got up on their feet and started dancing with me until the song ended. Crispin gave me her white satin scarf from around her neck and I waved it around in the air as I landed in a split on the psychedelic carpet on the last note.

“Damn, Caprice, I didn’t know you could sing!” Hannah yelled out.

“That’s because I can’t sing,” I replied. “At least not better than the next person.”

“The Devil is a liar,” Nigel added. “You can blow.”

“Amazing chops!” Shayne chimed in. “You need to go to some Broadway auditions.”

“Yessir-ree! It’s worth a shot!” Crispin confirmed Shayne’s thought.

“Stop kidding with me!” I lashed out, hurt from them teasing me. “I’m not talented!”

“Says who? You?” Hannah walked over and rubbed me across the cheek. “Baby girl, a lot of people don’t recognize their own gifts. You can sing great and . . .” She paused and looked around the room. “My buddies and I might be a lot of things, but liars we are not. We don’t sugarcoat shit.”

“Never have, never will,” Shayne cosigned. “Now me, I sound like a sick frog when I sing, but I own it. You need to own up to the fact that you have a natural talent. Embrace that bitch.”

“Have you ever had any voice lessons?” Nigel asked. “You sound like a pro.”

I smirked. “I was barely allowed to go out the house. Besides, Grandma couldn’t afford anything like that for me.”

Sebastian had been fairly quiet up to that point, but that brought him back into the fold. “Grandma? Is that who raised you? Is she still alive?”

I looked at him in horror, and didn’t say a word. I had no idea what Hannah had told her friends about me, but I knew that she was a master of mixing fact with fiction and making it sound plausible.

He looked at Hannah. “I thought you said this child didn’t have any living relatives. Are you sure you need to be involved in all of this, Hannah?”

Crispin started in then. “What’s really going on here?” She looked at me. “How exactly did you and Hannah meet, Caprice? And how old are you again?”

I still didn’t say a word.

“It’s Thanksgiving,” Hannah finally said. “My name’s not Babe or Dustin Hoffman, none of you are dentists, and this is not going to turn into the interrogation scene from Marathon Man.”

I cringed when Hannah said that. We had watched that 1976 flick on VHS a few nights earlier and that scene where a dentist tortured the main character by digging into his cavity had unnerved me to my core.

“Let’s just chill and listen to some more music,” Hannah continued.

All the rest of them looked at one another. I could tell it would not be the end of it but hoped it would end for that night.

Sebastian couldn’t drop the subject. “All I’m saying is you don’t need no more felony charges and if, for some reason, Caprice isn’t legally in your care, anything can happen.”