Maxine Wore Black

By Nora Olsen

Maxine is the girl of Jayla’s dreams: she’s charming, magnetic, and loves Jayla for her transgender self. There’s only one problem with Maxine—she already has a girlfriend, perfect Becky.

Jayla quickly falls under Maxine’s spell, and she’s willing to do anything to win her. But when Becky turns up dead, Jayla is pulled into a tangle of deceit, lies, and murder. Now Jayla is forced to choose between love and the truth.

Jayla will need all the strength she has to escape the darkness that threatens to take her very life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bold Strokes Books
• Release date: Nov 3, 2014
• ISBN: 9781626392656

Nora Olsen

What does it take to survive in a world built on lies?Sixteen-year-old Rubric loves her pampered life in the Academy dormitory. She's dating Salmon Jo, a brilliant and unpredictable girl. In their all-female world, non-human slaves called Klons do all the work. But when Rubric and Salmon Jo break into the laboratory where human and Klon babies are grown in vats, they uncover a terrifying secret that tears their idyllic world apart.Their friends won't believe them, and their teachers won't help them. The Doctors who rule Society want to silence Rubric and Salmon Jo. The two girls must flee for their lives. As they face the unthinkable, the only thing they have left to believe in is their love for each other.

Book preview

Prologue

Last night I dreamt I went to Fire Island again.

When it was all happening, all that drama and death and love and heartbreak, I never had any dreams at all. It was as if my unconscious mind was trying to protect me. I had too much to deal with during my waking hours, so when I slept it was a dreamless rest. But ever since we moved to California, now that it’s all over, I dream every night. Scary dreams. Sometimes I relive everything that took place. Other times the dreams are even worse than the reality was. In some of the dreams, I’m the one washing up on the shore, lifeless and battered by the sea.

Last night’s dream has stuck in my mind all day, the way the smell of cigarettes clings to you after you’ve been around smokers. I can’t seem to shake the memory.

In real life I’ve only seen Fire Island in the summer, but in the dream it was late autumn or maybe winter. There were russet leaves on the trees, but there had been a light snowfall, and the red leaves were partly hidden by a pall of snow. It seemed that I was going from the Seaview ferry terminal toward Becky’s house, which her family affectionately called the shack.

Every time I walked along this narrow concrete road in real life, past the houses all crowded together, I always passed dozens of people, mostly beachgoers in flip-flops. And lots of people passed me on their bicycles, ringing their bells; I always thought it was such a cheerful sound.

But now, in the dream, there was no one. I was all alone on the street. I decided everyone had left the island and gone back to their real homes. There weren’t many people who lived out there all year-round.

The salty smell of the sea was in the air. It seemed to be early morning, from the faint light in the sky, and silvery drops of snow clung to the cobwebs that lay unbroken on some lawns. There are a lot of pine trees on Fire Island, and their spiky green needles were tipped with snow. I passed a holly tree. It too still had its serrated green leaves, and now it had jaunty red berries also. I remembered how the leaves hurt like hell when I stepped on fallen ones while I was barefoot.

Here was Kelp Street, the street where Becky had lived. I always thought Kelp was kind of a gross name for a street, but all the streets in this town were alphabetical, and apparently they hadn’t been able to come up with anything better for the letter K. People always just called the streets by their letters anyway. I rounded the corner onto K Street, and I started to get nervous, wondering what the shack would look like now, after everything that happened. But when I finally saw it, I was surprised to see it looked almost the same as when I first saw it. True, the first time, the front garden had been carpeted in blood-red rhododendrons, and now it was fallen leaves covered with patchy snow. But the house still loomed ominously over the sidewalk, its cedar shingles looking almost crimson in the early morning light. There was the massive fence that surrounded the front garden, the ornately decorated gate that clanged so loudly whenever it shut.

They called it the shack, but that was just a pretentious joke, rich people pretending to be slumming. I go to school in New Jersey instead of I go to Princeton. We’ll be at the shack, our summer place, they would say. The place was no simple cottage. It was more like a mansion. It had never seemed to have much character, but now the windows with the pale sun slanting off them looked to me like unseeing eyes. This was a house that had witnessed too much tragedy, kept too many secrets.

How could the house be there, unchanged like that? It shouldn’t be. Something tugged at the edge of my memory. Something had happened to the house, but I didn’t know what. The shack should look different. This wasn’t right.

My heart started to pound, and I discovered my feet were carrying me down the street, past the house, toward the Great South Bay. I felt a cold wind blow through me, and I realized if I kept going, I was doomed. But my actions seemed to be beyond my own control. I tried to stop walking and found I couldn’t. Finally I came to a stop at the bulkhead that separated the land from the greenish water. I could almost smell how cold it was. The choppy waves splashed, and a little water landed on me. I could actually see how fast the current was moving.

Suddenly strong arms grabbed me from behind. Someone pushed me roughly forward, and together the assailant and I toppled off the bulkhead. The icy slap of the water terrified me. I opened my mouth to scream and a wave splashed into my mouth. The water tasted awful, salty and dirty. Those arms were still gripping me. The person shoved my head under the water. I tried to struggle, but she was too strong for me.

She.

Yes, I knew who it was who was drowning me.

Now I began to realize I was dreaming, but I couldn’t wake myself up. I thrashed, but those arms relentlessly kept my head beneath the surface of the water. My lungs began to burn. I couldn’t stop myself from opening my mouth, and the nasty, dark waters poured in. I coughed and kept on breathing in the water. Because it was a dream, the drowning went on and on, much longer than it could have in real life. In real life, I’d be dead.

I woke up to find myself gasping, covered in sweat and tangled in the covers, alone in the bed. It took me a while to reorient myself, remember I was here in California, safe, that Fire Island was three thousand miles away and, more importantly, in my past.

None of that ever happened, do you understand? No one ever tried to drown me in the bay. Why do I keep having dreams like this? And why was the most terrifying part of the dream not when she drowned me, but the part where I glimpsed the shack?

When I think of that house, it pains my heart. When I think of her, it pains my heart too. All this time, I’ve been trying to forget.

Some things are so awful you can only think about them at a slant, just for a second. I’ve been avoiding remembering that summer because it just hurts too much.

But I think, now, it’s a good pain. A cauterizing pain. It’s time for me to face what happened last summer. Maybe then, the dreams will stop.

Chapter One

It was a warm May night and the air smelled like summer.

I should have been happy since I was all dressed up, it was a beautiful night, and I was in the most fun neighborhood in New York City, the Village. In the Village there were all kinds of cool stores, bars, and restaurants, and almost all of them had the rainbow flag in the window, showing how queer friendly they were. The streets were full of interesting-looking people having fun. So why did I wish I was in my pajamas at home in my not-queer-friendly Brooklyn neighborhood?

I was waiting for Francesca on the steps outside the Center. Officially it’s called the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community Center, but everyone just calls it the Center for short. We were going to Queer Prom, and I most certainly was not going to go in by myself. Don’t get me wrong, Francesca wasn’t my date. She was my best friend.

I could tell that most of the people coming to the Center were going to the Queer Prom too, because usually it’s mostly old people, but these were all people around my age, looking their best. I became more and more unsure of myself as they passed by me in groups, chattering and laughing and swinging open the heavy doors to the lobby. Some people were really dressed up in their finest, tuxedos and ball gowns and feather boas and glitter, but others were in shorts and tees. Every single person looked better than I did. My dress had looked great at home in the bathroom mirror, but now I saw it for what it really was: cheap and unflattering. I saw one girl saunter by, her arm wrapped around the waist of her girlfriend, wearing a similar dress. I realized right away that she was the type who should wear that dress, a short, skinny soubrette type with soft rounded arms. I felt more tall and awkward than ever.

Everyone around me looked so happy. This was the first year the Center had decided to throw a prom for queer youth under twenty-three, to make up for the proms a lot of us had not been welcome at, not if we came as who we really were or with the people we were really dating. Since I only made it through two years of high school, I had never even considered going to my school’s prom. Who would I have asked, anyway? For most of my brief and hideous high school life, everyone still thought I was a boy. The last thing I would have done was parade around in a suit at some dance.

Just from watching the people pass through the doors to the lobby, I could tell Queer Prom would have the sparkle of a special event without the high-stakes stress of a real prom. And yet I felt incredibly anxious. That’s the story of my life, in a way. I worry about everything. But this seemed like a pretty legit thing to be apprehensive about, a chance to be humiliated. No one was going to want to dance with me or talk to me. I was sure I wouldn’t know the right way to behave. I’d stand next to the wall and try to smile and then go home miserable. I already knew it was going to happen, so what was the point?

My phone chimed, and I saw Francesca had texted me to say she was just getting out of the subway on the corner. Panic rose in me. I thought about fleeing and calling Francesca with some pathetic story about not feeling well. I turned toward Eighth Avenue, wondering if I would be able to get away in time.

Then I heard her call, Jayla! Too late. I turned around again and saw Francesca crossing the street, waving at me. I tried to return the greeting. Her face was all lit up in anticipation. She was dressed in an outlandish black dress with a plunging neckline and a leather, or more likely pleather, cape. A pair of sparkly goggles were perched in her thick black curls.

Francesca was really into something called steampunk. I didn’t really understand what it was except it involved dressing up like she lived in England centuries ago and was about to step into a balloon. Something to do with science fiction. She went to steampunk events all the time with other nerdy types. According to her, they were the most fun group of people she’d ever encountered, but it just wasn’t my thing. My thing was Star Wars, but I’d rather be burned alive than go to a Star Wars convention. I began to feel even more unsure, worrying that Francesca’s weird outfit would reflect badly on me.

Francesca smiled and touched my arm. Hey, Jayla. You look amazing! Stop being so nervous and get those worry lines off your face. You’ll get wrinkles.

I was an open book to Francesca. She knew all my moods. Okay, I said, trying to relax.

We’re going to have the time of our lives tonight, Francesca said.

The edges of my anxiety began to disintegrate at Francesca’s cheerful words. She usually knew how to make me feel better. That was the secret of our friendship. I reined her in, and she brought me out of myself and made me smile.

We went into the lobby, and immediately we could hear the booming bass coming from the big room on the first floor where the prom was being held. I felt a thrill of fear and excitement.

I want to stop in the bathroom to fix myself up first, Francesca said. After an hour on the subway I don’t look my best anymore. Plus I have to change into my heels.

I had noticed that she was wearing Converse high-tops, but I had been afraid that was part of her steampunk look.

We went up the spiral stairs to get to the women’s bathroom. It still made me happy to sail past the all-gender bathroom without a second glance. Okay, I gave it a tiny glance. I had used that gender-neutral bathroom so many times both before and during my transition that I was well sick of it. There had been times when I had walked a mile or more out of my way when I really had to pee, coming to the Center just to use that bathroom where I knew no one would give me a hard time. But all that was behind me now. I had been taking hormones and living full time as a girl for two years. I didn’t worry now when I used the women’s restroom that someone would confront me or say weird things to me. Of course, my personal odyssey wasn’t exactly over. The next goal, which I kept putting off, was to get the gender on my state ID officially changed from male to female. Once I had a new ID, my official identity would finally match me.

In the bathroom, Francesca and I freshened up our makeup, and she changed her sneaks for strappy heels.

How did you get shoes that matched your goggles? I asked. I had to admit, her weird look was coming together.

I painted them both myself, Francesca said. I did it on the fire escape and left them out there to dry because the fumes were terrible. And still my roommates were complaining about the smell.

I wished I had roommates instead of living with Aunt Hope. Francesca had left her family when she was seventeen, and now she lived in a tiny apartment in Queens with an ever-changing cast of wild and crazy roommates. She complained about them all the time, how messy they were and how they were always trying to skip out on their shares of the rent and utilities, but to me it sounded glamorous.

Francesca was my age, nineteen, but she seemed a little older. She had started her transition earlier, and when I first met her, she was already living as a girl and had just started taking hormones. We met in a support group for transgender teens. Right away we bonded because we were different from the other trans girls in the group. I guess you could say we had both led very sheltered lives and were hopelessly uncool. The other kids seemed much more sophisticated, and kind of jaded. But I couldn’t envy them too much, because they’d all led such hard lives. They all were either homeless or had been at some point. I couldn’t say I loved living with my Aunt Hope, but I had never spent a single night on the street. Francesca had spent a few weeks couch surfing, but that was it. I knew there were transgender girls out there who were rich or came from loving families. There must be. But whoever they were, they didn’t come to our support group.

I wondered if Francesca was somehow thinking along the same lines, or if we both couldn’t help thinking about money all the time, because the next thing she said was, You know, kids from all over the city are coming to this prom. Private school kids, rich college kids. Maybe we’ll both meet someone who’s loaded, who’ll sweep us off our feet. Like a Cinderella story. I feel like everyone I ever meet is either in foster care, just out of prison, or a sex worker. I want to meet someone who’s going to take care of me.

We can dream, I agreed.

I studied myself in the mirror, wondering who would want to sweep me off my feet. As always, I was not happy with my appearance. At five foot eleven and a half—don’t call me six feet!—I felt too tall. My shoulders were too broad. My forehead too wide. My eyes always had a pinched expression. My skin was too pale, making me look like a corpse. I had dyed my hair black, but it just looked stupid. Probably everyone could tell by looking at me that my hair was really brown. I had carefully styled it before I left the house, but the summer heat had flattened it back to hanging limply on my shoulders again. My nose was too big and looked masculine. My arms were too wiry.

Although overall I didn’t like looking at my face, when I zeroed in on my skin I did feel pretty happy. After repeated laser treatments and only a touch of electrolysis, I finally didn’t have to shave anymore. I was lucky to have very pale skin and dark hair which allowed me to get laser treatments which were cheaper than electrolysis. These days I only went for treatments now and then. If I was too broke and I skipped it, you couldn’t really tell, but I had just been last week and looked nice. And I did like my boobs. They were my one feature I was completely happy with. They were perky and just the right size. When they started growing after I began hormones, that was literally the best thing that ever happened to me. I could probably stand to drop a few pounds, but everyone thinks that.

I could hardly tell how much of what I saw about myself was true. I could be a hideous troll or I might be a regular, okay-looking person. How would I ever know? One thing I knew for sure: I wasn’t beautiful and perfect. Who would ever love me? No one could ever look at me and think, She’s perfect. And that’s what love is all about. People who are in love are always going on about how perfect their sweethearts are. The best thing I could imagine someone saying about me was that I was kind or caring.

Someday, if I had enough money, I wanted to get some work done on my face to feminize it. But when would that ever happen? I tried to save up money, but some emergency always wiped it out. My first priority was moving out on my own. Surgeries were more of a dream at this stage.

Francesca was assessing herself too. She twirled. How’s my butt look?

Cute and sexy, I told her.

She winked. You know the right thing to say.

It was weird about Francesca. If you listed her attributes on paper, she was not good-looking. I worried about my masculine attributes, but Francesca looked way more like a guy. Taller than me, shoulders like a linebacker, a big face with strong features. And she had no hips, just straight up and down. But she had luscious, thick dark hair and a soft beautiful voice with a hint of a Dominican accent. And she had a great personality. I know that’s what people always say about ugly girls, but she really did. Everyone liked her and she had a million friends. I was so lucky I was her best friend.

Most times, when people met her they could tell right away that she was transgender. It was just obvious. And she really didn’t care. She knew she was amazing, and a minute after you met her, you knew it too. So, when you added it all together, she was beautiful. I’d heard dozens of people describe her that way, beautiful. How did she get to be beautiful and I wasn’t? I could never figure it out.

Francesca snapped her makeup back into her strange Victorian purse covered in gears and cogs. Okay, enough procrastinating. Let’s get out there and dance. I hope you meet a cute girl.

I smiled. I hope you meet someone too.

I was strictly a lesbian, but Francesca was open to everyone. And she got a lot of play. True, it was mostly total nerds that she dated, but she dated a lot. She would flirt with anyone who didn’t seem like an axe murderer. I admired her get-up-and-go attitude toward dating. But I had more of a lie-down-and-die attitude.

As long as they can take me to the movies and buy me some popcorn and a soda, it’s all good. Francesca said. I don’t even care if they’re cute. It’s what’s on the inside that counts.

What’s on the inside of their wallet, apparently, I said, and Francesca cracked up.

All I want is to go to the movies, is that so much to ask? Francesca said. But for you, I hope you meet a nice girl, a nice cisgender girl.

On the one hand, cisgender is the awesomest word in the world—it means not transgender, as in a person whose gender identity matches the one they were assigned at birth. I like it because it’s not a loaded word and people can say cisgender woman instead of insulting phrases like real woman or normal woman that imply I’m not real or normal. On the other hand, it’s a frustrating word because basically no cisgender person knows what the word cisgender means. But maybe someday it’ll be more widely used.

Yes, I hope you meet a cis girl, since our own kind isn’t good enough for you, Francesca said with a wicked smile.

Francesca was still teasing me about this one time she came on to me. I always had a hard time saying no to anyone about anything, but I made it my business to say no to her. I know better than to date my best friend. When that’s over, you have no girlfriend and no best friend. Anyway, you can’t tell the heart what to do. It wants what it wants, and it doesn’t want what it doesn’t want.

Hey, I can’t help it if I’m not attracted to other trans girls, I said.

Ridiculous, Francesca said. You haven’t met them all yet. So how can you know?

I swung my purse at her and smacked her on the arm. Once I started talking to Francesca, the crazy spinning worries in my head quieted down. We gave last searching glances into the mirror and then we headed downstairs.

To get into the prom, we had to show our IDs to a volunteer. He was checking to make sure we were under twenty-three, so no old creepers would come to our dance. Usually I hate showing my ID more than anything in the world. It’s my old learner’s permit from when I was sixteen. I never did learn to drive, but the main thing is that my face and my name and my gender didn’t match up to what’s on that horrid little rectangle. People love to make clever remarks or turn me away. But I thought this ID would be okay here, and I was right. The middle-aged man examined it gravely, but I could tell he was just looking at the birth date, and he didn’t even bother to look back and forth from the picture to my face. Francesca’s old high school ID got the same treatment, and then the man nodded us toward the door.

I felt a rush of excitement as we entered the room. They had done a really nice job transforming the large room into a ballroom. The space was dimly lit; the music was loud and so was the noise of people shouting at each other. Colorful lights played on a mass of people. Different faces of varied skin tones were briefly caught in the light, and most of them seemed to be laughing. Gleaming white teeth everywhere. A few black-shirted security guards leaned against the wall, looking out of place.

Francesca’s outfit was far from the most outlandish one in the room. It almost seemed like a costume party to me, with people dressed like everything from hip-hop artists to David Bowie to princesses. Like most events at the Center, boys were predominant, but there were plenty of girls, and a good amount of people who defied you to classify them into those two measly categories. I stared around with interest at the girls. Latina girls, black girls, white girls, Asian girls. Some my age or older, some younger than me, some looking like they were barely in high school. A few I recognized, but most were strangers to me. Just as Francesca had said, there was a whole other crowd here. The rich kids showed up for a dance.

Some kids we knew from support group who were standing near the dance floor waved to us, and we went over to say hi. They swept us up in a flood of gossip, and although I had nothing to add, I smiled until my face hurt. I could barely follow their conversation, but I couldn’t help feeling it was a beautiful thing to be young and to be with so many sparkly people at a dance. The night was full of possibilities. Then Francesca squealed and ran off to greet a pair of tuxedoed boys I didn’t know, faithlessly leaving me behind. The kids I was with continued to chatter excitedly. The music seemed to get louder and I couldn’t even understand the words they were saying. My anxiety came back to me in full force.

Were these kids disgusted that I was standing with them? Were they even my friends? Probably they wished I would leave them alone. I surreptitiously sidled off and pushed my way through the crowd that had gathered at the edge of the dance floor. But now I was standing around, looking like a wallflower. How was that an improvement? I gazed wistfully at two girls who were dancing,

Reviews for Maxine Wore Black

[thcforpain · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Maxine Wore Black by Nora Olsen is a story that takes place around a transgender girl named Jayla. Jayla is a shy person and feels inadequate about herself due to a lot of different reasons. She is a high school dropout and due to that has to take menial jobs just to get by. One night Jayla and her best friend Francesca go to gay prom and during this event Jayla meets Maxine and completely falls for her. Maxine has a girlfriend already but this does not stop her from pursuing Jayla. Jayla feels bad that Maxine wants to cheat on her girlfriend Becky with her so she tells Maxine that while she is still in a relationship nothing can happen. Now at this point the book was dragging and I was hoping it would pick up and get better. Wrong. It did not get better it just got strange. Maxine kills Becky then calls Jayla to help her cover it up. Which Jayla does because she is so in love with Maxine yet she barely knows her. Who in the world would do that? Jayla thinks Maxine "belonged to royalty of another time period". The police decide that becky committed suicide. Which does not add up. Maxine is actually takes control of Jayla's life and she basically lets her. And at no point did I ever see this as the abused partner scenario like the author tried to make it look like. Jayla knew that Maxine committed murder but loved her so much it did not matter.

The book gets weird and there are parts of it that had been properly put in the book and pursued it would have given the story some bit of a realistic and enjoyable plot. Jayla's best friend Francesca who now never sees or talks to her is not concerned about her. Why? Or like the autistic child Jayla would babysit for who saw the whole murder take place. Jayla tells Becky's mother in a letter what really happened to her daughter and that Maxine killed her. What Becky's mother did made no sense. Even Becky's best friend Danny who she has known her whole life knows Maxine is guilty. I tried not to give too much information away about the story.

Watch out could Maxine still be out there?

I got this book from NetGalley for a honest review...