He glimpsed the three of them through the sliding glass door, the two parents browned but still white, their adopted son who neither tanned nor came from a place where they ate dairy from goats, cows, or sheep.

~PAUSE IN NARRATIVE REPORT~

This part was difficult. The Bio-meter vacillated from scarlet (original shame) to waxy blue (racial self-hatred) to a purple so dark it was almost black (lack that has been held back only by social situations). As I was thinking about Blithe’s story, I realized I knew absolutely nothing about transracial adoption or being trans and transracially adopted.

~NARRATIVE REPORT CONTINUED~

“Is something wrong, hon?” his dad asked over coffee.

He stopped himself from asking if hon was really the word his dad would be using with a normal twenty-eight-year-old boy.

“No, I’m just tired, working a lot.”

He wanted them to ask about his Line so he could feel like he had something to offer. They did not.

The pool shimmered. He’d longed to swim while they were away but hadn’t want to email them to ask how to turn on the heater. Anyway, he figured it would be disenchanted without their presence.

It was too late to start asking them about the heater, but he could float on a raft.

“You know, in my retirement I’m just now noticing how important it is to tune out, chew the rose petals, enjoy these little things, like being with your loved ones,” his dad said, and took his mom’s hand.

“Um, thanks, Dad, okay. I’m going to go change and then float on the unicorn.”

“You’re going to have to blow it back up,” his mom said.

Blithe pushed his chair in, and her glance reminded him to take his plate inside, even though he was a guest.

His parents’ pool was the secret to his professional success. In the untreated salt water, he regressed into a state of wonder, contingent on his parents poking their heads out between the sliding door to ask if he wanted a seltzer, some nuts, to go out to dinner.

Wearing new red trunks, he jumped onto the unicorn’s back, sending big waves toward the edges of the pool. Against the clang of his mom loading the dishwasher, he started nesting in his own colorful insides, away from the banal chatter of the world. He crossed a bridge into another world, full of hoofbeats and ridges and dragon’s breath.

He pictured himself walking into the conference room with its long holographic table, clutching his light blue portfolio, knowing his new Arrow-Line would be called kickass and fucking the shit by his boss’s boss, whose most notable skill was grape-skinning at cocktail parties.

Where do you come up with this stuff? his boss’s boss would ask in this fantasy, and he’d shrug and blush. The mind-altering delights of a swimming pool was hardly his most shameful secret, but still, he wouldn’t want to reveal his process.