Kings, Queens, and In-Betweens

Auteur
Tanya Boteju is an English teacher and writer living on unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations (Vancouver, Canada). She believes feminism, diversity, committed educators, sassy students, and hot mugs of tea will save the day. She is also grateful for her patient wife who builds her many bookshelves! Tanya may have been a drag king in her well-spent youth and knows that the queer community is full of magic and wonder. With her books, she hopes she’s brought some of that magic to those who need it most.

Résumé
“Poignant and important.” —Refinery29

Judy Blume meets RuPaul’s Drag Race in this funny, feel-good debut novel about a queer teen who navigates questions of identity and self-acceptance while discovering the magical world of drag.

Perpetually awkward Nima Kumara-Clark is bored with her insular community of Bridgeton, in love with her straight girlfriend, and trying to move past her mother’s unexpected departure. After a bewildering encounter at a local festival, Nima finds herself suddenly immersed in the drag scene on the other side of town.

Macho drag kings, magical queens, new love interests, and surprising allies propel Nima both painfully and hilariously closer to a self she never knew she could be—one that can confidently express and accept love. But she’ll have to learn to accept lost love to get there.

From debut author Tanya Boteju comes a poignant, laugh-out-loud tale of acceptance, self-expression, and the colorful worlds that await when we’re brave enough to look.

Échantillon de lecture
Kings, Queens, and In-Betweens

CHAPTER 1

The first time Ginny Woodland spoke to me, I vomited all over her Reeboks.

At the time, I was a haphazard assortment of fourteen-year-old body parts—frizzy black hair sprouting from an unruly ponytail, bug eyes, wide nose, ashy dark skin, practically inverted breasts, and a variety of other genetic hilarities.

She, on the other hand, was a year older, and her body parts were decidedly better suited to one another. Fair skin, freckles, a cascade of fiery red hair—from the neck up alone she was a Botticelli to my Picasso.

Her artistic head bobbed along beside me now—even more beautiful three years later. She’d just finished her shift at Old Stuff, the thrift store where she worked part-time, and I’d biked over to meet her and walk her home—part of a petrifying plan I was no longer sure I could carry out.

Sneaking sideways glances at her as we walked, I could tell she was in a good mood. She was humming some tune I didn’t know and tapping a pebble forward with her toe each step she took. I wished I was as at ease as she seemed. But as my bike rattled along beside me, my heart rattled even more inside my chest. I was trying to generate some magical source of courage to say what I came here to say, but all I seemed able to do was plod along beside her like a dolt, listening to her hum.

Though we’d known each other for three years, somehow that initial nausea had never fully disappeared, even though our relationship had managed to move past that early, revolting debacle.

When I’d first laid eyes on her in the ninth grade, Ginny had been playing basketball in the schoolyard, her lean arms and legs accentuated by a sporty top and knee-high socks, and my heart just about leaped out of my mouth.

Up to that point, my heart hadn’t experienced much in the way of leaping, or thumping, or any similar exertions. Life had been crammed with more “existing” and “observing” than other, action-related verbs. In fact, that September, my best friend Charles and I had made a habit of sitting at the same table at lunch in the schoolyard, under a forlorn cottonwood tree, watching and waiting. We didn’t mind the tree’s patchy shade or despairing limbs—the heart-shaped leaves abandoning their branches and floating down around us felt like a shield against the pandemonium of more boisterous teenagers nearby.

Our tree also provided a great vantage point from which we could safely observe all the high school “flora and fauna,” as Charles called the school’s cliques. He’d fabricate scientific-sounding categorizations for them while I’d invent extended metaphors—two nerdy kids playing a lunchtime game to distract us from the fact that our only friends were heart-shaped leaves.

“Ah look, Nima, there’s the dividas et conquer-ass,” Charles would say, pointing to one of the popular kids in grade eleven who swept past the courts with a trio of minions tailing him. Charles’s full lips would twist into grotesque shapes as he used an unidentifiable accent. “These trees are known to grow in tight clumps for protection, but will easily turn upon one another if forced to fight for the sun, scraping their way past each other’s tough bark and branches and displacing their own flowering blossoms in the process.” He’d curl his fingers into claws and force them upon one another in a simulated attack, his eyes going cross-eyed.

“Notice,” I’d add, “one member has separated from the group—a single fallen petal from a tree of deceivingly delicate blossoms. What fate will follow for our forgotten friend? Will the damp ground seep into her fine features? Or will some romantic soul pass by, pluck her off the pavement, and savor her forever?”

Admittedly, I could get carried away. When I did, Charles would throw a Froot Loop at me—he always had Froot Loops in his lunch, sometimes for his lunch—and we’d dissolve into giggles.

This was less exciting than some high school experiences, I suppose.

However, it was from the sparse shade of our cottonwood tree that Ginny Woodland—with her athletic body and radiant smile—took hold of my heart and sent it spiraling into a whole host of action verbs.

I’d had crushes on girls before. I’d realized in sixth grade that girls did something to my body and brain that boys never seemed to when Cassidy Grims dared a bunch of us to touch the tips of our tongues with one another’s. My tongue touched the tips of three girl tongues and four boy tongues that day, and let’s just say I had zero interest in touching any more boy tongues, but the flutter in my heart and the warm surge in other parts of my body made me want a lot more girl touching of all kinds.

Unfortunately, no more touching had taken place by the time ninth grade rolled around, but those warm and fluttery feelings perked up considerably when I saw Ginny. It didn’t even matter that she seemed, as I discovered, to prefer boy tongues.

But after barfing on her shoes, those feelings remained concealed, I remained an unfortunate assembly of features, and Ginny continued to be a distant desire.

Today I’d finally decided to bridge the gap.

In my mind, it’d been long enough since the Barf that I’d replenished whatever minor amount of self-respect I had in order to finally divulge my everlasting love for her. On top of that, she’d be graduating and leaving behind our small West Coast town for a university at the other end of the country when the summer ended. It had felt like a now-or-never situation.

But here, in the late afternoon light and with her smiling and laughing beside me, too many obstacles were presenting themselves.

For one, I’d apparently been rendered speechless.

As preparation, I’d envisioned the love scenes I read during my brief romance novel phase and practiced the conversation in my head over and over again.

Ginny, it’s time you knew: I’ve loved you for t…