Breath of a Fly

“How long do you think a fly can hold its breath?”

At fourteen and the height of gawky inadequacy, my brother kips on the camp bed with the book placed between two knees.

“Dude, flies can’t hold their breaths,” reprimands Aaron swiftly.  He pushes his glasses further up, layered cello tape shining like war scars on his nose.  “They don’t have lungs.  In fact… respiration occurs through a series of holes called spiracles on the sides of their bodies.  Gaseous exchange takes place by diffusion alone.”

“Great to know,” says Hunter, with overdone sarcasm.  “really great.  Now shut the hell up.”

“Why don’t you,” I say, “I’m trying to study.”  But really I am looking at more pictures of Lia.  I look down at the soft brown nose and deep eyes, and wonder how I never noticed how pretty she was in primary school.  But then, I suppose we were all too busy with other pastimes… I close my eyes and I can still hear our juvenile shouts…

“Lia!  Lia Gay!  Oi, Lia, you gay?”  From the three letters of her last name was to begin an eternity of our long-lived pleasure.  And then, one day, Lia Gay retaliated. 

“Hey, you know how you guys laugh at the same joke over and over again?  Are you just dumb, or is it a distinguishing characteristic of the Y chromosome?”

That caught us all off guard. 

“Y chromosome?” yelled Josh, “that a footy team?”  And we all erupted into paroxysms of laughter once more.  But Lia Gay just turned around in her plastic chair and shook her head into her math book. 

We thought she was just one of those mouthy nerds- the ones who learnt the entire social studies lesson off by heart but couldn’t live life for dog shit- but Lia Gay had guts.  As we progressed through elementary school, she became one of the guys- strutting around with us at lunchtimes acting like the seniors we pretended to be; getting soaked in mud when we snuck onto the field to play matches in winter; making such a racket in science class that half-deaf Mrs Markey shouted at the entire class and gave detention to all the boys; we were wrongly convicted, however; as was proven when, class over, the single female voice would eat her lunch at double-speed so she could come to A Block to mock us from behind closed windows. 

Whatever her status among the males in our class, Lia maintained good grades throughout high school.  She would literally jump from the honey-suckle bush where we’d be wagging last period straight into prize giving to collect her fifteen awards and Medal of Excellence and shake the principal’s pink hand. 

I guess none of us expected it when Lia actually started acting like a girl.  It just seemed like one day, we’d been playing Truth or Dare behind the groundkeeper’s shed, and the next she was in the library reading at lunch, with her hair down and eyes made up like all the other girls.  It was even longer before we began to notice the gentle curves; the soft distinctions which separated our species by the one chromosome she spoke of all those years ago. 

It’s been ages since I’ve seen Lia.  Feels like years, when really it’s been-

“What about the flies, then?” asks Hunter. “How long can they last without doing that diffusion thingy?”

“I dunno,” shrugs Aaron, “probably, like, an hour.” 

I smile and glance at the clock.  Flies don’t have girlfriends they’re supposed to be meeting in fifteen minutes.