Being Emily (Anniversary Edition)

by Rachel Gold

  I tore that photo out of the calendar, folded it and stuffed it into my backpack. I’d show Natalie and Claire so they could help me find pants like that. If Mom or Dad came across the calendar image, I’m sure it would fall somewhere between “possible impotence cure” and “oh good, our kid isn’t gay.”

  March’s model wore shorts small enough to be underwear. I’d returned to folding the calendar back so only the dates showed. I paged to April: she had on cowboy boots and a hat. I could use a few more hats, but not cowboy hats. By May and June, the calendar had gotten into bikinis.

  School ended the last week in May, so I figured I’d be coming out to my parents in Dr. Mendel’s office on either Thursday, June 5, or if I chickened out, a week later on the 12th. That was ten weeks away, and I’d run out of the hormones from Natalie in about six. I should save them to take closer to the end of the school year, for finals and extra confidence around coming out. But then I’d have to go through the rest of March and the first part of April without them.

  To do that, I’d need more help. Good thing I knew a paladin.

  * * *

  Saturday, I went over to Claire’s early, picking up donuts and coffee on the way. Her mom worked all day every Saturday, since it was a big sales day. I rang the bell anyway, in case her mom was late leaving. I didn’t want to tip her off that I had a key. Claire opened the door, pulled one of the coffees from the holder and went back to the couch where she’d been curled up with a book. She was in loose black pants and a black sweatshirt, her goth loungewear.

  I put the donut box and napkins on the coffee table and dropped my duffel by her bedroom door.

  “Tell me you’re not cheerful,” she said. “It’s too early.”

  “Motivated,” I told her. “I’m going to come out to Mom and Dad at Dr. Mendel’s in June.”

  Claire sputtered, grabbed a napkin and pressed it to her nose. “Holy…what? Your parents? June of this year?”

  “It’s months away.”

  “What are you going to do if they freak out?” she asked. At least she hadn’t said: when they freak out.

  “Duck behind Dr. Mendel’s chair and let her explain it all.”

  Claire sipped at her coffee and snagged a chocolate-frosted chocolate donut from the box.

  “That’s not the worst plan,” she admitted.

  “I need help setting it up,” I told Claire. She was chewing and nodding at me, so I went on talking. “I’m kind of sucking in school right now. Not English, but everything else is around the C level and I need to look like the best kid in the world before I come out.”

  “How are you getting Cs?” Claire asked. “You’re smarter than ninety-nine percent of the school.”

  “I thought I was bored but it’s more than that. It’s not that I don’t care about school, it’s like I can’t care. I’m paying attention all the time to a million things and I don’t have any brain left for homework. I have to remember how I’m supposed to act. I have to make myself forget that I feel like a girl. People treat me in ways that don’t make sense; I have to think about what they’re doing and why and how I’m expected to respond.”

  “Like what?” she asked.

  Tearing my donut in two I put one half on the napkin and took a sip of coffee.

  I told her, “After lunch when I’ve been sitting with the swim guys, I get to class and I don’t hear anything the teacher says. My brain’s spinning back over everything to make sure I did it right. And that’s when I finally get the joke that Ramon made, that I had to fake-laugh about—and realize I didn’t get it when he told it because it was based on the idea that we’re all guys together—then I’m freaking out that I laughed wrong and they’re going to know. By the time I try to do whatever assignment I missed the instructions for, all that comes up again and I don’t want to think about it, so I go as fast as I can to get it done. And then half the time I forget to turn it in.”

  I bit into the top of my donut, where it was mostly sugar, and washed that down with more coffee. I explained, “When I get up in the middle of the night and put on girl clothes, it’s a lot easier to do homework. All that other noise isn’t there. But I can’t keep that up. I need more sleep.”

  “Okay, so?”

  “I want to do homework at your house,” I said.

  “You want to be a girl here all the time when my mom’s not here so you can do your homework?” The end of Claire’s sentence rose in disbelief.

  “Yes!”

  She started laughing hard, bending forward, shaking. I grabbed her coffee cup so it wouldn’t spill. She wrapped her other hand around mine and held on tight. Good thing or I’d have thought she was laughing at me.

  When she’d recovered, she said, “You know in-game when guys are playing girl characters and they’re always like ‘if I were a girl, I’d spend the whole weekend playing with my boobs?’”

  “Uh, yeah.” I’d heard that too.

  “Homework,” she said, smirk-grinning. “You just want to be a girl so you can do that stupid social studies assignment and maybe some math.”

  “And psychology, definitely need to pull my grade up in that,” I told her, grinning back.

  “It’s on. Go change. Mom’s gone until after dinner.”

  I took my duffel into her bedroom, still smiling.

  She yelled after me, “And you’d better stop sucking at math. The world needs more math girls!”

  I put on the brown pants and my favorite sweater and my one cute hat. Claire offered to do my makeup but stopped halfway with a sigh and handed me the tiny brush, admitting that I was better at it. Then she had to change into a sweater because she said I was out-classing her by too much.

  Sitting on Claire’s couch, I got a ton of homework done. She did some with me, did her chores, heated up soup for lunch but made me stop and figure out what we could have for dinner. We watched TV while eating and then Claire looked over my assignments in Psych and Soc because she was better than me in those two.

  Mid-evening, I changed back into boy mode and drove home, warm and happy. I went into the house humming and Mom called from the kitchen, “Good time at Claire’s?” with a note of suspicion in her voice. Like I’d be stupid enough to hum cheerfully after sex, if we’d been having sex.

  “Claire helped me get this monster paper done for Soc,” I told her as I hung up my coat and kicked off my boots.

  “You seem happier. Dr. Mendel’s really helping?” she asked. She was at the stove making a huge batch of something to carry us through the week. Looked like spaghetti sauce as I went over to give her a quick hug from behind.

  “Yep, helping a lot,” I said and spun out of the kitchen before she could ask more and I could say too much.

  Dad was in the garage as usual, sitting inside the Bronco with the dash open, fiddling with wires. I saw one booted leg and part of his pocketed-vest, the rest of his body leaned across both front seats.

  “I’ve been thinking about the wall of parts,” I told him, waving in the direction of the back wall of the garage with its bin after bin of old car parts, even though he wasn’t looking. “We could list them on eBay, make some money on the ones you’re not going to use?”

  “Spend it on more parts?” he asked with a muffled chuckle, still focused on his wires.

  “You know it,” I said with what I hoped sounded like masculine enthusiasm. “But I want a cut.”

  “What for?”

  “Faster computer. Maybe take Claire out more. You know.”

  He snorted and we haggled about my percentage for a minute. Then he put down his pliers and turned around in the driver’s seat to face me. I don’t know what he was planning to ask, but his mouth hung open for a moment and the questions that came out were, “What the hell is on your face? Is that makeup?”

  Shit and double shit. I’d checked. There couldn’t be much.

  A big inhale and I dropped my voice further into my chest. “Claire’s on this guyliner thing,” I said as grumbly as I could.
“Wants me to look like some movie star.”

  “You take that shit off. Stand up to her. Don’t let her try to make you soft.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “No girl’s going to respect you if you go around looking like a—”

  “Dad, I got it,” I cut him off. “I’m going.”

  I hurried out of the garage before he could say anything more. I didn’t want to hear whatever slur was on the tip of his tongue. Good thing I’d gotten a week’s worth of assignments done today, because the only words in my head the rest of the weekend were going to be the ones he’d already said and the ones he might have if I hadn’t stopped him.

  Chapter Twenty

  Most of April passed without Dad, or anyone, catching me in “guyliner” again. Every Saturday I went to Claire’s and did as much homework and studying as I could. We left extra time at the end for her to examine my face and make sure every last trace of makeup was gone.

  My grades trended up. I ticked off days on the calendar. Too many days to the end of the school year, and too few days to my birthday.

  My birthday isn’t my favorite time of year. It’s near the end of April, so the world outside is slushy. At least the smell of hope is in the air, gently warm and green, and every year I let myself believe it’s going to be different than the year I got a toolbox, or the model car, or the neckties, the suit jackets, and so on. I used to hope I’d get gifts I wanted, but now I pray I won’t get anything too awful. I asked for a couple computer games and some graphic design software, in case I ever want my own website.

  Mom asked if I wanted a party, but I said not really, so she suggested we all go out to dinner, the family and Claire and one of Mikey’s friends. That didn’t sound like a particularly fun evening to me, so I added, “Can I invite Natalie and her mom?”

  They were more than happy to come out for my birthday, but by the time the evening rolled around, I was regretting my invitation. We had only one nice restaurant in town and I picked that because I didn’t want to have to drive too far with my family. Plus I thought it would be fun for Natalie to see downtown Liberty in all its glory. But when we pulled up in front of DaVinci’s, I wanted to turn around and head home. The restaurant seemed super small and kitschy compared to those in the big malls in the cities. I worried that my family would be too strange and at the same time I worried they’d realize Natalie was a trans girl.

  When my momentum stalled outside the restaurant, Claire grabbed my elbow and dragged me into the red and gold waiting area. Natalie and her mom sat on a low, red velvet bench, both a little dressier than our day at the mall. Claire made the introductions because my mouth was too dry for me to talk, and then we were all seated at a long, rectangular table. Mom quizzed Natalie’s mom about what kind of law she practiced, which left Dad to interrogate Natalie.

  “So, you’re in the Cities?” was his first attempt.

  “We moved from Chicago a couple years ago. I’m a junior at Maple Grove,” she said, deftly tearing off a piece of garlic bread with her manicured nails. I envied Natalie’s hands. Her fingers tapered toward the tips, so even though she had wide hands, she still looked graceful with the long, thick manicured nails she wore. My hands were square the whole way, from the base of my palms to my blockish fingers.

  “And how did you meet?” Dad continued, though I’d already told him.

  “We met online,” Natalie said. Claire and I had prepped her thoroughly on what we’d told my parents. “Gaming. We’ve been playing together for, what, four months? And I just thought that Em—uh, Chris was really cool.” She kept going, but Dad had heard it. And I’d heard it so now all the blood in my body was rushing to my head, making it feel like it would burst open.

  “What were you going to call Chris?” Dad asked.

  “Amalia,” Claire said. “It’s one of Chris’s characters. Sometimes we get so caught up in the game, we call each other by those names even when we’re hanging out together. My character name is Vaorlea.”

  “The Mighty,” I added reflexively, though my voice came out as a squeak.

  “You play a girl?” Dad asked me.

  I nodded. Couldn’t talk. I was having enough trouble breathing. After the “guyliner” thing a few weeks ago, this looked worse than it would’ve on its own.

  “Most mages are girls,” Claire lied. “Natalie plays a guy because she’s a barbarian. I mean, warrior.”

  That jab wasn’t lost on Natalie, who flinched when Claire said it, but she went with the flow. “Yeah,” she said with a pointed look at Claire. “It’s kind of weird sometimes, having to be a guy. But it’s also kind of cool to see how differently people respond to you. It’s an expanding experience.”

  “But you’re a girl,” Dad said to Claire, meaning in the world of the game, though he didn’t say that.

  “The whole time,” she said, trying not to smirk. “But my character is a paladin so she also uses magic. You get bonuses to your magic if you’re a girl character. I’m not a barbarian like Natalie.” She paused and shot another glare at Natalie.

  Natalie coughed quietly into her napkin, and I couldn’t tell if she was embarrassed or trying not to laugh. Probably both.

  Claire continued, “The gender-based stat bonuses are pretty important. Chris’s character is very powerful. He can wipe out a whole tribe of orcs with his flamestrike. Well, it’s not only that, he’s also got these dots…that’s damage over time spells. One of them makes the monster explode…”

  She trailed off as Dad’s eyes glazed over. Claire often said that the quickest way to get parents off a topic was to start going on about gaming. And Dad seemed to buy the “girl characters are magic, boy characters are warriors” excuse, even though Claire had made it up on the spot. No game I knew was ridiculous enough to bonus characters based on gender. But I guess it meshed with Dad’s girl/boy stereotypes well enough to avoid scrutiny.

  Mom changed the topic by asking Natalie’s mom about their house and pulling Dad in to talk about our house’s past renovation. Under the cover of that conversation, Natalie glared at Claire and whispered, “A barbarian, huh?”

  “You’re just lucky his magic user is named Amalia,” she shot back in a deadly whisper. They were sitting next to each other, both facing me, while Dad was on my left, so I barely heard what they said.

  Natalie looked at me wide-eyed. “I’m so sorry,” she mouthed.

  I shook my head because I didn’t trust my voice yet. The inside of my skin felt like Jell-O still quivering. I tried to eat some spaghetti, but my throat was so tight it hurt to swallow. I wanted my mom and dad to know and understand so badly, but how could I survive telling them if I got this nervous about one slip?

  The rest of dinner passed uneventfully, except for Mikey and his friend trying to throw meatballs at each other. We dropped off Claire, and Mom gushed the rest of the way home about how smart Natalie’s mom was. But when we got home, Mom took me aside in the kitchen.

  “They’re very nice,” she said. “But I’m not sure you should go into the Cities to see Natalie alone.”

  “Why not?”

  “I think Claire’s jealous of her,” Mom said. She called to my dad, who was still taking his boots off in the entryway, “Jerry, don’t you think Claire’s jealous of Natalie?”

  “Yep,” he shouted back. A minute later he stood in the kitchen entrance. “There was something going on between those two. That Natalie’s an attractive girl.”

  Mom nodded. “And she has a great way with her makeup. Most girls her age either don’t wear any or they put on way too much or, well, all that dark eyeliner isn’t doing anything for Claire’s complexion. Natalie is tasteful. But if you like Claire better, you need to let her know that. She’s probably feeling threatened.”

  “And maybe you should try being a barbarian for a while,” Dad added on his way to the garage.

  Mom shot me a quizzical look, because she’d missed that part of the conversation, but I shook my head.

 
“You and Claire have been dating for awhile,” she said. “Is it serious?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “I remember when I was dating your father in high school,” she said with a smile that made her face young and wistful. “Some of the other girls thought I shouldn’t stick with one guy. Do you get that?”

  “Some. Other guys on the swim team date around more, but I don’t really want to.”

  She put her hand gently on my upper arm. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, honey. I want you to have someone that you love. Someday I’ll get to come visit you in a nice house with your children and your wife, and whoever that is, I hope she makes you very happy.”

  I wondered if she had too much wine at dinner. I think she was trying to let me know that it was okay to dump Claire for Natalie, or not, whichever I wanted. As long as I got married and had kids. I could almost see the picture in her mind of me growing up like her, or rather like Dad.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “You’re going to make some woman very happy some day,” she added.

  I managed a smile. “I hope so.”

  I went upstairs to send Natalie an email about my parents’ compliments to her. I also wondered about what they’d said about Claire. I wasn’t attracted to Natalie, but I don’t think I’d ever said that out loud. Maybe I should do something nice for Claire. She took such good care of me, and she’d saved my butt at dinner.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Claire

  The Saturdays they spent together had been having an effect beyond bringing up Emily’s grades. Every Saturday morning, Claire saw the person she’d known as Chris show up with breakfast food and coffee, go into her bedroom, and come out as Emily.