The Santa Hoax

by Francis Gideon

  Julian turned over in his bed. He remembered the first night he’d learned about parrotfish and the word “transgender.” That was almost a year ago now.

  As he fell asleep, he realized this was never going to go away.

  Chapter Five

  One Month Ago

  AS JULIAN sat in class one morning, all he felt was a sudden and resounding pain in his abdomen. He tried to imagine the Alien movie in order to get past the first initial shock of his body. Then, as the pressure inside of him grew, he broke one of his only rules and went to the bathroom in school. He checked all the stalls to make sure no one was inside and then moved to the back one. A dark red stain greeted him on his underwear.

  “Fuck,” he said aloud into the empty bathroom. It was all so perfectly expected, all so cliché, and all he could think of was how stupid he had felt that he thought this would just never happen to him.

  Right then Julian knew, like his mother’s textbook suggested, biology was destiny. The books he had read as a child were nothing but fairy tales, meant to keep him down and not to question anything else. Sci-fi universes made him live in his head, distracting him for long periods of time while his body fought against itself. Sci-fi just wasn’t real—but he was still left dealing with the ramifications of all his choices. He was a woman now in people’s eyes, even if he never agreed with it for a second. His body confirmed it, like a sickening bang after a bolt of lightning.

  Another person entered the bathroom. From the slight swagger in her walk and the snapping of her gum, Julian knew this was Maria. He cleaned himself up as best he could and then walked out of the stall. Maria leaned over the counter, lipstick in her hand as she applied it in the mirror. She recognized Julian’s reflection right away.

  “Hola, chica,” she said, smiling. “How are you doin’?”

  Julian swallowed his pride and walked forward. “Can I ask you a favor?”

  “Sí, bella. What do you want?” She turned around and leaned against the bathroom ledge, her smile never wavering.

  “Do you have… something?” Julian knew the dynamics of pads and periods, but he could not put them into words. Maria gave him an odd look until he pointed at the dispenser to the side of the room.

  “Ohhhh,” Maria said. “Yeah. Of course. Do you want a quarter or something for the tampons?”

  “No. Pads. I think I need that.”

  Maria nodded. She dug through her pockets, and when she found nothing at all, she took off one of her shoes and went down to the bottom of her sock before she pulled out a few coins. “Always be prepared,” she joked as she slipped the change to Julian.

  “Thank you,” he said in an exasperated voice. “I’ll pay you back.”

  “It’s mere pennies, sweetheart. Don’t worry.”

  Julian turned toward the machine, the coins hot in his hands. Maria was still behind him, putting her lipstick on again in the mirror. He wished she would just leave so he could have privacy, but he felt another sudden stabbing pain in his body and knew he had to hurry. His fingers trembled as he put the coins into the machine and the pad dropped out. Inside the stall, he felt like he was changing someone’s diaper. It was stupid. It was bulky. And why did he have to pay for this? He couldn’t help it. And he definitely didn’t want it—so why was he paying for the pleasure like a luxury? The system made no sense whatsoever. Finally, Julian finished what he was doing.

  Now, he thought, if only I could do something about the pain. Asking Maria for something else made him feel too insecure. He told himself, thinking of irony, to man up.

  “You okay?” Maria asked when he stepped out again.

  “Yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “I don’t know. Periods usually mean bloat, which usually means pain and cravings for a lot of chocolate,” Maria explained. She leaned in and looked around to make sure no one was listening. “You wanna skip together? We could get ice cream.”

  “No, thanks.” Julian washed his hands and tried not to look at Maria.

  “Okay, no problem. I’m failing bio and should probably head back.”

  “Really? Bio’s pretty easy,” Julian said. “It’s all one straight line from birth to puberty to death.”

  Maria nodded with a smirk. “You’re smart. I could use your help.”

  “Uh. I don’t….”

  “Consider it payback.”

  Julian finally raised his eyes to her. She tilted her head to the side, her red T-shirt making her lips stand out against the gray walls of the bathroom. Another swell of pain thrummed inside of him, and he shrugged it off. His heart beat quicker than he wanted it to as he nodded.

  “Yeah, okay. I can help with bio. I think I may need to ask for one last favor, though.”

  Maria’s eyes were wide, almost afraid, before Julian slipped a hand over his stomach. Without another word, Maria took him back to her locker, gave him some Tylenol, and picked a day to study.

  “A date,” she said again, winking. “See you then.”

  THANKFULLY, JULIAN realized all Maria really did want was to study. The “failing bio” remark hadn’t been a pickup line, not really, since she was standing at a barely forty-five average right then, even though it was her second time in the course. Julian soon learned that was not from stupidity but from the fact that she never wanted to go to class. For more than a month, they met up at the library and talked over their homework. Maria always had very specific questions, ones Julian had an easy time answering.

  “Why didn’t you ask this in class?” Julian remarked, and then with a laugh rephrased it. “I mean, why didn’t you go? You know what you’re talking about, Maria. You’re just always missing the pop quizzes, so your grade gets hammered.”

  “I don’t go because Mr. Roberts likes to stare at my chest. And I feel a little awkward with an old man that gross ogling me, so I have a hard time paying attention.” Maria smiled like ice—cutting and bitter but ultimately transparent. “I also can’t do anything about it, so I have to ask you for help.”

  “I don’t mind helping at all. Especially if that’s the reason.”

  Maria smiled and tried to curl a stray bit of hair around Julian’s ear. “You’re sweet. You know that, right?”

  Julian coughed. “I try. But we need to figure out a way for you to make up the pop quizzes. Maybe a make-up test after school? We can give Mr. Roberts some really big lie about why you’re never in his class.”

  “And then maybe get another teacher to administer the test?”

  “Or have Josie there?” Julian suggested. “Since you’re cousins, you can say you need to drive her somewhere. That way you won’t be alone with him. And I can hang out outside the classroom too?”

  “You’re brilliant,” Maria said. “See? Now I think I can pass. The biology is easy. It’s people I hate.”

  “I hear you,” Julian laughed.

  Maria’s smile was infectious to Julian. And she was easy to talk to, once they got down to work and could look past the awkward flirting. But Josie had been right about that too. Maria liked to psych people out just to see what would happen. Most of the extreme flirting fell away within a matter of days.

  “It tests their true characters,” Maria explained later on. “I make a rule to freak out someone at least three times.”

  “Why three?”

  “First could be a fluke. Second times never count either. But three, that’s the sweet spot. That’s how you know something is real.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Real as in… like, I know people aren’t faking anymore. If they’re still cool hanging around me after I’ve said a bunch of weird shit, then I know they’re still cool people. And I can lay off some of the really weird shit. But only some.”

  Julian nodded. He liked that rule. Most things in science seemed to happen in threes—that was why his mother was at the lab more and more. She had to do trial after trial to make sure her experiments all yielded the same results. He thought back to first meeting Maria and coun
ted up all the weird things she had said to him. Quickly he realized she had tested him: three times, three passes, and now they were studying for the third week in a row.

  “Are you wondering how you’re doing?”

  “Kind of,” Julian admitted.

  “Well, don’t. Because you don’t need anyone’s approval.”

  “Thanks, I guess….” Julian soon turned his attention toward their diagrams.

  As he and Maria enacted their plans to get her pop quizzes made up, their time together after school became a lot less focused on biology and more about each other. They chatted and laughed together, and soon enough, Maria invited Julian to sit with her and Josie’s group of friends at lunch. While Julian was really having fun with both Maria and Josie, he also felt torn. He still knew there was a huge disconnect between himself and how people perceived him. In spite of what Maria had told him, Julian knew he did need people’s approval. That was the hard part about being who he was. His body was going to keep going through puberty and his parents were going to keep thinking he was screwed up unless he told them who he was and they believed him. Right now, everyone thought he was a girl. But if he told them he was a boy, that he was Julian, and they just ignored it… then Julian didn’t know what he would do. It seemed like a fate worse than death, because he would have told the truth and still no one would care. Who was he without other people? Without their approval? He wasn’t quite sure. But he couldn’t find any answers unless he finally told someone.

  “What’s up?” Maria asked him. “You’ve been staring at that one page, with all the answers filled in, for the past five minutes.”

  “I’m fine,” Julian said. “I think I’m tired. I’m going to head home.”

  Though she seemed sad, Maria didn’t fight him. “Tomorrow at lunch?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Definitely.”

  On his way home, Julian thought about Maria’s rule. Three people. Test the news with three people; then it’s real. He wondered if that worked for transgender stuff too. He certainly hoped so.

  Once in his room, Julian went around to his bookshelves and began to pull off titles. All the sci-fi and the biology books he had gotten out of the library in the past year—gone. He wanted them out of his room. He gave his father back what he had loaned Julian and then placed the others in the trunk of their car to take back later. There was no need to dwell in a futuristic world anymore. Gender only fell away in those landscapes because everyone had stopped looking and caring.

  But in high school, everyone looked and everyone was blind at the same time. They saw Julian as a name on paper: Julia Gibson, female, daughter of Damien Gibson, the town council member, and Sarah, the biologist. That was it. That was all he would ever be if things stayed the same. No one saw his struggle in the bathroom or his attempts to flatten his chest at night. No one saw him sign his name and add the n after it each time. And no one saw him as he paced the guidance counselor’s door after school some days, never deciding to go in. The life he had been living, the one that only felt real to him, was invisible to everyone else.

  But if there was one good thing he had learned from sci-fi, it was that the future could change. Julian just had to make it for himself.

  And so that night, Julian went to bed and knew what he needed to do.

  Chapter Six

  Today

  NOW IT was December again. Thanksgiving had passed, and there was snow on the ground. Not enough snow to call it a storm, but enough to remind Julian of the storm he and his mother drove in to pick up that first book, Parrotfish. Christmas would be in a few more weeks, school would close, and Julian would be left alone with his parents over the holidays. For once he couldn’t just hide in his room and pretend things were okay. In order for any of what he was feeling to become real, he needed to tell three people.

  At first Julian thought he could tell his dad. Sitting at the kitchen table, it had all seemed so easy and natural. The Black Sabbath shirt Julian wore used to be his father’s—something Julian had stolen out of the laundry room two years ago and his father hadn’t argued. Julian had almost gotten the words “Dad, I need to tell you something” out of his mouth that morning. He still wasn’t sure the exact route to confess by, the simple “I’m a boy” or the technical “I’m transgender.” There was even the metaphorical answer of “I’m like a seahorse” he could go with. But none of them mattered as soon as his mom had shattered the mood by calling him Julia. No matter what language he dressed it up in, Damien would always side with Sarah. And he would always be Julia to her.

  So Julian had merely pressed his lips together and held his backpack tight over his chest as his mother drove him to school that morning.

  “Are you okay?” she asked when they stopped at a light. “Are you feeling sick?”

  “No, I’m fine. Don’t worry.”

  Though Sarah pursed her lips, she eventually nodded. The radio crackled as they went under a bridge, and Julian cranked it so he could hear the Christmas songs a little louder. The weather report came on just as he was about to leave.

  “Be careful,” his mother called out. “Supposed to snow later on.”

  He nodded and then slammed the door. By the front of the school, he soon found Maria and Josie, along with their small group of friends. They were only missing Kent, the nearly six-foot-tall teenage boy Maria had befriended in math, who had basketball practice early in the morning. Josie attempted to do her homework (or Maria’s) while still carrying on a conversation half in limited Spanish with Maria and Davis. Maria nodded to Julian as soon as he arrived but made no effort to stop the conversation. Julian’s bag felt heavy on his shoulder, especially as no one really asked him anything about his morning so far.

  Three people, he told himself. He only needed to tell three people who he was, and that was a lot easier around their friends. He was sure of it. When Hannah Wilson, the most recent addition to their social group, got out of her mother’s SUV, Julian waved her over right away.

  “Hey, Hannah. How’s it going?”

  Hannah was tall and thin but rejected by most people in the popular crowd after she had come out as bisexual. That had been the story she told Maria, at least, in their shared history class, and Maria had swooped in to save her. Maria and Hannah had dated for about a week afterward, but it didn’t go anywhere. According to Maria they never “meshed well,” but she was still cool enough to hang around. Hannah was usually up to date on all the newest fashion trends and new lingo, both in and outside of LGBT circles. She had been the first in the small group to talk about Chaz Bono, though most people knew him from Dancing with the Stars and didn’t care about his history before that. Hannah also made Julian’s heart jump in the confusing way that Maria still sometimes did.

  “Hey, J,” Hannah greeted. She fixed her long blonde hair that had become tangled in her scarf before nodding to Maria quickly. “I’m okay. What are you all up to?”

  “Nothing….” Julian took a deep breath and decided Hannah would be the first person he’d tell. She seemed like the best choice. “But can I talk to you for a second?”

  “Of course.”

  “Can we, uhh…?”

  “Oh,” Hannah said, eyes wide. She glanced around the corner of the school, then motioned with her bag. “For privacy?”

  Julian nodded, grateful that Hannah understood what he had wanted. She gave a quick smirk to Maria as she walked by, but soon Hannah’s attention was solely focused on him. The other side of the school was louder, since they now faced the parking lot. A sudden wind cut through both of them, making Hannah shiver slightly. She took another step closer to Julian in an attempt to get warm.

  “So what’s up?” she asked.

  “I wanted to tell you something.”

  “I gathered that. And it’s a secret?”

  “It is, in a way.”

  “Well, I’m all ears.”

  He looked away from her gaze just as another car pulled up onto the lot of the school. Aiden hopped
out of a battered brown Cadillac that blasted the beginning of another Christmas song—the same one from the radio in Julian’s car. His heart stopped as Aiden walked out, saw him and Hannah, and then looked away. Aiden walked around the back of the school instead of cutting by the two of them so he could go inside.

  Julian froze on the spot. Inside his head, he heard everything that people had told him about who he was and how he was supposed to feel. Inside the reflection of Hannah’s eyes, he saw himself as a small kid with short hair. His hoodie poked out from under his thin jacket, and his breasts hurt so badly because he had tried to bind them this morning. Then he saw himself the way Aiden must have seen him with Hannah. As a butch and femme lesbian couple, on the edge of getting together.

  Crap. This isn’t it. This isn’t what I wanted at all.

  “I was thinking…,” Julian started again. He thought of the metaphor, the technical terms, then the reality. I am a boy. I am transgender.

  “What? Don’t keep me in suspense, Julia!”

  “I was thinking… I have a secret. I mean, I think we should do a Secret Santa at school.”

  “Oh?” Hannah’s eyes widened. She still seemed delighted by the idea, though it was clearly not what she had expected. “What were you thinking, exactly?”

  Julian scrambled as he threw his idea together. “You know how in the ‘Twelve Days of Christmas,’ people give things to one another as, like, a countdown? Maybe we could do something like that. With small things, but we could make the rest of the days here more memorable that way, I guess.”

  The skin around Hannah’s eyes creased. “With partridges and all?”

  “Well, maybe not that. Maybe we could update it? Instead of partridges….” Julian trailed off. He noticed how sparsely inhabited the parking lot was getting and glanced down at his cell phone. The first warning bell was going to ring in a matter of minutes.

  “We’ll figure something out,” Hannah said, also noting the time. “Is that really what you were going to ask me, though?”