The Santa Hoax

by Francis Gideon

  “Thank you. Now—can we please discuss what happened today?”

  “You already know. I got suspended.”

  “Right. But we still don’t really know why,” Damien said. “And as soon as we do, you’ll get your phone back.”

  Julian swallowed a lump in his throat. He looked at his parents, who either stared at the floor in front of them, ashamed, or at him with an accusatory glance. They oscillated between their anger at him for being so close to becoming a sex offender and their sympathy that he could be the victim of a crime. They continuously walked back and forth like acrobats on opening night, unsure of their audience. They are more confused about this, Julian thought with a laugh, than I am about my gender. Julian felt the answer rise up inside of him, then fall down into a tiny worry. He knew how to make all of this go away and just confess. But each time he felt big with pride, he shrank down again, worse than Alice in the cartoon Disney version.

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Julia, please. We’re worried about you.”

  “Don’t be worried. Really. I guess I just went into the… wrong bathroom.”

  “On purpose?”

  Julian didn’t answer. His silence was taken as a yes. Sarah made distressed noises at the back of her throat.

  “But why? Julia, if it was a stunt or something—that is seriously dangerous. Lewd conduct is against the school code, and it’s technically a sex offense. You can’t do that. It’s too risky.”

  “I know that now.”

  “So you won’t do it again?”

  Julian didn’t know what to say, and his silent pauses were giving him away.

  “Julia. Please. You can’t gamble with this. It’s not a good life.”

  “The life of a sex offender?” Julian said, then bit his lip. God, it sounded so much worse out loud. He closed his eyes, blinking back feeling. Chants and shouts from the boys behind him sounded in the bathroom. Dyke! I bet she has a dick. “Oh God. It’s probably all over school right now, isn’t it? Everyone thinks I’m a pervert.”

  “Not everyone,” Damien said. “Most people are worried about you.”

  “You don’t know high school.”

  “No, that’s true. I don’t. But you still have a few years of it left, and maybe, just maybe, we can work toward something better for you.” Damien glanced at Sarah, who nodded along.

  “What if we took you to see a therapist? You could tell them what happened today.”

  “Nothing happened. Nothing like Amanda Todd, don’t worry.”

  Sarah furrowed her brows, both of them exchanging another look. “You shouldn’t have been eavesdropping.”

  Julian shrugged. He remained quiet, which seemed to upset them more. As acrobats, they sucked at reading their audience. And as parents, he realized they were hopelessly confused. He had never been in trouble—any kind—before. So how were they supposed to know what was a real offense and what was just teenagers being teenagers? After a few more extended moments of awkward glancing, Damien finally spoke.

  “We’re going to make a therapist appointment right now, because it will at least be a step in the right direction. Even if you go and don’t talk, we can at least tell Mr. Fisher we’re getting you help.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with me,” Julian muttered.

  “That’s probably true,” Damien said, surprising Julian. He looked up from his palms and stared at his father’s dark blue eyes, pleading and tired at the same time. “That’s probably very true. But for the time being, it looks like we have a big problem to deal with. So we must take steps forward. It’s the only way.”

  “Your father is right. You have time off now, so I expect you to do your homework and go to this appointment.”

  “So like any other day. Got it.”

  “Hey,” Damien said. “Show your mother respect.”

  “Sorry,” Julian mumbled.

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea to go to that Secret Santa party tomorrow night either.”

  “What—why?” Julian asked, showing the most emotion he had in the past five minutes that wasn’t cynicism or denial. In his depths of despair, he had worried they’d punish him like this, but now he couldn’t believe they were doing it. “I can’t just skip—I still have to buy my present for Davis. It’s not fair—they’re counting on me!”

  “You can find someone else to do that. Make arrangements.”

  Julian gagged. Make arrangements, make arrangements. He might as well be a corpse.

  “I can’t. They depend on me.”

  “They will survive one night. You need some time alone, some space to think through things without outside influence.”

  “I’m always alone,” Julian said. “And none of this was their fault. If you think so, you’re wrong.”

  When Sarah and Damien exchanged looks, he saw a tremble of recognition. Did they really think all of this had to do with his friends group? With Maria? First it was the books making him depressed, and maybe now it was his friends making him a pervert.

  “They’re the best people I know. I love them all.”

  “I know that,” Sarah said. “It always feels that way when you’re young.”

  “No. You’re saying that like it’s not real, and it is.”

  “I don’t doubt that,” Sarah said. She seemed like she wanted to finish with something else from one of her psych textbooks from when she had dabbled in that soft science, but she refrained. “Maybe you can go to the last party. But only after we talk more. Is that okay?”

  Julian nodded. As far as he was concerned, nothing had been solved. This had been one long argument full of nothing, and he was nowhere. “Sure. That’s fine.”

  “Good. I’m going to start dinner. If you want, your dad will stay with you for another moment.”

  As soon as Sarah was gone, her soft footsteps moving down the stairs and into the kitchen, Damien took a step forward. He gestured to the chair she had once sat in. “Can I sit?”

  “Sure.”

  As soon as he did, his hand reached up to the tie around his throat. He loosened the knot, then rested his hand back on his knee. “You know you can tell me stuff, right, J? Not a lot scares me. Probably heard worse at council meetings. I’m a politician, so it comes with the territory.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And I’ve read a lot of sci-fi. I have an open mind, you know.”

  Julian laughed. “You thought Stranger in a Strange Land was a good story. I sorely disagree.”

  Damien laughed louder than Julian anticipated. For a moment things were okay. But then he got that gleam to his eye again, that paternal stare Julian both loved and hated. He wanted his dad to be his friend so badly, just like Aiden. They were so cool—but they were also men. Men that Julian wanted to be so badly, but that was always out of reach.

  “I know I haven’t been around a lot lately. There’s been a lot of policy changes and boring stuff to catch up on. End of quarter, all that. But I am here, J. You can still talk to me. Even if we don’t have a book club anymore.”

  “That’s a matter of time,” Julian said. “We can start up again.”

  “Yeah, okay. Maybe this break. Should I pick something for us?”

  Julian took a deep breath. He wanted to tell his dad about who he was, but he realized now that telling his dad anything meant his mom would find out almost instantly. They were a couple, and a unit. He hadn’t really understood that before, but now he did because of Maria. More or less. So instead he answered with, “Yeah, sure. Pick a book. We can read something.”

  “Awesome. Because I saw this post on Tor.com that you may actually really like. It’s written by a sci-fi writer I used to like, and her wife’s stuff is pretty good too.”

  “Sounds good. Send me the link—but turn the Wi-Fi on first?” Julian smiled, knowing he was playing his father’s weak spots.

  “Ah, yeah. I can do that. I’ll do it now, actually.”

  “And my phone?”

  “
I don’t know. Let me think. Maybe after dinner.”

  Julian nodded, understanding. As his father got up and moved toward the doorway, he lingered.

  “Dad?”

  “Yeah, J?”

  “I really need my phone. Not for me. Or for school. But you know that girl I sometimes mention?”

  “Josie?”

  “No, her cousin, Maria.” Julian took in a deep breath. “I need to talk to her. We’re… we’re kind of dating.”

  Damien nodded as he processed the information, a smile ghosting his lips. “Well, I’ll see what I can get out of your mother. Can I mention this to her?”

  Julian nodded. It wasn’t the full truth yet, but it was something. He was okay with letting this secret slip—especially if he wasn’t ashamed of it.

  “Good. Thanks for telling me, J. I’ll come get you when dinner’s ready.”

  “Thank you,” Julian said, and meant it.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  ABOUT AN hour after a tense dinner with all of them at the table—something that hadn’t happened in probably three weeks—Julian retired to his room. He’d opened up his laptop, and even debated starting to work on that project Mr. Singer had given him, when there was a knock on the front door. Julian pressed his ear to his bedroom door, hoping he could hear the sounds of his mother greeting someone, talking animatedly, and then parse out who was who.

  “Julia? Well. She’s upstairs studying. Right now we have a no-friends policy.”

  “Don’t worry—I have work for J. It will only take a minute, and I have instructions from our math teacher I need to explain.”

  Josie. Oh, sweet Josie. When he heard the plodding of feet on the stairs, Julian leaped back to his desk and pretended not to overhear. He pulled up his iTunes playlist and shuffled around the songs, attempting to get them in just the right order as his mother knocked.

  “Come in.”

  “Hi, Julia. Your friend Josie is here. But not for long, okay?” Sarah looked from Josie to Julian, her brows knitted. “I’ll be back in a little while to let you out, Josie. Thanks for bringing Julia her homework.”

  “Not at all.” Josie nodded, then waited, with her hands balled into fists over her backpack straps, for Sarah to leave. As soon as the door was closed and her footsteps headed back down the hallway, they both let out a breath.

  “I really do have homework,” Josie said, stepping forward. She took the spot his father had sat in an hour earlier, setting her bag between her legs as she worked on unzipping it. Crunching sounds—from old paper and granola bars at the bottom of her bag—came from Josie as she pulled out the two math and science textbooks and the Willa Cather book.

  “I finished that,” Julian said. “I don’t need the copy. But thanks.”

  “No, you’re taking it. I’m not carrying this back to my place, okay?”

  Julian laughed a little, then tucked the novel into his own pile of homework. “Thanks, Josie. I really, really appreciate it.”

  “Pfft. It was easy. All of your teachers are shocked, so most of them didn’t even want to give homework since they knew you were ahead of the game anyway. So well done on having them all fooled.”

  “Hah.” Julian’s stomach panged. Each time he looked at Josie, the familiar creeping sensation returned and his skin felt too tight. “So. How bad is it?”

  “Not at all—weren’t you listening? Man, you’re as bad as Davis.”

  “No, no. How bad is it at school? “

  Josie shrugged, not meeting Julian’s eyes. “School is school. I can’t really say much else.”

  “Ugh, yes you can.” Julian huffed. “Don’t give me tautology.”

  “What now?”

  “Sorry. Tautology—it’s a logical concept. My mom used to tell me about it when I tried to get out of trouble by not giving her an excuse.”

  “Your mom is a mad scientist, isn’t she?”

  Julian laughed. He was almost surprised his mother hadn’t accused him of using the tautological argument stream when they were having their serious discussion today. She probably would have, he realized, if she didn’t think I was attacked. And now that she knows I’m dating Maria, she just thinks I’m gay. And that explains the world.

  “So what does it mean?”

  “Tautology?”

  “Yeah. You can’t just drop stuff in like that and then let it go. Tell me.”

  “Oh. It’s when you define something using the same premise, so it makes a loop. You know, like say boys will be boys or business is business? Things like that. It doesn’t actually mean anything because you’re using the same thing to define what you wanted to define. Or something…. Or I don’t know. My head hurts.”

  Josie nodded, her mouth askew with thought. “Interesting. See? I told you your mom is a megasmart lady.”

  “Thanks.”

  Josie looked down at her notes again and the small pile she had made for Julian on the desk. “Is she okay, though? You know… with…?”

  “I haven’t told them about me,” Julian said, feeling defeated. “I just can’t. Not with this whole suspension.”

  “But they’re going to have to know. Right? You can’t just keep this a secret from them.”

  “Why not? It’s worked for fifteen years so far.”

  Josie rolled her eyes. “I’m sure you didn’t know you were trans when you were, like, two months old.”

  Julian shrugged. “Maybe. But what does it matter?”

  “You know now. And you should tell them. I don’t want to tell you what to do, because I know it’s hard… but you know who you are. Why keep it from people? I don’t even know why it took so long for you to tell Maria. And she adores you.”

  Julian smiled. “Is she okay?”

  “Oh yeah. She misses you. Has been texting you like mad and then sent me on the homework mission like a spy so I could figure out what was going on with your phone. Nothing?”

  “Nothing,” Julian confirmed. “And some of the safe filters are on the computer so I can’t go to Facebook to message her.”

  “Bummer. But I kind of figured. Here.” Josie slid him another small package, meant to look exactly like math notes. As soon as Julian touched it, though, he could smell lavender. The kind of bodywash—or was it perfume?—that Maria wore. He unfolded it without a second thought, then read her crooked handwriting in silence.

  Julian! Okay, so by now, I’ve heard the rumors about you and the whole bathroom situation. I know, I know—that’s an awful way to start this message, but I wanted to tell you about how good I am at this kind of thing. I suck at writing, but talking? I have you covered. I won’t out you, but please know that no one is going to think you’re weird for what you just did. I’m going to tell them how amazing you are. A feminist icon, maybe? Men can be feminists, so don’t tell me otherwise. Either way, I’m telling everyone you were staging a protest. That you demand equal rights. For what—well, I’ll let people think what they want for that. But don’t worry about a thing, Julian. I will spin this so that whenever you come back to school, you won’t be an outcast. You’ll be a hero.

  And if I fail, well, then we can still run away together, right? Right.

  xoxox Maria.

  Julian reread the first few lines before folding the note in half. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “What on earth is she talking about?”

  “Oh, the protest thing?” Josie said with a slight roll of her eyes, as if she had been hearing about this all afternoon.

  “Yeah. Does everyone in the school think I’m a pervert?”

  “Not anymore. She’s been correcting people all afternoon. Saying that you were literally protesting for equal rights in the bathroom. It’s been… an interesting day. Which reminds me. You ever hear of Mark Shuman?”

  “Um. No?”

  “He’s a politician in Ottawa, I think? Either way, I wasn’t sure if your dad would know. But check this out.” Josie took out her phone, using her own 3G connection in order to pull up a couple of a
rticles that Julian knew would have been blocked on his own connection. At first there was nothing but a boring old white guy in a suit—clearly Mark Shuman—but then the article had a few pictures of women holding a camera as they took selfies with urinals.

  “What is this?”

  “Trans women in the men’s bathroom. And,” Josie said, flicking to another photo of a guy with a full beard next to women doing makeup in another bathroom. “Trans men in the women’s bathroom. There’s a law Shuman passed that doesn’t allow trans people in their bathroom of choice if they still have the birth sex marker on their license, and if they violate that choice, they get fined. Or something like that. But all these people protested it by doing a bathroom selfie. There’s even a hashtag on Twitter. Let me find.”

  Julian’s heart pounded in his chest as Josie moved to Twitter and found the #IJustWantToPee hashtag and scrolled through it. More transgender people inside bathrooms—some with signs and some with their friends—had their pictures added to the ongoing conversation. Julian saw the date of some of the tweets, all the way from March of last year.

  “What is this? How come I’ve never heard of it?”

  “You spend all your time in books, reading about fish.” Josie nudged him playfully. “But there’s a whole other world online, J. And this stuff is only at the beginning. You could be part of history, you know.”

  “I don’t want to be part of history. I just want to pee.”

  “Same difference now, really,” Josie said, then folded her phone away. “But don’t worry about Maria. She’s just saying it’s a protest and not giving any details. She won’t out you, never. Not until you’re ready.”

  Julian sighed. “I did tell Mr. Fisher.”

  “What?”

  “When I was caught. I told Mr. Fisher what I was doing. That I was trans and that was why I was in the boys’ washroom.”

  Josie’s eyes were wide, her skin a shade paler. “Oh my God. That’s huge! What did he say?”

  “That he needed proof. As if I could give him that.”