by Jeff Garvin
Bec gets to her feet and offers me a hand. I take it. She pulls me up and we just stand there, looking at each other. Finally, I can’t take the silence anymore. “Saved by the bell,” I say.
She blinks. “You’re better than a cliché.”
My stomach does a flip. I almost ask her, How do you know? But at the thought of saying the words, my face goes hot as a match head. Unable to meet her gaze any longer, I glance down at the unopened juice box in my hand, and offer it back to her.
“Keep it,” she says, then turns and walks down the ramp.
CHAPTER 7
MOM’S SCHOOL HAD AN EARLY-OUT day, so I’m not surprised to find her minivan already in the driveway when I get home, but what I don’t expect to see is the unfamiliar red Mercedes that’s parked next it to it. If Mom’s having some kind of campaign-related meeting, I don’t want to get drawn into it, so I enter the house as quietly as I can. I hear voices drifting up from the kitchen; she’s definitely not alone. I turn to head upstairs to my room—and then the door to the downstairs bathroom opens.
A short girl about my age with long brown hair steps out. She looks up, and my mouth drops open slightly in surprise—it’s the girl who called me it. Hastily, she tugs down her sleeves and folds her arms—and then she appears to recognize me, too.
“Hi,” she says, but it sounds more like a threat than a greeting.
“Hi,” I reply.
I’m about to ask what she’s doing in my house when a voice calls from the kitchen, “Sierra, come in here. I want you to show Mrs. Cavanaugh how the tea tree oil cleared up those blemishes.”
The girl—Sierra—closes her eyes, shakes her head, then turns and walks back toward the kitchen. I’m already heading for the stairs when my mom calls me.
“Riley? Did I hear you come in?”
I grip the banister. I don’t want to go in there—but now I don’t really have a choice. “Yeah, Mom.”
“Come in and say hello.”
Cautiously, I approach and peek around the corner.
With her tight red dress and long, shiny hair, Sierra’s mom looks more like an older sister. She’s seated across from my mother at the table with a case of little glass bottles between them. The kitchen smells like a potpourri factory.
“Look at the size of these blemishes,” she says, swiping through photos on her phone. Mom is trying to be polite, but I can see that she’s embarrassed. Sierra’s mom continues enthusiastically. “You know teenagers, they eat junk all day and refuse to take care of their skin. But this stuff works like a miracle. Sierra, turn around, show her what it looks like now.”
“Mom—” Sierra starts to protest, but her mother flaps an impatient hand at her. Reluctantly, Sierra turns and her mother lifts up the back of her shirt. Now I’m embarrassed, and I start to retreat into the hallway, but it’s too late—Sierra makes eye contact with me. I expect her to shoot me a dirty look, but she just grits her teeth and looks away. When her mother finally lets her sit down, I take a half step into the room, trying to act as if I haven’t been watching the whole time.
My mom makes the introductions, which I acknowledge from the archway.
“Sierra runs the peer tutoring program,” my mother says. “Maybe you could join.”
I try to hide my revulsion at the thought of working alongside this girl who so obviously loathes me—but Mom seems to read my thoughts, because she shoots me an apologetic look. I glance at Sierra to gauge her reaction, but she’s too busy glaring at her mother.
Sierra’s mom—Mrs. Wells—ignores her, turning her attention to me. “Riley,” she says, “you have such fair skin. Are you using a chemical-free sunscreen?” She reaches for one of the bottles. I open my mouth to say something, I’m not sure what—but my mother intervenes.
“I know you’d love to stay and socialize, honey,” she says, “but you still have a month’s worth of homework to catch up on. Better get to it.”
And then, I swear to God, she winks at me. I suppress a smile. My mother just came to my rescue. I forgive the “honey” immediately. In fact, I kind of want to run into the room and hug her, but instead, I turn and head upstairs.
I know I should feel bad for Sierra—clearly her mom makes her life a nightmare—but I can’t forget how she treated me yesterday, and it’s obvious she doesn’t feel bad for me. I pull my copy of The Crucible out my bag, flop on my bed, and read until dinner.
Mom excuses me from dish duty so I can log more time catching up on homework—but my brain is already fried from two hours of Arthur Miller, so I decide to click around Bloglr instead. When my dash comes up, I frown at the numbers.
MESSAGES: 1
FOLLOWERS: 58
That can’t be right; when I wrote my first post yesterday, I had precisely one follower. How could that jump to almost sixty overnight?
I click on the activity icon. My original post, “Both and Neither,” which I put up only yesterday, has been liked, commented on, or reblogged over a hundred times. Beneath the hashtags is a stream of comments:
BPButtercup: Wow. Just Wow.
IrishPaulie: ^^This.
phoebe98: I feel u Alix!!
I have to scroll down to read them all.
I click on Followers, and a list appears. There’s QueerBoi1996, MiMi_Q, gowestyounglady, and more than fifty others. All of them are Bloglr users who read my first post and decided to follow me.
I sit back and stare at the screen as my skepticism gives way to surprised acceptance. I know how they found me—the same way I discovered there was a name for what I was feeling—by searching the internet. Browsing hashtags. And honestly, it wouldn’t have surprised me if a few dozen people had found my first post at random and liked it—but over a hundred? In one day?
I lean in and move my pointer down to my second-ever Bloglr message. I consider clicking Delete without opening it; I don’t want to spoil my good mood with a repeat of “your a fag.” But, after a moment, I can’t stand not knowing what it says, and I click the message.
yell0wbedwetter: You are #@%^& hilarious and super helpful. Please post more!!
I want to reply, but I don’t know what to say. Finally, I just type “thanks ☺” and click Send.
I’m oddly touched that some random stranger wrote to me. The idea that my writing actually helped someone else makes me want to do more—so I decide to take yell0wbedwetter’s advice. I open a new post and start to write.
NEW POST: MY RAGING HYPOCRISY. ALSO, LIGHTSABERS.
OCTOBER 2, 9:47 PM
Today, I met a boy.
Well . . . I thought I met a boy. Actually, I met a girl. That’s right: I got all prematurely gender-assigny . . . and I was WRONG.
In my defense, I was in the middle of a fairly epic anxiety episode, and she—whom I thought was a he—has these unsettlingly gorgeous blue eyes. NO ONE could be expected to maintain objectivity while under the gaze of those eyes. They were, like, lightsaber blue. My guts have turned to Jell-O just replaying the scene in my head.
Oh, and did I mention the lip ring? HOT.
NOW PLAYING: “There She Goes” by the La’s
Okay. Given the fact that even I am capable of making premature assumptions about someone’s gender, I will attempt to explain this with less than my usual dose of Gender Fluid Rage™. (Which, by the way, is the name of my new punk band.) The point here is that somebody’s gender expression—in this case, Lip Ring Girl’s goth-boy vibe—doesn’t necessarily indicate their gender identity. There are dudes who like to cross-dress (expression), but are still 100% comfortable being dudes (identity), and vice versa. So, even if you had X-ray vision and could see through my jeans, what you’d see there—or not see—does not determine my gender identity. Gender identity is not external. It isn’t dictated by your anatomy. It’s internal. It’s something you feel, not something you see—and it can be way more complicated than just male or female. Some people, like me, slide on a continuum between the two. Others, as I’ve learned via my pathologica
l blog-reading obsession, feel like neither, or like a third, unnamed gender.
I can’t blame you for trying to categorize me. It’s a human instinct. It’s why scientists are, to this day, completely flabbergasted by the duck-billed platypus: it’s furry like a mammal, but lays eggs like a bird. It defies conventional classification.
I AM THE PLATYPUS. (Coo coo ka-choo.)
We’re all taught from a young age that there are only two choices: pink or blue, Bratz or Power Rangers, cheerleading or football. We see gender in two dimensions because that’s what society has taught us from birth. But, are you ready for a shocking revelation?
SOCIETY NEEDS TO CHANGE.
#genderfluid #crushinghard #lightsaberblue
When I’m done, I obsessively reread, tweak, delete, and rewrite. I want it to be funny—but more than that, I want it to be true. By the time I click Post, it’s well past midnight. I ought to be exhausted from staying up so late last night, but I’m not. Reliving my encounter with Bec has my mind awake and racing. So instead of going to sleep, I click around Bloglr for more than three hours. At first, I intend to do some heavy reading on gender issues—but that rapidly devolves into watching funny cat videos and reblogging Harry Potter gifs. By quarter to two, my eyes start to droop—and then, at some point later, still curled up with my laptop, I fall asleep.
When I wake up on Wednesday morning, I’m certain it’s going to be a girl day. But then, halfway through English, I feel a pang of dysphoria—a sort of plasticky sensation, this time in my hips—and I start to squirm in my chair. I’ve been sitting up straight with my legs crossed, but now I put both feet on the floor and slump down in my desk a little. I even let my left foot stick out into the aisle. It feels better.
Solo pretty much ignores me the whole period. I’m still pissed at him, definitely—but underneath, I think I’m more disappointed. He glances up at me once, but I can’t read his expression; and when class ends, he slips out before I do.
On my way to Government, I notice I’m feeling edgy; that low-grade anxiety is starting to buzz in my head. The plasticky feeling comes back, and suddenly my walk feels artificial and stiff. It takes me a second to realize what’s happening: I’m fluctuating. The needle on my internal compass is inching away from feminine toward the opposite pole—and I’ve been struggling to compensate with the way I move. Rather than try to fight it with deep breaths or Dr. Ann’s whiteboard exercise, I decide to “go with the flow.” I reach into my bag and pull out the beanie I keep in case of bad hair days. I put it on, hook my thumbs into the pockets of my jeans, and lean into my walk a little. I start to feel better on the inside—but I wonder what the people around me think, or whether they even notice.
And then I walk into Brennan’s class and see Bec, and all my concerns are obliterated by her bright-blue eyes, cryptic and curious as a cat’s as they flick up to meet mine. A hint of that crooked smile plays across her lips, and I feel a flutter in my chest. It’s a pleasant feeling, but totally disconcerting. I try to smile back, but I’m afraid it comes out wrong on my face.
I drop my bag and slide into the plastic chair behind her. I want to lean forward, to say something to her, but before I can, she turns to face me instead.
“Riley Cavanaugh,” she says.
It’s like a purr, the way she wraps her voice around my name, and suddenly I can’t catch my breath.
“B-Hi,” I reply, and feel my face turn purple. I started to say her name, but changed my mind too late and ended up sounding like a complete idiot; but Bec goes on as if she didn’t even notice.
“Thursday,” she says. “Seven o’clock.”
I blink. “What?”
“Come to my house at seven o’clock on Thursday,” she says.
I feel the blood slowly draining from my face. Is she asking me out?
Without breaking eye contact, Bec gestures over her shoulder at the whiteboard. Written in red dry-erase marker are the words “QUIZ FRIDAY.”
“You help me ace this quiz,” Bec says, “and maybe we can forget about your toll.”
The pleasant fluttering stops abruptly. Bec doesn’t want a date; she wants a study partner. A pet nerd.
“I can’t,” I say, suddenly remembering Dad’s fund-raiser. “I have a thing on Thursday.”
“Oh,” she says, raising her eyebrows. “Okay.” For a second, I detect genuine disappointment—like “I just got turned down for a date” disappointment, not like “I’m going to fail this quiz” disappointment. And now I wonder if I’ve made a mistake. I open my mouth to say something—but at that moment, Brennan clears his throat and calls for quiet. As Bec turns to face the front of the classroom again, I catch the scent of something sweet—vanilla shampoo?—and all my neurons seem to fire at once, obliterating any further rational thoughts. Brennan begins his lecture, but I’m far, far away. I’m at Bec’s house on Thursday night, trying to figure out if I’m her date or her tutor, and discovering that I wouldn’t mind being either.
Right before class ends, while Brennan is gesturing emphatically at a diagram of the three branches of government, Bec reaches behind her and drops a folded piece of notebook paper onto my desk. Just as I’m about to unfold it, the bell rings.
CHAPTER 8
BEC ISN’T AT HER USUAL table at lunch, and on Thursday morning, she doesn’t show up for school at all; she must have come down with a cold or something. Sitting alone on the ramp, I unfold and read her note for the zillionth time. It’s just the words “In case you reconsider,” and a phone number.
In case I reconsider what—a date, or a tutoring appointment? I can’t tell if she’s being mysterious on purpose, or if she’s already given me some obvious sign that I’m just too socially inept to recognize. I pull out my phone, thinking I’ll send her a text to say “hi” or “feel better soon,” but my thumbs just hover helplessly over the screen. What do I say? And, what if I sound too desperate, and she’s repulsed?
This is why I’m not popular; I can’t decode the subtleties of text message etiquette, let alone figure out how to act around live people. My thoughts drift to Solo, who appears to have given up trying to talk to me. Apparently, I misjudged him like I seem to misjudge everyone. And instead of keeping my guard up, I’ve allowed myself to hope that this place would be different. But so far, the only difference between Park Hills High and Immaculate Heart is the clothes.
I click off my phone, refold the note, and stuff it into my back pocket.
When I get home from school, I drop onto my bed, not even bothering to open my laptop, and fall asleep.
The muffled sound of my phone’s air raid siren alarm tone wakes me. It’s six p.m.; my parents will be home to pick me up for the fund-raiser in less than an hour. I drag myself out of bed and cross to my closet.
I stand there, staring at the outfit I have to wear tonight, which is still wrapped in plastic from the dry cleaner’s. It’s the most gendered thing I own, and I hate it.
I hate it.
I call it my “campaign costume.” It’s a stupid name, but it helps me to think of it like that because that’s how my body feels when I wear it—like a cheap Halloween costume that somebody else chose.
Putting it on is like a suicide ritual; as I dress, I’m killing any possibility of expressing my other, less acceptable self. Just standing here looking at it triggers a powerful wave of dysphoria. My arms feel like plastic. Like mannequin limbs. The tingling starts up again in my cheeks and the tips of my fingers. I’ve got to get this over with.
I take down the hanger and lay it on the bed. I tug off my jeans and T-shirt, rip open the cellophane bag, and begin to dress. The material feels suffocating against my skin. I picture myself walking into the hotel ballroom with my parents, deafened by applause and blinded by camera flashes. I put my arms through the sleeves; my hands are shaking. Another flash goes off, and I can’t tell if it’s real or imagined. I pull fabric over my head, and it seems to rush in at me, clinging to my face like the plastic from the clea
ner’s, covering my nose, my mouth. I can’t breathe.
I can’t do this.
Piece by piece, I tear off the clothes and hurl them against the closet door. I stand there, chest heaving, staring at the heap, my breath coming in gasps. And that’s when it hits me: This is what I wore the night I went to the hospital.
There was supposed to be a fund-raiser that night, but Dad had to cancel it—because of me. I remember I kept apologizing to him in the ambulance, and his cornflower-blue tie got tangled in the IV tube as he leaned down to tell me it was okay. I spent the night at Park Hills Community Hospital, and the next day, my parents drove me to Pineview.
I fall back on my bed and stare up at the ceiling. I haven’t thought about that night in a long time.
Pineview was terrible—but it was also kind of . . . easy. I felt like the healthiest person there, as opposed to how I felt at Immaculate Heart, like I was the only one who was broken. It feels good to be the normal one for a change, but it’s awful to be surrounded by sick and hopeless people. Like being in a room full of the worst possible versions of yourself, surrounded by reminders of what you’ll become if you don’t get better. If you don’t fix yourself. And, in those moments when you’re sure you never will, it feels like there’s a rope winding around your body, tightening every time you exhale. And after a while, you can’t even breathe.
I feel that way now, like there’s something heavy sitting on my chest, squeezing the air out of me. I stand and pace my room, clenching and unclenching my fists, trying to catch my breath, trying to stave off the tingling already making its way up my arms. I can’t let this happen, not before a fund-raiser. Not again. I can’t do this.
I can’t do this.
My dad’s ringtone cuts through the air, and I jump. The phone rings again, and I grab for my jeans, which are still crumpled on the floor next to the bed. As I pull my phone out of the back pocket, a slip of paper drops to the floor.
I answer the call, and my mother’s voice says, “Riley?”