by Emery Lee
I sigh because I just know he’s gonna drag me over there against my will and make me mingle. He takes another sip of his coffee and sighs, squeezing his shaking hands into fists. “Okay, let’s do this.”
Devin ushers me forward so we can introduce ourselves to the parents slowly filling the rec center, and his voice quivers with every line he lets out. I hold back my urge to warn the parents to stand clear a few feet, and we make our rounds, talking about how “excited” we are to get to know their little brats.
Finally, we clear most of the crowd. Everyone seems to be heading toward the bleachers, and Devin steers me out of the rec center and toward the rehearsal hall.
“The parents are going to sit through a quick orientation, then we get the kids. During the day camps, we have kids ages four through seven. Only the eight- to thirteen-year-olds do the sleepaway camps.”
I know the camp runs in weekly cycles, so all the kids here today will be gone by next Monday, but it still sounds exhausting. I never realized I’d feel so fortunate to have never gone to summer camp.
“I’m not doing the sleepaway camps,” I say.
Devin smiles. “I know, but you might want to consider it later in the summer. It’s the best part of camp.”
I roll my eyes.
By the time the kids run into the rehearsal hall, big goofy grins on their faces, I’m working through the last of my coffee energy and ready to go home. Devin whistles to call them to attention—nearly scaring me out of my skin in the process—and then he has them all sit in a big circle so they can say their names and talk about things they like.
“I’ll start,” Devin says, his grin as big as the slobbering toddlers’. “I’m Devin! My pronouns are he/him, and I love Disney movies. Anyone seen Coco?”
And the whole room erupts as the kids start screaming about their favorite Disney movies or just screaming unintelligibly.
Devin whistles again, and they all stop like flies caught in a trap. I wonder if they come programmed like that or if they gave them something during orientation.
“Awesome!” Devin says. He turns to me and says, “Your turn!”
I blink back at him because this is the most humiliating thing I’ve done since I got cast as the Thanksgiving Turkey in a damn preschool play. I sigh and say, “I’m Noah. My pronouns are he/him, and I like anime?”
And I’m pretty sure none of these kids even know what an anime is, but they erupt again, like it’s the damn coolest thing they’ve ever heard, and actually, it does feel kind of nice. Like having your own little cheer squad who applauds you for doing nothing in particular.
Devin whistles again, and he motions to the little girl sitting next to me. She’s a dark girl, her hair tied up in little braids with these cute pink bows in them. She smiles wide and says, “I’m Bailey. I pronounce she, and Moana!”
And the kids lose it all over again.
I turn to Devin, who honestly looks like he’s fallen into the greatest state of euphoria, and I can’t help but laugh because wow, these kids don’t even know what we’re talking about but they sure are having fun. I wonder if I was ever like that. I doubt it.
It takes us a half hour to make it around the circle, and by the time we do, half the kids are playing with their shoes or crawling on the floor.
Devin rolls out an old TV and an even older DVD player and plops a little disc inside. He calls the kids to attention, and gets them to gather together in front of the screen before pressing play. Then he dims the lights and sits down next to me at the back of the room.
I’m not really sure what movie he chose, but there’s a bunch of Disney ads, so I guess that settles that.
I drop my voice low and say, “This is a zoo.”
He smiles. “You just have to keep them entertained. All they want is to have some fun.”
We lapse into silence as the movie starts. Then I turn my head and say, “Why’d you start by introducing your pronouns? Kids don’t even know what that means.”
“Maybe not, but they’re going to hear about that stuff somewhere, so why not start now? I can open them up to it here, or I can wait for someone else to teach them wrong.”
I raise an eyebrow. “You don’t strike me as a trans rights activist.”
Devin chuckles. “I’m nonbinary.”
“Wait, really?”
He shrugs. “Don’t tell me you actually thought I was cis.”
A kid at the back of the group turns around, puts a finger to his lips, and makes a loud shushing sound at Devin. Devin puts his hands up in surrender and makes a motion of zipping his lips.
I roll my eyes, but it is kind of sweet how well Devin seems to get along with these kids. I’d never have the patience for it, but I wonder if there’s one little trans kid in the group who’ll find that much more confidence in coming out for having known Devin. Hell, if some trans girl I never knew personally could inspire me to embrace myself in high school, I imagine Devin opening these kids up to pronouns now will make all the difference. Imagine knowing that being trans isn’t just a thing, but a thing you’re actually allowed to do. I wonder if I would’ve found myself sooner.
And maybe this is part of finding myself now. Maybe this is Fate’s way of helping me find a kid just like myself and give them something I never had.
And maybe it doesn’t mean anything at all, but I still can’t help but smile.
We only keep the kids until one. Then two more counselors take them out to spend a few hours outdoors until their parents pick them up. Devin looks almost wistful watching them go, and then he tells me to start cleaning up.
On top of just picking up all the scattered crayons and DVDs, we also have to mop the floors to clean up any bodily fluids the kids left behind. Really, the day’s firmly convinced me that kids are disgusting, and I’d rather cut my own uterus out by hand than ever birth one, but at least it’s basically over and I’m getting paid.
Devin puts on this playlist, and I don’t know if it’s intentionally gay—Halsey, Hayley Kiyoko, Troye Sivan—or if that just happens when you’re queer and really dig your indie pop.
“Did you have fun today?” he asks. He’s pulled out some spray cleaner to wipe down all the windows and mirrors.
I shrug. “I don’t know if ‘fun’ is the right word for it, but it wasn’t too terrible.”
He laughs. “When I first started working at the camp, it was pretty stressful, but it gets better. You kinda realize that they’re kids, which means as rambunctious and uncontrollable as they can be, they’ll also give you way more wiggle room than any adult.”
He’s probably right about that, even if he had to use some weird SAT word to explain it. I can’t say I did anything particularly well today, but the kids seemed to like me well enough. One little girl even brought me a drawing of a heart and said, “I love you, Mr. Noah,” which was really fucking cute.
“How long have you worked at the camp?” I ask.
“This is my second year,” Devin says. “I haven’t lived in Denver that long, but if I had, I probably would’ve been here longer.”
It’s kind of nauseating how in love he is with the camp and the kids and all that jazz, but I’m trying to give him a pass. I still can’t quite say Devin’s my cup of tea—between the weird whistling and head bobbing while he cleans and the overbearing smiling, he’s just way to peppy for my taste—but something about him coming out to me made me like him a little bit more. Like maybe we aren’t total opposites, and I could stand to be a little nicer to him.
I swipe my mop across the floor. “Where’d you move from?”
“Florida—Satan’s ball sack.”
I laugh because we used to call it that too. It’s the little phallus hanging off the edge of the US. “I’m from Florida too,” I say. “Which county?”
“Dade, you?”
I freeze, my mop stopping mid-swipe. “Same.”
He smiles. “Small world.”
He’s definitely right about that. “Why’d you
leave?”
The room falls quiet after that, the sound of Troye Sivan muffled in the background, and I wonder if I overstepped. Really, it doesn’t matter that much. I’m mostly just making small talk, but it kind of feels like I asked him about his dead grandmother or something.
Finally, he says, “I came out at school, and people didn’t take it very well.”
I freeze, my hands gripping the handle of the mop until I’m almost positive I’ll get splinters. “Because you came out as nonbinary?”
He laughs, but it sounds hollow. “Actually, I thought I was a trans girl. They weren’t really cool about that.”
And suddenly something clicks in me and the mop falls from my hands, the wood colliding with the floor in a hollow crack.
Devin stares at me, eyebrows raised. “Are you okay?”
“You went to St. Francis?” I ask, my voice soft.
And Devin’s eyes widen. “How did you know that?”
“Because I was a grade below you,” I say. “I remember when you came out. It was all over the school.”
And Devin blushes, which is probably fair since I just put him on the spot like that. He turns his face away from me, but since he’s wiping down a mirror, it doesn’t do much. “Yeah, I—it was a mistake.”
“A mistake?”
“I mean, I thought I was a girl back then, and I guess a part of me thought that if I came out, things would be easier. Instead, I just got bullied to shit, and now I don’t even really know what I am, you know?”
I shake my head because hearing him say it was a mistake makes me inexplicably angry. I mean, I never really knew him at school, but the story of the one trans girl brave enough to actually live her truth at St. Francis? That shit kept me going. It was the reason I had the courage to look into transness in the first place. It was the reason I stayed up for hours, finding the right words, looking into transitioning. It was the reason I finally had the confidence to tell Becca and Brian who I really am, to make the Diary. It’s why Noah exists at all.
And Devin’s saying it was all a mistake?
“It wasn’t a mistake,” I say.
He looks up at me then, his wide eyes meeting mine through the mirror.
“I thought you were the bravest person at St. Francis. Hell, in the whole goddamn country. I only came out because I had you as a model. Don’t you dare call it a mistake.”
He blushes, his voice soft as he says, “Thank you.”
I roll my eyes. “For what?”
“For saying that.”
We lapse into silence for a moment, and I struggle to focus on my mop strokes instead of the awkward tension hanging in the air.
Finally, Devin says, “I thought I was a fool, you know? For ever thinking I was trans in the first place. I just felt like a liar and an embarrassment and a shame to real trans people.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Why?”
He shrugs. “’Cause after I came out and we moved out here, I didn’t feel like a girl anymore. At least, not really.”
“Do you feel like one now?”
He shrugs again. “I don’t know. I mean, I don’t really feel like a boy. I almost never do, but I don’t know if what I’m feeling is dysphoria or just—”
He stops, and I want to tell him that I understand. I mean, not fully, because I’m a boy, and I know I’m a boy, but that doesn’t mean figuring it out wasn’t hard. There were moments when I thought maybe I was just being dramatic, maybe I was just a tomboy who didn’t like wearing dresses. I didn’t have to be a boy, right?
Except that I am.
I set the mop down and sit down on the floor. We aren’t particularly close, but something about being eye level with him seems better right now.
I say, “There were rumors about what happened after you came out. Are they true?”
He stops scrubbing the mirror and turns back to me. “Which ones?”
“The ones that said you tried to kill yourself?”
He sighs, but I don’t really need him to keep talking. Hell, that sigh alone weighs a couple thousand pounds, and I feel like I can see the entire weight of his high school misery reflected in his eyes.
Finally, he says, “Yeah, I did. That’s why my parents pulled me out of school and why we moved across the country. They thought getting away would make me better.”
“Did it?”
He laughs, but he doesn’t answer. I’m not really sure what I was expecting from the conversation, but it’s pretty clear to me that it’s over. I pick up the mop again, and start scrubbing the floors harder than I should. I think part of me is hoping I can erase more than just germs and dirt stains, like maybe the past can be washed away just as easily.
Hey, Becca, I really need to talk to you. Please call me when you get a chance.
Delivered
On the way home from work, Drew texts me asking if I wanna go to the movies, and of course, I say yes. We usually meet at Brian’s apartment before every date because Drew says it’s a better setup for the Diary stories since there are no parents around, but he says he’s bringing his brother this time and asks me to meet him at their place. I agree, copying and pasting the address into the rideshare app.
Drew’s house kind of blows my mind because it’s not at all what I’d expect. There’s a massive, mud-covered truck in the driveway and three American flags in the lawn, and there’s a doormat that says, Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be shot again. Like, I realized he was white, but I never thought his house would be that white.
I’m absolutely certain I got the address right, but I’m still a bit apprehensive as I knock on the front door.
Then it swings open almost immediately, and Drew’s standing there with the most stressed-out look on his face, which melts away just a little when he catches sight of me. Aw.
“Hey,” he says, but it sounds like it’s riding a sigh. “Let me just get my brother and then we can go.”
I expect him to invite me inside, but he doesn’t, simply slipping back in and closing the door with me still standing on the porch. A minute later, the door opens again, and he comes out, a nine-year-old version of him following behind.
“Noah, this is Jordan. Jordan, this is my boyfriend, Noah.” Despite it being all an act, the words flow casually off Drew’s tongue like he’s really falling into the motions, and I can’t help but smile.
“Hi,” Jordan says, but he doesn’t seem very enthusiastic about it. Actually, after spending the day with the kids at camp, this kid seems just about dead.
Drew calls our ride, and we all shuffle into the back seat. “You have an interesting house,” I say.
Drew winced. “Ugh, yeah. My dad’s just kind of like that.”
And suddenly I’m a little relieved he didn’t invite me inside.
“Do you guys, like . . . kiss and stuff?” Jordan asks.
Drew shoves his shoulder, a look of mortification on his face. “I told you not to say shit like that. What the hell?”
“It’s just a question.”
“It’s fine,” I say, and really, after camp, I don’t think there’s a whole lot any kid could say to catch me off guard. We sit in silence until we finally get out at the theater, and Jordan rushes ahead to get into the ticket line, and I can’t help but feel like Devin would know exactly what to say. Hell, he’d have Jordan swinging off his arm in an hour, and they’d be getting matching tattoos by the end of the night.
“I’m sorry about that,” Drew says as we make our way to the line.
“It’s fine,” I say. “I just wish I was better with kids.”
He smiles. “You’re perfect. Really. I told Jordan you offered to go to the movies with him, and he was thrilled. He’s just shit at showing it to you.”
That’s both kind of a relief and extremely nerve-racking. God, what if I disappoint him? That could have a terrible effect on my fake-but-soon-to-be-real relationship.
“Anyway,” Drew says, “things were getting super messy, so thanks for busti
ng us out of there.”
“Your parents?” I ask.
Drew shrugs, but it’s pretty obvious that means yes. “I think they used to pretend to like each other for Jordan’s sake, but they’ve basically all but given up on that. Now it’s just a battleground, and they don’t give a damn who the casualties are.”
“I’m really sorry,” I say, and I am. My parents have always gotten along well, and there’s never been a time when I doubted that they loved each other or me. I can’t imagine living any other way.
“It’s fine,” he says. “I just really wanted to be with you. Things feel a lot better when you’re around, and focusing on the Diary has been a real lifeline for me lately.”
I smile. There’s a pressure in my chest, squeezing my heart and my lungs, twining through my nerve endings, like this is the Tether—the moment that binds us together forever.
“Hurry up!” Jordan screams.
And Drew shoots back, “Calm down! The movie doesn’t start for an hour!”
I laugh, interlacing my fingers with his. “It’s fine. We can get a couples’ popcorn or maybe an Icee?”
He smiles. “Okay, but we have to make this look legit, so we’re only getting one straw.”
Monday, June 11
MeetCuteDiary posted:
Hey, everyone!
Sorry I’ve been kind of MIA. Drew and I have been spending a lot of time together, and we just went on the world’s cutest movie date. Thanks for all your support, and I’ll get to your messages soon! Oh, and here are some photos!
Babbyabby12 replied: Ahh! This is adorable! So happy for you guys!
Mysticmayhem replied: No worries! We understand! You guys are like soul mates!
Krismaastime replied: Thanks for sharing these! So cute!
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Despite Brian’s badgering, I don’t get home at a reasonable time, and when I do get home, I stay up late updating the Diary with pictures from the movie. I want to make sure the Tether is really laid out for my followers so they realize how legit Drew and I are becoming. Unsurprisingly, the next morning, Brian has to literally drag me out of bed and deposit me on the floor until I finally groan and stand up long enough to change.