by Arin Andrews
The question now, though: Who would go down that road with me?
I got to the end of the hallway and saw my family sitting in the living room, and suddenly my depression came crashing back onto my shoulders. The task at hand seemed impossible—how could I ever tell them that I wasn’t actually a girl? Would they ever accept that? Papa and Gigi are really religious, and if religion says being gay is a sin, then I figured transgender people must have their very own suite in the ninth circle of hell. And Darian had recently come to the realization that she was an adamant lesbian, instead of just bisexual. She’d told me that she never wanted to be with a man. So what did that mean for us?
I’d finally discovered the truth about myself, but instead of it setting me free, I realized that things were actually probably about to get a whole lot worse.
8
Despite Darian’s recent coming out as a full-on lesbian, I still knew that she was the only person I could tell right away about my discovery. But we were practically cut off from each other. Mom had pretty much confiscated my cell phone permanently after discovering a text from Darian that I’d forgotten to delete, so we’d have furtive phone conversations on my house’s landline whenever possible. But I always had one ear out for Mom. Darian knew to stop talking and immediately hang up if it ever sounded like someone picked up the other line. Though I was never able to have a fully fleshed-out conversation with her about what I was going through, I was able to communicate the basics, and she was supportive and encouraging from the get-go. The idea that I was trans didn’t faze her at all.
“I have a cousin who is engaged to a trans man,” she said. “It doesn’t change the way I feel about you.”
The problem was, it started to change the way I felt about her. Darian was a lesbian, which meant she liked girls. Now that I knew I wasn’t a girl, I wondered if my dating her would just continue to remind me that I was stuck in the body of one.
I watched all of Skylarkeleven’s YouTube videos. I wondered if he realized just how lucky he was to have what seemed like such a strong support group around him. And some days, watching his freedom only intensified my feeling of isolation. I sent him a message, thanking him for putting up such incredibly personal videos, and letting him know how much they helped me. I checked every day for a response back, nervously opening my e-mail, only to feel my heart crash when there was nothing there. I understood, though. I knew I wasn’t the only person he was helping, and he must have been slammed with tons of messages just like mine. Still, I desperately wanted an ally.
Sometimes entire weeks would go by when Darian and I wouldn’t get to speak. And when we did, I’d vomit up so much repressed emotion that I started to scare her.
“I’m completely trapped,” I said at one point. I had dragged our landline into a closet, since my mom was home, but talking to Darian was worth the risk. I knew I was starting to spiral. “And now that I know the truth, it almost makes it harder. I will never be able to be like Skylarkeleven. And school . . .”
“You’ll be out of that hellhole in a few years,” she said. “It will fly by, I promise. Like they say, it gets better. You’ll be able to get out from under all this control and live the life you want.”
Funny how people can say all the right things and it still means nothing. I couldn’t fathom a world outside the one I lived in. The depression turned to a dull numbness. Every single day became the same. I kept my headphones on constantly and listened to the song “Shake Me Down” by Cage the Elephant on repeat. Eyes cast down, I’d chant along in my mind. I became obsessed with how flat and hopeless the geographical landscape around us was. On the drive to school we’d pass by fields that stretched out forever into nothingness, and I’d picture myself walking out into one of them and never stopping.
• • •
One afternoon as we drove by the American Legion building, I noticed a group of uniformed teenagers marching in perfect unison, with rifles held over their shoulders. Suddenly they stopped, and the guns started spinning around their sides and backs like batons, with precision movements. The guns settled back onto their shoulders, and they continued their march forward.
“What is that all about?” I asked Mom, pointing.
“I think that’s the Civil Air Patrol,” she said, squinting at them. She started to swerve into the other lane, and quickly straightened the wheel. “I’m pretty sure they have a youth program. Is that something you’d be interested in?”
“Air patrol?” I asked. “Does that mean they let you fly planes?”
“We’ll look it up when we get home,” she said.
We learned that Civil Air Patrol, or CAP, is an offshoot of the United States Air Force and is open to pretty much anyone. It teaches about the history of flying, provides aerospace education, and trains people for dealing with emergency situations like plane crashes.
“I want in,” I told Mom. There was something about how in control of themselves they’d looked that appealed to me on a very base level. And the idea of rescue missions and learning how to save people cut a small swath of light through the fog in my brain.
I filled out some background check forms and was accepted after about three weeks. My first squadron meeting was held at the air force base at Tulsa International Airport. When Mom dropped me off, I watched a small fighter plane speed down the runway and take off into the sky. I pictured myself in the cockpit, with the freedom to go anywhere. When you’re up in the sky, who you are on the ground doesn’t matter.
There were about twenty cadets in total, mostly guys, and I felt out of place at first, since I was the only person in civilian clothing. Everyone else was wearing uniforms and nametags.
“Fall in!” the squadron commander barked, and I took the end spot in the line that suddenly formed. I watched the way everyone was marching, and imitated them as we walked about half a mile to the airplane maintenance hangars and practiced more marching drills.
I loved it. I could make my body do exactly what I told it to. CAP allowed me to have an authority over my physicality that was otherwise completely absent from my life.
• • •
No one at CAP thought it was weird that I acted masculine. They even embraced the fact that I could keep up with the guys during physical exercise. I was issued a navy-blue air force suit with huge brass buttons, a nametag, a cadet badge, and a pointed flight cap. Men and women wore almost identical suits, so it was easy for me to pretend that I was just one of the guys. I learned to spin rifles like a pro. (They were plugged, so you couldn’t actually shoot them.)
It was the perfect distraction, something to take my mind off the depression, off Darian, and off the truth of who I was.
But better than all of that, I started making friends.
I became really close with two guys in particular, Samuel, who was around my age, and Jon, who was several years older than me and already in college.
One weekend I invited them over, and we hiked down to the giant boulders behind my house. The cave I’d built between the rocks had started to come apart, and I had recently found a couple of copperheads living in the back of it, so I’d dismantled the whole thing and built a fire in the hole for good measure. I may be a huge animal lover, but I hate snakes.
“Let’s build something here,” I said.
“Like what?” Samuel asked.
I thought for a minute. I missed having a hideout, a little place to escape to, one that was all my own.
“A cabin,” I decided.
We scrounged all the spare lumber we could find from the garage and built a basic frame out of two-by-fours. We hammered compressed wood panels onto the top and sides to make a roof and walls. A small hole cut into the front served as the entrance, so that it still felt sort of like a cave. I hung a towel over it that could be pushed aside to let in fresh air.
That night Samuel stayed over with me in the cabin. I’d been asked to join the CAP honor guard, the riflemen who honor fallen soldiers at official military ceremonies
. The training was supposed to be really intense, and since Samuel was going to be one of my instructors, he kept me up all night with horror stories about the endurance tests, things like having to stay in a push-up position for ten straight minutes.
We woke up at dawn and cooked breakfast over a fire I built on the rocks, and from that day on, I was always inviting CAP friends over for campouts and bonfires down at the little cabin. It was the first time in my life that I had ever felt truly accepted by a group. The camaraderie helped cut through the loneliness of missing Darian. And while I was pretty sure that some of the guys from CAP might have had crushes on me, everyone was too professional to ever act on it. We were a team.
• • •
Hands down, the best part of CAP was getting to ride in the airplanes. I wasn’t allowed to sit up front in the cockpit with the pilot, but I got to go on a bunch of orientation rides and sit in the back to watch practice missions for search and rescue operations. I paid close attention to all the instructions but would still find my mind drifting just a little, overpowered by the sheer wonder of flying. The small single-propeller Cessnas we flew were nothing like the impersonal giants that commercial airlines use. In one of those you may as well be on a bus—you hardly feel any relationship to the empty space outside.
But on the smaller planes, I felt like I was telling gravity to screw off. I was breaking the rules of nature, and getting away with it.
Jon and I grew especially close. I looked up to him like a big brother, and even found myself modeling certain masculine mannerisms after him. Little things, like the crisp way he tucked in his shirts. Catchphrases that he was always uttering started coming out of my mouth as well, and I watched how he moved his arms when he walked, as an example of how to swing my own. He started coming over every Wednesday night to sit around the fire and talk.
“I promise I’ll take you flying with me someday,” he said. “And when you’re old enough, I’ll help you get your pilot’s license.”
But despite how close we were, I never told him about Darian, or that I knew I was transgender. I was still too scared of those sides of myself to test them out on anyone.
Having friends again gave me confidence, though, and coupled with the joy I got from flying, I was able to partially pull myself out of my depression. I started excelling at school, making top grades. I wanted to prove to my teachers that I was a worthwhile human, even if they’d hate me if they knew what I was inside. So I worked hard, and kept my mouth shut whenever someone would call me a lesbian in the hallway, or make fun of the way I walked or spoke.
In fact, I got so good at faking the part of being a good Christian girl during my freshman year that I was awarded the Lincoln Spotlight Student of the Year Award, a plaque they gave out annually to one student in the high school for their exemplary work in fulfilling the school’s three core priorities: Godly character, academic excellence, and extracurricular activities. In that exact order.
Since things seemed to be going so well, Mom finally agreed to let me cut my hair. Not as short as I wanted—only to my shoulders—but it still meant nine inches off, and I knew it would make it even easier for me to hide the rest of it up in a hat.
She drove me to the same place where we’d always gotten our hair done, a place called Spalon, located in a strip mall and sandwiched between a Body by God health club on one side and an abandoned Jazzercise studio on the other. The stylist, Rachel, had known me for several years by then, and she knew how badly I’d always wanted to chop my hair off, so she understood what a big deal it was.
“If you’re going this short, we should donate to Locks of Love,” she said, and gathered my hair into a long ponytail. “You’ve got enough here for sure.”
She picked up the shears.
“Ready?”
“Born ready,” I said.
Mom suddenly bolted. “I’ll wait outside,” she choked.
Rachel patted me on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, honey. She’ll come around when she sees how good I’m going to make you look.”
“Oh, I’m not worried,” I said. “Do it already!”
The high-pitched shearing sound was just like I’d always imagined, and as soon as the chunk of hair was separated from my body, I felt my head drift upward, as if there were helium balloons tied to my ears. While my hair had been pulled back, I had seen my true, short-haired self in the mirror, and I felt a slight twinge of disappointment when the remaining strands fell back down around and settled on the tops of my shoulders. But the lightness felt incredible, and I shook my head back and forth a few times to get used to it. I couldn’t stop grinning.
• • •
My happiness was short-lived, though. I got a text from Darian’s secret phone, asking me to call her as soon as I could. I snuck away the first chance I got.
“I’m quitting dance,” Darian told me as soon as she picked up.
I let that sink in for a minute. “But that’s the only time I ever get to see you,” I said.
“I know,” she said. “But I can’t take those homophobic rednecks anymore. They don’t say anything out loud, but I know they’ve hated me ever since you and I got busted together. They treat me like dirt, even though I’m good at what I do there. It’s all because I love you. And we are paying these people money to go there! I just can’t be a part of it anymore.”
“And what about me?” I asked, my voice sounding far away.
“You’re going to escape someday,” she said. “And I’ll be waiting. But our next recital is going to be my last one.”
After we hung up, I thought hard about everything she’d said about the dance studio. As much as it killed me that I wouldn’t get to see her, I couldn’t argue with any of her points. In fact, the more I thought about it, the angrier I got. For my family it wasn’t just the dance studio we were giving money to—it was my school. Their hard-earned cash was going straight into the pockets of people who wanted me to burn.
I knew the time had come to tell Mom that I was transgender. CAP had been serving as a good distraction from having to face reality, but it was also helping me build up the confidence to own up to who I really was.
I figured since the school year was ending, we’d have the whole rest of the summer for her to process it, and hopefully let me begin transitioning. I considered suggesting we go out to lunch somewhere and I’d tell her there, so she couldn’t freak out because we’d be in public. Or maybe I’d build a fire in the backyard and tell her over the crackling flames, surrounded by nature. Perhaps whatever magic energy the woods held for me would rub off on her, too, and make it all okay.
In the end I chose a highway off-ramp.
We were driving to the studio for our end-of-year recital, the last time I’d see Darian for any sort of foreseeable future. As we curved down the road toward the thruway, I felt my stomach drop, as if we were free-falling on a roller coaster.
“Mom, do you know what ‘transgender’ is?”
She was silent as she merged into the traffic.
It’s happening, I thought, and started to tremble. It’s actually happening.
I held my breath, waiting for her to reply.
“I think so,” she said, her eyes straight ahead. “But why don’t you explain it to me.”
“It’s when a boy feels like a girl, and he changes his body to match his mind. Or when a girl feels like a guy, and she does what she can to be male,” I said, before I could lose my nerve. “That’s what I am.”
I was too scared to look at her. I watched the white divider lines on the road disappear underneath the front wheels, charting our progression.
“So you want to be a boy,” she said finally. Her voice was flat.
“Yeah.”
“So you want a penis.”
“Well, yeah. That’s part of it. But it’s a lot more than just that.”
Neither of us said another word for the rest of the ride. When we got to the studio, I left the car first. Usually she’d be glued to my si
de to make sure I didn’t talk to Darian. She’d been volunteering backstage at the recitals since I was three, and I figured she’d be extra diligent with her duties that night—like she had been at all of our previous recitals since Darian and I had gotten into trouble—to ensure our separation. But she let me go in ahead of her.
I saw Andi as soon as I walked in, and she turned away from me, refusing to make eye contact. I tried to muster up some anger. I wished I could go up to her and say something like, You narrow-minded traitor. Anger would have helped take away some of the pain of losing her. But I couldn’t be angry with her. All I felt was sadness, and all I could think was, You were my best friend—can’t you see that I need you?
I took advantage of Mom’s delay and went in search of Darian. I found her in one of the dressing rooms, sitting in front of a mirror, putting on makeup. I stood in the doorway.
“You look pretty,” I said. “I got you this.” I handed her a Godiva dark chocolate bar, her favorite.
“Thanks,” she said with a sad smile. “Hey, I brought you something too.”
She rummaged around in her bag and pulled out a folded-up Tulsa World newspaper story. “I thought you might get something out of this.”
It was a two-part story called “Becoming Katie” about a local male-to-female transgender girl. There was a large photo of her, and she was beautiful.
“Thanks. I can’t wait to read—”
“There you are,” Mom said, appearing out of nowhere. Thank God I was still in the doorway and not in the actual dressing room. I would have been screwed.
“Hi, Ms. Andrews,” Darian said meekly.
Mom nodded in Darian’s general direction and took me by the arm. “Time to get dressed, Emerald.”
I changed into my uniform quickly so I could whip through the article before showtime. It said that Katie had been born Luke, and that she lived relatively close by. Almost everything she said about feeling like she had been born in the wrong body was identical to my own thoughts. One quote hit me really hard: