Euphoria Kids

by Alison Evans

  Dear reader,

  I write these stories because I can’t get the fifteen year old me out of my head, the one who was so scared because they thought that they were alone. I don’t want anyone else to feel that.

  I want people to know about gender euphoria. I want them to learn about it before gender dysphoria. I want the young trans kids that will read this book to be proud of who they are, and imagine wonderful, magic lives for themselves.

  Alison Evans

  23/10/2019

  Contents

  Chapter One The Plant Child

  Chapter Two The Fire Girl

  Chapter Three The Smoky Quartz

  Chapter Four The Other Realm

  Chapter Five The Haircut Spell

  Chapter Six The Rose Boy

  Chapter Seven The Faerie Bond

  Chapter Eight The Party in the Trees

  Chapter Nine The Story of the Sun and the Moon

  Chapter Ten The Strange News

  Chapter Eleven The Deep Water

  Chapter Twelve The Jar Spells

  Chapter Thirteen The Art Project

  Chapter Fourteen The Old Book

  Chapter Fifteen The Static Girl

  Chapter Sixteen The Story of Babs and the Heavy Day

  Chapter Seventeen The New Scar

  Chapter Eighteen The Rose Tattoo

  Chapter Nineteen The Blank Potential

  Chapter Twenty The Flower Ravine

  Chapter Twenty-One The Other Side

  Chapter Twenty-Two The Long Walk

  Chapter Twenty-Three The Safe Harbour

  Chapter Twenty-Four The Journey Home

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter One

  The Plant Child

  Before the rose was there, the garden was full of moss. I started as a seed under it, waiting for the right time to sprout. Clover waited, and waited, and tended the garden, and didn’t listen to anyone who said she should give up. Moss, my other mother, she waited too. But Clover was the one who came out every morning and told me about her night, what she was planning on cooking that day, how Moss was going.

  On the first day of spring, I thought it was the right time. Clover did too, I think; the day before, she’d whispered through the ground that she knew I’d be there soon.

  When my first two leaves emerged, Moss and Clover knew I would be okay.

  I didn’t mean to be a strange baby made of plants, but it hasn’t caused any problems. I don’t know if anyone else can tell. Only Clover and Moss talk about it.

  After I emerged from the ground, Clover fertilised the garden bed and made a home for the rosebush with its moon flowers. Now it’s as tall as me.

  Saltkin flits over and touches a closed bud, waiting for its time. ‘Look at this, Iris.’ He beckons me closer. I have to squint to see him in the almost-dawn. He’s changed his skin – now he’s a tiny fat boy and he’s kept his wings.

  ‘Your spring look?’

  ‘Maybe. Not sure on the colour scheme.’ He preens one of his bright-green iridescent wings with his fingers.

  ‘You look good.’

  He smiles and moves to sit on my raised hand, crossing his legs. He’s the weight of a bird. ‘Are you going to change?’

  ‘You know I can’t change like you.’ I wave my free hand around, and he flutters so he’s hovering in front of my face like a hummingbird. ‘It’s different for me.’

  ‘I meant, you know. Like your hair. Or get some metal in your face. You love tattoos, you could get some of those.’

  ‘I’m too young for tattoos,’ I say. I want to cover my body in art and stories, watch them move and flex as I go through the days. I want to cover my body in flowers and vines. But not for a couple of years.

  ‘We can do something with your hair,’ Saltkin says, touching a bit of it that’s fallen out of my ponytail. ‘You’d look nice pink.’

  ‘Why don’t you go pink? Keep the green wings, though.’

  He closes his eyes and the snow-blue of him changes to a peachy pink, with patches of orange.

  ‘You look like a rose,’ I tell him.

  There’s so much potential in winter, and the very beginning of spring is my favourite. Anything could happen. The world is waking up again, and even now, in the dark backyard, the air is humming with new energy.

  A couple of other faeries who I’ve seen before but don’t know well come over and speak to Saltkin. I can’t understand what they’re saying; it sounds like music.

  I walk around the garden. Clover tends it; sometimes I help, but she is the reason it thrives. She grows us vegetables and herbs, and when flowers are blooming, there are always some in vases in the kitchen.

  The rosemary bush has been here since long before Clover and Moss moved in, and when we’re gone it will take over the whole backyard. I pinch off a stalk and, leaving Saltkin to his friends, I return to the house. The back door leads right into the kitchen. I switch on the kettle, and as it starts to boil the kitchen starts to awaken. The tiles are different patterns but all various shades of green and blue, salvaged from seconds bins and the tip. The benches are a dark wood, stained with years of cooking and spillages. I put the rosemary sprig in a thin glass vase and place it on the windowsill, its scent lingering on my hands.

  The yellow overhead light flickers on, and Clover is there when I turn around, sitting, still blurry-eyed. I hug her good morning. ‘You’re up early,’ she says. She always gets up at this time.

  ‘It’s spring.’

  ‘Oh.’ She looks through the window, though it’s still too dark to see outside now the light is on. ‘Of course.’

  I always wake up early on the first day of spring.

  I make us a pot of rooibos tea and sit opposite her as it brews. She spoons honey into our cups. As she pours the tea, I ask, ‘What are you doing today?’

  ‘Moss has the day off. We’re just going to hang about, I think. Do you want a lift to school?’

  I think of Saltkin and his fae friends, and how my mothers have each other. I know lots of creatures, and I have my mothers, but I don’t have my own people.

  ‘I don’t mind catching the bus. I like the walk.’ It’s not long, maybe five minutes. Sometimes the stop is right outside the house; I’m not sure what that depends on, exactly.

  There are still a couple of hours before I have to go to school, and so I take the half-drunk tea to my room and get back into bed. The sun is rising, soft light covering the garden. I can see the glitter that is Saltkin and the others, and I feel a tiny bit of annoyance.

  Just like that, he appears on my windowsill. ‘Sorry, Iris,’ he says, pausing at the sill to see if I’ll tell him to go away. Sometimes I do. It’s hard to get privacy when you’re friends with faeries. ‘Are you mad?’

  ‘A little.’ I sip the tea and beckon him to sit on my bed. ‘But I don’t know if that’s fair. I think I’m jealous of you.’

  ‘The magic?’

  ‘The friends. I don’t have any.’ I’m envious of the magic, too, but we’ve been over that.

  ‘We’re not friends?’ I can tell I’ve hurt him.

  ‘Sorry, I don’t mean we’re not friends. I mean, I need human friends.’

  He still looks a bit put out, and I feel like I would be too.

  ‘Like how Clover has Moss. They understand each other, and they’re in love but they’re friends too. And your other friends near the rosebush. You have a connection with them that we can’t have.’

&nbs
p; He nods. ‘I’ll be right back.’ He flits out the window, and I stare after him for maybe five minutes before I wonder if he’s not coming back. My tea has gone cold, so I lie back down. I set my phone alarm just in case I fall asleep and miss the bus.

  When I wake for the second time that morning, herbs, flowers and rocks are strewn all over the bed. I reach for the closest one, a rose quartz. It’s polished smooth but it’s not quite perfectly round, like it’s been sitting on a riverbed for a long time.

  There is a tiny note on the bedside table. A spell for friends is written in loopy, thin, spindly letters. I’ve never seen Saltkin’s handwriting before, but I assume it’s from him.

  My alarm goes off and I get out of bed, trying my best not to disturb the debris on the covers. I pull on my uniform, in varying shades of blue, and pocket the rose quartz. The bus stop takes me twice as long to walk to today, and by the time I reach it I’m sweating.

  There is a new person on the bus wearing our uniform. I’ve memorised all the faces that get on, and what stops they belong to. But theirs is new.

  They’ve got straight black hair, cut so it’s just shorter than their chin. They’re wearing a choker, just a thin black one with a silver star on it. They’re wearing a smidge of eyeshadow, not enough for a teacher to tell them not to. Their uniform is frayed a bit, so they might not be new. There’s a denim jacket on the seat beside them.

  They look at me, catch me looking at them, and I quickly look away. My cheeks are burning as I stare at the scenery rushing past. We go through ten minutes of bush before we get to the town, and the school.

  In science, that’s when I notice they’re in my year. The new person. But no one is really paying them any attention. We’re paired together because I have no friends and everyone else is paired up.

  ‘Are you new?’ I ask. They seem like they’re not; they don’t look lost. Up close, their dress is patched in a couple of places, definitely an old uniform.

  ‘No.’ They smile at me. ‘But you probably just haven’t noticed me. I’m Babs.’

  ‘Iris.’

  ‘Like the song?’

  I look at them blankly.

  ‘You know. Goo Goo Dolls?’

  ‘Oh.’ I pause. ‘My mums chose my name. But it’s a good song.’

  ‘I chose my name,’ they say. ‘I just liked the sound. I like how it makes me sound like an old lady.’

  We smile at each other. We fill out the sheet our teacher gave us, and then the bell rings, and we have different classes to go to. I think about asking them if they want to meet up later, but by the time I work up the courage, they’re gone.

  The next class I have is IT, but because we’re on the computers no one’s doing any work except me; I like to finish it early because then I won’t have to do all of it the night before assignments are due. And today I’m glad to have some extra time. The school has blocked most social media sites, but not all the proxies, so it’s easy enough to get around them. I look up Babs on everything, but I don’t know their last name, and I find nothing.

  I can’t wait to know them.

  The bell sounds and it’s the start of recess, so I go to where I was sitting yesterday. The paperbark beside the patch of grass thrums with joy when it feels me, and I touch its trunk in greeting. It’s slowly waking up from winter, shaking off the cold and getting ready to use its energy stores to bloom.

  ‘Same,’ I say to it out loud. I sit and unwrap my sandwich, and wait for Babs. I don’t know if they’ll want to sit with me again. There’s a bubble brewing in my stomach, the nerves making me feel ill. I’m excited. I want them to sit with me.

  I eat the jar of yoghurt and muesli Clover prepared for me this morning. She’s given me some cheese and biscuits as well, tied up in a handkerchief-sized gingham cloth. Saltkin loves cheese; if he follows me to school I always share it with him. But he’s busy today, it seems. The start of spring always means a lot of work.

  Babs walks past with their jacket on. I can see patches on the sleeve. One has a green alien head and says, Let’s be friends. The one under it is too small to read from where I’m sitting.

  They turn their head, and they see me looking at them. ‘I was looking for you.’ They walk closer, and pause. I can see the uncertainty in their face, pausing, wanting to do something but . . . too scared to?

  ‘Same,’ I say. And then I don’t know what to say.

  ‘Can I sit down?’ they ask.

  I move further back on the patch of grass under my tree and give them plenty of space. I always sit here, unless it’s raining. Other grass is in the sun, or near too many people. This place is private enough, and there’s no risk of sunburn.

  ‘I know I asked already,’ I say to Babs, ‘but I literally have never seen you before.’

  ‘I know, it’s a thing about me. I feel like we should be friends.’

  My eyes dart to the patch on their sleeve. ‘Are you an alien?’

  They laugh, and I’m glad they do. The patch under the alien says she/her. As soon as I read it, something catches alight in me. She’s made of fire, this girl. I think.

  We don’t say anything else the whole of recess, except when I offer her some cheese and she thanks me.

  The rest of the day I don’t see her, but the fire that she lit in me keeps me warm. At home, Saltkin meets me by the gate. He buzzes around my head, but because Moss and Clover must be nearby he doesn’t speak. When we first met, I didn’t realise not everyone could see him.

  ‘Hey, sprout,’ Moss says when I walk into the kitchen. This room is where everything seems to happen; it’s the heart.

  I kiss her cheek and sling my schoolbag onto the ground as I go to the cupboard to find something to eat.

  ‘How was your day? Clover said you got up early.’

  ‘It’s spring, Moss.’ I smile at her. ‘I think I made a friend.’

  ‘In spring?’ She grins before taking a sip of coffee. ‘I feel like you two go way back.’

  ‘No, in a person. A girl at school.’

  A lot of emotions go through her face while she pretends not to be relieved. It’s not that I haven’t had friends before, just they were all in primary school and the first couple years of high school. I kind of drifted from them, not really for any reasons. We didn’t have anything in common.

  The fire Babs has put in me is a thin flame, flickering a bit. It’s not strong enough to stand near the tiniest of breezes yet, but I’m going to keep it safe.

  Clover walks into the kitchen with a couple of branches of silver dollar eucalyptus. ‘What?’ she asks, looking at Moss’s face.

  ‘Iris made a friend,’ she says.

  ‘Have they?’ Clover says brightly. ‘Who? Do we know them?’

  ‘Her name is Babs,’ I say. ‘We didn’t really talk much, but I think she can tell.’ She can tell that I am grown from a seed in the ground. I wonder if she knows I know she’s made of fire. Probably. ‘And I thought she was new. I’ve never seen her before, but she was on the bus this morning, and then in science.’

  Clover laughs. ‘Maybe magic is afoot.’

  I do think she believes in magic, but maybe not to the same extent as me. The way she and Moss met definitely had some kind of magic going on, I’m sure, and I wasn’t born the way other babies are. But I don’t tell them about Saltkin, or his spell this morning. I want to keep it safe.

  She starts to cut the branches so they’ll fit into vases, enough to make the whole kitchen more alive. The kitchen and the garden are Clover’s favourite places. She has plants strewn all through the house, but the kitchen gets the most love. The sun is just right, streaming through the windows at the best time of day. And we’re always in here, and I know the plants like that. I can feel what they’re feeling, sometimes, if I touch their leaves.

  Saltkin tugs at my ear, wanting to talk.

  �
��I should probably start my homework.’

  ‘Well,’ Moss says, ‘keep us updated on the friend situation.’

  ‘I will.’

  I take my muesli bar to my room and close the door. After I turn on some dreamy electronic music, softly, I turn to Saltkin and say, ‘I think it worked.’ I take the rose quartz out of my pocket.

  He claps his hands and a little peach cloud surrounds him. ‘Oh!’ he says, touching the stone with his tiny hands, his skin turning the same shade of pink. ‘It worked.’

  ‘Her name is Babs.’

  ‘The fire girl,’ he says. ‘Oh yes. I know about her.’

  ‘You know her?’

  He nods. ‘I haven’t met her. But I know kinfolk who live nearby. She is very kind. She has been through too many things for someone so small. She’s brave, Iris.’

  A spark crackles through me, her fire. It’s larger. ‘Oh.’

  He sighs contentedly, returning to his peach colours. ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘Like I’m on fire. In a nice way.’

  He smiles as he sits on the windowsill, crossing his legs. ‘Good. Just don’t burn up.’

  I hadn’t considered that.

  ‘Remember, you’re made of plants.’

  ‘I know, Saltkin.’

  I close my eyes and feel the fire. It’s warm, the flame still small, filling me up. I don’t think she will burn me.

  Chapter Two

  The Fire Girl

  As I’m staring out the bus window, I realise Iris won’t see me again today. I take the rose quartz hanging around my neck and twist its coldness between my fingers. I try to ignore the sinking feeling as we get closer to their stop. I’ve seen them around school, and something about them always felt a bit magic. I realised yesterday while talking to them – they’re made of plants. I don’t know how that’s true, but it must be like how I’m fire. Somehow it’s real.

  The bus pulls over, and a few people get on. I see Iris through the window. They’re in our school uniform, shorts, itchy blue jumper.