Just Girls

by Rachel Gold

  “I hope you don’t mind excessive amounts of chocolate and caramel,” she said.

  “I love it.”

  Tucker pushed two pillows against her headboard so she could sit up comfortably and Ella settled cross-legged against the wall halfway down the bed. Tucker took a big spoonful of the ice cream. It was thickly creamy with a soothing cold that she needed very badly.

  “Now the painkillers,” Ella said and handed her two pills. Tucker downed those and accepted the ice cream back for another big spoonful.

  “I also have something for bruising—want me to look at your shoulder?”

  Tucker looked down at her thin T-shirt. It had been off-white and was now smudged with dirt and flecked with blood on the left side. Her right arm still had the kind of grinding hurt that indicated a deep bruise and she wasn’t sure she wanted to try lifting it. A flash of helplessness hit her and she bit her cheek to keep from crying. She shook her head at Ella.

  Ella set down her spoon and edged across the bed toward Tucker. “If it hurts that much, we should look at it,” she said, quiet but resolute.

  Tucker shook her head again. She didn’t trust herself to talk. She’d felt so tough and protective minutes ago and now she was struggling not to cry in front of Ella.

  Ella’s fingers touched the collar of her T-shirt. “May I?” she asked.

  Tucker managed a tight nod. Ella lifted the collar and peeked under. “It doesn’t look too bad,” she said. “I can see the bruise forming and…” She shifted her head so that her hair brushed the side of Tucker’s face. “Oh, that’s ugly. We need to ice that and you should let me put some arnica cream on it.”

  Wisps of Ella’s hair were tickling her collarbone and the gentle touch of her fingers distracted Tucker from the throbbing in her shoulder. She wanted Ella to keep touching her.

  “Okay,” she said.

  She sat away from the wall and pulled the bottom of her shirt up, but halfway she realized she couldn’t get it over her head without using both arms and her right arm was still in protest. She was stuck with her left arm hanging half out of her shirt.

  “Hold still,” Ella said, laughing.

  She straddled Tucker’s lap, took hold of the shirt with both hands, and worked it over Tucker’s mobile shoulder and head, and then let it slip easily down her sore arm.

  Tucker abruptly didn’t care at all about the pain. She turned her right shoulder toward Ella. “How bad is it?”

  “When all the blood comes up, that’s going to be one hell of a beauty. You should totally Facebook it—unless your mom’s on Facebook,” Ella said. “Is it okay to touch?”

  “Don’t poke it!”

  “Hah.” Ella leaned back and snared a white tube of cream from the box top tray. She put a thick glob of it on her fingers and with feather touches began spreading it on Tucker’s shoulder.

  Tucker sat very still. She didn’t want Ella to realize how close their bodies were. Warmth radiated from Ella and a sweet scent like baby powder and blackberries. She felt so light and small across Tucker’s lap. It wasn’t just her size, but there was a way that she carried herself deep inside so that even touching Tucker she held herself away. It was the exact opposite of Lindy’s demanding presence and just as compelling. Tucker wanted to pull her close and break through that distance.

  A knock sounded on the door and Ella jumped. She scrambled back off Tucker.

  “Blanket,” Tucker said and pointed at the lopsided afghan at the foot of her bed. Ella picked it up and helped Tucker drape it across herself so she wasn’t just in running shorts and a sports bra.

  Two campus police were at the door. Ella let them into the room and then tucked herself into the small space by Tucker’s closet. The first one in was a woman, on the tall side with maple skin and dirty blond hair pulled back into a high, severe ponytail. Behind her came a stocky guy, oak-skinned, black-haired, who looked uncomfortable about being in a dorm room with three women and stayed near the door with his thumbs tucked into his belt.

  The woman introduced herself and the guy, and then started taking Tucker’s statement, starting with a series of questions about how she was doing physically and if she needed medical attention. She made sure they understood that the men had referred to her as “it,” and made anti-trans statements, and that they grabbed her breasts and crotch.

  “I don’t know if that counts as sexual assault or a hate crime or both,” she said. “But it’s really important that’s included.”

  The woman cop nodded. “I have it all in my notes.”

  They asked a few times if she wanted to go to the hospital but finally relented and strongly suggested she visit the campus health center in the morning.

  When they were gone, Ella slipped into the other room and came back with a lumpy package wrapped in a shirt.

  “Frozen soup,” she said. “It’s the closest to an ice pack I’ve got.”

  “Thanks.” Tucker propped it between her shoulder, a pillow, and the wall and leaned back gingerly. The ice felt just a little less wonderful than Ella’s touch.

  “Tucker,” Ella said as she picked up the softening ice cream. “Maybe it’s time to tell people you’re not really trans.”

  “I don’t think it would matter. They’ve got it in for me now and that one girl’s going to be pissed that I pepper sprayed her boyfriend. If I tell them, they’ll be even madder that I lied. It’s kind of a done deal at this point.”

  “I guess so,” Ella said. “But I don’t want to see you get hurt again.”

  “Me either!”

  They passed the pint of ice cream back and forth until most of it was gone. At that point Tucker just wanted to turn off the light and close her eyes. She crawled under the blanket and lay back. Ella turned off the light and then seemed to stand for a long time in the doorway before she went back into her room, but later Tucker wondered if she’d just imagined that.

  Chapter Seven

  Ella

  Just after midnight, I went back and checked on Tucker again but she was sleeping. I thought I should go to sleep too, but I didn’t want to turn off my light. Pacing the room didn’t help. In compromise, I switched off the overhead light and left on my desk lamp. I got Erasmus the stuffed tortoise from the top of my dresser and brought him to bed with me. Lying on my side with his furry body held to my chest, I looked at the poster of Doradus-30 and tried to imagine I was floating in that cold, vast space with stars being born out of the fiery clouds of matter around me.

  Out of the darkness came a huge fist that smashed into my face. I jerked up with a yelp. The little light on my desk illuminated an empty dorm room. My heart pounded. I must have fallen asleep and dreamed it. But the fear felt so real—as if there was still someone waiting just out of sight to hit me.

  Minutes passed and Tucker didn’t knock on the door. She must have been deeply asleep or maybe I hadn’t actually yelled aloud and only thought I had because I was dreaming. I wanted her to come through into my room and comfort me, but that was hardly fair. She was the one who’d been hit tonight, not me.

  Erasmus lay on the floor next to the bed where he’d fallen when I sat up. I leaned down to get him and when my fingers touched the soft, brown plush of his shell, I just started crying. I held him hard against my mouth so I wouldn’t make a sound and curled my knees to my chest.

  They called Tucker “it,” I’d heard her tell the cops. They called me “it.”

  What if they found me walking across campus some night and not Tucker? I didn’t carry pepper spray. I wasn’t strong like she was. I would have curled into a ball and prayed that they didn’t kill me.

  Would they have killed me?

  Would they have killed Tucker?

  I wanted to run into her room and cling to her and make sure we were both okay. But I couldn’t.

  I cried into Erasmus’s furry shell until it was damp and matted. My head ached and my eyes felt like sandpaper even though they were wet. Forcing myself to uncurl, I got off the bed, gr
abbed a tissue from the box on my desk and blew my nose, then sat down in my desk chair.

  I both wanted to talk to someone and didn’t. If I tried to talk to Mom or Dad, they’d just freak out and I didn’t want them to pull me out of school. I had to prove to myself that I could make it in the real world. I could text Nico but I didn’t want to put this on ze. Nico acted tough, but I knew it was an act. Sometimes I thought Nico was more vulnerable than I was, even as I envied zir flamboyant gender play, because Nico was the one who heard this kind of shit on a regular basis.

  For the last few years I’d been able to just walk around in the world as a regular girl. But Nico and other trans folk who either chose not to play the gender binary or couldn’t pass—they got treated in terrible ways. What kind of coward was I that I couldn’t even handle tonight?

  I wrapped my arms around myself and took long, slow breaths. When my hands stopped shaking, I opened up my microbiology textbook and woke up my computer. After about an hour I went into the bathroom and washed my face, then took the trek through the silent dorm halls to get myself some caffeine from the vending machine. I didn’t plan to stay up all night, but every time I thought about getting into bed again I just didn’t want to.

  When the sky outside the window started to get light around six a.m., I could finally get up from the desk and fall into bed to squeeze in a few hours of sleep before I had to go to class.

  * * *

  I stopped back in my room after my late morning class. Lindy’s voice came from the other side of Tucker’s door. The words weren’t clear, but her tone was pleading and fussy. I backed quietly out of my room and headed for the dining hall. I’d wanted a quiet lunch alone in my room, but I didn’t want to have to run into Lindy in full rescue mode. Mostly I didn’t want to have to try to talk to Tucker now with Lindy watching.

  Every time I looked at Tucker, I remembered her sitting against the wall by her bed in a bra and shorts looking vulnerable and humming with anger all at the same time. I didn’t even have a way to think about what I wanted, but I felt paranoid that Lindy would see it in the way I looked at Tucker.

  When she didn’t know I was in my room the week before, I’d heard Lindy accuse Tucker of wanting to date me. I didn’t know if that was true or not, since I’d also heard Lindy accuse Tucker of having a crush on Summer and on her writer friend Claire.

  I was not the best judge of relationships. I hadn’t ever really had one. I could look at my mom and dad and see some of the things that make relationships work in the long term, at least with sane adults, but that didn’t really help with the whole dating part of things.

  It was hard to want to be in a relationship back when my body wasn’t right. I know a lot of people have to deal with their body not being the way they want it to be, but gender is such a big thing in our society that it can be a deal breaker. When I looked like a boy, if I asked a girl out she’d be thinking we were in a heterosexual relationship and that I should do all the boy stuff and that wasn’t me. And if I wanted to go out with a guy, he’d have to be bi or gay, but if he was gay then he’d also expect me to act like a guy.

  It’s ridiculously tough to say to someone, “Hey, I know I look like a guy, but I want to go out with you as a girl, okay?”

  At thirteen and fourteen when my friends were starting to go out with each other, I was willing to just skip it. And then there were those weird middle years of fifteen, sixteen and seventeen, where I looked like a girl but still had that boy part. Nico never cared about that, and that’s one reason we managed to date off and on for a bit. The trouble was that even if Nico didn’t care, I did. I just wasn’t ready to get into a relationship where we might get sexual and all I had to offer was something I wasn’t. Plus I know there are some people who fetishize the hermaphrodite look—ugh. I mean, it’s cool in art, but it’s not cool when you’re talking about my body because then you just don’t really get me. When it comes to a relationship that I’m in, I’d rather be part of it.

  I also really wanted to come out to Tucker and at the same time I was afraid to—not just because of Lindy, though that was still a top reason, but I didn’t know how Tucker would feel when she understood that the person she’d gotten beat up for was me. Would some part of her blame me for what had happened to her?

  I went to the dining hall for lunch, then read in the library until my afternoon class. That ended at 3:30 and I headed to the Union just in case Lindy and Tucker were still back at the room. Usually they went to Lindy’s apartment, but I didn’t know if Tucker’s injuries would change that pattern.

  Summer and Tesh sat at The Table with big mugs of tea and books spread out in front of them. Only Tesh was actually looking at an open book. Summer spotted me as soon as I walked through the front doors and waved me over. Her black hair was just long enough to pull into a tight, high ponytail, which made her welcoming grin dominate her round face. As I sat down, Tesh closed her book and widened her smoke-blue eyes expectantly.

  “How’s Tucker?” she asked.

  “Bruised and angry, but she seems pretty good otherwise.”

  “I wish I’d been able to see her pepper spray those assholes,” Summer said. She was still smiling as she said it, which made her look a little crazy.

  I shouldn’t have been surprised that they had the whole story less than twenty-four hours after it happened. News traveled with dizzying speed in the LGBTQIA group—it was worse than my high school.

  “Those fuckers. They found them and they’re already out of their dorm rooms,” Summer continued. “And they’re banned from campus, on top of the assault charges. If they even try to show up around here, they’re screwed.”

  I raised an eyebrow at her.

  “Someone posted their pictures online,” Tesh told me. She didn’t have to add that the someone was probably Summer.

  “Don’t you think that could backfire?” I asked.

  “How?”

  “Because they attacked Tucker as a trans woman. I’d be worried that some people might actually side with them.”

  “Shit,” Summer said. “That’s messed up. Anyway, the post is just about two guys jumping a woman outside the gym, it doesn’t have the details.”

  “But it will,” Tesh pointed out. “You know those girls who’ve been harassing her will be all over it if they find it.”

  I felt sick inside. The hazy, terrified sensation of last night returned and it reminded me that I was running on three hours of sleep.

  “If there’s news online about an assault on campus, I should go let my folks know not to worry,” I told the two of them. “Even though they know I’m the last person to be caught coming out of the gym, since I never go into it.” I shouldered my bag and headed for the door.

  Back in my room I wrote a quick email to my mom and dad letting them know that I was doing fine. I didn’t mention the assault on campus, but I gave enough detail of the last few days that if they did see it, they would know it wasn’t me.

  I slept for a bit and woke around dinnertime, but I didn’t want to go to the dining hall or the Union. I had enough food to make a dinner for myself and if I didn’t turn on the lights and worked by the glow of my laptop, I could pretend I wasn’t there even if someone knocked on my door.

  * * *

  Shen and Johnny were always happy to see me in the gaming room in their dorm, so I spent Wednesday night there. The loudness of the room was a buffer against my thoughts and I knew none of the topics that could come up in conversation would have anything to do with Tucker or anti-trans attacks or me.

  When I came in, Shen and Johnny shoved themselves apart on the couch and invited me to sit between them. Johnny insisted it was so I’d have the best view of the TV screen. The two of them were nearly inseparable. They had most of their classes together, took meals together, roomed together and as far as I could tell, worked out together when they managed to actually make it to the gym.

  Not that I’d been stalking them, but it was pretty easy to pick u
p their movements—in the gaming room, their conjoined twins status was legendary and spawned a variety of jokes ranging from pooping together to the notion that they’d have to date the same girl if they were ever going to get any action.

  Apparently this idea occurred to them too because that night when Johnny went to get more pop, Shen asked, “Do you study in the library?”

  It took me a minute to realize he was asking me because he was still looking at the TV screen.

  “Sometimes,” I told him.

  “So do I,” he said. “Mostly on Wednesdays and Thursdays.”

  I waited but he didn’t say anything else. Was he inviting me to come study with him?

  “Do you prefer to study alone?” I asked.

  “It’s good to have someone to talk to during study breaks,” he said. “Unless you prefer to study alone.”

  “Oh no, I’m a social studier.”

  That sounded stupid to me so I tried to come up with something else to say, but then Johnny came back and I thought that maybe Shen didn’t want him to know about the study…date?

  Chapter Eight

  Tucker

  The days after getting jumped outside the gym seemed to Tucker like one long chorus of: “Holy [noun of your choice], what happened to your face?”

  The most common answer she gave was, “Two guys tried to beat me up for being trans and I pepper sprayed the shit out of them.”

  The trip to the health center confirmed that she hadn’t fractured anything in her cheek or shoulder, and she didn’t have a concussion. The school had discovered the guys who’d attacked her about ten minutes after she called the incident in. They were still on the ground outside the gym when a passing coach found them coughing and whimpering. Long story short, the two of them weren’t going to Freytag anymore. Pat didn’t dispute the charge that he’d shoved Tucker up against the wall, only said that it was necessary because she was creeping around to look at his girlfriend. That didn’t fare well as an excuse.