Just Girls

by Rachel Gold

  Johnny was still next to me on the platform and he yelled, “Is that fair?”

  “No!” the crowd bellowed.

  “Is that right?” he yelled.

  “No!” they yelled back with greater volume.

  “We gonna let that stand?”

  “No!” they screamed.

  The sound vibrated in my chest. I looked down at Shen, who stood next to the raised area, and he nodded. Then I glanced over at Tucker, her arms folded hard across her chest, her jaw tight. I could do this. It was just like any other time I came out, only a hundred times bigger and louder.

  When the sound of the crowd dropped enough, I raised my voice and said, “Tucker needs our help. And I need your help. I’m the student she came out to protect. I’m a transsexual woman.”

  A hundred different expressions of surprise came from the crowd and next to me Johnny said, “No way.”

  I held up my hands and the crowd settled a bit.

  “I transitioned in high school,” I yelled. It was a talk that felt familiar, just not on this scale. “And there are more and more women in the world like me. If you want more information on transsexualism, we have a flier with the basics and some good websites. It has my email on it so you can also ask me questions.”

  Shen was already moving through the crowd passing out stacks of the flier. I tried to channel some of Johnny’s bombast and yelled, “Tucker put herself on the line for me, now I need an army of kindness. Will you put yourself on the line for her and for me?”

  A cheer started in the back corner of the room near The Table. It wasn’t a whooping-style cheer, but a chant accompanied by clapping hands and stomping feet. In seconds the room was roaring: “Ella! Ella! Ella!”

  “Oh my God,” I said to Johnny.

  He grinned. “You’re doing great.”

  The cheer crested and as it started to fall, he raised his arms again. “Rules!” he shouted. “You will receive assignments. If you cannot perform these, you must email us right away. The flier you got also has a web address for a site we tossed up last night, so no dogging on the graphics. Please register with your game moniker. We will be tracking every act of kindness daily on our site. You may form teams of up to four individuals or you can play solo. We need escort details and a whole lot of people willing to protest the university’s bathroom and locker room policy. We will meet back here in a few weeks for pizza and awards.”

  He paused and drew himself up taller. “My friends, this is the most ambitious game we have ever played and the most impactful. I am proud to stand with all of you. Check in with Shen if you live on campus. Shen, wave. Check in with me if you live off campus. Let’s go change the world!”

  The group broke into chaos. Shen and Johnny sat at two tables next to each other and people lined up to register teams and get assignments.

  Tucker came over to me. “I think you might be out of your mind,” she said.

  “You’re welcome,” I told her.

  The denizens of The Table descended on us.

  “That was so cool,” Summer said. “You’re trans, I had no idea.”

  “That’s just because you haven’t seen my collection of trans rights T-shirts,” I joked.

  “I still wouldn’t know,” Cal put in. “But that’s not really a compliment, is it?”

  “No.”

  “You know we have a ton of really annoying questions,” Tesh said. “Do you want to just answer them all at once or tell us to stuff it and go do our own research?”

  I laughed. “I can answer questions. That’s usually what happens right after I come out.”

  I ended up sitting on top of The Table and answering questions for a group of about thirty-five students until the Union closed. Tucker and I walked back to our room together. She didn’t say much and I didn’t know what to ask her, but when we got to her door, she pulled me into a hug.

  “That was cool,” she said, her voice a little rough. She let go and went into her room before I could say anything.

  Chapter Twenty

  Tucker

  Tucker thought the rally in the Student Union was a great gesture and one of the best rallies, she’d ever seen, but she didn’t have faith in it doing much of anything. The LGBTQIA students had rallied a few times last year when Cal was the victim of someone painting “faggot” on his car door repeatedly. Nothing came of it.

  She loved that so many people showed up and seemed so into it. And when Ella came out, it was amazing to see the surprised looks on people’s faces and then to watch how many of them smiled or nodded, or quietly asked their friends a question and then nodded. At least a lot of students learned a few things about trans people.

  Tuesday morning when she opened her door to walk to history class, she was startled to see three students, one man and two women, waiting there. They were all wearing Freytag university shirts under their jackets with the university logo in white on dark blue.

  “Oh, hi,” she said.

  The guy stood up straight and gave her a light salute. “We’re your escort,” he said. He had Irish-style freckles and a lot of shaggy brown hair.

  She remembered Ella mentioning that, but it was buried under the general loudness of the evening.

  “Thanks,” she told him. “I’m just going over to history.”

  “It’s our pleasure to accompany you,” he said and he actually sounded sincere.

  He fell in next to her as they walked down the narrow hall and the other two trailed behind. He introduced himself as Kieran and gave the names of the other two, which she promptly forgot. Once they came out of the building onto the quad, the three students flanked her. She felt a little silly but also grateful.

  “I heard your team almost won the last game,” Kieran said.

  “That was mostly Ella,” Tucker told him. “I was just the cannon fodder.”

  “Not anymore,” he said.

  When they reached her history class she thanked them.

  “We’re not done,” Kieran replied. “We’re going to wait here for you. We’re your escort until noon.”

  “You three are going to follow me around for an hour after this class?”

  “Yes, unless you don’t want us to,” he said. “I hope that’s okay. We get a ton of points for it, plus it’s kind of awesome and secret agent-like.”

  She thanked him again and went in to her seat. It was mind-boggling and yet she kind of liked it. This morning was the first time she’d walked across campus in almost three weeks without feeling afraid.

  After class they were waiting for her in the hall. Kieran handed her a hot cup of coffee.

  “I texted Ella to get your preference because Sue wanted to make a Starbucks run,” he said. “It’s an Americano with cream.”

  “Okay, I could get used to this,” Tucker admitted.

  “Sweet, extra points,” he said and high-fived one of the women.

  Tucker gave Kieran a questioning look. He grinned sheepishly and told her. “We score more points if we can do favors for you.”

  They walked her to the cafeteria and sat a discreet distance away while she had lunch with Tesh and Summer. At noon a pair of people in dark blue university shirts came and spoke to the first group for a minute before taking over for them.

  “I’m Meryl,” said a woman on the new team with short hair dyed indigo and intense blue eyes. “How was your experience this morning?”

  “Actually kind of fun,” Tucker said.

  “Perfect. We’re your escort for this afternoon.”

  It went like that for a few days. Tucker met more of the team leads. There were nine escort teams of two or three students each and she was told other teams would be on call for the weekend if she needed them. Some of the students weren’t even from Freytag. Some were from a nearby community college and she heard that a few were from a local high school’s Gay-Straight Alliance. They brought her coffee and pop and silly toys until the whole thing really did feel like a game, but an unnecessary one except that it
did get her going to all her classes again.

  * * *

  It took two days for her to realize how much she needed them. On Wednesday afternoon when she was coming out of gender studies, she heard Lindy call her name. She froze and her heart raced ahead of her down the hallway. She took a few steps in that away direction, but her knees felt like they weren’t connected to her body and she had to put a hand out and touch the wall to make sure she knew how to keep standing upright.

  Behind her, she heard Lindy say, “What the fuck, get out of my way!”

  Tucker turned. Her escort team stood with their arms crossed, facing Lindy. The three of them blocked the hall. The one on the end uncrossed her arms long enough to pull out her phone and type a message.

  “I need to talk to you,” Lindy said to Tucker over Kieran’s shoulder.

  “No,” Tucker told her.

  “You people get the fuck out of my way,” Lindy said to the three blue-shirted guards.

  They didn’t respond. Lindy put her hands on two shoulders and tried to force them apart. Kieran and the woman next to him linked arms.

  “Please don’t touch us,” Kieran said.

  “Then get out of my way.”

  “She doesn’t want to talk to you. Please leave.” His voice was even.

  “Fuck you,” she said, but the commotion was drawing a crowd and Lindy turned on her heel and left.

  “We have backup at the north exit,” the woman who’d texted the message said. “Let’s move.”

  Tucker felt like she was playing the role of the president in a spy movie, but compared to the panic attack, it was a pretty fine feeling. They met two other blue-clad guys at the north door.

  “She left headed northwest,” one said.

  “Good,” Kieran told him. To Tucker he said, “Did we do all right?”

  “You did great. Thank you. That really was so much better than what could have happened.”

  They all grinned and insisted on walking her to the Union for a plate of garlic cheese bread.

  * * *

  That night Lindy came to her dorm room door and knocked on it, saying, “Please, Tucker, talk to me. We can resolve this.”

  Tucker’s gut told her that wasn’t what Lindy meant at all. With a sickening lurch in her belly, she wondered if Lindy wanted to get her alone to threaten her and then, if that didn’t work, to fire off more lies and accusations about Tucker attacking her.

  Tucker went into the bathroom and knocked on the door to Ella’s room. Ella opened it with her phone in her other hand.

  “I’m calling the cavalry,” she said.

  “You heard that?”

  “She’s not quiet.”

  A few minutes later they heard voices in the hall. Tucker recognized Lindy’s angry tones and then the calm but firm sound of the RA from the second floor.

  “She’s on a team?” Tucker asked.

  “Yes. Have you seen your scoreboard?”

  “I have a scoreboard?”

  Ella woke up her laptop and called up a website. It was rudimentary, but the biggest feature across the top was a scoreboard with a bunch of numbers. The measures were:

  Acts of kindness: 14

  Acts of protest: 6

  Acts of defense: 2

  Hours served: 57

  Letters written: 98

  Tucker pointed to “letters written.”

  “That’s the number of people who have themselves written or have caused to be written letters protesting the bathroom policy or asking the Dean of Students to take your complaints seriously and proceed quickly on them.”

  Below the scoring dashboard was a list of teams and individual nicknames that showed the top ten in each category in descending order. Down the right side were photographs of players. She saw teams and individuals posing in their university blue shirts. One in particular caught her eye: a person of indeterminate gender, dressed up in super femme attire, standing in a campus parking garage, holding a sign that said “Women Protect Women.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We let people design their own challenges and this is a senior in the Social Science department who’s choosing to protest at Vivien’s car every evening.”

  “How’s that going?”

  “Vivien pretends to ignore it, but I think it’s a pretty amazing statement. Plus it’s started to go viral.”

  “Do you think this will actually make anything happen?” Tucker asked. Then she thought about it and corrected herself. “Wait, that’s not the right question because things are already happening. I feel better. All the attention is kind of weird, but it feels awesome to be part of something big.”

  “And we just educated a lot of people about trans issues and they’re having a great time doing it. I’m about to add two online modules about transsexualism and feminism that players can study and take tests on for more points.”

  “I hope I pass!” Tucker said.

  Ella laughed. “You should help me design them. I’m glad you’re smiling again.”

  “Me too.”

  “What are you doing for the winter holiday break?” Ella asked. “Want to come down and stay with me for a bit?”

  “Emily and Claire invited me up to Minneapolis for a week or two,” Tucker said.

  She’d been texting and emailing with Claire almost every day since she told Claire everything that had happened, and Claire insisted that she should get away and come stay with them. It was exactly what she wanted to do. She just wasn’t sure she wanted to come back when the break was over.

  “You should totally visit them,” Ella said.

  Tucker looked at Ella, who had turned back to the computer screen. Ella would be the person she missed most if she didn’t come back, though maybe Ella wouldn’t feel the same now that she was spending so much time with Shen. If there was one aspect of her time at Freytag she wasn’t ready to let go of, that was Ella.

  “If it’s cool with Emily and Claire, do you want to come with me? If we left on that Sunday after classes end, you could bus up with me and stay a few days and still get back in time for Christmas.”

  Ella smiled. “I’ll ask Mom. Does it have to be the bus, though? Flying is so much faster.”

  Tucker shrugged because she had no idea what a one-way plane ticket cost and she didn’t want to commit to coming back.

  * * *

  In the end, Ella talked her into plane tickets. She said her mother had a bunch of frequent flier miles and she could get a ticket for free so she’d split Tucker’s and they could both fly for the cost of taking the bus. Tucker didn’t tell Ella that this was the first time she’d been in an airplane. Her mom had always said she thought flying would be too frightening, though Tucker figured she couldn’t imagine spending that much cash to get from one place to another.

  The takeoff was fun. Tucker liked feeling weightless and buoyant as the plane gained altitude. Ella chatted about the sights they could see in Minneapolis, particularly the huge mall and the science museum. Tucker was more interested in seeing Emily’s place and the University of Minnesota. It was a much bigger school than Freytag and Tucker wondered if she could disappear into it. She’d have to live in Minnesota for a year first to get the residency rate, but then she might be able to afford it if she had a job at the same time.

  Ella caught her staring out the window thoughtfully and she tried to remember what part of the conversation they’d been in. Without her at Freytag, Ella would be okay. The gamers would stick up for her and protect her from the mean girls, right?

  “What are you thinking?” Ella asked.

  “How cool it’s going to be for you to meet Claire and Emily. It’s cool, right? Not weird?”

  Ella smiled. “You mean the whole ‘Hey, meet my other trans friend’ thing?”

  “Yeah.”

  “If that was the only thing we had in common, that would be weird. But I kind of feel like I already know them, you know?”

  They landed and rolled up to the gate, and then Tuck
er had to wrestle Ella’s insanely heavy bag down from the overhead bin, followed by her lighter backpack. They were headed to the baggage claim, even though they had nothing to claim, because Claire said it was the best place to meet a ride. The Minneapolis airport was bigger, cleaner and brighter than Columbus, and Tucker hoped the whole city was the same way.

  In the baggage claim area, two women waved as soon as they saw Tucker. One was short, in a knee-length skirt with calf boots and a red sweater. Black hair spilled over her shoulders and her dark eyeliner made her eyes stand out starkly in her pale face. The other woman was tall with swimmer’s shoulders and a chin-length bob of brown curls. She had on jeans and a sapphire jacket over a cream-colored shell. They swept down on Tucker and folded her into a hug.

  “Claire, Emily, this is Ella,” Tucker said when they finally let her go. They both hugged her as well.

  “We’re so glad to meet you,” Claire said. “I feel like we know you already. Come on, you have so much to tell us.”

  “I want to hear about this game you set up,” Emily told Ella as they started walking.

  The four of them wove through the labyrinth of escalators and tunnels between the baggage claim and the parking garage to Emily’s gleaming silver Volvo station wagon that somehow looked old and new at the same time.

  “Our new place is so cool, it’s got a writing loft and everything,” Claire said as they drove. “And it’s just off a park, but this city has so many parks that’s not unusual.”

  They had the top of a duplex that included both the second and third floors of a house. The second-floor area held a living room and dining room joined by an archway, a kitchen and bath, and two bedrooms. The third floor was a large room with a desk for each of them and another, smaller bathroom.

  “We were going to put the master bedroom up there,” Emily explained. “But then we realized this way one of us can be working and the other one can watch TV without disturbing her.”