by Ami Polonsky
I smiled, thinking of a hammock hanging from a September tree and how I kind of definitely wanted to kiss Ollie. And then thinking of whether it should matter to me that I wanted to kiss someone who was nonbinary. I mean, if Ollie and I kissed, them being nonbinary wouldn’t matter matter. But it would matter, because it was who they were. And, more important, because it would mean something about who I was.
“Will the warden let you out tonight?” they asked.
“Only after I clean the bathroom floor with a toothbrush.”
“Scrub quickly and meet me at eight?”
“Deal.”
85 DAYS LEFT
84 DAYS LEFT
It was eleven fifteen on Saturday night. I couldn’t sleep. The streetlight outside my bedroom window cast a wavering glow onto my wall. Shadows of branches danced like weird, willowy people over my head. I looked at the completed tally sets on my wall. They didn’t mean what they used to. My time in North Carolina was one-fourth over.
I thought of how, back at Jak’s, Marianne had addressed me, Ollie, and Dad as “fellow humans.” If we were all just people and gender didn’t exist for me or Ollie, would we have kissed in the hammock? The view of the moon through the tree branches had been perfect. Our shoulders had pressed together as we’d lain side by side. The backs of our hands had been touching. The zaps had become a force field surrounding us.
What were the zaps, anyway? I wondered. They felt like electric beginnings or effervescing doors, rimmed in rows and rows of twinkling fairy lights and constructed of glowing specks of warm, North Carolina air. In my mind, when I’d reach for the doorknob, the lights would rain down into a carpet of red and gold leaves and radiant sunlight. The door would disappear.
And Ollie would be standing there.
And I’d ask them: Can you feel it, too?
I got my phone. Ollie had texted at 10:51 P.M.: You up?
83 DAYS LEFT
The sun was lowering behind the swings at the park. Ollie and I had walked to Jak’s for ice cream. Now, as we pumped our legs in unison, I tried to visualize Ollie playing on the jungle gym in front of us when they were a little kid. How did they look as a five-year-old? A ten-year-old? Even though Ollie had told me they used to be okay with a “tomboy” label, I realized how much I didn’t know about them. Did they ever have long hair? Wear “girls’ clothes”? Would they be okay with me wondering these things? Or should I just think about who they are now?
“Essie?” Ollie interrupted my thoughts, and I turned to them quickly. The sun created a halo around their hair. Every strand was illuminated. “Want to…” Do something? About the zaps? “… come to the spinny-spin with me?”
“What’s a spinny-spin?” I asked, laughing, jumping off my still-swinging swing.
“That thing.” They pointed to the royal-blue, rotating playground structure that had probably made a bunch of kids puke over the years. “Spin with me?” They jumped off their swing. Landed by my side. Held out their hand.
I took it.
On the spinny-spin, I lay on my back, my head in the center of the rusted, sandy circle. Ollie ran it around, jumped on, and rested their head beside mine. They looked at me.
Above us, the darkening sky whirled in circles. I knew the kiss was coming, but instead of feeling excited, I started to feel … panicky. Because the truth is, you can never know for sure how someone feels about you. I mean, it definitely seemed like Ollie liked me, but how could I know for real? Mom and Dad had probably really liked each other once, too. And Mom and I had been so close until she’d basically decided that I was “all grown up.”
I searched Ollie’s face in the dying light for the blue of their eyes as thick air seemed to weave a cocoon through the spinny-spin’s rails. Inside the cocoon, it seemed safer, a place where I wouldn’t have to worry about whether anyone’s feelings were for real. So I pulled myself in, just as Ollie kissed me.
82 DAYS LEFT
My alarm chimed, and I felt frantically beneath my covers for my phone. I scanned my texts. Again. Still nothing.
The stretch of tallies over my bed had seemed to be rushing toward December just the day before. Now my eyes drifted to the white space to the right of the marks; I still had three months left. I opened my Sharpie and made my twenty-ninth line. For the first time in weeks, I wanted to go home.
It was clear that, on Ollie’s end, something was wrong; the kiss had obviously been weird for them, too. I’d only been able to focus on the warm, humid cocoon. There had been no electric charge on that frayed wire inside of me, the way there’d been when I’d first seen Ollie. And every second of every day after that. There’d been no zaps. No force field.
And besides, now that we’d kissed, I couldn’t stop wondering: If Ollie was nonbinary and I liked them, what did that make me? Partly it made me annoyed to have to think about it. I was just me, just-Essie. But also, what was my label?
It was as if, with all the emotions I had, there was no room left in my brain for words. Half of me was desperate to see Ollie at school, and the other half dreaded it. Savannah and Luciana would definitely know that something had happened. When I saw Ollie, everything would feel strange and wrong.
In the end, it didn’t matter, because they didn’t show up.
* * *
After school, I texted Emily.
Hey Em we kissed. Things r weird. I rly like them. Also what does this make me. Like what is my label?
She was probably at soccer; she didn’t respond.
81 DAYS LEFT
At school the next day, I watched for Ollie as I walked through the halls. Did I want to see them? Avoid them? I didn’t know. I was aware of my every move. Each second of the morning, I stood in Ollie’s shoes and looked at myself. Was the way I walked stupid? How about the way I picked up my backpack?
I finally saw them in the hallway between third and fourth periods. They looked away quickly as we approached each other, but then smiled at me. Forced? Fake?
“Hey,” they said, stopping amid students pushing their way to classes.
“Hey.”
Then, like nothing had happened, they half said, half asked, “See you at lunch?” and walked away.
I stood, frozen, in the current of people, watching them go.
So this was how it was going to be; we were going to pretend nothing had happened. Pretend that we hadn’t kissed. And I was going to pretend that whatever my label was didn’t matter? (Did it matter?)
GLOW was meeting at lunch, and as we sat around the table, I struggled to focus. Ollie was talking about an idea they had come up with: a GLOW event sponsored by the university’s Sociology Department, on campus, the week after Thanksgiving. “A Thanksgiving Thankful for Pride event!”
“That’s such a great idea,” Luciana told Ollie. They smiled at each other.
I agreed. And I loved watching advocate-Ollie talk about it.
But I also missed just-Ollie. Just-Ollie from the hammock, three days before we’d kissed, moonlit, hand against my hand, pointing to the stars overhead.
79 DAYS LEFT
78 DAYS LEFT
After school, I texted Dad that I couldn’t do “Indian Food Friday” with him. After lunch, Ollie had invited me over to plan for the Thankful for Pride event. They’d gotten a haircut. I’d wanted to touch the extra-spiky soft hairs beneath the long strands that were falling over their eyes.
Waiting on the front steps, I tucked my phone into my backpack as Luciana and Savannah approached me. “Hey!” they said, both zipping up against the cold-for-North-Carolina breeze.
“You’re coming to Ollie’s, too, right?” Savannah asked.
The world tilted, then righted itself. “Oh, right.” I guess it was stupid of me to have thought it was going to be just the two of us.
I wondered, again, what Luciana and Savannah knew about me and Ollie. I was sure that, at the very least, Ollie had told Luciana everything. But, if Luciana knew things were awkward, she wasn’t letting on.
&
nbsp; Above us, the arched doors opened and Ollie came down the steps to where we waited. I watched them. Would they smile at me first? Keep pretending everything was normal? I tried so hard, but I couldn’t read their face.
77 DAYS LEFT
76 DAYS LEFT
Dad poked his head into my room. I was stretched out on my bed, my Spanish textbook next to me, unopened.
“Hey, Es, I’m running to the mailbox on the corner. Join me? It’s a gorgeous night.”
“Nah,” I replied. “Too lazy.”
“Okay. I’ll be back in ten.”
The front door clicked shut. Even though I hadn’t really done anything, I was tired from the day. From my thoughts. About Emily, who had clearly told Beth and Ava what I’d told her not to tell. About Beth and Ava, who were just … Beth and Ava. And about Ollie and how we were pretending everything was normal when it definitely wasn’t.
I assessed my tally marks and the space surrounding them. If we were repainting in December, we may as well repaint the entire wall. I got up and grabbed a pencil from my desk. Carefully, I began to sketch two trees, as high as my head, an empty hammock between them, stars, and a cratered moon overhead. I wanted to re-create the moment in the hammock when we’d almost kissed. The moment where Ollie had seemed most completely like just-Ollie. And where, just three days before hiding away in the cocoon on the spinny-spin, I’d felt most like just-me.
“That adds a nice touch,” Dad said, startling me. I hadn’t even heard him return.
“Geez, Dad,” I said, looking from him to the sketch on my wall. “You scared me.”
75 DAYS LEFT
After school, I walked to the campus bookstore. The back wall was a patchwork of Post-it notes and pens. Paradise. I took out the two twenties that Dad had agreed to give me and paid $29.99 for a massive pack of colored Sharpies. If I was going to do this, I was going to do it right.
Back home, I sketched hundreds of leaves in varying shades of green and shaded half of one thin tree trunk until my hand ached.
I felt like talking to someone about Ollie and how things were too nice, pretend-normal with them.
And I felt like talking to someone about myself.
I scrolled through old texts with Emily. With Ava and Beth. I even scrolled through the Seventh-Grade Girls Chat. And I scrolled through texts with Mom: What an exciting adventure; I’m so impressed with your independence. Take advantage of every moment!
I didn’t feel like talking to or texting with anyone from home.
Dad came back from teaching and popped his head into my open doorway. “Nice mural,” he commented, pushing his glasses up onto his nose before heading off to bustle around the kitchen and figure out dinner. Not that there was anything wrong with Dad, but I definitely didn’t want to talk to him about stuff like … this.
I looked at my texts with Savannah and Luciana, knowing that anything I said to them would go straight to Ollie.
And I scrolled through all of my texts with Ollie.
They were the one I wanted to talk to. But I couldn’t do that, and for the first time, I wished I were as bold as Mom thought I was.
73 DAYS LEFT
I wandered into the kitchen, where I slid my phone onto the cluttered counter. Dad was on his laptop in the living room. “Hey,” I said to his back.
“Hey!”
“So I was just texting Mom,” I said.
He glanced over his shoulder at me. “Yeah? How’s everything?”
“Seems good.” I looked out the window at the blue siding of the house next door and asked him, “Has she called you recently?”
“No, not for a little while.” Labels were so annoying. But so useful. I wanted a label for my parents.
“Are you … I mean, is that okay with you?” I pressed.
He closed his laptop and turned to me. “Well, we’re both just super busy right now. More important, let’s talk dinner. I’m starving, and we’ve got nothing to eat. Should we try a pizza place that Marianne told me about? It’s called Pizza Pizza.”
I shrugged. Classic Dad. “Sure.”
70 DAYS LEFT
66 DAYS LEFT
64 DAYS LEFT
“I have excellent news!” Ollie announced at the GLOW lunch meeting. “My brother’s best friend from high school is Joey Chen. He works for the campus press that’s covering the Thankful for Pride march. Joey wanted to help us out, so he submitted our info to ABC News. Now ABC wants to do a thing on us, too!”
Everyone cheered. Grinning, Ollie held my gaze for an extra second. Electricity flickered in my veins.
“I bet we’ll get lots more members of GLOW now,” they continued. “We can publicize the fact that we’re going to be ‘famous.’ Everyone’ll want to join!”
Not that I’d say anything to Ollie about it, but I wondered about the types of people who would join GLOW just because they wanted to be on TV. And wait, Ollie had a brother? What else didn’t I know about them?
* * *
“This ABC News thing is fantastic,” Ollie said as we walked home. Again. “It’s going to work in our favor because it will get us new members, plus it will just be awesome. Maybe we should make another announcement Monday morning for the next GLOW meeting…”
I looked back and forth between Ollie and the sky; Ollie and the wind-blown branches; Ollie and everything. They talked on and on.
They seemed kind of … hyper. Or anxious. Or something. It wasn’t that I minded advocate-Ollie, but this was anxious-advocate-Ollie. I wanted to be with just-Ollie. I didn’t know where they were, and I missed them.
But if this Ollie—this kind of nervous, sort of unrecognizable one—was my only option, I’d settle for them in a heartbeat.
62 DAYS LEFT
I sat on my bedroom floor. My phone, with Emily’s blurred face filling the screen, was propped against the leg of my bedside table. “I specifically told you that I would tell Ava and Beth about Ollie and especially that I was wondering what this … how to label…” I felt stupid. “Why would you tell them when I’d told you not to?”
“I’m sorry, Essie. But it’s not like this has been easy for me, either.”
“It’s not like what hasn’t been easy for you?”
“I mean, my best friend leaves me for the semester, then tells me over text about all these changes going on with her…” She stopped.
“God, Em. I’m still me.” Saying it made me feel stronger, like light was starting to shine into the cracks of someplace dark.
Emily didn’t respond.
“And I told you not to tell,” I repeated, envisioning Ava and Beth. Beth, who was clearly weirded out and still hadn’t texted me back.
Besides, would who I liked determine some shifting label that I had to advertise? Even though I was still curious: If someone liked someone else who was nonbinary, what would that person’s label be?
“I’m sorry,” Emily said, but the way she said it made me feel like all of this was my fault.
“’Kay,” I said.
“Bye.”
“Bye.”
60 DAYS LEFT
Every teacher in the history of forever has insisted that you hang things on school walls with that blue sticky tack. Which is fine, except it doesn’t stick. Tuesday afternoon, Ollie, Luciana, Savannah, and I spent an hour hanging posters advertising GLOW and the Thankful for Pride news coverage (Ollie’s idea). Then we had to rehang them with contraband tape (the horror!) because they’d fallen down.
“OMG!” Ollie yelled dramatically when the four of us turned a corner to find yet another poster with blue sticky tack on its back lying on the ground.
We laughed.
I didn’t know if I should stay right by Ollie’s side, or give them space. I wanted to stay by their side.
Luciana and Savannah ran off to collect fallen posters. When they disappeared around the corner, Ollie and I sat on the floor in the dim hallway. They pulled the sticky tack off the poster and rolled it between their fingers as I made tape
loops to put in its place.
It seemed like they wanted to be with me. Like, right next to me. I could feel our force fields buzzing. But I didn’t know what to make of that anymore.
I did know that, by six o’clock, I was starving and tired. My stomach was sore from running through deserted halls after dangling and fallen posters, laughing.
The four of us walked toward campus and decided we should hold all future Thanksgiving Thankful for Pride meetings at Pizza Pizza. “We’d be so productive productive,” Ollie joked.
While we were there, I never once thought of Emily, Ava, Beth, Mom, or Dad. Only Ollie, Ollie, Ollie.
58 DAYS LEFT
Ollie had been right. Instead of fourteen people at Thursday’s lunch meeting, we filled an entire, long cafeteria table. I looked around it, counting. Thirty-three! A sixth grader named Maria said her parents had a flatbed trailer that we could probably attach to their minivan to make a float. An eighth grader had an aunt who worked at a clothing company and could get us cheap GLOW merch to wear to the march. March merch, I thought, just as Ollie said, “Awesome! March merch!” I caught their eye as if to say That’s what I was thinking!
They grinned at me. Swept their hair out of their eyes.
It was pretty clear that Ollie had been right about this membership thing after all.
They took down notes on their laptop, assigning tasks. They put one group in charge of making a video for the school’s website, another in charge of creating more posters.
I felt the energy. It made me feel powerful to be surrounded by “hate erasers.” Invincible. I’d never really been a part of a group on a mission to do something important before. Maybe it was because I’d been wondering about my own label, but either way, I understood advocate-Ollie a little better.