by Ami Polonsky
Ollie stood on the front porch, hands tucked in their coat pockets. The wind blew their hair sideways. Their face looked hard. I opened my mouth and then closed it.
“You won,” they said.
I nodded, wanting to be able to say so many things.
“How could you have just ditched me like that?” they went on.
I’d never seen Ollie like this.
“Was your poster why you didn’t … I mean, you knew how important the march was to me,” they went on. “We worked so hard on everything. How could you have just not come? I texted you, like, a thousand times.” Their eyes glistened as if they were trying not to cry. “Was it because of the poster?” they asked. “It was good. Was it us? It was us, wasn’t it?”
I didn’t want to be so stuck and silent. Not with Ollie standing right in front of me. I couldn’t find the words that I needed, so I reached my hand for theirs.
13 DAYS LEFT
It was suddenly as if time were moving in fast-forward. Ollie came over and we lay down on my floor, beneath the heart. “Ollie?” I asked, looking at the two of us in my mural. “Was it totally obvious to everyone?”
“Was what obvious?” they joked.
“Shut up.” I smacked their arm. Zaps flickered.
“Sorry. No, just to Luciana and Savannah. They know everything, anyway.” They nudged me. “You’ve got guts.”
I took a breath. “I’m so sorry,” I told them again. “I just couldn’t bear to see your reaction. To my…” I couldn’t finish the sentence, so Ollie finished it for me.
“To your heart?” they asked.
12 DAYS LEFT
I couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that Ollie thought I wasn’t a wimp. Because if I actually had guts, I’d say …
1. Do you feel zaps when you’re with me? I mean, I feel like you do, but
2. When we kissed, you didn’t, right?
3. Because I didn’t either. Why?
4. And, I want to kiss you again, because this time, I’m sure we’ll feel them.
After school, Ollie and I sat on my front porch steps even though it was cold—like actual, winter cold. According to weather.com, a snowstorm was coming.
“Get ready to see all of North Carolina shut down,” Ollie joked. “We’ll probably have a snow day tomorrow.”
I grabbed their phone from them to look at the weather report. “It’s only supposed to snow two inches!” I said.
“Just watch,” they told me, grinning.
11 DAYS LEFT
Sure enough, the next morning the call came that school was canceled. Dad came in to tell me the news.
“I can’t believe they’re closing school for two inches!” I said, looking out the window.
He laughed. “I know. Southern snowstorms. Coffee’s—” He cut himself off, still smiling slightly. “I’m going to get my coffee.” Then he added, “There’s a new hazelnut coffee creamer in the fridge that I thought we should try,” before disappearing into the kitchen.
I walked to Ollie’s that afternoon to “play in the snow.” There was only half an inch left by one o’clock, but still, playing outside was like being a kid. It was like labels didn’t matter—or at least, didn’t matter as much. I felt like the energy between Ollie and me was just an indication of having fun, not something that threatened to electrocute the world as I spilled a slushy “snowball” into their outstretched hand.
Next door, the front door opened and two adults emerged.
“I haven’t introduced you to Annabella and Damien yet, have I?”
“Nope,” I said.
“I’m Annabella’s mini me,” Ollie explained, waving.
Annabella wore a red coat and had long blond hair that was pulled into a low ponytail. Damien was bald with a red beard and lots of earrings.
“Annabella is nonbinary, pan…,” Ollie went on.
Pan? I thought of fried eggs and half-goats. Ollie read my mind as they dragged me across the lawn to introduce us.
“It means you could be attracted to anyone on the gender spectrum.”
“Oh,” I said, relieved. Could it really be so simple that that was my label? “Cool.”
10 DAYS LEFT
Dad, Marianne, Lillian-the-teaching-assistant, and another professor were having a work dinner, so Ollie’s dad was taking Ollie and me to dinner at Satter’s Platters, which, apparently, had the best guac in the universe. I didn’t understand the hype over avocados, but whatever.
“Lady and gentlemen, your menus,” the waiter said, handing them to us and taking our drink orders (root beers all around).
Ollie subtly rolled their eyes at me in response to the waiter’s greeting, and then leaned over and pointed to the roast duck on my menu. “Roast rabbit?” they asked, giggling.
“Oh, did you remember to feed your duck before we left?” I asked, cracking up.
Their dad tried not to smile.
I wondered how it felt to be Ollie. When I saw someone, I always noted their gender first. How would it feel to not be a “boy” or “girl”? I stood in their shoes (black Converse high-tops—so Ollie). Would I feel angry? Misunderstood? Better-than? Or just aware—always aware?
9 DAYS LEFT
Thursday night, Ollie knocked on the front door after dinner, a plastic bag and flashlight in hand.
“What is—” I started to ask, but they held up their hand.
“Patience, young Jedi.”
In my bedroom, they emptied a pile of glow-in-the-dark stars and a moon from the bag. “I picked these off my ceiling. You’re welcome,” they said, smiling. “I know you’re leaving soon, but I still wanted you to have them.” Then, standing on my desk chair, they added the stars to the inside of my heart and hung the moon. When they shone the flashlight onto the mural and turned off the light, the wall literally glowed.
“That’s so awesome,” I said, taking Ollie’s hand. I wanted to say so many things, but all I could do was feel the energy rocketing through my body. “Thank you.”
8 DAYS LEFT
“I have a department event tonight,” Dad told me after school on Friday. “Sorry, hon. Can we have Indian-food Friday on Saturday?”
“Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m really sick of Indian.”
“Esther? Me too.”
“Why do we keep going?” I asked him.
“I thought you liked it.”
“I thought you liked it,” I said.
He shook his head, smiling. I was leaving in eight days. If I was going to talk to him and Mom about the idea I’d had, I was going to have to do it soon.
7 DAYS LEFT
I started to wonder: What did it actually meant to not be a wimp? Maybe, kind of like when I’d talked to Mom over Thanksgiving, it meant asking someone to describe their butterfly. How else were you supposed to compare it to your hands?
On Saturday afternoon, Dad and I sat at the tiny kitchen table. He poured me some coffee (he’d insisted on decaf, since it was afternoon) and handed me the hazelnut creamer.
“Dad?” I said, taking a sip. “I have an idea and I don’t want you to say yes or no until I explain everything, ’kay?”
He looked confused. “Okay.”
I pulled out my phone to FaceTime Mom. When her face appeared (a dab of white paint on her cheek), I began to talk. “I want to propose something,” I told the two of them. “I don’t want to leave North Carolina. I want to stay here second semester.”
Neither of them said anything.
“That’s it,” I told them. “That’s my proposal. I mean, it doesn’t have anything to do with either of you. It’s just that I have these new friends here and I don’t want to leave them yet.”
Finally, Dad cleared his throat. “What do you think?” he asked Mom.
“Dad and I will talk,” Mom told me.
6 DAYS LEFT
It was suddenly warm again.
“My mom and I have been texting a lot,” I told Ollie. We were lying in A
nnabella and Damien’s hammock.
“Yeah? That’s awesome! Tell me more.”
“I don’t know. It feels different. In a good way. More like it used to back when I was in elementary school. It’s weird that she and I saw things so differently.” I put my thumbs together. “Butterfly…”
Ollie squeezed them. Their hands were so warm. “Hands.”
5 DAYS LEFT
Ollie and I were in their yard, watching Froggy sleep in a new hutch Ollie had made for her.
“Es?” Ollie asked nervously.
“Yeah?”
“What made you stop liking me? You know, after the spinny-spin.”
“What?” I asked, stunned. “I never stopped liking you.”
“I was worried that you weren’t attracted to me because I’m nonbinary.”
I could barely speak. “That was never it. Maybe I panicked?” I admitted, thinking of how I’d felt ditched by Mom. And how before she and Dad had told me about the divorce, at least I’d been able to hope that they would become more like Emily’s parents.
Now there was officially no hope.
“You know, it’s okay,” Ollie told me, reading my mind. “It’s okay to be sad.”
3 DAYS LEFT
For days, Mom and Dad had been looking into whether or not they could get a refund from my school in Saint Louis and whether or not, even if they could, it was a good idea for me to stay. The decision would be a last-minute one. Don’t get your hopes up, they continually reminded me.
Weeks before, Dad had bought a gallon of white paint, some brushes, and a drop cloth. They’d been sitting in the corner of my room, waiting. He didn’t want us rushing to paint at the last minute, so now Ollie and I stood together, paintbrushes in hand. Time was flying by. I most likely only had three days left.
2 DAYS LEFT
It was a cool, clear night. We were side by side, under the stars.
I turned to Ollie. “A while ago, I got an idea,” I told them.
They looked kind of nervous.
“I asked my parents if I could stay with my dad for the rest of the year. Here. Because it didn’t seem fair for them to uproot me twice in seventh grade, and why should I have to go home now? I don’t want to go home now.”
Ollie sat up eagerly. “And?” they asked quickly.
1 DAY LEFT
The hammock swung gently. Our force fields combined, doubling the electricity, and it was exactly like that night back in September, except that everything was different.
We turned to each other—just-Ollie and just-Essie. Smiled. I wondered: What would be left if all I had was this feeling, right now? What would exist for me if all the words were gone?
Nothing?
Our lips touched.
Or everything?
Zap.
PART 2
HANDS
DAY 1
Everything—everything changed when I saw her.
I’d been walking to my locker, psyching myself up with a you’re going to kill it with your mad combination-lock-opening skills pep talk when I’d glanced to my left … and spotted her. The new girl. Whoever had been behind me bumped into my back and my inner Ollie rolled their eyes at me. But I couldn’t move; I was powerless in her presence.
She was looking nervously from her schedule to the locker numbers, and it dawned on me: She’s probably Esther Rosenberg, the girl Mom had told me to introduce myself to.
But I didn’t. I couldn’t. All I could do was visualize this show Dad and I had watched on the science channel the night before. Lightning storms in space. Storm chasers in the ionosphere. I felt the blood pumping in and out of my heart in electromagnetic pulses, exploding like space lightning in bursts of blue and red.
DAY 2
“Spill it,” Lucy said, waving her hand in front of my face to get my attention.
“What?” I asked, turning to her and Savannah. They both burst out laughing.
Savannah packed her empty Tupperware into her lunch bag and turned around to see what I’d been staring at (who I’d been staring at) throughout lunch. “The new girl?” she asked, smiling.
Lucy looked over her shoulder. “Wait, you let her eat all by herself?” she asked. Esther was getting up from the back table to throw out her garbage.
“I didn’t … I mean, I couldn’t—”
“She’s nice,” Savannah interrupted, saving me from trying to explain this thing that I had no words for. “I met her in class yesterday. I’ll ask her to eat with us tomorrow, you wimp,” she joked. “Her name’s Essie.”
Essie.
DAY 3
“Hey, did you have a chance to introduce yourself to Esther?” Mom asked after school, poking her head into the living room, spatula in hand, as I fed a handful of pellets to Froggy who (a) still elicited bad memories, and (b) definitely wasn’t a dog.
“She goes by Essie, Mom,” I told her, more emphatically than I’d meant to.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” she said, looking at me curiously, before disappearing back into the kitchen to flip the fried tofu. (Really, Mom? Tofu again?)
I thought back to art and science. And to lunch. I’d watched from the doorway as Savannah had called Essie over, and she and Lucy had proceeded to introduce her to the world. They’d told her the name of each person sitting at our lunch table as I’d stared, starstruck.
“And that’s Ollie,” Lucy had finally said, smiling at me, once I’d built up the courage to join them. I’d felt a tightening pressure in my chest, like a hand clasping a doorknob.
DAY 5
DAY 6
“What’s the word on GLOW?” Mom asked, sitting down on the couch with me, pretending (failing) to be chill, which was how she always acted when talking about GLOW. I wondered why it hadn’t bothered me before.
“What do you mean?” I asked, looking from my algebra notes to my computer. Why did math have to exist?
“Is everything good to go?”
I closed my notebook and examined the creases on Mom’s forehead. They softened when I smiled at her. “Yup, good to go. Ms. Rose just sent me a link to the calendar. The weekly lunch meetings, after-school meetings, and my individual meetings with Ms. Rose are all set up through June.”
“Great!” Mom replied quickly. “Do you want to brainstorm any projects or initiatives together?”
I fought the urge to roll my eyes. I’d never minded Mom’s help before. But now “Initiative Number One” was: How to get Essie to join GLOW so I have an excuse to talk to her. “Nah, that’s okay,” I told Mom. “I’ve got this.”
DAY 8
DAY 10
“Bad news, Ollie.” Mr. Lee approached me at my locker (where I was slaying it with my combination lock. Sixth day in a row!). “I had to swap your math and P.E. classes. Scheduling snafu.”
I popped open my lock as he handed me a new schedule.
“You’re not upset with the change,” he noted, observing my smile.
“Nope,” I told him. “All good.” Because now I had gym with Lucy and Savannah. And Essie. I gathered my notebooks happily. Then all the synapses finally connected in my brain and I realized that gym with Lucy, Savannah, and Essie meant changing in the locker room with Essie.
Which might mean Essie thinking I was a girl.
And also? Changing in a locker room with your crush? Awkward.
DAY 15
“Hey! Want a job?” I asked Essie when she showed up at her locker, where I was waiting for her after school.
“Hello to you, too,” she replied, tucking her hair behind her ears. God, she was adorable.
“Please?” I fake begged (okay, actually begged). “We have approximately one billion posters to hang up.” I pulled the photocopied GLOW flyers out of my backpack and handed the stack to her.
She flipped through them. Looked back at me. I thought about how she’d misinterpreted my comment about Panda and Penelope last week. How she’s been overly eager to tell me she was cool with my gender. And how she seemed to
get that I wouldn’t have been hanging out with her if I didn’t think she was. “What are they for?” she asked.
“GLOW Club. Gender and Love Open-minded Warriors. We’re going to erase all the hate in the world.”
She nodded, not looking away. “I hate hate.”
The tugging feeling returned to my chest, like Essie’s hand tightening around the doorknob.
DAY 16
DAY 17
“Hey, mini me!” Annabella called out from my front porch, where they were drinking tea with Mom after school on Wednesday. I cut across the lawn and joined the two of them.
“Hey, hon!” Mom ruffled my hair as I reached for the plate of cookies.
“You guys having a tea party?” I joked.
“Nah, just gossiping,” Mom said.
“Anything good?”
“Well, the Acostas seem to be getting quotes on a new roof,” Mom told me.
“And Marta from around the corner neglected to pick up her dog’s poop. Again,” Annabella added.
I laughed, thinking of all the hours I’d spent on the porch over the past several years talking to Annabella. Unlike their conversations with Mom, we didn’t talk about our neighbors and dog poop. Instead, we mostly chatted about how it feels to be nonbinary—the challenges, the general awesomeness. Our gender journeys, as Annabella liked to call them, had been similar, except for two major differences, which were that when Annabella had been a kid, they hadn’t fully understood their gender, and they’d had to keep their identity a secret. Over the years, they’d told me a lot about a summer camp for queer kids where they’d worked, and how helping kids be themselves had also helped them.