by Ami Polonsky
Now we were sitting around our dining room table—me, Mom and Dad, Essie and Walter. Essie seemed … on edge. Lucy would say to just ask her if she was okay, but that was obviously impossible.
I took a bite of Mom’s famous cornbread (you totally couldn’t even taste the quinoa flour in it) and nudged Essie, trying to cheer her up. “Hey,” I said, “a smile?” I turned it over. “Or a bridge?”
Her face calmed, like she was grateful for the diversion. I wanted to put my hand on hers the way Mom or Dad would do for each other; I wanted to ask her what she was thinking about.
She seemed to relax a little into her normal, perfect self, until Walter told Mom and Dad that he’d emailed the seventh-grade teachers about Essie missing the Friday before our already-way-too-long Thanksgiving break. Wait, was he serious? I mean, if Essie went home on the Friday before break, ten days would pass without us seeing each other, which was an entire day more than nine days, which was already an eternity. I felt … deflated. And anxious, actually. Because, I realized, obsessing over Essie when she was close by was one thing. Obsessing about her when she was all the way in Saint Louis would be a different thing entirely.
DAY 65
Since Lucy and Savannah would have told me to go for it, even though it was probably too early for Essie to be up, I breathed in for four, held it for seven, exhaled for eight, and texted her: Hey Es.
An hour or so later (not that I was watching my phone obsessively for the three little dots), she texted back: Hey Ol.
DAY 66
Damien peered over my shoulder to examine my progress on the butterfly-hands. Personally, I thought it was coming along nicely. As I’d been working, I’d been thinking about Essie: editing the information about the march and doing homework with her the night before; sitting next to her on my bed; the electromagnetic pulses (that I was pretty sure were coming from both me and her) meeting between us, turning the red and blue electricity into purple flames. Her long, wavy hair; perfect, tiny freckles; the way she locked her eyes on mine and didn’t turn them away.
“Hey, if you use that narrower chisel, you’ll be able to get a better line between the fingers,” Damien suggested, bringing me back to his and Annabella’s basement.
“Cool,” I said, swapping chisels.
Damien was right; the narrower chisel was way better. I carefully slid the blade between the fingers, peeling out thin curls of wood.
Back home, I sat at the kitchen table and watched Mom stir something on the stove. “Hey, Mom?” I asked. “What do you think of this: A poster contest for the Thankful for Pride event? The winner’s art will become our logo and be blown up and displayed on all the signs at the march.”
“Huh,” Mom said thoughtfully. “I’m just wondering: GLOW is such an inclusive group. Does it have to be a contest? How about something a little less exclusive?”
I thought Mom’s comment was dumb. If it were last year, I would have listened to her anyway. But now, at least when it came to this contest, I didn’t feel like it. Why did I ask her opinion, anyway? Maybe it was just habit. I rolled my eyes at her back. “Sure, I’ll think about that,” I told her, knowing that I wouldn’t.
DAY 67
DAY 68
“Why does it have to get dark so early?” I moaned as Mom pulled out of the driveway. “It’s not even five thirty. This is so depressing.” My phone buzzed. I checked it quickly, hoping it would be Essie, but it was just a picture from Savannah of her and Lucy at volleyball.
“It’s the worst,” Mom agreed, heading toward the grocery store. “Anything new at school?”
“Nah, the usual.”
“You still liking stage combat?”
“It’s amazing,” I told her, thinking of the special bruise-making makeup Ms. Wigg had shown us the day before.
“It’s not interfering with GLOW, is it?” Mom went on.
“Mom—” I started, annoyed. She glanced at me, and in the intensity of her fake calm look, I saw years of her anxiety about whether being nonbinary was going to make life extra challenging for me. I knew she just wanted me to be okay. Better than okay. She wanted me to be confident and happy. But I didn’t feel like explaining to her that if Essie understood that I could juggle everything, couldn’t she? “No, it’s all fine.”
She nodded. “Hey, you never told me what you ended up doing about the contest idea.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“For the Thankful for Pride event.”
“Yeah, we’re doing it. Ms. Rose thinks it’ll be great.”
“Huh, I thought you were considering not doing a contest because it’s so exclusive?”
“I think that was you, Mom.”
“Maybe you’re right,” she said, turning into a parking spot at the store.
“I’m definitely right.”
DAY 69
I sat at the dining room table, picking at my lentil salad (really, Mom? Lentil salad?), watching Mom and Dad. He poured her more water; she picked a lentil off his shirt collar (really, Dad?). I tried to remember: What had life been like before I’d come out as nonbinary, back when I hadn’t minded being labeled a “girl who likes boy things”? Before Mom and Dad had become so involved? Max had been home, so things were louder. Good louder. Lucy had been my BFF. Obviously. There had been less thinking about gender. More being.
I helped Mom and Dad clear the table when we finished eating, and went to my room to do homework and email Ms. Rose about the T-shirts that GLOW had decided on for the march, but I couldn’t focus. I turned off my lights to see if my glow-in-the-dark solar system had collected enough energy in the past few minutes to shine, which it hadn’t. So I turned the lights back on, still wondering: What had life been like before? And, had everything changed because I’d come out? I opened my laptop. Googled Rumble Peak Amusement Park. My fingers just moved, typing the words into the search bar like they were on a Ouija board.
I clicked over to images: The Ogre, Fortifly. And the gentler attractions. The ones a wimpy fourth grader might go on: the merry-go-round; the giant net—a house-size hammock—dotted with happy, climbing kids. It was like a part of my brain was actually trying to force me back there. To Addison Miller. To that day at the beginning of fourth grade.
I shut the computer and leaned back on my pillows.
Why was I doing this to myself?
DAY 71
Essie was waiting for me at my locker after school. “Hey, Ollie,” she said in that way of hers, her eyes glued to mine, like I was the only person in the entire world.
“Hey, Essie.” She had this one strand of hair that was hanging kind of crookedly over her forehead. Man, I wanted to reach out and move it. Tuck it behind her ear for her. Keep my hand there, on the side of her face.
It seemed like she was trying to get up the courage to say something. “What’s up?” I asked her, hoping she’d interpret my words in their translated form: You can tell me anything.
“Nothing much,” she replied, her eyes still on mine. Was she sending me a secret message? Was it the same as my secret message to her? If it was, if I could tell her anything, what would it be?
It would be the story of what happened at Rumble Peak, in fourth grade.
I still felt like I’d messed up back then; I’d been too-much-Ollie. Impulsive, overly trusting. Stupid. Whatever. Annabella had spent months telling me how universal my “mistake” had been.
I wanted Essie to think I was perfect, and I also wanted to tell her what had happened. But I couldn’t. I didn’t have the right words. “Want to come over and do homework? I’ll teach you the secret rice crispy treat recipe.” I wiggled my eyebrows.
She laughed. “Yeah,” she said. “That sounds perfect.”
DAY 76
It had been raining for days. I found a mostly broken turquoise umbrella in the black hole, aka the front closet. “Bye, Dad!” I called over my shoulder.
“Later, dude,” he said from the couch. “Send Lucy my regards!”
&
nbsp; I stepped over puddles as I tried to approximate how many times I’d walked this route to Luciana’s house in my lifetime. She and I had met in kindergarten and immediately become best friends. I’d walked to her house at least once a week since then, at first with Mom, Dad, or Max; eventually on my own. What was six and a half years times fifty-two?
“Hey,” I said when Lucy opened her front door and took my umbrella, “something popped into my mind as I got to your driveway. Remember roofball?”
“Random,” she said. “Obviously.” Lucy’s house had an awning that was perfect for the game we’d played constantly in third grade. “Minus ten for gutter balls, remember?”
“Right! We should play again,” I suggested.
She looked at me like I had two heads. “Yeah. Sure. Maybe when the rain stops. Hey, want to borrow one of Diego’s sweatshirts?” she asked me, eying my damp fleece.
“Maybe?” I said, laughing.
We sat on the couch and turned on the TV. I kept thinking about roofball. Luciana was crazy smart; loyal; a chess master … But coordinated? Not so much. Back in third grade, the girl couldn’t catch a ball to save her life until we (okay, I) invented roofball as a way to teach her how. I was always teaching Lucy things back when we were little—how to tie her shoes, how to make friendship bracelets. In kindergarten, I actually taught her how to blow her nose.
But then in fourth grade, everything just … shifted. She became the one in charge, the one taking care of me.
DAY 78
It was weird how drastically my relationship with Lucy had changed in fourth grade, and it was also weird that it had basically taken me three years—and, maybe, Essie’s arrival—to see the big picture.
The big picture was kind of like realizing that the butterfly and hands were actually the same object—something that I’d had to remind Annabella and Damien of the night before when they’d gotten into a fake fight about what my almost-finished butterfly-hands really was. It’s a butterfly, Annabella had said, squinting at it.
Hands, Damien had quickly countered.
It’s actually both, dummies, I’d told them. That’s the point.
They’d looked at me, impressed, like I was some kind of brilliant philosopher.
After school, I hopped up on the stage and dug through Ms. Wigg’s bin of props. She had restocked the blood capsules, which for some strange reason (sarcasm) had disappeared really quickly.
“Here,” Franco, an eighth grader, said, handing me a “blood-soaked” bandana. “Tie this around your head.” He added a stage-makeup cut to my cheekbone. I looked in the mirror. Awesome, I thought.
“Bewilder your audience!” Ms. Wigg reminded us (again) as we “beat each other up” on the stage. I swung my fist into Franco’s face and then gut. He doubled over before spitting out a mouthful of fake, bloody teeth.
Was this heaven?
DAY 81
My phone buzzed. Have a good T-Giving Superperson, Essie had texted. I couldn’t believe this perfect human being, who was so sure that I could do anything, was leaving me for ten days. I thought about Lucy’s advice: Just tell her what you’re feeling.
I’ll miss you so much, I typed.
Then deleted it.
I want to tell you about when I was in 4th grade & I came out as nonbinary even tho it’s not even a good story lol, I wrote and deleted that, too.
Essie wouldn’t think that what had happened at Rumble Peak was a huge deal. She definitely wouldn’t think that I had done anything wrong. And I hadn’t—I knew that.
I flopped onto my bed. Finally, I didn’t force out the memories.
Addison and I had been climbing around on the giant hammock-net while some of our less wimpy friends, like Lucy, had gone on the roller coasters. The hammock had been swaying and rocking in a way that was just the right amount of scary. Addison, who’d had a streak of chocolate ice cream in her long blond hair, had climbed to the highest point on the net.
She’d called my name—the name that totally didn’t fit me, that I used to go by. I’d glanced up at her, contemplating the climb. “Get up here, girl!” she’d encouraged.
And even though prior to that day, I’d been okay with a “girl who likes boy things” label, there was something about the way that Addison said girl in that moment that made me positive that it didn’t fit. I’d made my way up to where she was waiting.
“I’m not a girl,” I’d told her when I’d gotten to the top, all of Rumble Peak spread beneath us. “Call me Ollie, ’kay?” It was no big deal; Max had given me the nickname when I was a baby, and my family had been using it for years.
“Okay,” she’d said, studying my face. It had felt like a relief, telling her. But once we’d climbed down, she’d run straight to Charlotte and Mia—two girls I’d been avoiding for the past three years—to tell them what I’d said.
The fallout was typical. Lots of looks from my classmates; too many questions from kids who had never had questions for me before that day; the teachers intervening, looking at one another like they didn’t know how to talk to me about what I’d said. I hadn’t understood what the big deal was. Annabella, who I hung out with all the time, had been born with what most people thought of as a “girl’s body,” but they weren’t a girl. When Lucy had found me, she’d wrapped her arm around me. I can still remember standing with her, looking up through the giant net, to the sky.
I’d come home from Rumble Peak crying.
“Everyone’s got a story of being outed, Ol,” Annabella had said, stroking my short hair, when Mom and I had gone to their house and told them the story. “Welcome to the club.”
DAY 88
DAY 92
I avoided the puddles dotting the sidewalks as I rushed to school. I couldn’t wait to see Essie. Ten days apart had been almost unbearable, which made it unavoidable to focus on what I’d been trying to ignore for months: In three weeks, she’d be gone.
When she’d been away, I’d started to worry that the distance between us might have somehow broken our bond or snuffed out our electromagnetic charge, and I needed to see her to confirm that we were still cosmically connected.
Up ahead, I spotted her purple fleece and long, blowing hair. She was sitting on the stone steps, backpack on her lap, like she was waiting for someone. I approached her, and a huge smile spread across her face. She stood up. She was waiting for someone. Me.
The frame of the open doorway inside of me caught fire. I wanted to hold her hand. “Hey,” I said, instead.
“Hey!”
“How was home?” Saying that word—home—made me feel like crying. I wanted this to be Essie’s home.
She shrugged, studying my eyes. “It was … weird.”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“My parents are getting divorced. My dad is staying here next semester.”
I didn’t know what to say. I mean, I knew what I wanted to say: I want you to tell me everything you’re feeling. But putting myself out there like that was obviously impossible. So I told her, “I’m really sorry. That totally sucks.”
DAY 93
It was December 1, so I’d spent my entire day in a panic. Not because the march was just a few days away, but because it was officially the month that Essie was leaving. There was suddenly so much that I cared about, when last year it had just been GLOW.
Mom passed the salad. “Have you eaten any vegetables today?” she asked, smiling at me.
“Do potato chips count?”
“Definitely,” Dad said.
Mom laughed. “So tell us everything that’s happening with GLOW. Is there anything I can do to help with the march?”
“No, I’ve got this, Mom,” I quickly replied.
She and Dad exchanged a look. But it was true: I was totally set. Ms. Rose and I had made our final checklist after school and everything was in place. I imagined myself walking behind the decorated Pride float, next to Essie. In my daydream, we were holding hands. “You know,” I said, poking at a tomato with my fork
, “you guys don’t have to come to the march if you don’t want to.”
“Don’t be silly!” Mom said. “You’ve put so much into this. How could we possibly miss it?”
Dad looked from her to me. “Ol, the Sociology Department is sponsoring the event, remember?” he said.
“Yeah, that’s true.”
He reached over and rubbed my hair. “We’re so incredibly impressed with you. Through this event, you’re doing so much for so many people. You know that, right?”
I smiled and nodded, because I did.
DAY 95
I found Ms. Wigg behind the auditorium curtain after school, digging through a bin of costumes. Zoey, Franco, and a few others were already on stage drizzling “blood” onto rags.
“Hey, Ms. Wigg,” I said. “I can only stay for about fifteen minutes today. We have an after-school GLOW Club meeting,” I explained.
“Oh, right! The march is tomorrow! I’ll be there.”
“Sweet,” I said.
“Hey, can you gather the troops? I want to talk to you guys about the spring performance.”
I sat on the stage between Zoey and a new seventh grader named Avi as Ms. Wigg promised everyone that they could return to soaking cloths with fake guts in just a few minutes.
“After winter vacation, we’ll start prepping for the April performance,” she explained. “We’ll break into small groups and write our own skits that incorporate stage combat. The show will consist of a series of mini-plays.”
“That sounds so sweet,” Zoey whispered.
I agreed.
“We’ll need to make some scheduling changes, though,” Ms. Wigg went on. “A once-a-week meeting won’t leave us enough prep time. So starting in January, we’ll meet until four thirty on a rotating schedule, three days a week.”