LUCY NEWSOME: holy shit
LUCY NEWSOME: what did jonah say???
I look up, out the window. Bailey and Jonah have made it to the sidewalk. I expect to find them arguing, but they’re not. They’re holding each other, standing still in a flood of travelers. Bailey speaks a word that I sure hope is sorry; Jonah smiles as he says it, and smiles again when Bailey kisses his forehead. He pulls back, but only far enough to tuck a curl the color of cornsilk behind Bailey’s ear.
I want to feel disgusted, watching this reconciliation. I know that Bailey has done less than nothing to earn it. Instead, from my place in the backseat, I feel, once more, like a little kid. Like I’m looking into a world I’m years too young for. In this world, their world, you might fight with your partner, but you make up. You forgive one another. You’ve got your flaws; they’ve got theirs.
Then again, one of Jonah’s flaws may be this: He’s way too quick to forgive.
FINCH KELLY: He’s in love with Bailey, and I understand that, I do, but he lets Bailey get away with murder
FINCH KELLY: Bailey was being so rude and so racist, you wouldn’t believe it
LUCY NEWSOME: wow that sucks
FINCH KELLY: And then when I tried to jump in and defend Jonah, he got mad at ME? And I have no IDEA why
LUCY NEWSOME: i mean like
LUCY NEWSOME: maybe jonah didn’t want you to fight his battles for him?
LUCY NEWSOME: like i know you have a boner for jonah but that doesn’t mean you can just like. go in there and white knight and try to solve all his problems. ykwim
My breath hitches in my throat. Is Lucy right? Was I white-knighting for Jonah just now? Fighting his battles for him?
These are valid questions, but they’re quickly eclipsed by a more pressing one: Why does Lucy keep insisting that I’m in love with Jonah? I’m not! I’m not even gay! I’m definitely not driving a wedge between him and his boyfriend out of lovelorn jealousy.
Even if that boyfriend happens to be kind of a racist jerk.
FINCH KELLY: Okay, let’s get this straight: I do not have a “boner” for Jonah
FINCH KELLY: Technically speaking I’m incapable of truly having a boner for anyone until I get phallo. Or at least meta.
LUCY NEWSOME: lmaoooooooo you KNOW what i mean
LUCY NEWSOME: i don’t meant to put you on the spot here it’s just honestly like
LUCY NEWSOME: i’ve noticed this for a while! you’re like! weirdly jealous of bailey and jonah’s relationship!
LUCY NEWSOME: and now you’re jumping into their fights and getting super mad at bailey!
LUCY NEWSOME: i mean maybe for legit reasons but still!
I frown at her last message. I wonder: Does she have a point? And even if she does—even if I did stick my nose in a fight that was none of my business—doesn’t that pale next to what Bailey did? What he said?
FINCH KELLY: Look. Jonah is my friend. And I think he deserves a lot better than Bailey.
LUCY NEWSOME: oh hell ya i agree w u there
I lift my head. Jonah’s walking back to the car. He’s got his hands in his pockets, his head down, eyes on the pavement. It’s impossible to see his face. Impossible to tell if he’s happy, sad, angry. If he’s going to ream me out or tell me to just forget the whole ordeal.
Keeping my phone in my lap, I type:
FINCH KELLY: Gotta go. Jonah’s back. We are blissfully Bailey free for the rest of the day.
LUCY NEWSOME: good. crossing my fingers he dtmfa
FINCH KELLY: dtmfa?
FINCH KELLY: Was that a typo or does it stand for something?
LUCY NEWSOME: DUMP THE MOTHER FUCKER ALL READY
I smother a laugh and shove my phone into my pocket as Jonah opens the door on the driver’s side and sits down. “Hey. You okay?”
He doesn’t start the car. His hands are on the wheel: tight grip, white knuckles. “I need a minute,” he says, his voice tight.
“. . . Sure,” I say. A flicker of fear burns through me. He’s angry. That much is clear. But is he angry at Bailey . . . or at me? “I’ll wait. Take your time.”
“And come up here.” He points a thumb at the passenger’s seat. “I’m not your Uber driver.”
My breath’s shorter, my posture stiffer than usual, as I step out of the car and take my new seat. I can’t quite bring myself to turn my head and look right at him. I click my seat belt into place, sweaty fingers fumbling on the buckle.
“I told you I didn’t want to talk about the musical.”
“I know, but I couldn’t just sit there and let him—”
He lifts a hand: Quiet, Finch. “I didn’t want to argue about the musical,” he repeats. “Two reasons. One: I didn’t want to upset him right before his big audition.” He turns the key in the ignition, begins to steer us back into the flow of departing cars. “And, two—as you know—he really wants me to go to NYU with him, and I’m . . . I mean, I already said yes to UDub.” He sighs. “And I know he’s going to be mad when I tell him, so, like, in the meantime . . . I don’t want to give him more reasons to be mad at me, you know?”
“I wasn’t trying to make him mad!” I insist. “But then he started defending yellowface, and I knew he was hurting your feelings. I thought if I could show him how racist he was being, then I’d help you.”
“Help me? Help me do what?”
“I don’t know!” I’m wringing my hands, a pathetic nervous tic. “Win the argument!”
“It’s not about winning, Finch.” Frustration flickers in his voice. “Bailey’s not Ari or Nasir. He’s not some enemy we’re trying to obliterate. He’s my boyfriend. I have to think about his feelings.”
I bring my palms down against my knees, forceful. “But he’s not thinking about your feelings!”
“And you are?” He looks at me, a challenge in his eyes. “Like, I get that you want to help me, Finch, but it’s not your life. You don’t get to decide what’s best for me.” He turns away, laughing. “You literally don’t have any skin in the game.”
For the first time since Jonah started talking, I actually hear him. I lean against the window—queasy, suddenly—and think hard about how I’m coming across. How I must have come across during that fight with Bailey.
“I’m sorry,” I say, voice quivering, and swallow. I’ve never been carsick in my life. This would be a terrible time to start. “I wasn’t trying to talk over you.”
“Yeah, but . . . you did,” he laughs. “And you didn’t help. Like, it’s so hard . . . it’s so hard, Finch, to talk to white people about this.” He lifts a hand, flicks his fingers between us. “You included. Right now. This is hard. I don’t want to be harsh, but . . .”
“No, no.” I turn my head, look right at him. “Please. Be harsh. I deserve it.”
“You really kind of do, man.” He pauses, taking a deep breath. “From now on, just . . . only help if I ask you to help. Got it?”
“Loud and clear,” I tell him, and then I tilt back to the window, grateful for the cool glass; my skin is burning with embarrassment. “I’m really sorry, Jonah,” I murmur to his reflection. “I swear. It won’t happen again.”
“I know you are,” he says. “And I know it won’t.” One more deep breath; he holds it for a moment, and then he blows it all out. “All right. We ready to crush Ari and Nasir?”
He offers me his fist. With profound gratitude, I turn to him and bump it.
“Let’s do it,” I tell him. “Let’s crush them.”
* * *
—
At about half past nine, we park on the street outside Annable. Well, one of the streets outside Annable, anyway. The campus is a monster, sprawling across ten acres of verdant greenery in a rich-as-piss Seattle suburb. The buildings are all a hundred-plus years old, but there’s some architectural magic at work in these ol
d schoolhouses. On the outside, the Schechter Library is all weather-beaten brick and homey mansard shingles; inside, it’s as glassy and sleek as an Apple store. Wide-screened computers line one wall. Silver e-readers charge in docks against another. Rows on rows of real books in glass cases look like they’ve never been touched by human hands.
“You’re late,” says Ari, with a puff from her Juul. She’s seated with Nasir behind a glass desk cut in a funny modern-art shape. “We were supposed to start at nine.”
“Sorry, Ari.” Jonah drops his backpack at the northern foot of the amorphous glass blob. “We had to drop Bailey off at SeaTac.”
“Ooh, who’s Bailey?” says Nasir, clad in a Supreme hoodie, a Supreme bucket hat, and—well, no visible logo on those sweatpants, but I’d be willing to bet: Supreme. “She hot?”
“She’s my boyfriend,” Jonah says. “And, yeah. Smokin’.”
“So, what,” Ari goes on, blinking through purple vapor, “you had to drop him off? He had to make you late? He couldn’t just take an Uber?”
I squint at her. “All the way from Olympia to SeaTac?”
“God. Sorry.” Ari rises, rubbing at her temples. She’s wearing her school uniform—I mean, the whole ensemble: the blazer, the necktie—even though it’s a Saturday. “I always forget you guys don’t live in the city.”
“Well, even if we did, we can’t afford to hire private drivers whenever we want,” I say. And, because I’m trying to get back in Jonah’s good graces, I add: “Bailey’s folks work weekends packing boxes at Amazon just to—”
“What?” Jonah’s surprised. “No, they don’t.”
I blink at him. “But you told me the other night that his parents work weekends at—”
“I mean, yeah, but his dad’s a programmer,” Jonah says, “and his mom’s a graphic designer.”
“And they have to work on Saturdays?”
“Apparently, yeah. Some big Prime Video overhaul?”
. . . Why did I think Bailey was one of us? He doesn’t dream of Broadway—not the way I dream of a seat in Congress, not the way Jonah dreams of cleaning up the oceans. He doesn’t even have to dream, probably. He just wants, and he receives. Must be nice.
“Well, anyway, you guys are late.” Ari pockets her vape and cuts a quick glance at her glossy watch. “So can we get started? Please? Get a move on? Flip a coin?”
* * *
—
When the dime landed on Roosevelt’s gleaming head, I felt total relief. We’d be arguing for my right to pee, not against it. I wouldn’t have to sacrifice any of my principles, not even in the name of practice, not today.
See, we were very deliberate when we built our affirmative case. Very careful to guard against any transphobic tirades. Guess how many times Jonah says the word transgender in his opening?
Once. Up top, reciting the resolution.
The rest of the speech he devotes to simple, practical questions. “How would anyone enforce a ban like this, anyway?” he asks. “Would police deploy to high school restrooms? Carry out strip searches? Ask for papers? Or maybe go the biometric route, embed a chip in the hand of every child, have them scan their palms at the locker-room door?”
By the end of Jonah’s eight minutes, this is no longer an argument about sex or religion or anything spicy. It’s about money. It’s about enforcement. It’s about the plain fact that there’s no way—cost-effective, or constitutional—to divide a student body into phallus and pudenda and funnel them toward specially segregated toilet bowls. That’s it. Bulletproof. Refute us with some rant about the sanctity of human dimorphism, and you’re cruisin’ for a losin’.
But we should’ve known Ari would be too smart to take our boring bait.
And I should’ve known that it would hurt just to hear her.
“My opponent stood at this podium, Mr. Speaker, and presented apocalyptic scenarios, dystopian ones,” Ari says—even though the podium is just an Infinite Jest stacked on a War & Peace, and the closest thing we’ve got to a Mr. Speaker is the custodian mopping up mud in the hallway. “Mr. Cabrera would have you believe that this common-sense legislation is unenforceable. He proposed armed police carrying out strip searches in high schools. Biometric chips in forearms!” She performs a laugh, then straightens her face. “In actuality, of course, enforcement is neither costly nor draconian. Every human being is born with their own enforcement tool, free of charge.” She taps at her temples: “A pair of eyes, Mr. Speaker.”
She is less than a minute into her speech. I should definitely remain in my seat. I should definitely not rise up on a hot, bodily wave of anger and throw out my arm, and shout, “On that point, madam!”
But it’s done. It’s done, and I’m standing, and Ari’s looking at me like I’ve got three heads.
“I’ve only been talking for, like, ten seconds,” she says, in her civilian voice. “What are you doing, Finch? Sit down.”
I don’t want to sit down. I want to physically fight her. It takes all the willpower I’ve got—including some from Jonah, tugging on my sleeve—to plant my butt back in my chair.
“Thank you. Jesus.” She turns her head; she goes on: “My opponent talks about gender like it’s a game of four-dimensional chess. But gender is simple. It’s easy to visually verify. And—”
I leap to my feet—“On that point, madam?”—and, shocker, she waves me down again.
“In virtually all cases,” she says, visibly pissed to have been interrupted so soon, “it’s possible to glean a person’s gender merely by looking at them, and—”
This time, leaping up, I don’t even bother with the formality: “So prove that you’re a woman.”
She lets out a shocked sound, half a cough. “Excuse me?”
“Prove to us,” I repeat—on a roll, knowing it—“that you’re a woman.”
“Well, for one, I was born with a vagina, and thus ‘assigned female at birth,’ so—”
“Well, we don’t have the tapes from the maternity ward,” I say. “We have no idea if you’re telling the truth.”
“Sit down, Finch,” she says, through gritted teeth.
“No, no. This is the burden of proof you’ve established: You need a vagina to enter a women’s bathroom, because having a vagina makes you a woman.” I lift my hands, smile, and go in for the kill: “So prove to us that you’re a woman.”
“Finch, if you ran this line of questioning in a real debate, I’d report you for sexual harassment.”
Jonah raps his knuckles on the table. “So you admit that interrogating people about their junk is sexual harassment?”
Nasir laughs; Ari cuts her eyes at him. “You’re supposed to be on my side, Nas.”
“I’m waiting for my answer,” I say, feeling smug now; I’ve got her cornered. “Please, Ms. Schechter, go ahead: Prove to everyone here that you’re a woman.”
“Well, no, Finch, I’m not going to lift my skirt and flash a roomful of teenage boys,” she says, “even though I’m sure you’d all love that.”
“I know I would,” says Nasir.
She moves to slap him. He just barely dodges her open palm.
“But you said, and I quote, ‘Gender is simple, and easy to visually verify.’ ” I can see her squirming. I’ve got her. “But the people who experience the most harassment in bathrooms are women like you. Women we might call ‘butch.’ Who look masculine. And you—you’ve got a man’s haircut”—and it really is shorter than it was when I saw her last, more Maddow, now, than Rodham—“and you’re wearing a very manly blazer, and a very manly tie, and—”
“Okay, okay, you’ve made your fucking point,” she says, water beading in the corners of her eyes. “And you could’ve made it without telling me that I look like a fucking man.”
“Ari, that’s not what I—”
But she’s clapping a hand over her mouth, and l
etting out a sound like a small animal drowning, and spinning on the heel of her Gucci loafer. Before I can blink, she’s sprinted out into the hall, moving so fast her body blurs.
. . . And that makes two people I’ve brought to tears today.
“. . . Well,” says Jonah, after thirty seconds or so of shared, stunned silence. “That could’ve gone better.”
“No shit,” Nasir says.
I want to say something like, “Yeah, well, she insulted me just as much,” but I can’t. Nasir is in the room. Why would I tell him I’m trans? He’s a living, breathing episode of Family Guy.
“You’d better go apologize,” says Jonah.
“You’re probably right,” I answer.
* * *
—
I find Ari perched on a bench in the hall, mouth locked around her vape pen.
“Hey,” I begin, gently, because I can see the red rimming her eyes. “About that whole thing just now . . .”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“On school property? People have gone to jail for less.”
She snorts; purple vapor billows from her nose.
“Oh, goddammit,” she says. “That was a good one.”
“Thanks.” I start forward; I stop. “Can I take a seat? Do you mind?”
“Go ahead.” She angles her thumb at the empty space on the bench. “Just don’t fucking touch me.”
“Okay.” I place myself down, carefully, as far from her as possible. “So. Things got heated in there.”
“Sure did.”
“I shouldn’t have said all that, Ari.” I reach for her, then remember what she said about no fucking touching. I settle for patting the bench instead. “You don’t look like a man.”
“Ugh,” Ari grunts. “That is so not the fucking point.” She screws her eyes shut, rubbing at her temples with both hands. “Like, yeah, whatever, I don’t look like a girl. But I don’t want to. There’s all this pressure for me—I mean, for Jewish girls, period—to iron out our curls and wax our mustaches and contour our noses into little ski slopes. And that’s on top of . . . like, you know, I’m not exactly sample size.” She sighs, sweeps a hand over her body. “Whatever. I’m rambling. Sorry. I just don’t care about that shit. Like, at all. I could spend all my time starving myself and straightening my hair, or I could, like, actually do something with my life.”
Both Sides Now Page 12