Both Sides Now

by Peyton Thomas

  “Okay, okay. That’s enough. We should probably get some work done.” I lower my eyes to my laptop, pausing to wipe a thin layer of silt from the keys. “Just so we’ve got something to show Adwoa.”

  “Fine,” Jonah says, and opens his own laptop. “But I’m not done razzing you about Ari.”

  “You’d better be,” I say. “Or I’ll punch you.”

  “Well, you’ll try,” he says. “You don’t have a great track record.”

  I scowl at him, and he scowls right back, and then we crack up, both of us, and settle into a comfortable, companionable silence. We trade links to long-form articles. We highlight typos. We pin suggestions and emoji-encouragements to each other’s speeches. It’s like a weight’s been lifted; there is no proof, none, to Lucy’s and Bailey’s conspiracy theories. I’m not in love with Jonah. And he’s not in love with me. He is sitting across from me, pasting a study from the Lancet into our communal doc. Ours is a thoroughly unsexy evening.

  And then, suddenly, the silence shatters. Jonah’s phone, facedown on the table, begins to peal: seven messages, almost all at once. That incoming-text tri-tone rings out so many times in such rapid succession that I wonder if the phone is broken. I startle, knocking over my lemonade. The butter-yellow wave heads right for the ringing phone. So I grab it, lift it, save it, as Jonah lunges for a napkin. It should be the other way around, maybe, but here we are: Jonah mopping up my mess, me holding his phone.

  “What’s it say?” Jonah asks. “My phone, I mean.”

  “I don’t know.” I hold the phone out, away from me. “I don’t want to read your texts.”

  “Can you just read them out? Please?” He waves a hand at the spreading puddle of lemonade. “I’m trying to save our laptops here.”

  “Fine,” I say, and flip the phone. “If you say so.”

  I press home; the screen glows.

  Seven texts. All from Bailey. I read, out loud, with a shrillness that makes Jonah giggle:

  BAILEY LUNDQUIST: really nice of you to skip my dress rehearsal lmao

  BAILEY LUNDQUIST: not like i’m having the most stressful week of my fkn life or anything

  BAILEY LUNDQUIST: idk why i’m bothering to text you since you’re CLEARLY busy

  BAILEY LUNDQUIST: but ms elliott just asked if i’m gonna have a plus one for the opening night party

  BAILEY LUNDQUIST: so what should i tell her

  BAILEY LUNDQUIST: are you going to come

  BAILEY LUNDQUIST: or are you going to flake out on me again to go hang out at the green bean with the little red-haired girl

  “Oh my God.” Jonah’s staring at me—mouth open, face ashen. The napkins balled up in his left hand, the color of weak sunlight, drip and drip and drip. “I am so, so sorry.”

  I couldn’t tell you why, but all I can do is laugh. I should feel cratered by Bailey’s girl dig. And maybe I am, deep down. But right now, at this moment, in this coffee shop, I can’t stop thinking about how funny it is.

  How long have I looked at Bailey and seen the kind of boy I’d love to be? But all that confidence, all that charm—he never had it, not really. I do, though. He knows that. It scares him. It scares him so much that he’s septuple-texting Jonah, weaponizing Peanuts, worrying that I, Finch Kelly, virgin and a half, am out to steal his man.

  “Finch, really, I can’t believe he would . . .”

  “Peanuts!” I’m finally able to form words again, instead of just bellowing laughter.

  “Sorry?” Jonah looks at me, mystified. “Peanuts?”

  “You know? The comic Charlie Brown’s from?” I see the recognition on his face; I keep going. “The Little Red-Haired Girl is . . . she’s a character. From Peanuts.”

  That “dot dot dot” there? That’s how close I come to telling him that Charlie Brown’s hopelessly in love with her.

  “He’s never done anything like this before,” Jonah says. “Called you a girl, I mean. I can’t think why he would . . . I mean, I never told him you were trans.” Jonah picks up his phone—dry, but sticky with lemonade—and pockets it. “He’s just under a lot of stress right now and . . . Yeah, no. I got nothing. No excuses. I’m just . . . I’m sorry.”

  He’s barely gotten out this very sincere sorry when another text from Bailey pings through. I don’t get to see this one, though—just Jonah’s reaction, a deep frown at the screen.

  I crane my head. “What did he say now?”

  “Oh, nothing. Just a string of question marks.” Jonah exhales, lifts his head. “I’m trying to figure out how to answer him. Any ideas?”

  I’m tempted to help Jonah draft a breakup text so cataclysmic that Bailey never loves again. Just rots in his bedroom like Miss Havisham in a pile of yellowing Playbills. I’d be in the wrong, of course. I’d be doing exactly the thing Bailey—and Lucy—have accused me of doing: conspiring to wreck Jonah’s relationship.

  So I don’t offer ideas. Instead, I shrug.

  “I can’t tell you what to write, Jonah. I’m sorry. He’s your boyfriend, not mine.”

  Jonah doesn’t answer me, not at first. He stares at his phone, thumbs moving slowly over the screen. He’s at this for a while. I’ve just drifted back to my laptop when I hear Jonah tapping the table in front of me.

  “How’s this?” he begins. “ ‘Hi, Bailey: I know that—’ ”

  “Jonah, I just told you that I can’t tell you what to write.”

  “ ‘I know that this has been a really stressful week for you,’ ” he goes on, ignoring me, “ ‘but it’s not fair to take your stress out on me. We’re both working hard to balance all our commitments right now. I’ve been patient with you, and I hope you can be patient with me.’ ”

  He takes another breath; I can’t find my own. My mind is racing, questions firing. Is Jonah really not going to mention the “little red-haired girl” thing? Do I matter that little to him? Or does he think that Bailey is right? That I am, deep down, a little red-haired—

  “ ‘And I’m deeply disappointed by what you said about Finch,’ ” he says—like he can read my mind, like he knows precisely what to say to stop my spiraling. “ ‘Finch is not a girl. It is not okay to call him a girl. He saw the message when it popped up on my screen, and it really hurt his feelings. I want you to apologize to him as soon as possible.’ ” He stops there, looks up, searches my eyes. “How’s that?” he asks me, anxious now, with none of the confident indignation of his reading aloud. “Is that okay?”

  . . . Is it okay? Yes, it’s okay. More than okay. He’s standing up to Bailey. Not because he’s in love with me; because he loves me.

  I can’t form words; I nod. That’s enough for him. He presses send; I listen to the quiet whoosh of the paper plane, flying away.

  I return my eyes to my laptop and pretend the earth didn’t just move.

  * * *

  —

  “Hold up. Bailey called you a girl?”

  “No, not just ‘a girl.’ ” I’m honestly not sure whether Bailey knows I’m trans—if he deliberately misgendered me, I mean, or if he just picked a highly unfortunate insult. “ ‘The Little Red-Haired Girl.’ ”

  I’d booked some time with Lucy because I knew, after the hurricane of this weekend, that I’d need a quality vent with my best friend. Plus a plate of pad thai from that great hole-in-the-wall around the corner from her place. Good thing I did. Monday wound up being just as much of a shitstorm.

  “Unbelievable.” Lucy shovels a bright orange forkful into her mouth, ignoring the noodles that fly from the fork to the bedspread. She can be an awfully messy eater when she’s angry. “I’m going to beat his ass at school tomorrow.”

  “No, you’re not,” I tell her, from my seat at her desk. “You’re not beating anybody’s ass.”

  “Why not? You don’t think I could take Bailey in a fight?”


  “Lucy, you’ve never even been in a fight.”

  “Only ’cause my mom refuses to let me join Puget Sound Antifa.”

  “Really?” Most parents would have reservations about their kids hitting the streets and slugging Nazis. Not Lucy’s mom. “I would’ve thought she’d be all over that. Sewing balaclavas for the black bloc, mixing up little bottles of saline solution to ward off the tear gas . . .”

  “I wish, man.” Lucy sighs, flopping back onto her mattress, arms out wide as a starfish. “I mean, she and I do hit protests all the time. We blockaded ICE up in Tacoma just last month. But it’s not the same, you know? Sometimes, you just wanna smash.”

  “Don’t beat Bailey up,” I tell her, again. “I don’t want to strain my relationship with Jonah any more than I already have.”

  “Sorry—strain? I thought you guys were in great shape. Didn’t you just tell me that he defended you? Like, tapped out a text right there in front of you, demanding at gunpoint-emoji that Bailey apologize to you?”

  I’m still working on my portion of pad thai, but Lucy’s had two spring rolls and two and a half helpings of the main event. She’s horizontal on her mattress now, fully in a food coma, cheek buried in the down of an enormous Porg.

  “He did ask for an apology, yeah.” Bailey’s apology—no surprise—has not been forthcoming. “I was really impressed by that. Especially after how awful I was this weekend.”

  “Are you kidding?” Lucy lifts her head, rests her cheek upon the Porg’s fat belly. “What Jonah did was the bare minimum, Finch. If he were really on your team, he would’ve dumped the motherfucker on the spot.”

  “I honestly don’t think they’ll ever break up.” I abandon my plate, and then, against both my better judgment and my standards for laundry, I lie down on her bed, and make a pillow of the Porg’s wing. “I mean, they’re Jonah and Bailey. Homecoming kings. They’ve been together for ages.”

  “Teenagers break up all the time, Finch. Nobody ever actually marries their high school sweetheart.”

  Does she have a point? Jonah still hasn’t told Bailey about his plans for college. Bailey still hasn’t quit the outrageously racist musical. I’m having a hard time squaring the boys I’ve seen these past weeks with the matching Halloween costumes, the affectionate phone calls, the kisses on the bus.

  “All I’m saying,” I continue, though I’m sure Lucy can hear the doubt in my voice, “is that they seem . . . different. Don’t you think? It’s like they’re not built to break up. Not like . . . well, not like us.”

  “What are you talking about? You and me, we’re the best-case scenario.” Lucy lifts the Porg’s other wing and wraps it around herself, like it’s giving her an extraterrestrial hug. “We dated for a while. We broke up. But we’re still friends, and you still crawl into my bed and cuddle on bad nights, and you still happily eat the breakfasts my mom makes for you.” She reaches out, taps me lightly on the nose. “That’s a way better deal than the bullshit Bailey’s putting Jonah through, don’t you think? I know you’ve got a pretty pessimistic view of all this love stuff, but . . .”

  “Pessimistic?” I sit up, squint at her. “Just because I don’t want to waste my time dating?”

  “Dating isn’t a waste of time, honey.”

  I roll away from her; my eyes roll, too. “If it’s distracting me from studying, and getting into college, and becoming the first trans person in Congress . . .”

  “If Alice Brady doesn’t get there first, you mean.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Lucy reaches out, presses a finger to my lips: Stop talking, Finch. “I think you’re just scared.”

  “Scared of what?”

  “Scared of telling girls you’re trans,” she says. “Remember what happened with Ari? During that party after Senior State?”

  I haven’t briefed Lucy on my more recent chat with Ari—that I did tell her I’m trans, that it went even worse than I’d feared.

  “Well, maybe I’m right to be scared,” I say. “What if I were to hook up with a girl, and she stuck her hand in my pants, or—I don’t know—up my shirt, and she found out that I wasn’t cis, and she . . . she attacked . . .”

  “Oh, yes,” Lucy says, flatly. “Ariadne Schechter of the Annable School transforming into a violent hate criminal the second she smells clam juice. Totally plausible.”

  “Didn’t I ask you to never say ‘clam’ again?”

  “So you admit that you’re scared to tell girls you’re trans?”

  “Uh, I admit that most straight girls don’t want to have sex with someone who has a vagina,” I fire back. “Just like most gay guys don’t want . . .”

  “Wait.” Lucy puts up a hand. “Gay guys? You’re into guys? It’s official?”

  “No, Lucy.” I groan into the Porg’s wide wing. “Why does everyone keep saying that? Bailey thinking I’m after Jonah, you asking me if I have . . . if I have a boner for him . . .”

  “Oh, right. I completely forgot I said that.” Lucy rolls onto the Porg’s belly, laughing. “You know I was just joking, right?”

  “No! I assumed it was part of your ongoing campaign to make me question my sexuality!”

  “Well, if I didn’t know any better,” Lucy says, leveling her eyes at me, “I’d say that campaign’s working.”

  “I’m not questioning anything, Lucy. I’ve been there, done that, signed the papers, popped the puberty blockers, bought the binder, stabbed the syringe into my thigh . . .”

  “I said ‘questioning your sexuality,’ ” she says. “Not ‘questioning your gender.’ Two completely different things.”

  “Look, Lucy, we have to settle this, once and for all.” I reach out, hands on her shoulders. “I’m not gay. I’m just not. And you, of all people? You should know that.”

  “Should I, though?” She shrugs my hands from her shoulders. “I mean, I know we’ve never really talked about this, but back when we dated? Before you transitioned? You never really wanted to make out.”

  “Yeah, because making out isn’t fun for me!” I lower my voice, fast. I don’t want Lucy’s mom to overhear me and think that Lucy and I are back together. “And sex sounds terrifying. I don’t like being naked. I really don’t like being naked in front of other people. I don’t even like to touch myself.”

  “Okay. I hear you.” Lucy nods. “But, still: would you feel the same way about sex with a man?”

  I consider it—and then I shudder. “No. No. I’d feel worse.” Visions are dancing in my head: men, men, big, hairy, muscular men. If I had a boyfriend, would I even look like a man next to him? “Being with a boy would just make me feel like a girl.”

  “Finch. Honey.” There is a devastated look on Lucy’s face. She crawls across the mattress to me, taking me up in her arms. “You know that’s not true. Being with a boy wouldn’t make you any less of a boy.”

  It’s easy for her to say that. Harder for me to live it. This fear I feel when it comes to dating? These worries about being with a boy, being with a girl, being with anyone? They are very real to me.

  Even if I did want to fall in love—and I don’t, because I have school to focus on, and then college, and then law school, and then my campaign for Congress—my body will always be a barrier. I’ll have to apologize for it every time I meet somebody new.

  And Lucy doesn’t get that. How could she? If I try to tell her how scary love seems to me, how bleak and lonely my future looks—well, she wouldn’t tell me the truth, would she? She’d just paint pictures of a fairy-tale world where love is possible for people like me. Where it’s pure. Uncomplicated.

  “Oh, Finch,” she says, looping her arms around my shoulders. Here it comes, the fairy-tale pabulum: “Love is going to sneak up on you when you least expect it. There’s no escaping it.”

  “That sounds ominous,” I say, as best I can with my cheek smush
ed to her chest.

  “No escape,” she says, and squeezes me tighter. “None.”

  chapter nine

  The first thing I see when I step into the senior hallway on Friday morning is Jonah, leaning against the last locker on the left. He holds an enormous bouquet of roses—pink, fat, ripe. The occasional petal flutters to the floor as he shifts, side to side.

  “Those for Bailey?” I ask.

  “Opening night,” he says—all smiles, all strained. “Had to show him some love.”

  “Of course.” I should have remembered—lately, this stupid musical has been dominating my life almost as much as debate. “I’m sure he’ll love them.”

  “I hope so.” Jonah laughs uneasily. “He and I haven’t really talked since . . .”

  “The other night?” I ask, more than a little uneasy myself. “When Bailey called me a girl? And never apologized?”

  “Wait.” Jonah’s fist tightens on the flowers. “He didn’t . . . ?”

  I shake my head.

  “Not even a text?” he says. “Nothing?”

  “Nothing,” I repeat.

  The cellophane in Jonah’s hands is a symphony. Why’s he fidgeting like this? What’s he thinking?

  Then, suddenly, Bailey turns the corner, flanked on all sides by a cloud of his friends from the drama club. When they see Jonah with roses in his hands, they erupt—cheering, whooping, clapping.

  “Baaaaaaaby,” Bailey sings—actually sings. He folds his hands over his heart. “Roses? For me?”

  Jonah, smiling only on one side, says, “All for you.”

  He’s just barely pulled the bouquet out of harm’s way before Bailey is surging forward, crashing into him. There’s a kiss—a long, lingering one, on the lips—that Jonah isn’t ready for. His eyes are still open.

  Bailey’s buddies are oohing and awwing—phones out, red lights flickering. In minutes, this will be all over Instagram. Another perfect vignette. People will see this perfect kiss and get jealous of Jonah and Bailey. Just like I used to.