“You’re loved, too,” I tell him. “You know that, right? Your parents—they love you so, so much. I wish that my own . . .” How do I say this? How, without sounding like an ingrate? “I mean, they accept it. Me, being trans. But I don’t know if they really love it. And your parents—it’s so obvious, Jonah—they love this part of you. Since you were that little kid, dressing up like a princess, they’ve loved it.”
I am aiming here for comfort, for reassurance. So why is Jonah’s face caving in on itself? Why is he crying harder?
“They do,” he says. “They love me. You know how rare that is?”
I remember the early talks with my own parents. The fear on my dad’s face when I cut my red hair down to the scalp in the bathroom sink. The disappointment on my mom’s when I told her that, no, I didn’t think I’d ever want to carry a baby.
“I know,” I tell him. “I know exactly how rare.”
“My parents would come to Pride with me and Bailey. March in the parade right next to us. They were so proud of me for being in love. For being open about it. For doing all these things that Ferdy never got to do. And now . . . now, it’s over. Like, I just threw it all away.”
It takes me a moment to understand what, exactly, he’s saying here. “Wait,” I begin, slowly. “You think that they’re . . . what, disappointed in you? Because you broke up with your boyfriend?”
He looks to me. His eyes are full of tears, and when he nods, they spill over, fall in beads onto his cheeks. I hook the sleeve of my sweater over the heel of my hand. I lift it up, to his face.
“They are not disappointed,” I tell him, brushing my sleeve across his skin. “They’re so proud of you, Jonah. Anyone could see that.”
“Yeah, but here I am, like . . .” He waves his hands: his cheeks, my sleeves. “Having an emotional breakdown, when it’s like—they worked so hard to make sure I could be with Bailey, and like, bring him to church, even, without anyone saying anything, and, like . . . you know how many kids would kill for that? For a family like that? And I’m sitting here, and I’m not even happy . . .”
“Well, Jonah, people don’t . . . I mean, they don’t come out of the closet to be happy. They do it to be honest.”
Jonah rests his head on my shoulder. He nods against my collarbone. I have to lift my chin, rest it on the crown of his head. It’s a funny feeling; I’m not used to being taller than him.
“I wasn’t always honest,” he says; the faintest hint of a sniffle. “Like, if I was having problems with Bailey, I’d keep it to myself, you know? I wanted my parents to think I was happy. And that, like, the support they were giving me, it was all worth it.”
“But, Jonah, you don’t have to be happy all the time. You don’t. You really, truly don’t.” I can hear my own voice climbing, insistent. “You’re allowed to fight with your boyfriend, and break up with him, and just . . . be messy. Like anybody else.”
Jonah leans away from me, laughing through his tears. “Since when are you the one who calms me down?”
“Since you’re the one who got brutally dumped twelve hours ago, buddy.”
“Buddy?”
“Or, I don’t know.” I look down, away from him, and pick at a loose thread on his yellow bedspread. “Partner.”
“Pardner,” he says, with a Texan twang.
And for that, broken heart or no, he gets a soft pillow to the side of the head.
* * *
—
At the end of the night, Jonah pulls my raincoat from the closet. I look out the window and wonder: Is it going to rain again? Should I leave my bike here, come back for it? Take the bus instead?
“Well,” says Jonah, “thanks for coming over, cheering me up.”
“Oh, of course. Nothing like a pillow fight to lift a person’s spirits.”
He claps me on the back. Or, at least, he means to. But as I’m turning to him, his hand falls, and he brushes me ever so slightly against the side of my body. I’m not sure he meant to do it; I know I wasn’t expecting it. And I definitely wasn’t expecting my skin to burn where he touched me, like he seared somehow through my coat, my sweater, the rumpled button-down beneath it.
He’s pulling away already, with a look on his face like he’s done something wrong. I want so badly to tell him that he hasn’t. But his mouth is already saying sorry, and I’m already stumbling over my own reply—“It’s fine, it’s fine”—and clipping my bike helmet beneath my chin. I fuck up; I pinch the skin. “Ow,” I say, out loud, and before either of us can say anything else, I’m stepping out into the cool, wet night. There’s my bike, still propped against his porch, not locked down. With a final wave, I’m gone.
It isn’t ’til the first stoplight, when I’m absolutely certain he can’t see me, that I let go of the handlebars and press my fingers into my side. The soft space just below the bracket of my ribs, the place where he touched me—it’s still warm.
The light turns green. And even though the intersection is clear, I don’t move forward. I leave my hand where it is. I feel the pulse glowing beneath my skin.
chapter ten
I hear the fight on my way up the walk, louder and louder with each step. It sounds worse than usual, pouring through the thin walls. This isn’t just Mom and Dad’s familiar rumble; Roo’s in the mix, too, roaring like a feral animal. I’m tempted on the front steps to click my heels together and wish myself back to Jonah’s house. There was all the love in the world in that dining room. There’s none here. Why? What’s wrong with us?
I tiptoe down the hall, following the noise to Roo’s bedroom. They’re standing in an uneven triangle in the small space. It takes me a minute to break their voices down, really hear the words buried in each shout, before I understand: They seem to be arguing about . . . video games?
“Are you out of your minds?” This is Roo, at the top of her lungs, which are not large. “You couldn’t even get five bucks for this at GameStop!”
“Five bucks? Really?” Mom, arms across her chest, is well on her way to fury. “For an Xbox 360 that cost us hundreds of dollars?”
“Yeah, when you got it used, like, a decade ago,” Roo fires back. “You must be a fucking idiot if you think anyone’s gonna—”
Dad comes in, thunderous: “Did you just call your mother—”
And I know Dad would never get physical, but he is so big, and Roo is so small, and she’s backed into a corner with her body as her only barricade—I have to do something.
I know I shouldn’t. If I were smart, I’d retreat to my room, close the door, leave them all to carry on. But if there’s a chance, even a small one, that I could make peace? Get the screaming to stop—or, at least, pull the anger away from Roo? I’ll take that chance.
I step forward. “What’s going on?”
They swivel to face me, all with veins popping, faces glowing, chests rising and falling fast.
“Finch,” Mom says, her voice hoarse, her calm so unconvincing I wonder why she’s even bothering. “We’re having a garage sale, and we’re just deciding—”
Roo breaks in: “They’re trying to take all my stuff!”
It’s only then that I notice what, exactly, Roo’s guarding, with her arms stretched out wide: her old cathode-ray television, and the console as old as she is, and the collection of games she’s packed into cases held together with dense geological layers of masking tape.
“Even though this stuff is so ancient,” she goes on, “that it’s literally worthless!”
“Ruby, unemployment is going to pay me a fraction of what I used to make,” Mom says—no, shouts. “And your father still hasn’t found work . . .”
“Oh, right, because this is all my fault,” Dad booms. “Doesn’t matter I’ve been pounding the fucking pavement, doesn’t matter I haven’t had a drink in eight goddamn months . . .”
“I could use this stuff to m
ake money,” Roo insists. “There’s people who make millions of dollars streaming video games. If you guys got me a half-decent webcam . . .”
“Now she’s asking for more stuff.” Mom throws her hands skyward. “Unbelievable.”
“I’ve actually read a few articles about this”—I’m aiming for calm, rational—“and Roo isn’t wrong. A lot of video-game players make money online, and Roo’s so passionate, she could easily build a following.”
“What, she’s gonna pay the mortgage playing video games?” Dad says. “That’s where your tuition payments are gonna come from? Your little sister playing video games on the fucking internet?”
“Oh, no, not at all.” I put my hands up, and I take a very deliberate step back, through the door. “You know I’m planning to pay for college with scholarships and grants, and . . . I mean, especially if Jonah and I do well at Nationals, I’m sure that I can scrounge up—”
“Oh. Finch. That reminds me.” Mom turns to me, a pained look on her face. “I’m so sorry, honey—I know how much you were looking forward to your debate tournament—but we had to refund your plane ticket to D.C.”
What? “What?”
“Three hundred and fifty dollars.” Dad pronounces every syllable. “We need that money right now, Finch. We need it bad.”
“But . . . but I have to go to Nationals.” That panic I felt before, on Jonah’s bed: It’s back. My vision is going blurry, my pulse sprinting. “This is my last chance to impress Georgetown, and . . .”
“You might just have to settle for in-state, sweetie,” Mom says—and, weirdly, it’s the sweetie that twists the knife, kills whatever little shreds of hope I had. I don’t know how I manage the three steps across the room to Roo’s bed. I only know that if I don’t lie down, I’ll faint, and gravity will force the issue.
“Why didn’t you ask me?” I know my parents aren’t villains; we’re poor. But still: Why? “You know how much this meant to me.”
“It’s just one tournament, kid,” Dad says, as I stumble. “What, you don’t have enough gold medals already?”
My shoulders are falling heavily to Roo’s mattress, my head dizzily to her pillow. She is standing just steps away, saying, quietly, “Finch, I’m sorry.”
Her games, my debating: These are the things we’ve used to escape our gloomy present, to imagine something better.
And now, they’re for sale.
“I’m flying to D.C. next weekend,” I say, half smothered by the pillow, like saying it will make it real. It’s all I’ve got left: delusion. “And I’m going to college in D.C.”
“With what money, Finch?” Mom sounds exhausted, more depleted than angry. “We don’t have fifty thousand dollars for D.C. tuition. Hell, we can’t even pay for your plane ticket.”
I can’t look at her, at any of them, in the odd, queasy silence that settles in the room. I can only gaze, eyes unfocused, at the stain on Roo’s carpet. It is made of Mountain Dew and shaped like a kidney. Someone should really clean that up, I think, and then I think how silly it is, how stupid, to be staring at a stain on a carpet at the end of the world.
* * *
—
Eventually, I go to my own room, close the door behind me and lock it. Nobody bothers me as I plant my face into my pillow and scream, scream, scream ’til my throat is hoarse.
By the time I lift my head, the sky outside has blackened, swallowing up the shapes of trees and roofs. I must have fallen asleep. I reach for my laptop to check the time. Logging in takes an eternity, blue circle spinning endlessly. When the clock appears, finally, and tells me it’s half past one o’clock in the morning, I feel like I’m being mocked.
I wonder if I should climb out of bed and walk over to Lucy’s. She’d never turn me away, not even at this hour. Thing is, though, I’m tired. Too tired for a walk in the dark. Besides, if I know anything about Lucy’s sleep habits, I know this: She’s still awake right now, up late, reading fanfiction.
So I navigate to iMessage. I’m not ready for the burst of bright white light. It springs out of the screen into the dark, searing my eyes, as I click on Lucy’s name. I can barely see the keys to type.
FINCH KELLY: Hey so everythign is awful
FINCH KELLY: Just really really really messed up a nd bad
FINCH KELLY: Please please please message me back when yo see this
I wait. I watch the blank white space where I want the gray bubble of her response to appear. But it never comes, that bubble. Not so much as a read receipt. Why? Where is she? I was banking on her being awake right now. Should I wait until Monday for our ride to school? Can I wait, even? Closing my computer and drifting off to sleep is nowhere near an option, not now. My pulse is still thrumming, my chest still tight. If I don’t speak everything I’m feeling—well, type everything, anyway—the grief will bloom up within me and vine around my lungs ’til I choke.
FINCH KELLY: Okay well I guess you’re asleep in which case good job you’re presently better at life than I am
FINCH KELLY: I’ll just leave this all here adn you can read it when you wake up and we can talk about it at school on Monday
FINCH KELLY: Okay. So. Tonight I came home to this massive fight, Mom & Dad trying to sell all of Roo’s video game things for extra cash, and when I tried to help my parents dropped the BOMB that they cancelled my flight to nationals
FINCH KELLY: And when I told them nationals was my last chance to impress Georgetown and the other schools in DC my mom was like “well maybe you can just settle for in state” lololololol
FINCH KELLY: So now I guess I am not going to DC for college or debate or anything unless someone gives me $350 for another plane ticket. Or someone else gives me a million billion dollars to pay DC tuition
I’m surprised to find my chest feeling heavy, still, even after spilling all this. What more is worrying me? Before that fight, before the refunded ticket, what was I . . .
Oh. Right.
Jonah.
FINCH KELLY: Oh and then earlier on Jonah invited me over to distract him from the breakup so I biked over and had dinner with him and his family, we looked at his baby photos, that part was nice
FINCH KELLY: But then we went up to his room and we were lying on his bed together watching a movie and this is so ridiculous, I’m sorry, but I thought he might be coming on to me? I mean he didn’t do anything, we were just lying there, and I know it’s bad of me and probably homophobic but I did start to freak out, that he might try something
FINCH KELLY: And then we talked
I stop here—the story of Ferdy, of Jonah’s long, complex familial history, of all his shame and fear; it seems way too private to share, even with Lucy.
And so I skip to the end. The end of the night, I mean. That touch before I left.
FINCH KELLY: And then we talked about really personal things and he sort of well not sort of he really did cry in my arms on his bed and then at the end of the night he, I don’t know, touched me? On the side of my body
FINCH KELLY: BEFORE YOU SAY ANYTHING obviously I am not attracted to boys and I don’t even think he likes me that way either, he’s definitely just heartbroken over Bailey and maybe he needed a hug tonight, or something, I don’t know
FINCH KELLY: I mean this is JONAH and it has NEVER been like this with us and nationals is right around
FINCH KELLY: Oh wait! No it isn’t! I’m not even going to nationals because mom and dad refunded my ticket!
FINCH KELLY: So there you go, I’m not goign to Nationals, I’m not going to George town, or any school in DC, I’m not. getting srugery, things are WEIRD with Jonah, and on top of it all, I can’t even see hte screen it’s so fucking bright
FINCH KELLY: Please message me when you get this or just come over to my house and bonk me on the head with your softball bat
FINCH KELLY: I love you
I
can’t look at the searing white sun of the screen a second longer. I power it off, and fall back onto my mattress, letting out a long, loud sigh as my head craters the foam.
It’s funny, but I do feel better having ranted at Lucy. Already, my anxiety is dissolving. In its place, I feel anticipation, the warm kind. Lucy will meet me on the bus to school on Monday. She’ll give me a hug. She’ll tell me everything is going to be okay. She’ll be lying, but it will, at least, be nice to hear.
* * *
—
On Monday morning, Lucy bounces onto the bus and into the seat next to me, radiant in Pantone polka dots. She looks as full as I feel empty.
“Hey, you,” she says, and kisses me on the forehead. “How you doing?”
“I haven’t heard from you all weekend.” I blink at her, baffled. “You didn’t get my messages?”
“Messages?” She shakes her head; twin pink pigtails flutter like wind socks. “I don’t think so. When did you send them?”
“Friday night. Just after one o’clock?”
“Would it surprise you to hear that I was asleep?”
“There were, like, fifty of them.” I nudge at her, insistent. “Check your phone.”
“I mean, I could check my phone,” she says, not making any movement in the direction of her pockets. “Or you could just tell me what ails thee.”
I could, couldn’t I? But how would I find that frantic midnight energy now, exhausted, on the bus to school? How would I say, out loud, the ugly things I typed about my parents? Let alone the things I wrote about Jonah, about him touching me—words that weren’t ugly so much as unspeakable.
“Actually, I don’t think I want to talk about it.”
“Aww, come on, Finch.” She puts her head on my shoulder. “You always want to talk about it. You’re literally a competitive talker.”
“Not today,” I tell her, and my head falls against the cold glass of the window.
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