“This is not how I imagine he thought the day would go.”
“That makes two of us.”
I feel we’re each standing a good hundred feet from the real subject. I have to move us closer.
“Is it over now? With the two of you?”
“Yes. So I guess you got what you wanted.”
“That’s an awful way to put it,” I say. “Don’t you want it, too?”
“Yes. But not like that. Not in front of everybody like that.”
I reach up to touch her face, but she flinches. I lower my hand.
“You’re free of him,” I tell her.
She shakes her head. I’ve said yet another thing wrong.
“I forget how little you know about these things,” she says. “I forget how inexperienced you are. I’m not free of him, A. Just because you break up with someone, it doesn’t mean you’re free of him. I’m still attached to Justin in a hundred different ways. We’re just not dating anymore. It’s going to take me years to be free of him.”
But at least you’ve started, I want to say. At least you’ve cut that one attachment. I remain silent, though. This might be what she knows, but it’s not what she wants to hear.
“Should I have gone to Hawaii?” I ask.
She softens to me then. It’s such an absurd question, but she knows what I mean.
“No, you shouldn’t have. I want you here.”
“With you?”
“With me. When you can be.”
I want to promise more than that, but I know I can’t.
We both stay there, on our tightrope. Not looking down, but not moving, either.
We use her phone to check the local flights to Hawaii, and when we’re sure there’s no way Michael’s family can get him on a plane, Rhiannon drives me home.
“Tell me more about the girl you were yesterday,” she asks. So I do. And when I’m done, and a sadness fills the car, I decide to tell her about other days, other lives. Happier. I share with her memories of being sung to sleep, memories of meeting elephants at zoos and circuses, memories of first kisses and near first kisses in rec-room closets and at Boy Scout sleepovers and scary movies. It’s my way of telling her that even though I haven’t experienced so many things, I have managed to have a life.
We get closer and closer to Michael’s house.
“I want to see you tomorrow,” I say.
“I want to see you, too,” she says. “But I think we both know it’s not just a matter of want.”
“I’ll hope it, then,” I tell her.
“And I’ll hope it, too.”
I want to kiss her good night, not goodbye. But when we get there, she makes no move to kiss me. I don’t want to push it and make the first move. And I don’t want to ask her, for fear that she’ll say no.
So we leave with me thanking her for the ride, and so much else going unspoken.
I don’t go straight into the house. I walk around to run out the clock more. It’s ten o’clock when I am at the front door. I access Michael to find out where the spare key is kept, but by the time I’ve found it, the door has opened and Michael’s father is there.
At first he doesn’t say a word. I stand there in the lamplight, and he stares.
“I want to beat the crap out of you,” he says, “but it looks like someone else got there first.”
My mother and sisters have been sent ahead to Hawaii. My father has stayed back for me.
In order to apologize, I have to give him some kind of explanation. I come up with one that’s as pathetic as I feel—there was a concert I had to go to, and there was just no way to tell him ahead of time. I feel awful messing up Michael’s life to such a degree, and this awfulness must come through as I speak, because Michael’s father is much less hostile than he has every right to be. I’m in no way off the hook: the change fee for the tickets will be coming out of my allowance for the next year, and when we’re in Hawaii, I may be grounded from doing anything that isn’t wedding-related. I will be getting guilt for this for the rest of my life. The only saving grace is that there were tickets available for the next day.
That night I create a memory of the best concert Michael will ever go to. It is the only thing I can think to give him to make any of it worth it.
Day 6023
Even before I open my eyes, I like Vic. Biologically female, gendered male. Living within the definition of his own truth, just like me. He knows who he wants to be. Most people our age don’t have to do that. They stay within the realm of the easy. If you want to live within the definition of your own truth, you have to choose to go through the initially painful and ultimately comforting process of finding it.
It’s supposed to be a busy day for Vic. There’s a history test and a math test. There’s band practice, which is the thing he looks forward to the most in the day. There’s a date with a girl named Dawn.
I get up. I get dressed. I get my keys and get in my car.
But when I get to the place where I should turn off for school, I keep driving.
It’s just over a three-hour drive to Rhiannon. I’ve emailed to let her know Vic and I are coming. I didn’t give her time to reply, or to say no.
On the drive, I access pieces of Vic’s history. There are few things harder than being born into the wrong body. I had to deal with it a lot when I was growing up, but only for a day. Before I became so adaptable—so acquiescent to the way my life worked—I would resist some of the transitions. I loved having long hair, and would resent it when I woke up to find my long hair was gone. There were days I felt like a girl and days I felt like a boy, and those days wouldn’t always correspond with the body I was in. I still believed everyone when they said I had to be one or the other. Nobody was telling me a different story, and I was too young to think for myself. I had yet to learn that when it came to gender, I was both and neither.
It is an awful thing to be betrayed by your body. And it’s lonely, because you feel you can’t talk about it. You feel it’s something between you and the body. You feel it’s a battle you will never win … and yet you fight it day after day, and it wears you down. Even if you try to ignore it, the energy it takes to ignore it will exhaust you.
Vic was lucky in the parents he was given. They didn’t care if he wanted to wear jeans instead of skirts, or play with trucks instead of dolls. It was only as he grew older, into his teens, that it gave them some pause. They knew that their daughter liked girls. But it took a while for him to articulate—even to himself—that he liked them as a boy. That he was meant to be a boy, or at least to live as a boy, to live in the blur between a boyish girl and a girlish boy.
His father, a quiet man, understood and supported him in a quiet way. His mother took it harder. She respected Vic’s desire to be who he needed to be, but at the same time had a difficult time giving up the fact of having a daughter for the fact of having a son. Some of Vic’s friends understood, even at thirteen and fourteen. Others were freaked out—the girls more than the boys. To the boys, Vic had always been the tagalong, the nonsexual friend. This didn’t change that.
Dawn was always there in the background. They’d gone to school together since kindergarten, friendly without ever really becoming friends. When they got to high school, Vic was hanging out with the kids who furiously scribbled poems into their notebooks and let them lie there, while Dawn was with the kids who would submit their poems to the literary magazine the minute they were finished. The public girl, running for class treasurer and joining the debate club, and the private boy, the sidekick on 7-Eleven runs. Vic never would have noticed Dawn, never would have thought it was a possibility, if Dawn hadn’t noticed him first.
But Dawn did notice him. He was the corner that her eye always strayed toward. When she closed her eyes to go to sleep, it was thoughts of him that would lead her into her dreams. She had no idea what she was attracted to—the boyish girl, the girlish boy—and eventually she decided it didn’t really matter. She was attracted to Vic. And Vic had
no idea she existed. Not in that way.
Finally, as Dawn would later recount to Vic, it became unbearable. They had plenty of mutual friends who could have done reconnaissance, but Dawn felt that if she was going to risk it, she was going to risk it firsthand. So one day when she saw Vic piling in with some of the other guys for a 7-Eleven run, she jumped into her car and followed them. As she’d hoped, Vic decided to hang out in front while his friends played in the aisles. Dawn walked over and said hello. Vic didn’t understand at first why Dawn was talking to him, or why she seemed so nervous, but then he slowly realized what was happening, and that he wanted it to happen, too. When the chime of the front door marked his friends’ exit, he waved them off and stayed with Dawn, who didn’t even remember to pretend she needed something from the store. Dawn would have talked there for hours; it was Vic who suggested they go get coffee, and it all went from there.
There had been ups and downs since, but the heart of it remained: When Dawn looked at Vic, she saw Vic exactly as he wanted to be seen. Whereas Vic’s parents couldn’t help seeing who he used to be, and so many friends and strangers couldn’t help seeing who he didn’t want to be anymore, Dawn only saw him. Call it a blur if you want, but Dawn didn’t see a blur. She saw a very distinct, very clear person.
As I sift through these memories, as I put together this story, I feel such gratitude and such longing—not Vic’s, but my own. This is what I want from Rhiannon. This is what I want to give Rhiannon.
But how can I make her look past the blur, if I’m a body she’ll never really see, in a life she’ll never really be able to hold?
I arrive the period before lunch and park in my usual spot.
By now, I know which class Rhiannon is in. So I wait outside the door for the bell to ring. When it does, she’s in the middle of a crowd, talking to her friend Rebecca. She doesn’t see me; she doesn’t even look up. I have to follow behind her for a ways, not knowing whether I’m the ghost of her past, present, or future. Finally, she and Rebecca head in different directions, and I can talk to her alone.
“Hey,” I say.
And it’s there—a moment’s hesitation before she turns. But then she does, and I see that recognition again.
“Hey,” she says. “You’re here. Why am I not surprised?”
This isn’t exactly the welcome I was hoping for, but it’s a welcome I understand. When we’re alone together, I’m the destination. When I’m here in her life at school, I’m the disruption.
“Lunch?” I ask.
“Sure,” she says. “But I really have to get back after.”
I tell her that’s okay.
We’re silent as we walk. When I’m not focused on Rhiannon, I can sense that people are looking at her differently. Some positive, but more negative.
She sees me noticing.
“Apparently, I’m now a metalhead slut,” she says. “According to some sources, I’ve even slept with members of Metallica. It’s kind of funny, but also kind of not.” She looks me over. “You, however, are something completely different. I don’t even know what I’m dealing with today.”
“My name’s Vic. I’m a biological female, but my gender is male.”
Rhiannon sighs. “I don’t even know what that means.”
I start to explain, but she cuts me off.
“Let’s just wait until we’re off school grounds, okay? Why don’t you walk behind me for a while. I think it’ll just make things easier.”
I have no choice but to follow.
We head to a diner where the average age of the customers is ninety-four, and applesauce seems to be the most popular item on the menu. Not exactly a high school hangout.
Once we’ve sat down and ordered, I ask her more about the aftermath of the previous day.
“I can’t say Justin seems that upset,” she says. “And there’s no shortage of girls who want to comfort him. It’s pathetic. Rebecca’s been awesome. I swear, there should be an occupation called Friendship PR—Rebecca would be ace at that. She’s getting my half of the story out there.”
“Which is?”
“Which is that Justin’s a jerk. And that the metalhead and I weren’t doing anything besides talking.”
The first part is irrefutable, but even to me, the second part sounds weak.
“I’m sorry it had to all go down like that,” I say.
“It could’ve been worse. And we have to stop apologizing to each other. Every sentence can’t start with ‘I’m sorry.’ ”
There’s such resignation in her voice, but I can’t tell what she’s actually resigned herself to.
“So you’re a girl who’s a boy?” she says.
“Something like that.” I sense she doesn’t want to get into it.
“And how far did you drive?”
“Three hours.”
“And what are you missing?”
“A couple of tests. A date with my girlfriend.”
“Do you think that’s fair?”
I’m stuck for a second. “What do you mean?” I ask.
“Look,” Rhiannon says, “I’m happy you’ve come all this way. Really, I am. But I didn’t get much sleep last night, and I’m cranky as hell, and this morning when I got your email, I just thought: Is all of this really fair? Not to me or to you. But to these … people whose lives you’re kidnapping.”
“Rhiannon, I’m always careful—”
“I know you are. And I know it’s just a day. But what if something completely unexpected was supposed to happen today? What if her girlfriend is planning this huge surprise party for her? What if her lab partner is going to fail out of class if she’s not there to help? What if—I don’t know. What if there’s this huge accident, and she’s supposed to be nearby to pull a baby to safety?”
“I know,” I tell her. “But what if I’m the one that something is supposed to happen to? What if I’m supposed to be here, and if I’m not, the world will go the wrong direction? In some infinitesimal but important way.”
“But shouldn’t her life come above yours?”
“Why?”
“Because you’re just the guest.”
I know this is true, but it’s shocking to hear her say it. She immediately moves to soften what sounds like an accusation.
“I’m not saying you’re any less important. You know I’m not. Right now, you are the person I love the most in the entire world.”
“Really?”
“What do you mean, really?”
“Yesterday you said you didn’t love me.”
“I was talking about the metalhead. Not you.”
Our food arrives, but Rhiannon just stabs the ketchup with her French fries.
“I love you, too, you know,” I say.
“I know,” she tells me. But she doesn’t seem any happier.
“We’re going to get through this. Every relationship has a hard part at the beginning. This is our hard part. It’s not like a puzzle piece where there’s an instant fit. With relationships, you have to shape the pieces on each end before they go perfectly together.”
“And your piece changes shape every day.”
“Only physically.”
“I know.” She finally eats one of the fries. “I guess I need to work on my piece more. There’s too much going on. And you being here—that adds to the too much.”
“I’ll go,” I say. “After lunch.”
“It’s not that I want you to. I just think I need you to.”
“I understand,” I say. And I do.
“Good.” She smiles. “Now, tell me about this date you’re going on tonight. If I don’t get to be with you, I want to know who does.”
I’ve texted Dawn to tell her I’m not in school, but the date is still on. We’re meeting for dinner after she’s done with field-hockey practice.
I get back to Vic’s house at the usual time he’d come back home from school. Safe in my room, I feel the usual set of predate jitters. I see that Vic has a large selection of ties in h
is closet, leading me to believe that he likes wearing them. So I put together a dapper outfit—maybe a little too dapper, but if what I’ve accessed about Dawn is true, I know she’ll appreciate it.
I whittle away the hours online. There’s no new email from Rhiannon, and there are eight new emails from Nathan, none of which I open. Then I go to Vic’s playlists and listen to some of the songs he’s listened to the most. I often find new music this way.
Finally, it’s a little before six and I’m out the door. It’s almost strange how much I’m looking forward to this. I want to be a part of something that works, no matter what the challenge.
Dawn does not disappoint. She loves the way Vic looks, using the word debonair instead of dapper. She is full of news of the day, and full of questions about what I’ve been up to. This is a delicate area—I don’t want him to be caught in a lie later on—so I tell her I simply had the impulse to take the day off. No tests, no hallways, just driving to somewhere I’ve never been before … as long as I was back in time for her. She fully supports this decision, and doesn’t even ask why I didn’t invite her along. This is, I hope, how Vic will remember the day.
I have to access rapid-fire in order to follow all Dawn’s reference points, but even still, it’s a good time. Vic’s memory of her is absolutely correct—she sees him so precisely, so wonderfully, so offhandedly. She doesn’t broadcast her understanding at all. It’s just there.
I know their situation is different from ours. I know I am not Vic, just as Rhiannon is not Dawn. But part of me wants to make the analogy. Part of me wants us to transcend in the same way. Part of me wants love to be that strong, that powerful.
Both Vic and Dawn have their own cars, but at Dawn’s request, Vic follows her home, just so he can walk her to the door and they can have a proper goodnight kiss. I think this is sweet, and go along, walking hand in hand with Dawn up the front steps. I have no idea if her parents are home, but if she doesn’t care, neither do I. We get to the screen door and then hang there for a moment, like a courting couple from the 1950s. Then Dawn leans over and kisses me hard, and I kiss her back hard, and it’s not the door we’re propelled toward but the bushes. She’s pushing me back into the darkness, and I am taking all of her in, and it’s so intense that I lose my mind, or lose track of Vic’s mind so that I’m in my own mind completely, and I am kissing her and feeling it and out of my mouth comes the word Rhiannon. At first I don’t think Dawn’s heard it, but she pulls back for a second and asks me what I just said, and I tell her it’s like the song—doesn’t she know the song?—and I’ve always wondered what that word meant, but this is what it is, this is what it feels like, and Dawn says she has no idea what song I’m talking about, but it doesn’t matter, she’s used to my quirks by now, and I tell her I’ll play it for her later, but in the meantime there’s this and this and this. We are covered in leaves, my tie is caught on a branch, but it’s just so full of life that we don’t mind. We don’t mind any of it.