October 6, 1997

  Camille

  Two weeks since Eva kissed me, third time I’m sneaking out to see her, and already, it’s down to a sce. Ten at night. Dad went to bed an ho. Mom is out of town w.

  It’s perfect.

  I look in the mirror, hanging on the bay bedroom door. I think about the time I’m about to spend with her, and I get the feeling again. Giddy . Like I want to just talk to someone about Eva, and all the things I like about her. Her teehrob haircut. How, when she sees me, her smile is at oed and pleased, because not only does she have me, but she knows she does. How it feels like Eva woke me up from a dream, and now I finally uand what it’s like to be be with someone, who makes the entire rest of the world, every due date, bang act, and difficult question dissolve into nothing, and the only thing that matters is us. I feel like I’m in middle school, ily crushing so hard. Being so hopeless.

  But I ’t think about all of that right now, as much as I might want to.

  I let my hair down, and brush it until it sits exactly the right way, with a ton of volume and with my retly appeared grey hair at seventeen catg the light. I put my bck pea-coat on, making sure nothing that could snag on anything is hanging freely, and I aowledge, once again, how perfect it is to have a bedroom on the ground floor of a house, before I walk over to my window, softly, gently unlock the lock, and start very, very slightly, pushing it up. As little noise as possible.

  I gently step out of the window, on to the little margin of brick that the window instaltion sits on top of, and start sliding the window down. Then I pull it the rest of the way, as I pull the other half of my body through, and jump down the one foot, onto the grass.

  And then I run, through the cool, Autumn air, to the er, around which Eva’s Tercel should be waiting.

  Sure enough, it’s here. She sees me, and beams. That smile.

  I get in.

  “Hey geous.”

  “Hey.”

  “Are you ready?”

  “Yep!”

  “Good” she says, as if she’s happy to be taking care of me.

  She starts driving toward the overlook, One More Hour pying, and I take a sed to just… look. She has me.

  Ae introduced Eva and I wheh showed up to her house to go to a cert with her, ba April. We got along, and she ended up spending most of the summer lying on my bedroom floor, talking to me while pying all sorts of music through my stereo. One day in July, she’d been hanging out in my room, when Ae dropped by randomly, like she’s been doing since I met her two years ago. She sat in the chair across the room from my bed, drawing, as she often did, and we listeo Eva’s old riot girl tapes and talked for hours. Her parents had gotten sick of her not being around for dinner, so she left around four-thirty, a home to beat her parents there.

  “Camille. She likes you”, Ae had said, without even b to look up from her sketchbook.

  “Yeah, we’re really good friends.”

  “No, I mean she really likes you.”

  I paused whatever I was doing. “What do you mean?”

  “. That haircut, those bands? She likes girls. How do you think I met her?”, she’d said, with her iette flip-ness, as I felt myself blush. “Did you guys go out?” I asked without thinking.

  “Nah, she was friends with Aill is, probably. That’s how I know her. I ended up liking her more than I liked Ange, but we never went out.”

  “Oh. Good.” I’d said, hearing relief in my voice. Ae caught it and looked up, her loving and wry smile already pasted across her face.

  “Camille… do you like girls?”

  “I don’t know… I certainly don’t care about guys .”

  “Do you like me?” she asked, i, quick, joking tone.

  “That ship sailed when we saw Hole sophomore year.”

  “I figured. But Camille… do you like Eva?”

  And I’d stood there, thinking about Eva, and all the versations we’d had. How I felt when I saw her through the window on the front door when she was waiting to e lounge on my bedroom floor, the jokes she made, how she’s a bit of a scker but thinks it’s endearing that I actually care. How she read the novel I told her to, after not reading anything for fun in years. How, st May, I’d barely known her a couple of weeks, but when I broke down while studying for the physics exam, she’d hugged me, pulled my hair back so it stayed out of my face, and took me to the bathroom to me up, instead of letti there and break in the library. And I thought about her. Her face, her sense of style, the way she shakes her hair out of her face. “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”, I’d said, before it set in. “Oh my god, I like Eva!”, I’d loudly added, before thanking the stars that Mom and Dad weren’t home.

  And we kept spending time together, never addressing anything. The ime I saw her, a day or two ter, I saw what Ae had talked about. The sparkle in her eyes when she looks at me, the way she looks at me. How ied she is in what I’m thinking, how I’m doing, who I am. But it didn’t feel bad, to think of her looking at me, or cheg me out. It made my stomach feel warm.

  I started sitting on the floor o her, sometimes, talking quietly, telling stories about people we k school, and one day, it got quiet. She looked at me, with her gentle smile and sparkling eyes, and tucked my hair back behind my ear. A moment passed of us, looking at each other, before I got up and offered her water. But I repyed it over and over. Waiting to fall asleep, making breakfast, tidying up. I wanted her to do it again. And I wanted her to kiss me. And then it happened.

  Ae’s parents are always out of town the sed weekend of September, two years ago, she ied the tradition from her older brother, now in college, of using it to throw the first big party of the school year. As Ae’s named and designated detail person, I’ve always stayed after to help her . This year, I spent the first hour or two of the party feeling bored and sitting in my head, watg everyone we knew from school drink beer ahe same jokes they’d been telling all week and talking about the uping games wasn’t fun anymore. her was listening to Courtney and Diana talk about Stephen, from the guys swim team. I still liked them, having known them all for most of my life, but it all felt so… b. The same versations as always. And then Eva showed, excited. Everyone was too buzzed to notice her sit right o me and make me light up, or if they did, they just thought we were really good friends. At this point, the school versations gave way to everyone exging stories and ughing, for hours, with Eva never leaving my side. She made everyone ugh, and seemed to know everyone, despite not even going to the same school. Brandon, the rare cool band kid, made a joke about drunk music theory, and Eva, whose Dad had been a musi and made her take piano until high school, pyed up her tipsiness and said, “sevens resolve downward, Brandon”, in a way that, despite being a joke about music theory, actually got the circle to ugh. Eventually, people left, getting rides from each other or their older siblings, but Eva and I just… kept talking. Like we always do. Ohe drinks wore off, I started ing, and she helped me. We talked about everything, and nothing, as we reset throw pillows, threw away cups and s, and took any defiled bo the washing mae. The same sorts of versations we’d been having sihe ride back from the cert in April, every day, all summer. She watched me, amazed, as I looked at the mostly tidy room a everything I could, every st detail, to the way it’s been since I first set foot in it, fall of Freshman year, when Ae told me I should e over, to make Ae’s parents pletely uo detect any partying that may or may not have taken pce while they were gone.

  At three in the m, with everything perfect, we sat right back down on the couch, where we’d been for hours, out of things to talk about yet again, just like that day in my bedroom. That’s when we looked at each other, and I saw the sparkle in her eyes and her smile. Ever sure of herself, and then leaned in and kissed me, softly, sweetly, creating blooming butterflies in my stomach, that fluttered out through my entire body. I closed my eyes ahe warmth travel through my chest, when she pulled back. The only time, to that day and sihat she’s been anythihan delusionally self-fident. So I had to pensate. I grabbed her arms, pulled her ba, and kissed her. “I k!”, she’d said, breaking for air. With a smile, I rolled my eyes, and kissed her again. She broke, and said, ever softly, “I want you”, before she went to kiss my neck, sending sparks through my body. We made out more, and more, and then held me, and we fell asleep together, on Ae’s parents’ couch. We woke up the m, and Ae didn’t have to say anything. She just smiled when she found us.

  The top of the overlook feels empty, and it’s perfect. Bed in leaves from the rapidly shedding trees, wide, and tranquil. Day after tomorrow, all manor of old cars will be parked on top of it. This is where everyone goes, Eva’s school and mine, and it always seemed so me. Cheesy. But now, I’m Eva’s , and when she suggested it the other day, I saw it in a different light, and I got the butterflies again.

  She pulls out a piiket from her backseat, and finds the perfect spot.

  “So, how is mademoiselle?” she asks, unfolding the b.

  “Good now. I had a long day at school.” I grab the other end and situate it so it’s perfectly ft, and hopefully made nicer by the leaves u.

  She’s sitting, almost lying down. “Oh, you should’ve told me if you were tired, we could’ve…”

  “Oh, I have energy now . The long day got… shorter”, I say as I sit o her and she ys down.

  “That sounded better in your head” she says, as I le into her.

  “We ’t all be effortlessly smooth all the time”, I reply.

  “It’s a burden I’ll have to carry” she says, with feigned solemnity, and kisses my forehead.

  I feel the butterflies again. I ’t believe I talk to someone like this, flirty and cheesy. They made me want to vomit all of three months ago.

  “I’ve been ughing sihis m though.”

  “Why?”

  “In English, this guy Jeremy asked how braille worked, it came up in this short story we were reading. So Mrs. Ridel described it really quick, how there’s an alphabet and blind people tell the letter by feeling, that sort of thing. And then I just hear Joanna say ‘I wish I was blind so I could do sign nguage.’”

  She cracks up a little bit. “What’d Ridel say?”

  “I don’t know. ‘Bless this child’, I think? One of her phrases.”

  “Does she say that a lot?”

  “Oh. All the time.”

  “I’ve got one”, she says. “I was in bio today, and there’s this guy, Ryan, with this super deep voice. Really… what’s the word?”

  “Monotone?”

  “YES! So our teacher made us all go outside, just to give us something to do, and she said something along the lines of ‘There was a forest here, but they cut it down, and built a school.’ And we’re all kind of zoning out, because it’s kind of obvious, and I just hear Ryan, right o me, say, ‘unfortunate…’. And I guess we all heard him because all thirty of us just burst out ughing.”

  We talk, with her right hand in my left, and her left pying with my hair, for a long time. She tells me the story of how st spring, they watched a movie in css with a straight couple kissing, and a bunch of the other people started going “ oooohhhhh!” as if they were iary school, before a girl, Renee, said loudly “I’ve seen that in the hallway ”, and a bunch of people ughed. I tell her about Mom’s weird religious rant the other day, how she thinks there are invisible angels and demons, floating right o our heads, shooting each other with bows and arrows, and she tells me about how her Dad’s car o stolen because he left the keys on the fro, and how he still doesn’t care, and still leaves his keys on the fro. Eventually, we run out of stories from the st couple of weeks and the ohey remind us of that we haven’t told each other yet, and we just look at each other. It’s so nice, so lovely, so otherworldly to just lie here, with Eva. Our third time together after she kissed me, after everything became real . Sihen, her fidehe way everything in her life always seems to fall into pce perfectly, feels like it trao me. I look up at the t, willowy trees around us, that seem to fade into hollow, empty sky. Everything looks dark, almost gothic, but the st thing it feels is dreadful. With Eva, everything else in the world could disie, and it wouldn’t matter. I’m hers, and nothing hurt me.

  Nothing.

  June 23, 2016

  Chloe

  I don’t really know why, but for the past few days, being in the same room as Mom feels incredibly awkward. Like I stantly just said something I shouldn’t have, like there’s a really big forcefield in the air between us, and we talk, but ’t ect. I’ve been trying to stay in my room, burn time, and find some new subject to stick my head inside of until I know all about it, but nothing is grabbing on to me. But tonight is Mom’s birthday, so there’s ing out of sitting here for at least an hour, possibly more, while I stare at the invisible gss pahat feels like it divides us. At around five, I stop my daily “head down on pillow, face down in hands, falling down the elevator shaft that is my brain” session, a dressed. We’re going somewhere nice, I’m told, and Mom doesn’t deserve to be embarrassed by her emo child ohirty-sixth birthday. So I brush my hair, ge into the outfit that cks enough gehat I don’t stare in the mirror and curse geics, the ohat became my favorite when I was mistaken firl in it, and tell Mom that I’m ready when she is.

  In the car, I get a text from Dad, and it’s the first I’ve heard from him since he asked if I made it to Boston okay, and I replied “yeah”. But this isn’t a text— it’s a picture of a bar in a restaurant, a oop says “THEY SHOULD BUILD THESE INTO EVERY STORE SO GIRLS SHOP AND GUYS DRINK BEER AND WATCH SPORTS” and then otom it says “LIKE IF YOU AGREE”.

  I ’t bring myself to reply with a ughing g emoji, so instead, I reply with a thumbs up, mostly because he gets upset if I respond to stuff like this ively, or don’t respond at all, and I feel like I ’t risk him being any more upset about me moving in with his so called “bitch ex-wife” than he already is. One day shy of three weeks, and the pattern tinues, with almost a thousand miles not even being enough to defeat it.

  Whenever I have any distance from Dad, whether that’s staying out of his way in Raleigh, not talking about anything, time goes by, aarts to try to talk to me again, on his terms, the way he talks to Sylvan. I fell for it for a long time and sometimes I don’t even realize that it’s happening again until it’s too te. Eventually, when I do start to talk more, believing, idiotically, that he actually cares what I have to say, he makes fun of me for being soft, and whenever I actually think something he says — usually about women or Obama ay people or something — is kind or iive, and try to debate it, he viciously cuts me down in front of everyo punishes me for being me, validates Sylvan for mirr all of Dad’s thoughts back at him, and creates a Goofus and Gant type sario for Casey to absorb. Points for efficy, I guess.

  The photo, the top text bottom text meme that feels like it’s five years out of date but wasn’t funny then, is the signal. The cycle is starting again.

  And then I feel bad for dreading the anticipated awkward sileween Mom and I. The look like she wants me to say something or is about to say something herself. Because an awkward sileh Mom is several thousand times better than asses for a normal, fortable versation with Dad. And then I feel guilty, taking her frahree weeks ago I felt like my life was over in North Carolina, and now I feel like I have some room to breathe. I hate myself— I live in this world to shut out my thoughts so hard that I fet things have actually gotteer. I don’t want to think about it. So I look at my phone, scroll through pictures of girls with swoopy, long hair, wearing bck sweaters, and save them to my aesthetic board, as if that means anything. I’m eventually interrupted by the car turning off. We’re here.

  I awkwardly walk in, and I’m reminded again of what I am outside of my own head, outside of an imagined bination of filtered photos and vibes: an awkward fourteen year old boy going everywhere with his mom.

  Mom walks up to the host, elegant and put together. “Hey, I had a reservation? It should be two under Lambert.”

  “Here you are!”, she says, looking up from the tablet listing all the reservations. “You just follow me!” The host grabs menus and turns slightly on her heal, before leading us to a table. It’s an Italiaaurant— Mom’s favorite food is sagna, thanks to her own mom— food being the only text she ever brings her mom up in. And I hate most food, but miraculously, I like most Italian dishes.

  We sit down and the host briskly, gracefully walks away. Must’ve been a long day. I look around and notice the jazz pying, how nice everything is, and how different it is from the pces I would end up going to in Raleigh, with Dad, where some of the nice restaurants are still “steakhouses for people who drive expensive pickup trucks but don’t hem”. Or pces that mostly exist for people to hang out in and watch college sports and drink like eighty-two beers in.

  “I know you’re picky about it, but the sauce here is really good.” Mom’s food reendations are usually actually perfect, so this is a big relief. “I’ve been here a couple of times before, everything I’ve tried has bee.” It means a lot that she cares, because Dad would always throw his hands up and sometimes go “Well I don’t know what you wao do, you don’t like anything”, and then make fun of me when I just ate rolls for the entire meal, as if everyone else needed more encement to think I was weird.

  God, I’m an asshole for dreading this. For dreading spending time with my Mom. I feel bad for even pario Dad, but it’s tough not to do. During the months after she moved here, it felt like she did anymore. I had to get used to life without her. It sucked.

  Christina introduces herself, tells Mom about the wines, and brings delicious bread and oil before taking our order. Mom gets sagna, I get a pasta dish that Mom tells me is really good, and Christina is happy that we’re simple.

  “So, I feel like I haven’t really talked to you tely.”

  “Yeah, sorry. Really busy at the office these days”, I reply. With almost fourteen years of practice, she ighe quip gracefully.

  “How are you feeling about everything?”

  “I’m good. I like my room and the furniture, I like living with you, I’m not under a microscope stantly,”

  “You’re pretty low mainte’s true”, she adds.

  “and I’m not in North Carolina anymore. I ’t really pin.”

  “Did I just hear you say you ’t pin?” She wryly asks.

  Fuck.

  “Since you learo talk, it’s been analysis of things in the world and why they’re bad. Are you three kids in a trench coat? Did you repce— are you a robot?”

  I smile and roll my eyes at her. It’s hat we joke like this.

  “I take back what I said about not being under a microscope.”

  “You don’t even have to be under a telescope for people to see that you pin about things.”

  “Fine.” I say, pying up some frustration as a joke. “The sheets I got are a little scratchy.”

  “ There it is”, she says, borrowing an expression I remember Ae using.

  “I’m gd I could rise to the occasion.”

  The waitress brings our food, says she’ll be right back to che us in just a minute, and walks away.

  The food is amazing . The best pasta I’ve ever had. Mom remarks that the sagna is actually better than she remembers it being, from when she was here a couple of months ago, and that sticks out to me, because I usually remember things as being way better than they actually are. She remembers them as worse.

  “What are you reading?” She’s been askihis more tely, and it always feels good to actually talk about things, rather than her just asking me about school or if I saw a meme she sent me or something.

  “I started reading Carrie again.”

  “Again?”

  “Yeah. I think because it’s so short, as so weird toward the end, there’s almost this like, mythic quality to it. I like reading it ain… I don’t know.”

  “I read it in high school, it’s the only book of his that I ever felt much for.”

  “Yeah, it’s good that the women are like, written. ” She nods. “I like all the stuff he says about small towns and stuff like that, the little towns that produce people like Carrie’s mom.”

  “You don’t think it would happen in a city?” She asks, and I ’t tell whether she’s early asking this question, or asking it the way an English teacher does, trying to get me to eborate my logic behind an ao a question, which she’s already decided may be correct or incorrect.

  “No, because I think people like Carrie’s mom probably don’t want to live in cities.” She thinks for a sed, and then hums positively.

  “You’d be surprised” she says, cutting more sagna with her fork and knife.

  “What about you?” I return the question, feeling bad that I ever dreaded this versation. She actually cares. And she’s a little bit surprised. I feel bad, because I don’t think I’ve ever asked her before. She usually jumps in, and I think maybe she doesn’t know that I want to know what she thinks.

  “Hard Times, by Charles Dis. I haven’t read it since I was in college.”

  “Ugh.”

  “Hey, I like Dis!”

  “I don’t!” I promptly reply.

  “You have to be patient. Books from that time period that take a lot of time to make realistic characters, so that everything is more meaningful ter on. You wouldn’t care very much if two people you barely knew were arguing over who loved who or not, but you would definitely care if two people you’ve known for your entire life were fighting about it.”

  I think on it.

  “I’m pretty sure ninth graders read Great Expectations. That’s when I read it”, she says. “You’ll see.” She smiles at me, knowingly.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because I know you. It’s basically the emo of the 1800s.”

  “Oh god.”

  “I’m excited for you to read it. It’s still one of my favorites.”

  We finish up, and she orders two slices of cheesecake, because it’s her favorite dessert and she knows I like it as well, and there’s a lull. I have mi the table, but she gets a box to take hers home, and pays the bill.

  I think about how all of the air from being around her hasn’t beeonight, how easy it is. I still feel bad for not being grateful earlier, for wishing I could avoid this. I fot what it was like to have someone around who… cares. Who isn’t trying to either reel me in or throw me away.

  I should talk about something other than myself or my thoughts as if I’m some important person, for once.

  “How does thirty-six feel?”

  “A lot like thirty-five.”

  “It doesn’t feel any gayer?”

  With her patented “dryly ign any quip” teique that I’m pretty sure icked up by years of hanging around her friend Ae, she replies instantly, matter of factly:

  “Oh, no, that’s ial.”

  “Sorry I couldn’t get you anything, on at of being fourteen.”

  She ughs a little bit. “It’s fine.”, she says with a smile. “Are you ready?”

  “If you are.”

  She is, so she grabs her purse, Christina tells us “Thanks so much!” as she catches us leaving, and we leave.

  The sun had set while we were eating, and we walk out into a humid, te June night. The sky is dark blue, turning bck, serene and sticky. It’s quiet as the two of us walk for about a block or so, and we arrive back at the parking garage, with its white interiht g against the street mps and the st of the light from the su in her car, an Outback, which I instantly took notice of when I saw her new car for the first time, but didn’t joke about because I don’t know if it’ll trip any fgs that I know about the Subaru Lesbian joke, and it’s still quiet. She’s focused. She’s thinking.

  It’s a short drive back to the house, but no music pys. I start to feel anxious, and I look over at her, but she’s as happy as ever.“I did want to talk to you about something.” I should’ve seen it ing, she always talks to me about Serious Things in the car. I didn’t think she would do it on her birthday, but she is a mom, I guess.

  “I’m gay.”

  “I kind of gathered.”

  “Well, I just… we didn’t talk about it. I never came out to you properly. I was nervous, and I thought… I wao talk to you about it and tell you the whole story.” Is this what she wao talk about this whole time? She wao e out to me, after I’ve known for over a year?

  “You don’t have to if you don’t want to… but… um… I’d love to hear about it. How you knew, and everything.”

  “When I was sixteen, I met a girl. Eva. One day, her, Ae, and I were hanging out, and Eva had to go home early. She left, and Ae looked at me, and said ‘Eva really likes you.’”

  I nod.

  “And I thought about it. And I had just turned seventeen, and I realized I’d never cared about a guy. Girls talked about guys all the time, and I just never even noticed that they were there, or that I was supposed to care about them. And I realized: I liked Eva. Maybe more. We got together a couple of months ter.”

  I nod again. It’s strange seeing her like this. Talking about the past. I look at her eyes and I see that she isn’t here. She’s seeing her memories.

  “But I was off with her one day, and my Mom— searched my room while I was gone. She found a little box I had, that had a strip of pictures in it from a photo booth. Nothing bad, we were just… kissing. Very obviously more than friends.”

  Suddenly, I imagine Mom, at seventeen. Sneaking out and having fun with her girlfriend. It’s difficult to imagine her not so proper, overly g and a little anxious, so knit together, so… Mom.

  “I came home one night, and she was waiting in my room, sitting on my bed. She showed it to me and asked what was going on. She’d seen Eva and I get really close for the st year, and she…”

  “Thought something ?”

  “Yes.” She looks pained. She hasn’t talked about this to someone in a very long time, if ever. She hasn’t wao. She’s opening up to me and maybe it’s not even strictly as a Mom, as a proper parent. She’s… being vulnerable. The way I ’t help but be.

  “So… you khe whole time?” She looks over at me.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The whole time you were with Dad. You knew you were gay?”

  “…Yes. I needed a car, I had to get out of their house ao college. I tried to ighe fact that I was gay. Yrandparents weren’t going to help me if I…”

  She doesn’t finish. She doesn’t o.

  “I didn’t have anyone else that could help me. Eva and I saw each other for a little bit again, in college, but my mom and dad dropped by my dorm one day without telling me, and... she was there with me.”

  “And they threateo stop helping you with school.”

  “There was that, and… Eva had already been out for a long time. She was sie having being in the closet for such a long time, and… being too scared to leave it. As an adult I think about it now, and I should have just taken out more loans or asked someone for help, or something, but I was raised to feel bad for doing that. And I was scared to e out. I saw what Eva dealt with, and… I don’t think I wao be gay. Right after that, I met your Dad, and… he was very different then.”

  “I mean I hope so”, I ’t stop myself from adding, thinking of the meme from earlier.

  She lets out a single ugh, aowledging the absurdity of it. How she ended up going from her first girlfriend the first person she ever really felt for romantically, to… Dad.

  “He was, and we were really good friends whe, and when you get along with someone like that, it’s easy to try to make it work as a retionship.”

  It’s quiet again. I think about it. This side of her. The sheer memory in her head. Moments pass.

  “I’m gd you told me” I say. She looks over at me, smiling, motherly and tender, but slightly wounded. It’s quiet for another minute before I ask her something, without even thinking. “Hey, how do you… or how did you… feel about it? Being gay?”

  She looks a little bit surprised.

  “At first, I hought about it. I never noticed guys, I kind of tuned out my friends who would talk about Johnathan Taylor Thomas or whatever, just like they were talking about the weather. When I realized I liked Eva, I didn’t even really gh a big ‘I’m gay’ thing, I just knew I liked Eva. It felt really natural. It was natural.”

  “Oh.”

  “But when my mom found out, the things she said got to me. She was very, very Christian, and she kept hammering it into me that it was an abomination. And I never believed that, not ever. But I felt ashamed. It was hard not to. And then I saw what Eva went through, when she came out. It was much different in 1998. And I was afraid of dealing with the same thing. It’s something I’ve thought about since I got here . I do know that I tried being straight, and… you saw how that went.”

  “That makes sense. But-”

  She looks over at me.

  “It didn’t make you feel… different or anything like that?”

  “Only when my parents started to get to me. Even when I wasn’t with Eva anymore, I would notice other women and feel bad for it. Like I was something gross. I don’t know how much of that was me feeling that way, or telling myself that I felt that way because I had to stay in line if I wao get out of my parents house or not end up homeless, but… it’s how I pushed it all down.”

  She stops for a sed and seems to think about it.

  “Why?”

  “I’ve just… kind of always felt different. And sometimes I wonder if it’s because-” and then I realize what I’m saying. I realize that I’ve already started telling her, without even thinking about it, this whole time. And that I ’t lie to her, after she told me all of this stuff about her life, after I’ve e here to live with her, after she’s cared so much about me, for my entire life. More than she o care for Sylvan. More than they o care for Casey. So I have to tell her.

  “Um…” She looks over at me. “I… uh…”

  At this moment, I realize that we’re oreet that the do is on, and she’s right about to park, she looks at me, expeg something, but almost eager. Slightly excited? Like she’s trying to keep her mouth from smiling?

  “I’m… transgender.” I notice how the word “transgender” leaves my mouth so slowly, and weakly. As if I’m uain. As if I haven’t been thinking about this for almost twht years. “I want to be a girl”, I quickly add.

  She stops holding back her smile, and stretches over the thiweewo fros of the car, and hugs me. I’m surprised, and with her arms around me, all I think to say is, “You knew?”

  She lets me go, stops t her poor torso, and searches for a sed.

  “Yeah. Yeah, I did.”

  “…How?”

  “Well, when you were building furniture, you were so focused on doing it yourself, but I wao help. So I grabbed a knife and started opening your boxes.”

  It takes me a sed to realize what she’s talking about.

  There have been thousands of things through my entire life that have made me feel extremely embarrassed. They always e bae when I’m in the bed, waiting to fall asleep, ht before I have to speak in front of the css at school. Sometimes they e bae as a list of things I’m afraid Sylvan will tell Lauren about, if he ever met her. And people usually tell me I’m really kind of ft, and they say I look sad when I’m just… thinking. Not feeling any particur way. Which makes it feel all the more fug ihat I feel my face bee boiling hot. I don’t need a mirror to kly what I look like right now. Red. Burgundy. Scarlett. Vermillion. All the art css shades.

  “Oh my god. The oh the clothes.”

  “Yeah. Sorry.”

  I bury my fa my hands, and they feel freezing cold.

  “Oh my god”, I say again, to no one in particur. I sit with my fa my hands, letting the world drift away, when I realize something.

  “Wait. You’re not… mad?”

  “Honey, I wasn’t even surprised.”

  “You weren’t?”

  “Well, maybe a little at first. I didn’t know you were transgender, exactly. But…” She trails off, thinking. It reminds me of a babysitter or an older sister in a TV show, trying to think of how to say something so that it won’t hurt me. I wish she would just say it. “You have always been different. It’s like you’ve said. You live in your own head all the time. And I’ve known a lot of gay people who are like that too, who always felt different. And, you know, you’re my child. I didn’t think it was too uhat you were some variety of…”

  “Queer?”

  “Yyyyyes”, she says, surprised that I went ahead a for it. “And then I found the box, and I told Ae about it— I hope you don’t mind, but she’s just always been there for me with stuff like this— and she said it made sense.”

  “…Why did she say that?”

  “She said her wife, Liza, is friends with someone who transitioo male a long time ago. They probably know some other trans people, too.”

  “Oh.”

  She’s not just fih it, she’s excited. She was smiling when she knew I was about to tell her something. Who knows how long she’s been a step ahead of me?

  “Hey… how did you know?” she asks. The question es out of nowhere, but now it’s my turn.

  “I remember this oime, lying on my bed in the middle of the day, with my head in my hands, when I was three. I still do this, actually. But I just remember, out of nowhere, having the thought, ‘I should’ve been a girl’. And so that kind of came back every so often, but I didn’t really think about it that hard”, I start, and she nods, listening ily. “And then I started seventh grade, and every guy started pretending to be super aggressive, or maybe actually being aggressive, and purposely annoying girls to try to flirt with them. And I hated it. I didn’t want to be like that. So I made friends with girls, because they acted like actual human beings, and then I realized I reted to them more. I thought about it and I realized I’d always reted to girls more, and wao be like them. Like Violet from A Series of Unfortunate Events, or… you.”

  She nods her head again, still ily, carefully listening.

  “And I was thinking about it all on the bus home one day, when I had the thought again. I wish I were a girl. And then that Christmas, it just… fell of the deep end.”

  “When you were having all that trouble sleeping?”

  “Yeah. You noticed?”

  “I did. I just didn’t know what to do, and Davi- your dad, kind of talked me out of talking to you.” Figures.

  “I just had this break, where I was terrified of what my body would do to me, or what I’d grow into. I just kept thinking it over in my head again. I want to be a girl. And so I started googling it. Eventually I realized there was a word for this thing, it was being transgender.”

  She’s thinking, and it’s making me anxious.

  “And I didn’t want to be. It didn’t seem cool. It seemed like most of the girls kind of just sat around in their houses being sad. So I tried to bottle all that ba. And I’d almost vinced myself that I could just suffer through it. But I got up and brushed my teeth before I went to sleep, and I had to look in the mirror. And I realized I couldn’t be a man. I couldn’t deal with it. I felt like I would die. Not that I was going to do anything, but it was like… like I couldn’t imagine waking up one day and being six feet tall and huge and southern.”

  She nods, and she’s hurting for me. I feel bad for making her feel like this. There’s no romano blossoming. It’s barely a story. It’s some loser looking at their puter. She takes a sed.

  “So… what’s your name?”

  I take a sed. It feels like it es out of nowhere, and I think she thinks maybe I’m hesitating. But it’s all starting to feel real, and ay doesn’t care if something good or bad is happening, just that something is happening at all.

  “Chloe.”

  She looks me over, and hums positively.

  “It fits you.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “It’s quiet and simple, but buttoned up and pretty. It’s very feminine.”

  I look down at my nails and pick at them again. I feel my chest getting heavier. “And I really want- I wish I could ta… I want your st name. Like, if we get it ged.”

  She thinks for a sed, and then hugs me again. Tighter than before. She gets it now, the other part of it. I haven’t told her about what the months were like after she left, when I couldn’t see her. When I came home from school and sat in my room until it was time to sleep, or until three in the m, just because I didn’t want to go back. When I dealt with Sylvan in the car and Dad at dinner, and there wasn’t an escape. I haven’t had to tell her about it all. “Chloe” is because I want to be a girl, because I should’ve been a girl, because I want to grow into a woman one day. “Lambert” is because I really, really fug do not want to be a man. I don’t want to be Dad, or Sylvan. I’m deeply fug afraid that I’ll end up like them, instead of ending up like Mom.

  “Of course” she says, quietly. My throat feels heavier. I his. I’ve his for months. I’ve his since April of st year. Maybe longer. Definitely longer.

  “…How do you feel about it?” I ask her.

  “I have always wanted a daughter, and now I have one.”

  And the feeling I’d wanted, almost fantasized about in a weird way, finally drowned me. It’s been years of feeliy, disected from anything except ay and tension. Years to journal only to just describe things in kinda’s and sorta’s and I think’s. I finally get what I wanted.

  I burst into tears, and she hugs me.