“Do you really have to go home for dinner?”
“What? Oh no, I was just saying that. My mum has late tutorials on Mondays, so it’s very much a grab-and-go situation.”
“Do you want to head back to the river?”
He says it nervously, as though asking if I wanted to have a sneaky cigarette by some bike sheds.
“If you want to. But do you think we should – I don’t know – talk about what I saw? In your bedroom?”
“Oh. That.” Roe tugs at his hair again, twisting the dark curls into his fist. He doesn’t say anything for a while.
“We don’t have to,” I say, my palms up. “I’m not trying to out you or anything, but if you want to…”
He hides his chin in the zipped-up collar of his jacket for a moment, and I assume the subject is closed. Suddenly, he speaks. “When my parents found out that I was…”
“Bisexual?”
“I don’t know. Sure. Bisexual is fine, I suppose. It makes me feel a bit like a specimen, but whatever.”
I briefly imagine this beautiful boy in nail varnish, hidden jewellery and Chanel No. 5 pinned to a frame like a dead butterfly.
“But that day was something I had agonized about for months. Before Lily went missing, that was like … the worst day of my life. And afterwards, after you made me relive it … I don’t know … it didn’t feel like this big burden any more. I had this weird feeling of clarity. Like I finally got how dumb my parents were being with me that day.”
“A problem shared is a problem halved? That kind of thing?”
“I guess,” he says, sounding unconvinced. He kicks at a stone.
“What happened that day?” I ask. “The day your parents found stuff on your computer.”
“What do you think happened?”
I open my mouth, ready with the answer “Gay porn?” but am completely unable to say it.
He looks at my face and bursts out laughing. “You look like a fish,” he says. “Relax.”
“My dad was using my laptop and my texts were synched to the laptop. And there were some messages coming through from a friend.”
“A friend?”
“Yeah. Someone in the band. They were talking about coming out to their parents, asking me if I had any plans to do the same. Which, ironically, became coming out to my parents.”
“Oh, shit. I bet your friend was kicking himself.”
“Themself.”
“What?”
“They. Miel is non-binary.”
“Ah. OK.”
Miel. Miel.
“Is … is Miel their name like Roe is your name?”
“Do you mean, did Miel name themself?”
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
We walk along in silence as I try to puzzle this out, turning out of Fiona’s road and down the street towards the river. A bunch of kids are hanging around Deasy’s takeaway, eating chips with gloves on. It’s a strange sight.
Miel. Who is Miel? Are they in a relationship? Or is it just a band thing? Are they both in some kind of genderqueer club that I will never be a part of?
Roe stops and turns to look at me. “I know what you want to ask me,” he says. “And the answer is, I don’t know.”
“OK,” I reply. “I just … I don’t really know how it works.”
“Non-binary people?”
“Yeah,” I say, nervous. “So is it like being trans? You were born in the wrong body?”
“It’s not about being born in the wrong body. I think that’s just like, an easy thing to say for people who don’t really get it.”
I feel a moment of shame at being someone who, apparently, doesn’t really get it.
“Can you explain it to me?”
“I’m not sure. I feel like…” He stands still and closes his eyes. “A pinball machine.”
“Right.”
We turn onto the riverbank. It’s quiet, the sky turning purple. I miss the sun. I look at the snow under my feet. It’s not the pure white mound of sugar crystals it was this morning. Hundreds of schoolkids and commuters have turned it to grey sludge.
He’s so much more Irish-looking than me. The curly hair. The thick shoulders. The wire frame. The ruddiness in his skin, high in his cheekbones, scarlet to his ears. He’s like an old drawing of some Celtic warrior.
“Like I’m this tiny metal ball that is just racing around this giant thing, colliding with all these levers and bumpers and bits of machinery. Except the bumpers are all labelled things like ‘dresses’ and ‘naked women’ and ‘Keanu Reeves’. And each time I hit something, it’s proof of either one thing or another.”
He smiles then, clearly amusing himself with the metaphor.
“Like, on the days I hit the things a guy is supposed to like, it’s like, Oh wow, the guy side has won. But some days the girl side wins, and it feels weird, but I like it, too. Am I making any sense?”
“No,” I say, dumbfounded that anyone could have thoughts this detailed about their gender. “I mean, sorry, yes, of course you are. I’m just so impressed that you have this … this thesis on all this stuff that I just…”
“Take for granted?”
“Yes.”
“I guess it all feels natural to you. I’m jealous,” he replies. Then he pauses. Thinks about it. “Except, actually, no. I don’t think I am. I used to be. But the more I let myself just exist, the more fun it gets. So I try not to question it or label it. I’m trying to just see everything as … negotiable.”
“Negotiable.”
“Yeah. Negotiable.”
We laugh nervously, turning over the weirdness of the word. Our laughter tapers off, and all I can hear is the lapping of the water where the river meets the low stone wall.
I stare at him, in awe that he could know so much about himself, and at the same time, be so comfortable in not knowing.
He stares back.
For once, I am determined not to break eye contact. Not to change the subject. To prove to him that I’m capable of understanding him, or at least looking like I
