But Daniel’s nothing like Tyler. This won’t turn out like that.
I look down at my outfit: red Converse with one of the laces coming untied, sorta fashionably ripped jeans I got at Goodwill, a purple T-shirt with a stegosaurus surfing on the back of a shark. An outfit that could go either way.
I brush fur off my stegosaurus. There’s so much more to me than my gender. But people interact with me differently if they think I’m a girl than if they think I’m a boy. And if they read me as a girl during a boy time, or a boy during a girl time, nothing past that feels right.
I really want Daniel to read me as a girl.
Maybe I’ll get lucky and the boy feeling will fade without taking root. This has been my longest stretch yet as a girl, all the way since the end of last school year. But these past few days, it’s like the feeling I have when I hit a wrong note on my keyboard. There’s this nagging discomfort with my clothes, with how my shoulders curl forward when I’m relaxed, with the way I walk. Think. Breathe. My makeup has started to feel garish, not girly and understated. My stride is lengthening. I’m eating more, sleeping less. The music I’m listening to is changing from light and airy to heavy and loud. If things keep on like this, after an uncomfortable, in-between week or so, boom: I’ll be 100 percent dude. Sarcastic and overconfident. I’ll feel stronger, I’ll play Fortnite and listen to punk and metal and use basic dude wash in the shower instead of Mom’s girly products. I’ll stop daydreaming. I’ll slack on my homework.
Maybe I can hide it this time if it doesn’t fade. Duck my head and hold my breath till it’s over. Hurry along the days until I catch myself listening to Schubert again and admiring the graceful shape of the kitchen faucet, or thinking about how good a silky skirt feels on freshly shaved legs. Then I’ll paint my nails, smear on a little eyeliner, blink mascara onto my lashes. I’ll braid my hair, smile more, pay attention to how people interact and stop taking what they say at face value. Soon, with luck, I’ll be flying fully girl-style again, doodling vines and flowers and the elegant curves of harp notes in my notebook margins, instead of scribbling the craggy-jaggy shapes of dubstep or thrash guitar.
Dad would sure be happy if I stuck with the same jam he’s seen me in the last five or six times we got together for lunch. Which, ugh, I have to do that tomorrow. Last time, when we met for Chinese food right before Mom and I moved, he told me that labels like enby and gender fluid and nonbinary are the equivalent of deciding your identity is airport: somewhere you go to get from one place to another. Not somewhere you live. Not somewhere you feel settled, or at home. He said it’s for my own good that he “encourages” me to pick-and-stick. That he doesn’t want me to be uneasy or unhappy forever.
I guess there’s a kernel of parental love in it. He wants his kid to be happy, or whatever.
He just totally disregards that I’m truly happy when I’m with people who see me instead of my gender. People who roll with it. People like Mom and Griff. Like my friend Camille from Bailey did. They never act like I’m a pain in their keisters when I shift.
But boy howdy, it sure gets under Dad’s skin.
I finger-comb the tangles out of my hair as I watch a kid climb up the slide and get totally creamed by another kid coming down. I’m laughing at the cuss words they’re slinging at each other in their little-kid voices when someone says “Hey” right in my ear.
I jump up from the swing and turn. Daniel’s looking uncertain, holding a small orangish-brown dog in a backpack he’s wearing on his front. “Oh, hi!” I say too enthusiastically. I catch a strong whiff of pee.
“Meet Chewbarka.” Daniel lifts her out of the backpack and sets her on the ground.
I squat and scratch her chin. “Hey, Chewbarka. Hey, little girl.” Chewbarka looks up at me with cloudy eyes like she’s confused. Her face is gray and her back end is damp. “Did you walk through a puddle on the way here?” I ask Daniel.
“No, I biked here with her. I mean, um, she had an accident in the tent.” He moves the empty bag to his back. “I have to be out of there by five forty in the morning to get home before my mom’s alarm goes off, and then I can’t get to her after school till like three fifty. It’s too long for her.”
“Aw, poor thing. Maybe we can give her a bath.”
“I did already, sort of. With water bottles. She’s just not all-the-way dry yet.”
I pick Chewbarka up and tuck her under my arm. “My mom’s gonna love her.” I say it with more conviction than I feel. Chewbarka is cute-ish, but definitely smelly and past her prime. Plus her breath is a little fishy. I guess I was hoping she’d be a little more . . . I dunno, Bambi-eyed. And less stinky. It’d be easier to make my case.
When we walk into the apartment, Booper immediately charges Daniel, his tail going like a helicopter. Daniel’s
