Halfway through looking at all his stuff, I find a selfie. It’s a simple mirror shot taken in what might be his bedroom. He has one eyebrow up and he’s half smiling.
I zoom in. His lips look so . . . ugh. So ridiculously kissable.
I’m not going to kiss him. I’m Ashley to him, not Asher. Dad said once that girls aren’t supposed to make the first move. Besides, I’ve never kissed anyone. I don’t know how it works.
But good lord. I’m blushing just thinking about it and no one’s even around.
I curl up and hug Chewbarka, turning over Griffey’s question about telling Daniel. I saw a TikTok a few weeks ago of a girl sitting on a floor looking at her phone. A guy in the background notices her and starts dancing toward her like he wants to ask her out. Some dude runs into the frame and whispers, “Don’t do it, she’s trans!” in the dancing guy’s ear. But he just shrugs the dude off and keeps dancing toward the girl.
I cried when I saw it. I don’t even know if I’m trans. Like whatever I decide I am for good, Ashley or Asher, one of those will make me trans and one won’t. Plus, if I’m Asher I’ll be gay, and I’ll be straight if I’m Ashley.
But that meme is exactly what I hope will happen: A guy will see me for me. He’ll shrug at my whatever-whatever gender mess and keep dancing toward me like woop woop cutie-boo!
Daniel really is nothing like Tyler. But liking him is an intense mix of exciting and scary, and I’m feeling even less girly than I did yesterday. If I wake up tomorrow in full-on dude mode, it’ll suck to fake being a girl. I’ve tried faking before. It’s like someone’s rubbing my eyebrows the wrong way.
I don’t want to be fake with Daniel. But if he only likes girls, I’ll lose whatever this thing is that might be starting. This feeling that I want to make his life easier, that I want to be the one he comes to when he’s sad or lonely. This feeling that he might look past my outsides and see me for me. A task so challenging my own freaking dad can barely do it.
I hug Chewbarka. “Dogs are so lucky,” I tell her. “You don’t gotta worry ’bout this crap.”
She licks my arm and pees on me.
10
Hazel Surprise
Daniel
While the morning kennel worker is cleaning the cages in room B, I sneak a look in the supply closet. There’s so much stuff in there, old blankets and bags of food from past boarders, extra leashes, flea dip solution, toenail clippers, cat litter. On a top shelf near the back, I find what I’m looking for: a plastic bin of disposable dog diapers. I fish through it as fast as I can, searching for one small enough to fit Chewbarka. I finally find a couple at the bottom. I roll them up and shove them into my pocket along with a dog brush. Then I duck into the employee bathroom and check Facebook. There’s a reply to one of my messages. My heart leaps, but when I tap the message, it says I have no idea what you’re talking about.
I wish I could ask someone upstairs to look up Tina’s number. But Saturdays are chaos up there and I doubt anyone would have time for me. The only front-office worker whose name I know is that Gavin guy, and he doesn’t come in on Saturdays. Besides, maybe they can’t give me her number. At my last checkup at the doctor, we had to wait forever and I read the HIPAA paperwork because I was so bored and it made it sound like you can never, ever give someone’s personal information away without their consent. What if I ask and they say, Sorry that’s illegal, and then get too curious about why I want Tina’s number?
I’m playing with a basenji in the kennel yard an hour later when I have a brain wave: Maybe I could ask Dad to help. He backed Mom on the no-getting-another-dog thing, but his heart wasn’t in it. He loved Frankie as much as I did.
I hate that there’s so much everyone in my family keeps hidden lately. I know what’s going on with Mitch, getting ditched by his friend who has a girlfriend now, plus losing Dad and hitting puberty and crushing on a girl who’s not into him. And Mom’s . . . well, whatever she is about Dad. Sad? Disappointed? Relieved? Mad? It seems like all of it at the same time. I keep looking back at the last few years and how Dad’s slowly been withdrawing from us and I worry it’s my fault somehow, because I’m so emotionally over the top. The inside of my head keeps getting bigger and more complicated and it seems harder and harder to share the full truth of it with anyone, especially when everyone already thinks I’m way too in my feelings.
I just miss Dad. A lot. I missed him before he left and I miss him more now. All of us have huge private struggles, and none of us talk about them. We keep big parts of ourselves locked away.
But maybe Chewbarka could fit into Dad’s separate, hidden part. Just for a few weeks.
My mind churns as I put the basenji back in her cage. I can’t bike all the way to Dad’s with Chewy in the backpack. It’s awkward to ride that way. But we still have our old bike trailer from when me and Mitch were little. I could bike Chewbarka to Dad’s apartment tomorrow while Mom’s doing her church stuff. I’ve never pulled the trailer, and there are busy roads between our house and Dad’s apartment, but maybe I can find a
