I leave study period early, so I’m sure to be the first one to get into the cafeteria for lunch. I can’t bear the thought of the people I had tentatively started thinking of as friends pretending not to notice me. Or worse, staring. Seeing. Judging. I wish I could just go without eating, but I barely had anything for breakfast already.
As I carry my tray to a table in the far corner, by the wall, not by the window, my thoughts circle back to Friday. To what Drew showed me. He knows Sunshine Girl. The mere thought of it makes my head spin. Drew, reading my poems. Those most intimate pieces of me. Those deepest thoughts I have of him. He can never know that I am Sunshine Girl. He can never know that he is Sunshine. All the more reason to be glad that I will be gone soon. No chance that he will find out. I will have to be even more careful until then.
I’ve already stopped posting. I wrote three new poems over the weekend. I sent all of them to Penny, but I won’t upload any of them to my blog. I know how these things go. If I go on posting, he will find out eventually. Some mistake, a clue to my identity, and then he will not just know that I am Sunshine Girl, he will also be able to guess that I’m trans and from that point on, there will be no hiding.
Just five more weeks.
People start flocking through the doors and towards the food. There’s a pang in my stomach at the sight. I wish Drew had never asked me to come to the barn party. I wish I had never taken that jump. I wish I had never agreed to dress up, and I wish I had never gone to the party at Leslie’s. That would’ve spared me the hurt of knowing what it’s like not to be shunned before going back to sitting on my own. It always hurts so much more to lose what you had than to miss something that was never yours. Had I been arrogant to assume I could have this? Had I overstepped my natural boundaries?
Before my inner eye an old memory begins to play.
I was thirteen, maybe fourteen. I’d already started hormone blockers, and the effects had started to become apparent. I was the last in my whole year whose voice had barely cracked, by far the smallest of the boys. The weakest. The most quiet. The best in class.
I was walking to Drew’s table at the center of the cafeteria, my full tray in hand. Drew wasn’t there yet, but there were two free seats, so I would be able to save him one, existing at the fringes of the conversation until he arrived.
Quietly, I sat my tray down at the corner of the table to pull out a chair, when Jacy started talking.
“Yo, what do you think you’re doing?”
I looked up. “Sitting down?” I offered, a little indignantly. I’d never really liked Jacy. He was one of the loudmouth kids who loved to get on everybody’s nerves. He hadn’t gotten better with the onset of puberty.
“This is the big-kids’ table. There’s no space for you here,” he sneered.
“I always sit here with Drew,” I protested, without raising my voice. My stomach was tied up in a knot. I had feared this might happen at some point. I’d accepted that it would, because in the end I would still be me after all this. Much better than spending the next five years in the wrong body and coming out of puberty all mangled and wrong. I still didn’t fully trust the hormone blockers. Every evening, I would stand in front of the bathroom mirror, inspecting myself for signs of masculinity. Hair or muscle or pimples. I even sang, in a low voice, to make sure my voice wasn’t changing any further.
“Well, not anymore. He doesn’t want to eat lunch with faggots.”
In an act of rebellion, I tried to sit anyway. I pulled the chair out all the way and sat, except by the time I should have come to rest on the familiar, uncomfortable wood, the chair was gone. With a yelp, I fell backwards, only barely managing to keep my head from hitting the ground.
“What the fuck?” I yelled, sitting up, rubbing my bruised tailbone.
“Told you,” Jacy drawled. “Not even the chairs want you here, you should take the hint.”
My face hot with rage, tears already pricking at my eyes. I wanted to scream at them, to make them understand what they were doing to me, and how stupid it was, but I couldn’t. My throat constricted around the words and wouldn’t let them out. I was better off just becoming invisible. This wouldn’t get better with time. I was only going to become more and more different from them, and they would know. Trying my best to blink away the tears, I took my tray and stormed out of the cafeteria
I want to shout at them now, too. For leaving me alone. For letting this moment that was not at all my fault define their perception of me. I want to jump onto the table and tell them all where they could shove their friendship if all they cared about was how cool somebody was. Get faster updates on g.com.
My face is hot and I can tell that I’m about to cry. It was all pretentious bullshit. All those kind words about how they were sorry for how they used to bully me, about how glad they were that I was coming to parties with them. They were just the same cruel, self-centered children they used to be, but even worse, I am still the same child that cannot fight back. That’s why I’m alone now, isn’t it? And they will never understand. They cannot begin to understand who I am and why I behave the way I do. Why can’t they understand that I just don’t want to be alone anymore—
“Oh, there you are!” a voice says brightly, right as the person places their tray across from me, sitting down casually.
I look up.
Leslie?
“I was looking for you earlier today, but you weren’t there. Ms Attenburg is sick, isn’t she? Well, anyway, I’m so glad to find you here now, because I was so worried. You know, after you left without telling anybody. I guess it makes sense that you would, Marco really fucked up, but I still worried, right? And then you wouldn’t respond to anybody’s texts—”
“What?” I ask, interrupting her babbling.
“What, what?” she asks, like she’s not sure which part I require clarification about.
“You texted me?” My hands are sweaty. I turned off notifications while Amy was driving us home — I hadn’t wanted to know what they had to say about the stunt I pulled.
“Oh yeah,” she says lightly, “I know of Jacy, Sinéad, myself, Marco… probably some others as well, but I talked about it with them. Didn’t you see?”
“My phone’s on do not disturb,” I mumble, turning it off on my phone. The moment I do, a whole flood of messages pings past my screen. Easily thirty messages overall, from eight different people.
“Oh,” I say dumbly, staring at my phone. Once again, my chest constricts and my eyes prick, but this time not with rage.
“Hiiii,” Sinéad says right then, appearing next to Leslie. Jacy is trailing not far behind her. He nods his chin at me when our eyes meet, like we’re good friends.
“You alright?” he asks, sitting down next to me.
“Yeah, I guess…” I’m definitely better now, although I feel a little guilty about all the thoughts I had just now. Should I have expected this, instead?
As if on queue, Marco comes through the door to the cafeteria and makes a beeline right for our table. He doesn’t sit, though, instead stopping awkwardly next to Sinéad.
“Hi, uh,” he says in his deep voice, “I don’t know if you’ve read my texts, but I was gonna say this again in person anyway. So… I’m really sorry about… throwing you into the pool. And not realizing fast enough that you weren’t… gonna come back up.”
“It’s okay,” I say, meeting his eyes for moments at a time. “How should you have known?”
Marco straightens. “Well, it was a super shitty thing to do to somebody I don’t know well enough to, you know, gauge their reaction.”
“And not, like, a fight or something, but an actual conversation,” Jacy adds. “It’s so stupid that some of these things you just don’t consider, is it?”
I’m uncomfortably hot in the full cafeteria. The thick air settles right onto my skin in a thin film of moisture. How do you react to something like this? Am I supposed to say thank you? I am grateful for the apology, of course, but they did it in reaction to something that happened to me without my choice.
I’m about to open my mouth when Marco cocks his head. “Well, that’s all I was gonna say, so I guess I’ll leave you to your meal. I’ll see you around.”
He turns around and begins to walk, but I blurt, “Why don’t you sit with us?”
When he stops, his eyebrows raised a little, I point at the free seat. “We’ve still got space.”
“Thanks!” he says, sitting down. From his bag, he produces a lunchbox with rice and fried chicken. Why am I not surprised to see him eat this?
Sinéad leans forward a little. “I hope that incident didn’t ruin the memory of the whole day for you?” she asks, her brow furrowed. “It really sucks, because you were having fun before that, weren’t you? You know, even walking into homeroom that day, I was worried I was pushing you too much, so then I was relieved when it didn’t seem too bad… but then that?” She glances at Marco apologetically, but he just shrugs, agreeing.
“The party was probably a little overkill,” I say slowly. “Y’know, being the only one there still really dressed up. I don’t mind the clothes, obviously, I’m not that insecure, but… being the only one wearing them felt a little strange.”
“Well, you were the only one who really pulled it off. Aside from maybe Drew, but even he couldn’t keep up,” Jacy laughs.
Speaking of which. He’s not even here and still I’m talking to people. To a whole group of people, no less, and I’m actively involved in the conversation. The realization triggers a strange feeling in my chest. Is this the person I’m going to become on campus?
“You could totally wear that stuff every day, and nobody would even bat an eye,” Leslie says. “There are a lot of people who would kill for a body and face like that.” She hesitates. “Sorry, that was probably—”
“No, it’s fine. It’s a compliment.” Even though at least the first part is probably not true. At least where people know that I’m AMAB. Would they bully me for it? At least these people here at the table with me would probably not, right? But why should I risk telling them? It’s only another five weeks, then I’m gone anyway. There’s no point in putting myself through such stress, especially now, when I have to focus on the final exams.
I spend the rest of the lunch break listening to the others. They talk about all sorts of things, trade gossip and talk about upcoming exams and sports events they will participate in. When Drew finally arrives, he talks about the swimming tournament he has next week.
When the bell rings, I get up to put away my tray, when Sinéad jumps up to follow me.
“Oh, Mia?” she asks as we get out of earshot from the others.
“Yes?” I say, almost stopping dead in my tracks. Did she just call me Mia?? Why would she do that? I’m not crossdressed! Does that mean she knows I’m—
But Sinéad isn’t even looking at me when I glance over. No suspicious eyes watching for telltale shifts in my expression to figure out my feelings about this name.
“Do you think you could come over to my place later? I need to talk to you about something… private.”