Book by: Secret Geek

Chapter 17: Part 17 - Bathroom Blues

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Part 17 — Bathroom Blues

It was twelve days into my secret relationship with Rafa Couzins and the shine was starting to wear off.

“Do we —” I asked as we broke from kissing, “—always have to make out in the boys’ bathroom?”

It was a Wednesday. Third period. I was bunking science, Rafa was bunking math.

“You’re the one who wanted to keep it secret!” Rafa replied, his breath dropping as his passion shifted.

“I know,” I said. “I do. It’s just—”

“—Don’t you like it when we kiss?” Rafa asked.

“No, I do,” I replied. “I just—”

“What else do you like?” he asked. His tone shifted and he began running his hand up my shirt. I pulled away from him.

“I should have known better than this,” Rafa sighed, stuffing his hands into his pockets and rocking back and forth on his heels. “I should have known better than to date a guy who’s not even out yet.”

“I will come out,” I pleaded with him. “But—”

“—But what?” he asked, taking a step closer to me.

Rafa was two years ahead of me, and even though he was only about 15 months older than me, he was bigger and taller and stronger. And part of me loved being wrapped up in all that. But that part disappeared somehow when he towered over me, as he was doing now. Disappeared and was replaced by this feeling that I was doing something very bad that would get me into a lot of trouble.

“I’m just not ready yet,” I told him. “I don’t even know what I wanna come out as,” I conceded.

“So you want to keep on keeping this a secret!” he asked.

“I don’t know!” I cried, desperately.

The main door to the bathroom opened and someone entered. We both fell deathly silent in our end-cubicle. This happened from time to time and we’d gotten used to incorporating it into our rhythm. Though our rhythm was usually kissing (lately, Rafa was pushing for more), not arguing. We listened for the telltale sounds of someone taking a whizz in the urinal. Followed by the taps. Then the hand drier. Only when the main door swung shut did we continue.

“I just wish we could do some things together that weren’t secret,” I admitted, finally.

“Like what?” he asked, his tone shifting again. His body was more relaxed now. More sure of something. Like the tension was easing out of him.

“I don’t know,” I replied. “You’re my first— you know—?”

“Your first boyfriend?” he asked, his wide smile once again colonizing his face.

I suddenly grew very shy.

“Yeah,” I nodded, not meeting his gaze.

Rafa cupped my chin between his thumb and forefinger. It was a move that always gave me butterflies.

“You're a good boyfriend,” he replied, lifting my gaze to meet his.

“I am?” I asked, softly.

“You are,” he whispered, his words growing long and drawn out and making my stomach trip absolute somersaults. “And you’re such a great kisser,” he went on, hovering a millimeter from my lips. I could feel his minty-fresh breath on my nose.

“I am?” I whispered back, though it felt like my pounding heart was about to explode in my chest.

Rafa kissed me deeply. Passionately. And I felt like I was the only person in the world. His world. And he’d hung it just for me. I was dating Rafa Couzins. Mister Desirable. And nobody else was. Nobody else even knew about it. It just made me feel so special. I let him run his hand up the inside of my shirt. It felt nice. While we kissed. I never wanted it to end.

“I wonder—” Rafa whispered between the kisses, “—what else — you’d be good at—”

I stopped immediately.

Did he mean what I thought he meant?

“Not here,” I said. It was all I could manage. Looking back, I wish I’d said more. Been more certain. Explained that ‘Not here,’ meant, ‘I’m not ready for that, yet.’ But I didn’t.

“Invite me over,” Rafa suggested, moving his hands back down to my waist and holding me the way I’d seen some of the older boys hold their girlfriends.

“To my house?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he nodded back. “This weekend. For a sleepover.”

He took a hand and brushed my hair out of my eyes. I’d been letting it grow long, like the girls in my year. And when he pushed it out of the way, I suddenly felt so safe. So cared for.

“Okay!” I replied in a whispered giggle.

“We can walk in the woods before,” he said. “We can hold hands and no one will see us.”

“I’d like that,” I replied.

“I thought you might,” he said, grinning. And he fell to kissing me again. Slowly. Passionately. Like there were no other lips in the world.

I stood in the locked bathroom of our meatloaf-smelling house. I’d done something bad and I still didn’t know how I’d felt about it. Ever since Anna had told me about the birth control pills, I couldn’t get the idea of them out of my head. It hadn’t taken me long to find them. Children have their hiding places from parents, but there is no hiding from your siblings. Even in a respectful relationship like mine and Anna’s, I knew where she kept her secret stash of valentines cards, photo booth picture strips, and vapes. I found the Microgestin right next to the fake cannabis incense sticks.

It was a long, thin packet with four columns of colored pills. The first three were yellow. But the last one was orange. It said ‘Week 4’ above it, so I figured that must be the strongest. I didn’t even think about it. I popped on right out of the packet and swallowed it whole. Without water or anything. They had estrogen in them, right? That was what Anna had. What girls had. It wasn’t long after that I started to feel funny.

It couldn’t have been the pill, I reasoned. It had only been about 5 minutes. But it was something. Something dark and bitter was crawling up inside me, through my guts and into my mouth. It sat on top of my stomach and reached its long tendrils up into my throat. My throat closed off and I started to feel very sick. It was about this time that I bolted for the bathroom.

I was standing there, over the toilet bowl, weighing up the consequences of sticking two fingers down my throat and making myself throw up the pill, and all I could think about was what Jessie had said to me earlier in the day. That we could ‘do it together’. I’d never ‘done it’ before. Sure, I’d punched a couple of walls in anger as a little kid, but never anything that could be close to what Jessie was doing.

That was partly why I wanted to do it. I wanted to feel what it was like. This thing that Jessie was doing to herself. Maybe it would bring us closer together, I mused. I mean, wasn’t that what so many girls my age did? It was normal, right? Everyone had tried it at some point, hadn’t they?

But there was another part of me that wanted to do it for entirely different reasons. I’d done something really bad when I stole Anna’s birth control. That sinking, sitting feeling on my stomach. That was guilt. I’d been a bad girl. And bad girls get punished, right? This could be my punishment. For this bad and all the others I’d done.

I went over to the bathroom cabinet and took out the razor I used to shave my legs. I sat down on the edge of the bath and held the razor just above my thigh, high up and close to the hips, where no one but me would see it. All I had to do was press down a little harder. Press down and let it knick my skin. I thought about Ms Pike and her War on Gender. I thought about what Anna would say when she found one of her Microgestin was missing. What Mom would say when she found out what I had done to Anna and what Anna was doing to her body. What Dad would do when he found the same.

Then I thought about Rafa Couzins. For some reason, I thought about that time in the bathroom where he made me invite him over. I thought about his wandering hands and the way they’d made me feel. The way his kisses had tasted. So minty fresh. To hide the bad breath underneath. That was so Rafa.

I let the thin edge of metal kiss my thigh. All I would have to do was to press on. Let the blade punish me. I couldn’t control my dad or Ms Pike or even my own transition anymore. But I could control this. I felt the razor’s handle grow hard against the palm of my willing hand.

I could control this.

No.

I would control this.

My left hand moved up underneath my shirt, moved like Rafa’s hand had moved; it grasped the half-yin-yang pendant. Someone believed in me. Someone was there for me. So I’d be there for myself.

I put the razor back unused on the shelf, flushed the toilet and sprayed (as a cover for being in there so long). I’d been a bad girl. I’d been acting kinda wrong all day. Maybe longer But someone was there for me. And I think it was about time I was there for her too.

Submitted: January 13, 2025

Young Adult teen drama ya lgbtq trans