Chapter 22: Part 22 - Wednesday Afternoon, part 1

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Part 22 - Wednesday Afternoon, Part 1

My lessons after recess were one, long, drawn-out anxiety attack. Jessie wasn’t in either of them, so it had to wait until lunch to find her, draw her aside, and tell her my truth. I looked for my once(-and-hopefully-forever) best friend in all the usual places I knew she hung out, but I couldn’t find her anywhere. Finally, I bumped into some of the soccer team and asked them.

“I think she went down to the change rooms,” Sue-Ellen informed me as soon as I asked. “But I wouldn’t go down there if I were you.”

“Oh?” I prompted.

“Jessie looked upset as hell when she passed us a while back. And then there’s Ms Dyke.”

“What’s wrong with Ms Pike?” I asked.

I wouldn’t repeat her slur.

“She’s on the warpath about something or other!” Sue-Ellen warned.

“Probably got her period back,” Natalie said, grinning.

“Don’t joke,” Sara broke in, “I think I’m getting mine.”

“Thanks guys,” I replied and headed off to find Jessie.

The change rooms were on the lower floor of the school, leading to the sports fields out back. They were usually a dark, depressing place that no amount of boisterous laughter or girlish glee could fill. I didn’t feel as though I had much of either in me. But today they were positively frosty.

I’ve always believed in the power of a place to hold on to the emotions spilled in it. And this place had a lot of exhaustion, exasperation and defeat. But there was something more too. A cloud that hung over its usual gloom and threatened to squeeze the life out of me like toothpaste from the tube. Limp and defeated and impossible to put back. But of Jessie and Ms Pike, there was no sign.

I began in the obvious places: the girls’ change room, the separate bathroom and shower sections, the gym store where they kept the old vaulting horse and acrobatics equipment.

Nothing.

I was careful to stay away from Ms Pike’s office, as I didn’t think a team of horses would drag Jessie voluntarily in there. Finally, it occurred to me where she’d be. It was kind of obvious, really.

I headed over to the Ella-only-change-room.

Jessie was inside. She didn’t lock the door, but the light was out. The only source of illumination was the thin slit left by the metal ventilation grill at the top of the wall. It cast her in a hard light that made her situation seem all the more pathetic to me.

“What do you want?” she asked, drying the tears that had streaked down her face.

My God, the other girls had seen her pass them like this and just left her?! But then they weren’t really her friends. I recalled how they wrote off her morning lateness and said she ‘was a high maintenance friend’. How Sue-Ellen had disowned her at my party. The other girls just ignored the clear signs that Jessie was suffering. I suddenly felt so angry at the rest of the team. Not one of those other girls was worthy of Jessie as their best friend.

“I wanted to say sorry,” I began, looking her in the eye. “And I need to tell you something.”

“I don’t want to hear it—” she said, but I’d come so far now — talked myself into so much — that I had to go through with it.

“—I’m transgender!” I blurted out.

There.

It was done.

In the seconds before she responded — while she wore that look of surprise, then shock, then even a little fear — I thought about how many cis-kids had to have these conversations with the people in their lives.

‘Sorry. You wouldn’t want to date me. I’m cisgender!’

People ask why we need a pride month. It’s because of moments like this.

“You’re what?!” she finally replied. Her look had changed from one of shock-with-a-little-bit-of-fear to one of scrutiny. Like she was measuring me with her eyes. The proportions of my jaw and shoulders, the flatness of my chest, the swishing of my oh-so-concealing pleats on my skirt, the separate bathroom I was standing in the doorway of.

“I’m a transgender girl,” I replied, but I couldn’t meet her gaze anymore. It wasn’t a shame about who I was. It was a shame I hadn’t told her sooner. Before things got so… complicated.

She stood up and moved away to the back of the room. I followed her just a little inside and let the door swing closed a crack behind me. She looked so small in the corner, her arms clasped around her waist, the tears running freely down her face. I’d seen that look before. On grandma’s face. On my dad’s. It was betrayal. She felt betrayed.

“You’ve been pretending—?” she asked, but a choking sob cut her off.

“It’s not pretend,” I replied, trying not to grow defensive. “Nothing about our friendship was even slightly pretend. You’re my best friend, Jessie. The best I’ve ever had, in fact. And I’m sorry I hurt you before. And I’m sorry I hurt you now.”

The words flowed out of me like someone had unstopped a dam.

“But I don’t want your feelings for me to be based on something that I’m not.”

“Not what?” she asked. Then the kicker. Another hoof-blow to the stomach. “What even are you?”

In her world I was a what. Not a who. A thing. Not a person.

“I’m your friend, Jessie,” I offered back. “I’m the same person you knew yesterday.”

“You’re not the same person!” she retorted. “I never knew you!”

“No,” I countered, aware that I was in the fight of my life and that losing meant losing my best friend, probably forever. “I’m the same. I haven’t changed from the person who was your best friend. From the person who was goofing around with you in science.”

“Science?!” she repeated, a pull of realization on her face as she suddenly pieced it all together. “That’s why Mr Nevin called you Errol!”

“Yeah,” I conceded. “My dad and my grandma emailed the school to change my name. But it’s just my name, Jessie. Every single word, every single hug, every single thing that has happened between us was the same me — the real me — the me you’re talking to now. And I don’t want to give up on our friendship, even if you’ve given up on me. We’re worth more than that, Jessie!”

“I don’t know, Ella. Errol? What even is it?” she asked.

“I’m Ella,” I replied. “Ella Stevenson.”

“I just don’t know if I can trust anything that comes out of your mouth anymore,” Jessie admitted, wiping away another tear.

“I haven’t lied,” I explained. “About who I am. But I did let you carry on thinking something that wasn’t the whole truth. And that’s just as bad. And I’m sorry for that. And I’m willing to do whatever it takes to earn back your trust, because—”

Because what? Because I owed it to her? Because I needed a friend as badly as she did? Because it was the right thing to do?

“—Because I really value our friendship and I don’t know if it could be any more than friendship and I don’t know if you’d ever be able to think of me as anything other than a boy who dresses like a girl, but I am so much more than that. I don’t think I even I know what my sexuality is yet, but I know I want you in my life. One way or another. And I know that, together, there isn’t anything in the world we couldn’t conquer.”

I tried to imagine how she must be feeling after all that truth. What she thought of me before and how that might have changed. I’ve seen people go from friends to strangers in a heartbeat. It rarely works the other way around. And I knew I’d hurt her. And I knew that the next words out of her mouth would be the most important.

“Wow,” she replied, coolly. “You should write speeches or something.”

I still couldn’t tell if she was mocking me.

“That was really good—” she left the slightest of pauses after the word, into which I cut a universe of possible disasters. Then she flashed me that smile and finished, “—Ella.”

She’d done it. I was grinning like an idiot again. Just looking at her own winning smile, and the fact that she’d accepted me as Ella and nothing else, made me beam that simpering banana-grin.

“Come here you,” I said, and threw my arms open to hug her.

“I thought I’d lost you,” she replied, wrapping her arms around me and hugging me with her warm, soft body.

“We’re never going to lose each other again,” I said.

That was my biggest rock. And I took it and I gave it to her. And she carried it with ease and made me feel light and free in the carrying of it. Nothing that came after this could ever separate us. We’d be friends for life. We’d be maybe-more, who could say. We’d be—

The door to the change room flew open and the light streamed in, blinding us both for a second. But it wasn’t all light. And it wasn’t all doorway. There was a shape there. A rounded shape with kind of a fuller figure, and a whistle hanging out of its mouth like a limp cigarette.

It was Ms Pike.

And she was fuming.

“What are you two disgusting children doing in here?!”

Submitted: January 15, 2025

Young Adult teen drama ya lgbtq trans