Stranger Than Fanfiction(15)
“You know I wouldn’t be caught dead in any of those,” Sam said.
“Would it kill you to add a little color to your wardrobe?” Candy asked. “Everything you own looks like it was bought at a nineties grunge concert. You’ve got the same figure I had when I was your age; I wish you’d let it show once in a while.”
“That’s how I dress,” Sam said. “It’s what I like to wear, it’s what I’m most comfortable in, and that’s always how it’s going to be.”
“You might change your mind one day,” Candy said with a shrug.
The hopeful hairdresser looked from side to side as if she knew something Sam didn’t.
“Mom, you’re doing that thing with your eyes again,” Sam said. “If you have something to say, please just spit it out.”
“You want to know the truth? Fine, here it is,” Candy said. “I stopped by the psychic on Fourth Street after work today. She told me a bunch of really interesting things. Apparently I was royalty in a past life, I’m going to make a good investment soon, Grandpa says hello, yada yada yada.… But the most interesting stuff she had to say was about you.”
“The psychic told you I needed new clothes?”
“No, she told me there’s a boy in your life that you aren’t telling me about!”
Sam’s eyes bulged so large they almost rolled out of her head.
“What?” she said.
“I told her that couldn’t possibly be true because I would have known if you were dating someone,” Candy went on. “But Madame Beauffont was adamant about it. She couldn’t give me his name or age but described him in great detail. He sounds perfect for you—I’m talking soul mate material! He listens to the same music as you, likes making things out of trash, and he even watches that ridiculous show you’re so obsessed with. Now, I know I’m the last person you like to talk to about these things, but if there was a boy, or a boy you had your eye on, I thought you might want a cute outfit to wear around him.”
Sam tried to stop her mom from talking with every gesture she knew, but her mouth was like a runaway train with no conductor.
“Seriously, Mom?” she said. “I’ve told you a million times there are no boys in my life. Are you going to take Madame Beauffont’s word over mine?”
“She’s a world-renowned clairvoyant, Samantha,” Candy said. “Why is it so hard for you to talk to me about these things? Having a boyfriend is perfectly natural for a girl your age. I’m trying to be supportive but you freak out every time I bring up the subject. Are you a lesbian or something?”
“No, I’m not a lesbian!”
“Then what are you so ashamed of, Samantha?” Candy asked.
Sam went quiet. She knew why it was such a touchy subject; she just wasn’t ready to have the conversation with her mother yet. It was beyond Candy’s level of comprehension.
“I’m not ashamed of anything,” Sam said. “Boys just aren’t a priority for me right now. I wish you’d respect that.”
Candy threw her hands in the air in surrender and put all the clothes back into the shopping bag.
“I’m not trying to be disrespectful, I’m just impatient,” Candy said. “I’ll take these back to the store tomorrow. Now I’ve got to get out of this room before those candles give me a migraine.”
Candy left Sam’s room in a dramatic and defeated sulk. The psychic had been so accurate about everything else—how could she have been so wrong about this?
However, if Candy could read her daughter as well as Sam read her mother, she would know her daughter wasn’t being completely truthful. The psychic was right: There was a boy Sam had been hiding from her mother, but it wasn’t a boyfriend like Candy so desperately hoped. The boy in her daughter’s life was her daughter.
There were very few things Sam Gibson knew for a fact, but she knew with all her heart, body, and soul that he was transgender.
When he was young, Sam never thought twice about his hatred of wearing dresses, his reluctance to let his mother put his hair up in a bow, or his preference for playing with the boys in his neighborhood as opposed to the girls. He despised the phrases little girl and young lady, but that was because they were always followed with instructions to sit up straight or behave a certain way. Sam didn’t realize until he was much older that these were subtle hints his true self was sending him.
Sam had always been different from other girls, but it was around the third grade when his feelings surpassed being different and something felt blatantly wrong. For the first time, he and his classmates were no longer students, but divided into groups of young men and women. The segregation seemed to come with an invisible set of new rules, expectations, and restrictions that he had never put on himself. It made him uncomfortable but he didn’t understand why. He knew he was a girl—that was obvious—so why didn’t he feel like one? Why did he feel like a boy on the inside? Why did he want to be treated like one?
It was confusing, frustrating, and unfair all at once and the feeling got stronger the more time passed.
Sam’s childhood was haunted with questions he couldn’t answer. Was he a freak of nature? Was something broken inside of him? Had God made a mistake with him? Was God punishing him for something? He attended Sunday school with his friend Joey so he could learn how to pray and ask God to fix him. Every night Sam prayed to wake up the following morning in the correct body, but his prayers were never answered.