Birthday(35)

“You know you’re family,” he says as we make our way to the kitchen, then he smiles. It’s hard not to be warmed by the lie. “And that rule only applies to girls anyway.”

That hits me in the chest like a kick from an angry horse. I keep my face from moving, but my throat closes and tears start bubbling up again. Luckily his back is turned to me as he rummages in the kitchen.

“Sorry for bailing earlier,” he says. “But I was actually coming to find you, if you can believe it.” I don’t say anything, but focus instead on willing this feeling away. He keeps talking without looking up. “It’s weird, I know, but I get this, like, pressure at the base of my neck sometimes. Who knows? Maybe it’s brain damage. But I always take it as a sign to—”

Eric turns with a Coke in his hand, his face morphing into confusion and then alarm when he sees the tears coursing down my cheeks. The weird thing is I never cry. The guys at school call me a sissy and a “whiny little bitch” all the time when they aren’t calling me a faggot, but the thing is I never, never cry. Normally sadness never reaches past my throat. Except suddenly, tonight, I can’t stop it.

“Oh,” he says. I close my eyes and try to rub the tears out of them but they keep coming. I feel like a child. “Okay. Okay.” I hear footsteps and then Eric’s arms are around me, which is surprising. Ever since the kiss we both silently agreed to keep our distance—no more sharing a bed when one of us sleeps over, no more slaps on the shoulder, no more wrestling, and I guess I hadn’t noticed how much I missed this. I rest my cheek on his shoulder and decide to stop fighting it. My shoulders shake and I’m distantly aware of the uncontrollable sobs coming out of me, that I’m getting snot and tears all over my friend’s nice shirt.

He rubs his hand between my shoulder blades and shushes me, and I hate that under all this pain it feels so good. I want to be friends like we were. I want puberty to never have happened. My mind rushes back to the last time he held me, last year as we sat in the street, and I can’t stop imagining that horrible idea: what if I’d been born a real girl, and all of this were different?

Eric sits me down on the couch and I sink into the quicksand cushions. I scramble at his shirt, furrowing my fingers in the cloth like someone holding on for dear life. He stays with me the whole time, whispering against my shoulder.

“Breathe,” he says.

I force myself to breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth. My tears dry on my cheeks and soak into Eric’s shirt.

In my exhaustion I consider telling him everything that just happened with my dad, with the makeup, with the dumpster. But I can’t. I’m headed for a lifetime of repression and pain either way, and it’s like Carson always says: if you’re going into town, you might as well go in a Lincoln.

Eric squeezes my shoulder. “How can we make you feel better?” he says softly. I rub my eyes and sigh.

“I think I want to try out for the football team,” I say, before I really know why I’m saying it.

Eric arches an eyebrow and leans back.

“Wait, what?” he says.

“I know it sounds crazy, but yeah.”

And suddenly I am sure. I sniffle the last of the mucus away and nod so hard my headache comes back. It’s pointless to imagine living in some different reality. I have the life I have. I live where I live. If I can’t be a girl then I’ll throw myself completely into being a boy.

“Really?”

“Yeah,” I say.

Eric leans down into my field of view and gives me a skeptical look. I shove him away, but with a light touch so he knows I’m only kidding.

“What?” I say. “You think I can’t? I seem to remember you leaning on me back in middle school, and I’m as tall as you now.” That hurts like hell to think about, but my tear ducts must be spent because I don’t start sobbing again. “I’ll hit weights with you and Dad and try out before next season. I can do it.”

He runs a hand over his scalp and blows out a long breath. “Yeah, sure. But why?”

“Something has to change,” I say. It might not be the whole truth but at least it is true. “Who I am right now, who I’ve been, it just doesn’t work. It has to change.”

“But…” Eric rubs a knuckle against his lips and narrows one eye. “I like who you are.”

He’s being generous.

“Thanks,” I say, running my fingers through my sweat-matted hair and staring for a while at his shaved hair under the light. “And one other thing.”

“Yeah, anything.”

“I want you to cut my hair off,” I say.

Eric shifts away from me, a shocked look on his face. He takes the ends of my hair between his fingers, pulls the long brown strands toward him. My hair glimmers in the low light of the living room. I haven’t cut it since Mom died, but I push that thought away.

“You sure?” Eric asks, incredulous.

“Positive,” I reply, suddenly more certain of this choice than anything else I’ve ever done in my life.





ERIC



I send Morgan to the back porch and run upstairs to Mom’s craft room. My parents are away this weekend, at some church couples retreat to work on their marriage, and I have the house to myself. I’m not sure if chopping his hair off will really help—and I have zero clue if him joining the football team will make him feel better—but helping him is the least I can do. Seeing Morgan cry like that, like he used to but worse somehow, more raw and desperate, left me needing to do something.