He’s back inside, door snapping shut behind him.
Nineteen
EZRA WON’T RETURN MY TEXTS.
He won’t pick up the phone.
No answer when I buzz his apartment door.
He doesn’t even bother showing up to class on Monday.
The realization hits me, over and over again. Ezra is in love with me. He has been for a while now. Declan was right.
God, I’ve been so effing oblivious.
The memories spin in my head on rerun. The way I told Ezra I didn’t want to hear how he feels about me—the way I told him not to love me. It was pretty shitty of me, but I was freaking the fuck out. That’s what I text Ez, what I tell him in a voice mail: I’m sorry. I was freaking the fuck out.
I regret it now. I should’ve spoken to him about it more calmly, figured out where things are between us. Are we still friends? Does he hate me now? Does he never want to see my face again? I was afraid we’d fuck up our relationship, but I still somehow managed to do that anyway.
It doesn’t help that I kind of feel like I cheated on Declan.
“What are we?” I ask him. I’m on the phone, locked away in my bedroom. I have the lights off tonight, so my dad won’t judge me for still being awake at two in the morning.
“What do you mean?” Declan asks.
I tell him, “I kissed someone.”
He’s silent on the other end for a few seconds too long. My nerves start to spike.
“Well,” he says, “it’s not like we’re going out or anything, or like we decided to only date each other. You can kiss whoever you want.”
“You’re not upset?”
“I am a little,” he admits. “But mainly because I don’t understand why you won’t let me have a chance to . . .”
“To kiss me?”
“I was going to say to meet you, but yeah—I’d like a chance at that, too. If that’s something you want, anyway.”
“You don’t even know what I look like.”
“I’m not sure I need to know.”
I open my mouth, almost tell him that he doesn’t know if I’m a guy or a girl or both or don’t have a gender at all, like Bex—but I hesitate. Even I don’t know my own gender identity.
“What if you’re not interested in me . . . physically?” I ask him.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You can’t be attracted to everyone in the entire world.”
“No, maybe not.”
Captain is asleep beside me. When I touch her ear, it twitches back and forth. “What would you say if I told you I’m questioning my identity?”
“I would say okay.”
“Okay?”
“Are you questioning your identity?”
I scratch Captain’s ear, and she opens one eye lazily. “It’s weird,” I tell him, “because I thought I’d already had it all figured out, you know?”
“But that’s normal, right?” he says. “When I started questioning whether I was into guys or not, I drove myself crazy for a while, going back and forth and trying to figure out if I’m into guys or girls or both or neither, and it felt like the answer kept changing every week. I was going insane.”
“Did you?” I say. “Figure it out, I mean?”
“Not really. But I looked at a bunch of stuff online. Read posts with other people’s questions. Realized a lot of us have the same questions, wonder the same things, and I guess that just took the pressure off to figure it all out, you know?”
There’re so many things I wish I didn’t feel the pressure to figure out. Now that Ezra has told me he’s in love with me, I feel like I have no choice but to ask myself how I feel about him. I love him—of course I love Ezra. But do I love him the same way I would love a boyfriend? The question is so big, so huge, that I’m trying to avoid it. Every time it appears in my mind, I push it aside. I ignore the real reason I don’t want to think about it: I’m too afraid of what my answer would be.
“Is there anything that you feel pressure to figure out?” I ask Declan.
“Yeah, all the time. I guess the main thing is my future. If I get into college, how will I pay for tuition? Sometimes I wonder if it’s even worth it. Why be in debt for the rest of my life?”
“I know what you mean,” I tell him. “I’ve been so focused on this one goal of getting into college, because—I don’t know, I felt like I had something to prove . . . but I don’t really think I’m going to get in, and I don’t know if there’s any point in trying.”
“Something to prove?”
The irony of the conversation hits me. This is Brown that I’m talking about—the school that both of us have wanted to get into, the school that we’ve fought over. “Yeah. I don’t think a whole lot of people would think I deserve to get in. I guess I want to prove them wrong.”
I can practically hear him shrug over the phone. “Maybe there isn’t any point,” he says, “but I don’t think it’s a bad thing to show others that you can get in, just for the sake of proving that you can. There isn’t anything wrong with that, is there?”
After we’ve said good night—it’s only three in the morning this time, as opposed to five when we usually hang up—I pull out my laptop. I haven’t been sleeping much anyway, not since everything that happened with Ezra. I bring up Google and type in I don’t know if I want to go to college. What should I do instead?
The possibilities are endless. Internships, travel with volunteer organizations, vocational work—but instead of excitement at the thought of doing anything that I want, I’m filled with anxiety. There’re too many options, too many opportunities. I suddenly know how Ezra felt, unsure of his future. I feel bad for giving him a hard time about it. I was so judgmental, clouded by my own jealousy. I wish I could text him. Apologize. Ask what he thinks about me just giving up on Brown altogether. What would Ezra say?
When my phone buzzes with a notification, surprise and excitement thrum through me. Maybe Ezra could feel me thinking about him—has decided to forgive me. It’s been a couple of days now. Maybe he’s ready to move on.
But when I check my phone, it isn’t Ez.
Are you trying to ignore me?
You can’t ignore me.
I heard that your mom abandoned you.
I would, too, if I had a daughter that was pretending to be a boy.
Tears start to sting my eyes. Pain fills my lungs and makes it hard to breathe. I shouldn’t let this troll get to me, but they really figured out exactly where to hit me the hardest, what to say to hurt me more than anything else. My finger hovers over the block button. I should’ve blocked grandequeen69 a long time ago. But I don’t press it. I feel this need to respond, to stand up for myself, to make grandequeen69 realize I deserve to be treated better than this—that there’s an actual human being on the other end of the phone.
I type. What do you get out of this? Why’re you attacking me? Just because you don’t understand my identity, doesn’t mean I’m not real. That I don’t exist.
They must’ve been waiting for me to respond.
That’s what you don’t get. You don’t exist.
You’re nothing.
Do you really think you matter to anyone?
You don’t matter. You don’t even matter to your own mom.
I can feel the pain like it’s a physical thing, filling my heart and spreading through me beneath my skin. I don’t even know what to say to that. What do you say, when a person basically tells you that you’re not a human being? Treats you like you’re not human? The pain sparks into anger, and I fling my phone across the room. It hits the wall with a thud and falls to the ground. Captain hisses, leaping from the bed.
“Shit.” I jump out of my bed, snatching up my phone. There’s a tiny crack in the corner of the screen. “Fucking shit.” I wipe a hand over my face, rubbing away the tears. I shouldn’t let this troll get to me like this. I know I shouldn’t. But I can feel their words sinking into me, making it harder to breathe.
; When I get to St. Cat’s on Wednesday, I’m not expecting to see Ezra—not really, not after he’d skipped class the past couple of days and wouldn’t respond to any of my messages—so when I see him cross through the parking lot, I’m completely unprepared. My heart pounds with nerves, and the memory of our kiss—of him trying to tell me he’s in love with me—makes me feel like I’m about to freak out all over again.
Ezra passes by without a glance. Right alongside the nerves is a flare of hurt. He probably just didn’t see me, but the words from grandequeen69 flash in my mind. I don’t matter. I don’t exist. I call out after him. “Ez!”
He doesn’t stop as he walks in through the lobby’s sliding glass doors. Ezra’s never ignored me before, so I assume he didn’t hear me, is way too wrapped up in his own thoughts. I follow him inside. “Hey—Ezra!”
He glances at me now, but the look he gives me is blistering. The sort of look I’d expect him to send Marisol’s way—not mine. He doesn’t say a word. He just keeps walking.
The hurt’s an open wound now, gushing blood all over the pavement. I hesitate, then start following again—slowly at first, before I start running after him, down the hall, my footsteps echoing, until I’m walking right alongside him, struggling to keep up with his long strides.
“Ezra—hey,” I say, stopping in front of him. He gives this impatient sigh, looking down at my shoes before looking up at me again. “Listen, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said the shit I did.”
He shrugs, doesn’t answer.
I don’t really know what else to say. I don’t think Ezra’s ever been this angry with me before. “Can we—can we talk about it?”
He shrugs again. Even his shrugs are with the least minimal effort required. “What is there to talk about?”
A few seconds pass. “I mean, are you really that pissed because of everything I said?”
“I guess not.”
“Then what’re you so angry about?”
“I’m not angry,” he says. His eyes are glazed, like he also hasn’t been getting enough sleep, but behind that glaze is—emptiness? Coldness? Boredom, maybe. Indifference.
I force myself to keep Ezra’s gaze, no matter how much I want to look away—no matter how much I feel like I’m seconds from crying. He said that he has feelings for me—tried to tell me that he loves me—but it looks like it only took a few days for him to figure out that he doesn’t give a shit about me after all. “Then what’s wrong?”
Another shrug. These fucking shrugs. “I guess I just need a second. To wrap my head around everything.” As much as I’m forcing myself to look at him, he’s looking anywhere but at me. “I just need some space.”
“Space?”
He doesn’t repeat himself. He stares at the wall, swallowing, his throat moving up and down.
“Okay,” I say. “I’ll give you space.”
He leaves before I even finish my sentence, walking down the hallway. By the time I get to the acrylics classroom, he’s moved to an entirely different table altogether, sitting where Tyler usually sits, and Tyler is fast asleep in the stool beside mine.
For the first time in days, I find it hard to focus on my project. As much as I want to sink into my self-portraits, to just let my mind go, I can’t think of anything else but that kiss. Ezra. Over and over again, even when I tell myself I won’t think about him anymore. Ezra. Even when I close my eyes and take a breath and clear my thoughts. Ezra. My mind immediately jumps to him, again and again. Ezra, Ezra, Ezra.
He doesn’t love me anymore. He couldn’t, the way that he looked at me downstairs. It took only one argument for him to fall out of love with me and to decide that he hates me instead. In a way, grandequeen69 is right. I don’t matter—not to Ezra, not anymore, and Declan thinks that he’s in love with Lucky, not me. My self-portrait smirks up at me. I’d gotten a little full of myself, thinking that anyone could fall in love with someone like me.
I’m not thinking when the paintbrush in my hand dips into purple and begins to swathe strokes across my painting’s smile, my eyes, my entire face. I push so hard against the canvas that a hole tears, right in the center.
“Felix?”
I look behind me. Jill is watching, concerned. When I glance around, I see that half of the class is looking at me, too. Ezra moved to the opposite corner of the room, his back to me. He’s standing still, not moving, like his focus is across the room and on me, though he still refuses to look my way.
“Are you all right?” Jill asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “I guess I just got too into it.”
She nods slowly, eyeing my destroyed painting. She walks closer, lowering her voice, as the rest of class returns to their art. “Decided this one wasn’t working?”
“It was too—I don’t know, arrogant.”
She puts a hand to her chin. “I thought that it had merit, but in the end, it doesn’t really matter what I think.” She looks like she’s about to move on, before she pauses again. “You know, Felix—there’s been a call for the end-of-summer gallery.”
“Yeah, I heard the announcement.”
“You should consider applying,” she says. “Your self-portraits—if you can finish enough in time—well, they’re powerful, Felix. Maybe more than you even realize.”
She must be just saying that because I’m obviously struggling with something. I know it doesn’t make any sense to apply for the end-of-summer gallery. The gallery is pretty competitive. Basically everyone in the summer program applies, and if accepted, their art gets featured in the school’s newsletter, which goes out to alumni, which can mean a lot of great opportunities. Several people have gotten internships for winning the gallery selection—and I know it isn’t going to be me. What’s the point of applying, just to fail?
I tell her that I’ll think about it, and she gives me a satisfied smile.
Twenty
WHEN CLASSES ARE DONE FOR THE DAY, I FEEL STRANGE, disoriented. Normally, I would walk back with Ezra to his apartment, but he ignores me as he leaves the parking lot. I could go home and talk to Declan as Lucky, but I’m not feeling like myself, and—I don’t know, I guess I’m a little afraid that he’ll realize he doesn’t love me anymore, either. It’s only as I’m walking out of the parking lot that I realize it’s Wednesday. The LGBT Center will have its gender-identity discussion group in a few hours at eight. I should be too terrified to show my face there again, but I remember Bex and their reassuring smile, their suggestion that I come back whenever I like.
It doesn’t take too long for me to get to the LGBT Center, only about thirty minutes. I’m early for the discussion group, so I sit at the café of white walls and sleek tables and chairs, the smell of caramel and croissants filling the air, a sketch pad out as I draw the people around me. I realize, suddenly, that since Bex is nonbinary, any of the people in this café could be, too. Maybe I shouldn’t assume anyone’s gender as I draw them. There’s someone with wrinkles, a blazer, an infectious laugh; someone closer to my age with green hair and a nose ring, showing their braces when they give their friend a wide smile. The longer I sit here and sketch, the better my art becomes—and it helps to look at the people around me, really look at them, instead of seeing who I assume them to be.
I almost wish I could just stay in the café and sketch for hours, but I came here for a reason. A few minutes before eight, I pack away my sketch pad and head up the stairs, so focused on my feet that I feel like I’m about to trip. My heart hammers in my chest with nerves, as though I’m about to get up onto a stage in front of one hundred people. This time, I think to myself. This time, I’ll be brave enough to speak—to ask my questions and find the answers I’ve been looking for.
Bex waits at the door, just like last time, and they seem genuinely happy to see me when I walk up to the table to sign in. “Felix!” they say. “I’m really glad you could make it.”
I smile back, even though I’m too nervous to say anything as I sign my name. I take the same seat I did befo
re, as far away from everyone else as possible. The same people are here, too: Tom, newspaper folded in his lap as he talks to Sarah, still with her bright red lipstick. Zelda checks her hair in her phone. Wally wears a Miles Morales T-shirt. He grins and waves at me, and as I wave back, I feel so awkward I think my hand’s about to fall off my wrist.
When it’s time to begin, Bex has us do introductions again, even though we already know each other—just protocol, I guess—and then begins the discussion. “It’s the fourteenth. The Pride march is in a couple of weeks,” they say. “But sometimes, it can be difficult to find pride for ourselves. There’s very little visibility for people of all genders, and many cisgender people don’t believe transgender and nonbinary people deserve the same rights. It’s even more difficult for transgender and nonbinary people of color, and especially transgender women of color. Though we have transgender women of color to thank for the Stonewall Riots and the Pride march, they’re often erased and ignored, even by other queer people within the LGBTQIA+ community. How do we find and cultivate pride for each other and ourselves when we’re in a world that seems like it doesn’t want us to exist?”
I wasn’t really expecting a discussion topic that would hit so close to home. The words of grandequeen69 cut through me. You don’t matter. You don’t exist. I realize with a flinch of shame that I’d started to believe those words, too. It’s hard to feel pride for who I am when it feels like the rest of the world doesn’t want me to.
The topic clearly resonates with others in the room also. Sarah already looks like she’s near tears. “Gay cis men, especially white men—it’s like they’re one identity away from being what they’d consider normal, so they hold that identity over us, enjoy their privilege and power in their little elitist group, try to push the rest of us away. Treat us like dogs. Just last week, a group of them laughed at me the second I walked into a bar. I wanted to ask them if they’d ever heard of Sylvia Rivera. If they realized they sounded just like those white gay boys who’d laughed at her, too.”
Felix Ever After Page 20
