Both Can Be True

by Jules Machias

  I kissed her, hoping they’d both get over it. But Cole can’t forgive me for breaking the bro code, and soon after that party Fiona started dating a jerk named Ryan, who’s two years older than us, and somehow Mitchell blames me for that. He says it’s because I sucked at kissing, so now Fiona won’t date guys our age, but really, he’s been mad at me forever because I’m closer to Dad than he is, and the Fiona fiasco is just a new excuse to treat me like crap. So even though she has a boyfriend, even though I’ve told Mitch a hundred times I don’t like her that way, even though he joked around her once that she’d friendzoned him and she gave him an earful about why that’s a sexist concept that needs to die—he still acts like he’s mad at me for kissing her. When really, he’s mad that Dad and I did photography together and liked the same bands and Dad didn’t shout huzzahs at Mitchell’s sportsball games enough (which, hello, is because Dad’s an artist guy, not a sportsball guy).

  I don’t know why Mitchell’s brain works that way, where he transfers all his mad about one thing onto something else. But we’ll never talk about it because Mitch isn’t a “feelings” dude. I don’t think he’s aware he has feelings. He just acts on them while pretending he’s made of logic.

  Cole’s not like that. He’s wicked talented at oil painting, and he’s funny and smart and good at making people feel better when they’re down. It made him a great friend. One time last fall, before everything changed, I had a nightmare that my mom died. I couldn’t shake off the grief all day, even though I knew it wasn’t real. Cole sat with me at lunch and listened to me describe the dream in detail, and then he said, “I can see why you’re upset. That sounds really hard to forget.”

  It was exactly what I needed to hear. He did that sort of thing all the time. I didn’t know how much I relied on him to prop me up until he ran out of patience and stopped doing it. I don’t just miss having a friend, even though that’s huge. I miss him.

  I wish I knew how to fix it. I’m sorry wasn’t enough. Now he’s besties with Erin and they ignore my existence, which is awkward since we all have first-period chemistry together, and Erin and I have English together, and we see each other in the halls and all of us eat during the same lunch period. Which means I eat by myself.

  In the house, I drop my bag in my room and go to the kitchen for a protein bar. I’m itching to head for the tent, but Mitchell’s sticking annoyingly close, and of course he wants to complain about our parents. Again. “How long do you think it’ll be before they officially split?” he asks as he peels a banana. “Seeing as Dad didn’t bother to come home the last three weekends. And when he came home four weekends ago, he slept in the basement.”

  I unwrap the protein bar. “He’s had work stuff. A client moved up a deadline.”

  “He could’ve come home at night. It’s not like he moved to Texas.”

  I take a bite, but I can’t chew the tough chocolate. My tired brain is grinding through all the stuff over the last few months that’s left me sobbing in my bedroom like a Disney princess: my dog, Frankie, dying. Fighting with Mitchell. Getting ditched by Cole. Dad leaving. Mom saying I’m too emotional and need to grow out of it.

  I swallow the lump of protein bar. It hurts going down, but I won’t cry in front of Mitch. It’s not like I’m going to ask him to take it easy on me because Ow I Have a Sad About Dad. He does too, big-time. I put the rest of the bar in a plastic bag and go to my room.

  Fortunately, he doesn’t follow. I sit on my bed and try to find Tina on Facebook. Her last name is Martin, and there are thousands of Tina Martins. I filter it by city and the number drops to a few hundred. I scroll the list, searching for anyone who looks even remotely like the Tina I know. Some have pets as the profile photo, so I check those people’s other photos. None of them are her.

  Maybe I could call the vet office and ask for her number. But I hate talking on the phone. Mom had me call a restaurant once to ask what time they stopped seating and I had a minor panic attack, which Mitchell found hysterical. And anyway, what would I say to the vet office? Hi, I’m a random kid who volunteers downstairs, can I have Tina’s number? Ten to one I’d sound like a jibbering dingbat and accidentally draw attention to the situation, which, yikes.

  I search the Tina Martins on Facebook for ten more minutes. Twelve minutes. Fifteen. Finally, at 4:22, Mitchell leaves the kitchen and goes to the bathroom. I empty my backpack, slip out the back door, and pull my bike out of the shed.

  When I get to the woods, I shove my bike behind a honeysuckle bush so it’s out of sight, then fight my way through the brush to the tent. As I’m coming up on it, I hear Chewbarka whimpering and turning in circles like she does when she’s excited.

  I unzip the door a few inches and her little nose pokes out. She pushes her way through and bounds into my arms reeking of pee, her whole back end wet.

  “Aw, baby, I’m sorry! I know, you were in there for so long! I’m so sorry.” My eyes sting as I clean her up the best I can with the paper towels and water bottles I’ve stashed in the tent with her. She needs to be brushed. Mats are forming in her long, thick fur. I pull out the old blanket from our basement that’s now her bed. The corner of it is wet with pee and the rest of it smells like dried pee. “Little doggo, what are we going to do with you?” I spread the towel over some honeysuckle branches, then pour some kennel food I’ve been stealing into Frankie’s old bowl. Chewbarka sniffs at it and then digs in. It suddenly occurs to me that I forgot to tell Ashley Chewbarka is sort of leaky.

  Well . . . maybe it won’t matter. Maybe they can let her out more often than I can. Or maybe their kitchen has a tile floor and they can shut her in there during the day. They probably have a doggy gate already, since they have a beagle.

  When Chewbarka’s finished eating, I put my backpack on my front and carefully tuck her into it, leaving the top unzipped so she can breathe. I tighten the straps and carry her out to my bike. I’m not sure if this is going to work.

  I wheel the bike out to the sidewalk and give it a try. We’re wobbly at first, and I have to sit at an uncomfortable angle with my back ramrod-straight. But it works, and Chewy settles down right away.

  We set off for Ash’s apartment, my foolish heart an equal mix of fear and hope.

  5

  Crossed Fingers

  Ash

  I’m arguing with Mom about cross-country at quarter to five when I finally get a text from Daniel: Almost there!

  I shove my phone in my pocket. “You’re not getting this,” I tell Mom. “You’re confusing ‘This school has a gender-neutral bathroom’ with ‘Ash will have no problems with sports at this school.’ Those are two totally different concepts.”

  “Kid, we didn’t move to the whole other side of the city so you could go back in the closet. How can you know sports will be a problem here if you won’t even try?” She’s still wearing her blue work shirt and it has a big smear of truck grease on the shoulder. She slices a lime and drops a couple wedges into a cocktail glass with some ice. “I’m sure they’d be fine with a gender-fluid kid running as whatever—”

  “Ugh, ‘gender fluid’ sounds like some goopy crap you gotta dump in a car when it’s making a weird noise.” Plus Dad says it’s a made-up label for people who haven’t figured out what they are yet.

  Mom gives me that look like I know you better than you know yourself. “I’m sure Oakmont would let you run as whatever gender you want if you joined. The whole mentality at your new school is different. They have a Rainbow Alliance, for example.”

  She’s freaking obsessed with RA. And anyway, maybe at cross-country they’d let me run in the group I want at practices, but competition races are divided into boys and girls and they’d definitely want to know the deal then, just like they did at Bailey Middle. “Why can’t ‘I don’t want to’ be enough? Why are you pushing me to do this?” The guy feeling that started to creep in earlier this week has gotten stronger over the past couple days, and I’m afraid it’s starting to show. My voice wants to dro
p low and come out of my chest instead of my throat. My hands feel awkward and too big when I play my keyboard.

  Mom dumps cherry juice concentrate over the limes. “Honey, you loved cross-country at Bailey. I just want you to be happy here. This and Rainbow Alliance seem like a way to make that happen.”

  “I liked practicing, not competing.” At practices, it’s just plain running. Not worrying if you look like the correct gender while everyone watches you race against other kids in a gendered group. I get the 7UP out and hand it to Mom. Booper sits by my foot with his Nylabone, making his funny nyar-nyar-nyar sound as he chews it.

  “You were friends with everyone on the team. Joining would be a great chance to make more new friends at Oakmont.” She pops open the can and pours 7UP over the juice and limes.

  “I was friendly with them, not friends. Anyway I already have a friend here. His name’s Griffey. Pretty sure you’ve met him six thousand times.”

  Mom rummages in the fridge and comes out with a pint of blackberries. “You hung out with the cross-country kids. You went to Ethan Schmidt’s preseason party in August.” She pops a blackberry in her mouth and gives me a handful of them.

  I bite into one. It’s super sour, just how I like them. “I spent the whole time playing with the dog. I couldn’t wait for you to come get me.”

  Mom gives an exasperated sigh as she smashes blackberries against the inside of her glass with a spoon. “Sometimes I think we’re from two different planets, kiddo.”

  “Yeah, you’re from Planet Extrovert. I’m from Planet Introvert.” We have to stop arguing. I need her to be in a good mood when Daniel gets here, not cranky ’cause I’m ruining her Friday post-work mocktail. “So. Speaking of friends. Someone from school is gonna come by.”

  She smiles. “Yeah? Someone from Rainbow Alliance? What’s her name?”

  “His name is Daniel. From photo class.”

  “Oooh, a boy!” She chugs her drink. “Friend or crush?”

  “Oh my god, Mom.” I take my water bottle out of the fridge. When I close the door, I grab the flowery cross-stitch magnet she made that says I stab fabric so I don’t stab people and shove it in a drawer because it’s embarrassing. “I’m going outside to wait. Don’t be weird when I bring him up here. And don’t drink your weird drink in front of him.”

  Mom holds up both hands. “I’m the paragon of normal. I’m exceptionally ordinary.”

  “You have green hair and ear gauges and a porcupine tattoo on your butt cheek that you always bring up within like three minutes of meeting someone. You fix trucks for a living and your hobby is cross-stitching profanity.”

  “Says the ‘normal’ kid who sees sounds and has purple hair.” She tugs a curl.

  “Partly purple, and I’m thirteen, not thirty-six. It’s normal for me to ‘experiment with my look.’” I do air quotes to mock the words from the book she bought me when I turned eleven, Puberty: Weird but Normal.

  “I’m not experimenting. I’ve settled on porcupines and green hair.” She sticks out her pierced tongue. “But about cross-country—”

  “Okay, I’m out.” I take my water bottle and leave.

  The apartment complex’s playground is swarming with kids burning off the school day’s pent-up energy. I sit on the only unoccupied swing. I wish I hadn’t left Booper upstairs. Our last apartment was on the first floor and we’d clip him to a tie-out so he could sniff all he wanted. Now we’re on the third floor, and every time he has to poop or pee, one of us has to take him outside. The stairs are rough for him since he’s getting so old. I usually carry him and wind up with fur all over my clothes.

  I’ll walk him after Daniel gets here with Chewbarka. We can take them around the complex together.

  My stomach does that roller-coaster dip thing. I can’t believe Daniel’s coming to my apartment. I didn’t quite follow the story of why he has the dog—it seems like someone else could take her, if Tina just left her at the vet by mistake. But I guess if he doesn’t have her number, and he told Tina he would help, it makes sense. And now he’s coming over and I’m sixty-two kinds of nervous. I can’t believe I actually like someone again after what happened with Tyler, the last guy I was into. The reason we moved. It feels dangerous.

  But Daniel’s nothing like Tyler. This won’t turn out like that.

  I look down at my outfit: red Converse with one of the laces coming untied, sorta fashionably ripped jeans I got at Goodwill, a purple T-shirt with a stegosaurus surfing on the back of a shark. An outfit that could go either way.

  I brush fur off my stegosaurus. There’s so much more to me than my gender. But people interact with me differently if they think I’m a girl than if they think I’m a boy. And if they read me as a girl during a boy time, or a boy during a girl time, nothing past that feels right.

  I really want Daniel to read me as a girl.

  Maybe I’ll get lucky and the boy feeling will fade without taking root. This has been my longest stretch yet as a girl, all the way since the end of last school year. But these past few days, it’s like the feeling I have when I hit a wrong note on my keyboard. There’s this nagging discomfort with my clothes, with how my shoulders curl forward when I’m relaxed, with the way I walk. Think. Breathe. My makeup has started to feel garish, not girly and understated. My stride is lengthening. I’m eating more, sleeping less. The music I’m listening to is changing from light and airy to heavy and loud. If things keep on like this, after an uncomfortable, in-between week or so, boom: I’ll be 100 percent dude. Sarcastic and overconfident. I’ll feel stronger, I’ll play Fortnite and listen to punk and metal and use basic dude wash in the shower instead of Mom’s girly products. I’ll stop daydreaming. I’ll slack on my homework.

  Maybe I can hide it this time if it doesn’t fade. Duck my head and hold my breath till it’s over. Hurry along the days until I catch myself listening to Schubert again and admiring the graceful shape of the kitchen faucet, or thinking about how good a silky skirt feels on freshly shaved legs. Then I’ll paint my nails, smear on a little eyeliner, blink mascara onto my lashes. I’ll braid my hair, smile more, pay attention to how people interact and stop taking what they say at face value. Soon, with luck, I’ll be flying fully girl-style again, doodling vines and flowers and the elegant curves of harp notes in my notebook margins, instead of scribbling the craggy-jaggy shapes of dubstep or thrash guitar.

  Dad would sure be happy if I stuck with the same jam he’s seen me in the last five or six times we got together for lunch. Which, ugh, I have to do that tomorrow. Last time, when we met for Chinese food right before Mom and I moved, he told me that labels like enby and gender fluid and nonbinary are the equivalent of deciding your identity is airport: somewhere you go to get from one place to another. Not somewhere you live. Not somewhere you feel settled, or at home. He said it’s for my own good that he “encourages” me to pick-and-stick. That he doesn’t want me to be uneasy or unhappy forever.

  I guess there’s a kernel of parental love in it. He wants his kid to be happy, or whatever.

  He just totally disregards that I’m truly happy when I’m with people who see me instead of my gender. People who roll with it. People like Mom and Griff. Like my friend Camille from Bailey did. They never act like I’m a pain in their keisters when I shift.

  But boy howdy, it sure gets under Dad’s skin.

  I finger-comb the tangles out of my hair as I watch a kid climb up the slide and get totally creamed by another kid coming down. I’m laughing at the cuss words they’re slinging at each other in their little-kid voices when someone says “Hey” right in my ear.

  I jump up from the swing and turn. Daniel’s looking uncertain, holding a small orangish-brown dog in a backpack he’s wearing on his front. “Oh, hi!” I say too enthusiastically. I catch a strong whiff of pee.

  “Meet Chewbarka.” Daniel lifts her out of the backpack and sets her on the ground.

  I squat and scratch her chin. “Hey, Chewbarka. Hey, little girl.” Chewbark
a looks up at me with cloudy eyes like she’s confused. Her face is gray and her back end is damp. “Did you walk through a puddle on the way here?” I ask Daniel.

  “No, I biked here with her. I mean, um, she had an accident in the tent.” He moves the empty bag to his back. “I have to be out of there by five forty in the morning to get home before my mom’s alarm goes off, and then I can’t get to her after school till like three fifty. It’s too long for her.”

  “Aw, poor thing. Maybe we can give her a bath.”

  “I did already, sort of. With water bottles. She’s just not all-the-way dry yet.”

  I pick Chewbarka up and tuck her under my arm. “My mom’s gonna love her.” I say it with more conviction than I feel. Chewbarka is cute-ish, but definitely smelly and past her prime. Plus her breath is a little fishy. I guess I was hoping she’d be a little more . . . I dunno, Bambi-eyed. And less stinky. It’d be easier to make my case.

  When we walk into the apartment, Booper immediately charges Daniel, his tail going like a helicopter. Daniel’s whole face lights up. He kneels and rubs Booper’s soft, floppy ears. “You didn’t tell me he was old! Old dogs are my favorite. Yes, you are, you are!” He scratches under Booper’s chin and Booper rams his head into Daniel’s stomach. Daniel wraps his arms around him and they hug like they’ve been best buds for life.

  Mom laughs as she comes in from the kitchen. “He only rams people he’s known a long time or really, really likes. Consider that an honor.”

  Daniel does a double take at Mom’s appearance. “Um, hi, I’m Daniel.” He stands up, brushes dog hair off his shirt, and offers his hand.

  “Kate.” Mom shakes his hand, clearly amused at his formality. “What’s your dog’s name? She looks pretty old too.”