by Leah Raeder
“Just give me your hand.”
When she reached down I clasped it firmly, lacing my fingers through hers.
“Vada, what . . .” she began, and trailed off.
I opened my other palm. Her eyes went wide and bright.
Naveen did an incredible job: he’d taken the spoon I’d given him, sterling silver with a bluebird engraved into the handle, and heated it till some melted off and the rest was soft enough to bend into a ring. Triple-coiled, the bird at the center enameled with lapis lazuli. I knew her size. Thanks for the hand pic, Blue.
Never in my life had I thought I’d go down on one knee on an ocean pier beneath the stars, but life is crazy like that.
“I meant it,” I said. “I want to be your everything. Forever.”
Ellis put her free hand over her mouth, starting to cry.
Told you, pajarito.
“Ellis Morgan Carraway,” I said, “will you marry me?”
Her head bowed, a tear tracing the back of her hand. Those green eyes remained locked on mine. The tear rolled off and hung in midair for a second, a crystal thread flecked with stars, holding the whole universe. Ellis leaned close and touched my face. No fear in my heart now. We looked at each other, and she gripped my hand tighter, and her lips parted with her answer. But some part of me already knew. Like it already knew her, from the moment we first met.
(—Bergen, Vada. She Said Yes. Ink and watercolor on paper.)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
When I was a kid, I wanted to be Robin Hood. I was obsessed with him. I watched the Kevin Costner movie a million times, begged my mom to buy me LEGO Forestmen, played the crap out of the Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves Nintendo game. When my little sister and I played make-believe, I was always Robin. I made swords out of sticks and capes from towels. I saved princesses. It never seemed weird, pretending to be a boy. Because I wasn’t pretending.
Growing up, I never gave much thought to my gender. I didn’t feel like anything specific inside—just this sort of genderless being that tended more toward masculinity than femininity, whatever those words mean. Some stuff bothered me. I felt physically sick when my parents made me wear dresses, and eventually I refused. I cut my hair short in high school and have kept it short ever since. When I was allowed to pick my own clothes as a teen, I insisted on buying from the men’s section. My mom, thankfully, agreed, but if she hadn’t I would’ve found some way to get them. Because I didn’t feel right in girls’ clothes. I felt like I was wearing a costume. Like I was in drag.
At the same time, I was beginning to identify as gay. Who cared about fashion? I was more worried about what being queer meant.
You can put off dealing with mild gender dysphoria for a long time. How you choose your clothes, your hairstyle, your hobbies, the gender of your friends—all can assuage the slightly off-kilter way you feel inside, to a degree. Strangers called me “sir” and “young man.” Girls gave me nasty looks when I walked into women’s public restrooms. All my friends (who were mostly boys) called me a tomboy. But something about that word always bugged me. It implied that deep down, I was really just a girl acting like a boy. And I knew that wasn’t quite right. Whatever I was, I wasn’t a girl.
Say what you will about its downsides, but Tumblr is a fucking lifeline for many LGBTQIA+ people. Not until I was an adult, meeting people on social media who identified outside the gender binary, did I realize I was one of them. Everything clicked. The way I dressed, behaved, felt inside all finally made sense. Then the agonizing questioning phase began: So am I transgender? Am I a boy who was born into a girl’s body? Do I need to change my body to match what’s inside? Gender is a Pandora’s box—once you understand how fluid and endlessly diverse it is, you can never go back to the simplistic binary.
From Tumblr, I learned words that fit me better than “tomboy.” For starters, I was somewhere in the “nonbinary” category: someone who does not identify as a woman or a man. Like sexuality, gender is a wide, flexible spectrum with multiple subcategories. I knew I stood way farther on the masculine than the feminine side. But transgender wasn’t right either, because I didn’t definitely feel like a boy, just somewhere between boyish to neutral. So “transmasculine” fits, but “nonbinary” is where I feel more comfortable right now. To me it both encompasses a diverse sense of gender and also implies that gender itself is sort of an unnecessary concept. It’s a giant middle finger to the idea that our sex should define who we are. I think in some blissful future we’ll abandon the concept of gender entirely (or at least our robot masters will—what is gender to an AI?), which will be so fucking liberating.
Because really, why does it matter that my body has two X chromosomes but that I wear men’s clothes and do stuff that’s considered “masculine”? Why are people more respectful and attentive when they see me as “sir” and more critical and dismissive when they see me as “miss”? Why can’t anyone use whichever public restroom they feel the most comfortable in? What about intersex people who destroy all our quaint ideas about sexual dimorphism determining gender? Why do stores have separate aisles for girls’ and boys’ toys? Why do we color-code babies by their sex, before they’ve had a chance to grow up and express their personality? I hated the color pink as a kid. Pink represented weakness, frivolity, stupidity, ditziness. Where do you think I got that from? Children are sponges. We readily absorb adults’ fucked-up ideas about gender. We’re taught to categorize, reduce, divide, judge. Break people down into stereotypes. Don’t see them as people anymore.
In many ways the Internet is abolishing these divisions between us. We can communicate online largely free of preconceptions that derive from a person’s sex, race, ability, etc. We can be simply and purely human with each other. And we can see examples of others like us who make us feel less alone. I didn’t have Tumblr as a teen. I had no nonbinary role models to look to for comfort and guidance. Facing these issues for the first time as an adult with a fully formed sense of self is scary and depressing and confidence-shaking. But it’s especially scary and depressing if you’re young and uncertain and in need of support.
I was in the middle of writing Cam Girl when Leelah Alcorn, a transgender girl, killed herself. Leelah was assigned male at birth and came out as trans to her parents at age fourteen. Her parents refused to accept her gender identity. They tried to “fix” it with conversion therapy. Leelah had been highly active online, posting selfies and talking about trans issues. Her final post to Tumblr was her suicide note. Hundreds of thousands of people read her last words, unable to help.
Leelah had access to a supportive online community yet couldn’t endure the hate and intolerance from her own family. Too many people in this world can’t handle the idea that who you are is more complex and beautiful than something as arbitrary as your chromosomal sex. And Leelah’s story isn’t uncommon—it plays out again and again in the news. The Tragic Trans Teen. Depression. Substance abuse. Self-harm. Suicide. It keeps happening because we as a society keep clinging to obsolete, absurd ideas that our genitals have some kind of influence over our humanity.
I hope others out there who are like us, who don’t fit into the cisgender binary, are someday able to live free of this bullshit. I hope books like this add one small drop to the ocean of diverse gender representation out there. And I damn well hope to see more books like this, where cis/straight/white isn’t the stale default. I needed to see that when I was a teenager. Other nonbinary kids need it, too. Every teen needs to see that it’s okay to be trans, or however they feel inside—boy, girl, both, neither, or something more nuanced and complex and mutable. Gender isn’t pink or blue. It’s not either/or. It’s whatever the hell it means to you, personally. Maybe it means nothing, and that’s okay, too.
You are okay just as you are.
* * *
As always, I have to begin my thank-yous with the person who shaped this book the most: my keenly sharp, smart, driven editor, Sarah Cantin. It’s a pleasure to work with someone who’s as
Type A as I am. Sarah, thank you for insisting on nothing less than the best I’m capable of. I’ve learned and grown so much with you. Your guidance echoes in my work and I’m damn proud of what we’ve made out of these books.
Thank you also to my peerless agent, Jane Dystel, who’s been a rock for me to lean on, and to everyone at both the Dystel & Goderich agency and at Atria Books. I’m honored to work with all of you.
Mad hearts to Alexander, my partner and best friend and Minecraft co-architect, for being the sweetest boy alive. I love you, buddy.
To my writer friends—Dahlia Adler, Bethany Frenette, Ellen Goodlett, Lindsay Smith, and many others on Twitter—thanks for inspiring and supporting the hell out of me.
To all the bloggers and reviewers who make these books possible at all, thank you. Special shout-out to the Cuddlebuggery girls for being rad af. #sorrynotsorry that I used your names in this book.
And of course, crazy love to my Facebook fan group, the Raeder Readers. You guys are my everything. Thank you for sharing your stories and passion and humor and art with me, for being there when I need an escape from reality, for sticking with me through these increasingly challenging books. I promise to keep writing the best I can and to give you stories that provoke intense feelings, push you out of your comfort zone, and generally make you go OMGWTF. No compromise, no surrender.
I hate to end on a sad note, but there’s a deep sorrow in this book that’s haunted me even after the happy ending. Because too often in real life, trans people don’t get HEAs. I was nearly one of those tragic statistics, too. It’s sheer luck that I’m here instead, writing books about it. I feel indebted to light a candle and try to guide others out of the darkness.
Leelah, this book is for you. You’re one of the girls I’ve lost.
We’ve all lost you.
All my love,
Leah Raeder
Chicago, August 2015
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LEAH RAEDER is the author of Unteachable and Black Iris, and is an unabashed nerd. Aside from reading her brains out, she enjoys graphic design, video games, fine whiskey, and the art of self-deprecation. She lives with her very own manic pixie dream boy in Chicago. Visit her at www.LeahRaeder.com.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 by Leah Raeder
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Cover Design by Lucy Kim
Cover Photographs © Barbara Chase/Getty Images (Paint Splatters);
© Andrew Dorey/Getty Images (Camera Lens);
© Alexey Ivanov/Getty Images (Girl)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Raeder, Leah.
Cam girl / Leah Raeder. — First Atria Paperback edition.
pages ; cm
I. Title.
PS3618.A35955C36 2015
813'.6—dc23
2015028559
ISBN 978-1-5011-1499-1
ISBN 978-1-5011-1500-4 (ebook)
CONTENTS
Part 1: Winter
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Part 2: Spring
Chapter 3
Part 3: Summer
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Part 4: Fall
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Part 5: Winter
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Acknowledgments
About Leah Raeder
