What We Left Behind

by Robin Talley

  What if Toni cancels that at the last second, too?

  I never should have come here. I’ve ruined everything.

  And Toni is clearly having a blast at Harvard with people who aren’t me. Thinking about changing pronouns. Starting a whole new life and leaving me behind.

  I run two miles and say goodbye to Briana, who’s already on her fourth. I go back to my room and take a half-hour shower while Samantha bangs on the bathroom door for me to hurry up. Then I text Carroll and meet him at the dining hall. I wolf down a plate of pancakes and eggs while everyone around us douses themselves in coffee and moans about how hungover they are.

  Across the table, Carroll is quiet, stirring sugar and honey into his tea. So I tell him about the late-night texts. About the pronouns.

  “It sucks that you can’t go up there,” he says. “You think it’s ’cause she’s mad at you?”

  “I don’t know.” I shrug. “Toni never seems mad. It’s probably true, about T having too much work. I mean, it’s Harvard. Besides, the pronoun thing has to be distracting.”

  Carroll raises one skeptical eyebrow. “Come on. Are pronouns really that big a deal?”

  “Yeah, usually. I mean, everyone’s different, but using male pronouns is this huge step.”

  “Oh,” he says. “I thought you said Toni thought all pronouns were bad and that English was sexist, or whatever?”

  “I don’t know.” I rub my forehead. Toni did say that stuff before. Did something change? Maybe I misunderstood it to begin with. Can I ask about that, or will that make me seem totally clueless?

  “So, look,” Carroll says. “It’s okay. You can tell me the truth. Are you into that?”

  I keep rubbing my forehead. “Into what?”

  “You know. Are you one of those girls who’s into the whole guys-wearing-panties thing, and vice versa? Like, does it turn you on?”

  My head starts to ache. Maybe I’m hungover, after all. “Is this more crap from that website you found?”

  “Yeah. It said some people are into guys that look like girls, or girls that look like guys. They think it’s hot.”

  I groan. Carroll’s terrible internet research skills are really getting old.

  “I’m sure there are lots of people who are into all kinds of things,” I say. “But I don’t care about that. I only care about Toni.”

  “Uh-huh.” He yawns. “It’s weird how you talk about this stuff. Because when we hang out, you know, normally, just you and me, you come off like such a girl girl, but when you talk about her, you act like you totally get how she feels.”

  Did he just call me a girlie girl?

  “I’m not one of those ultrafemme girls,” I say. “I don’t wear glitter nail polish and all that.”

  “Oh, really?” He gets this half smirk on his face that I don’t like at all. “Does that mean you’re kind of trans, too? Like Toni?”

  “No!” I say. Then I hear how that sounds and I say, “No, but I mean, it’s not like it’s a big deal.”

  “Riiiiight.” Carroll stretches the word out into another yawn. “What does it mean if your girlfriend is a guy? Do you still get to tell people you’re a lesbian?”

  My heart is pounding. I shouldn’t think this is important. It isn’t important.

  “I don’t care what other people think,” I say. “That’s so petty.”

  “Well, if you only like girls, and your girlfriend turns into a guy, then how can you like her? Or him? Doesn’t that mean you’re really bi?”

  The back of my head throbs. I wish I’d never brought any of this up. I take a long drink of coffee. “I don’t know. I don’t think that’s how it works.”

  “Well, since you’re so enlightened about it all, that means you and her are, like, beyond gender, right? So it doesn’t matter if your girlfriend is really your boyfriend?” He grins. “Even if that means people think you’re straight?”

  I can’t help it. The word straight makes me shudder.

  It’s not like I have a problem with straight people or anything. I’ve always had tons of straight friends. It’s just that being straight seems so...obvious. So conventional. It’s never felt like me.

  I don’t even remember when I first thought of myself as gay. It’s not like I sat down one day and decided boys were icky. I even used to get crushes on guys when I was a kid. I just never wanted to jump any of them the way I wanted to jump Toni at that Homecoming dance.

  I guess maybe I could like a guy someday. Hypothetically. I’m never going to stop liking girls, though. If people started thinking of me as straight, it would really freak me out.

  Carroll sees the look on my face and laughs. “Maybe you’re not that enlightened, after all. Maybe you have issues like the rest of us normal people.”

  Now I’m mad. He’s just saying all this because he knows it’ll bother me. He has no idea how serious this really is.

  Whenever I start to think about this stuff, I always push it out of my head. I always think I’ll have time to figure it out later.

  Well, what if right now is later? What if the stuff I’ve put off thinking about is actually happening right now?

  Toni’s friends are using male pronouns already. Soon Toni could ask everyone else to do the same thing. Come out to the whole family. After that, there could be actual physical changes. Hormone injections. Surgery.

  Would Toni still be the same person after all of that?

  Would Toni still want to be with me? Regular, boring me, who doesn’t even know how to talk about pronouns without messing up?

  I shake my head so these thoughts will go away. It only makes my headache worse. I look back up at Carroll.

  “I’m not straight,” I say. “It doesn’t matter what pronouns Toni uses. That wouldn’t make me straight.”

  “What’s so bad about being straight?” Carroll grins. As far as he’s concerned, this conversation is hysterical. “Some of my best friends are straight!”

  “Oh, yeah?” I say. “Who among your many, many friends would those be?”

  Carroll’s grin fades, and his eyebrows crinkle. He bites his lip like he might cry.

  I’m the worst person in the world.

  “Crap, crap, crap, I’m sorry,” I say. “Really, I am. Ugh, please just ignore me. I’m freaking out a little bit.”

  “Why?” Carroll lowers his mug to the table. “Are you—wait, are you mad at her?”

  “No!” The very idea of being mad at Toni is ludicrous. “Of course not. Toni sounded really happy about this pronoun thing, so that makes me happy, too.”

  “No, I meant about canceling your trip,” Carroll says. “You should be mad at her for that. Seriously.”

  I shake my head. “That isn’t how it works. We don’t get mad at each other that easily.”

  Carroll raises a skeptical eyebrow, but I ignore him.

  “It’s just that I hadn’t thought about this other stuff,” I say. “Like, what it means for me if Toni starts presenting as a guy. I guess it doesn’t really mean anything for me, though. It’s not about me.”

  “Sure it is,” Carroll says. “Like, what do you tell your parents? ‘Whoops, sorry I freaked you out, it was a false alarm, it turns out I’m into guys, after all’?”

  “Oh, my parents won’t care either way. They love Toni.”

  “For real?” Carroll frowns. “When did you come out to them?”

  “Eighth grade, when I had my first girlfriend. My brother’s gay, too, so they were used to it by the time I came along.”

  “Huh.” Carroll strokes his chin. He didn’t shave this morning, so there’s a tiny bit of light brown stubble there. “So they’d be cool with it if you told them your girlfriend’s getting a dick.”

  Oh, for gosh sake. “Look, Carroll, please don’t talk lik
e that. You sound like you’re on Fox News.”

  “Sorry. I promise to behave from now on.”

  Carroll spends the rest of brunch telling me about the latest episode of The Flighted Ones while I finish two more mugs of coffee.

  When I get back to my room, I’m jittery from the caffeine. My head feels like it’s going to detach itself from my body and go romp around in Headache Land. There’s no way I can focus on the paper I need to write. Instead, I take three aspirin and gaze at the computer screen while all the questions Carroll asked whirl around in my brain. After two hours, I know the headache isn’t going away unless I talk this all the way through.

  I can’t talk to Toni. Not until I’ve done enough research to understand all the gender stuff. Not until I can talk about it the same way Toni’s new friends apparently can.

  Besides, sometimes being a good girlfriend means not mentioning every single thought that passes through your head. Especially thoughts that might hurt your girlfriend’s feelings.

  So I text Carroll and ask him to come out for another slice of pizza.

  5

  OCTOBER

  FRESHMAN YEAR OF COLLEGE

  6 WEEKS APART

  TONI

  I think Kevin & I are going to try a nonmonogamous relationship, the text from Audrey says.

  I glance around before texting back, since I’m in class, but no one seems to be paying attention to me.

  What does that mean?

  We want to stay together but also see other people, my sister replies.

  Like having your cake and eating it too?

  Whatever. Don’t mock my romantic ideals.

  Hey, I have the utmost respect for your romantic ideals. Who do you want to romance with besides Kevin?

  No one in particular. I just want the option. Monogamy is so old-school. No offense.

  None taken. I pride myself on my old-schoolness.

  I bite my lip to keep from laughing out loud.

  I’m sure Audrey is dead serious about the “nonmonogamous relationship” thing, but I can’t imagine what it will actually mean in practice. The second Kevin hooks up with some other girl, Audrey’s bound to go psychotic.

  I slide my phone back into my bag and glance around the room. We’re in a small basement classroom in one of the older buildings on campus. They haven’t turned the heat on yet, so everyone’s wrapped up in coats and scarves against the chill. Three other people are on their phones, too, which makes me feel better, but I turn to my laptop and get back to taking notes anyway. Lacey, our grad student teaching fellow, is winding down the discussion about the evolution of the two-party system.

  In high school I never would’ve dreamed of texting in class. I was what you might call a nerd about academics. And, okay, most other things.

  In college, though, everything feels more anonymous. When I was growing up, my teachers kept telling me I was supersmart, which was awesome, but here, I’m surrounded by people who heard the same thing all their lives from their teachers. I still want to make perfect grades, obviously, but—I mean, it’s Harvard. There’s no way I’m going to be at the top of my class. I don’t know if there even is a top of the class.

  Plus, I’m four weeks into my Foundations of American Government class and the main thing I’ve learned so far, aside from the fact that buying a semester’s worth of government textbooks meant putting upward of two hundred dollars on my mom’s credit card, is that there are way too many conservatives at Harvard.

  Lacey dismisses the section, and I glance at my watch. I’m about to be late to meet my friends. I’m shoving my laptop into my bag when I hear my name.

  “Stick around for a few minutes, will you, Antonia?” It’s Lacey calling to me from the front of the room.

  I grit my teeth. I hate it when people call me Antonia.

  Wait. Did Lacey notice me texting? Crapola. I gear up for a lecture and meet Lacey at the front of the class.

  “That was an interesting perspective,” Lacey says as the rest of the class filters out. Lacey’s young, maybe a year or two out of undergrad, with long, deep brown hair that’s always wound into a messy braid. As though Lacey’s too busy being smart to worry about anything so frivolous as hair. “Some would argue our two-party system is getting stronger as candidates move further to the left and right extremes.”

  Oh, right. During the first half of the discussion, before I got Audrey’s text, I said I thought the Democrats only had a couple of decades left in them before the party collapsed for good. Half the room tried to shout me down.

  “That’s absurd,” I say. “Party identification is decreasing. How many people in the US said they considered themselves independents in the last election? More than forty percent, right?”

  “Either the Democrats or the Republicans have won every presidential election since 1852,” Lacey says. “It’s easy to get caught up in media hype about one party or the other being up or down, but looking at the arc of history—”

  “The arc of history shows that the parties have evolved,” I say. “No one’s trying to resurrect the Whigs anymore, but it’s reductive to say all we’ve ever had is a party that loves abortions and a party that hates nonwhite people. We’ve only known it one way, but that doesn’t mean it can’t evolve. Or that evolution has to be a bad thing.”

  “You know, I think you’re absolutely right,” Lacey says. I blink. “Especially in a foundations class like this one, we have to be able to put aside our presumptive, twenty-first-century views and focus our analysis on the bigger picture.”

  That isn’t what I was trying to say at all, but I don’t want to argue anymore. I started the day fighting. My roommates have very strong opinions about how long my showers should take.

  “So thank you for speaking up during the discussion.” Lacey smiles. Not a teacher-like smile, either. More of an isn’t-it-cool-how-smart-we-both-are smile.

  I nod, uncertain. I don’t know what to make of this conversation.

  “So, I hope to hear more from you next class, Antonia,” Lacey says.

  “It’s just Toni, actually.”

  “Okay, then. Toni.” Lacey smiles again.

  I turn to go without smiling back. I’m not sure what just happened, but something about it left me feeling vaguely anxious.

  I try to shake it off as I hurry outside. It’s only the beginning of October, but it’s already getting cold. I’m getting sick, the way I always do when the seasons start changing. Of course, it probably doesn’t help that I only slept four hours last night. The night before, too. Between reading, writing my piece for PolitiWonk, more reading, working on the transition guide, more reading, and hacking up lungs while my roommates yelled from the other room for me to be quiet, and then, yes, more reading. Sleep is a luxury I did not sufficiently appreciate in high school.

  I’m crossing the street into the square, now officially late to meet the guys, when my phone rings. It’s Chris. I hit Accept.

  “Hey, you,” I say.

  “Hey back,” Chris says, then pauses. “So.”

  Chris never calls me to say “So.” Chris texts me or emails me or messages me. I haven’t gotten a phone call from Chris since June.

  I play dumb. “What’s up?”

  “So,” Chris says again. “Um. I have news.”

  “What kind of news?”

  “Um, so I. Uh. Not so much with the virginity thing anymore.”

  I laugh. “Congratulations. When did this happen?”

  “Last night. He came for a visit.”

  “This is Steven, I assume? You’re back together?”

  “Yes. Hello. Obviously. What kind of guy do you think I am?”

  “Sorry.”

  While Chris fills me in on more details than I’d really prefer, I check my watch. I�
��m fifteen minutes late. My friends are going to kill me. A bunch of us are meeting outside the Starbucks and then going to some bar they love in Jamaica Plain, and they made a big deal about everyone having to be exactly on time. We’re meeting up with their friend Andy, the president and cofounder of Harvard’s Student Anti-Starbucks Alliance, so we have to move fast. Being seen next to an actual Starbucks is not politically advisable for Andy.

  “The problem is, I’m getting all paranoid,” Chris says. “He keeps dropping these hints about guys he’s friends with at school. I have this weird feeling, like maybe instead of this being about us taking the next step, it’s kind of like, I don’t know. A preemptive goodbye or something.”

  I take a long breath. Long enough to suppress the urge to say I told you so.

  “That’s absurd,” I say. “No way would Steven fly all the way across the country just for a pity screw.”

  Chris laughs. “Thanks a lot.”

  “Look, Steven adores you, okay? Besides, no Stanford guy could ever be anywhere near as hot as you. Not even Elvis.”

  Chris laughs again. “Well, yeah. I mean, obviously.”

  “On that self-aggrandizing note, I have to go,” I say.

  “No! Wait! I have a ton more to tell you.”

  “Sorry, I’m already late. Can you get online later and tell me the rest?”

  “Where are you going anyway?”

  “Just out with some friends. I have to be exactly on time. I think it’s a weird hazing ritual.” I haven’t told Chris about Derek and the others. I don’t want those two worlds colliding yet.

  “Okay, fine. But be prepared to receive an epic email with a lot of embarrassing details in it. I have to gush somehow or other.”

  I concede to this plan, get off the phone and half run to Starbucks. Derek and Eli are there, along with Pete, Kartik and a couple of other guys from the UBA. I’ve met them before, but I don’t know them very well. It’s weird hanging out with such a big group when I’m really only friends with Derek and Eli. Also, no one’s ever actually told me where most of the other guys are on the trans spectrum—they might be totally cisgender for all I know—and it kind of stresses me out not knowing how to categorize them.