by Rachel Gold
“No,” she said. “We’re not the same. I’m a girl.”
“I know you are. I get it, what you’ve got under your pants doesn’t matter. I want to touch you.”
“Girls don’t have dicks.” Her words came out short and bitter. She was talking about herself, but it felt like she was talking about me too.
“Some do,” I said.
“Not me.” Her voice was rising. “I don’t want you to see me like that.”
“But I don’t care. I like you how you are.”
“That’s not me!”
Her fingers fumbled on the catch of the door, opening it behind her. She swung around in my lap and hopped down, out of the truck.
I was shaking. I got out and stood, bracing myself against the truck with one hand. You would think we’d be the best couple in the world. I couldn’t tell if I was more sad or scared about losing her or mad at myself or frustrated about all of it.
She went around and got in the driver’s side and sat. After a while I grabbed my coat from the passenger side floor where it had fallen and put it on.
“I’ll walk,” I said.
“It’s too far and it’s the middle of the night.”
I shook my head. “It’s fine. I look like a guy from a distance.”
“Nico,” she started. I closed the truck door, barely short of slamming it, and walked away down the sidewalk.
She didn’t try to follow me and when I looked back she was slumped down in the truck, probably crying. I felt like an asshole, but too mad to go back to her. I jammed my hands in my pockets and kept walking.
“Some girls do have dicks,” I muttered. Maybe that was me, maybe it wasn’t. But it was someone. It was plenty of people with intersex traits. And it wasn’t freakish or weird, it was nature. And Ella, of all people, should not make me feel so wrong about myself.
That was the thing tonight in the playground with Tucker. She might like making out with me. She might really like me, the way I liked her. But when it came down to my body, was she, as a lesbian, going to have a bad reaction? Would it be like Ella all over again—only different in the details of why my body was wrong? How many times could I go through that and not hate myself?
Chapter Eighteen
Tucker
Women’s voices woke me, speaking cheerfully in a language with long vowels and sudden stops. I didn’t want to wander into a strange family setting. I snuck down the hall to the bathroom and back to the bedroom where I sat and read on my phone. The doorknob turned softly and clicked open. Nico peered in and grinned when yo saw me up.
“Hey, didn’t want to wake you. Ready for breakfast?”
Nico’s curls were uneven from sleep, tight against one side of yos head and tousled on the other side and top. I beamed back at yo and ran my hand through my hair.
“Sure.”
I followed Nico down the stairs into the kitchen nook. A stout woman with light oak skin, crinkly, smiling eyes, and a mass of white hair piled on and behind her head, sat at the table. She had a bowl of porridge in front of her and a book propped up. I caught part of the title, Broadway, before she set it down.
Another woman moved in the kitchen, her walnut skin less wrinkled, her smile more compact and internal, like she was smiling at herself. She was in loose pants and a sweatshirt with a white apron that said in scrawling red script, When this apron is on, I’m the boss. Any questions?
She had the same eyes and broad, flat nose as the woman at the table. The same nose that I saw resemblance to in Nico. That had to be Nico’s mom in the kitchen and grandmom, Yai, at the table.
“This is Tucker from up at Freytag,” Nico said. “Where Ella goes to school.” That last was directed at Yai, who nodded.
“Eggs?” Nico’s mom offered, holding up her spatula.
“That would be great,” Nico answered for both of us. “Thanks.”
“What brings you to Columbus?” Nico’s mom asked me.
“Um, I heard that stuff was going on with Nico and I wanted to come down and be supportive and stuff.” That was too many “stuffs” for one sentence, but her smile widened.
“Ella’s coming down for the surgery but I told her to go camping for spring break with Shen like she planned,” Nico said. “Tucker, coffee with cream?”
“Yes, thanks, and sugar.”
Yo went into the kitchen. The kitchen wasn’t any bigger than the one at my mom’s house, but it was in much better shape. Everything gleamed, even the handles on the cupboards. The kitchen was open to this dining area, where I was, which was open to the living room. The TV played cartoons and a young girl sat in the middle of the couch, enthralled. She had very black hair but light, birch-toned skin.
Nico took the chair next to Yai and set the coffee by the empty chair to yos right so I sat there.
“What do you want with the eggs?” Nico’s mom asked.
“Can we have some of the sausage you put in Yai’s jok?” Nico asked. “Would you fry us some?”
“You want the McDonald’s special?” she asked, shaking her head.
“Oh are you making McGriddles too?” Nico replied.
She rolled her eyes at Nico and went back to the stove, smiling to herself.
I liked this side of Nico. Not outrageous and flamboyant, like when yo came up to the parties at Freytag, but joking, laughing, playful in a soft way.
“What are you two doing today?” Yai asked.
“I’m going to take Tucker over to the Noodle to get some costumes. Then I want to run down to Cincinnati for that little convention I told you about last week.” Nico called into the kitchen, “Mom, can we stay the night there?”
“Text me when you get there,” she replied. “And at bedtime so I know you’re safe.”
“Of course,” Nico said. “I want to show Tucker what cosplay is like. We’re going as Athena and Starbuck from Battlestar Galactica. She’s Starbuck.”
Yai pulled her reading glasses further down her nose and gave me a good once-over. “All right.”
“You watched Battlestar?” I asked.
“It would be better live,” she said and tapped the back cover of the Broadway book.
“Oh, I would so go to that,” Nico said.
“Noknoi, you’re always welcome to come with me,” Yai said. “Even if it’s not Battlestar.”
Nico’s mom asked me, “What are you studying?”
“Women’s and Gender Studies,” I said, feeling like that was a goofball thing to say in front of Nico. As if I was studying Nico.
“She’s the one who came out as trans for Ella,” Nico said. Nico’s mom paused at the counter where she was picking up plates and gave me a long, appreciative look.
“That was quite something,” she said.
“Thanks.”
Yai had finished her porridge and took the bowl to the sink to rinse it. I couldn’t think of anything intelligent to say, so I asked Nico, “What does ‘Noknoi’ mean?”
“That’s my Thai nickname. It means ‘little bird.’ Everybody gets one. Mom is Fah, ‘Sky.’ And Yai is ‘Daeng,’ but it’s not respectful for us to call her that because we’re too young.” Nico paused and then grinned, “Ella’s nickname is ‘Baby’.”
“I thought that was an endearment.”
“Nope, even Yai calls her that. You can borrow English words. I hear there’s even a poor guy over in Thailand whose nickname is ‘Airbus.’ Yai named Ella ‘Baby’ because she’s always been so small. It sounds different when Yai says it, though. I wonder what she’d call you.”
Nico turned toward the kitchen, “Yai, what’s Tucker’s nickname?”
Yai finished washing out her bowl and set it on a dishtowel folded on the counter. She leaned against the sink, contemplating me.
Nico’s mom stirred the contents of a frying pan and pulled it off the heat. She slid eggs onto two plates and from another pan small patties of fried sausage. Nico got up and carried the plates from the stove into the eating nook, putting one in front of
me. The eggs were cooked so that their whites swirled and scrambled around intact golden yolks, thickened by the heat.
Coming back to the table, Yai said, “Dtao.”
Nico laughed. “Perfect.”
“That’s my nickname? Dtao? Like in the Tao te Ching?”
“No, in Thai it means ‘star.’ She’s making a play on Starbuck.” Nico turned to Yai. “So I can go on calling her Starbuck?”
She said, “Dtao is better.”
“I like it a lot,” I told her. “Thank you.”
After breakfast Nico hopped in the shower and then I did. I got a clean pair of jeans, sweatshirt and T-shirt from the duffle. I hadn’t thought through where I was going to stay, but it was always a good idea to carry around a change of clothes or two, even if you ended up sleeping in the car. Nico met me in the hall.
“Hey, I need to do my Athena makeup before we go, so you have to promise no teasing,” yo said.
“I can’t promise that. No evil teasing, sure, but not no teasing at all.”
“Fair enough.” Nico grinned and disappeared into yos room.
I could see over the railing that Nico’s stepdad, Matt, was in front of the TV now too. He sat on the couch next to the black-haired girl who had to be Deena since Hazey hadn’t come home yet. He had the same thick hair and light skin, a broad face balanced by heavy brows. His right leg wore a thick brace and he’d propped it up on an ottoman covered by a pillow. I went down and sat in one of the two armchairs that flanked the couch.
“Are you Nico’s girlfriend?” Deena asked.
“Um, not…yet?”
“But you want to be?
I nodded.
“That’s good. I think girlfriends are better than boyfriends. Boyfriends have sweaty hands.”
“Hey, I was a boyfriend once,” Matt said.
“That is so gross, Dad.”
“I did have sweaty hands, I’ll grant you that.”
Deena made a gagging scream and shot off the couch. She nearly collided with Nico who was coming down the stairs.
I blinked and stared and, even though it didn’t help, shook my head trying to clear it. Long, straight black hair, thin brows, makeup that de-emphasized the breadth of Nico’s nose and emphasized the graceful shape of yos eyes.
“Oh, wow.”
Nico winked. “I’ll do your makeup when we get to the con. You’re easy. This wig takes forever to get on. Come on, let’s run by the Noodle and get our flight suits.”
“Uh, yeah,” I said, trying to get over how pretty Nico was.
How big a problem was it going to be if I did like Nico better as a girl?
* * *
The Noodle turned out to be a big, old three-story house with a sign that said Jim’s Glorious Noodle out front but nothing restaurant-like inside. Nico unlocked the side door and took us down a flight of stairs to a large, finished basement.
“Nobody’s here yet,” Nico said. “Too early. But by afternoon this place will be packed with folks working on costumes. Hey, I’m in a genderfluid cabaret here in two weeks, you should come.”
“Definitely.”
Garment racks lined the far wall of the basement. Nico pulled one forward and stepped behind it.
“What are you, like a size twelve?” Nico asked.
“Fourteen,” I said.
“Gotcha.”
A minute later Nico was back holding two full Battlestar Galactica flight suits on hangers. Yo held one out to me.
“A lot of the costumes down here are from theater productions they did upstairs. But then as more and more geeks came down here to work on stuff, people created a lending library of popular costumes,” Nico explained.
Yo hung the other costume on the end of a rack and pulled off yos shirt to reveal a genuine Battlestar Galactica gray and white tank top. Under the tank top was the rise of breasts. I couldn’t even not stare. I’d seen the hint of breasts when Nico was in the tennis dress the night of the party. But when we’d been making out, Nico felt flat-chested so I thought maybe I was wrong.
Nico stepped out of yos pants, revealing a pair of dark gray boxer briefs edged with white, and pulled on the smaller fight suit. Zipping it up, yo noticed me staring.
“You own a Battlestar Galactica tank top,” I said lamely, trying to come up with anything better than: omg, boobs.
“Yep.”
“Um, can I ask? At Cal’s party, you were binding?”
“Yeah,” Nico said. “Close your mouth, you look like I invented breasts.”
“That wasn’t you?”
Nico laughed. “Suit up, Starbuck.”
I stripped down to T-shirt and boxers and got into the other flight suit. I saw the wisdom of taking off outer layers. The fake leather of the suit was hot and not breathable for long stretches of it along the legs, arms and torso.
Afterward, we drove up north separately so I could drop the car off at Bailey’s. Nico waited in yos car while I gave Bailey her keys back. She raised her eyebrows at my flight suit but didn’t ask. Probably thought it was some kind of hardware store coverall. But she had to peek out the front window at Nico.
“She’s pretty,” she said. “That your new girlfriend?”
I wanted the answer to be yes, but her question was a lot more complicated than it sounded. Was “girlfriend” the right way to describe what I wanted Nico to be? Plus there was Quin, who’d been texting me steadily since yesterday to see if we were going to do anything this weekend. I hadn’t responded to any of her texts; I was on the verge of being an asshole.
I got out my phone and quickly texted Quin: Out of town, catch up with you Monday.
That gave me two days to figure things out. Bailey was giving me her what-did-you-do-now look.
“It’s complicated,” I told Bailey.
She shook her head. “Sweet car, at least.”
“It’s Nico’s stepdad’s,” I said, feeling worse for using Nico’s name to avoid using a pronoun.
“Well don’t get her pregnant or anything,” Bailey said.
“Uh. Yeah, okay. See ya.”
I went out to Nico’s car shaking my head and wondering if Nico could get pregnant—then kicking myself for getting caught up in the plumbing and wiring. Being around someone where I couldn’t make assumptions made me realize all the times I was on autopilot.
Chapter Nineteen
Nico
The convention was at a Best Western on the outskirts of Cincinnati, but all the rooms were booked. I got us a room across the street at the overflow hotel and we went in to drop off our bags. The room was humid and smelled like sweaty dogs. At least it was big, with two queen beds, a couch and two chairs.
It had taken two hours to drive up and return the car to Bailey. Then we got lunch and had to drive two and a half to get down to Cincinnati. We’d talked our way through all our classes, everything we knew about Ella and Shen, about Cal and his boyfriend, what I had been watching, what Tucker was reading.
She spilled some amazing drama about Summer and Tesh that made the whole Summer-groping-me situation less awful. No wonder that girl was messed up. She was way in love with her best friend, maybe more so now that Tesh was rocking the nonbinary, and she’d been shut down hard. That had to hurt in a deep, bitter way.
Tucker also updated me about the Quin situation—how they’d only hooked up once and called it a rebound thing from the start. The fact that Tucker drove down on a moment’s notice to be with me when she’d heard about the evil peanut, and our kiss last night, made it a lot easier to hear. I wondered what Quin thought about all this, what she was going to think when Tucker got back to campus. But I figured that was for Tucker to deal with.
All the best stuff at the convention happened at night, so I told Tucker we had time to chill in the room. We both used the bathroom and settled our stuff where we wanted it. For Tucker, that meant dropping her bag on the bed near the door and flipping through the TV’s movie channels.
I unpacked my makeup kit and touched
up. Then I hung my extra shirt in the closet so it wouldn’t be a mass of wrinkles by morning. Tucker watched me with raised eyebrows. Did that mean she was anti-closet or did this read as super girly to her? Like dapper guys couldn’t use closets.
I was worrying about the “binding” moment at the Noodle. Not that I didn’t want her to know, I totally did, but she’d looked so surprised and delighted. She hadn’t been like, “Dude, how weird is it that you have boobs?” which I’m actually used to, but more like, “Oh wow, presents!” On the one hand, awesome. On the other hand, what would the reaction be when she saw the rest of me?
I couldn’t deal right now if that freaked her out. Not on top of the evil peanut news, and Dad, and her hooking up with Quin. Way too much. I needed to disconnect and get some distance. Then I could come at it again, maybe find answers in there.
Thinking of Dad, this was the perfect way to do my experiment with being a girl again. Not any girl—a badass cylon girl from a science fiction future, my favorite kind to be. With the long hair of my wig brushing my shoulders, I could settle in and see how much I really liked this.
We went to the Best Western restaurant to get burgers, lucking out with a corner booth. The décor was forest green and brown and even the wallpaper smelled of old grease. But the table top was clean and the menus non-sticky, so overall a comforting “we’ve been here for decades” vibe.
Since I was trying out this gendered thing, I asked Tucker, “While we’re here, could you use female pronouns for me?”
“Um, sure.” Her jaw was tight, lips compressed.
I asked, “How are you doing?”
“Sweaty. I feel like everyone’s staring at us.”
“They’re not,” I reassured her. “The Klingons were probably in here earlier. After them, few other costumes stand out.”
“How’d you start doing cosplay?”
“A ton of kids at the Noodle were into it. They’d throw parties every few months and I started going.” I held the menu up, read it for a bit. I wanted the conversation to go deeper, but not too deep. I said, “It’s, um, actually how I got laid the first time.”
