Shifting Tides

by Caitlin Ricci

  “Guess I can’t call you La-La anymore,” he said as he took a drink of his beer.

  “You could just call me Adam,” he suggested, looking over at him. He couldn’t sort out the feelings that coursed through him. He hadn’t expected to be sitting there on the beach with Blaine, quietly answering questions. He’d expected to tell his family the truth and have them all hugging him, telling him how proud they were of his strength for being honest with them about who he was.

  Blaine nodded and glanced at him. “I plan to. It’s a good name. And no one will ever misspell it or forget how to pronounce it.”

  He was right about that for sure. Since biblical names were pretty popular overall, Adam was pretty sure no one would be messing up his name. He didn’t even mind that it was fairly common either. “You’re not freaked out?”

  Blaine shrugged. “Not really. So what if you’re a guy? You’ve never gotten a manicure that I’ve known about or done other girly stuff anyway. I figured you were a tomboy. That you’re a guy isn’t that big of a deal to me.”

  Adam smiled and shook his head. He didn’t feel like explain how his mother liked to torture him with things like manicures. “I wish it was that simple. You make it sound so easy. So minimized. And here I’ve been freaking out about it for months, just waiting for the right time to tell everyone.” He sat back on his butt and crossed his wet legs in front of him. The surf lapped at his heels, tickling them. The tide was already starting to shift, slowly coming up on them. If Blaine weren’t sitting there with him, Adam might have simply sat there and seen how much water he could endure before he just floated away, another body claimed by the Atlantic Ocean. But somehow, having Blaine there made things a little bit easier.

  “Well, I think you chose a good time. Other people may disagree, but this way it wasn’t like you ruined Christmas or anything.” Blaine’s voice was even and bland, like he was holding something back.

  Adam slowly nodded and drank more of his beer. It was nasty and he wasn’t sure why anyone actually chose to drink the crap. But he didn’t want to look like a wuss in front of Blaine either so he sipped it while Blaine gulped his drink down. “I didn’t mean to ruin anything.” And it sucked that Adam was sure he had. Somehow, he knew the family get-togethers would never be the same, now that he wasn’t the girl they all thought he was. He wondered if anything would ever be the same. If his family couldn’t accept him, who would?

  Blaine shrugged and leaned a little closer to Adam. A small herd of horses walked up the beach away from them. A foal played among them, looking completely at ease with his life in that moment. Adam knew he would have given anything to feel like that again for just a little while, but everything was changing and he couldn’t tell where the changes would end. Would he even recognize the world when it was all over?

  “You can’t really change how people are going to react to certain news,” Blaine said. “Your parents will come around.”

  “Maybe. But I’ve never seen either of them that mad. And then they were yelling, which they haven’t done in years. At least not anywhere that I could hear them.” Adam drank down the rest of his beer, choking on it, but at least he could give Blaine back the bottle and be done with it. Adam couldn’t wait to brush his teeth and get the awful taste out of his mouth. “I tried being a girl. I really did. But I hate everything about this body. Every last thing. None of it feels like it’s mine.”

  “So change it.” Blaine’s level tone made it sound so easy.

  Wishing it was that easy, Adam rolled his eyes. “It’s slightly harder than that, you know. Like there’s hormones and surgery and…” He waved his hand in the air between them, not really knowing what else was involved, but he was sure there was more stuff he was just forgetting right then. He’d been doing all the research online about what happened and the best places to go, but there was so much emotion running through him he’d forgotten most of what he’d read. Like a lot of the past few months, it was all a haze.

  “And cutting your hair?” Blaine reached into his back pocket and pulled out a pocket knife. It was short, the blade maybe three inches max, but Adam couldn’t stop staring at it as Blaine pushed his bottle of beer into the sand and opened it up. The blade was shiny, and it looked sharp. “Some guys have long hair, though. Maybe you’ll want to keep yours.”

  As quick as Adam could, he shook his head. “No. I don’t. I want it off. Will you help me?” Adam was afraid to ask him for the help, even though it seemed to be so simple of a request. But it really wasn’t. This was the first thing he could do to be himself. And Blaine got up and knelt behind him to do it for him. Adam put his head forward and held his hands in his lap while he watched those horses on the beach. He tried his best to not shake with a mix of fear and excitement. He didn’t want Blaine to inadvertently stab him in the neck or anything.

  “I wish I could be free like them,” Adam said as Blaine started sawing away at his hair. Adam didn’t care what he did, or how awful it looked, as long as it was all gone. He would have shaved it off if he could have.

  “Why can’t you?”

  Adam wondered if Blaine was he always this dense and he had just never noticed it before, or was this a new development? Adam started to shake his head but Blaine put his hand on Adam’s shoulder, stopping him. And Adam remembered that he was using a knife pretty close to his scalp. “I’m fifteen. Remember? I’m too young to live on my own. And I don’t have a job or anything else. I’ve just got my parents. And now they’re freaking out.”

  “You’ve got your aunts and uncles too. And Seth.”

  Blaine sounded fairly sure they’d stand by him, but Adam wasn’t as sure. He’d already seen what his family was capable of. He snorted. “Seth’s not exactly useful in this situation.”

  “I’ve got news for you—he’s not that useful in most situations,” Blaine said with a laugh.

  Blaine pulled Adam’s head back, and he closed his eyes as Blaine ran his fingers through Adam’s short hair. Adam could feel his fingernails against his scalp and he shut his eyes tightly and tried not to enjoy it so much. Blaine liked girls. Adam wasn’t one. And Adam knew that it would only hurt more when Blaine really let him being a boy sink in and rejected him the way his parents were.

  “But I am serious,” Blaine continued as he resumed sliding his pocket knife through Adam’s hair, finishing cutting it all off. “You’ve got more family than just your folks. If they need time to calm down, you’ve still got your aunts and uncles. Even if the ’rents say they’re done with you, even if they decide they hate you forever, you’ve got more family. And if they really are like that, so what? Screw them. You can make a better family with the giraffes at the zoo than parents who treat you like that.”

  Adam didn’t pay attention to the tears that leaked from his eyes. He wanted to be strong. He had to be strong. “I wish it was that simple.”

  “It can be.”

  Adam’s tears were coming faster now. “Says the guy that has parents who love him.”

  Blaine laughed. There was a tone of bitterness to the sound. “You think so? Try again. I’ve been living with my grandmother since the start of the year.”

  That made absolutely no sense. “Huh? But you’re not a girl. And you like girls. And—”

  “That’s not the only reason parents get mad. I was caught drinking. Problem was, I was also driving myself home. I didn’t get caught by the cops or anything. But my parents were royally pissed. They called my grandmother to come get me and told me I wasn’t allowed back home. Like ever.”

  Adam opened his eyes and found himself staring at a perfect night sky filled with brightly shining stars. They looked so peaceful, so absolutely untouched. Like nothing could ever go wrong under them. Only Adam knew that wasn’t true. Not anymore. Not as the sound of his mom’s SUV starting up roared from up the sand dune and he knew she was leaving him there with his aunts and uncles to deal with. His dad left right after that. Adam knew the sound of his dad’s little sedan�
�no one else at the campsite had a car that sounded like it.

  “That’s really dangerous. Please don’t do that anymore.” Adam didn’t want Blaine getting hurt. Having Blaine there helped push back the emotions threatening to overwhelm him. He was proud that his voice hadn’t broken as he tried not to cry again. But he failed as Blaine put the pocketknife aside. Adam turned against him and leaned into his chest. He never questioned whether or not Blaine was going to hold him as he cried. He wasn’t the kind of guy who would have pushed away someone in need, not even a guy like him.

  Adam choked through his tears and Blaine rubbed his back. “Your hair is probably going to look really awful but at least it’s shorter now. I’ve got some gel if you want to spike it or something tomorrow once you can see it in the daylight.”

  Once his tears had slowed Adam reached up to touch the short, uneven strands. “Thank you.” He’d never been able to run his hands through his hair so quickly. The cool breeze from the ocean chilled the back of his neck. A shiver went down his back at the strange feeling. He supposed it was something he’d get used to. He never wanted to have long hair again.

  “Of course. I’ve been wanting to have a reason to use my new pocket knife.”

  Despite everything, Adam laughed at that. “You’re a good guy. That girl you like? You should tell her. I think she might like you too.”

  He stopped moving his hands over Adam’s back. “Well…what if she’s actually a guy? And what if he’s sitting on my lap right now? What would he say then?”

  “Yes?” he whispered, his voice cracking. For a moment, Adam’s head reeled.

  Did I have to lose everything to find Blaine? Or is this just a cruel joke by the universe?

  Blaine went back to rubbing Adam’s back. Tight muscles eased under his touch. Adam wished it could go on forever.

  “Good. I was hoping you’d say that.”

  “I was hoping you might like me. Even like this.”

  Blaine nodded and wrapped his arms fully around Adam, holding him tightly against his chest. “Lucky me that you’re gay.”

  Adam frowned. He hadn’t thought of himself like that. But he was a guy, and he liked guys… So, yeah, that made him gay. “And you’re gay too? Or what are you?”

  “Me? Well, I’m this thing called a human on this little planet called Earth and—”

  Adam elbowed him in his ribs. “I’m serious!”

  He let go of Adam long enough to rub his side, then brought his hands right back to holding him. Adam liked that.

  “Look, I’m just me.” Moonlight glistened off the perfect teeth in Blaine’s soft smile. “I don’t do labels. If you need to call me something then call me pan, I guess. But I’m whatever means that I like you. And I want to take you out on a date.”

  Adam laid his head against Blaine’s chest. “I’ve never been on a date. Not sure I’d be any good at it.”

  “Not sure I would either. But I’m told there’s nothing to it. Get together, go to a movie or something. You like movies, right? You’re not weird about them or anything?”

  Laughing, Adam shook his head. “I’m a boy in a girl’s body and you think not liking movies would make me weird?”

  Blaine shrugged. “Well, yeah. Everyone likes movies. Even the weird kid who was in my homeroom last year that likes to get all deep and intellectual about action movies—like there’s something more to them than stuff getting blown up—likes them. This last one he saw he swore had something to do with Buddha and Nazis or something like that. I don’t know. I tend to tune him out. Anyway, yes, you have to like movies, because if you don’t, that’s a deal-breaker for me.”

  “I like them.” Adam took a deep breath and tilted his head back to look back up at those perfect stars again. “Thank you for coming out here to talk to me. I needed this.”

  “What you need are better parents. But you’re welcome. Can’t let you swim alone and can’t have you crying alone either. I’d kick my own butt if something ever happened to you.”

  He sounded so serious about it that Adam had to smile. Blaine was a good guy to have in his corner. It would give him the strength to go on. “Do you think we should go back?”

  “Maybe. Can’t really stay here all night. Right? The tide will come in and drown us.”

  Adam wasn’t so sure they couldn’t stay. “Maybe my parents just needed a chance to cool down and will be coming back.”

  Blaine didn’t say anything to him about that. He just took Adam’s hand, put his pocket knife away, then they headed back up the beach. The little herd of horses walked sedately along the water’s edge. There were six of them, with the foal following at the back of the herd. They seemed happy, somehow. And as much as Adam was trying to be like them, because Blaine liked him too, he couldn’t keep the worry and fear out of his heart as he trailed along beside Blaine back toward the campfire where his aunt, uncle and Seth sat. The happy air had vanished, but at least someone was determined to make the most of it.

  As if no time had passed at all, they sat there eating s’mores. No one commented on the fact Blaine was still holding Adam’s hand when they came back and sat down on the logs across the fire from them, or when Blaine put his arm around Adam’s shoulders like it was the most normal thing in the world that they were together now. That he was Adam’s boyfriend.

  He was a boy and he had his first boyfriend. Adam should have been overjoyed and running up and down the beach laughing and doing cartwheels. Did boys even do cartwheels? Maybe he would have to learn how to do backflips. Surely guys did those when they were happy.

  But as much as part of him wanted to run around and be crazy for a while, he couldn’t. Not when he saw that his parents definitely hadn’t come back to get him. They were absolutely and completely gone. He had been left on the beach. Like the beer bottles Blaine and he had left by the surf. He would make sure they went back and got them before the tide came in. But he was sure now that no one was coming back for him.

  “Adam?”

  It took him a few seconds, and Blaine poking him with his finger into Adam’s shoulder, for him to figure out that Aunt Amy was talking to him. “Huh?” Had someone actually used his real name to talk to him? Could it have really been that easy? The pain inside him told him it wasn’t that easy, no matter what it seemed like on the outside.

  She gave Adam a soft smile. When he looked closer at her, he could see that she’d been crying. But he didn’t get why she should have been. She wasn’t the one who had been abandoned on a beach.

  “Sweetie, you’ll be coming to stay with us. And your school starts early enough that I can take you in the mornings. And we’ll help you figure out the bus schedule so that you can get back in the afternoons. Or maybe you could join a club or something like that. Then we could pick you up in the afternoons like I do with the boys.”

  Seth rolled his eyes, and Adam thought he was going to say something mean, even as his heart was racing. He was going to live with Aunt Amy and Uncle John? And he would live with Seth? And try not to want to smack him over his head all the time? Was that even possible?

  “Or, he could do what I suggested, and just come to school with Blaine and me. It’s the summer. Should be easy to transfer. Then I could make fun of you all the time.”

  Adam’s head swam as he took everything in. Had Seth just said ‘he’ when referring to him? “You’re okay with me being a guy?”

  Seth shrugged and stretched out his legs as his marshmallow caught on fire, just as he liked it. “’Course I am. It’ll be cool. We can play video games together and stuff.”

  “We could already do that.” Adam had no idea what he was getting at.

  “Yeah, but you play girl games.”

  Clearly he hadn’t really looked at Adam’s video game collection. Which was at his mom’s house. Along with all of his other stuff. Damn. Would he ever see any of it again? Could he go on without his stuff?

  “Adam? Honey? What do you think of that?” Uncle John was talking to hi
m now.

  It took him a second to figure out what Uncle John was asking about, since his mind had been so wrapped up on the idea that he would never see any of his stuff again. Everything that had been important to him for fifteen years, and he might not have any of it anymore. His art supplies. His books. His video games. They were his things, and yet they weren’t.

  But his Uncle John was talking about school and where he wanted to go for his sophomore year of high school. “I’ll go to Pharrell High, with Seth and Blaine.” Maybe they had a soccer team. Maybe he could make things work there. Maybe, after a bit, it wouldn’t hurt so much to be abandoned by his parents and cast out like trash. “Did my mom say anything about me getting my things from her house?”

  His Aunt Amy looked sad as she nodded. “She’ll have everything packed up for me to go get when this vacation is over. Maybe she’ll even calm down by then. You never know.”

  Adam thought it was nice of her to try to cheer him up and give him a little hope, but he was pretty sure she was going to end up being wrong. He fought back another round of tears as the feeling in his gut settled hard. His mother was not going to calm down and things were never going to be the same. He’d been cast out, but at least he wasn’t alone.

  Chapter Eight

  Blaine slipped into the tent, trying to not let Seth see how tired he really was. Even though he hadn’t been the focus of any of the night’s emotional events, the whole thing had left him exhausted. But he was thankful he’d been able to be there for Adam. He hadn’t really had anyone there for him when his parents had thrown him away. Seth had been, but Seth wasn’t great for emotional support. Seth was more prone to practical questions, like, did they keep your stuff? One of the reasons Seth bounced around from girl to girl was he hadn’t figured out how to really connect with someone on an emotional level.

  “Dude, you will not believe the shit that was said after you left.” Seth stretched out on his sleeping bag and kept his voice low.