CHAPTER ONE: JEREMY
Three Weeks to Homecoming Kickoff
“Please try to look presidential, Jeremy. Keep your tongue in your mouth,” Hannah Kim says from behind the camera lens. “This is for our senior class yearbook. Like, your grandkids will be cleaning this out of your attic when you die.”
“At least it’ll be easy for them to find my photo.” I plant my hands against the cement and lift myself into a headstand. “Take it now! I’m making my serious face.”
Behind me, Ben, vice president of the student government, cracks up. Debbie, our treasurer, grunts and rolls her eyes. The shutter clicks, and the Cresswell Academy Class of 2021 Student Government Association is immortalized. Posed on the sunbaked sidewalk before the flagpole, the sun scorches down on us from a flawless sky, turning the school lawns and hedges a saturated green. Late-summer humidity clings to my bare arms. My battered boat shoes kick at the air as Debbie makes a gagging sound.
“Really, Jeremy?” she asks me. Hannah waves us off to crowd the whole debate team into one shot. “Coach picked you as cheer co-captain, and you’ve already won SGA president. Naomi says you’re even planning to run for Homecoming King. How much more attention do you need?”
“I thought it was funny!” Ben says, slapping me on the back. I wince, then cough to cover it. “Who says you need a stick up your ass to lead?”
His voice, deep and booming, echoes off the concrete and linoleum as we reenter the school by the gym doors. In the halls, lockers alternate in a bold, clashing medley of gold and blue—the Cresswell colors. Students eat lunch in tight knots and huddled bunches, curled against their lockers and sprawling out of classrooms. Tupperwares burst with curry and pasta. AP Physics students toss back thermoses of coffee and scrawl equations with their free hands. The administration lets us eat lunch wherever we choose, to study, socialize, or work on special projects. The local public schools have tighter rules, but Cresswell trusts its students to make good choices with their time.
Busy as they are, the other students slide out of Ben’s way. He cuts a path for me and Debbie like an icebreaker ship, leading us back toward the student government meeting room. Discomfort builds low in my stomach as I watch Ben’s broad shoulders plow forward.
I should be leading the way. I should be gliding through these halls like Ben—the muscular varsity quarterback, six foot two and sporting a five-o’clock shadow at 12:15 p.m. But three weeks on testosterone has done nothing but transform my throat into a slide whistle packed with gravel. Frozen in the amber of yearbook photos, I’ll always look like a short-haired girl in too-big boy’s clothes.
Hence the tongue waggling and headstands. I’m going to draw attention no matter what. I’d rather my fellow classmates see me as a class clown and glory hog than just “a guy who switched genders senior year.”
“Debbie! Jeremy!” Anna Kim, Hannah’s little sister, waves at us from across the hall. She’s surrounded by a horde of pink-clad freshman cheerleaders, swapping mouthwatering pumpkin cupcakes with their names scrawled across the top in rose frosting. Anna frowns at my outfit. “Jeremy, aren’t you going to be in the cheer team picture?” She plucks at the string of faux pearls around her neck nervously.
“Yeah, Jeremy, aren’t you supposed to be cheer captain?” Debbie says, fluttering her lashes and pulling out her own set of pearls. “We agreed we’d all wear pink today.”
I flinch. The cheer team planned to wear pink and pearls for our yearbook photo. I bought the perfect outfit to immortalize my place as captain, but an untimely acne breakout distracted me on my way out the door this morning, and I left it at home.
“My mom’s bringing my outfit, don’t worry,” I say. “I found this adorable salmon dress shirt and a tie covered in silk rosettes.” I don’t mention that I went to six different stores to find the XXS size, and I bought the super-skinny tie online. Years of practice mean I know my way around the mall, but even I could barely find formal clothes that don’t make me look like a kid playing dress-up in his dad’s suit.
“Do you still have your grandma’s pearls?” Debbie says. “Or did you hock them when you decided to be a dude?”
I didn’t decide on any of this. “It’s tacky to wear a tie and pearls at the same time, Debbie.” Luckily, before she can respond, my phone buzzes in my back pocket. “Sorry, I think my mom’s here.”
“Come back dressed in pink or not at all!” Debbie says as I push through the crowd.
Mom’s parked on the south side of the building, where the imperious brick façade gives way to the concrete and cinder block of the humanities hallway. Neatly manicured hedges and vast green fields sweep the campus grounds, filling the air with a cut-grass scent. Her Tesla—a gift to herself for making partner at her law firm—idles by a stack of hurdles abandoned by the track team. Even in yoga pants and a sweatshirt, her high ponytail and bleached grin are still flawless. She’s the image of the polished, professional DC woman I once thought I’d grow up to be.
“Hey, sweetie,” she says, and kisses me on my cheek. “I come bearing picture day outfits and one pumpkin spice mocha.” I duck my head through the door and see a garment bag and two steaming Starbucks cups sitting in the front seat.
I exhale. Tension eases from my binder-compressed chest. Mom and I have always been close—my dad was never around, and she left my stepdad when I was really young. The two of us have always been a team, the Harkiss girls against the world. But that ended when I transitioned, cut off like an electrical short. I’m not sure what we are now.
After taking a sip of my delicious mocha, I unzip the garment bag.
And the first thing I hear is the rattle of pearls.
Grandma’s antique necklace is draped around the hanger. I remember her dry fingers as she clasped it on me for my twelfth birthday. Real ladies wear pearls, she used to say. The rest of the outfit is almost as bad: a pink blouse and cardigan. No skirt, but the dress pants she brought are for girls, fitted and small-pocketed, made to advertise all the curves I’m trying to hide.
“Mom,” I say, breath coming short where my binder squeezes my lungs. “This isn’t the outfit I packed. It’s a girl’s outfit.”
Red creeps into her hairline. She knows she messed up. “Oh. Well. I don’t know, Jeremy. It’s just clothing. It doesn’t come with a gender attached.”
“But if people see me in those, they’ll think I’m a girl.” The Cresswell administration may be okay with me transitioning, but that doesn’t mean I won’t get misgendered. Names and pronouns get stuck in people’s heads, with no malicious intent. But getting called “she” and “her” hurts, even when it’s accidental.
What cis people don’t get is that it’s not the wrong clothes, the wrong name, the wrong pronoun. It’s the strangling feeling, like you’ve been buried alive and are struggling to breathe, like you don’t exist. That the most important part of you is invisible and, thus, unreal. If people don’t see me as a boy, then they don’t see me at all.
And my mom’s the one I need to see me most.
“I’m sure no one will notice,” she says. Like it’s no big deal, a faux pas as small as showing up to a party in the same dress as the host.
You’ll always be my daughter, she had said.
My fists tighten. My eyes sting bitterly, and I look away so she can’t see me break. I want to yell, scream, cry. I want to shout so it will finally stick in her mind. Finally convince her to see me as I am. I’m your son! Say I’m your son!
But what if I yell and she says something that hurts worse than this stupid wardrobe malfunction? Grandma had ugly views on gender. She hated that Mom wasn’t married when she had me, and made it clear that she didn’t want me repeating my mother’s “mistakes.” I was supposed to be a good girl, in pearls and cardigans, no drinking, no smoking, no sex before marriage. Her beliefs still nip at my heels like her ancient, bad-tempered Chihuahua. Telling me every step I take away from being that perfect girl is one in the wrong direction.
Mom has to hear the echo of Grandma’s voice, too. But I don’t want to ask about it—I don’t want to know what lessons she can’t shake.
Just because she’s letting me transition doesn’t mean she sees me as her son. And while she still gets final say on all my medical decisions, I’m too scared to threaten the fragile balance between us. I already fought one uphill battle getting here.
“Thanks,” I murmur, zipping the bag shut so no one can see what’s inside. “See you at home tonight.” I turn and head back toward the school, my mocha forgotten on the roof of the car.
* * *
Students scurry into classrooms and off to the gym, sneakers squeaking and voices bouncing off the walls. I bow my head to hide my red face, weaving through a thicket of backpacks and sliding around the cherry vinaigrette splatter where some poor kid dropped their salad. Just one more body in a crowd.
A voice in the back of my head says that maybe I should be grateful. Blending in is the point, just like Principal Meehan suggested when we met to discuss how my transition would work at school.
There are a few other trans and nonbinary students at Cresswell, but since I’m the only one legally changing my name and gender, doing all the medical stuff, I get all the administrators’ attention. My mom and I worked out a plan with Principal Meehan and the school counselor. My deadname was removed from all school documents. I have access to the boys’ bathroom and locker rooms. My teachers were instructed to gender me correctly.
In return, I promised to behave. To be an example, to adhere to the Code of Conduct that has governed Cresswell students since the 1950s. Drafted back when the school still only admitted white, cisgender dudes, it says a lot about “honor” and “gentlemanly conduct” but nothing about gender transition. Cresswell hasn’t historically been a progressive school, and relics of that past—like the spectacle of Homecoming itself—still litter the school’s culture and calendars.
But history can only move forward. And I refuse to let my transition define me. This is my senior year. It should be my time to shine. To lead the cheer team and SGA. Be crowned on the Homecoming Court.
Since my freshman year, I’ve watched glittering seniors in formal wear sweep onto the football field during the Homecoming halftime, crowned by Principal Meehan as the crowd cheered them on. I’ve dreamed of ascending that same stage in glory, on my boyfriend’s arm, all of Cresswell chanting my name. Only now it’s the king’s crown I’m after—and it still hovers before me, bright and shiny as a spotlight.
For cheer captain, I risked my neck as a flyer. For SGA president, I debated six other juniors and made an unforgettable speech promising free admission to football games. For Homecoming Court, people just need to like you enough to vote. I want—I need—everyone to like me that much. To see me as one of Cresswell’s golden sons, crowned in shimmering plastic.
“Excuse me, coming through,” rumbles a familiar voice from behind a stack of boxes. Close. Too close. My head snaps up. I try to step sideways, but a clump of boys carrying lacrosse sticks block my path, and I stumble—
The boxes tumble from the boy’s arms, cascading over me in a tide of glitter and craft feathers.
“Shit. Sorry,” he says, kneeling to scrape up the mess. A tall, suntanned white boy, dark hair messy, a streak of blue paint down the firm line of his chin. “I can’t see over these Homecoming Committee craft supplies—oh. Jeremy.”
I freeze. The sound of my name in his mouth, rich and smooth and edged in nerves, hooks me like an anchor, dragging me back in time. But it also feels like the rush of something new. It’s the first time he’s said my name. And now I don’t know what to say to him. Because the last time we spoke, I broke his heart.
“Hi,” I squeak out, shuffling back as he tries to sweep up the mounds of glitter. My shirt’s drenched in the stuff. “What’s up?” There. That feels like what one guy says to another guy—when they’re friendly acquaintances, not buds or bros or anything that matters.
He shrugs. But as I try to slide past him, he gives up on the glitter and puts a hand on my arm. “Hey. Are you okay?” he asks. And then I remember my blotchy red face and the cursed garment bag I’m holding. His voice is genuine and warm. Concerned. And I hate it. Because who the hell gets concerned about the feelings of their exes, especially after how mean I was to him? He probably just sees me as a hysterical girl he needs to calm down.
Some people sink past the ears in sexism until it colors everything they see, but not Lukas, says the voice at the back of my mind. Lukas cares about everyone, regardless of gender. He cares so much it hurts him. And I only care about me.
“I’m fine,” I say. “Super fine.” I move to walk away and then hesitate. “Hey, you’re leading Homecoming Committee this year, right?” I know he is. He’s been on the committee since he was a freshman, working his way up the ladder. Lukas loves organizing complicated, flashy events. “Will you put my name down on the court ballot?”
Copyright © 2021 by Zabé Ellor
