I sat on the roof as my family slept in the house below. The early December winds bit at my skin, but I stubbornly refused to move. The time was 11:38 pm, and I couldn’t sleep. Sometimes my body, like this, just hurts too much. It’s not a physical pain, but rather a mental one. It’s like a rock sits in my stomach and dully wears away at my insides until the day it will eventually burst out. I look down at my legs and just start sobbing. The thick, fine hairs all over them look like a jungle that could never be tamed. I was supposed to be like any other girl my age, being 17 and having fun with her friends, like my twin sister, Amy. Problem is, almost everyone else in the world thinks I’m a boy. I, Beverly Anderson, am a trans girl.

Once I calmed down, I slid down the roof into the window that leads into my room in the attic. My parents gave it to me instead of a downstairs bedroom, saying that “It was a much more manly place” for all of my friends to hang out. That didn’t exactly pan out well. My only real friend is Molly, my best friend. I guess there’s Davis, but he’s way too good to be my friend. Molly is really the only one who actually knows I’m, well, me. One day in 9th grade Molly and I were hanging out, I had horrible dysphoria, and long story short it just became too much. I told Molly who I really was between sobs. Since that day, Molly has done her best to make me comfortable whenever we’re together, but with my ghastly anxiety, that would be easier said than done. After all, Amy still doesn’t know. Neither do my parents, or my little brother Ben. I figured I would tell Ben last, if ever. Despite looking up to me in every way possible, the kid is a toxic lump of “Did you just assume my gender” jokes, equivalent to the Elephant’s Foot. I can’t totally blame him, as he’s had no one to educate him otherwise (besides me) and he’s a product of the fun time of life known as middle school. Still, it doesn’t mean that what he says hurts any less.

I knew right then I just didn’t want to be alone. I was hurting. I shot Molly a text.

“Hey, are you awake? I don’t wanna be alone rn”

“Beverly it is 12:30 in the morning, of course I’m awake. You ok?”

“Just lots of dysphoria

I don’t want to live like this. I don’t want to be a boy”

“You’re not tho”

“Ya ik ik, you know what I mean”

“Tomorrow’s a Friday. Do you want to come over and you can be you for the night?”

I paused. As much as I’d love to, I already had other things to do.

“Wrestling practice :/”

“More reason to. We’ll have all night, and we both know that wrestling is only going to make your dysphoria worse. Why do you still do it again?”

“I need to. Coach is counting on me”

“Alright princess, I’ll pick you up from your house at 6 then.”

Molly always uses cutesy words like “princess” to describe me, and I honestly really appreciate it, even if it does make my face go bright red. It’s not a romantic thing, I’m straight as a board. Molly just knows I like it, even if I would never admit it.

“Is your Mom going to be home?”

“Is she ever?”

Molly’s mom is a single working mother. She got divorced from her Dad when Molly came out as gay, and they moved here right before freshman year. Molly doesn’t go into it often, but her Dad lashed out at her mom for raising a lesbian, in not so kind of words. It ended with the dude slapping her mom, so Molly and her mom moved here, to North Carolina. We’ve got enough North that people are more than tolerant, but there’s always the other half: Carolina. We’ve got our fair share of bigots, but for the most part it’s ok. I think Molly resents her mom a bit for always being away, but she’s grateful that she does so much for her.

“Alright, but I’ll only be able to stay till 11”

“Yay! I’ll see you tomorrow, bright and early! Now get some sleep so you’ll be awake enough to enjoy yourself”

“There’s no arguing with that

 you too”

I laid back on my bed only to realize I was absolutely exhausted, but I still couldn't sleep. I then chose just to get it over with and take a melatonin. Tomorrow is gonna be fun, but only if I could get through some shit first. The wind hitting the roof lulls me to sleep as the melatonin takes its effects.

~~~

I woke up to my alarm blaring at me at 6:15 in the morning. I rolled out of my bed and shut it off, before hopping in the shower with the lights off. Mom hated when I did that, saying I’m going to slip and fall. I just said it was easier to see because my eyes still hadn’t adjusted to the light. The real reason is because I preferred to not start out the morning with a hearty dose of dysphoria.  After a shower, I took a razor to my face and got rid of as much hair as possible. I brushed my teeth, threw on a “Joan Jett and The Blackhearts” tee shirt and some jeans and headed downstairs. For some reason all of my band shirts give me a bit of euphoria, or at the very least don’t spark dysphoria. I don’t know why, but it’s caused me to get one from Molly for every occasion the past two years.

I skipped breakfast, as I had to for wrestling. I know it’s horrible and that I’m not treating what little of my body I love with care, but there's no way around it. I have to make weight. Amy scoffed at this, as up until freshman year we had both eaten the same meal for breakfast everyday since kindergarten: An English muffin with cheddar cheese, a sausage patty, and scrambled eggs, all in a sandwich. It’s called the “Bootleg McMuffin.” Ben would eat this too, but he’s gluten free, so he’s got his own variation of the household staple, involving gluten free toast. Dad works from home, so he was already upstairs working, and Mom was about to take Ben to his school before heading to her own work. Amy and I head out for the day. For our sixteenth birthdays, we received a beautiful 2003 Uni-Red New Beetle, with a nice 123,000 miles, which we have lovingly named Mary. She’s a looker, alright. I was driving that morning because Amy would be taking Mary home that afternoon while I was at wrestling practice, and she’d come pick me up after. As we drove to school she was trying to make small talk, when she eventually dropped the bomb that would set forth the greatest journey of my life.

“Hey, I woke up last night and heard you crying on the roof, are you ok?”

It was like my body froze, with icicles piercing every bit of my skin. I thought everyone was asleep and no one could hear me. She knew. She had to know, how could she not. Everything was falling apart, and I would be outed to the school oh god-

“Matthew?”

That was never my name. I took a breath.

“I don’t really want to talk about it. All that matters is that I’m ok now.”

She paused for a minute before taking this answer as satisfactory. She then reminded me that she's always here, and all that. It’s unfortunate, but I’ve heard it a thousand times. As we pull up to school, I tossed her the keys and scurried away as quickly as possible, hoping to avoid any follow up questions.

Molly is around the corner, so excited you’d think she was at Disney. “Why’re you so giddy?” I ask, knowing exactly why. She winks and follows it up with “I get to see Beverly tonight when she comes over!” Not wanting to draw much suspicion I smile and thank her for all she does.

Molly is a fiercely feminine lesbian. She’s of Filipino descent, and stands at about 5 feet 6 inches. She’s wearing an amazing cross of outfits: a white blouse, a short back skirt, and a black leather jacket that’s she’s always looking for an excuse to wear. Her long black hair is something I still marvel at, and truth be told I’m extremely jealous of, considering wrestling requires my hair to be ungodly short. Our school isn’t the most diverse, so it’s nice for us to have each other, even if it was accidental that we both were LGBTQ+.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the other LGBT person in our school, at least who was out to me. Our school, based on the district, was almost all old money. Almost every student was a white allocishet. Davis, however, didn’t follow those guidelines. Like me, he was white, and stood about 6 feet tall. He had been incredibly lucky and figured out he was a trans guy before puberty hit, and I know it had to have saved him a lot of trouble. His shoulder length ashy brown hair and his stupid perfect face was so goddamn handsome. Yes, laugh it up, the one trans girl in school has a crush on the one trans guy. So what if it’s stereotypical! I happen to be stereotypical in a lot of my aspects of my identity. Sue me.

This, however, never stops Molly from poking and prodding me about my very obvious crush on him. After about a minute of it today, with her talking about “how cute Beverly and Davis would be together,” I groaned and made my way to class.

Most of the day of school just ended up trudging along. It’s always that way on Fridays. It’s like you’ve got that last bit to push through, and any minute now you could be out, but you really have 3 hours left. Wrestling practice wasn’t much better. The team is all guys on paper, and practice today is conditioning, meaning it’s just a bunch of guys (and me) in a room sweating.

Nasty.

Amy picked me up right after school, and started driving me over to Molly’s, cause I had already planned to just shower there. But, being my sister, she kept prodding at me for answers about last night. “I’m sorry for bringing this up again, I really am, but I’m really scared for you. I’ve never heard you cry that hard before. It felt like it was shaking the roof, and there was a whole floor between us” My eyes darted to Mary’s worn floors. “I’m ok.” I whispered. I just wanted to get to Molly’s house so I can just be Beverly for the rest of the night. Her tone immediately shifted as she began to further confront me, however. She wasn’t going down easy. “No you’re obviously not! Something’s been wrong for years now and you won’t open up to me. I’ve just seen it get worse and worse! You never smile or have any drive to do anything! I can tell when something is horrifically wrong, you’re my brother.”

Maybe it was how soon I was supposed to be myself. Maybe it was the night before. Maybe it was the way the connotations of that word, brother, twisting a knife into my stomach. It could have even been a combination of the three, a trident of hurt that summoned a wave of emotions to knock me on my back. Either way, I start bawling right there. Luckily, the car was already stopped in Molly’s driveway.

Amy looked at me, her eyes big and worried, like a lioness with a wounded cub. “It’s ok, alright? I’m here. Whatever it is that’s hurting you won’t matter. You’ll always be my twin brother.”

There was that word again. Brother.

I wasn’t taking another minute of it. I refused.

I couldn’t.

“You don’t get it!” I sobbed and stepped out of the car, slamming the door on my way out. “Come with me and you’ll see what's wrong with me and why you should fucking hate me Amy!” At this point Molly has seen the commotion (and most likely heard) and had run out of the house and over to comfort me. “What’s going on here?” she sputtered. “It’s time Molly. It’s time for me to do it.” I sobbed into her shoulder. Molly led the three of us inside and sat Amy down on a sofa in the living room. “We’ll be back soon. Could be anywhere from ten minutes to an hour. Just stay put and trust us, ok?”

Molly guided me up to her room and threw me in the shower with my razor, while she went through my wardrobe she’s been helping me to assemble for me for the past two years. When I initially tried to stop her from spending so much money on me, she shut me down saying “Look, you’re pretty much my sister now ok? And I’ve gotten clothes my entire life, you haven’t. I just want you to be comfortable. Please let me do this for you.” I got out of the shower and bathroom to find Molly had picked me out a white, short sundress, with just a bit of lace at the bottom. “We want to just get the point across here, right? This hits the nail on the head. Don’t want to go too elaborate with her seeing you, the real you, for the first time." I nod, and she then got to work on my makeup, brushing out my hair and such. I usually do this myself, but my hands were so jittery and shaking so much that I couldn’t be trusted to do a solid job right now. We did this same routine every time we hung out alone for the past two years. This time however, there’s a finality to it; a feeling that if the worse came to pass that Beverly would never show her face again.

"You're sure about this? I think it'll be ok, but it's your decision ultimately."

"I can't do this anymore. I'm not being called a boy."

"Ok princess, I'll be by you the entire time. You've got this."

Before I exited, I went over a mental checklist. My falsies are in, my concealer is doing its job over the little shadow I have on my face. My dark brown hair sits just above my ears, but that doesn’t matter right now. I would grow it, regardless of what Coach had to say. We made our way down the stairs to the living room where Amy was, right where we had asked her to stay. Just trusting me on this proved she was ready to know about me.

"Matthew?"

You could practically see the puzzle pieces all over her face, scattered, making some sense, but not yet assembled by any means. She was gazing up and down and seeing it all, like some sort of human barcode scanner. My dress, my chest, my makeup, and my stupid hair.

"No. Not Matthew. I was never Matthew, Amy. I'm a girl. I'm a transgender girl and I'm your sister and..."

I was cut off by Amy lunging at me and pulling me into a hug. "I had no idea what I was saying! I'm so sorry! I don't care if you're a boy or a girl I love you because you're my sister!" She sniffled and dried some tears on both our faces. "What's your real name?"

"My name is Beverly."

That’s when we all jolted our heads to the sound of a quiet knocking at the front door, and saw Davis there, his eyes bulging like a tree frog, holding a bag of brownies, and looking straight at me.