We tried to go to the hospital after that, but it was complete chaos. The sodas must have been more widespread than I would have ever guessed, because the place was absolutely full of transformed people, and they all seemed to be dealing with Sam’s reaction, not Elise’s. Ultimately, after leaving contact information with a doctor, we went home, reluctantly going our separate ways. I was still awfully worried about Sam, but Elise insisted that she would check in on him, since her house was a little bit closer. Which was probably fine, because I couldn’t quite let go of some weird feelings about the whole situation. 

It still felt like I had a lot to process, even if I didn’t have the slightest idea where to start. Instead, I just went home. Dad had made dinner, like usual, and he immediately noticed that something was up. I wound up giving him the whole awkward recap, watching his eyebrows climb higher and higher as I went. But he just nodded along, and at the end made a point to tell me that Sam and Elise were welcome at our place any time, regardless of what bodies they may or may not have.

Between all of that, I found my appetite was minimal. I forced down some spaghetti, and eventually made up some excuses to retreat to my room. Dad just gave me that concerned look of his, and I felt even worse. By the time I had collapsed into bed, all I could do was stare at the ceiling while my mind wrestled with unhelpful thoughts. By the time I drifted off to sleep, I had come no closer to anything resembling a conclusion.

That night I dreamed about the past.

I was tiny, in kindergarten or first grade, one of those ages where school was fun and exciting because we spent most of our time playing, with occasional breaks for recess or a nap. Today we had been given paper and crayons, as part of an assignment to draw our house. I had the best idea though: rather than draw my house now, I’d draw my house in the future. So obviously it had a soccer field and a tennis court and a dock for a pirate ship and a rocket launch pad for Luke, who worked on the moon but came back for dinner every night, and a castle tower for Sam, who wore a shiny crown and a blazer because he was the President.

“Who’s that? Your dad?” a fuzzy voice said. It was… the teacher? A helper? An adult at least, so obviously I didn’t care too much about their opinion. But Dad had raised me to be polite, so I answered.

“No, that’s my friend Sam,” I said, matter-of-factly. “We’re married.”

The person’s chuckle was distorted. “You can’t be married,” they said lightly. “You’re both boys.”

I paused, frowning. My crayon hovered in midair as I thought. Was that how things worked? That wasn’t fair! But then I had an idea, and my smile returned, even bigger.

“Then I’ll be a girl,” I announced. I drew a triangle on the stick figure that was me, giving myself a skirt. And then my eyes lit up. “Yes! I’ll be a princess. And that means I get a sword too!” I drew it in, all the better to fight the pirates. That made me so happy that I decided to be particularly gracious. “Luke can be a girl too,” I announced, and added a skirt to her spacesuit, as she floated up by the moon.

“But not your other friend?” the voice said, with that kind of annoying tone that adults got when they thought they knew better than you.

“No,” I said. “Duh. Because now I can marry Sam and Luke can marry Sam and we’ll all be together forever and it’ll be fine.”

“What an imagination you have!” the person said. 

“It’s not imaginary,” I insisted. “It just hasn’t happened yet.”

The person laughed. “I’m afraid the world doesn’t work that way, Taylor.”

I set the crayon down, suddenly feeling upset. They weren’t taking me seriously. What did they mean the world didn’t work this way? That wasn’t fair! I had figured it all out! I sniffed, feeling that pressure behind my eyes that meant a good cry was coming.

“Hey now, none of that,” the voice said. “You’re a boy so you’re not supposed to cry.” They paused, and then added brightly. “If you grow up to be strong and brave, you and your friends can still stay together, okay? Just… just don’t worry about this girl stuff or getting married. That’s not allowed.”

I wiped at my eyes, sniffling. “Really? If I’m a good boy, we can still be friends forever?”

“Of course.”

If that’s what it took… I could do it. I knew I could. I could be strong. For them.

When I woke up, those churning feelings remained in my stomach, as if I really had been that person, as if that really had happened to me. 

It was so long ago. I… I couldn’t have remembered anything that clearly. I had to be making it up, right? Just my brain piecing together fragments and feelings in weird ways, brought about by the strange circumstances of yesterday. But the thought that I was just making it up felt wrong somehow, deeply disappointing in a way that I wasn’t sure how to deal with. I had this weird sense of urgency, this desire to prove to myself exactly what had happened.

I hesitated, an idea striking me. Dad had always been way too supportive of me, whether in school or sports. He just claimed that as a single dad he had to be twice as present in my life, which I always appreciated, even if sometimes I acted annoyed about it. And as part of that, he made sure to keep basically everything I ever did or won or cared about, filing it away into boxes when I would have otherwise thrown it in the trash. Which meant…

Fifteen minutes later, I was clunking around in the attic, trying to figure out which boxes corresponded to which years of my childhood. I wasn’t sure if I should be thankful or curse his thoroughness. There were so many boxes.

“Hey, sport?” Dad’s voice floated up from the bottom of the ladder. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, I’m just looking for something,” I called down.

He climbed up after me, and even though there wasn’t much room, I figured he could help me find what I needed. Even if I dreaded having to explain why.

“Do you know where the kindergarten stuff is?”

He smiled and nodded, and with my help we lifted an old trunk, setting it down in a better place so there was enough room to open it. Inside it was a treasure trove of construction paper and macaroni art, colorful crowns with plastic jewels, and even some ratty scraps of pink fabric.

“You went through quite a princess phase back then,” my dad said, a hint of amusement in his voice.

“What?” I said, the word coming out a little too sharply. I tried to collect myself and speak more evenly. “I don’t remember that.”

“We got this picture book with a princess who fought a dragon and you made me read it to you every night for a month.” His fond smile faded a bit. “And then suddenly one day you stopped. You got ahold of the book and ripped all its pages out and insisted that you never wanted to read it again. I never could figure out why. I guess kids are kind of mysterious.”

“Y-yeah,” I said, not looking at him. I flipped through a few sheets of utterly abysmal artwork, heavily involving dragons, soccer balls, and/or strange hybrids of the two. And then, underneath a paper cut-out mask of a lion, there was an all-too-familiar drawing.

I pulled it out, my hands shaking slightly.

It was definitely amateurish and messy, colorful strokes of crayons making up something barely even distinguishable as a building. But I knew what it was supposed to be. I could see which parts were the castle tower, and which parts were for the pirate ship. And the stick figures were obvious to any viewer: one of them wearing a crown and triumphant smile, one floating upside down with a space helmet and a skirt, and one standing with sword, skirt, and ferociously angry eyebrows. My fingertips brushed over the picture.

“Is that what you were looking for?” Dad said, and I jumped.

Trying to preserve some semblance of cool, I wracked my mind for a suitable reason. “Y-yeah,” I said. “I just thought that since Elise is… is a girl now, she’d find it kind of funny that I drew her as one back then.”

“Oh,” Dad said. “Uh-huh.” He glanced down at the drawing over my shoulder. I couldn’t really tell, but I could tell that he was looking at the same figure on the page that I was. For a moment we were both silent. Then he cleared his throat. “Hey, sport? I love ya. You know that, right?”

“Yeah, Dad.”

He patted my shoulder awkwardly. “Good. Uh. Good. I’ll just, uh, leave you alone for a bit, then. Try to put stuff back when you’re done?”

“Sure thing.”

The ladder creaked as he made his way back down, and then I was left in silence, still just staring at the sheet and trying to figure out what it meant.

If this was real, if that memory was real… If that’s what I felt, then…? And it wasn’t just memories, I had felt it, as if it was just yesterday. The self-assurance, the satisfaction, the brief moment of joy at the perfect plan coming together in my head so that everything would work out… and then the frustration and sadness of being told it wasn’t allowed. The real world didn’t work that way.

It was just silly, right? I was eighteen, I was an adult now and I knew these were just the screwball dreams of a weird kid who had a lot of growing up left to do. But something about that kid’s pain was hitting me freshly again. I wanted to protest that it wasn’t fair, even if I knew that it didn’t matter. Life wasn’t fair. I had learned that. But that didn’t mean I didn’t want it to be. Deep inside, I felt all that frustration bottled up, building to something that I didn’t know exactly how to contain.

Sam, Elise, and I had always been a perfect fit together, like we had cracked the codes of high-school cliquedom by combining the strengths of prep, nerd, and jock into one unbeatable team. But now I felt an acute despair at realizing that everything was doomed to fade once we got pushed out of the comfortable structures of school. That was how adult life worked, right? We were all going to eventually drift apart as we wind up forced to conform to the constraints of a real world that doesn’t give a shit about our hopes and dreams and aspirations. But then what was the point of everything that I had done, all the work I had put in to try and be a certain kind of person? What the fuck had it all been for, if it felt like I still was going to wind up losing Elise and Sam, and in the process, something fundamental about myself... if I hadn't given that up already? 

“Hey sport?” Dad called up again, shaking me out of my complete mess of a thought spiral. “I heard on the radio earlier this morning that most people who drank that soda stuff are getting back to normal. They’re arranging for people to try and find any leftover cans and bring them to local post offices to dispose of it properly. Maybe you should go see if they could use any help?”

“Yeah Dad,” I said, closing the trunk again. “Sure.”