“Have a good night,” I said as Amber slithered out of the back seat.

“Mhm,” she grumbled, slamming the door shut behind her and making her way slowly up to her doorstep. I watched in my side mirror as she went inside. After a few seconds the automatic interior light of the car switched off, dowsing me in immediate shadow. I let out a long sigh.

I didn’t want to look in the mirror. It seemed cliche. In everything the protagonist looks in the mirror when they have their big revelation, and somehow the reflection of their face changes their perspective or bolsters their resolve. It’s nonsensical. Besides, I knew I wouldn’t want to see what was in there. When will my reflection show who I am inside and all that, we’ve seen the movies. That wasn’t me. I’d grown up my whole life with that thing in the mirror and tonight was the point where I realized why that wasn’t me in there. So I didn’t look into any of the mirrors. I just stared ahead, hands gripping the wheel.

It was weird, wanting to be that thing. There was a word for it, that I knew, but I would not let it near my tongue. It wasn’t cataclysmic, it didn’t feel like a puzzle piece clicking into place. It didn’t feel like the point in the story where they figure out the villain’s weakness and all the moving parts fit together at long last and you can save the day. It felt like nothing more than a confession. A confession that I’d felt wrong my whole life, and I’d known it every day, little things piling up one by one by one each too small to notice ending up having all the weight of a planet, and that night. That night at that party, watching everyone else go about the games of make-believe and not carry that same planet on their shoulders, I finally had to admit to myself that it wasn’t normal. I watched them don and doff masks and personalities, becoming in a moment flappers and moonshiners and mobsters all just for the fun of it, and I played along with them, but I felt like I just put on another mask at the end. That was what I had to confess. Because it was weird. It was weird attending a party dressed in costume, and spending the entire time jealous of your friends who were wearing dresses. God damn did Amber look good in that dress. And god damn would I have loved to look good in a dress too.

Iron chains tried to hold that thought down, a familiar response. They were the chains that held that planet to my back every single day. But they couldn’t quite make it this time, and I knew there was no going back.

I saw the curtains in her house shift in the corner of my eye, and I realized I probably couldn’t idle in front of Amber’s house anymore without her coming out and asking what was wrong. Which was the last thing I needed. So I shifted out of park and took off down the road. Realizing I’d been holding in my breath for a minute or so, I let it all out. My shoulders visibly sunk as I released the tension. I liked driving. I was one of those people who could zone out during it and let the time pass by. I imagined that it was close to what meditation feels like.

It didn’t take me long to realize that I was not on the route home. I saw my turn, and I just kept driving. The road snaked further along, curving gently away from my neighborhood and off through the rest of the town.

“I could just keep going.” My voice was too loud, how hollow it sounded, like punching a wall. I wished that my reflection would refute me.

“No, but seriously, I could. Nothing would stop me until I run out of gas, and I have money for more.” My eyes wandered over a faint bit of frost that had built up in the corner of my windshield. “Sure, I’ll hit the ocean eventually, but then I could turn around.” I passed another two exits. I was going too fast, but in that moment when I let my voice die, all there was was the friendly rumble of the engine and the wheels beneath me. I knew there was an ocean at the end of the road, but there and then that asphalt felt endless, straight as an arrow until the end of time, and there was nothing but black to either side, and the stars above.

This was stupid. I hit the brakes, a little two hard, and pulled over to the shoulder. I shifted to neutral but, being on a slight hill I started to roll backwards, so I swore and went into park. I must have sat there, staring at the frost on the glass, for an hour or so.

I felt my fist ball up and I slammed it down on the dashboard.

“Well what do I fucking do?” I shouted, louder than I perhaps ever had, until my voice cracked and the rage turned into a squeak. “What do I even fucking do about it?” I refused to look into the mirror. I had used up the tears left at the party, so I began to simply spasm there, my stomach contracting, dragging me down, suffocating me.

“No you don’t understand!” I punched the dashboard again. It hurt like hell, and I felt I deserved it. “I want to be a girl! Don’t you understand how insane that is? I can’t just say that! I can’t just fucking say that!” The frost didn’t respond. “I can’t just go home and go on with things now!”

A car rumbled by, the first I’d seen all night. Nothing else had existed for me, not since dropping off Amber. But the deafening thunder of something else, a person utterly removed from me, unaware of the crumbling ground below me, made me jump in my seat. This road was nothing more than a poorly paved stretch of asphalt on the outskirts of my hometown.

There was nothing else to do.

A while later, I pulled into my driveway. The lights were off inside. Brother still partying, parents asleep. What I expected. As I stepped out of the car and locked the door, I felt dry. My limbs almost seemed to rustle, like corn stalks, while I moved, and every step felt far too fatal, as though each footfall crushed a city underneath. The door opened and closed, I removed my shoes and put them on the rack, and I walked up the stairway, hand running along the handrail with a gentle rasp. The house didn’t know anything was wrong. My footsteps went the same places as always, and the house wouldn’t care enough to read the expression on my face.

I closed my bedroom door behind me. The small room I’d lived in my whole life. Textbooks from last semester littered the floor, interspersed with abandoned projects and, well, laundry. Not flattering, but fair. The room of a twenty year old boy.

Those words dug into my mind, a linguistic burr sticking its hooks into the soft flesh of my brain. Boy. I wrinkled my nose up at it.

I navigated myself to my bed and pulled out my phone. 1:27 AM, the time read. An hour and a half into January already, and I spent it dry-heaving in my car. Good sign. I plugged it in to recharge and shrugged out of my party costume, throwing the coat in a corner and my tie into the closet. I took off the shirt and pants next, letting them crumble on the floor in a way that would surely require ironing in the future, and stood there naked for a moment. No. There were no mirrors in my room. The reason why suddenly made sense. Thankfully, pajamas were quick to cover me back up, and I fell on top of flannel sheets that I had no intention of properly making the bed with. Hardly worth it right now.

I should have expected a January night to get cold though, and I quickly bundled the mess of blankets and sheets around me in a chaotic cocoon. The window on the other side of my room was illuminated in the faint blue of the moonlight, and I saw a thin line of frost that had creeped its way along the side of the glass. No, I couldn’t just keep going on, could I?

But what was there to do? I wanted to be… something. A girl? Was woman a better word? What would that make me? Just because I wanted to wear a dress? To be seen as, feminine? Referred to as such? Did I? How would I have even known? Or was I just hating myself so much that I wanted to change anything and everything that I could? Wait no that was the plot of Silence of the Lambs, wasn’t it. I hated that movie.

You couldn’t just.. decide that though, right? Right?

I stuck my hand out of my fleece bundle and grabbed my phone sitting on the bedside table, swallowing what little moisture was left in my mouth. This is stupid. This is stupid.

Into Google I typed the word “transgender”. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

It was going to be a long night.