A few hours later, Noelle and I had made a lot of progress, by which I mean we had made an entire mess. Papers and books and sticky notes were laid out all over the floor, making a labyrinth of tenuously connected information that we were struggling to pull together into some kind of coherent presentation. We had plenty of stuff, but Noelle and I kept going in circles around how to actually present it, and I think at this point both of us were starting to get a little bit hungry and grumpy.

Salvation arrived in the form of a tall, scruffy boy who smelled a bit like french fries. When Dustin arrived, still wearing his uniform from his job at a fast food restaurant on the other side of town, he brought burgers with him.

“My hero!” Noelle exclaimed, practically skipping over to him, where he hastily tossed the burgers on the desk just in time to pick her up and spin her around in a hug. 

“Someone’s in a good mood,” he said. He glanced over at me, and then gave me one of those ‘sup’ nods. I smiled sheepishly. I was just getting used to being around Noelle, and now both of them together? Oof, now I felt like a third wheel all over again.

But now Noelle was looking at me and smiling. “We’ve been working really hard, and have some good ideas, I think. Or at least the start of some. Let’s eat, and then we can go over what we’ve got so far?”

Dustin nodded. “Do you still have any shirts of mine anywhere?” He tugged at the collar of the brightly-colored polo shirt that was very obviously his work uniform. “I really want to get out of this.”

Noelle pointed at a pile of clothes near her closet. As Dustin walked over to them, he reached down and pulled his shirt off entirely, and—

Oh. Gosh.

I mean, I had seen guys’ chests before, right? In a theoretical sense. But, like, when you’re changing for gym class in a locker room, you don’t look at anyone, you stare directly into your locker and change as quickly as humanly possible so you can leave immediately. It's not like you're going to see much when you're trying so hard not to completely panic about being perceived by anyone yourself. And where else was I going to see guys without their shirts on? It’s not like I’ve ever been a fan of going swimming, either.

But to have him just… just take his shirt off like that? With no warning? Staring was the only thing I could do, right? And it was just like… okay, it was objectively a good chest. Not, like, ‘Oh yeah, I could grate cheese on those abs’ or whatever like he was some kind of movie star. Just that it was clear he was in good shape, and I just couldn’t help but wonder what exactly it would be like to trace my fingers all the way down— 

I heard a soft snort next to me and I jerked my head to the side to see Noelle watching me with a positively devious smirk. She wiggled her eyebrows, and my hands flew up to hide my face. Oh god, what… what expression had I been making? I made a sort of choked noise. “I— Uh— Bathroom! I need to use it! I’ll be right back!”

I darted out the door just as Noelle broke out into outright giggling.

 

 

 

---

 

 

 

It took like ten minutes to find a bathroom in this stupidly large house. I was a little disappointed to see that the toilet wasn’t solid gold or anything. At least there was a huge bathtub that looked like it had those little jacuzzi jet things, which seemed ostentatious enough on its own.

I took a minute to splashing my face with water a few times, because that's what people on movies did, I guess. I'm not sure how that helped, but between having the space to collect myself and taking some deep breaths, I managed to cool down a bit. I looked up into the gilt-framed mirror, and grimaced at my reflection. Though now I looked a little bit like a half-drowned frog. Great.

What was I even doing here? I felt so out of place—and I wasn’t just talking about the monogrammed hand towels that probably cost more than my car. I felt so out of place being around Dustin and Noelle. It was some real wings of Icarus shit to be flying this close to the sun. Even if I did feel some sort of weird pull towards them… Well, I knew what those feelings were. Obviously, I had a crush on Noelle. That’s why I felt like I was floating whenever I got to be in the same room as her, watching her face light up when I showed her some cool fact I found in a book, my heart thudding as her fingers brushed mine to put a sticky note on the paper I was writing on. 

And... And since I had a crush on Noelle, I was jealous of Dustin. He was everything I wasn’t, everything I couldn’t be in a million years. I guess I wanted to be him? That had to be what that feeling was. Even if I couldn’t imagine having his confidence, just taking his shirt off like it was nothing, taking pride in looking so… so… Well, he was kind of wiry, but in a way that you could see his muscles, and he had this constant very slight stubble on his face that I wondered what it would be like to feel against my fingertips and… I don’t know. Somehow on him all of the same stuff that I felt like made me look pathetic and gross instead came across as extremely... nice? So obviously I wished I could look like that too, right? Even if my gut kind of twisted at that thought when I tried to put it all together.

It was all just so confusing! I sighed, forcing myself to look my reflection in the eyes again. I knew I objectively didn’t look that bad, even if I deliberately didn’t put much effort in to taking care of myself. Sometimes it just felt like I was stuck underwater. It took so much mental and emotional energy just to do the simplest things, like make sure I shaved every day, even if when I skipped doing so I wound up feeling even worse for being a slob. Or, like when it came to making any kind of decision about a haircut: it just felt like so much work and energy to invest into a decision that then inevitably only disappointed me. How did guys handle everything like it was no problem at all? Why was I the only one who seemed to be broken?

I didn’t have any answers, and I knew I never would. I’d just have to suck it up and continue on, doing the best that I could. Maybe that’s what everyone did. Maybe.

But I didn’t have time to feel sorry for myself. I dried my hands off, trying to point my brain back in the right direction again so we could continue to make progress on our project. Get it together! I didn't have time to worry about the crushing depression that I sometimes slipped into. I needed to think about gender instead, if we were going to get this presentation done!

 

 

 

---

 

 

 

When I got back to Noelle’s room, I was relieved to see that Dustin had a shirt on again—even if it was tight in a way that still reminded me of my earlier glimpse of the muscles underneath, and that caused my heart to speed up a little bit all over again. Unfortunately, he and Noelle were also deep in the middle of an argument.

“—I just don’t think this is going to work out the way you think it is. And who’s the one who’ll be getting hurt here? Not you or me.”

“Oh come on, Sam’s a little gremlin who’d love the chance to cause chaos.”

“But as the big sister, shouldn’t you be the one looking out for—”

“Um,” I said weakly, and both of them cut off to glare at me. But then Noelle let out a breath and smiled big.

“Yes! Okay,” she said. She grabbed hold of my hand and pulled me into the room, sitting me down on the bed. “We’re having a little difference of opinion and maybe you can help. So, I was telling Dustin about what we had put together so far, and he came up with this great idea—”

“No,” he said sullenly. “I said something stupid, and you jumped on it and came up with an even stupider plan.”

“—and now he’s being a wimp and wants to take it back,” she said, shooting him another fiery glare.

I held up my hands, trying to placate them. “Okay, okay, can you just start from the beginning?”

Dustin sighed. “So Noelle was telling me about the ‘gender is fake’ thing, which, cool. Seems good. But then I said that it’d be easier if we could show that rather than just talking about it.”

“Right,” Noelle said eagerly. “What if we had someone to demonstrate stereotypical gender presentation, and then at the end reveal that the whole time the audience’s assumptions about their gender were completely wrong?”

“Huh.” I thought about that for a sec. “Okay. Interesting. Maybe.”

“We can ask Sam to help,” Noelle said triumphantly.

I hesitated. “Wait. So, like… You’re going to ask Sam to dress up as a girl?”

Noelle and Dustin shared a weird look as a moment of silence stretched out. My confusion deepened. “No,” Dustin said. He sighed. “I think the point would be to ask Sam to dress up as a guy.”

“Oh.” I said, frowning. “Why? What would be the point, then?”

Okay, now they shared a second strange look, and I was really starting to get worried. Dustin opened his mouth, and then shut it again. “Sam is…” he finally started, but then trailed off, looking at Noelle.

Noelle had a stricken look on her own face. She bit her lip, but then she let out a sigh, and sat down on the bed next to me, looking forward. “Look, um, do you know what ‘Sam’ is short for?”

“Samuel?” I said. “No, wait, is this, like, a joke? ‘Sam is short for a guy, but he’s still good at basketball, ha ha.’ Something like that?”

“No,” Noelle said. “’Sam’ is short for ‘Samantha.’”

“Oh.” And then the gears finally—finally—started turning in my head. “Wait, Sam… is transgender? They're the person you were talking about before?”

Noelle nodded. “Yeah.”

“So…”

Okay, yeah, I think I got it. Huh. I was kind of impressed. That had to take so much courage! Wow.

“Sam wants to be a girl,” I said, trying not to sound weird or envious or anything.

There was a ‘thwack’ sound as Noelle’s face fell into her hands. I blinked

Meanwhile, Dustin was chuckling to himself. Noelle looked up again to shoot him a glance, but he shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s just…We’re all dancing around it and I think it’s just making everything even more confusing than it needs to be.”

“Okay, maybe,” Noelle admitted. She reached over and squeezed my shoulder. “Sam was born as Samantha, and um… everyone thought she was a girl. Even though it was pretty early on that she… well, he started insisting things were otherwise. Dad just didn’t take things seriously for a long time, until… well a lot of things happened, some of which you should hear from Sam if you hear at all. But right now the deal is basically that Sam can do what he wants, but he’s going to be homeschooled.” She rolled her eyes. “You know, to not besmirch the family name or whatever.”

“Wow,” I said. I shot her a wry glance. “Gee, Noelle, you’re really falling behind both of your siblings on the pissing-off-your-parents thing. You’ve got a lot of ground to make up.”

Noelle snorted, and Dustin full-on laughed at that. “Trust me, I’m doing my best to help,” Dustin said lightly. He shook his head, still grinning in my direction. “Honestly though? I’m looking forward to telling Sam how confused you were. The little dude will get a kick out of that.”

I shrugged. “I mean, he introduced himself as Noelle’s brother. If someone tells me who they are, I’m going to listen. Isn’t that just common decency?”

From the weird look that they gave me, maybe not. But Noelle was smiling.

“Yup. I like you,” Noelle said, as she reached out and ruffled my hair, as if I were some kind of small puppy who had performed an admirable trick. She was just… just a very physical person, apparently. There wasn’t anything special about this or anything. There was no actual reason for me to mentally be a puddle on the floor. I tried very hard to convince myself of that, and very very hard to not let out a squeak or some other inappropriate noise. But, just saying, it felt extremely good.

When I had managed to reassemble my scattered remnants of a brain back into something approximating human, I tried to think back to where we were with the whole proposal to begin with.

“Wait, though,” I said. “I think Dustin is right. I don’t know that this is a good idea.”

“Knew it!” he said, pumping a fist.

Noelle frowned. “What do you mean?”

“It’s just that… Well, if you have Sam act all manly, and then it’s like ‘Ha! Twist: he’s a girl!’ That’s really awful. Because he’s… not a girl. Right?”

“Oh. Yeah, when you put it that way… I don’t want to do that.”

I nodded, happy to finally be having some good ideas. “What you need is, like, someone who’s not transgender to do it. Because then it really does reveal that gender’s all socially constructed.”

“Huh.”

“That… makes sense,” Dustin said. He flashed a smile and struck a pose. “What do you think, babe? Would I look good in a dress?”

Noelle grinned, wiggling her eyebrows as she blew him a kiss. “I bet we could—”

“No,” I said. “I mean... Everyone in school knows both of you, there’s no way in a million years you’d be able to pull off being disguised as another gender. Plus, Mr. Clark already hates you so he'll be on the lookout, and expect you both to be there for the group presentation regardless. No, what you need is someone who no one cares about to dress as a girl. Someone who just kind of blends into the scenery.”

And this is the point when I said the stupidest thing in my entire life.

“Someone like me,” I said.