I'm sure it comes as a great shock, but I didn’t sleep well that night. I had a lot to think about, obviously, and as I laid in bed, I found myself pinballing from one line of thought to the next.

Trav was the easy one, surprisingly. Dustin was right, and… well, there was plenty of guilt and shame there about my part in sitting quietly while my friend spewed hateful shit. But that was something that I could do, that I could fix. Not to say that it'd be easy in practice. I knew better than to just assume I’d be able to be brave. I thought through it, considered exactly what I would say the next time he tossed off some homophobia or said some sexist remark. I rationalized what his response might be, even in the worst case. Even if I lost my only friend… Well. Dustin had said there would be other friends, though I don’t know how much I believed that. I couldn’t quite imagine him and Noelle being my friends—actual friends, not just classmates bound by the obligations of a group project. But maybe there were other people out there, people who would put up with a quiet, awkward person who… Well, I still didn’t know why anyone would want to have me as a friend, but for some reason the past twenty-four hours did hint that maybe Noelle enjoyed getting to spend time with me. That was still kind of baffling to me.

In fact, Noelle and Dustin were confusing in all number of ways. The more I learned about them and their circumstances, the more that cracks started to form in my assumptions about the cute, perfect girl and her hot rebel boyfriend. Underneath all of that, once I got to see all their complexities and real personalities, I found myself even more drawn to them. It really didn’t help my massive crush on them—on Noelle, I mean, obviously. Learning about her family, and how she was trying to navigate unsupportive parents while taking care of her brother and trying to make amends for her part in all that stuff with her sister… It was really admirable. She was so strong when she needed to be, but when she let down her guard, her bubbly and cheerful personality came through, too. I felt lucky to be able to see that. I wished… I wished I could be there for her, so she got to be that person more often. Was that what Dustin also felt? Was that why he was so protective?

He was so confusing too. From the outside, he seemed like he’d be the kind of macho asshole who broke all the rules and got in fights and did whatever he wanted. It was exactly the kind of bad boy vibe that good girls would be into, you know? So much so that I totally understood the attraction myself. But… in reality, that wasn’t how he acted at all. If anything, the conversation in the car had shown him to be a lot more perceptive than anyone would guess, and a lot more empathetic too. He could be intimidating, sure, but that was only when he thought I was going to hurt Noelle in some way. Plus, he was the one who had insisted that Noelle slow down and consider Sam’s feelings. On some level, I still felt like he was a mystery to me. Underneath it all, was he really that nice? Or was it just an exception that only applied to his girlfriend? I wasn’t sure.

And finally, of course, there was Monday looming over my head. I had so blithely volunteered myself, but as I tossed and turned in my bed, I couldn’t help but keep imagining just how wrong everything could go. Was I really going to show up to class, dressed like a girl, specifically so that I could act like a girl, and then… have it all be part of a bit? If there were easier ways to become the laughingstock of the entire school, I couldn’t think of them. It was just about the most terrible idea you could imagine as a teenage boy, plus it put me squarely in the spotlight in front of everyone else. Everyone would know. Everyone in school would hear about it. Was I really willing to endure the whole rest of my high-school career being known as… as… Well, I knew the words that Trav would use to describe me, at least.

As I laid there, these thoughts swirling around my head, I felt so overcome by the awkwardness and angst of it all. Teenagers really did have it the worst: stuck between the freedom of being a child, who didn’t have to care about anything and could just have fun, and the freedom of being an adult, who actually got to make decisions and exercise control over their life. I wasn’t sure which was nicer, and I laid there, trying to imagine both… first, thinking back to when I was just a stupid little kid, before high school and stress and my uncomfortable body and social anxiety and everything had combined into the toxic soup of pervasive misery that I felt like I was drowning in now. Then I thought about the future… but that remained frustratingly unclear. What did a good future as an adult even look like, at least for me? I logically knew what I should be thinking, but I just had the hardest time imagining myself out there, working a job, buying groceries and paying bills. If anything, I… all I could imagine was myself ten years from now, lying in bed just like now. What would I be thinking about then? Would I just mirror this moment, reflecting back on my wasted teenage years? 

And that was kind of it, wasn’t it? Somewhere inside me, I knew that no matter how disastrous the plan was, no matter how mercilessly I was mocked for dressing like a girl, there was no way I’d ever regret it as much as if I let that opportunity pass by. There was something in my heart, in my gut, in… some crucial emotional organ, and it just felt important somehow. More important than anything else. I had to try it. I had to see, at least. And maybe this was just my hopeless crush still talking, but… for some reason I trusted Dustin and Noelle to have my back, even if no one else would.

I didn’t know what Monday would bring, but I was ready. I had to do this.

No matter what.

I showed up at Dustin’s at about eleven the next morning. It wasn’t because I felt guilty about what he had said or anything. Though... I did feel guilty. It just wasn’t because of it. More than anything else, I was too worked up with nervous energy, and didn’t know what to do with myself alone at my house. I needed something—anything—to take my mind off of everything going on right now.

In the daylight, I could see his house a lot better. It was one of the older ones on the block, the paint chipping away in places, and the grass in the front lawn starting to get tall. As I walked up to the front door, I had to step around a plastic tricycle.

I was just about to ring the doorbell when I remembered that Dustin had said his mother would be asleep. I hesitated. Should I… knock? Should I just walk in? Surely not, that seemed way too familiar. But...

I was shaken out of my indecision by a shriek—specifically, the high-pitched kind of delighted scream that could only come from a little kid who was taking joy in getting away with something. I stepped off the small concrete porch, walking over to look around the side of the house. It wasn’t fenced or anything, and as I continued further, I found myself in the backyard. The whole place looked like a tornado had hit it. Toys were scattered in every direction, and a half-deflated plastic kiddie pool rested in a patch of grass, completely devoid of any water. In the middle of everything, Dustin was half-heartedly trying to corral three kids that clearly had the better of him.

When he saw me, he froze, suddenly looking more guarded again. The kids paused too, distracted by my status as something new, but uncertain of how to respond. 

“Hey,” Dustin said carefully. “I thought I said to come over later.”

“Oh, well, you said you might need help babysitting?”

He snorted. “That was a joke, you know.” He chewed on his lip though, clearly thinking about it. “You really want to…?”

“Sure. I mean. If you want me to?” I shifted nervously. Maybe this was just one more headache that he didn’t need to deal with today, but…

“Yeah, okay,” he said, looking a bit relieved. My heart soared. “If you can watch these gremlins long enough for me to handle the laundry and clean up a bit inside, that’d be a big help.”

I nodded, trying to smile at the three pairs of wide eyes that were now sizing me up.

“This is Alyssa,” Dustin said, mussing the hair of the girl who looked to be the oldest at around seven or eight. She made a face. “Jodie,” he said, tilting his head to indicate the girl a little bit younger who was clinging to his leg, half hidden behind him. “And the lil guy is—”

“’m Ninja,” the youngest one chirped. He had a black t-shirt wrapped around most of his head.

Dustin sighed. “Ninja, who is currently having a bit of a ninja phase.”

“But Dusty!” Jodie whined, tugging on his jeans. “You promised we’d have a tea party!”

“Tea parties are stupid,” Alyssa scoffed. “I thought we were going to do something fun. Where’s the baseball at? Gimme the bat.”

Ninja shook his head fiercely, clinging to a plastic wiffle-ball bat to his chest. “No! Mine!” Alyssa grabbed hold of it and they started pulling it back and forth in a tug-of-war, while Jodie looked to be on the verge of bursting into tears.

Dustin shot me a glance, smiling wryly. “You asked for it, they’re your problem now.” He made his way to the back door of the house, the screen door clattering closed behind him.

The three kids stopped for a moment, all simultaneously staring at me, their eyes wide.

“H-hey,” I said. “So, my name is—”

And then they scattered, running in opposite directions as Alyssa shrieked, Jodie tried to find a place to hide, and Ninja decided to start banging on things with his wiffle-ball bat.

...This was going to be interesting.

rooibos_chai

I'm having trouble trying to sleep
I'm counting sheep but running out
As time ticks by, and still I try
No rest for crosstops in my mind
On my own, here we go...

Green Day, "Brain Stew" (1995)