“Aughhhh,” Allie groaned. “Yo Haze, are you sure that the only thing she said was “how do you speak like a girl?”

“Dude, she told you that the fairy chick dumped the question on her and then left, like, 20 times already,” Ethan answered for me.

“I know, but! Gah, it’s just such a stupid question!”

I could understand her frustration. My friends and I had collectively spent all morning doing research, again without anything substantial. Olivia and I took a break to have the study session I’d forgotten about, but she’d agreed to help me search for an answer afterward.

As Ethan demonstrated, our research on that creaky sound, which apparently actually is called “creaky voice”, by the way, told us that it was something used by everyone. We also found out that it’s generally viewed negatively when women use it, but neutral or positively when men use it. Hooray for double standards, I guess.

Aside from that, we still had nothing. Our new approach was to listen to famous female celebrities and Youtubers speak and write down the traits we saw in their voice. But when we compared notes, there wasn’t a single thing in there that applied across the board, and any traits that could be applied to the majority of them were things that we’d already contradicted. 

Maybe we were overthinking this, and the answer was something like a generally higher pitch. But if that was the answer, wouldn’t that invalidate all the trans people who haven’t done voice training? Ugh!

“Do you want more tea, Hazel~?” Olivia asked, bringing me out of my thoughts. “You’re spacing out again~,”

“No, I’m good,” I said. “Just wondering if there’s something we’ve missed. I mean, you’d think we’d have something after a day and a half of research.”

“Seriously,” Allie agreed. “It doesn’t help that at least half of these papers are outdated as hell. Like, what the fuck is a “feminine” trait? I don’t do half those things, and I’m a woman last time I checked.”

“Preach, sis~,”

Our grumbling was interrupted by the ring of the doorbell. We weren’t expecting anyone else, were we? I shot a glance at Ethan, who looked just as confused as I was. With a shrug, I stood up and opened our front door.

“Hazey!!!” My little sister shouted as she barrelled into our apartment. I only barely managed to remain upright as she wrapped me in the biggest hug she could possibly give.

“Hey, Aria,” I laughed, giving her a few pats on the head. “What’re you doing here?”

“Hi, sweetie,” Mom greeted as she and Dad walked into the room. “I mentioned to Aria that we were going to be doing some errands near here and she insisted on seeing you. I brought some homemade lasagna! We just have to pop it into the oven to warm it up.”

“You have quite a few guests already,” dad said. “Are you all working on a group project together or something?”

“Yeah, something like that,” I half-lied. “Sorry, I didn’t realize you were coming,”

“It’s no problem,” Mom continued as she turned on our oven. “I know we showed up without asking. They’re all welcome to eat lunch with us if they’d like to.”

***

And that's how we all wound up eating lasagna around our small little table about 20 minutes later.

“Thanks for bringing us lunch, Mrs. Walker~,” Olivia said. “It’s really good~!”

That prompted the rest of my friends to mumble out thanks as well. My mom chuckled. “Of course! Sorry for interrupting your group project. So, what are you all working on?”

“It’s about, uhhhhh~...” Olivia gave the rest of us a look that I interpreted as “save me!”

“S’bout language and identity,” Allie covered, not missing a beat. “Like, where we get vocal stereotypes from n’ stuff.”

“That’s a pretty interesting topic,” Mom commented. “So, what have you guys found so far?”

“Nothing conclusive, really,” I sighed. “Besides pitch, we haven’t really found anything conclusive for men or women. But defining voices based on pitch might exclude transgender and non-binary people.”

“What’s a ‘non-binary?’” Aria piped up, as curious as ever.

“It’s when somebody isn’t a boy or a girl,” Allie answered. “They generally don’t want to be referred to as a boy or a girl, either, so we use they/them pronouns to refer to them.”

“Oh, okay! So they’re like Hazey, but they have to tell everyone they’re not a boy or a girl, even though they may look like a boy or a girl!”

“Exactly!” Allie giggled. “Your little sister is adorable, Haze.”

“I’m fine with non-binary people, but I wish they used different pronouns instead of they/them all the time,” My dad said.

I saw Allie tense up slightly, and Ethan raised an eyebrow. “Why do you think that, Mr. Walker? What’s wrong with they/them pronouns?”

“It just seems… ungrammatical,” My dad answered. “I don’t know, maybe it’s just how I was raised. But I feel like I’d always forget or get confused on whether you’re talking about one person or several people.”

“Hmmm.” Ethan seemed unsatisfied with that answer, but he took another bite of food to hide his expression. “Oh! I’ve been meaning to ask. Mr. Walker, have you heard of this youtuber called ‘Petrouge’?”

“Can’t say I have. Who are they?”

Ethan didn’t answer, but there was a very smug grin on his face. A grin that was quickly spreading to the rest of us as we realized what just happened.

“What did I say?” Dad asked. “Oh.”

“‘Oh’ is right, honey.” Mom teased. “I think Ethan’s proven his point.”

“Yeah, singular ‘they’ is way more common in everyday speech than you might think. And nobody is saying you have to be perfect! Just slow down a bit and think about what you’re gonna say first. And if you make a mistake, just correct yourself and move on, right?”

“Point taken, Ethan,” Dad said. “I’d forgotten how clever you can be in conversation. I’ll try to keep the pronoun stuff in mind.”

“Thanks for talking some sense into my dad,” I told Ethan. “I’ve gotta say, that was pretty impressive,”

“My pleasure!” He grinned. “Talking sense into cis people has become one of my favorite pasttimes.”

The conversation died off after that. And it probably would’ve stayed that way if Aria didn’t speak up.

“Hazey, I wanna play that game with all the animal people in it! Can we play, pleaseee?”

“Animal people~?” Olivia said. “Hazel, what kind of games do you play~?”

“No way! You got your little sister into Soulseeker Online?” Allie smirked. “Now this is a story I hafta hear!”