My heart heavy, I followed Danielle into the living room. Frankie was still twirling in joy, restlessly bouncing back and forth between the couch and… her…? buttons. Her buttons. Danielle settled on the ground and waited for the kitty to nest herself on her legs, while I hung back, resting my shoulder on the wall.

I stared at the happiness on Frankie’s face with an alien sentiment of envy. I wanted what she had, that sentiment of… finally finding that piece of identity that truly matches you.

It didn’t help, of course, that the person I was envious of was covered in fur and walking on four legs.

“What… do we do, now?” I asked. Danielle turned her head to me. “For Frankie, I mean. Like, she’s a cat, how would you even… make her a girl cat? You can’t exactly just put her on hormones or something,” I said with a shrug.

“Oh, no, of course not.” Danielle blew air out of the corners of her mouth. “For Frankie, all a transition would entail would be a change in pronouns, in honorifics, in name probably? I mean when I called her Frankie I meant it as this like, very ‘guy’ name, but then I learned there were some actresses that had it as a nickname so technically it’d work—”

Frankie interrupted her tangent with a pleading mewl.

“Buut that sounds like a yes on the change of name. She pretty clearly did not take to it.”

“Right, right, makes sense I guess…” I nodded absentmindedly, staring vaguely at the ground. Frankie was all sorted out, I supposed. She’d had it all figured out, she didn’t need anything fancy, it was so simple a switch that it was basically already done and dealt with. There was a knot in my heart that just felt wrong, like I had just bitten down on a lemon, and being aware of that knot only made me feel worse. I felt like I had to push it down before that envy turned into resentment. Still, with one situation handled, that only left, well… I didn’t want to get to it.

It didn’t take Danielle long to gather what was on my mind just by looking at my expression. “And as for Mx Avoiding The Question, all you’ve got left to do is to just try things.”

“Try?”

“Try.”

“Just… try?”

“Yup.”

“How do you ‘just try’?” I asked. “How can you do things without them like… calling out to you? Without already knowing deep in your heart that they’re right for you?”

“That’s the neat part, you don’t need that to try anything. You can even try things that you know are wrong! That can still give insight sometimes!” Danielle proclaimed, before mumbling a follow-up. ”Well, most of the time that insight is ‘yup should’ve listened to my gut’, but you know what I mean.”

I bit my lip and walked to the window. I felt like I needed fresh air. After opening it and resting my arms on the railing, I sighed. My eyes drifted from cloud to cloud, aimless, then looked down at the street below. A man in a blue jacket was walking his dog. Two kids wearing backpacks were heading to school with sullen looks on their faces. Someone who looked too poorly rested to drive was getting into their car, a thermos can in hand.

Everything I thought I knew about what mattered and what didn’t had been smashed to bits. The way I thought everyone was a little bit melancholic and just silently stomaching it had been a misconception. I felt like the world as I understood it was crumbling down on me; and yet, numbly, calmly, it kept moving.

And right here, right now, I struggled to see how I could keep moving with it. I felt stuck in place — no, I had been stuck in place this whole time — and dragging my feet one in front of the other felt monumentally impossible. Even with being told where to start, it just… didn’t compute, didn’t check out. 

How long ago I had been left behind, I didn’t know. And now, having to play catch-up…  That sounded harrowing.

“Danielle…” I asked, turning my head a little.

She switched her attention from her cat to me. “Yeah?”

“I’m scared,” I said in a weak voice. “I’m really, really scared.”

“Oh, honey…” She didn’t waste any time in getting up and offering me a hug. I took her offer and let her wrap her arms around my shoulders, before she started to hold on tight.

I let out a sad chuckle. “When have you ever been the dependable one out of us two?”

She shook her head into my arm. “Shush. No sassing. Just hugging.”

I started to feel a warm little furry thing leaning against my leg. I looked down at the kitty, and freed myself from Danielle’s grasp enough to lower my hand to her head. She leaned into it for a second, before trotting back to her buttons. Whichever she was looking for, she found it quick — and kept pressing her paw to it until an electronic beep sang out.

With one last glance, Danielle made sure I was feeling okay, then went to see which one the kitty had just reset. She giggled as she looked down. “Okay, so that was very much intentional then.” Picking it up, she peeled the label off and stored the button back on the nearby shelf. “She erased her name.”

The kitten meowed.