“What the hell is this, some kind of ‘awakening’ for you?” Jeff shouted as he stepped out of his car. He was gesturing incredulously in my direction and I couldn’t tell from his tone whether he was angry or mocking me.

I looked down at myself, as if somehow surprised to see what I was wearing. “Dude, it’s not like that!” I retorted, feeling my face go red. “Let me change and we can talk about it, okay?”

“Why bother changing? You clearly like it enough to do it more than once!” As he approached my car, he saw the shopping bags of clothes in the back seat. “Seriously? You bought more? So what’s the deal, are you trans? Are you a crossdresser? What the fuck?” There was a desperation in his voice that really confused me.

“Look, man. It’s complicated. Seriously, give me like ten minutes to wash my face and change. And then I’ll tell you what’s up.” I don’t know why I felt so conflicted about this. It was all just a big joke, right? Like, he was the one who wanted to humiliate me by making me dress up. So why was he so pissed?

*CLICK*

Jeff was holding his phone toward me and had snapped a picture. I heard a few more clicks and I started to get angry. I walked over toward him and tried to take his phone away, to delete the photos or something. Instead, he twisted his arm up over my head and used his other hand to grab one of mine, pulling it down forcefully and keeping me from stretching far enough to grab his phone.

“Delete the pictures!” I ordered.

“No! I’m gonna show the guys how much you like looking like a lady,” he taunted, his voice bordering on hysterical.

“Why do that? I told you I would explain this, just delete the fucking pictures!” I yelled as I tried to pull down the arm holding the cell phone. “What do you get outta this?”

“Can you explain what you’re doing, Jeff?” My mom called out from the front door.

Double fuck.

Jeff’s arm dropped in surprise and I wrenched the phone away from his hands, more focused on deleting the photos than anything else. 

“You should be happy your mommy came to save you, Michelle,” Jeff said with heavy emphasis on the name. “Little girls need their mommy to protect them.”

Before I could say anything in protest, my mother was in the driveway. “Look here, you arrogant little shit! I have tolerated you for years for the sake of my child, but you roll up in my driveway blasting that shit you call music and picking a fight with my kid outta nowhere? Get the fuck out of my driveway before I have the police haul you out of here!”

Jeff took a step back and snagged his phone out of my hands. “Don’t bother showing up for basketball,” he said darkly. “I won’t be there. And I’ll make sure Chris and Tim won’t be there, either.” He stalked back to his car, kicking mine in the driver’s side door on his way. With an exaggerated flourish, he threw his door open, jumped inside, and slammed the door. His music kicked in and he turned that shit up to 11, peeled out of my driveway, and rocketed down the road.

I stood there, dumbfounded, as I watched him go, wondering numbly what the fuck actually just happened. Mom interrupted my musing with a very well-timed, “Good riddance, you spoiled fuck!”

“Mom… what the hell?”

She laughed merrily. “I can’t believe that little bastard chickened out in front of a 45 year-old woman!”

“Mother, language!” I exclaimed, still shocked by my mother’s outburst.

“What? He’s an actual bastard! Do you think Kimmy Henderson was married before she spat that walking cyst out her baby chute? Come on, we all know she went after Randy with a paternity test! It was the next best thing to having the Jerry Springer Show in town!” my mother continued heatedly.

I placed a hand on her shoulder. “Uh, Mom? Are you okay?”

She turned to look at me. “My son is standing in my driveway looking like a fashion model on a Sunday afternoon, fighting with the one friend of his I can’t stand. A friend who seemed more scared of admitting his own repressed sexual attraction to my child than anything else and was using his money to try to erase the memory.”

“I’m pretty sure Jeff is like the straightest guy I know, Mom,” I mumbled in disbelief.

She gave me a pitying look. “Honey, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but there isn’t a person out there who could look at you and NOT see a beautiful young woman. I’m not sure if it’s just a hobby, or you’re trying things out, or what the deal is. But I do know that I support my kids.”

I felt a strange knot in my stomach and I motioned toward the house. “Can we go inside? I’m pretty sure you and Jeff made enough noise to get the whole neighborhood’s attention and the last thing I need is everyone asking questions about the random blonde in our driveway.” As soon as I finished speaking, I felt very weak. I’m pretty sure it was some sort of post-adrenaline crash, I just know that I felt tired, my face felt cold, and my lips were tingly. That’s probably a bad combination, right? Right. I leaned on my mom a bit and we made our way back inside.

Maggie was waiting in the kitchen for us. “Oh, hey. Welcome home, Lauren!” I didn’t have the energy to try and silence her, and she noticed I didn’t take the bait.

Instead, I collapsed into one of the dining room chairs and slumped over the table. My arms felt heavy and leaden and I couldn’t tell if I wanted to black out our vomit. Maybe both. I mean, from what I’ve heard, these options were not mutually-exclusive. There was a part of me that wanted to shout in frustration and another part that wanted to crawl into bed and hide from the world. Now that Jeff had seen me dressed up like this voluntarily, I felt like my social life was over.

And even if I couldn’t hang out with my friends, I would have had the option of spending time with Emily if I had just opened my mouth and told her the truth. Told her that I was actually a guy. Told her that I thought she was cute and I’d like to hang out with her more. Told her I was sorry for letting her believe I was a woman. She’d probably be upset that her friend “Lauren” was just me in drag, but I felt like maybe there was enough of a connection to work past that. But then I pulled that shit at the salon and ran out of there without saying anything.

I pulled my wig off. “I don’t even know what I’m doing anymore.” I muttered into the surface of the table. “My friends think I’m a weirdo who likes wearing women’s clothes. The girl I like thinks I’m actually a girl. And now I’m sitting at my dinner table in a dress, whining to my family about it.”

I felt a hand on my back, gently rubbing a small circle. “I can’t say I know what you’re going through, right now. It sounds… comedically complicated,” my mother said. “But if you want to talk about it, I’m right here, okay? I know you’d probably rather have your father here for something like this–”

“No, Mom, you’re great! You’re… You’ve always been more than enough. I’m sorry, it’s not anything like that. I just feel really stupid, y’know? Like, I got myself into this mess and I thought I could get myself out of it. But really, I just dug myself deeper. All because of a stupid bet and my own brittle sense of self,” I said as I lifted my head from the table.

My mom rounded the table and sat down to my left. “Speaking of that bet, do you still have the money he sent you?”

I nodded. “Yeah, it went straight to my checking account, but I haven’t spent any of it. Do you want more than the five hundred bucks I promised you?”

With a laugh, Mom suddenly said, “Hell, no! I don’t want a penny of that pampered prick’s cash! He’s never worked a day in his life. It’s basically just a hand-me-down from his dad and his dad is even worse than he is.” She tilted her head toward me to look more directly in my eyes. “I was wondering how you felt about returning all of it?”

“Wait, how much are we talking about?” Maggie asked suddenly, looking up from her phone.

“Two grand,” I replied. “It was only supposed to be twelve-fifty, but he upped it when he canceled the bet and brought me home.”

“Daaaaaamn,” Maggie said. “He really was trying to pay off his guilt for thinking you were hot.”

“Why the hell does everyone keep saying that? Shit, even Emily said it, and she thinks I’m a girl! There’s no way Jeff thinks I’m attractive. All he has to do is wave his wallet and beautiful women flock to him. I’m just some dude he knew from high school!” I ranted. As I was talking, I had removed the wig cap and placed it on top of the blonde wig. Mom reached over and messed with my hair, which actually felt kinda nice. Mom hadn’t really fussed over me like that since I was twelve.

*CLICK*

My eyes snapped toward my sister who was holding her phone toward me. “Okay, what the fuck is up the non-consensual photography today?”

She turned her phone around toward me. I didn’t look. My appearance had been the cause of literally all of my problems for the last few days. I just continued to stare at my sister. “What? Are you proud of sneaking a shot of your big brother with clown make-up on?”

Maggie huffed. “Okay, for one, I did a damned good job on your make-up so it kinda hurts me to hear you say you look like a clown. For another, just look at the stupid picture!”

I rolled my eyes and turned my gaze toward the phone. On it, there was a cute girl with a messy pixie cut and a very forlorn expression. The shot was surprisingly artistic. I felt a bit uncomfortable. “Okay, so you used some sort of filter to take a picture of me. Big whoop.”

“Look again, dingus. Look closely.”

I grumbled under my breath and looked at the phone one more time and frowned. I tapped the image info, just to be sure. It was a RAW file taken in the native camera app. No filters. My brow furrowed as my eyes darted back to Maggie. “What the hell is this?” I asked. “There’s no way that’s me.”

Mom was the one who gently used a finger under my chin to turn my head toward her. “I don’t know if you realize this, but you’re actually quite beautiful. And I think when Jeff realized this, it made him question his sexuality. You’re right. He may be the straightest guy you know. But thinking one of his basketball buddies was attractive might have made him extremely uncomfortable. But that really doesn’t matter if this isn’t who you are or how you want to be seen.”

She stood up and fetched her cell phone from the counter - which indicated I probably would have tried to sneak in and ended up running into her, anyway. After a minute of swiping, she sat back down. “Pizza is on the way for dinner, so I don’t have to worry about cooking. Now, tell me the whole story about your friends, this girl you like, and the name Lauren. And don’t leave anything out! I’ll know if you’re lying to me,” she said with a smirk.