(Girlfriends)

-Mymy added Julia to the 'Girlfriends' group chat-

Nisha: Jules!  =D

Nisha: welcome to the girls' club!!!

Chu<3: welcome in

Julia: thanks  ^.^

Mymy: so guys

Mymy: i want 2 talk about somethin

Mymy: its important

Nisha: okey omw

Chu<3: wait

Chu<3: what about class?

Mymy:  :l

Nisha: :l

Julia: :l

Chu<3: u kno

Chu<3: i expect this from them

Chu<3: not u julia

Julia: wut?

Julia: i wanted to join in

Chu<3:  -_-

Nisha: im ded  ToT

Mymy: anyway

Mymy: plz

Mymy: its very important

Chu<3: alright

Chu<3: heading there now

Mymy: Thx!  ^.^)b

 

I close the chat room after that. Julia and I had moved from the front office to the lunchroom after our little conversation from before. We decided to sit in the small open-air courtyard connected to the cafeteria. You'd think that it would be a popular place to eat at, but today it was practically empty, save for two people sitting at one of the corners of the yard. We were going to look through the pamphlet together and whenever I had questions, she would try to explain it to me.

with a huff, Julia slammed her tray of cafeteria food onto the wooden picnic table and sat down next to me.

"So, meatloaf, huh?"

"It was either this, or stale peanut butter and jelly..." She said, poking the slab of meat with a plastic fork.

I went back to reading the pamphlet and looking up more information on terms that still confused me while Julia slowly dug into her meal. The plan was to gather everyone together and tell them about what was going on with JJ and get their insight on it. After Julia trusted us with her secret, I felt like telling our group of friends something like this shouldn't have been such a big deal, but I was beginning to feel slightly nervous.

While we waited for them to show up, Julia and I spent our time looking through the pamphlet again.

"So, when JJ told me that he was uncomfortable in his clothed..."

"It's most likely dysphoria." Julia said, still nibbling at her lunch. "But like I said, you should probably get some more information before you decide to do anything about it."

"And where is that on here?" I said, flipping the pamphlet over in my hands. Julia pointed at the third page near the top, at a part labeled 'What is Dysphoria?'.

'Dysphoria is a mental condition that causes someone to feel unhappy, lost, and/or confused. It can occur for many different reasons at any given time. Listed below are the different types of Dysphoria.'

"This is the one you should look at." Julia pointed to one of the bullet points labeled "Gender Dysphoria'.

'Dysphoria is when people are unhappy because their body isn't the same as the gender they feel. This discomfort can cause significant stress that interferes with normal life activities and relationships.'

That sounds... rough.

It then went to show examples, like a person being born biologically male but identifying as female, and vice versa. Below the examples were different websites that it recommended to get even more information about gender dysphoria.

"Whatcha readin'?"

Tanisha startled the both of us as she suddenly poked her head in between Julia and me. She returned the scowl I gave her with a cheesy grin of her own. the walked to the other side of the table and put down her own lunch tray. More meatloaf. Great.

"Lookin' at the pamphlet. Y'know, realizing some things." I said, as I began looking up one of the websites listed under the gender dysphoria bullet point on my phone.

"Wait. You mean, about yourself? or-"

"Let's wait for Chu, then we'll talk about it." Julia jumped in. "Speaking of Chu... Hey!"

Julia spotted Chu walking into the lunchroom through the glass and waved her over. She walked over to our table and sat down with her own lunch box she bought from home.

"Okay! Everyone is here now!" Tanisha loudly announced. Che covered her ears and leaned away from Tanisha. The other two people in the courtyard besides us give her an annoyed look and started packing their things up to leave.

"Sorry!" She called out to them as they left. "So, what was so important that we needed to skip class? Not that I'm complaining."

Chu shot her a quick glare, then turned back to face me. Everyone was watching me now. I was already feeling nervous in the moments leading up to this meeting, and now my stomach was doing flips. With everyone here, and all the attention on me, I froze.

Why?

I didn't know why I couldn't speak right away. It felt like something was preventing me from telling my friends what revelation Julia and I had come to. My mouth flapped open and closed as I tried to force the words to come out. As my friends stared at me with worried expressions, I felt a warm hand placed on my back. I quickly glanced to the side and met Julia's calming gaze.

I suddenly had a realization. Julia is a girl and her parents have accepted her for who she is. Mr. Robert is an adult that is super supportive of her. I imagine that Chu had accepted her a long time ago and Tanisha and I are totally cool with her being who she is. But I couldn't say the same for JJ.

I still didn't know if my parents would be accepting of JJ. And that did worry me, but not as much as how the rest of our family would react. Because most of my family are super homophobic. And if they have problems with that, then they certainly were going to have issues with someone in Julia's situation. It was beginning to feel like I was putting JJ in danger by digging into this.

What... do I do?

I sat in silence, mentally wrestling with my thoughts. Did I even want to bring this up anymore?

I winced. Julia had prodded me in the side, worry showing in her eyes. It distracted me from my wandering thoughts as I looked back to her.

"Hey. Your friends are cool. You can tell them this." She stated bluntly. She then nodded back to Tanisha and Chu, who were eagerly waiting on for me to spill the beans.

Yeah... My friends are great. I know that for a fact.

So, I closed my eyes and took a couple of deep breaths.

Okay. I'm ready. No more hesitations!

I opened my eyes, and just said the first thing that came to my mind. The words kinda tumbled out of my mouth at that moment.

"I think my little brother might be a trans girl!"

-

-

Huh. That was easier than I tho-OW!

I received another hard prod in the side.

"You could have explained that a bit better instead of just jumping in the deep end! And so loud!" Julia told me in an exasperated tone, holding her head in her hands. Looking back across the table, I saw Chu staring at me, eyes wide in shock. Tanisha was also shocked, but not as much as Chu was, as she quickly recovered.

"How- how do you know?" Chu asked me. "What made you think that in the first place?"

I hesitated again, for just a moment. Then Julia spoke up.

"Just start from the beginning. Exactly what you told me." She said.

So, I did. I told them about everything that happened over the weekend. Everything with the video game and the dresses. And how JJ told me that he felt strange in his clothes. I then pointed to the gender dysphoria portion of the pamphlet. That's when I noticed that Chu's body had stiffened. Her eyes had kinda glazed over when I looked at her face.

"Actually... that makes a lot of sense." Tanisha finally muttered out. She had her arms crossed in front of her, head tilted to the sky, as she was listening to me.

Hah?

"What do you mean?" Julia asked.

"Well... You must have noticed it, right, Maya?" She turned to me. "Every time that we would play that dancing game in the living room, and he would come out of his room and watch us the whole time? I always thought that was weird."

For some reason, that really scared me.

He's not...

"Don't... Call my brother weird, please."

Tanisha seemed to realize that this had upset me, and she immediately went on to explaining her point.

"I didn't mean it like that, sorry. It was something I noticed that could explain some of the strange ways he acts is all. After you said all of that, I was thinking that he probably wants to dance with us, but he feels like he can't, as a boy, y'know?"

"I don't know about that... There are songs on there for guys." I argued.

Tanisha frowned. "I meant, the songs we would dance too."

I averted my eyes from her. A memory of JJ nodding his head along to a popular pop song Tanisha and I were dancing to suddenly popped into my head. After the song ended, I handed my controller to him, thinking that he'd want to play as well. He poked around the song list for a while, then shoved the controller back into my hands, disappointed.

Hm...

"Okay. Uh, what else... OH!" Tanisha snapped her fingers, coming to a realization.

"You know when we would have sleepovers at your house and watch that one Saturday morning cartoon?"

I tilted my head in confusion. "Magical Girl Heartbeat? What does that have to do with this?"

Julia hopped excitedly in her seat. "Ooohhh! I love that show!"

"You do!?" I exclaimed. "Oh my god, we have to talk about it later!"

Tanisha rolled her eyes as we were gushing over the show. Beside her, Chu raised a hand.

"I'm sorry... What are we talking about?"

"You don't know Magical Girl Heartbeat?!" Julia and I questioned her at the same time.

"Uh, no?"

Tanisha spoke up.

"It's okay if you don't remember it. The show was mid anyway."

That earned the ire of Julia and me. We simultaneously sent her death glares while she held up her hands defensively.

"Hey, my opinion! Doesn't mean the show is bad for you guys."

We began arguing to Tanisha about the good qualities of the show, when Chu cut us off.

"Does someone want to explain what this has to do with what we're talking about!?"

Chu's shouting stopped us from trying to talk over each other. Tanisha then tried to coax an answer out of me.

"C'mon you gotta remember! About three years ago? When Magical Girl Heartbeat had that two-part special?"

I felt my eyebrows scrunch up, trying to bring up this memory that she wanted me to remember.

Let's see... Three years ago, JJ was in the third grade... And during the two-part special...

.

 

.

 

"Hmm?"

Tanisha perked up. 

"You got it?"

Oh.

I slowly lowered my head to rest in my hands, realization dawning on me finally.

"Ayy! She's got it!" Tanisha shouted, throwing up her hands.

Julia and Chu looked to each other both of then felt confused at being left out of the loop.

"So, I was on to something, right?"

I sat in silence for a couple of moments, running the memory through my mind again before finally saying, "You know, with what I know now and all of the signs, it's pretty obvious."

"Well?" Tanisha waved to me, wanting me to explain to them what we both were thinking of. She already knew, since she was there when this happened. So, I sat op straight in my seat and began explaining.

"About three years ago, Tanisha, JJ, and I were watching Saturday morning cartons together, when Magical Girl Heartbeat started it's two-parter special. On the first episode, one of the main characters had switched to the bad guy's side at the very end, and no one knew if she would come back. It was pretty shocking, because up the that point, the show was very light-hearted."

---

I remembered that JJ was especially hyped up from the cliffhanger at the end of the episode. He ran up to mom, who was in the kitchen at the time, and tried to explain what happened in the episode to her. We didn't see what happened, but we heard it loud and clear.

"That's a girls' show, isn't it? Why are you watching it? Mom asked.

Tanisha and I both looked back to where they were standing. JJ's excitement quickly wound down as he stared up at her.

"Because... Um-"

"Jerome."

He shuddered a bit, looking away from mom.

"Why are you watching it? She reiterated.

"B-because, I like it, I guess." He turned back to meet mom's wondering gaze. "Did I do something wrong?"

Mom bent down slightly at the knees, so that she was a little over a head taller than JJ.

"Well... No. But you're a boy. And that is something for girls, right? Why don't you watch that one show? You know, with the robots?" Mom suggested. "I don't want you watching that girls' show anymore, okay?"

We could see what was left of that excited spark leave JJ's body as he slowly lowered his head.

"Okay..."

Tanisha and I quickly turned back towards the tv before mom spotted us snooping. We listened to JJ's footsteps as he walked back over to the living room, his shoulders sagging slightly as he plopped down next to me on the floor.

While we were in the middle of another show, my mom went back to her room to get ready for work. JJ watched her walk to our parents' bedroom and close the door, then turned to me with a question.

"Hey, why is that show only for girls?" He whispered.

"Uhhh... I dunno. 'Cause it's made for girls?" I shrugged. "Kinda like how there's stuff made for boys, y'know? I looked over to Tanisha, wanting her input.

"That's basically it. You're a boy, watching something made for girls. Kinda weird, I guess... I mean, I don't even know why you'd want to watch this, it's not even that good anyway. It's soooo.... Predictable."

"Predictable!?"

We began a heated debate about the quality of the show while JJ sat next to me in silence. After a few minutes of thinking to himself, he interrupted our argument.

"Hey, so... If there was a girl, and she wanted to watch Magical Girl Heartbeat, she could, right?"

His question snapped both of our attention back to JJ. Before I could answer, Tanisha spoke up.

"Yeah? I mean, she's a girl. She could always do that."

"Huh." He stated simply. "A-and if she wanted to wear girls' clothes, and play with girls' toys, she could also do that too?"

I shared a brief, concerned look with my friend, then turned to answer JJ's question.

"Um, yeah... She could."

"Hm."

He paused, staring down into the palm of his hand. Then, he went back to watching tv, like we just didn't have this weird conversation. I scrunched my eyebrows at Tanisha, and she shrugged her shoulders in response, before we also focused on what was on the screen. I noticed that JJ was nervously fidgeting next to me after a while and when the next show ended, he got up from the floor and walked back to our parents' room.

It was very quiet when JJ first entered the room. Whatever they were talking about in there quickly escalated into my dad shouting. We stared down the hallway at the door that the yelling was coming from until it stopped. The door suddenly opened, my dad briskly walking down the hallway with JJ in tow. Tanisha and I looked away, not wanting to also get yelled at for being nosy.

They walked to the front door, my dad with a stiff expression on his face. There were tears streaming down JJ's face as they left the house. We heard the sound of dad's truck starting up and taking off down the driveway. We stopped watching tv, wondering about what just happened, when my mom left the room, dressed for work.

"Ma, what was all that yelling about?" I asked her.

She stopped reaching for the doorknob. I could tell from the look on her face that she was wrestling with whether she wanted to say what went on in their room. When she had her answer, she turned to us.

"It's not important, don't worry about it." She told us.

And she walked out the front door. We were so, very curious, but we let it go. Dad and JJ came back to the house a couple of hours later after Tanisha went home. And that was it. No one ever brought up what happened the day.

---

I finished my story, looking to the faces of my friends sitting at the table with me. Julia and Chu were deep in their own thoughts, trying to figure out what they wanted to say. Julia spoke first.

"So... That's pretty convincing evidence..." She muttered.

"Yeah." I said. "The signs are pretty obvious when you know what to look for, huh?"

"What are you going to do now?" Chu asked me, looking a little pale. Tanisha nodded to this question.

"What's the plan, girl?" She said nervously.

Everyone waited on me for an answer. Thinking back over everything I know and learned over the past couple of days. I didn't have to think on this that much as I quickly came to a conclusion. So, I met the stares of my friends sitting at the table with me, and I shrugged my shoulders.

"Nothing." I simply said.

Of course, they were shocked. Tanisha's jaw hung slightly open, and Julia was giving me a questioning glare. Chu somehow paled even further, pursing her lips together tightly.

"Why?" She asked me sternly. The other two also wanted to know my reasoning.

"Two reasons. Number one." I said, holding up two fingers.

"My family is full of homophobic assholes. It's not that unlikely that they are also transphobic as well."

I locked eyes with Tanisha. She knew what I was talking about, because her family has the same opinions as mine. She instantly deflated.

"Sh-she's got a point..." She muttered. Chu was stunned by how Tanisha, who was usually very optimistic, gave up so easily.

"That is a huge problem." Julia thought aloud.

"And second." I said, getting their attention again. "Is that JJ- he's very... fragile. I don't know how he'd handle being told this stuff and not having a way to do anything about it safely, y'know?"

Julia nodded slowly, agreeing with me on this point.

"You should prioritize your own safety after all."

A chime from the lunchroom speaker rang out, signaling for the end of our lunch time. We sat in silence for a bit, watching everyone inside shuffle slowly back to their classes.

"Well... I guess we can talk more at the club meeting after school?" Tanisha said, standing up from her seat. At that, Julia and I also began to stand up. Chu, however, remained seated, staring down at the table.

"Hey Chu, you good?" Tanisha stepped up next to her. We all huddled around her, starting to get worried. She didn't respond, so I moved closer to give her shoulder a little shake-

"I hate my voice." She suddenly said.

I paused, trying to process what I just heard.

Wha-

"What do you mean? I like your voice! I think it's cu-OUH!"

Julia had, once again, elbowed me in the side. I rounded on her.

"Why do you keep doing that?!"

"Now's not the time for this." She gestured slightly back in Chu's direction. I whirled back around to find that she had lifted her head up from the table. She was crying.

"I hate my body." She started again.

Oh.

"I hate looking at myself in the mirror. All this hate... And not knowing exactly why. I didn't even have a clue until I met Julia. Mr. Robert and his sister helped me realize why."

Chu stared vacantly into the space in front of her as she addressed us the entire time.

"It sucks... To hurt. to know that you're hurting and not know why..." She locked eyes with me.

"That's why I think you should tell him. If that is what he's feeling, then I think he deserves to know why." Chu wiped her eyes with the long sleeve of her shirt. Tanisha and I were stunned, bombarded with Chu's inner thoughts. We shuffled awkwardly in the courtyard, trying to come up with something to break the silence.

"Okay, I think now is a good time."

Julia was the one to speak up first. She strode up to Chu and started whispering to her. We didn't move as they carried on the conversation quietly. When it looked like they had come to a conclusion, Julia spun Chu around on the spot and pushed her back towards us.

"Like I said to Maya, these are you friends and their wonderful, understanding people. Go." Julia said.

Chu looked back to her nervously as Julia patted her on the back. She took a deep breath, her confidence reaffirmed, and walked up to me first. The same way that Julia introduced herself to me earlier today was repeated by Chu. She offered a hand to me.

"Hi, my name is Leon. I go by He/Him."

I shook the hand in front of me. Leon then moved over to Tanisha, doing the same to her. He stepped back, waiting for any type of response from us. We were speechless.

.

.

Julia threw her hands up in triumph.

"Alright! Everyone's finally here!"