7

Family

The school bell rang, announcing the end of the last class of the day. I would usually be excited to get back home, but today I had to talk to Ryan. Luckily, the last class today was Ms. Castillo’s, meaning we were in the same class.

“Can I talk to you, Ryan?” I asked, catching up to him as he walked out of class. “It’s about the club and stuff.”

”Sure. Right now?” Ryan asked. I saw him look up and around the hallway. With his height, he easily was able to look over most people’s heads.

“Right now would be best, yes,” I said.

“Okay, follow me,” he said. He reached out and grabbed my hand, pushing through the crowd that was in the hallway. He pushed open a door and led me inside, closing the dor behind us. I looked around, we were in an empty classroom. He let go of my hand, leaving me missing the warmth. “So what do you have to talk about?”

“I mean, I’m sure you might already have been suspecting it,” I said, rubbing my arm. I raised my voice, now that I was in a place where I was able to. “But I think I might be transgender.” I breathed out. That took a lot of confidence to admit, and my heart was racing. I knew Ryan would be supportive, but it was scary even then.

“You’re right about the first part, you certainly were pretty suspicious,” he said with a lopsided grin. “I thought it would take you a little longer to figure it out yourself, but I guess you were able to. Congratulations on discovering who you are, Julie.”

“Thank you,” I replied, a smile slowly growing across my face. It was nice to be called by my real name, even though I wasn’t completely used to it yet.

“So, why did you come to tell me?” he asked, tilting his head. “I didn’t know we were that close yet.”

“I don’t know, I felt like you would give good advice?” I said, uncertain as to why I went to Ryan first. “Since I do want to come out at school at some point.”

“I mean, we do live in Washington,” he said, shrugging. “The school was more than happy to set up my GSA club and said to report any hate towards us, so I think they would be supportive of you.”

“The issue would be coming out to my parents,” I said. “I don’t even want to imagine how Dad would react.”

“That would be an issue,” Ryan said, stroking his chin. “I heard from Daniel about your dad and he doesn’t seem like the nicest guy. No offense intended, of course.”

“It’s fine, he really isn’t,” I said laughing.

“Have you told Daniel, by the way?” he asked. “I think he would be pretty supportive, he was supportive when I came out to him.”

“I wish you told me that a little earlier,” I said. “I ran into him after we went to the movies all dressed up.”

“Oh, that must’ve been rough,” Ryan said, biting his lip. “What did he say?”

“Well, I told him I was trans by accident, it just kind of slipped out of my mouth. He’s been supportive though, although things have been a little awkward between us.”

“I’m glad he’s supportive,” Ryan nodded his head. “Hopefully you two can patch things up.”

“I hope so too,” I said. We weren’t the closest siblings but we felt especially distant nowadays. I made a mental note to fix things.

“I know this is random, but do you want to come to my house today? I have something I want to show you.”

“Sure,” I said, slowly nodding. I didn’t have anything else to do, so I might as well. Not to mention the idea of spending more time with Ryan didn’t seem too bad. I did have a lot of fun at the mall after all.

“Let’s get going then,” Ryan said.

***

Ryan slowed to a stop in front of a house. We had gotten off the school bus and been walking for about a thousand feet, and I was feeling out of breath already. He walked up the driveway and onto the porch then took out some keys from his pocket and unlocked the front door. “Come in, I’ll tell you more inside.”

I walked inside Ryan’s house, taking my shoes off as I entered. It was a normal house a middle-class family would have and had a layout similar to mine. I poked my head around, a little curious about how Ryan lived. Sadly, there was nothing that particularly stood out. The stairs stood to the left, the kitchen was messy, and the most interesting about the living room was that it had a massive television. A very boring place overall.

“Let’s go up,” he said, pointing at the staircase leading up. I followed Ryan upstairs, where he led me into a room.

“Is this your room?” I asked, looking around. The room seemed like a typical teenager's room, with gray walls and a carpeted floor. A desk stood in one corner of the room and a bed in the other. A gaming console lay underneath a TV and several shelves were adorned with small figurines.

“This is my sister’s room,” Ryan said, wiping something from his eye.

“Where is she?” I asked, sitting down on the bed. “I never knew you had a sibling before.”

“She’s dead,” he said. As I looked closer, I saw that there were some tears rolling down his face. The room was in disuse too, with all the plugs taken out and a fine layer of dust covering the desk. It almost felt like a museum piece, a relic outside of time.

“Oh my God,” I said, quickly standing up. It felt disrespectful to be sitting on the bed of someone who passed away. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s fine,” he said. “Take a seat, I’ll sit down next to you.”

I slowly sank back down, following Ryan’s order. He made his way next to me and sat down.

“Do you want to tell me about her?” I asked.

“That’s the reason I brought you here,” he replied, chucking a little. “She was just like you.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, furrowing my brows. I couldn’t imagine how Ryan’s dead sister was like me.

“She was transgender, I mean.”

“Oh,” I said. I didn’t expect Ryan to have a sister, let alone a transgender one. “What happened to her, if you’re okay with me asking?”

“She died of suicide three years ago,” he said. “My parents weren’t the biggest fans of her being transgender so she was already struggling. Then, word got out at her school that she was trans and things didn’t go so well. We lived in a worse area then, so she didn’t go to the most supportive school. She got bullied a lot and so we moved here so she could get away from things. But even then, she just couldn’t handle it anymore.”

“Wow,” I said gulping. “That sounds really difficult, I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you,” he said. “Now, I’m not saying this to scare you or anything. Most people at our school are perfectly supportive, a lot know that I’m bisexual and are fine with it. The same goes for everybody else in the GSA club, lots of them are out and have no problems. Not to mention you have me and your brother to stop anyone who’s mean to you.”

“That’s good to hear,” I said. I was slightly assuaged after hearing that, glad to see that things could go well at my school.

“I just thought it was important to let you know a little about me and why I started the GSA club. I just wanted to give a supportive space to people. Because I think if she, my sister, had something like this, she would still be around today. I’m hoping that the club will also give you and the rest of the members a safe space to express themselves.”

By the time he finished that sentence, Ryan was shaking. It was clear that he was trying to keep himself composed but emotions were overwhelming him.

“It’s okay,” I said, stroking his back in an effort to help. “You’re doing a great job, I’m sure your sister would be proud.”

We sat in silence for a minute as Ryan slowly began to shake less and less. He eventually stopped and breathed in deeply.

“So yeah, that’s what happened with my family. My parents are super supportive of LGBT people now, I guess they view her death as something that happened due to their ignorance. I just wished they helped her a little bit earlier.”

“I wish they did too.”

“Anyways, that’s enough for this heart-to-heart, don’t you think?” Ryan said, wiping a tear off his cheek. “Let’s go do something else. ”

***

“Why are you so good at this?” I asked, miffed. I had lost yet another round that Ryan won without breaking a sweat. At this point, he was playing with one hand to give me a chance to win and was still handily winning round after round. My aim just wasn’t good enough, and he was easily able to shoot me from anywhere.

“Look, you’re the one who wanted to challenge me at my best game,” Ryan said, laughing hard. “Obviously I was gonna wipe the floor with you. Aren’t nerds supposed to be good at video games though?”

“I’m not a nerd,” I said, shoving Ryan with all the strength I had. As expected, he didn’t even flinch. “If I’m a nerd you’re a stupid jock.”

“Hey, come on now,” Ryan said. “You know there’s no one as smart as me. I have decent grades.”

“Genius,” I said, my voice dripping with sarcasm. “You’re talking like half of those grades didn’t come from the homework I completed.”

“Hey, once you give it to me it is my intellectual property,” Ryan said. “Therefore, my work.”

I shoved Ryan again, but he didn’t even react to it.

“You’re going to have to try a little harder than that if you want to knock me down,” he said.

I decided to try harder, getting up and using all the strength in my body. Despite my best efforts, he remained sitting still. I kept on pushing until I realized what I was doing. One of my hands was situated on his broad shoulders and the other on his chest. They both felt super warm and muscular and before I knew it I was looking away to hide the growing blush on my cheek. I quickly pulled my hands away and sat back down.

“How strong are you?” I asked, panting

“I’m on the football team. Of course I’m pretty strong,” he said.

“Ugh,” I said. “I give up, you’re too strong.”

“Thanks for admitting,” he said with a wink.

“Let’s do something else, I’m tired of losing.”

“Sure, let’s see what I have,” Ryan said, stretching as he got up. He looked around his room, and I took the opportunity to take a peek as well. His room’s layout was very similar to his sisters. The exception was that there were sports memorabilia and trophies instead of figurines. “Hmm, I don’t have much else to do. I usually rotate between talking to friends, playing games, and practicing football. You can’t really talk to my friends and I’m not sure if you would want to play football.”

“Let’s do it, I’ll beat you,” I said, a look of determination appearing on my face.

“Football?” he asked, surprised. “Sure, we can practice throwing the ball around a little bit. I can teach you.”

Ryan led me to his backyard, where there were a variety of footballs and training equipment.

“You’re really serious about this, huh?” I asked, putting a hand above my eyes to shield them against the sun.

“Of course, I’m not sure if I’m good enough but I would at least like to play it on some professional level. After I finish college, of course, my parents still want me to get an education. Unless I make it into the NFL, then I’m dropping college quickly. Also, catch.”

He threw a lightning-fast football at me that I was barely able to catch. I was knocked off my balance and had to struggle to get back onto my feet. My chest hurt a little due to the sheer force of impact.

“Jeez, go easy on me,” I said, letting the football drop to the floor. “That hurt.”

“That was me going easy,” Ryan said. “Sorry, I’m used to using a lot of force. Besides, you’re lucky it didn’t hurt even more.”

“Huh?” I asked, tilting my head. “What do you mean?”

“You know, once you start hormone treatment you’ll get boobs,” he said, slowly lobbing a ball over to me. “That would definitely make it more painful if you got hit in the chest.”

“Oh,” I said, a little embarrassed. I caught the football and threw it back, although it landed short of Ryan by a few feet. I rubbed my chest, a little sad at the emptiness there. “That would be nice.”

***

By the time I got home, I was dead tired. I had been running around trying to catch Ryan’s throws for an entire hour, and it was clear my little body was not equipped for much physical exercise. I collapsed onto my bed, panting for air. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to get some sleep when I saw the clock. It was only 6, a little too early to be getting any sleep in. I sighed and got up, smoothening out the bed. I decided to make my way over to Daniel’s room, knocking on the door.

“Hi Daniel,” I said, rubbing one arm with the other. “I just wanted to apologize”

“Julie, hi,” Daniel said. “What do you have to apologize for?”

“I don’t know, I just felt bad for ignoring you after what happened on Friday.”

“Come in,” Daniel said. He smiled and opened his room door. “Let’s talk.”

I walked over to his bed and took a seat on the mattress, smoothing out the bedsheets next to me.

“I was just so surprised and nervous after what happened that I found it difficult to talk. I’m sorry if that made you feel bad.”

“Don’t worry, I’d feel the same way if I was in your situation,” Daniel said, sipping on a glass of water. “Apology accepted, don’t worry about it.”

“Thanks,” I said, smiling. “Do you have anything to ask me though? You did seem a little confused at some points.”

“Is it okay if I asked what led to all this?” Daniel asked. “Like what led you to become trans?”

“Let’s see,” I said, sighing. “I’ve actually been crossdressing for a while now. Well, I guess it’s not crossdressing anymore but you know what I mean. I realize now that I did it because I felt much more comfortable in my own body and with myself when I was a girl. Some of my friends told me about gender dysphoria and I researched it and everything just sort of fell in place from there.”

“Sorry, I don’t know a whole lot about this,” he said. “Are you gay? Well straight now. I’m just a little confused.”

“I’m not sure about that. I think I’m straight, like into guys. I was never attracted to girls that much but I never thought I would be into guys. But lately, I’ve been having some feelings for them and…” I trailed off, embarrassed at what I was saying. I decided against telling Daniel about my little experiment where I looked at pictures of both men and women to see who I was into. “Anyways, yeah. But that doesn’t really matter, how I see myself in terms of gender doesn’t have anything to do with my sexual orientation.”

“Okay, so your gender is completely separate from who you like?”

“Yes,” I responded, nodding. “Like if I liked girls that would just make me a girl who likes girls.”

“I see,” Daniel said. He set his cup down and took a seat in his chair. “The last thing I expected after coming home from practicing football that day was that I would have a little sister.”

“Yeah, I didn’t expect it either,” I said laughing. “How’s football going, by the way?”

“I’m doing good as always,” he said. “I’m getting scouted by some colleges so I’m going to have to decide where I want to go soon.”

“Oh right,” I said, my face falling. “You’re gone by the end of this school year.”

“Hey, it’s still a while away,” he said, tousling my hair with his hand. “I’ll still call and such often.”

“It’s just I’ll miss you if you go,” I said, rubbing my arm in embarrassment.

“I’ll miss you too. I can always visit often.”

We hugged, with me sinking into his warm arms.

“Thank you, Daniel,” I said.

“Of course,” he responded. “Do you want to talk and maybe play a game or two until Mom and Dad get home?”

“I would love to,” I said, smiling. I was glad things were back to normal between us.