For Chris
Whoever you are holding me now in hand,
Without one thing all will be useless,
I give you fair warning before you attempt me further,
I am not what you supposed, but far different.
—Walt Whitman
I’m grown, and I’m going to wear my dresses.
—Billy Porter
Chapter 1
I grew up in the wrong house. The ceilings were low and there was too much stuff everywhere. Books crammed into leaning bookcases. Blankets folded on the back of the couch. In certain moods I wanted to run away. There are a lot of stories about teenagers who run away. But that always seemed like too much work to me. The teenagers who run away just come back again. And the message of the story is something like, Why run away when you could learn to be at peace with where you are? Stories like that didn’t help me. I didn’t like where I was. It made me itch. Being in that house, alone with my parents, made me itch. Running away seemed like too much work, and I didn’t know where I’d go.
You wouldn’t know just meeting me that I was the sort of kid who wanted to run away. I got pretty good grades, and grown-ups tended to like me. I could be quiet, but I smiled a lot. If you smile like you understand when people tell you things, they like you. I’d worn the same jacket with a broken zipper since eighth grade. I didn’t care about clothes. That’s the kind of smiling, nice kid I was.
My best friend was Mabel. Mabel was a badass who wouldn’t seem like she’d be friends with someone like me. She was tall—taller than I am—with a thick straight bob of black hair; she would stand there with her head dangling from her neck like a bird. Usually she would hold her hands in her pockets or behind her back, because when she didn’t put them away they’d flutter all over the place. We met freshman year and I think she knew right away that I wasn’t the person I seemed to be. When I was with Mabel, I would feel a creature wake up in me and run circles around my insides. We used to laugh a lot and go to this coffee place called Carma’s, and Mabel would tell me about the girls she had crushes on. I’d laugh and give her advice and then we’d speculate about the future of the world. Coffee was starting to be our big new thing, at the end of sophomore year.
But then Mabel’s dad got a job in Pittsburgh and they moved.
Her last night in town we climbed up to the roof of our favorite parking garage. We took pictures of ourselves with the four views behind us—the north, the south, the east, the west.
“Maybelline,” I asked her, “what am I going to do without you?”
“Alexidore,” she replied, which is what she called me, even though my real name is Alex, short for Alexander, “it’s simple. You’re going to live your best life and conquer the school.”
And we both laughed. We peered down at people who talked with their hands as they waited in line to buy movie tickets or drifted out of the Spanish restaurant. Later we bought a pack of cigarettes to smoke, but they made us sick, so we gave the rest of the pack to a man on a bench. I was sad from that minute on. I get this sadness sometimes that comes over me like a blue shadow, and I got it then. I knew that as soon as the school year started all the teachers would say hello and I’d wave back and smile and people would like me because I was the same person I’d always been—the person they thought they knew me to be.
After Mabel moved, I had about two months of summer left to sulk. I knew other people, yes, sure, but they weren’t my real friends. They didn’t wake up that little creature inside of me, so why would I want to see them?
I did do one social thing after Mabel left. This was late in July, and the whole city was hot and the Orioles had just won some big tournament, so everyone’s cars had flags in the windows. I ran into Jen and Jo, who I sort of knew from our class, in the aggressively air-conditioned produce section of the grocery store, and they said I should come hang out with them sometime. Jen balanced a soda bottle on her head as we stood there. Jo’s hands were full of oranges. I could see the goose bumps on their arms from the AC. I was sweaty and I smelled like the sunscreen my mom made me put on. They told me they were going to this pool party at someone’s house that night and I should come. They told me Tracy would be really glad if I did. Tracy was the smartest person in our class, with a really nice smile, who I always found a little intimidating.
“Okay, sure,” I said, and shrugged.
I didn’t know what to make of what they said about Tracy being glad if I came, but Jo pinched my arm until I promised I’d be there.
“I don’t know anybody with a pool, so I guess it’d be cool to see what that’s like,” I said, and immediately decided I sounded dumb.
Jen took the soda off her head; she put her and Jo’s numbers in my phone. We parted ways by the tomatoes.
At the pool party, I felt like I kept doing stupid things. I didn’t want to take my shirt off because I never liked the way my stomach sagged over the edge of my bathing suit. My chest was pale and my nipples were little soft points. So instead, I ate more chips than I wanted and dripped salsa on the redwood deck. I tripped on the hose at one point and made a weird noise as I fell into the grass. But Jen and Jo and Tracy were nice and made fun of me just the right amount. Even their friend James, who had a buzz cut and an earring and usually made me nervous, seemed like he didn’t mind I was there. By the end, I was telling stories about my mom’s childhood in North Carolina, on what she always described as a post-hippie commune. These were stories I knew would impress people. They weren’t about me, but I got to tell them, which meant I got to be at least a little bit impressive. I also told them about this eco-warriors documentary I’d seen. Jen and Jo laughed and came and went with paper plates full of chips and baby carrots. Tracy just sat and listened.
The next morning I woke up knowing I’d been a doofus the night before and decided that none of them would ever want to hang out with me again.
I have this theory that some people are Real People and some people are not. Real People are comfortable being themselves and don’t have to think about what they want. They laugh out loud and they eat when they’re hungry and they say what they’re thinking no matter who is listening. And the paradox of it is that the harder you try to be Real, the deeper you know that you’re not. Going to pool parties tricks you into thinking you might get to be Real for a little bit. But then you wake up the next morning and you almost don’t want to get out of bed because you feel like your body is a costume and your voice is a recording and whatever little kernel of Realness you might have is buried or drowned or dead. That kernel will never, not in a million years, see the light of day.
But maybe that’s just me.
I still didn’t know what to make of the thing Jen had said with the soda bottle on her head, that Tracy would be glad to see me. Tracy had barely said anything to me during the pool party. And I hadn’t said anything to her in particular, just the things I said to everyone. I told my dumb stories and could tell she was listening. At one point I’d asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up. That was something my dad would always say as a joke to other people his age, and it could be pretty charming when he did it, in a dad sort of a way. But I guess it’s less obviously a joke when you’re saying it to someone who’s still a sophomore in high school. Jo had answered for Tracy—jumped in before Tracy could open her mouth.