Chapter Eleven

 

 

 

The next morning Adam woke up with no Blaine next to him and came out of his tent to his aunt Amy and his uncle John packing up their big SUV. For a panicked moment, he thought they were going to leave him there on the beach too.

But then Seth waved him over and said, “Hurry up and get packed. My parents are taking us all out for breakfast. Then we’re going home!” He looked excited as he ran off down the beach toward where he and Blaine had made their own camp. Adam wondered if Seth had even noticed Blaine sneaking out again to be with him.

Adam turned to Uncle John. “Am I coming too?”

Uncle John frowned at him and stopped tying things to the roof of the SUV. “Of course you are. Why wouldn’t you be? We talked about this. Now go get ready before my wife changes her mind about wanting pancakes someone else made.”

Adam nodded and, as quickly as he could, threw his things together. It was the worst job he had ever done of packing up his tent, but it would have to do because he was in a hurry. Even though his uncle John had said he wouldn’t be left behind, Adam was afraid of them doing just that. His parents had turned on him so quickly. He expected his aunt and uncle to do the same thing to him if he messed up at all.

In their SUV, Adam pressed himself against the door. Blaine sat in the middle of the back seat with Seth on the far side. To avoid being a bother to anyone, Adam tried to stay small and stared at his nails as he picked the last of his old clear nail polish off them. He had been so brave a few days ago. He had thought for sure nothing at all would go wrong. And somehow he had been terribly out of his element. He wondered how he could have been so very wrong about his parents and how much they had loved him…or didn’t, he guessed, since that was pretty obvious now.

He shook his head and tried to listen to the conversations going on around him. But it was just noise, and he couldn’t make sense of any of it. He was stunned and unable to say anything. He wondered if his parents had ever really loved him. Wasn’t this not what parents were supposed to do to their kids? He was still himself, just more himself than he had ever been before. And that had apparently been too much for them to handle.

Blaine elbowed him in his side, though not that hard, and Adam turned his head to look up at him. “Huh?”

“Your aunt was asking you something,” he explained, and Adam moved his attention over to her.

His aunt Amy was turned around in her seat and looking back at him. “Are you okay? You’ve been really quiet these last few days.”

He had lost his parents. What did she expect from him? Adam shrugged and went back to looking at his nails.

“I talked to your mom today. She asked about you.”

That got him to look back up at her. She didn’t look like it was good news, though. “What’d she want to know?”

Aunt Amy frowned and shook her head. Nope, definitely not good news. “She thinks this is a phase. She wondered if you were ready to be yourself again. I wasn’t sure what to tell them.”

As good as Adam was trying to be right then, he couldn’t not react to her words. “You can start by telling her she’s not my mother. And this isn’t a phase I’m going through or anything else.” He went right back to picking at his nails, though much more angrily this time.

“Then what I told her works. I like being right.”

“Huh?” Adam had no idea what she was talking about, but when he looked back up at her, she was suddenly smiling at him.

“I told your mom to screw off, and that she didn’t deserve you. Adam, what you did, telling us all something so big about yourself, that was huge. I’m very proud of you. John and I both are. You have real guts. Now smile a bit more. Everything is going to change, but it’s going to be so much better too. And after breakfast you and I are going to get your hair fixed and you three are all going shopping for back to school clothes. No arguments this time. It’ll be so much fun to not have to worry about girl clothes and what’s in or not this year when I shop for you, Adam. Boys are so much easier to shop for.”

Tears warmed his face as Adam’s throat tightened up and when Blaine pulled him in against his side, Adam didn’t even try to stop crying. He just dug his fingers into Blaine’s shirt and held on to him as tightly as he could. They were both right, everything was going to change. And it was all going to be huge.

 

* * * *

After breakfast, Aunt Amy kept her word, and they all got haircuts. Adam’s heart beat so fast he thought he was going to pass out as a woman showed him to one of those shiny black swivel chairs. As he sat down, she said, “I see someone had a fight with a pair of scissors.” That made him smile a bit. She had no idea. “Don’t worry, sweetie, your hair will grow back in no time. I bet you’re the prettiest girl in your class.”

Somehow Adam had become able to cry at nothing and suddenly he was wiping away tears again. But Seth, on his left, came to his rescue. “Hey, Adam, are you going to shave your head or what? Can’t wait around all day for you to make a decision on what to do with that mess you call your hair.”

The woman behind him was quick to apologize. “Oh, I am so sorry. I just assumed… I…” Adam watched her shake her head in the mirror and he took a deep breath to try to slow his tears. It worked, a little.

“It’s okay. It’s…new?” Sort of. That was the best thing he could come up with to say. But it fit. Because this was new to him. This being a boy on the outside was all sorts of crazy new. “Can you cut it really short? But not shaved off?” He wanted to try going that short, someday, but he didn’t want to be shocked by it right away. Not when he’d never had a boy haircut to begin with.

“Of course.” She looked less worried now as she pulled out a clipper, something Adam had never once had used on his hair before. No more coconut-smelling sprays and styling creams. No more curling irons. It was all such a relief. He got buzzed on the sides, and his hair was cut short on top. She left it a little longer in the front, and showed him how to spike it with some gel she gave him a sample pack of.

Then, for the first time in his life, Adam got to see himself with a real boy’s haircut. And he started crying all over again as he stared at himself in the mirror.

Seth got up beside him and shook his head. “Jesus, stop that doing that. You know we don’t cry all the time, right? You’re a boy now. Start doing it right. You’re going to make us all look bad.”

Adam punched him in the shoulder, and he actually stepped back a little. Seth laughing made Adam laugh and he shook his head. And when he did that his hair didn’t fall over his neck and start irritating him. It wasn’t in his face. And he looked really good.

But not as good as he did half an hour later as he tried on guy clothes in the dressing room at a department store down the street. His jeans were baggy. They didn’t hug a single of those curves he hated. And Aunt Amy had managed to find him a really heavy duty sports bra, even though he didn’t have much to support. He wasn’t even sure why she’d handed it to him until he had put it on. And then he’d gotten an almost perfectly flat chest.

“Blaine! Seth!” Adam didn’t even think about it as he darted out of the dressing room with just the jeans around his hips and the sports bra on. Thankfully they were the only ones there trying on clothes or else that might have been embarrassing as they both opened up the doors to their own dressing rooms and looked at Adam like the place might have been burning down.

“I don’t have boobs anymore!” he nearly shouted at them after a few seconds in which it was clear that they weren’t understanding what he was trying to silently get through to them.

“Yay.” Seth rolled his eyes, but he was smiling as he closed the door and went back to trying on his own clothes.

“Congrats.” Blaine looked like he was going to go back into trying on his own clothes then too, but he stepped back out of the dressing room and rushed at Adam with a giant hug that took him off his feet. Adam held on to him tightly and shut his eyes. There were no lumpy, awful things between them. Just his flat chest against Adam’s muscular one.

Uncle John came into the dressing room area, looking worried. “I thought I heard screaming.”

“Adam was just excited. No more boobs,” Blaine explained to him.

Adam laughed and he wasn’t at all embarrassed when Blaine put him down and his uncle was watching them. “Hey. I’m almost done. Don’t know about these two, though.”

Uncle John shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. I think your aunt is buying out the shoe department right now, and that always takes a while. I’ll be right outside ready to be a pack mule for you three when you’re ready.”

Laughing, Adam headed back into his own dressing room, where piles of clothes still awaited his decision. Adam had grabbed everything that might have even somewhat fit him since he had been so excited to try on anything that he could that was for boys. And there’d been no one at the desk to tell him that he had too many clothes either.

After trying everything on, sometimes more than once, Adam settled on six pairs of jeans, four T-shirts, and a hoodie. Adam thought he had grabbed a ton of clothes in the end, but Seth had an even bigger haul, making his look pretty pathetic overall. Blaine hadn’t grabbed much for himself, just a few T-shirts and one pair of jeans. But Seth could hardly carry his clothes all at once as they headed toward the cart.

“I don’t need much,” Blaine explained with a shrug as Adam looked over at him.

“And I’ve learned better than to argue with my mom. Clearly you haven’t,” Seth said with a grin. They tossed it all into three haphazard piles in the cart and Adam stared at his new clothes, his fingers practically begging him to throw them on and get out of the girl clothes he had on. But Adam decided that he would wait until he was at his aunt and uncle’s house.

Uncle John pushed the cart as Blaine took Adam’s hand and pulled him over to the backpacks. “You’ll need a new one. And shoes too. Guys don’t wear shoes like yours.”

Adam glanced down at his shoes. They were perfectly good sneakers. And pretty plain too. But then Adam looked over at Blaine’s. He didn’t have any purple on his. Adam realized he was probably right about him needing new ones. Adam grabbed a black messenger bag and figured it would be what a guy would use. He looked to Blaine for confirmation and he smiled at him. “That’ll work.” Blaine then took his hand again and pulled him over to the shoe area, where Aunt Amy definitely was building herself a pile of small boxes to take home.

“Oh good! You made it over here. Adam, I’ve got a selection of shoes over here for you to go through. I wasn’t sure of your size so if anything is wrong, let me know. And pick at least two pairs. I love shopping. This is going to be fun.”

Adam was starting to like shopping a lot too.