Observations on the First Day of School, Harry typed on his laptop. It would have been fine, but Dad told the teacher that he had to call me Harriet and then it got stupid fast, and I’m stupid so I panicked.
Note to self: Panicking is stupid.
Dad is stupid.
Everything is stupid.
Harry read what he had typed. It wasn’t bad in that it was true, but still, it wasn’t good either. If his dad saw it, he would kill Harry. Harry started hitting the backspace key and watched the word “stupid” disappear, one letter at a time.
One day, he was going to write a whole entire book about what it was like to be a boy who had been identified as a girl—“transgender” was the word for it, according to Google, not like he had an expert around to ask or anything—and then everyone would understand.
Maybe even he would understand.
But he didn’t quite understand the why of it. Particularly the why me part. It’s just who he was.
He just wanted to be a kid. To play video games. To learn new tricks on his skateboard. To have a group of boys to hang out with and to just do stuff.
The thing was that sometimes a thing could happen to you, and sometimes it could be really personal, but you couldn’t explain why. You didn’t know what it was, what misfired when, or if it even was a misfire or if it just was, like having brown eyes or curly hair. Personally, he didn’t think it was a bad thing. If he could change anything about himself, it actually would be his hair.
But he would, eventually, be able to do that.
Sooner or later, he’d be able to just go ahead and cut his hair short, without his parents having to approve it.
That’s what he’d say in his book, The Book with All the Answers, in a non-annoying way. What he wrote would make other kids feel OK in their own skin.
If he were to write a book, it would 100 percent not be annoying.
It would answer everything to everyone’s satisfaction.
No kid would be in trouble ever again for being who they were! They definitely wouldn’t get bullied about it.
It would make it OK, not just for kids like Harry, but for dads like Harry’s dad.
Basically, it would be a magic, miracle book.
“Duh,” Harry said out loud. “As if.” Then he mentally crumpled up his own idea and threw it away. Why would he be able to do this thing?
Writing a book was hard.
Impossible, even.
Writing lists was easier.
He highlighted everything that he’d typed and erased it. Then he started a new list.
Goals For This School Year:
1. Don’t freak out.
2. Make friends with boys (Best friends) (OK to be friends with girls but just acquaintances, sort of).
3. Always use the bathroom before leaving home so you NEVER have to use the GIRL’S bathroom at school. DUH.
He underlined the “DUH.”
That about summed it up, he thought.
Harry closed his laptop and turned the Xbox on. His short-term goal was to play through all the new levels of this video game in record time. That was an easier goal than, say, writing a book to explain inexplicable things.
“Kapow,” he said.