NINE
March 13, Eighteen Days to Deadline
My name is Ben Price, I’m seventeen years old, and I’m nonbinary. Was that right, D? Just my name and age?
I guess love is something I’m still trying to figure out, or understand. It took me a long time to date anyone, well, relatively long time. I’m only seventeen, I guess. I just needed time to figure out my own identity. I was really confused about how I wanted to present, I didn’t understand who I was or what I wanted for myself, so I don’t think I could have, like, brought somebody into that. I mean, that feels like a fundamentally queer thing to me. To want to know your otherness before you can know someone else’s.
Queer love, to me, is like when you cut the gift-wrapping paper and the scissors catch and it makes that slick cutting sound and slides all the way down smooth. It’s like that with Edie. She saved my life. That’s completely fully true. I never thought I’d be the type of person to say, like, oh this person is my better half. This person is like … the love of my life. Yeah. The love of my life.
Edie was slumped over Ben on their bed reading a copy of David Sedaris’s latest collection of essays. She’d developed an obsession with him after hearing someone reading an essay of his on the radio. She looked him up after hearing the story and quickly devoured everything she could about him, every book, every interview. She could name his husband, sisters, hometown, favorite foods.
She had always been this way, liking things, ideas, and people too much too quickly to the point of quiet obsession. Bands she’d only heard once, facts about space, a fashion designer whose clothing she liked but would never be able to buy; they all got caught in her mind until she meticulously searched and read about them, gorged and exhausted with knowledge.
Even realizing she was queer at age thirteen, Edie tracked down dozens of books and websites about LGBT rights, read whole novels under her blankets at night about white boys in the Midwest being disowned by their Catholic families, and pored over plays with girls kissing in every other scene. None of it fit her individual feelings and story exactly, but she considered it valuable research regardless. It all made her into who she was.
Ben was doing something on their phone, but their eyes were glazed over to the point of not looking at all. Even though it was late at night, she knew she could fit in a few more pages before she had to head home. Her parents wouldn’t start looking for her until eight.
“Edie,” Ben whispered.
“Shhh.” She had just gotten to the end of an essay and had only a few pages left. She was usually at UN club at this time but it had been cancelled so she went to Ben’s.
“Okay.”
Edie tried to keep her focus on the page but couldn’t, afraid she’d been too harsh. She watched their lips part in hesitation and then close again. Edie already knew what they were going to ask. They wanted to come over. She retrained her eyes on the book, pretending to read, pretending to have something else to think about. A few moments passed and Edie peeked up as Ben finally tried again to open their mouth with more conviction.
“I have something to say,” they ushered out the words from their lips quickly.
“What?” she asked gingerly, placing her book face down on the bed. She looked up at Ben and waited.
“Not to say, but to ask.”
“Shoot.” She held her breath. They looked nervous, their nails digging into a loose strand on their faded jeans.
“I wanted to know,” they paused and inhaled deeply. “Do you think I could come meet your parents or something, sometime.” The words stuttered out uncertainly, Ben still not meeting Edie’s eyes.
Edie froze. She didn’t say anything as her mind went blank. Her hand slid beneath the book and she picked it up as if to begin reading again.
“Nope,” she voiced, the book blocking her face.
“What? Why not?” Ben’s voice dragged to a whine, like some injured animal.
“Why would you even ask that?” She rested the book against her face so that the pages touched her lips and muffled her voice as she spoke.
“Stop avoiding the question, and please put the book down, babe.” Ben’s words sounded more insistent now, almost upset. Edie suddenly grew tired. So tired she could barely get out words anymore. Being wrong was exhausting.
“What question? I don’t know what you’re asking me.” She let her eyes wander around the room to the rows of swimming, debate, and dance trophies Ben had lining their dresser. They were always winning something. She concentrated hard on the plaques and saw that they all said First Place. She tried to remember how many debates and dance competitions she’d sat in the audience for. She could feel the heat of Ben’s gaze on her as she thought about all of this. They were getting angry.
“I’m asking you why you’re ashamed of me.” Hot tears began to form at the corner of their eyes. They swiped their wrist quickly across their face as if to catch the crying before it started.
“I’m not.” She wasn’t. At least, she didn’t think so. She wanted to be her own person, but she wasn’t. Not yet, anyway. Their silent nods of approval when she got good grades or stayed in on weekends instead of asking to attend a school event or a birthday still meant something to her. Introducing them to Ben would crumble the façade she’d been delicately building since the day when she was thirteen when she’d realized she was a disappointment in the biggest way she could possibly be, a failure of literal biblical law.
“Of course you are. What other reason is there? You don’t even really like me. I’m just like—like some sort of fucking game to you.” Ben stood up and pushed off the covers from the bed in frustration.
“Ben.” Edie was surprised at their sudden redness, the shrillness of their voice as their anger gained momentum.
“What, Edie? Am I wrong?”
“Fine,” she said, finally letting go of the breath she’d been holding in, afraid. “You want to know the truth?”
“God, not the truth. That would just be way too much.”
“What does that even mean?” She stood up and looked at them as if for the first time.
“It means you don’t know how to be real about anything. It means your parents’ ‘holier than thou’ attitude has forced you to lie about every single fucking thing. It means you don’t tell the truth unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
It was true. Everything they said was absolutely true. Watching Ben hold back tears, she decided to be honest for once. “They don’t know that you’re nonbinary, and they will hate you automatically when they find out. They’ll act like they like you, but as soon as you leave, you’re done for. We’re over.”
In her home, there was no Ben. There was Ben in her thoughts but never on her tongue. There was Ben in a whisper. There was Ben beneath their sheets on early Monday afternoons. There was Ben across from her at a restaurant she knew her parents would never go to. She couldn’t conceptualize them to be something said out loud past her doorstep.
She wanted to be honest, to be open and free from judgement. Part of her hated the lying. She knew God didn’t hate her, but her parents were another story. She could already see their downturned lips, thin lines of disappointment at her supposed sin.
“Is that it?” They lightened.
Edie nodded, tired of all the yelling. She finally looked up and felt exhausted by all the truth in the room. This is the part where they break up with me, she thought.
“That’s not a big deal.” They softened, the room becoming suddenly less hot, less energetic.
“It’s not?” She let herself relax at their words.
“No. I can just not mention it.” Edie grew hopeful. If they lied to her parents everything would be fine and she could keep hiding them and their identity.
“Really? Like just use different pronouns?”
“Yeah, wait. I mean, no. I don’t want to do that.” They stumbled over their words. They sat down again on the bed and looked at Edie questioningly.
“Why not? It’s a perfect plan.”
“No. I don’t want to use pronouns I’m not comfortable with. I think maybe just not saying them would be better.”
“But you just said you would! I need you to.”
Edie heard herself and felt ridiculous. She was stuck with her parents, stuck with the selfish, anxious self they brought out in her. She was ever desperate for acceptance she knew she’d never get if she told them the truth. Edie knew college could be better, but for now, she was just some stupid, wanting child, hopeless for the last glimmers of her parents’ love for a version of her that didn’t actually exist.
“I’m not doing that, Edie. I worked way too hard to be comfortable with myself just to lie to more people in an attempt for them to like me or accept me. You of all people should understand that.” Their words ran on without a breath, small scissors cutting into Edie’s perfectly round plan. They waited to speak again. “I think we need to take a break. Like, a long one.”
Edie started to cry. She wiped the corners of her sweater against her eyes again and again, making the tears worse and reddening her skin.
“From each other?”
“Yes. Please go.” They looked away from her and kept their eyes on the abandoned copy of Calypso that had fallen to the floor.
Edie picked up her book and backpack. When she leaned over, the snot dribbled out of her nose and onto the blue rug. She tried to cover it up by wiping her shirt across her upper lip again and again but it was useless. She left without looking back at them. The sidewalk scuffed beneath her sneakers as she walked down to her bike parked by the neighborhood pool. The sun went down across the cream-colored houses, and Edie was left with nothing.
Edie loved Ben. She knew it as soon as she started her walk home. To Edie, love was Ben’s untethered laughter expanding over Edie’s body like a rush of water through a busted dam. Their t-shirt curving up when they reached for their locker to reveal just one earthly inch of pudge. Love was long. Love lived on Danica Street and drove a shitty red car. Love missed sixth-period Advanced Calculus to make out with Edie after lunch for four days in a row. Love was the plot of a B movie. Love kicked Edie in the chest and left her bleeding on the searing Texas concrete like love is so apt to do.