My ears still stung when the girls dropped me off near the trail to the tree house. I knew better than to try to find out from them what Grant had planned, so I got out of the car without protest, smiling to myself as Layla wolf-whistled and screeched down the street. Once they were out of sight I made my way down the trail, my hoodie providing minimal protection against the chill blowing off the lake.
The undergrowth was mostly dead this far into November, and inches of fallen leaves obscured the path. I heard distant music and followed it to its source. When I stepped out of the trees and got my first glimpse of the lake glittering like crystal in the late-afternoon sun, it took me a moment to realize that Grant was there, leaning against the tree, fiddling absentmindedly with a lighter.
He wore a slightly threadbare black suit with buttons that shimmered in the light. His hair was combed and slicked back, and he had shaved. I loved the feel of his stubble on my face, but his smooth cheeks made him look princely and dashing. I took a small step forward.
“Wow,” I said. “I mean, hi. Apparently you’ve been getting something ready?” I recognized the music as the soundtrack to Amélie and grinned.
“Your birthday present,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck and smiling sheepishly. He nodded toward the ladder. I climbed up and saw the tree house floor covered in a white blanket, with two plates of food. Candles flickered on the window ledge. “Surprise!”
I hugged him and gave him a kiss.
“What’s that smell?” I said. “It’s wonderful.”
“Sole Meunière,” Grant said. “Hope I pronounced that right.” He hadn’t, but he had gotten it wrong in a cute way. “And there’s a hot potato salad and some baked zucchini with olive oil too.” He laced his fingers in mine and I felt so good, like lying in a sunbeam on a spring afternoon and falling into cold water after exercising all at once. “I remembered what you said when we watched Amélie, about wanting to live in Paris one day, so I thought I’d bring France here for a night.”
“Grant,” I said, turning to him, “this is wonderful. I don’t know what to say.”
“Yeah,” Grant said. I realized he was staring at me. “You make me feel that way a lot.” His lips parted as we stared at each other, and for a moment our eyes just danced back and forth and we breathed each other in.
He stepped forward and pressed his lips to mine. I closed my eyes and leaned into him, my fingertips grazing the lapels of his jacket as our mouths moved. I smiled and bit his lip as I undid the buttons on his jacket. He shrugged it off and broke our kiss to gingerly hang it over a tree branch.
“Sorry,” he said. “It’s just it’s the only suit I’ve got and I don’t wanna mess it up. It needs to last me at least until homecoming.”
I silently hooked a finger around his tie and pulled him to the tree trunk. He fussed at first, afraid the food might get cold, but I wasn’t hungry. I untied his tie, throwing it onto the same branch as his jacket. He placed his hand on my thigh. I put my hand against his chest and loved how hard his muscles were under his shirt, and especially how different our bodies were, how we were as different as two people could be but when he kissed me again our differences came together and we weren’t hard chest muscles or a soft thigh or breasts or beard shadow, we were just one thing exploring itself and shivering with the joy of it.
He reached under my skirt and I stiffened instinctively, still not used to that territory being safe. He looked up at me, eyes wide, and I slowly loosened back up. I nodded and we resumed our kiss as his fingers danced up my thigh and found the top of my leggings, which he slowly pulled down. We both looked at my legs as he unpeeled them. They were November pale, but long and shapely. Seeing him see them, I loved them even more. He ran his hand up my calf to the back of my knee and then up the back of my thigh and I gasped at the realization that touch could be like this. I thought of that poor girl pretending to be a boy who tried to kill herself and I wanted her to see this, to feel this, so she could understand that one day she might not just be okay with her body but that she would be able to feel things, beautiful things, inside of it.
He kissed the nape of my neck and I unbuttoned his shirt and slid it down his arms. His body was so lean and strong and real, not the body of a model or a movie star or even really an athlete, but a body with muscles built from long, tiring labor. I lifted my sweater over my head and I wasn’t afraid. I wasn’t afraid. We stared at each other for a moment and came to a silent decision. I stood and wiggled out of my skirt while he sat forward and shucked his pants. We looked at each other again, and my breath caught in my chest.
I bit my lip and unclasped my bra and let it fall to the floor. His eyes were so wide I could see my reflection in them, and the girl in those mirrors was smiling and she was beautiful. He took me by the arms and pulled me back down. I giggled and ran my fingers down his stomach as he crawled on top of me.
He kissed me again and I wrapped my arms around him. His fingers ran down my side, tickling me, and it took every ounce of willpower not to giggle and squirm, and from there they passed over my hip bone and down farther still. I didn’t stop him but I breathed in sharply and stiffened. His eyes snapped open and he raised himself off me, his eyes wide with concern.
“Is this your first time?” he asked. When I looked away, he touched my cheek, turning my gaze back to his. “Of course it’s your first time. You said I was your first kiss. Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I said, biting my lip. I knew where I wanted to go with Grant tonight, but now that we were here, I was scared.
“Okay.” He rolled onto his side and rested his hand on my cheek. “Do you wanna slow down?”
“Yeah,” I said, grateful that he knew, and understood. “This is really wonderful, but yeah.”
“That’s fine,” he said. “That’s so absolutely fine.” He rolled onto his back. We laced our fingers together and watched the sky fade from orange to purple to black, just feeling each other’s warmth and listening to each other’s breathing.
“I’ve been thinking about the future,” Grant said. I turned to look at him. He was still staring up at the dome of stars above us. “I can’t get into NYU or anything, but I talked to the guidance counselor and she said if I get my grades up I could get some grants and go to college in state. I might be able to go to community college without even takin’ out any loans.”
“Wow,” I said, snuggling up next to him and resting a hand over his heart. It was beating so fast. I didn’t ask what he was going to do about his family—I wanted him to only think about himself, for once.
“And I was thinkin’,” he said, turning now to look at me. Our noses pressed together and I unfocused my eyes. “I could use some of my financial aid and get a computer, and when you’re in New York we could Skype each other.”
“Maybe you could come up and visit,” I said.
“Maybe,” Grant said. “That’d be nice.”
“And maybe,” I said, bringing my lips centimeters from his and letting my eyelids droop, “once you’ve gotten all A’s down here, you could transfer to my school and get an apartment with me.”
“For now though,” he said, pulling me tight to him and sneaking a quick kiss, “this is just fine.”
I nodded. But my mind was already racing ahead, imagining a future I had scarcely allowed myself to consider. I thought of Grant holding my hand as we walked down a New York City street, of lounging on a blanket in Central Park, reading for class as he napped peacefully beside me. I knew we were only just beginning, but I couldn’t help imagining what it would be like to be with him until the end.
“I want you to be my first,” I said, chewing the inside of my cheek. “When I’m ready, I want it to be you.”
“No rush,” Grant said, burying his face in my shoulder. “We’ve got all the time in the world.”
AUGUST, TWO YEARS AGO
“You really wanna come?” Mom called from the living room. “Pretty sure I know what you like by now.”
“I haven’t left the house all summer,” I called back. I accidentally turned my head as I spoke, smearing a line of eyeliner from the middle of my eyelid up to my eyebrow.
“Shit.” I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, trying to stay calm. This should have been easy. I’d been drawing and painting since I was in kindergarten. But nothing was easy, not in this strange in-between time. The hormones I’d been taking hadn’t finished their work yet, and I wouldn’t be old enough for the surgery until next summer.
I opened my eyes and looked in the mirror sitting on my desk. My hair was still short and boyish, though its growth had sped up noticeably thanks to the hormones. My right eye was bare while my left eye was ringed with eye shadow and eyeliner in thick, childish smears. My cheeks were two bright, red circles like an embarrassed anime character. I watched as my mouth screwed up and my eyes started to twitch. I felt tears forming, and I knew that if I let them loose I would have to start all over, but I felt so helpless and stupid that I wondered what the point was in the first place. Mom knocked gently at my door.
“I changed my mind,” I said. I tried to sound calm but it came out as a pathetic whimper.
“You’re crying.”
“I’m f-fine.”
“You can’t lie to me,” she said. “You got ten seconds before I come in there, so if you need to make yourself decent, now’s the time.”
I shuffled over to my bed and slouched on the edge, still sniffling. My cat, Guinevere, padded across the bed and bopped her face into my shoulder, the sound of her purring only just barely lifting my spirits. The door creaked. I watched Mom’s white sandals as she came in. She sat down beside me and her soft, round hand squeezed my shoulder.
“I look stupid,” I said. “I’m not a boy or a girl anymore. I’m just broken. It would have been easier if I’d died.”
“Easier for who?” Mom said. Her hand tightened. I turned to face her and there was a steeliness in her narrowed eyes that seemed completely out of place in her soft features.
“Everybody but you I guess,” I whispered. I looked away again and her grip weakened.
“You wouldn’t hurt your mama, right?”
“Right,” I muttered.
“You promise you ain’t gonna … again…?”
“Promise.”
“Atta girl,” she said. She grabbed both shoulders and turned me toward her, looking all roses and biscuits again. “Mason girls don’t quit.”
“I’m still a Hardy.”
“Well, your dad’s mama was a hard old bitch, so she counts too.” I smiled despite myself. “Now, let’s see what all the fuss is about.” She put her fingers under my chin and turned my face this way and that, a thoughtful expression on her face. “Good lord, Amanda, you got a good inch slathered on here. Who said you needed this much?”
“The Internet,” I said sheepishly. Mom made a dubious noise at the back of her throat.
“The Internet says lots of things, hon. Remember Hank?”
“The ointment guy?”
“Yup. Internet said we was a perfect match, and look how that turned out. Ointment stains in my damn carpet and just as single as ever.”
I laughed, forgetting the burning puffiness around my eyes for a moment. She grabbed the makeup wipes off my desk and started gently rubbing my face like she used to when I was little. “Makeup has lotsa uses. One of ’em is to highlight your eyes, cheeks, and lips so they stick out a little, give you a kinda feminine glow that boys think’s natural. There now.”
“What are the other uses?”
“Looking young,” she said without looking up. “But if you looked any younger, folks’d wonder why I let you out of your crib.”
I laughed. This felt right. This felt like the moment I had wanted with Mom since I was old enough to know I wanted anything at all.
“Quit moving! Now, wink at me and hold it.” I did as I was told. The tip of her tongue poked out of her lips and she squinted as she took the pencil to my eyelid in long, graceful strokes. “Now, open both eyes and look up.”
She ran the pencil along the waterline of both eyes. “You know I thought you were gonna be a girl when I was pregnant?” My eyebrows popped up. She snorted and made a tutting sound, and I forced myself to return to a neutral expression. “I was a little sad when you came out a boy. I knew I didn’t wanna go through that whole ordeal again, so I was afraid I’d never get to show anybody this stuff.”
“Me too,” I said. I closed my eyes as she lightly brushed a peach blush onto my cheeks. “I was afraid too, I mean.”
“You still afraid?” she said. I opened my eyes and saw a look of concern pulling her smile down.
“Yeah,” I said. “Not as much. In different ways. Scared of getting hurt by people instead of scared to live at all.”
“At least you’re smart as I always thought then,” she said. “Pucker up. Being a girl in this world means being afraid. That fear’ll keep you safe. It’ll keep you alive.”
“Is it really that bad?”
She ran the balm along my lips and signaled for me to pucker. “Maybe not. Who knows? World’s different now. When you told me about … your condition, I was more sad for you for having to deal with being a girl than anything else. Go check your reflection.”
“Oh,” I said when I reached the mirror. I brushed my fingers against the glass. Burgundy lines around my eyes, faint peach pigment on my cheekbones, and brownish-red lip gloss, and somehow the face staring out at me was one I’d never seen before. It was the one I always felt like I should have seen.
A wave of vertigo washed over me. I leaned back against the wall and grabbed a nearby bookshelf. My cheeks hurt and my eyes were starting to water again, but it felt different.
“You okay?” Mom said, walking up behind me.
“I think I might be allergic or something. I feel kinda strange … sort of floaty and light-headed.”
“You ain’t sick, hon,” Mom said. She kissed my cheek and hugged me so tight I thought I might break a rib. “That’s joy.”