Chapter 7
The late afternoon was spent at Patty’s studio with my family. She’d helped remove the puffiness from my face from crying, and we’d begun with some family portraits. Everyone taking a turn at playing model. James was actually good at it because he acted as a model for me often enough. But my mom and dad had fun making faces, or strutting their stuff, which had Aunt Patty giggling.
The ones I did dressed as a girl, I’d started off a bit nervous. How would dad react? Or James? Neither seemed bothered.
“Wow, squirt,” James said. “I need my girlfriend to take makeup tips from you.”
“That would be from me,” Mom corrected him. “Tory is still learning.”
“Learning how not to poke myself in the eye,” I grumbled.
“It’s all in the practice, like taking photos,” Patty said.
No one asked how the date had gone. I guess my tears must have been explanation enough. Only James commented. “Can I beat him up? For making you cry? He’d get less modeling jobs after I bust up his face. You make a pretty boy, too. Maybe you can take some jobs he would have gotten?”
“Jameson,” Mom warned.
I reached for James, offering him a hug which was rare. He grunted when I wrapped my arms around him and squeezed a little. “I’m okay,” I promised.
“You are,” he agreed. “Even if this boy doesn’t like you. Even if you like being a pretty girl, or a pretty boy, or a photo nerd.”
I pulled away and stared at him. “Aren’t you supposed to hate me or something for being the uncool brother?”
He made a face. “Um, bro, the cool or uncool thing isn’t decided by the universe. At least not for me. Though don’t date any of my teammates, they are all assholes who think with their dicks.”
“Jameson,” my mom gasped, “language.”
He held up his hands but gave me a look that said he wasn’t at all ashamed of what he said. “I mean it, no football players.”
I put my hand over my heart, pretty certain there wasn’t going to be anyone touching that for a while. “Promise.”
Patty showed me the pictures of me as a boy. “That’s for real?” I wondered. The only makeup I wore for those had been a bit of concealer to tone down the reflection of the lights. The photos made me look like a model, my hair unruly and cascading over my shoulders, expression focused and deep. Even the handful we’d done with me in glasses looked good. Like I was some hot nerd. “That’s not really me?”
“You’re pretty, squirt,” James teased. “I got all the handsome genes; you got the pretty ones. Might as well use them.”
The glam ones, with heavy eye makeup, and bright colors were intense. I could still see me in them now, from the boy in the photos to the girl glammed up. Patty took a few minutes and spliced together one that was the same full-face pose, half me as a boy, half me as a girl, and it was startling. Same person, two different sides of emotion, and yet it still grabbed something in my gut. That wasme. The me I felt was always inside. Two parts of the whole. Beautiful, and full of vibrant life, evoking emotions. It was also the sort of picture I longed to capture myself someday.
Jenny showed up with cake, and took a few pictures of her own. Glamming up much the way I had. “He makes a prettier girl than I do,” she said, passing out plates of cake. “Those cheekbones scream supermodel. He doesn’t even have to contour for that.”
I didn’t care about being a supermodel. I cared about the feeling of the pictures. Like I could be me and that was okay, no matter which side of the camera I was on.
I got both a digital and print copy of the half-and-half photo, the emotions it stirred in me making me cry again for a little while. But eating cake and later pizza, made everything better. We headed home. I posted the picture to all my accounts wondering if it was social suicide and hoping that everyone else would see the beauty I did, even if it didn’t meet the standards set by the world around me.
The next morning Dad drove James and me to school. He let us out at the front door, telling us to call if there was trouble. I hadn’t looked online, hadn’t had the heart to see if there was hate spewed at me for what I found magical. But it was Monday and another day of school. I was in my uniform, hair pulled back in a ponytail, and I headed inside with James close behind me. No one looked our way.
Three periods passed without a word. I knew it wouldn’t last, and the trouble came at lunch. I entered the lunchroom with Jenny and a handful of my nerd friends at my side, a few from the photo club who had been chatting over my camera upgrade, and headed for our normal table.
“Look, here come the ladies now.” Richard, otherwise known as “Rick the Dick,” stepped into my path. “The little princess. Not so pretty without the makeup. School policy is that girls wear skirts. You should go change.”
“School policy is that bullying of any kind is not tolerated,” I shot back stepping into his space and staring up at him even though he was a head taller than me. I folded my arms across my chest, unwilling to back down.
“He can’t help it his legs look better in a skirt than you’ll ever look as a tight end on the football team,” Jenny said. “Might want to stick to salad for lunch. You were looking a little heavy out on the field last week. You’re supposed to run in football, not waddle.”
He gaped at her. I lifted my phone and snapped a dozen pictures. “Fish out of water,” I said staring at them. “Waste of digital memory space.” He blinked around the flashes of light, which had been totally unnecessary in the bright lights of the lunch room. “I can’t even use these on Instagram,” I said flipping through the pictures. “How do you get a date if you can’t take a single good photo?” I deleted them one by one. “Delete, delete, delete, delete.” Paused on one and shook my head, “Screams meathead going nowhere, no thanks. Delete.”
He sputtered. I darted around him to take a spot at our table, everyone filing around me. A second later, a bulky body sat down beside me; Teddy, the quarterback. I braced for more trouble.
“You’re modeling now?”
