TWENTY-TWO
DION
FIFTEEN YEARS AGO - JULY
I don’t knowhow long I’ve been awake but it’s long enough for me to replay the whole of last night several times in my mind. And each time I get stuck on that conversation I overheard between Miles and Benji.
She’s just really vulnerable, you know…A little bit delusional…Maybe somebody abused her or something when she was a kid…I won’t be hanging around her. Why would I?
Who the fuck does he think he is? Does he think because we shared two double periods a week together for the last year that he knows me? Does he think that afternoon in Paris we spent together gives him the right to pyschoanalyse me?
Still lying in bed, I screw my face up and cover my eyeballs with my fists, wanting to hit the words I heard out of my head. “He doesn’t know me,” I say out loud. “Nobody knows the real me.”
Apart from me.
I know who I am. And who I’m not. And I am not adelusional, vulnerable girl. I’m a capable and strong man. I’m a fucking man!
“I’m a fucking man!” I say out loud. Loud enough for my sister to hear in the room next door. Loud enough for my parents to maybe hear downstairs.
But I don’t care anymore. I know who I am. It’s time for everyone else to catch up. It’s time for me to stop putting their discomfort before my own. It’s time for me to prove Ben Smith and Miles Jizzface wrong. It’s time for me to live my life the way I want to live it. The way I’m supposed to live it.
Throwing the covers off me, I dress quickly, brush my teeth and run a comb through my hair. I look tired, but very, very determined.
I pound down the stairs, faster than I have in years. My parents are seated at the kitchen table, mugs of tea in their hands and sections from the weekend newspaper strewn in front of them.
They both look up at me at the same time, eyes curious and expectant.
“Mum, Dad, I’m not…I’m a man. A trans man.” The words tumble out of me but they’re the most solid, real words I’ve ever spoken in my life.
They don’t move. They don’t blink.
I pull in another breath. “I’ve known for a while. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I’ve been…trying to figure out how I could do so without it blowing up, you know. Because of course this is going to change things and I know that we don’t need any more stress in our lives and?—”
My mum holds up her hand and I stop talking. “Dee, take a breath.”
I do as I’m told, my gaze flitting between herand my father.
“Come and sit down.” Mum gestures to the chair next to her and opposite Dad.
I sit and place my hands on the table.
“Dad, please say something.” I stare at him. His big brown eyes — his favourite gift to me, he often says — are fixed on me but still he doesn’t speak. And yet plenty is communicated. A slow smile stretches his lips. His shoulders sink on a deep exhale. Moisture gathers in the corners of his eyes.
“My son,” he says, finally.
And I burst into tears.
I haven’t cried in years and it shows. Years and years of tears stream out of me. My nose starts to run and I am so overwhelmed by the physicality of my sobs that I don’t even think about getting up to look for a tissue, but then a box is suddenly in front of me and my mum’s arms are around my body and my dad has stretched over the table to hold my hand, and I know that everything is going to be okay. It’s going to be hard, but it’s going to be okay.
TWENTY-THREE
BENJI
NOW
I don’t remember sayingthat. I really don’t. Iwouldn’thave said that.
I would have never even thought those things about Dion, let alone said them out loud and certainly not to Miles. But I believe Dion. He heard what he heard and I believe that somebody hearing such a thing would remember it better than the teenage fool who said them to impress a pseudo friend.
