Thanks, I think? Ze/zim/zis, btw, not they/them.
Oh, that’s gonna be a challenge. I’ll start practicing. I can’t wait to meet this Eris. Ze seems super cool (Did I use that right?) and you two look so hot together!!! I need to get to know zim(???) better whenever you finally let Allie and I visit you. Which is when, exactly? You still need to send us your graduation deets.
Yes, you got it right, but don’t get too excited. Not sure how long this will last.
Right, sure, because you’d totally bring someone you’re not crazy about to the wedding.
Allie said to bring someone even if it wasn’t serious.
Your mom says she wants to meet zim when you’re ready.
ARE YOU WITH THEM RIGHT NOW???
Yeah. It’s Friday Family Game Night.
I HAVENT TOLD THEM ABOUT ERIS
lol whoops. You put it online, Blokey!
On Insta! Not Facebook!
But it’s too late. My phone lights up with an incoming video call from my mom. I take a deep drag on the joint to ease the embarrassment and dread before answering. “Hi, Mom.”
Her hair fills the screen. “Your young man looks very interesting, Blakey-poo.”
“My human person, Mom.” Though that’s debatable. I choose not to press that passive-aggressive “interesting” she dropped—a Minnesota Nice habit she’s picked up in the twenty-four years of living in Solberg. Not that I ever press Mom on anything.
“Oh, he’s non-binary too?”
“Ze, Linda.Zeis non-binary, too,” Matt corrects, his tongue buzzing as he drags out the zee sound. I’m tempted to clarify that Eris identifies more closely with genderfuck, but that’s technically under the non-binary umbrella. And a deeper dive into gender expression than my parents could handle. “And I, for one, can’t wait to see how my parents react when they see just howinterestingze is!”
Matt must have taken the phone from my mother, because suddenly I can see all of them. Mom with her henna-dyed red mane of curls; Matt, his strawberry blond mop of hair and freckles popping against his tan skin and gap-toothed beam; Allie, with a sweet smile hiding her shit-eating grin because she’s secretly bitchy like me, and we love that about each other; and my dad, his gray hair pulled into his usual ponytail, who waves in the background before going back to squinting at his Scrabble tiles. Must be his turn. Our family takes Scrabble very seriously.
Seeing everyone I love in one place—excited to see me, to be a part of my life, even though I’m not there—hits me hard. Fighting back the burning in my eyes and the yearning ache for a life I can’t go back to, I smile, take a hit of the joint, and prepare to be roasted.
Six
Glacial Melt
Ihatedrivinginthe city (part of the reason I never go anywhere), so Eris drives the first leg to the Illinois border. And—because it’s a six-hour drive—we’re leaving at the ass crack of dawn. As an aspiring lawyer, I should get used to early mornings and navigating rush hour traffic, but I hate getting dressed before nine.
Dressed in my comfiest joggers and t-shirt, I curl up in the passenger seat, a scalding cup of gas station coffee pressed under my nose, snorting the caffeine until it’s cool enough to drink. In the driver’s seat, Eris talks shit about me. Namely, that I’m eerily quiet without caffeine, what a stereotype I am because I drive an Outback, and the binoculars in the driver’s side door, which ze assumes I use while I drive. I choose not to respond because I have, on occasion (in my defense, sandhill cranes!).
A little under two hours later, the coffee and Eris have done their job. I blink awake as Eris—who I just noticed is wearing a sundress in the exact baby pink of zis elbow-pit vulva-rose tattoo (honestly, a flattering color for zis tan skin)—pulls into a reststop. I am awake, I need to piss, and we’re almost to Wisconsin, so it’s my turn to drive the rest of the way. It’s not entirely even, but there are no tolls or confusing interchanges to navigate from here. It’s a fair swap.
The problem with being awake and paying attention is that I can’t tune out Eris’s constant chatter, most of it at my expense. Ze talkssomuch, reading every sign out loud, guessing what the roadkill used to be in graphic detail, and calling all the hawks perched along the freeway “falcons,” even though they’ve allclearlybeen red-tails.
It’s when ze points to a bird in the distance and declares it to be a bald eagle that I lose my patience at how confidently incorrect ze is. “Oh my god, it’s a turkey vulture!Notan eagle!”
“Oh, youcanspeak!” Eris squints through the windshield. “How do you know it’s a vulture?”
I fish my binoculars from the side pocket—proving exactly why I have them there—and pass them to zim.
Eris holds the binoculars up without removing the lens caps. “I can’t see anything.”
I snatch them back. “There’s another pair in the glove box.” The pair in the glove box are the ones I used as a kid. But if ze can’t even figure out the lens caps on my nice pair, then ze can use the little kid binoculars. I wait for Eris to find the turkey vulture again before I explain, “You see how the wings are tippy as it coasts? That’s a sign of a turkey vulture. Also, there are two of them, and they tend to be in pairs because they’re monogamous for life. Also, they’re actually bald, unlike the bald eagle, which has a white head, unless it’s a juvenile.”
“Dude, you’re a certified nerd. You’re full of nature shitandlaw shit.”
