My legs trembling, I managed to descend the stairs about five minutes before I needed to leave for school. The door that connected the hallway with the kitchen was wide open, allowing me to spot my mother as she sat at the breakfast table. As I did so, my feet came to a standstill in the middle of the wooden staircase. I balled up my fists, as if I was about to confront some ancient dragon in a quest to save some damsel in distress, but in reality, my mind was already made up.
In one swift motion, I continued my descent while immediately turning to the left, once again separating me and my mother with a more comforting brick wall. I threw on my jacket, slung my backpack over my shoulder, and, without uttering a word, opened the front door. The smell of Kentucky Bluegrass assaulted my nostrils as I stepped outside the house of horrors.
I looked down at my feet and sighed. The nerves that had been wracking me were beginning to subside. While closing my eyes, I allowed my head to fall backwards and took a deep breath
“You okay, bud?”
An unexpected- but familiar- voice rang out from behind me. While straightening myself out, I turned around and spotted Riley’s tall physique as she stood only about fifteen feet away from me on the sidewalk. Her hair had been pulled back, exposing her furrowed brows.
There were a million things I wanted to say, needed to say even. But seeing her just standing there casually had never been part of the millions of scenarios that had been milling around in my brain all morning. Instead of using any of the lines I had thought about, I did something crazy and unexpected. I spoke the truth.
“Not really,” I said, shaking my head.
A slight smile appeared on Riley’s face as she responded. “Me neither.”
“This sucks,” I blurted out.
Her eyes widened. “Tell me about it.”
A moment of silence fell between us as we kept our gazes fixed on each other. Our lips curled inwards as we tried to hide our emotions while the awkward silence continued. It must have taken about five seconds until I was the first one to crack. I couldn’t help but laugh, and as I did so, Riley broke out laughing right away as well.
From an outside perspective, it must have looked ridiculous, two teenagers suddenly laughing at each other. We must have stood there for at least a full minute, just laughing our hearts out. For that moment, it simply didn't matter what had happened, what had been said, or how we felt about it. Because, in that moment, we both could finally see what this situation truly was: ridiculous.
I stepped towards my friend and spoke. “I messed up,”
Her reply was simple, and to the point. “Tell me about it.”
***
“How did he take it?” Riley asked, leaning back against the metal pole that signified the location of our local bus stop. Her gray sweater melted in with the similarly colored metal of the pole.
“I don’t think he really gets it, to be honest.” I set down my backpack and rested it against my leg. The bus was at least a few minutes away, and I didn’t feel like carrying all the weight of these books for nothing. “He just made some jokes about me being small and kind of moved on from it. Said something about it not being a big deal, and that it will all work out in the end.”
Riley shrugged. “I mean, it could have been a whole lot worse.”
“Oh yeah, for sure.” I replied. “Somewhere in the back of my mind, I was prepared for him to just walk away from me right there. Or even worse, get physical.”
She smirked. “Doubtful, that man is like a walking, talking care bear.”
I couldn’t help but smile. “That’s one way to put it.” After a slight chuckle, I looked up to the sky for a second. “It’s weird; he’s great and all, but…”
Riley pushed herself off the pole to stand up straight again. “But what?”
“Ugh…It just sucks that he’s gone most of the time. I wish he had a normal job, a normal house, and I could just stay with him.” I felt a slight shiver travel down my spine as I thought back to last night. My dad would never have responded like that.
“Well, like I always say, it’s better to have one care bear as your dad, than having five care bears flying in the air.”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure I have heard you say that a bunch of times.” I joked
Further down the street, I spotted the school bus coming down. As it eventually pulled up in front of us, it blocked out the sun, leaving me and Riley standing in the shade. I couldn’t help but see our reflections appear on the side of the vehicle's windows. A reflection that looked nothing like the person I saw in the picture yesterday. I shook my head.
Riley got on the bus, so I simply followed her as we sat down together in some of the dark green seats that were covered in some weird geometric pattern. I had recently learned this pattern was often used to hide the dirt and filth that inevitably piles up on these seats.
“Did you know care bears are notoriously bad at pattern recognition?” Riley piped up as the doors of the bus closed and its antiquated engine got going again.
“Are you calling my dad dense?”
“At least mine figured out what was going on with you before you even figured yourself out.” She beamed at me.
I gave her a judging smirk before saying, “Your dad is a great guy, in his own way. They both are.”
“We'll call it a draw,” Riley said in some half-baked British accent, probably referencing something I was unfamiliar with again.
“What about you?" I said, trying to shift the focus away from myself. "Anything exciting happened over the last few days?”
She leaned in closer, lowering her voice. “Ok, so the craziest thing happened, you’re not going to believe it.”
I leaned forward with a posture similar to a turtle that is trying to retreat into its shell. “What is it?”
“So it turns out…”
“Yes?”
“My parents and I are moving to Battingham next week.”
A slight scowl formed on my face as I sighed dramatically. “Got me with that one.”
My friend looked back with a smug grin that spoke a thousand words all at once. All I could think about, though, was that not only that I deserved that one, but should also have really seen it coming.
“You know…” Riley rubbed her fingers together nervously. “I don’t like this whole moving thing either. Shamesburry can be pretty darn awful…”
I nodded.
“But at least my best friend lives there, and somebody like that is really hard to come by,” she continued. “So upsetting that best friend in any way? Man, that's a hard ask.”
Riley’s words brought a certain warmth, but it also made me feel incredibly anxious. Because let’s be honest, I did not deserve these nice words. After what I had done, what I had said, I didn’t deserve anything.
“And that’s not even mentioning the fact that your friend has the emotional stability of a potato,” I joked, echoing my dad’s words from a few days ago.
Riley smiled, and roughed up my hair. “Love you, bud, but try to keep the self-deprecation to a minimum. Making fun of you is my job already.”
“I don’t know, you got some pretty harsh competition out there.”
Her head tilted slightly. “Is there now? Please enlighten me, for who is out there threatening my business?”
“My mother,” I rolled my eyes. “Apparently, Ms. Shepard emailed her about how I was slacking. She read the whole thing out loud to me, only to start yelling about how I shouldn’t become a failure like my dad.”
“Sounds harsh.”
“Towards me or my dad?”
“Both?” Riley shrugged. “I mean sure, your dad isn't the smartest tool in the shed, but he has still done pretty well for himself regardless. Personally, I think that’s very cool, makes me feel less bad about needing to use your old geometry homework to cheat through my own.”
“It’s not that hard.”
“Not for you it isn't. But for the less academically gifted among us, it is. Your mother probably sees that as well and just doesn’t want you to waste your talents.”
I raised my eyebrows at her. “I’m pretty sure this is the only time I have ever heard you defend my mother.”
“Well, think about it from her perspective.” Riley offered. “She just thinks your games are getting in the way of your studies. She doesn't know about the…other stuff.”
My dad’s words regarding ‘Brutal Honesty’ started making its way into my brain. So far his approach has worked pretty well. Everybody who knew about it had reacted pretty positively, or at least not strictly negative. But I couldn’t help but feel shivers every time I thought about telling my mother about it. If last night was any indication, she definitely had the potential to blow up pretty dramatically.
“You think I should tell her?” I asked nobody, since Riley had suddenly disappeared from my vision. The bus had stopped, and she was standing on the footpath between the seats.
Had she even heard the question? Tapping my fingers against my thigh, I debated whether the question was even worth repeating, but as my body was pushed forward in the stream of fellow students leaving the bus, I decided to let it rest.
Walking into the familiar school building caused some pent-up anxiety to enter my brain. Its gray exterior was covered in three rows of identical lines of windows that made the building seem much longer than it actually was. Inside, there were a whole horde of locations that all carried some kind of shared memory between me and Riley. The baby blue lockers were made of some kind of cheap sheet metal that would fold in on itself with the slightest bit of pressure. Hiding anything in there was impossible. After some seniors copied and spread Riley’s self-made movie scripts from back in middle school during our first week of going here, we learned that the hard way.
At the time, this was nothing more than a harrowing experience we wanted to forget as soon as possible, but knowing this would be our last week attending this school together put it into a whole different light. It had strengthened our bond in a way akin to that of shared trauma. Because even though she was the one who got ridiculed by the entire school, it’s hard to see your friend be treated that way.
We walked into homeroom, something so mundane that my body could handle it all on its own, allowing my mind to keep mixing my omnipresent anxiety with my disharmonious melody of thoughts. There was an English test last Friday that I missed; and my mother didn’t know about that one yet. I was already drawing up scenarios for all the ways she could blow up at me for a second time. But in some of these scenarios, I told her about the whole…transgender thing. While most of them didn’t turn out well, there was one consistently positive factor. Riley.
Looking to my left, I could see Riley sitting at her desk, mindlessly scrolling on her phone before our teacher came in. Last week was rough. But, as this morning showed us, in the end, we would always have each other’s back. So if I wanted to tackle the issue of telling the truth to my mother, I better do it before Friday, so we could tackle it together.
My legs trembling, I managed to descend the stairs about five minutes before I needed to leave for school. The door that connected the hallway with the kitchen was wide open, allowing me to spot my mother as she sat at the breakfast table. As I did so, my feet came to a standstill in the middle of the wooden staircase. I balled up my fists, as if I was about to confront some ancient dragon in a quest to save some damsel in distress, but in reality, my mind was already made up.
In one swift motion, I continued my descent while immediately turning to the left, once again separating me and my mother with a more comforting brick wall. I threw on my jacket, slung my backpack over my shoulder, and, without uttering a word, opened the front door. The smell of Kentucky Bluegrass assaulted my nostrils as I stepped outside the house of horrors.
I looked down at my feet and sighed. The nerves that had been wracking me were beginning to subside. While closing my eyes, I allowed my head to fall backwards and took a deep breath
“You okay, bud?”
An unexpected- but familiar- voice rang out from behind me. While straightening myself out, I turned around and spotted Riley’s tall physique as she stood only about fifteen feet away from me on the sidewalk. Her hair had been pulled back, exposing her furrowed brows.
There were a million things I wanted to say, needed to say even. But seeing her just standing there casually had never been part of the millions of scenarios that had been milling around in my brain all morning. Instead of using any of the lines I had thought about, I did something crazy and unexpected. I spoke the truth.
“Not really,” I said, shaking my head.
A slight smile appeared on Riley’s face as she responded. “Me neither.”
“This sucks,” I blurted out.
Her eyes widened. “Tell me about it.”
A moment of silence fell between us as we kept our gazes fixed on each other. Our lips curled inwards as we tried to hide our emotions while the awkward silence continued. It must have taken about five seconds until I was the first one to crack. I couldn’t help but laugh, and as I did so, Riley broke out laughing right away as well.
From an outside perspective, it must have looked ridiculous, two teenagers suddenly laughing at each other. We must have stood there for at least a full minute, just laughing our hearts out. For that moment, it simply didn't matter what had happened, what had been said, or how we felt about it. Because, in that moment, we both could finally see what this situation truly was: ridiculous.
I stepped towards my friend and spoke. “I messed up,”
Her reply was simple, and to the point. “Tell me about it.”
***
“How did he take it?” Riley asked, leaning back against the metal pole that signified the location of our local bus stop. Her gray sweater melted in with the similarly colored metal of the pole.
“I don’t think he really gets it, to be honest.” I set down my backpack and rested it against my leg. The bus was at least a few minutes away, and I didn’t feel like carrying all the weight of these books for nothing. “He just made some jokes about me being small and kind of moved on from it. Said something about it not being a big deal, and that it will all work out in the end.”
Riley shrugged. “I mean, it could have been a whole lot worse.”
“Oh yeah, for sure.” I replied. “Somewhere in the back of my mind, I was prepared for him to just walk away from me right there. Or even worse, get physical.”
She smirked. “Doubtful, that man is like a walking, talking care bear.”
I couldn’t help but smile. “That’s one way to put it.” After a slight chuckle, I looked up to the sky for a second. “It’s weird; he’s great and all, but…”
Riley pushed herself off the pole to stand up straight again. “But what?”
“Ugh…It just sucks that he’s gone most of the time. I wish he had a normal job, a normal house, and I could just stay with him.” I felt a slight shiver travel down my spine as I thought back to last night. My dad would never have responded like that.
“Well, like I always say, it’s better to have one care bear as your dad, than having five care bears flying in the air.”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure I have heard you say that a bunch of times.” I joked
Further down the street, I spotted the school bus coming down. As it eventually pulled up in front of us, it blocked out the sun, leaving me and Riley standing in the shade. I couldn’t help but see our reflections appear on the side of the vehicle's windows. A reflection that looked nothing like the person I saw in the picture yesterday. I shook my head.
Riley got on the bus, so I simply followed her as we sat down together in some of the dark green seats that were covered in some weird geometric pattern. I had recently learned this pattern was often used to hide the dirt and filth that inevitably piles up on these seats.
“Did you know care bears are notoriously bad at pattern recognition?” Riley piped up as the doors of the bus closed and its antiquated engine got going again.
“Are you calling my dad dense?”
“At least mine figured out what was going on with you before you even figured yourself out.” She beamed at me.
I gave her a judging smirk before saying, “Your dad is a great guy, in his own way. They both are.”
“We'll call it a draw,” Riley said in some half-baked British accent, probably referencing something I was unfamiliar with again.
“What about you?" I said, trying to shift the focus away from myself. "Anything exciting happened over the last few days?”
She leaned in closer, lowering her voice. “Ok, so the craziest thing happened, you’re not going to believe it.”
I leaned forward with a posture similar to a turtle that is trying to retreat into its shell. “What is it?”
“So it turns out…”
“Yes?”
“My parents and I are moving to Battingham next week.”
A slight scowl formed on my face as I sighed dramatically. “Got me with that one.”
My friend looked back with a smug grin that spoke a thousand words all at once. All I could think about, though, was that not only that I deserved that one, but should also have really seen it coming.
“You know…” Riley rubbed her fingers together nervously. “I don’t like this whole moving thing either. Shamesburry can be pretty darn awful…”
I nodded.
“But at least my best friend lives there, and somebody like that is really hard to come by,” she continued. “So upsetting that best friend in any way? Man, that's a hard ask.”
Riley’s words brought a certain warmth, but it also made me feel incredibly anxious. Because let’s be honest, I did not deserve these nice words. After what I had done, what I had said, I didn’t deserve anything.
“And that’s not even mentioning the fact that your friend has the emotional stability of a potato,” I joked, echoing my dad’s words from a few days ago.
Riley smiled, and roughed up my hair. “Love you, bud, but try to keep the self-deprecation to a minimum. Making fun of you is my job already.”
“I don’t know, you got some pretty harsh competition out there.”
Her head tilted slightly. “Is there now? Please enlighten me, for who is out there threatening my business?”
“My mother,” I rolled my eyes. “Apparently, Ms. Shepard emailed her about how I was slacking. She read the whole thing out loud to me, only to start yelling about how I shouldn’t become a failure like my dad.”
“Sounds harsh.”
“Towards me or my dad?”
“Both?” Riley shrugged. “I mean sure, your dad isn't the smartest tool in the shed, but he has still done pretty well for himself regardless. Personally, I think that’s very cool, makes me feel less bad about needing to use your old geometry homework to cheat through my own.”
“It’s not that hard.”
“Not for you it isn't. But for the less academically gifted among us, it is. Your mother probably sees that as well and just doesn’t want you to waste your talents.”
I raised my eyebrows at her. “I’m pretty sure this is the only time I have ever heard you defend my mother.”
“Well, think about it from her perspective.” Riley offered. “She just thinks your games are getting in the way of your studies. She doesn't know about the…other stuff.”
My dad’s words regarding ‘Brutal Honesty’ started making its way into my brain. So far his approach has worked pretty well. Everybody who knew about it had reacted pretty positively, or at least not strictly negative. But I couldn’t help but feel shivers every time I thought about telling my mother about it. If last night was any indication, she definitely had the potential to blow up pretty dramatically.
“You think I should tell her?” I asked nobody, since Riley had suddenly disappeared from my vision. The bus had stopped, and she was standing on the footpath between the seats.
Had she even heard the question? Tapping my fingers against my thigh, I debated whether the question was even worth repeating, but as my body was pushed forward in the stream of fellow students leaving the bus, I decided to let it rest.
Walking into the familiar school building caused some pent-up anxiety to enter my brain. Its gray exterior was covered in three rows of identical lines of windows that made the building seem much longer than it actually was. Inside, there were a whole horde of locations that all carried some kind of shared memory between me and Riley. The baby blue lockers were made of some kind of cheap sheet metal that would fold in on itself with the slightest bit of pressure. Hiding anything in there was impossible. After some seniors copied and spread Riley’s self-made movie scripts from back in middle school during our first week of going here, we learned that the hard way.
At the time, this was nothing more than a harrowing experience we wanted to forget as soon as possible, but knowing this would be our last week attending this school together put it into a whole different light. It had strengthened our bond in a way akin to that of shared trauma. Because even though she was the one who got ridiculed by the entire school, it’s hard to see your friend be treated that way.
We walked into homeroom, something so mundane that my body could handle it all on its own, allowing my mind to keep mixing my omnipresent anxiety with my disharmonious melody of thoughts. There was an English test last Friday that I missed; and my mother didn’t know about that one yet. I was already drawing up scenarios for all the ways she could blow up at me for a second time. But in some of these scenarios, I told her about the whole…transgender thing. While most of them didn’t turn out well, there was one consistently positive factor. Riley.
Looking to my left, I could see Riley sitting at her desk, mindlessly scrolling on her phone before our teacher came in. Last week was rough. But, as this morning showed us, in the end, we would always have each other’s back. So if I wanted to tackle the issue of telling the truth to my mother, I better do it before Friday, so we could tackle it together.
