Starts with a Match

Birthday Boy

I give Toby a shortened version of my workout. It's similar to the one I gave Hannah when I met her, but with more running, since Toby mentioned they enjoyed track in high school and still do marathons with their girlfriend like a weirdo.

In the letter, I also ask about the two-colored eyes and 'they' thing. I'm mid writing out what I think it might mean, when I frown up to the others. "I'm looking for a word but my brain is coming up blank," I mutter.

"What else is new?" asks Jim. I kick him in the ankle, and he topples sideways from where he's leaning on a beam, watching Eli and Hannah play checkers on my bunk while I sit on the floor.

"Give the context," Hannah replies, eyes steely on Elijah and not on the board. She's mastered the art of watching his face before he makes a move.

"So...it's LGBT I think...like gender or something?"

"That could be a few things," Jim says.

"When is a girl not a girl? Or a guy?"

"When it's a jar," Elijah replies.

He looks up to find us all staring at him like 'what the fuck?' "What? Just the way you said it, Koop, sounds like that riddle—when is a door not a door? When it's—"

"Non-binary," Hannah snorts, shaking her head. She checkmates Vishou without even looking at him, turning to me as he gives an incredulous scoff. "Why? Who's non-binary?"

"I think Toby is," I smirk, watching Elijah scrub hands through his hair, elbow bouncing on his fidgety knee as he glares at the game. "Alex said when Toby visited, Claire called them 'she' and Toby asked to be called 'they'."

"Yeah that's non-binary," Hannah nods. She snatches Elijah's wrist seconds before he cheats and moves their pieces.

"Or agender. Trans every once in a while, sometimes genderfluid, gender flux..." I arch my brows at Jim, picking his nails as the kids fight over the game. He shrugs at me. "What? Beth's cousin is agender. Her uncle's trans. Plus, on rare occasions, like bank holidays and solstices, I used to read back in the states."

"So you haven't read a book in..." I start to smirk again.

"I read the backs of the MREs. Just to see how fucked I am after I attempt to eat the lo-mein." He grins and juts his chin to my letter. "I dare you to send one to Toby."

"No, I like them alive, thank you very much," I chuckle, going back to my letter. I finish it off by asking about the girlfriend they mentioned, ask how long they've been dating, how they met.

As a last little thing, in case my other dozen questions aren't enough to keep them talking to me, I tell them today's my birthday, July twenty-third. And I turned twenty-three, too. I ask when theirs is.

I tell them I celebrated by being with my friends, us using a pile of gluts as fire to keep warm last night, and that I woke up this morning to find all their stupid Beanie Babies piled around my head, placed there during the night.

I hesitate for a long minute, then I add in that Jim's friend Patrick Rozman was able to get Margaret's last camera developed.

It knocked the four of us on our asses when he handed us the envelope full of photos. Pictures she took of us when we weren't looking.

Jim and Hannah with their heads bent over a radio, Elijah snuggled up to Jim in the backseat of the truck, half asleep while Jim reads something from Beth. Me with my head tilted back, hat over my eyes, Hannah's head in my lap. Us smiling. Us laughing.

Got a one back the five of us took on Thanksgiving. Me in the center, holding Jim one one side, Hannah on the other with her arms crossed. Margaret's got her elbow on my shoulder, throwing up a peace sign, and Elijah's opposite of her with a smirk.

With my friends permission, I tuck that one in the envelope for Toby. And I get possessed by something insane and I put another photo of just me in there, too.

I thank Toby one more time, and I hastily fold up the letter and take it to the posts before I write so much that I have to turn the fucking page over.