Sophisticated Sharks and I'm Soaked and Covered in Glitter

Chapter One: Uncle Tom and His Cats That are Pretty Much Mine

Like most life changing/ruining scenarios, mine involved both a great uncle and a farm. Creepy old Uncle Tom was having trouble in Saskatchewan and I apparently need a male role model in my life. Honestly, I don't care. Maybe that's just Mom's mind slipping that I'm her daughter and not her son... Again. Or it could be that she wants me to be a well rounded person.

If that doesn't make sense, it's all right. For the first nine years of my life I didn't either. When Mom always told the story of how I was her son and then BAM- she has a daughter. Since my mother is single, I had way too early access to the world wide interwebs and stumbled across the term transgender. I thought that I was born a boy, but then was given the surgery at birth because somehow Mom got the message that I was female. So I asked my mom, and it turns out, I am not transgender. I was born female, and I identify that way. The whole fiasco was her doctor, who I think was going blind, according to what I've been able to dig up on him from the internet. He misread the ultrasound and thought I was a boy, but I was born a girl, much to everyone's surprise. It's a good thing Mom didn't conform to common gender stereotypes, otherwise I'm pretty sure I would have been mistaken as male for most of my being an infant. I probably wouldn't have minded a blue nursery, though.

Mom was pretty progressive. I could wear and play with whatever I wanted, which led to the Barbie-GI Joe war of 2000something that resulted in me creating a baking soda vinegar rocket which may or may not have exploded all over the kitchen table. Most of the kids in my daycare thought it was odd that I wore overalls, like most of the boys, when my hair was in pigtails, like the girls. They couldn't just place me according to stereotypes, and I wouldn't know that until much later.

When I was one year old, I met my best and only friend—Chandler. Mom says we took our first steps on the same day, but that is possibly hogwash. Anyway, back to the life changing thingy madoo.

Now let me get this straight: Uncle Tom is CREEPY. He's always been creepy, but he's also an alcoholic. He reeks of whiskey and sweat, and imagine having to live around that for four years. But I'm almost fourteen, and we're moving back to Georgia! There's one problem, though. We're not going to our little rural town super close to Atlanta. We're going to live in Atlanta. My first time in the big city.

"Ah, I'll miss you, smudge," I say glumly as I pet the cat whom I have named smudge. He's grey and brown, and is missing the top parts of both ears. They froze off and fell. "You're the only good thing about this place."

I look around the farm hastily. I won't see it again until I'm eighteen, a full four years away. There's the tarnished barn off to the left, piles of hay bales out in the field, quad motorcycles by the marked up house. There's a tree far, far off by the tree line with a wooden swing on it. I remember when Mom would push me on it.

"Take care of the farm for me, okay? And Starfighter and Warsword, too?" I rub smudge good and hard between what's left of his ears while reminding him of the other cats. I kiss him on the nose, and weakly smile. "G'bye, friend."

The real reason we're moving back to the US is because of Mom's job. She got hired for the special effects makeup on this TV show that I don't know about mainly due to the fact that I actually haven't watched any for four years straight. Uncle Tom doesn't own one. Well, he did, but he broke it by putting his foot through it.

"Elaina Ann, it's time to go!" Calls Mom. "Coming!" I shout, putting smudge down. He meows softly, but I have to run. I climb into the pickup and slam the door shut a little too violently. "You ready to go home?" Asks Mom. "Oh yeah," I say absentmindedly. "Home." The last part sounds weak.