On the night of my seventeenth birthday, I got my first kiss. You see, I never expected to get kissed, at least, not while I was still in high school. People just didn't like me. They called me names. They called me my dead name. They shoved rude notes and pink frilly bows down my locker. The teachers made me use the girls bathroom until I got an actual doctor's note, saying I was a guy. Even then, people would refer to me as "she" and "her" and "shemale." In short, high school was the closest thing to Hell I could and can imagine.
When I came out to my family as transgender, they all accepted and supported me. Later, after we had wiped the tears off of our faces, my sister would tell me she knew all along, my brother would say it was kind of obvious, and my parents would mention the time I asked for a chest binder on my twelfth birthday so I could "run better." My family was, and is, composed of the kindest people I could ever be blessed to live with. Even my distant relatives that I hadn't seen in years remembered to call me by my proper pronouns. All in all, home life was great.
However, as formerly stated, school was like Hell. As a freshman, I was in special education for algebra and science. But, get this: I was in AP English and AP History. That made me an oddity. The special education kids didn't like me because I was in two AP classes, and the AP kids thought I was dumb. I had one friend, all throughout freshman and sophomore year: Kila Francis.
Our friendship was born out of the mutual understanding that no one else would ever be friends with either of us. Kila was a mixed Latina in a predominantly white school in the American Bible Belt, and I was, well, me. From the age of twelve, she knew that she would have trouble fitting in with the little racist assholes in our school district. So she found me, a person desperate for a friend, who had the common courtesy to not be a racist. She had the common courtesy not to be sexist or transphobic. We hit it off immediately.
For a while, we were each other's only friends. But then Junior year happened. It looked like we would be adding another member to our friendless friend-group.
VOCÊ ESTÁ LENDO
Rainbow Jam
Ficção Adolescente"Some people were genuinely scared that I was going to infect them with my "transgender ways." Others just didn't want to tumble down the social hierarchy. I could respect that. They were just trying to survive without scars. There was a thin line t...
