Boy in a Girl's Body

Chapter 24

Chapter 24

School the next day was about as bad as I expected, honestly, I was waiting for Wendy’s brother to swoop in and pond into human pudding for saying what I did to his sister. I’d probably do the same if I could, should someone ever speak to Ashley that way, or break her heart. Btu as I passed from class the class, the only thing that came my way were the normal sneers and comments, things that rolled off my back; they hardly hurt anymore, they had become too common place to cut as deep as they used to.

Teachers had more or less come around to using my preferred name, which was a major confidence boost, it even made me smile some days. You can never believe how happy that can make someone, just using the right pronouns and the name we prefer and you make our fucking day, I can promise you that.

It’s not that Wendy and I having a falling out didn’t hurt - it ached, like taking a sucker punch to the heart from a prize fighter - but I stood behind my choice. It was what was best for me and her right now, maybe after the anger faded, she’d see that I was thinking about her safety. 

I could deal with whatever happened to me, however bad shit was going to get - and I could feel in my bones that it was about to get a hell of a lot worse - I could take it. But if something ever happened to her, I could never live with myself. I was willing to hurt myself and hurt her if it meant keeping her a safe distance away from me and th danger that followed me around like a storm cloud.

It was two days after my fight with Wendy that things started to go downhill, they started sliding and sliding fast. 

It was slow trickling, like water dripping from a cracked dam, and even though I saw this coming, it didn’t make me feel any less shitty. What can I say, when you have people coming after you and punishing you often enough, you start to believe that maybe, you do deserve it. Who knows, maybe I was asking for it? 

Asking for it, or not, they came after me again with fresh hate and disgust, and all I could do was stand there and take it. 

I didn’t know the name of the guy, or the pack of looming, yellow teeth that trailed after him, but that didn’t matter. They weren’t here to talk. 

I dropped my backpack into my locker and shut the door slowly, taking a deep breath before I turned to face them, looking them in the eye. I didn’t say a word, I didn’t move, my heart skipped beats and tried to hide behind my lungs, my mind was asking the same question over and over again. Why are you doing this? Why. Why. Why.

The ring leader, dressed in a bright blue polo was the first one to speak, “Hey dyke, where’s your girlfriend?” It was grossly unorigional, which I found more than a little annoying, not to mention incorrect, but I didn’t reply. I wouldn’t grace his ignorant words with a reply. 

Not answering only served to make him angry, but it wouldn’t have mattered what I did, they would have kept at it regardless. 

“I’m talking to you, lesbo! Hey, are you fucking retarded, you fucking freak? I sid where’s your girlfriend!” He loomed over me, his breath was rancid, stinking of cigarettes and god knows what else. I focused on keeping my breathing as even as I could and reminded myself that eventually, he would leave. They’d get bored and go away, they had to.

At that point, I decided it was best just to stop listening, I’d heard it all before, anyway. I stared straight ahead, at the isle of lockers across from me and wondered how many more minutes there were until passing period was over, detention did not sound appealing today. 

My logic proved correct, and after a few more minutes of lack-luster insults, Yellow Teeth’s short attention span kicked in. But right as he stepped away to go torture someone else, one of his lackeys made a particularly unsettling noise in his throat, and fired a loogie at me. 

I will say one thing, the kid had good aim, it landed on my left cheek, dead center. I could feel the phlegm, the warm liquid running down my cheek as then ran off, cackling like hyaenas. 

Much to my chagrin, I had an audience. Most of them were faceless strangers, but as I whipped the goop off my face and turned back to my locker, I recognized a set of fierce eyes watching me from across the hall. 

As I pulled my bag from my locker and slunk off to my second to last class of the day, I couldn’t help but think that if I had been born in the right body, none of this would be happening.