Too Bright to See: Chapter 13–Epilogue

I take a deep breath before stepping across the threshold.

I pull the lid off the first one, and it’s full of random costume pieces. Lots of necklaces and bracelets and earrings. Some of them are pretty ugly and are probably jokes. Clunky huge plastic and wood, bright colors and gaudy tassels and rhinestones.

The next one is full of his makeup collection, painstakingly gathered over the years, still looking bright and brand-new.

Those other options, a faraway city, turning our home into something else, hover above our heads like another kind of specter.

Griffin sounds disappointed when I tell him that I’ve never seen a “real” ghost, like a translucent person floating above the ground and moaning.

It was a relief to be around unfamiliar ghosts that weren’t trying to tell me something. That weren’t remnants of someone I love.

As my bike careens down the dirt roads my mind is pulled back to the box under Uncle Roderick’s bed.

I just feel like an uncomfortable, misshapen, squishy humanoid, and sure, maybe if I got to look like a boy and everyone thought I was a boy, that would make me feel better.

I try to stop my brain from churning through all these possibilities and just feel my feet on the floor, her arms around me.

I’m still turning over my sudden revelation, the new holes poked in it. The difference between wanting to be something, and knowing that you are something.

I still have weird dreams, but they’re normal-weird, just wisps of memory that vanish a few minutes after waking up.

I open the front door and the foyer is dark.

I’m frozen in shock, and Moira bounds over and flings her arms around me.

He doesn’t pay attention to anyone else, all his manic energy is focused on me.

It’s not cliquish, they say, not a lot of drama to avoid, and we don’t have to worry about bullies or anything.

If this scene happened in a book, the older girls would be a little mean to me. Not outright bullying, but subtly making sure I know that I’m not one of them.

When it’s just Moira and me our sleepovers take place in her bedroom, with some excursions to the kitchen for snacks.

Thick, curly silver hair cascading down her shoulders, dramatic makeup, long eyelashes framing her warm eyes.

The smell of eggs and sausage and toast pulls me out of my dream. What was it? Snippets surface through my half-asleep haze.

Too late I realize that if I’d lied, told them I wanted to try out a new look, some birthday impulse, that might have been okay. Quirky, and fun.

They give me hugs that I don’t instinctively recoil from, and tell me again that it suits me.

She’ll hug me and kiss my shorn head and tell me that she loves me no matter what.

A wave of anger rushes over me, obliterating any relief I had felt.

“That’s not what I mean, Bug,” she says, sounding exasperated.

The spike of anger hasn’t receded completely, but a pang of guilt threads its way through.

I had expected to answer her questions about, like, transitioning, or pronouns.

Bug has recently come out as transgender. We want to make sure that the school is prepared to treat him like a boy, despite what his records say. We also want to make sure that there is an anti-bullying policy, that he’s permitted to use whichever restroom is most comfortable, and that his teachers will be asked to refer to him exclusively as ‘Bug,’ instead of his legal name, and with male pronouns.

First, let me say thank you for being so proactive. I can tell that Bug has a strong network of support, and that is the key to success in middle school.

We do have an anti-bullying policy, and all faculty and staff have been to trainings around that issue. We know what to look for, and we know how to intervene without escalating.

My old baby blanket, tattered into a rag years ago, is suddenly a wide and plush quilt spread out across the dreamscape.