If I Was Your Girl

by Meredith Russo

“I think boys aren’t taught that smart’s the same as scared sometimes,” I said.

“I’m a big boy. I been knocked down before, and I’ll be knocked down again. I can handle things that ain’t simple, and I can handle things that’re hard. I want you, and whatever it is about you that you think makes you so complicated couldn’t make me want you less.”

I looked up at the cross again and wondered if I was supposed to hear this particular sermon at this particular moment for a reason. I decided that the people who had said God didn’t love me, who said that I didn’t have a place on Earth – they were wrong. God wanted me to live, and this was the only way I knew how to survive, so this was what God wanted. This was what I wanted. I had chosen to live, and it seemed like, finally, I was doing just that.

Homophobes think about gay sex all the time because they wanna have it. They insist being gay is a choice because every single day they have to choose not to have the kind of sex they want. Homophobes are super gay.”

It had taken me a little while to figure out what I was feeling, but now I understood: it was the sense of two parts of me coming together. It felt honest.

“Andrew Hardy was gonna die one way or the other, and one of the choices gave me a daughter in exchange while the other left me with no one.”

“When you were a year old I looked at your baby pictures and cried. When you were three I looked at the pictures from when you were one and cried. When you went to kindergarten I looked back and cried. Kids constantly grow and change, and every time you blink they turn into something different and the kid you thought you had is just a memory.” She rubbed her sinuses and sighed. “Five years from now you’ll be a grown woman graduatin’ college and I’ll look at photos of you now and grieve my teenage daughter.”

“The Empire will compensate you if he dies,” a goofily deep voice said. I thought I recognized it as Parker’s, but I wasn’t sure. “Any last words, Solo?” “Leia!” Grant said, really hamming it up in his attempt to break free. “Will you come to homecoming with me?” “Of course!” I cried, stepping forward and clasping my hands over my heart. I started to say “I love you!” since that was the next line, but paused. We hadn’t said those words yet, although I couldn’t help thinking it all the time lately. Instead I declared, “I…like you! A lot!” “I know,” Grant said, donning a perfect Han Solo smirk all the same.

I put my hand against his chest and loved how hard his muscles were under his shirt, and especially how different our bodies were, how we were as different as two people could be but when he kissed me again our differences came together and we weren’t hard chest muscles or a soft thigh or breasts or beard shadow, we were just one thing exploring itself and shivering with the joy of it.

He ran his hand up my calf to the back of my knee and then up the back of my thigh and I gasped at the realization that touch could be like this. I thought of that poor girl pretending to be a boy who tried to kill herself and I wanted her to see this, to feel this, so she could understand that one day she might not just be okay with her body but that she would be able to feel things, beautiful things, inside of it.

“Make-up has lotsa uses. One of ’em is to highlight your eyes, cheeks and lips so they stick out a little, give you a kinda feminine glow that boys think’s natural. There now.” “What are the other uses?” “Looking young,” she said without looking up. “But if you looked any younger, folks’d wonder why I let you out of your crib.” I laughed. This felt right. This felt like the moment I had wanted with Mom since I was old enough to know I wanted anything at all.

“You still afraid?” she said. I opened my eyes and saw a look of concern pulling her smile down. “Yeah,” I said. “Not as much. In different ways. Scared of getting hurt by people instead of scared to live at all.” “At least you’re smart as I always thought then,” she said. “Pucker up. Being a girl in this world means being afraid. That fear’ll keep you safe. It’ll keep you alive.”

“I’m not brave,” I said, smiling despite myself. “Bravery implies I had a choice. I’m just me, you know?”

It was going to be hard. I was going to have to pretend to be a boy for a little while longer. No matter how much I tried to hide it, classmates and family members were going to notice my body change. The bullying would probably be worse than ever, but somehow, now, I felt like I could handle it. I felt like, as Amanda, I could face things that would have kept me cowering in bed before.

For as long as I could remember, I had been apologizing for existing, for trying to be who I was, to live the life I was meant to lead. Maybe this would be the last conversation I would ever have with Grant. Maybe not. Either way, I realized, I wasn’t sorry I existed any more. I deserved to live. I deserved to find love. I knew now – I believed, now – that I deserved to be loved.