If I Was Your Girl

by Meredith Russo

I closed my eyes, whispered a short prayer to a god I wasn’t sure really listened anymore,

“My name is Amanda now though, in case you forgot.”

“That ain’t possible,” she said. “There ain’t a thing in God’s creation that could undo the love I have for my son.”

“Listen to me.” Her hand squeezed my leg hard enough that the pain broke through the fog of my meds. When she spoke next, I listened. “Anything, anyone, is better than a dead son.”

People who looked like Grant had never spoken to me without secretly planning to hurt me.

confrontations. I’d been knocked down a hundred times in a hundred different ways.

I had come to Lambertville with a plan: I would keep my head down and keep quiet. I would graduate. I would go to college as far from the South as I could. I would live.

“No,” I said. “I don’t think God actually cares about that kind of thing, and I think I could deal with just being gay or whatever.

I had only used a women’s room a few times since I’d been attacked, and the idea still made my heart race. But there was no avoiding it now.

This felt like something else, like friendship or acceptance or maybe fitting in. This felt like fun.

She tilted her head. “I already think you’re cool, you know. You don’t need to smoke to impress me.”

and wondering if that was the last time I would ever cry, if God had decided I only got a set amount of tears in my whole life.

“It’s okay, you know,” Bee said quietly, taking a long drag of her cigarette. “Whatever it is you can’t tell me.” She met my eyes. “It’s gonna be okay.”

She sat beside me and took my hands in hers. The size of her hands was the only thing that might have given her away, but next to my bony, pale fingers hers were beautiful and dark and alive. “Listen, a lot of the people you’re going to see tonight are pretty … rough. Don’t let them scare you off, okay?”

My eyes burned suddenly, and when I rubbed my cheek, my hand came away wet. I tried to remember the last time I had been able to cry.

In the last week I’d been given more hugs than in my entire life combined.

I felt guilty all of a sudden, as if just by existing and talking to him I was leading him on. It gave me a strange sense of power, and not one that I liked.

“You’ve been staring at the ceiling for the last ten minutes.” “Well, then you’ve clearly been staring at me.” “Can you blame me?” he said, shaking his head and laughing. “I just really wanna make sure you have a good time.”

Our fingers were the same length, I noticed, but his were much wider and stronger.

“I’m not feeling great…” I trailed off. I desperately wanted to finish the sentence with the truth, but what was there to say? I think I like you, but I’ll never have a normal life. I think you like me, but you’ll never understand who I am.

I nodded silently. “Did he do it himself, or did somebody do it to him?” “If people drive you to something,” Grant whispered, his voice quaking slightly, “then it’s their responsibility.”

“You’re a good kid,” he said, a faint slur in his voice. “Daughter. Sorry. I’m so sorry.” “It’s fine.” “You look happy,” he said. “I think I am.” “I want you to smile. I love you.”

He had been right, I realized; it felt like sitting in front of a fire, the warmth spreading across every inch of my skin.

“My friend Anna invited me. Why can’t you see me there?” I asked, though of course I knew why. I still believed in God, and for a long time my faith had been the only thing keeping me afloat. But I could never forget the day Mom had come home from seeing our pastor, red in her eyes from weeping and rage. I asked her what was wrong and heard a stream of curses, so strange in her normally sweet little voice, as she told me he’d had some suggestions: that I should be sent to a camp to fix me, that I should spend more time with a male role model, that I should maybe take some time away from the congregation until I found a way to fit in. We never went to church after that, though I did continue to pray.

My fingers dug into my thighs and I stared at the back of the pew in front of me, feeling my heart beating. Sometimes it didn’t feel like God walked with me anymore. I remembered waking up in the hospital after my suicide attempt and feeling a hollow place in my heart where my faith had been. Transitioning had reawakened it a little, but it was hard to place too much hope in a God so many people said hated me.

understand. How much of life was like that, just waiting for me to come and give it a chance?

“Trouble in the garden?” Bee said, grinning. “Does he have bad breath? Is he, like, super racist?”

“How would I know?” Bee said. “Just ’cause I’m bi doesn’t mean I have magic powers. I’m not the plucky queer sidekick in your romantic comedy.”

“Sure,” I said, “but only if this can count as mine.” I hugged his arm and brought my mouth inches from his ear. “I’ll probably be expelled on Monday, and I’m really, really high right now.” I planted a kiss on his cheek before he could respond. Now it was Grant’s turn to laugh. “Amanda Hardy,” he said, “you might be the most interesting person I ever met.”

and strange, psychedelic portraits of a Jesus who looked nothing like the sterile thing worshiped at Anna’s church.

“And how do you guys know each other?” “Virginia’s my trans mentor,” I replied. Virginia raised an eyebrow. “What happened to being stealth?”

“Sorry I’m being quiet,” I said. “I’m just … happy. This isn’t something I felt like I could ever have.” Virginia smiled at me, warm and wise. “You can have anything,” she said, “once you admit you deserve it.”

The night with Bee had been great, but not everyone was Bee.

“It’s everything,” I said, my mouth and throat dry. We were both silent for a moment. “Just, ahead of time, I wanted to let you know—if you’re upset with me for letting things progress like they did, for being with you … I’m sorry for that too, and I understand.”

“I never needed to know,” he said, shaking his head. “I just needed to feel like you’d given me a chance.” He pulled me around the fire, wrapped me in the tightest embrace I could remember, and kissed me like the fire burning brightly beside us.

“You tried to kill yourself,” she said, rolling her eyes up to heaven and biting her knuckle. “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 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 face 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.”

Years of bullying made me panic as they lifted me from the ground. “Easy,” one of the guys whispered. I recognized Grant’s friend Rodney’s voice. “Easy. We ain’t gonna hurt you.”

“Lord Vader,” I said. “I should have known. Only you could be so bold.” “Uh,” Vader said. He pulled the mask down to reveal Parker’s confused face. “I don’t know the next line. Sorry.”

“I want you to be my first,” I said, chewing the inside of my cheek. “When I’m ready, I want it to be you.” “No rush,” Grant said, burying his face in my shoulder. “We’ve got all the time in the world.”

“I look stupid,” I said. “I’m not a boy or a girl anymore. I’m just broken. It would have been easier if I’d died.” “Easier for who?” Mom said. Her hand tightened. I turned to face her and there was a steeliness in her narrowed eyes that seemed completely out of place in her soft features.

“Atta girl,” she said. She grabbed both shoulders and turned me toward her, looking all roses and biscuits again. “Mason girls don’t quit.”

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.

“Yeah,” I said. “Not as much. In different ways. Scared of getting hurt by people instead of scared to live at all.”

“Pucker up. Being a girl in this world means being afraid. That fear’ll keep you safe. It’ll keep you alive.”

“I think I might be allergic or something. I feel kinda strange … sort of floaty and light-headed.” “You ain’t sick, hon,” Mom said. She kissed my cheek and hugged me so tight I thought I might break a rib. “That’s joy.”

“And be safe,” I heard him call behind me as I got out and closed the door, but it felt like an instinct, like something all fathers said to their daughters.

Grant’s the brightest of them, and I felt myself in my own body being loved and accepted, and it felt so good it was almost surreal. This wasn’t my life. This couldn’t be my life. Things like this did not happen to girls like me.

“Here,” I said, tossing the tiara so that it skittered to a stop at Layla’s feet. She stooped and picked it up, looking from the crown back to me slowly. “I guess I’m disqualified.” I turned before anyone could say anything and hurried out of the school and into the night.

“I knew you were a creep,” a girl’s voice said. A beam of light landed on us, revealing Chloe’s silhouette holding a rifle pointed at Parker’s back.