28. Tink
TINK
I lean against the brown and beige checkered tiles of this Attaburger’s bathroom wall, eyes on the locked stall door in front of me.
Rustling sounds, a bonk of what sounds like an elbow against divider.
Nothing else except for whatever music from the eighties, nineties, and today they’ve chosen to pipe in at just after four in the morning.
God, I don’t remember the last time I was in a women’s room.
“You okay in there?” I say after a minute.
It’s still so strange hearing my voice like this.
It sounds different in my head even. I glance at my reflection in the greasy-looking mirror across the way.
If I don’t slouch and keep my limbs all loose, I do look a little girly, maybe, especially with the voice.
And I’m now standing next to a tampon machine, so no one who comes in is going to be too suspicious unless they’re a real asshole about gender presentation.
If anyone comes in at all, that is. Because it is four-fifteen in the morning.
“I’m fine,” comes Wendy’s voice, with what sounds like more confidence than she’s feeling. “Just…hang on a sec.”
I hear the slap of the metal lid of the trash can in the bathroom—another feature that I haven’t seen in months—and the toilet flush as she unlatches the door and steps out.
“You good?” I ask.
Wendy shifts from foot to foot, her expression tight and uncertain. “It’s not really comfortable,” she says. “Is that okay?”
She changed outfits, obviously. I lent her a pair of basketball shorts that I’ve got for some reason—I guess ‘cause all guys need one—and cinched it pretty tight.
In the bag I am holding from Discount Drug, besides the multipack of Primrose Brand Maxi Pads and some ibuprofen, is a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, which we can attempt to use to get the stains out of her Wyld-N-Tru pajama pants later.
I give her a kind of grimace. “Yeah, it’s not exactly undetectable. To you, I mean,” I add quickly. “No one else will be able to tell.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah,” I say, and nod to the restaurant door. “Come on, wash your hands, and I’ll get you the best cure I know.”
Five minutes later, we’re sitting outside at one of the coated metal picnic tables, sipping giant fountain cokes and each digging in to our own extra-large order of fries.
“This is my go-to,” I say, after a minute of us sipping and eating in silence. “It always makes me feel better when…you know.” I cough. “That and some ibuprofen.”
I rustle in the bag and pull out the bottle, cracking it open and punching the seal to deposit one liqui-gel in my palm. She’s tiny. That’s got to be enough. “Here.”
I hand it over, and Wendy gives it a skeptical look.
“It’s just ibuprofen,” I say. “Advil.”
“I know,” she says. “I just…don’t know how to swallow pills.”
“Oh,” I say. “Um, just kind of throw it back in your mouth and then drink a bunch of Coke all at once.”
Wendy nods and gamely chucks the little blue capsule into her mouth before hustling for her straw and gulping down what’s got to be half of the Coke in a single go. My eyes go wide, and I am about to pull it away from her just as she lets go and covers her mouth with her hand.
“All good?” I ask for what seems like the fiftieth time that night.
Wendy nods. “Yeah,” she says, but the word comes out on a massive burp.
I laugh. Not on purpose, but it is kind of adorable, and for a horrible moment I worry she’ll think I’m making fun of her.
Fortunately, she laughs too. “Oops,” she adds.
It’s cool this late at night, or early in the morning, whatever, with nothing but the cone of light from a nearby parking lot lamp shining on our surroundings.
The burger joint’s maybe three miles away from the shop, out of the Strip district proper, but close enough that I have, in fact, stopped in for a medicinal Coke and fries the one time I got my period prior to last week.
And it’s actually kind of nice. Late enough that even the late-night partiers have crashed, but still a little too early for anyone to be awake for an early shift. A couple cars pass now and again, tractor-trailers heading for the 303. But other than that, calm.
Wendy picks up a single fry and munches it down to nothing. She breathes out, looks at the empty road just beyond the fence, and then back at me. She gives a resigned exhale. “Sorry if this is rude, but I have so many questions,” she says matter-of-factly.
“What, about this?” I say, gesturing at the cokes and the fries. “I think it’s something about the caffeine and the salt, but maybe it’s just that I really want fast food when my period comes. I guess I figure—”
“No,” Wendy says, half irritated, half amused, and I quit my joke.
“Like…” She sighs. “How do I say this?” She taps a finger against her chin, and her suddenly serious posture makes me want to smile again.
But I don’t, just in case she’s about to hit me with some fundamental birds-and-bees kind of shit that I’ll have to really think through.
Fuck me, I think, scratching the side of my head.
This is not the kind of conversation I’m prepared to have.
At all. Besides just being a girl, I’m not really qualified to teach anything here.
I’m not sure anyone really taught me either, besides the internet.
If there was sex ed in high school, it must have been after I stopped going, because I can’t remember anything in a classroom. And Gram…
My thoughts trail off. Well, she wasn’t about to teach me either, let’s put it that way.
I’m mentally cycling through whatever phrases I can think of, like your body is changing and you’re a woman now, all of which seem ridiculous, especially considering that the person sitting across from me is definitely a child, still, when Wendy interrupts.
“So you’ve been a girl this whole time?”
Oh, I think. I pick up my Coke, shake the ice around, and slurp some up just to kill time.
“I mean…yeah,” I say, because I don’t know what else to say. “That’s kind of how it works.”
Wendy frowns. “Are you trans?”
That, I didn’t expect. I’m almost surprised that she even knows to ask—except for no, she’s all over YouTube. I imagine she’s picked things up.
I shake my head. “No, I’m definitely a girl. Although I learned a lot about all this”—I gesture at myself—“from trans guy internet, if that counts?”
Wendy considers, picking up another fry. “But you’re a girl. Like, for sure.”
“Yeah,” I say, and add, “same as you, just with shorter hair.”
Wendy’s still frowning but doesn’t say anything, chewing her fry with contemplation. Not wanting the silence to hang, and kind of desperate to change the subject, I rustle up the plastic bag and set it on the table between us.
“You can keep all this stuff in the bathroom, by the way. I’ll make sure the other guys don’t do anything to it or get—”
“Why, though?” Wendy interrupts again.
I withdraw my hand. I swallow, put both elbows on the table and my head between my hands, and rake my fingers through the short, short hair. “It’s kind of a long story,” I say at last.
“Yeah, I would think so,” Wendy retorts. And the fries and Coke must be doing their job, because her usual sassiness is back. She shrugs and picks up two more fries. “I mean, I’ve got time.”
I smile, catching my lower lip in my teeth as I do, and lower my hands again. “Well, it’s kind of complicated,” I say. “I really don’t know how to start.” It’s not a story I thought I’d ever be telling. I exhale, look at the empty road again, then back at Wendy.
“See, it was kind of an accident. I’d…” I stop short.
There’s basically no part of the backstory that I can tell to Wendy that’s acceptable for her to hear, appropriate for her to hear, or that I can even get past my lips. Anything I could say will be stuck in my throat, twisting in my stomach. Too real, too raw. Not acceptable, not needed.
I purse my lips together again and try a second tack.
“Basically, I got hurt. I was in this…accident. My head and my chest. So they had to cut my hair, and put me in this thing”—I span my hands across my chest to indicate the binder—“to stabilize my ribs while they healed. But that kind of had the side effect of…you know.” I smash a hand against my chest gently. “Flattening me out.” I shrug.
Wendy nods, as if she’s following so far. “Okay,” she says. “And you just decided to…stay that way?”
I pick up a fry of my own, twiddling it back and forth like it’s a pen I’m about to doodle with.
“Not exactly.” I stare into the mountain of potatoey goodness and the oil-splotched carton beneath them.
“I was just sort of living on the street, like wherever I could find a place to sleep for a while. And—”
“Where’s your family?” Wendy interrupts.
I think about it for a minute. “Gone,” I say, and then shake my head.
No, that’s not true, and there’s no reason to lie to her about this part.
“I mean, my mom and dad haven’t been around for…
” I roll my eyes at the sky. “I don’t even know how long.
I was living with my grandma, but she…” I trail off again.
I’ve never put words to this, not out loud, not to someone who cared or was at least interested in the genuine truth.
“She had a lot of problems,” I say at last. “Not sick exactly, just, you know, aging. Dementia.” As if Wendy knows what that is.
“She needed a lot of help,” I clarify. “So that’s what I did.
I took care of her.” I stretch my arms in front of me and fan my fingers as if I am trying to push the memory away.
“Um, but, so. Yeah. I left there eventually.” That’s the most kid-friendly version of I ran away to the big city with my so-called boyfriend that I can manage.
“And then I got hurt,” I go on, “and then, yeah, I kind of ended up looking like a guy while I was living outside.”
“Okay,” Wendy says again, like she’s adding all these things up. “And you just liked it, or…?”
I breathe out. “In some ways, I guess? Like, I noticed people didn’t bother me because they thought I was a guy.”