Chapter 2: Part 2 — Three Whole Days

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Part 2: Three Whole Days

My name is Ella Stevenson and when I was born the doctors made a mistake. It wasn’t their fault. They couldn’t have known. They saw something small growing on me on the ultrasound scan and they used it to determine my whole life. Chances. My name. The way people treat me.

My parents carried on that mistake for 13 years. And my grandparents, ugh – they don’t get it at all. My birth certificate still reads Errol Stevenson. I’m trying to get them to change it to Ella, but my dad says there’s ‘red tape’

I’ve never really felt right in my own skin. When I was a kid, I used to lie in bed and wait until everyone was asleep and then check under my bedclothes. To see if I still had it. If it was still there. The mistake. But no matter how many times I lifted the waistband of my PJs, I couldn’t wish it away.

I wouldn’t say things were fine until I hit 11, but they were manageable. I just figured so long as I kept the way I felt about who I was to myself, then I wouldn’t stand out. Nobody would think I wasn’t just like them. Wasn’t normal. That’s how I felt about it. Like I wasn’t normal and if people found out they’d hate me for it. So that’s what I did. I pretended to be like everyone else. My grandma keeps referring to how I identify now as a ‘phase’ or a game of ‘dress-up’. She doesn’t realize that there was dress-up. And it was called the first 12 years of my life.

That’s when I began collecting secrets like they were rocks. Carrying them on my back wherever I went. Putting little Xs in boxes that try to pigeonhole your whole identity into the letter M or F. That was the first rock. The first secret. When I joined Hillmans Middle School, a few years back, I joined as me. I ticked ‘F’.

I couldn’t change my name, of course — my dad told me — it was a legal document. He’s a lawyer, so I guess he knows all about this stuff. I had to be Errol at Hillmans. But I ticked ‘F’ all the same on the application form. I still wore pants and used the boys room, but it felt exciting to know that all the school things I was doing — even though I’d done them a thousand times before — were being done as the real me. Or so I thought.

So for three whole days, I felt good about my little secret. My little rock. Then the school found out. They called me into the principal’s office for this Big Chat.

“Errol,” the Principal Vickers began. He was this tall, thickly-set man with close, afro-textured hair and a deep, bassy voice. I’m pretty sure if you looked up ‘man’s man’ in the dictionary, it’d be his picture.

“Errol,” he went on. “There seems to be an irregularity with your application form.”

“Did you tick the ‘Female’ box by mistake?” Counselor Conway asked in her sharp, nasal tones.

“It wasn’t a mistake,” I answered. “I’m just not sure that I can tick the male box.”

Principal Vickers looked at Counselor Conway, and that was when they phoned my parents.

“You know you have to tick the ‘M’ box if you’re a male,” my dad explained when he and my mom arrived.

“He’s just a little confused,” Counselor Conway commentated.

She was right. I was. But not about that.

“I don’t see why there’s only two options on the form,” I offered, shrinking down a little into my blazer.

“Well, there’s only two options on the form,” my dad explained, “because there’s only two genders.”

“Gerald, I’m not sure that’s true,” my mom interjected.

“It was just a simple mistake,” my dad said to the principal. Now it was his turn to commentate and editorialize.

“But it wasn’t,” I replied, as calmly as I could with the tears forming in my eyes. “It wasn’t a mistake. I did it on purpose.”

My dad looked at my mom. Counselor Conway looked at both of them. Only Principal Vickers looked at me.

“You see, here’s the thing, son,” he opined. “Either this was all a simple mistake and there’s no disciplinary matter–” he left a pause in his speech long enough for my imagination to fill in what the other option might be, “– or this is a clear case of bad behavior, and the child needs to be punished accordingly. So, which is it, Errol?”

They ‘corrected’ my ‘mistake’ on the form and then they set about correcting me. They never gave a thought to the mistake the doctors made 11 years ago. That was fine. What I had done landed me three days detention and The Chat continued when I got home.

My dad couldn’t see why I’d done it. Why anyone would want to be anything other than who they were born as. My mom was a little more on my side. And Anna, my big sister, well, she’s always supported me no matter what. And that’s how Ella was born. In secret. At home. One family member at a time.

I started out wearing unisex clothes at home. Baggy and beige things that didn’t really scream any kind of gender at all. But at school, I had to be Errol. I threw myself into my pants and blazer (white shorts and shirts at gym time) and I pretended to throw myself into school with the enthusiasm of an eager beaver. That was another rock. Another secret. Another lie. That was until I hit 12 years old. And found Mr Jenkins.

Mr Jenkins ran Pride Club and, aside from being a really great math teacher, was also the only openly gay adult I knew. The school-board kept a very close eye on him, but — when 7 of the girls in 8th Grade wanted a safe space to talk about LGBTQIA+ issues, Pride Club had what it needed to be approved: a teacher willing to run it and a group of students demanding it be run.

It was there that I learned words like ‘cisgender’ and ‘demiboy’ and everything started to make sense. I can still remember when I announced at the breakfast table that I was a demiboy. My father was so surprised he actually spat his grapefruit juice.

All over my mom.

So, there was that.

The more I went to Pride Club, the more I found words to describe how I felt. Words that had seemed kinda scary -– words like ‘trans’ and ‘bi-romantic’ and ‘puberty blockers’ — became as familiar as an old teddy bear. But things came to a head around my 13th birthday.

13 can be a confusing time, especially when you’re not comfortable in your own body. I knew I was changing. I felt like there was more of me being added every day and I didn’t like what it was adding up to.

I’d decided that when I turned 13, I was going to tell my family my biggest secret. I didn’t feel like I was a demiboy anymore. I didn’t feel like any part of me was ‘boy’ at all. But my body had other ideas. My body was in on the doctors’ mistake and was shaping me more and more into this thing that I didn’t want to be. So, the only thing for it was to tell my family that I wanted to go on the blockers. I wanted to start my transition. It should have been a joyous time. It was anything but...

Submitted: January 01, 2025

Young Adult teen drama ya lgbtq trans