Chapter 27: Part 27 - Thursday, part 3

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Part 27 - Thursday, part 3

Since I was 12 years old, I’ve been collecting rocks. Hard and heavy and misshapen; secrets that weigh you down. I felt myself bent under their weight. Sometimes broken. But it never occurred to me til now that I wasn’t the only one hiding secrets.

“How can you two possibly know each other?” I asked, though part of me — the part that had felt all along that there was something suspicious about Bobby Brandon and his sudden interest in me, the part that understood total strangers don’t just leave jewelry for girls on their doorstep — that part of me was fighting to keep out what I should have seen all along. What Jessie had warned me about: ‘Bobby Brandon is the biggest player in the whole school.’

I felt the disgust rising up in me. The looks I’d tolerated, the thoughts I’d had, desires I’d allowed myself to fantasize about. Those things felt heavy in my stomach now, like gravity, like centrifugal force spinning me out of control.

Bobby knew Anna.

And I’d never seen it coming.

“Did he ask you to come?” Anna asked Bobby, ignoring my question.

Wait, there’s a he? Who’s a he?

“The guy’s worried about you,” Bobby replied.

I suddenly felt like a stranger in my own home.

“Will somebody tell me what’s going on, please?” I asked forcefully. Then summoned up the courage to add, “Are you two… involved?!”

A smile came over Bobby’s face. Not a cruel or sadistic smile; not a satisfied or indulgent smile; it was the smile of self-ridicule.

“Nah,” he offered. “We’re not together.”

I saw Anna’s eyes as she pieced it together: the outfit I was wearing, the sudden appearance of a boy in our kitchen.

“We’re really not, Ella,” she reassured.

I allowed myself to breathe again.

“Drake’s worried about you is all,” Bobby said again.

“Don’t—” Anna commanded. “I really don’t want to hear about Drake Carlson.”

Drake? That misogynistic guy at the basketball court with Bobby? He looked a little older than me. I didn’t figure he was that old.

“Why is Drake worried about you?” I asked Anna.

My voice suddenly felt so small. As though it was the least important part in some vast equation. The negative sign, maybe. That fitted.

Bobby looked nervously between the two of us. He knew the answer to that question. Clearly. So did Anna. Did I even live in this house anymore?

“You can tell Drake everything is fine,” Anna replied. “I went and got the pill like he asked.”

The pill? What pill?

Ohnoohnoohno!

“Don’t you dare tell Mom!” Anna commanded, raising her voice and wagging an accusing finger at me.

I’d read about this. In one of Anna’s girly magazines. This wasn’t a period. Her pain. The wrenching of her uterus, the bleeding, the discomfort she was in. It all started to make sense. The Microgestin. The Valentines cards. She was in a relationship with Drake. A sexual relationship.

This wasn’t a period. This was emergency contraception. That magic little pill a girl could take if everything else failed. Or if her stupid little sister decided to mess up her birth control because she wanted to feel like a real girl.

I’d done this to Anna.

I knew I had. Now I knew what it was I’d done.

“Ella, you have to promise me!” Anna ordered, taking me by the hands and looking me right in the eyes.

I can only imagine how my face looked to her. Guilt riding fear riding shame. The terror that was currently twisting up my guts and pulling at my insides. The way my jaw was set, so firm, so sure, so desperate. Heck, she could be reading that face in a million ways.

She didn’t know.

That I’d done it.

She’d have said by now, surely.

She thought she’d made a mistake herself. Forgotten to take her Microgestin and then had unprotected sex with this Drake guy. Then found out or figured it out when she went back for her next dose.

It was the only explanation that fitted.

“Ella!” she shouted, demanding my attention.

“I promise!” I replied.

Now it was her turn to breathe again.

“You can tell Drake he doesn’t have to worry about anything,” Anna informed Bobby again. “And tell him I just need some time away.”

“Alright,” Bobby replied coolly. If there was any terror in him, he didn’t show it.

“Is that why you came here?” I asked Bobby.

“No,” he replied, just as coolly. “I came to see you, Ella. I came because you said you needed someone to talk to.”

I was glad he didn’t tell Anna that my biggest secret was about to come out and there was nothing I could do about it. But — after everything I’d done — I felt she deserved to know.

“What did you need to talk to Bobby about?” my sister asked me.

Apparently, she felt she deserved to know as well.

“Something really bad has happened,” I said, but my shameful eyes could not meet her gaze.

For about 20 minutes, Bobby and I sat with Anna and told her about everything that had happened at school. The full story about Ms Pike. What had really happened down there in the phys ed department (even Bobby didn’t know all of that). Her recent visit to Jessie’s house.

My secret being out.

“I think you need to get ahead of this, Ella,” Anna said, once all the rocks were out of the bag.

“How?” I asked.

“There’s only one ‘how’,” she answered. “You have to come out!”

I felt my chest grow tight again. That little panic-spider was wrapping its long legs around my chest and pressing down remorselessly.

“I’m not ready!” I cried.

“It’s coming out one way or another…” Anna said succinctly. “At least this way you can get ahead of it.”

“I’ll lose all my friends!” I objected again.

I knew what I was doing. This truth was a cliff edge. And I’d do anything to avoid having to jump off it. Make any excuse; find any reason.

“Most of them will stand by you,” Bobby replied. “I’ll stand by you. And your girl Jessie too,” he added.

“She already knows,” I admitted, and began to bite the clear varnish of my thumbnail.

“Listen,” Bobby said, taking my willing hand in his. “There’ll always be people out there who gonna make trouble. And haters gotta hate. But there are so many people in the LGBTQIA+ community who gonna be there. You’ll see. My coz did.”

“Alright,” I replied.

“Yeah?” Anna asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “Let’s do this. Quickly. Before I change my mind.”

Anna and Bobby helped me to craft a quick Insta post and we took a photo of me standing there in my current outfit. My eyes looked all puffy and my hair was a mess, but I finger-combed it straight and smiled. Bobby helped. He was smiling right back at me. I still wasn’t sure why he was helping me. Or why he cared. But right now I needed people on my side, so I didn’t question it.

I tried to get hold of Jessie a bunch of times before I posted, but she was offline. I wanted to give her a heads up. There were bound to be questions coming her way. She was my best friend. Everyone knew it. But I couldn't get hold of her and I couldn’t wait. This had to be now.

Finally, I added a short description, and tagged in a whole bunch of tags that Bobby knew about and that Anna had researched.

Plus one extra tag that I insisted on myself.

Then, with my heart hammering at my ribcage, I pressed send.

When my mom came back, I told her what had happened round at Jessie’s, and I told her what I’d done about it. She was so angry about Ms Pike, she threatened to drive straight down to the school first thing tomorrow morning and have it out with the principal.

In the end, she didn’t go. It wasn’t that I talked her out of it. Something else happened. Something that I never saw coming but probably should have done.

Even before I was done explaining things to Mom, I switched my phone off. I closed my laptop lid down. I unplugged the house phone cable from the wall. I just wanted to crawl into my bed, bury myself under the covers and hide from the world.

I felt so tired. My head hurt. My heart hurt. I’ve always thought of myself as pretty thick skinned, but the sharpness of the events of the last few days would be enough to bring an elephant down. I wanted to sleep. I wanted to rest myself away from the world and just let the continents settle under my feet. I wanted to lay my body down and let the world spin on around me without caring for a while.

Turned out my body had other ideas.

Submitted: January 17, 2025

Young Adult teen drama ya lgbtq trans