“Um.” I hold out the backpack. I want this thing away from me. “I brought some stuff.” I stole some stuff. “Thought you might be hungry.”
He takes it like a starved dog takes meat from an outstretched hand. “Thanks. You look…”
“Like hell,” I finish for him.
“No. Just different.” He gestures at the back of his neck. “You cut your hair.”
Instinctively, I touch where my braid used to be. My head felt so light when Dad cut it all away, as if he’d taken off some terrible thing that’d been dragging me down for years. Which was true, in a way.
Theo says, “You actually look like a boy.”
My first instinct is to snap, I was a boy before I cut my hair and stopped wearing dresses, and I’d still be a boy if I hadn’t, but I don’t. I can’t be mad at him for saying the same thing I thought when I looked in that bathroom mirror. He’s just being nice.
“I look awful,” I say. I force a smile even though he can’t see it, not really. “I guess that’s the same thing as looking like a boy, right? I’ve worn cargo shorts three days in a row. If that’s not awful, I don’t know what is.”
Theo snorts. “How did I manage to land a straight guy?”
“How dare you imply I’m heterosexual. I am disgusted and appalled.”
And we’re quiet again, because we got close to the way things used to be and neither of us knows what to do with that.
Theo clears his throat. “Did you come here alone?”
“Of course I did.”
His throat bobs. I get the urge to pick out from under my nails blood that isn’t there anymore.
“Benji, I…，” Theo says. “I’m so sorry.”
I’ve been doing pretty good at not thinking about Dad. What would thinking about him do, anyway? It won’t change anything. “It’s fine.”
“Are you sure?”
I wave my hand at him. “I brought you stuff. Make sure it’s okay.”
“Right.” He sets the broken backpack on the teacher’s desk and opens it up. “Sorry.” I can’t watch him take out the food, the socks, the water. Still, as he replaces his old, ragged mask, I get a glimpse at his awkward half stubble. My dysphoria burns. I’ll never get to have that. I’ve come to terms with it, sure, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.
He stands there, hand over the mask as if feeling it. “You came back.”
“What, you thought I wasn’t going to?” I sit underneath a corkboard filled with coloring pages of the ark and the apostles. “I’m not that much of an asshole.”
“I just wouldn’t have been surprised if you didn’t. I would’ve been hurt, but I’d have understood. I haven’t exactly been…”
He doesn’t have to finish his sentence. No, he hasn’t.
He folds up his gangly limbs and sits beside me. He never did fill out as much as he thought he would, not the way his father did. Instead, he’s wiry like a wound-up spring, maybe one of those garage-door springs that can take off your face if you mess with them.
He’s so close. His thigh presses up against mine. I have to stop myself from leaning against him the way I always have.
“I lost it,” he says, “and I ruined the best thing that ever happened to me.” God, I hate apologies. He knows that. Why can’t we just admit that it’s all fucked up and move forward without talking about it? “I hurt you because I wasn’t mature enough to deal with you making a decision.”