Jason's Story

by Kristine Roland

Chapters 16 - 18. The continuing story of Jason, a young boy that is coming to terms with his transgender nature, and his mostly supportive family.

“Look at that, he does have balls. Jason, I’ll move on when I’m ready.” Brad pushed Jason.

Authors Note: This section only had 3 chapters, because I have posted all that I have written so far. Please let me know if this is a decent size for a post, or whether you want me to hold off until I have more chapters done. Now that I'm caught up, I'll have to slow down a little bit, but I promise to keep at it.

Kristy.

Chapter 16

At the mall the first place they stopped was the sporting goods store, where both Jason and Julie picked out cleats for the upcoming baseball and softball season. Julie asked, “Mrs. Anderson, do you mind if I run into the shoe store, I never did get those sandals the other day.”

Kristine smiled, and said, “Of course not, Julie. No problem.”

The three of them went into the store, and Julie started to look for a pair of sandals.

Jason for the first time really noticed just how many different styles of shoes there were for women. “So many styles!” He said.

Julie looked at him and laughed, saying “Yeah, you are probably like my brother, one pair of sneakers, one pair of dress shoes, and a pair of winter boots. Plus the sports shoes like the cleats of course, but I don’t count those, there more like equipment.”

Jason said “Pretty much that is all a guy needs.”

Kristine said, “Women are expected to co-ordinate their entire outfit, including the shoes and purse. So we have to have different styles and colors of shoes to go with the rest of what we are wearing. While a man or a boy might have three or four pairs, it is not uncommon for women to have a dozen or more. Some women go a little bit overboard on it though. How about you Julie, are you a shoe addict?”

Julie said, “Not really, I mean I do have a soft spot for a nice pair of shoes, but I don’t go crazy about it. Sue on the other hand, can’t pass up a cute pair of shoes; she gets it from her mother. I’m just looking for some basic sandals. My old pair fell apart last week.”

Kristine said, “How about these?” She held out a white slide with crossover leather straps and side notches.

Julie looked at them and said, “Those are nice, let me see them. Do they have them in my size?” Julie looked through the boxes and found a pair in her size. She slipped off her flats and slid on the sandals. She stood up and walked in them and asked Jason, “How do they look?”

At Jason’s look of incomprehension, Julie laughed. “How about you, Mrs. Anderson, I’m sure you have an opinion. Jason, stick with me and you will certainly learn how to tell.”

Kristine held back her own chuckle, and asked “Julie, I think they look good. Are they comfortable?”

“Yes, they are. Ok, I’m going to get these.”

“Do you have enough? You were supposed to bring your mother change?” Kristine reminded her.

“Oh, I’m not using Mom’s money. I brought some of my own money, too. And yes, I have enough.” She replied.

“Ok, just making sure.”

Julie went up to the counter and paid for her shoes.

As they left the shoe store, Kristine asked, “Julie did you eat? Jason and I did not get a chance, and could really use something.”

“Actually, no I didn’t. I overslept and just barely got ready in time. I did have piece of fruit, but nothing substantial.”

“Ok, let’s get something from the food court. What do you like, Julie?”

“I can get something from most places, where are you thinking of going?”

“We would probably just pick up something from Wendy’s” Kristine answered, “But you can get something else if you prefer.”

“Wendy’s is fine.”

“What would you like?”

“Can I have a single, with a side salad instead of fries, and a diet coke?” Julie replied.

“Of course you can. Jason?”

“umm… I guess that sounds good to me too.” He replied.

Kristine raised her eyebrows, but decided not to say anything. “Ok… Why don’t you two go grab a table, I’ll get the food.”

“Ok” they replied.

They found a clean table, and Julie said to Jason, “I take it from your mother’s expression that that was not your usual order at Wendy’s.”

“No, but I think I need to start to eat a little differently.” He answered.

“Well, it won’t kill you to eat healthier then most boys do. That much is for sure.”

While they waited for Jason’s mother to come by, several of the guys from school noticed them and came over. “Hi Julie, what are you doing here with Jason.”

“Brad. I’m here with Jason because he invited me along.” She replied coldly.

“Oh really, he invited you did he? Well Jason, that took some balls, didn’t think you had it in you.”

Jason stood up, and said “Brad, I think it is time for you to move on.”

“Look at that, he does have balls. Jason, I’ll move on when I’m ready.” Brad pushed Jason.

“What the hell is going on here?” Kristine hissed as she came to the table with lunch.

“Nothing Mom. Brad was just leaving.” Jason said as he looked Brad straight in the eyes.

“Yeah. Nothing. We will pick this up another time, Jason.” Brad said as he and his buddies walked away.

“What was that all about, Jason?” his mother asked, after they were gone.

“I’m afraid it’s my fault Mrs. Anderson. Or at least it’s because of me. Brad has been trying to get me to go out with him for a while, and I have told him that I was not interested. He does not like being told no, and now he sees me here with Jason, and so he is taking it out on Jason. I’m sorry Jason, I know he is a bully.”

“Julie, don’t worry about it. I can take care of myself, and he won’t push me around, and Julie, you let me know if he bothers you too.”

“Jason, you stay away from him.” His mother told him.

“Mom, I won’t go looking for trouble, you know me better than that, but I have to be able to stand up to him, if it comes to that, because if I don’t it will only get worse.” Jason replied. “I’m sorry, but I’ve lost my appetite, can we take it with us?”

“Ok with me, how about you Julie?”

Julie was looking at Jason, and she said quietly, “that’s fine.”

They got to the car, and headed toward Sally’s house. The ride was quiet, as all three of them were thinking about what happened. Jason kept looking over at Julie, and finally he said, “Julie are you ok?”

“I’m fine.” She replied.

“Have I done something wrong?” he asked.

Julie sighed, “No, Jason, you didn’t… I guess I was just surprised that you were so, I don’t know, masculine in the way you responded to Brad. I guess I was thinking about how Kelly would have reacted, and oh… I don’t know. I’m sorry… I don’t know what to think.”

“Julie, I don’t like having to respond like that. In fact I hate it, but as long as I’m Jason to the world, there are certain things that I have to be prepared to do. I’m not much of a fighter, in fact I’m awful, but I know what happens to boys that don’t fight back, and I’m not going to be someone’s punching bag. I have found that bullies don’t like to actually have to fight someone that fights back. Most of the time simply calling their bluff is enough to get them to back down. I’m sorry; I wish it was not like that. I wish I could be Kelly and not have to deal with jerks like Brad.” Jason answered.

“Trust me, being Kelly would not prevent that. I am a girl and I have to deal with him. He won’t take no for an answer, and now he is going after you because of it.” She answered with more than a touch of annoyance.

“I’m sorry; I did not mean to imply that it was easier for girls. It’s not; I know that, it’s just different. I hate having to put up the macho front, Julie, but I have to do it. I’ve never seen Brad get physical with a girl, has he?”

“No, Brad hasn’t, at least not that I’ve heard of. He does have a temper, though, and I would not want to be alone with him. If he did decide to get physical, I would be so vulnerable, I could never push him away, because he is so much stronger then I am. That scares me. Seeing you today, I saw you fully as a man, standing up to him. I did not see Kelly in you there at all.”

“Julie, believe me she is here, but I had to suppress her then. Can you accept me, Julie? I don’t want to lose my new friend. Can you accept that when it is necessary, Jason will assert himself to protect himself, and you? Can you?”

Kristine continued to drive, wanting to intervene, but holding her breath to see what Julie was going to do.

Julie thought long and hard before she took a deep breath and said, “Yes Jason, I can. I hope that someday your real nature can be your public face, but I understand. I don’t want you to get hurt, so you have to do what you have to do to protect yourself. But Jason, unless you catch someone trying to physically harm me, I don’t want you to go all macho to protect me. Let me handle it myself, is that ok?”

“Ok, if you insist. But I will not stand by and watch someone attack you physically, I just can’t do that.”

“Understood,” she smiled and held his hand, “and appreciated. Mrs. Anderson, I’m sorry.”

“That’s ok Julie. You two had to work that out between you. I’m sorry that I don’t have a glass partition like a limo driver, so that I could have put it up to give you some privacy, as I’m sure that was difficult for both of you knowing I’m sitting here. I will tell you I’m proud of you both, because you got it right out, then you talked it through to come to an understanding. If you can always remember to do that, you may have a very long friendship, or more. That is really the hard part in a relationship.”

Chapter 17

A few minutes later Kristine pulled into Aunt Sally’s driveway.

“Mom, I thought you had some other errands to run before we got to Aunt Sally’s?” Jason asked.

“Well, I had intended too, but frankly I’m hungry, and I want to eat our lunch. I’m sure you would both like to now as well, so I thought we might as well just come straight here. Jason, please grab the food bag.”

“Sure Mom.”

They went up to the front door and Kristine rang the doorbell. Emily came and opened the door, “Mom! It’s Aunt Kristine and Jason! Jason, are you going to play with me? Oh, who are you?” Emily looked surprised at Julie.

“I’m Julie. I’m a friend of Jason’s.” she replied.

“Are you his girlfriend?” Emily asked wide eyed.

“Yes, I am, and you must be Emily. I’ve heard a lot of good things about you, I have been looking forward to meeting you.” Julie answered.

“Oh, well… It’s nice to meet you too Julie. Jason, will you still be willing to play with me?” she looked at Jason with a face that almost broke his heart.

“Emily, of course I will. You know me better than that! Do you mind if Julie plays with us too?” he looked at Julie, hoping she would not mind.

Emily’s face lit up bright as the sun, and said, “No, of course I don’t mind. Julie is that ok with you?”

“I would love to Emily. Can it wait until after we have had our lunch though, I’m starving!” Julie replied.

“oh.. Wendy’s! Did you bring something for me, Aunt Kristine.” Emily said excitedly.

“Oh dear, Emily, no we had not intended on coming here with it when I picked up lunch, or I would have called to see if you and your Mom wanted something. I’m sorry.” Kristine answered.

Emily looked disappointed, but her mother came down the stairs and said, “Kristine, that’s ok. Emily you just had lunch, you can’t be hungry. Come on in, no reason to hang out on the stoop.”

Kristine, Julie and Jason came in, and they followed Sally to the kitchen. Emily followed them, but quickly decided that she was going to go back to playing her video game in the play room.

Kristine said, “Sally, this is Jason’s girlfriend, Julie. Julie, this is Sally.”

“Julie, its nice to meet you.”

“Thank you. It is nice to meet you as well.”

They all sat down at the table, and Jason passed the sandwiches and salads to his mother and Julie. While they were eating, Sally asked, “So, Jason how are things going?”

“Aunt Sally, I can’t tell you how good this week has been. Oh and by the way, Julie knows about… well you know.”

“I see. Well that will make things a little easier for you, and means I can relax and ask more straight forward. How did your first session with Dr. Daniels go?”

“It went well. He seems really nice, and we talked a lot about things.”

“I spoke to your father the next morning; he said he thought it was going to help you a lot. So I hear that you will be spending some time helping around the house, has that started?”

Kristine said, “yes, in fact that is how Julie came to find out about things. She saw us at the shoe store of all places and overheard us talking. We are going to have to be a whole lot more careful in the future.”

“Oh my, yes that could have been awkward. Julie, that must have seemed awfully strange to you.” Sally asked.

“I was surprised, and I felt bad for eaves dropping. Jason had always been a nice guy, and I felt like I had violated something special between him and his mom. I know I did not do it intentionally, but I really felt bad. I kept quiet so that I could think about what I should do about it. I could not stop thinking about it that night, and decided I wanted to let Jason know, and to help in any way I could. So here we are.”

“Well you are a remarkable young lady then. I think that most girls your age would have been on their cell phones, or texting away and spreading the gossip around before they even got out of the store.”

“I’m not like that.” Julie said quietly. “But I know that a lot of the girls are. I’m just glad it was me, and not someone like Courtney.”

Jason shuddered at the thought.

Kristine said, “Well, it was a lesson learned. We will have to be much more careful going forward. I know that Richard asked you to think about how to handle things with Emily. I know that you and Emily will be supportive, but since this has to stay a secret, that might be a bit much to ask of her.”

“I know, and I have given it a lot of thought. I think that she will understand, and I don’t think that it will do her any harm to be asked to keep this quiet, but I can’t guarantee that she won’t forget and say something at the wrong time, without even realizing she is doing it. I’m ok either way, but it is your secret Jason, it’s you that would be taking that risk, so I think it should be your decision.” Sally replied.

“I’ll have to think about it. I don’t want to hide it from Emily, but let me give it some serious thought.”

“Fair enough. One way or another, though, I do want to meet my niece some time.”

“and Kelly, wants to meet you too, Aunt Sally.”

“Kelly. I like it. You know you had a great, great Aunt Kelly. She was a strong lady, and was very active in the women’s suffrage movement. I think she would have approved.”

“I did not know that, but I think that is great.” Jason replied.

Emily came back in looking for Jason and Julie. “Are you done eating yet? I want to play.”

Jason said, “I’m done, Julie are you coming?”

“Yup, let’s go.”

Jason and Julie joined Emily and went into the play room. Emily had set up her tea table for three places, and asked them if they would like some tea. They both thanked her, and sat on the small chairs. Emily poured.

They spent the next hour playing with Emily, at whatever games she wanted. As might be expected many of the games were quite girly. Julie watched Jason playing with his little cousin and saw Kelly through the boy again. It made her feel warm inside, and she felt the acceptance solidify in her even more. She had been startled this afternoon, watching Jason react so strongly as a boy. She had not expected it, and it had bothered her. After all one of the reasons she was not interested in boys was that aggressive hard aspect. But as she thought about it more, she started to really comprehend how difficult this was going to be for Jason. For now at least, he was going to have to walk a fine line. She certainly knew that being a girl was not easy, but she had just gotten a hard glimpse at the difficulties a boy faced, and the thought of Jason, who was going to have to deal with both sides in his life, well her heart went out to Jason and to Kelly.

She knew that part of her job, was going to have to be helping Jason to walk that balance, to be able to be Jason when he needed, and to help him find Kelly’s strength as well.

Chapter 18

The rest of the weekend had passed. Julie had stayed for dinner on Saturday night, got to see Kelly in her new Navy dress, and then had to go home. Sunday they both had to be other places and did not see each other.

Jason and Julie agreed to meet up at lunch.

“I want to sit over there,” Julie pointed over toward the table that Jason was sitting at with his friends John and Steve.

Kathy and Sue looked at her like she had two heads, and said, “what is going on?”

“Jason and I got together this weekend. We had a really good time, I like him.” She answered.

“oooh… Julie is finally interested in a boy! And it’s Jason Anderson. Why him Julie? I mean he is a nice guy, I’ll grant you that, and he isn’t Quasimodo, but he isn’t Johnny Depp either. Julie, almost any of the boys would like to be with you, so why him?” Kathy asked.

“I don’t know, I just like him. I think he is cute, and I don’t like Johnny Depp.” She stuck her tongue out at Kathy.

“Ok. Ok. I’m just teasing. Julie if you like him that is good enough for me. But don’t expect us to date his friends for you!”

“I won’t ask you to, although John and Steve are not so bad. You might find you like one of them, if you give them a chance.”

Kathy and Sue shared a look and said, “Not!”

“Well, be nice anyway. Please” she pleaded with them.

“Oh ok.” They laughed, and went with Julie to sit with Jason and his friends.

“Hi Jason, do you mind if we sit here?” Julie smiled at Jason.

“No, of course not, Julie. Hello Kathy, Sue…”

“Hi Jason, Hello Steven, Hi John.” Kathy replied as they sat down.

John and Steven stammered, and replied, “oh… yeah, Hi.”

The girls giggled.

Kathy looking at Jason, said, “So Jason, I understand you and Julie had a fun weekend.”

John and Steven looked over at Jason with surprise.

“Yeah, I had a good time. I hope you did too, Julie.” Jason said, ignoring his friends.

“Yes, I did. The movie at your house on Friday was fun, and I loved meeting your cousin Emily on Saturday, she is such a sweet heart. I think she has a crush on her older cousin.” Julie smiled.

“Well, she has had a tough time, as you know. I just try to be a good cousin.”

“I know Jason; I think it is great that you are so good with her.” Julie replied. Then she turned to Kathy and asked her, “how was your weekend at your grandparents?”

“Oh, it was fine. Mom and I went shopping with my Grandmother, and got some cute stuff. We also saw a show at the local theatre; it was pretty good, all in all. How about you Sue, how was your weekend with your Dad.”

“It was ok. His girlfriend was there though.” She said, and it was obvious she did not like her father’s girlfriend.

They continued to make small talk. Brad and his buddies came to the table.

“Well Jason, you don’t have your mother here to protect you today, do you.” Brad sneered at him. “Now isn’t this fascinating. Julie, Kathy and Sue slumming with this crew.”

Julie, said, “Brad, what business is it of yours who we sit with. Why don’t you go crawl back under a rock.”

Kathy added, “Brad, I’ll sit with anyone I darn well chose to, and no Neanderthal is going to tell me otherwise. John, would you care to go for a walk.”

Sue, said, “What she said, Steven?”

John and Steven, both looked at them confused, but then quickly said, “um… sure, of course.” They took their arms and headed out to the field.

Julie stared at Brad, who then turned to Jason, “Hiding behind a woman again. Letting Julie and your mom fight your battles. Pansy.”

Jason stood up, “Brad, I’m not hiding. Anytime, you want to step outside.” Jason stared him right in the eye, and bared his teeth.

Brad broke the eye contact first, “I can’t afford to get suspended again. But I’ll catch up with you outside of school.”

Jason, replied, “Fine, name a time and place. I’ll be there.”

“Just wait. You will see.”

“Fine, like I said Brad, anytime.”

Brad walked away, and Jason sat down. “I’m sorry Julie. I know how much that bothers you.”

“No Jason, you were right the other day. The only way for you to deal with Brad is to face him down. You called his bluff, and it worked.”

“For now, he won’t go one on one with me now. He is more likely to get a couple of his buddies and try to ambush me on the way home, but hopefully I can avoid that.”

“Well let’s go find Kathy, Sue and John and Steven” she replied.

“Yes, before John and Steven have dropped dead from shock.” He replied.

Julie giggled, and said, “You know Brad could not have done anything more to push Kathy’s buttons. She may actually try to get to know John now.”

“He is a nice guy, she could do worse.” Jason replied.

“I’m sure you are right. Well lets go find them.”

They cleaned up the table, including their friend’s meals and then went out to the field.