Now I had a label, and Meredith’s permission to use it. I wasn’t sure if I liked the fit of it, but it certainly sounded a lot nicer than what Nathan had called her last time he and Dad were gossiping about her.

That evening, we had a family movie night; we were watching You Can’t Take it With You. Dad was really into old movies, and Mom liked them too although she wasn’t as obsessed with trivia about long-dead actors and defunct studios. Mom was getting a headache, and she asked Dad to pause the movie, then asked me, “Could you go bring me the Tylenol out of my purse? It should be sitting on my chest of drawers.”

“Sure,” I said, and went to Mom and Dad’s bedroom. Mom’s purse was easy to spot, so it shouldn’t have taken more than a few seconds. But I noticed the framed photo hanging over the chest of drawers, and paused for a moment.

It was a little girl, four years old, wearing a simple yellow dress with cartoon kittens on it. She was grinning broadly, and holding her little brother in her lap — Nathan was about a year and a half old in that picture. I hadn’t seen that picture since the last time I’d had occasion to go in Mom and Dad’s bedroom, however many months ago that had been, or thought about my sister Courtney for a long time, either. Mom and Dad didn’t want visitors who hadn’t known them for decades asking painful questions about her, so they only displayed her photos in their bedroom, and it had been a long time since they’d talked about her where I could hear.

She had died of a heart defect not long after that picture was taken, before I was born. When I was little, I vaguely remembered that Mom and Dad had kept her bedroom the way it used to be — I remember being forbidden to go inside without one of them, but allowed to look at it sometimes. But not long after I started school, they’d cleaned it up, packed some of the things away in the attic and given away others. Her old room was now an office that Mom and Dad used when they had to bring work home.

I wasn’t sure why I lingered to look at her photo, and then the other, taken when she was a few months old. After a few moments, I grabbed Mom’s purse and dug through it for the bottle of Tylenol, returning with it to the living room. Nobody complained about me taking longer than necessary to find it, because Nathan had taken advantage of the pause to go to the restroom and he wasn’t back yet.

Courtney’s photos had almost reminded me of something, but I couldn’t figure out what. I thought about it off and on in between watching the movie and getting ready for bed. And when I finally turned off the light and tried to sleep, for once I didn’t have to focus on math or history to avoid fantasizing about turning into a dragon-girl. What was it I’d almost been reminded about? Some story Mom or Dad told me about Courtney, back when they’d talked about her more often? Something about her bedroom, back when it was preserved intact? Another photo I’d seen in an old photo album or in a PowerPoint slideshow Mom had made for our family at Christmas one year?

I thought, not for the first time but for the first time in a long while, about what it would have been like if she’d lived, if I’d had a big sister growing up as well as a big brother. Maybe not that much different; with the difference in our ages, as well as sexes, we might not have had that much to do with each other. Especially these days; she would have been a junior in college by now. Not to mention I had no idea what kind of person she’d have grown up to be. But I speculated baselessly for a while anyway. It was better than the other things that had occupied my thoughts in the last few weeks.

At some point, I decided to mentally reconstruct her bedroom from when I’d seen it as a kid. That wouldn’t give me all that many clues to her personality, since Mom would have made most of the decorating decisions for her at that age, but I didn’t have much else to go on — a few half-remembered anecdotes about cute things she’d done and said. I arranged things in my mental space: the low yellow chest of drawers there, the bed over there, with her favorite plushies lined up next to the pillows (otter, turtle, bear, pig — if Mom had ever told me what she’d called them, I didn’t remember), the little shelf full of dolls and picture books, the toybox, the closet —

I gasped and started hyperventilating as the memory rushed back.

I don’t know how old I was, but probably no older than Courtney was when she died — three or four, maybe five at most. I’d gone into her bedroom, though even then I must have known I wasn’t supposed to, and instead of playing with the toys, like any normal kid would have done, I had opened the closet door and stared enraptured at the dresses. Finally I’d picked one out, a peach-colored one with ruffles at the hem. I’d taken off my shirt and shorts and put the dress on, looking at myself in the mirror.

Now that the memories had come back, I remembered the way I’d looked in the mirror better than the spanking I got afterward and way better than anything Mom or Dad had said to me about it. I’d looked like a girl with short hair. I remembered liking the way I’d looked, for however long it lasted before I got caught.

I couldn’t remember what Mom or Dad had said, only their tone of voice and volume, but I could figure out what must have been the gist. Dresses are for girls, you’re a boy, don’t ever do that again, and so on. And also probably a lot of stuff about desecrating your poor sister’s memory.

But I thought it through, and wondered what it meant. Wanting to turn into a girl wasn’t some weird sexual perversion that I’d developed well into puberty. Or not only that. It was already there when I was little, something I’d suppressed for a long time after that terrifyingly prolonged spanking and the weepy tirades from both parents. And little kids couldn’t have sexual perversions. Back then, at least, my motive for wanting to wear Courtney’s dress — to be like the girls I played with at preschool or kindergarten — must have been as pure as Meredith’s motive for needing to be a girl, if not more so. It had gone wrong recently as it came back under these weird circumstances, but it was originally good.

I started crying, and fell asleep not long afterward.

* * *

The next day was Sunday, and after church, we went out to lunch with the Ramseys and with Crystal Southers, a lady probably six or seven years younger than Mom or Mrs. Ramsey, whose new boyfriend was attending church with her today. As usual, the kids ended up sitting at one end of the table and the adults at the other. Fortunately, Ms. Southers ended up sitting between me and Mom, with Dad even further up the table.

“I like your fingernails,” I said to Meredith once we’d placed our drink orders. “I’m glad your parents are letting you use nail polish now.” Her parents were fairly conservative, though not like mine, and had grounded her and her sister Sophia for using the machine without permission. But they were gradually starting to let up on Meredith and let her do feminine things.

“Thanks,” she replied. “Sophia’s friend Julianna did them.”

Sophia put in, “Yeah, we had a sleepover to celebrate me not being grounded anymore.”

“That’s great!” I said. “I thought y’all were gonna be grounded for months, at least.”

I had the fleeting thought that if Meredith’s parents were easing up on her after just a few weeks of her being a girl, maybe it would eventually rub off on my parents and they’d consider letting me be a girl, too... if it weren’t against policy at the Everett Academy to let kids come to school venned. But Meredith interrupted that thought, saying:

“No, I’m still grounded, it’s just Sophia that’s not grounded anymore. Mom and Dad let me hang out with Sophia and Julianna for a little while, but I couldn’t watch movies or play games with them.”

She went on to say she was was still grounded for a month plus however long she stayed a girl, but the way her parents were acting in the last couple of weeks, she thought they’d let her off a lot earlier than that. After a little more of that, we talked about books we’d been reading for a little while.

After the waiter had brought our drinks and taken our meal orders, Meredith excused herself to go to the restroom. I kept talking with Sophia for a minute longer, but then the idea occurred to me that if I wanted to talk with Meredith alone, with no chance of anyone overhearing us, now was the time. I said I needed to go to the restroom too, and waited just outside the ladies’ room. That restaurant had the restrooms separated from the dining area we were sitting in by a couple of partitions, so people at our table wouldn’t be able to see, and even if someone from our table came to use the restroom, they wouldn’t see me until they came around the corner into the restroom area, at which point it would probably look like I’d just come out of the men’s room. I thought about what I wanted to say and how, and second-guessed myself a lot, almost going back to the table or ducking into the men’s room to hide a couple of times. But finally Meredith came out of the ladies’ room and I worked up the courage to say:

“Hey... I, uh, wanted to talk to you for a minute without other people around... if it’s okay...?”

“Sure,” she said. “What is it?”

“I, um, well... Nathan and I went to the library to do some research for school, and I convinced him to try out the trust booth. He turned me into a little dragon, about the size of a robin, I guess? And flying was really awesome, but we didn’t stay changed for very long because we had to get home, but I want to do it again, and to change into a more humanoid dragon next time, but... like, a girl dragon?” She nodded understandingly. “But I don’t think I can ask him.”

“You know him better than I do,” she said, “but he seems sort of okay with me being trans, so maybe he would be fine with you wanting to be a girl? Whether it’s just trying it out for a while, or for good. Is that a form you think you’d like to live with if your school would allow it and all?”

“I don’t know... maybe not. Ideally...” The ideal didn’t matter; what I could get away with was more important. “I guess I could be a human girl on weekdays and a dragon-girl on weekends? But there’s no way I can do that until I’m grown up and living somewhere else... And Nathan is nice to you in person, but you haven’t heard him talking about you behind your back. The way he and Dad were talking a few weeks ago, after they saw you for the first time after...” Meredith looked stricken when I said that, and I berated myself for gossiping about Dad and Nathan behind their backs.

Then she surprised me by grabbing me in a hug. It was more of a surprise because by that point I wasn’t looking at her; I was barely able to get the words out, eye contact was too much to expect.

“It’s going to be okay,” she said. “You might have to wait until you’re eighteen, or even a little longer, but then you can get exactly the body you want without spending thousands of dollars, begging a therapist for permission, or risking heart problems. We’ve got it a lot better than trans people used to, even if it’s still a long way from perfect.”

“Trans people.” That was what I was now, even though I hadn’t dared use the word for myself even in imagination. I’d just recently realized that I wanted to be a girl, or considered how much my motivations for wanting it might be similar to or different from Meredith’s. Now I had a label, and Meredith’s permission to use it. I wasn’t sure if I liked the fit of it, but it certainly sounded a lot nicer than what Nathan had called her last time he and Dad were gossiping about her.

“We’d better get back to the table,” she said, glancing toward the dining areas. “Just remember I’ve got your back. Whatever I can do...”

“Thanks. Uh, maybe we’d better go back separately?”

She let me go back first, and returned a minute or two later. We talked with Sophia some more about books we were reading and the topics we were doing term papers on, but I was pretty distracted and Meredith and Sophia had to hold up most of the conversation.

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