“Stop!” Mom screams. We freeze in place. “Let her leave,” she says quietly. Randy sits back down. I look at my parents, so sad, so willing to lose me rather than question their religion.

Before I walk out, I turn around. I should say something. There’s so much I want to say, but would they hear it? Mom’s not looking, but Randy has his eyes on me. I shake my head and walk out of my parents’ house for the last time.

I stomp down the driveway. I’m feeling no sadness, only anger. My parents were going to send me away to be fixed. They think I need brainwashing because they are brainwashed. I disgust them, but they disgust me. I can’t believe them, and they don’t believe me.

I walk along the sidewalk and punch the air. Anger burns inside me, and I need to let it out. I kick the curb. The pain in my foot feels good. My parents think I’m broken. Randy and his dumb this beer can bullshit. I push a trash can down.

If they only knew how it felt. How much I’ve struggled. Why won’t they try to see it from my side? Why would I put myself through all of this? I walk by a brick mailbox and punch it, the dry rock tearing the skin of my knuckle. I punch again with the other fist. Both knuckles are red, and the painful sting feels good.

My reality is that I was born in the wrong body. Their reality is an old book full of rules, and if you follow the rules then you go to heaven. How real is that? More real than me? I kick a car tire and my toe gets stuck in the hubcap, sending me to the ground. Perfect.

I pull myself up and take a deep breath. I need to calm down. I continue heading east and stop trying to fight the street. I walk my familiar route to the Wawa gas station, about a mile from my parents’ house, thinking about my parents. They think I’m sick. They think I’m wrong. But when I lived in their reality, I felt wrong.

I should call my aunt, but I don’t want to talk. I can’t bring myself to tell her that my parents don’t want me in their life. They will never be proud of me again. They will never hug me again. I turn the corner and see the gas station in the distance.

I sit at the picnic table near the dumpster. I don’t know what to do next. I can’t go home ever again—I’m done with my parents. And I can’t go back to school because Joshua Downs will fire me, and I’ll become the joke of SPA. I have nowhere to go. I have nothing left.