I let go of a breath that locked my entire body in place. “I—” I begin, but I don’t know what I say to that. I didn’t know Professor McPherson is nonbinary. Fuck, I’ve been referring to them as she in my head. My cheeks heat when I realize I’m now assuming that the professor uses they/them. This is some Inception-level thought betrayal.

“I just wanted to let you know that I’m here as a resource, something I wish I had when I was just starting out in this business.”

There’s an ease with Professor McPherson that I haven’t ever had with another adult, which of course makes me drop my guard, something I hardly ever do when it comes to discussing my gender identity.

“Can I ask you something kind of personal?”

Though Professor McPherson’s face softens, I notice a full-body tension. “Within reason.”

“Right,” I say. “How’d you know you were nonbinary? And do you use they/them?”

A smile stretches across Professor McPherson’s face. “I sometimes use they/them, but I actually like she/her.”

“It’s okay to do that?” I ask. “Use she/her, even though you don’t identify solely within that binary?”

She emits a nervous laugh I recognize because I do the same thing. “The one thing that I’ve learned is that there are no rules, only the ones you impose upon yourself. If you feel comfortable, that’s all that matters.”

I gnaw on the inside of my cheek for a bit and stare past her, afraid to look her in the eyes. A memory of my secret sketchbook flashes. It was filled with self-portraits of me as both prince and princess, knight and witch, male and female, and sometimes a magical combination of both and neither all at once. I used to think I was a shape-shifter because some days I would feel more masculine, others more feminine, and sometimes in-between or something else entirely. One drawing I did over and over again was a gender-ambiguous angel with dragon-like wings. They had my body but with flowing garments that hugged their curves. I wrote little stories in the margins about them, and some days, I felt like that angel: ethereal, something beyond this binary world.

But one day, when I came home from school, I found Dad in my room with the book in his hands. His eyes were red, and he started shouting at me. That I was a boy! A man! That if I needed to be reminded about that, he would knock some sense into me! He never did hit me, but it made me hate my body even more, to think that I might be like him. And if I wasn’t, would he ever love me?

“You asked me how I knew I was nonbinary,” she says. “How did you?”

I think about the angel in my sketchbook, the way Taylor and I would play dress up and how I’d relish the moments when I’d let her sloppily apply makeup to my chubby face, all the millions of ways I never felt like the rest of the boys but always felt out of place with the girls, too, even if I was more comfortable around them.