Fearless my ass. But this felt like a compliment from someone I saw as truly fearless. I elbowed them and let their comment just hang in the air. Fee had been trying to get me to play on their queer ball hockey team for the past year. I’d turned eighteen in the summer (I’d missed some school after the accident, so I was a bit behind), which made me eligible to play, and I think Fee was convinced I was going to come out sooner or later. Like, “come out,” come out. They weren’t pushy about it or anything and had never actually said as much—they just kept hinting I’d fit right in due to my “grit and guts.”

It didn’t bother me that they thought I was queer somewhere deep down. It wasn’t the first time someone had assumed I liked girls, even though I dated boys (well, “dated” might be a stretch). My skater uniform—baggy jeans, hoodies, ball caps, and skate shoes, plus my undercut and piercings—suggested I might not conform to all kinds of “gender norms.” But every time Fee hinted, I just laughed it off.

It wasn’t that I was a homophobe or anything—I mean, I could admit I’d even crushed on a few girls. But that didn’t mean I could—or would—hook up with one. It just seemed too soft or squishy or something. Not my thing.

After we’d finished skating, I threw my stuff into the back of Fee’s Subaru and climbed into the front seat, pulling the belt across my body and clicking it into place, taking deep, measured breaths as I did—one of the few things I learned from my counselor after the accident that actually helped. It had taken me weeks to get back into a car after the crash, and when I finally did, I’d panicked as soon as the car started, and stumbled out and onto the pavement, dry-heaving over the sidewalk.

Only three months later, once I’d done a shitload of CBT—cognitive behavioral therapy—that had me sitting in the car over and over until I didn’t fall apart every time it started, was I able to finally make it through an entire ten-minute car ride to the grocery store with my aunt by deep-breathing my way into my seat belt. And then wrapping my left hand around the buckle and gripping the shit out of it for some added protection, the physical pain pressing down the moments and memories constantly trying to pry their way into my chest.

That last part had been my idea, not my counselor’s.