“No?” says the voice. “Damn, all right.”

After a minute, I sit up by propping myself against the desk behind me. The room looks like an office. Books are scattered in piles on messy shelves. Papers are on every available surface. Certifications, newspaper clippings, and photos hang on the walls, their glass frames dull like they haven’t been cleaned since Judgment Day.

As interesting as this is, though, I feel like shit. And so does the person in the chair across the room, if their scars and grief-reddened eyes have anything to say about it. The right side of their face is destroyed with pockmarks. One eye doesn’t open all the way. Latinx, scarred face, and painted nails don’t combine into a person I recognize. “Who…?”

“Shit, we gotta do introductions.” The stranger leans back, fingers lacing together as if to distract from the obvious tears. “Name’s Salvador. I was with the group that found you, though I didn’t get to say hi before you passed out. Got stuck on babysitting duty—no offense—to make sure you didn’t lose your shit when you woke up.” I’m too tired for that. I’ve lost it enough for one day. “So yeah, nice to finally meet you. Xe/xem pronouns.”

Right, Salvador was the one who pulled the sunburned boy away from the body. The memory is hazy, though. There’s a fog in my brain I’m too tired to claw through. I recognize everything that’s happened today from a distance, like the color’s been bleached out by the sun. Dad’s blood under my nails is the only evidence that he died today. That he died a few hours ago.

Salvador watches me warily.

“Yeah,” I say. “Cool. Xe/xem.” I go through the rest of the set: xe, xem, xyr, xemself. I read about neopronouns in a book Dad smuggled from the burn pile of confiscated items at New Nazareth. He brought up the book again our second night in the city, just a few days ago, when we sat in a dead stranger’s bathroom and cut off two feet of my hair with sewing scissors. He apologized with every snip, certain he was ruining it. By the end, I was sitting in a pile of red-brown scraps and running my hands through my choppy, shaggy, awkward boy hair.

I need to stop thinking about Dad. So I say, “Are you trans?”

Salvador blinks. “Uh.”

“Wait, no.” I can’t just ask people if they’re trans. “I shouldn’t have…”

“No, it’s fine,” Salvador says. “I mean, yeah, of course. I’m super trans. Like, an honestly heretical amount of trans. Why?”

I’ve never met another trans person before. Can I say that? Would it give me away as an Angel?

I decide on, “It’s been a while.”

“Then you’re going to lose your mind when I tell you this is an LGBTQ+ youth center.”

Xe’s right. “A what?”

Salvador gestures to the office. “This is the Acheson LGBTQ+ Center. Kind of like the YMCA but even gayer somehow. We call it the ALC for short.” Alck, xe pronounces it, like it’s some sort of medicine or maybe a hard liquor. An entire building, just for people like us? “It’s not much, and we’ve had to make a few adjustments”—xe nods to the boarded-up window beside xyr head—”but it’s home.”