And I don’t know entirely because I’m pretty damn positive I’m a boy, but I do get where e’s coming from. There are times when I don’t hate my body, and I actually like wearing dresses and girl power slogans. It’s not so much that I’m a girl, but it’s a skin I wore for so long, sometimes I feel like I should just let myself slip back into it for a little while. It’s just that person that I used to try to be sneaking into the person I’ve accepted now.

“Anyway,” Devin says, leading me back toward the kitchen so we can grab more food, “it just gets really complicated sometimes. And I’m always worried I’m going to pick something, and then people are going to tell me that’s my final form, you know? Like you can’t go back.”

“People can’t tell you who you are,” I say.

And e smiles, but it’s kind of sad, and a part of me wishes I could go back in time and fight off whatever demons Devin faced since e first came out. I wish I could eliminate some of those scars.

“When I told everyone I was a girl, there was a lot of backlash, but my parents and some of my friends seemed mostly okay with it,” e says. “Then I told them I wasn’t so sure I was a girl anymore, and the reaction was—well, it seemed like they thought maybe I was faking it from the beginning.”

“Why would you be faking it?” I ask.

E shrugs. “I guess it just makes more sense to them than the idea of me not actually knowing my gender. My parents came around, and they’ve been really supportive since then, but I don’t talk to those friends anymore.”

I sigh because, yeah, that’s harsh. I know that if I ever change my mind, decide I’m actually a girl or a demiboy or somewhere else on the infinite gender map, Becca won’t mind. Brian would probably buy me a dictionary of terms so I could parse out all the potentials, and my parents would probably just ask that I wear a name tag until they got my new name right. None of them would act like I was just faking it. I can’t even imagine how invalidating that would feel.

“Noah?”

I look up to find Devin staring back at me.

“Can you grab that?”

“Oh, yeah,” I say, picking up the next tray. “You’re the first trans person I’ve actually talked to. You know, besides online.”

“Really?” Devin asks.

“Yeah. That’s why it meant so much to me when you came out my freshman year. I can’t say I’ve ever really had a trans person to look up to before.”