One

We’re the Partlow Triplets. Fraternal triplets, of course.

Cam’s the girl, and by kindergarten she had already latched onto soccer. She does other sports, too, but that’s always been her main thing. By first grade, Mom was driving her around to practices and games three and four times a week. Ed’s the boy. He took longer to find his thing, but by second grade he was totally into his piano lessons and was begging to take guitar and flute as well. As for me, I’m Dana, and I’m a bit more complicated. Well, my thing isn’t: I love books and stories. I taught myself how to read our first week of kindergarten, because I realized Ms Fox wasn’t going to be teaching us any time soon. But which triplet I am—that is the complicated part.

As long as I can remember, I didn’t like myself. Specifically, I didn’t like the way I looked. My whole body, really. As soon as I could express a preference, I had Mom buy me clothes a size too large. Shopping was excruciating, as I hated everything but the sparkliest shirts from the boys’ aisles and the plainest outfits from the girls’. (This is a ridiculously small subset.) When Cammie and Eddie dared us all, as preschoolers, to get naked so we could all see each other’s private parts—as if we didn’t during bath time anyway—I would hide in the closet.

And I hated hated HATED going to the bathroom with anyone nearby. I hated going at all, because it meant touching myself down there, but it was worse if anyone else could possibly see my private parts. More than once, even as late as first grade, I wet myself at school because I didn’t want to use the restrooms there.

But most of all, whenever possible, I retreated from everyone and everything into a book. Preferably a whole pile, to hide behind.

It’s entirely typical that a book changed my life. Sometime in first grade, I think a few weeks after winter break, Mom read us a new picture book for bedtime. It was about a kid whose family thought was a boy until she was old enough to explain she actually was a girl, and when she told her family, they accepted it. She had a friend who’d transitioned the other direction, from girl to boy, and another who said they were neither boy nor girl, and was called “they” instead of either “he” or “she.”

The book struck me like a lightning bolt. Cammie and Eddie liked it okay, but after they scampered off to our bedroom, I stayed on the couch, trembling.

Mom and Dad must have suspected something, must have gotten it because they suspected. They left the book out in the living room, and for the next few days I snuck back to reread it when no one was looking, over and over. Finally, I gathered up my courage and tracked down my parents as they were cooking dinner in the kitchen. I clutched the book to my chest.

“What is it, hon?” Mom asked, then took another look at me. She put the strainer full of steaming pasta in the sink and crouched in front of me. “What is it?” she said more softly, putting her hand on my shoulder.

I didn’t have the words to say it. But I didn’t need them—I had the book. I opened it and pointed to a picture—the non-binary kid who was neither boy nor girl.

Mom’s eyes widened a moment, but she stayed calm. “Is that you?”

I nodded, my throat tight.

“Okay then,” she said.

“I’m glad,” Dad’s gravelly voice rumbled through the kitchen, “that you could tell us.” His strong arms embraced me, held me close.

Relief flooded through me, overflowing as tears that dripped down my cheeks. I wasn’t in trouble. I wasn’t alone. There were kids out there like me. I could live as myself, and not this fake person everyone expected to exist based on what was between my legs.

It wasn’t that easy of course. We started my transition at home. We explained it to Cammie and Eddie over another reading of The Book That Changed My Life, using me as another example of a kid who is neither boy nor girl. Cammie nodded thoughtfully, while Eddie said, “Oh, okay,” and that was that.

The next day, as we put away our stuff after school, Cammie asked me, “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I didn’t know how,” I said truthfully.

“Come on,” Eddie said, “finish reading us the new Dogman book.”

Which I did. (They could have read it themselves, but I was the better reader and they preferred letting me do the work. I liked reading to them because it was doing something together. We had to do it in secret a lot, because our parents wanted my triplets to practice for themselves.)

It took Cammie and Eddie a while to consistently remember my pronouns, but as far as they were concerned, I was who I was—we were the girl, the boy, and the kid. The Partlow Triplets. This helped a lot. They had my back.

I transitioned in public that summer, and by the time I entered second grade I was fully an agender child using they/them/their. It took a meeting with the principal and school nurse to work out a bathroom I could use—one inside the main office—but school was accommodating. My teacher was fine. My classmates mostly accepted it, aside from one mean girl and a boy whose older brother was the school bully. I quickly learned that having a different bathroom meant not peeing during recess, because that made me stand out, so I only went when excused from class.

After that, elementary school was pretty good.

Two

Puberty was pure hell.

It slammed me after five years of living my agender identity. Even starting middle school hadn’t been bad, though arranging for a unisex bathroom took jumping through more hoops than at our elementary school. There were a few stupid jerks who gave me a hard time about my pronouns, about being just a kid and not a boy or a girl, but it honestly wasn’t much worse than the griefing Cammie got for being sporty or Eddie got for not being sporty. We had each other’s backs, when it came to stuff like that—the Partlow Triplets against the world, if need be. But in general, I was getting used to feeling almost optimistic about life.

And then my body betrayed me. Turned traitor. Ripped apart my life. It insisted, against everything I knew in my core, that I had a sex that matched the fake-person that many believed I was. It was wrong, so so wrong, but the meat revolted—and revolted me. Budding breasts were bad enough, but then I started menstruating. The first time I saw blood in my underwear, I threw up. Several times. I cried more or less continuously till the bleeding stopped, two days later.

I became one of those students, all the others being girls, who were absent once a month for a day or two. Eventually, after a half-dozen iterations of anguish, I was throwing up only once or twice a period.

I was offered puberty blockers. My therapist even recommended it. But one comment from my endocrinologist stuck with me—taking them would only put off going through adolescence. It’s not something you can completely avoid, not without seriously weakening your body and your health. So I gritted my teeth and allowed my body to warp and distort. To win for now. I promised myself top surgery as a reward, once those monstrous breasts finished growing. Bottom surgery would have to come much later, when I was fully adult, but by my mid-teens I could at least get rid of a chest that had clearly been delivered to the wrong person by a cruel cosmos with a really sick sense of humor.

Gritted my teeth and got violently ill every time my body insisted that I was wrong about who I am.

I survived, such as I did, by escaping even more into reading and writing. Oh, my triplets’ support also helped, ditto our parents’. Cammie and Eddie even forced me to promise that, every time I had even a moment of fantasizing about killing myself, I would tell one of them. They didn’t make me promise not to do it, just to tell them—they knew that would be enough to stop me unless I was in a really bad place. (They were right, all three times.) They also kept running interference for me at school, with the other kids. This helped more than I was willing to admit at the time.

At the time, though, I spent more of my life in other worlds. Mostly invented by other people, but I also scrawled and typed story after story, trying to make real a fantasy I couldn’t live, of having a body that matched me. (I even wrote a story about a transboy donating his developing breasts to a transgirl in a transplant operation.) It helped, but only some, and not only because I wasn’t a very good writer yet. Reading helped more. But again, only helped.

Stories can only shield you so much when you’re barely surviving hell itself.

Three

My life changed again the summer I was fourteen, and this time it wasn’t a book or my body that changed it, but Cam and Ed. (My triplets decided to simplify their names for high school. I regret to say it took me a lot longer to get used to their new names than they did my pronouns.)

We were near the soccer field at the rec center, waiting for Cam’s game to start—the other semi-final for her summer league was just wrapping up. I was reading, of course, while Cam and Ed hung out with some kids, also of course.

“Dana, c’mere!” Ed called out, followed by Cam, “There’s someone you should meet!”

I almost blew them off. But I was having trouble caring about this particular Dark Lord’s threat to destroy yet another generic fantasy world, and something about their voices caught my attention. I got up and wandered over, finger holding my place.

“Dana,” Ed said, “meet Jamie.”

“They’re like you,” Cam said.

They?

Jamie held out a hand to shake. Details struck me before I could put them together into a person. Fingernails: short and painted bright indigo, the same shade as the shock of hair brushed across the forehead. T-shirt: electric blue. Jeans: faded but not ripped. Several string bracelets on both arms, plus a small cowrie shell on a knotted rope choker. Slightly taller than me, which made them one of the tallest kids our age. I had no idea whether their body was male or female, but Jamie was wearing they-ness like a banner.

A they-ness that struck me like a lightning bolt. I took their hand weakly and whispered, “Dana, they/them.”

They grinned and shook my hand. “Jamie, they/them.”

“They’re also starting at Central next month,” Cam said smugly.

“They’re from Eastside,” Ed added. We’d gone to Westside, the other middle school that fed into Central High. (Yes, our school district’s fully stocked with amazingly imaginative namers.)

“Partlow!” Cam’s coach called out. “Warm up!”

“Gotta go,” Cam said, running off. Ed followed.

I suspected my brother was grinning, but I didn’t know because my gaze hadn’t left Jamie for a moment. Their eyes were that blend of brown and green called hazel, a color I’d never seen in person before. Their smile slowly turned wry, and they finally tugged their hand from mine.

That woke me from my stupor, and I looked down, blushing.

After a few moments, Jamie said, “Any good?”

I glanced up, and saw them nod at my book.

I considered the paperback while I pulled myself together. “Meh,” I finally said. “The music-based magic is cool worldbuilding, but the plot is paint-by-numbers. So far, anyway, but there’s no sign it’s gonna change.”

They laughed. “I’ll let him know.”

I peered at the cover, then at Jamie. “Leigh is a guy’s name?”

They shook their head. “That’s one of my uncle’s pen-names. Usually that name’s for romantic fantasy, but he wanted out of a publisher’s option clause and turned in a quickly written epic fantasy, expecting they’d reject it. Instead they published it. He claims that both he and they made a mistake.”

“Okay,” I said carefully. “A, cool beans that your uncle’s a pro writer, but B, what the what-ing what coincidence much? For real, you just happen to be the nibling of the author of the book I’m reading?”

Jamie cackled. I shook my head at yet another example of cosmic perversity. They started walking towards the shade of a nearby tree and I followed.

Softly enough that passers-by couldn’t easily hear, they asked, “Agender?”

I nodded. As if my neutral short haircut and generic clothes didn’t make it clear, but I liked the effort to confirm my type of non-binary. “You?”

Headshake. “Gender-fluid.” Off my look, they explained, “Sometimes I feel more boy then girl, sometimes I feel more girl than boy.”

It was a whole other way of being neither a boy nor a girl, of being non-binary, and it was amazing to see. I’d heard of it, of course—thank you, internets—but hadn’t met anyone actually living it. It totally wasn’t me—I mean, even aside from how the idea of calling attention to myself with bright colors gave me the heebies. I don’t have a gender. But the worlds of possibilities it suggested, of lives others were living, left me breathless.

“What about today?” I asked.

“More boy-ish,” they said. “You can tell because I left off the lipstick.”

My eyes opened wide. “They make lipstick that matches those nails?”

Jamie cackled again. “Honey, they make everything.”

A whistle blew on the soccer field—Cam’s game was starting. I knew I should go watch and cheer. I meant to go. It was why I was even here. Instead, I sat under the tree, and Jamie sat with me.

We chatted basic get to know you stuff: we both had straight parents in first marriages, Jamie had an older sister in college, I had just my triplets. Jamie also read but spent more time playing video games, and they had a YouTube channel.

“About?” I asked to be polite, certain it’d be yet another stupid Fortnite or GTA thing.

“About being intersex.”

“Uh—” I said eloquently, “—kay, didn’t see that one coming,” I continued as smoothly as I could. Which wasn’t very. How often do you stumble across your heart’s desire in the possession of a stranger? Then again, there’s that sick cosmic sense of humor. “What kind? Er, if you don’t mind my asking.”

They cocked their head. “You know about intersex conditions?”

“It came up in, ah, the transkids support group I was in.”

“Was?”

“Y-y-y-yeah,” I admitted. “The part about hating the body you’re forced by fate to inhabit, we had that in common. But the other kids, they were all so very binary.” They longed to have the bodies of a born boy or born girl. I couldn’t even. Not to mention, I’d just gotten screwed over by puberty and just wanted out.

Jamie snorted. “Yeah, I’ve met some of those. There’s plenty of transkids who aren’t, though.”

“I know,” sounding a lot whinier than I wanted. “It’s just, these all were.”

“You can look for another,” they said softly.

“We have been,” I lied—I’d passively resisted trying any more, not wanting to be disappointed again. But why were we even talking about this? I tossed out the first change of subject I could think of. “How many pen-names does your uncle have?”

Jamie raised one eyebrow (which made me even more jealous) but accepted my unsubtle divert. “Right now, just two—romantic fantasy and mysteries. He used to write for kids as well, but wasn’t as successful. Are you a writer?”

I bit my lip. “I want to be.”

“Do you write?”

I nodded.

“Then you’re a writer.” They shrugged. “That’s what Uncle Peter keeps saying, anyway. Doesn’t matter if you don’t finish anything, or don’t show it to anyone—if you write, then you’re a writer.”

I took a moment to digest that. “Okay then.” Suddenly my throat tightened. It didn’t seem fair—it wasn’t fair. How did Jamie get so lucky? —with their body that’s neither male nor female, with their relatives. Not that I didn’t want them to have all that, but damn I was so frickin’ envious it ached.

Cheering from the soccer field broke in, and even over the heads of the audience I saw Cam’s ponytail bouncing up and down in celebration. It was the excuse I needed.

“I need to go,” I said, fumbling up. “Cheer on my sister.”

From the corner of my eye, I saw Jamie nod with a small frown. I walked as fast as I could without looking like I was running away, to where Ed and my parents sat.

It was just my luck that Jamie ended up with the supporters of the other team. They talked and joked with a couple kids and a set of parents. Not that I spent more time watching them out the corner of my eye than Cam’s playing in front of me. Not at all.

At least Cam’s team crushed their opponent.

Four

I spent the next two days telling myself all the reasons I hated Jamie. For supporting the wrong team. For having a body I ached for. For being at ease with themself. For pulling off indigo hair. For hazel eyes to die for.

Every time I went over the catalog of their sins, I caught myself and returned to whatever it was I was doing. Until I started reciting the list again.

The night before Cam’s championship game, I woke from a disturbing dream. Nothing unusual about that. Dreams about my traitor body were the bread and butter of my slumbertime meals, to steal a phrase. But this was a whole new level of disturbed. It was sexy.

As in good sexy.

Sexy dreams were a big part of the hell that’s my life. Sex calls attention to the body parts I hate. It’s all about the body parts I hate. Sexy dreams were nightmares ... usually. Not this time. This sexy dream, I couldn’t see our bodies, lost in some vague haze—we were naked from the start, somehow, but I couldn’t see anything below our shoulders but a vague, sensual smear.

We saw each other and smiled, and came together, and kissed. Their skin was smooth, erotic. Their hand over my back and ass sent tingles down my spine. Their lips were joy, their mouth a wonder, their vivid hair a miracle. And just as my feelings wound me up, and up, higher and higher till I was about to crash—

I woke up, shuddering in orgasm. My first ever. (What, you think I’d masturbate?! —as in touch myself!?) In a wet-dream about Jamie.

I lay tangled in my sheets, gasping at my dark ceiling. My stomach roiled.

Crap.

No, that wasn’t strong enough.

Shit.

Still not enough. This was definitely a fuck moment.

Fuck!

As in, Oh fuck no. This couldn’t be happening. I started crying silently. It took a long time to fall asleep again.

Five

Jamie wasn’t at Cam’s championship game. Her team won. I told myself I was happy about both these things, but I wasn’t.

Six

Next weekend, Cam, Ed, and I biked over to Hanging Out to, well, hang out. That is, Cam and I went just to hang—Ed also had business there. Hanging Out is an all-ages club that’s cool in a freaky kind of way: thrift-shop decor and aggressively queer-friendly atmosphere. Not that straights and norms aren’t welcome, but if you’re not comfortable with two girls or two boys smooching in a corner, you don’t belong—and they let you know it.

They’ve got all the usual coffee shop offerings, a juice bar, a full bookcase of games, a mix of cafe tables and lounge seating, and a dance floor in front of a dais just large enough for a small band or a big DJ. Music every weekend and, through the summer, most weeknights. That’s what Ed was there for—he’d been asked back for a second gig, the next Thursday, and needed to talk specifics.

As I picked up my triple-shot latte (I hadn’t been sleeping well, okay?) I caught sight of the back of someone’s head, sitting on my favorite shabby loveseat, the brown corduroy one. The hair was that unnamed shade of light blue that’s halfway between turquoise and teal, but I somehow knew who it was. I think it was the shape of their neck.

Jamie.

The other couch in that nook had these two college-age guys playing a card game, and Cam snagged the comfy chair on the other side before I could. I climbed over the back of the loveseat and slumped down next to Jamie with as much nonchalance as I could manage, which was actually a lot. At least until I saw their smile—that kinda took my breath away. They wore lipstick this time, a deep maroon shade, and their t-shirt said “Hedgehogs: why can’t they just share the hedge?”

“Hey, Dana.”

Yup, those eyes were as dreamy as in my dreams. “Hey,” I managed to squeak out. (Even my body’s voice betrays me.)

I didn’t actually die of embarrassment from squeaking, but the cushy loveseat did swallow up a lot of me. (It always does, that’s why I love it.)

Fortunately, they turned to my sister, giving me a break. “Hey, Cam—congrats.”

“Thanks,” she said with a grin. I thought it was from still being stoked by the league championship, rather than laughing at me, but I wasn’t 100% sure. “You come here a lot?”

They shrugged. “Every so often. Bit of a trip for me. You?”

Cam nodded. “Once a week, at least. Not many teen-friendly hangouts this part of town. Plus good brew.” She took a sip of her house blend. (She takes it black no sugar—I can’t even.)

Jamie nodded and turned back to me. My face wasn’t as warm and my throat felt like it might even speak in a normal tone, but I still couldn’t meet their eyes. I dropped my gaze to the battered spiral-bound notebook in their lap, and seized on it as a good diversion.

I nodded at it. “Whatcha working on?”

A small grimace. “Script for my next video. It’s not working right, and I can’t figure out how.”

I peered at the page of bullet-points and paragraphs and scribbles, then held my hand out. “Can I?”

They shrugged. “Sure—could use some outside eyes.” They flipped the page over to the start and handed over the notebook.

“I thought you didn’t want to do scripts?” Cam pointedly asked me.

I shrugged. “Text is text—it’s all about being convincing.” I scanned through the draft, a mix of outline and full text. The topic was a little freeform, but mostly about how cis-het teens do and don’t relate to someone gender-fluid, with a sidebar on how most don’t know Jamie’s intersex since the relevant private parts are inside their clothing. The jokes along the way were sharp but the result was flabby. It took a second read to see what to do.

I interrupted Cam listing the classes she was registering for. “Here—if you swap these two sections,” I marked this with their pen, “you can cut this part out, ‘cause then it’s just repetition. Then take this,” I circled the conclusion, “and move it to the beginning—always open with your best joke.”

Jamie frowned in thought as they traced the altered flow with a finger. Cam leaned back in her comfy chair and sipped her mug with a smile. I ignored the smile and the black coffee, and watched Jamie.

They nodded. “Okay, I see that. Thanks. Though now this part comes out of nowhere,” tapping the start of the swapped passages.

I waved that off. “Spackling. When you write out your next draft, you’ll figure out a transition.”

We went through the whole thing, editing their script for, I dunno, fifteen minutes. Focusing on the words, on making the story sharp and convincing, made it easier to talk to Jamie. To talk with them, even when we digressed into talking about starting high school in a couple weeks, and friends we’d have there, and a Netflix series about a transwoman and her adult kids.

An hour later, I looked up and realized Cam wasn’t in the chair. She and Ed were playing foosball.

I turned to Jamie and met their eyes. Their hazel was shaded greenish.

“Thanks for the edit,” they said softly.

“No prob,” I said, even softer—to avoid squeaking again. My chest felt tight, and it wasn’t just the compression wrap binding my breasts.

“You’ll be here Thursday night?”

A small voice in the back of my head noted that Cam must have mentioned Ed’s gig. “Of course,” I said faintly. Or, it sounded faint to me. Everything did, even Ed’s crowing over a goal, or maybe a victory.

Jamie grinned. “See you then.”

I nodded without meaning to.

Ed and Cam collected me on the way out the door, and I wasn’t sure whether to be glad or pissed at being pulled away. As we biked home, I took what felt like the first deep breath in ages. Glad, I decided. Definitely, entirely glad.

Except for the part of me that was looking forward to Thursday.

Seven

I actually dithered over what to wear.

Look, it’s not like I like showing off my body. My wardrobe consisted of oversize plain tees (summer) or flannel shirts (winter) and baggy jeans. In high August, I just grab the tee on the top and go. That’s what I’d usually do, anyway, but short sleeves felt too exposed. Jamie made me too aware of my body. I wanted to cover up as much skin as I could, as protection. But flannel in summer was ugh.

Finally I stole a white long-sleeve tee with a metal band logo from Ed’s dresser and tossed one of my olive tees over it. (Ed wasn’t there to protest, having headed over earlier with Dad to set up his synths and boards—I’d begged off being roadie this time.)

“Come on,” Cam said, “he’s almost on.”

I tried (and failed) to raise one eyebrow. “He starts in half an hour.”

“Ugh! Casey said Logan’s coming.” Logan had been Westside’s star soccer player on the boy’s side, and had been Cam’s current crush for nearly three months now.

“Fine,” I grumbled.

When Mom dropped us off, Jamie was already there. Hair and fingernails were pink this time, and they wore lipstick again plus a blush of glitter on eyes and cheeks. A pair of pink glowstick bracelets joined the collection of strings on either wrist. Their magenta t-shirt read “Kind people are my kind of people.”

“Hey there,” they said, then nodded to me. “Like the look.”

I immediately decided to buy a dozen white long-tees in back-to-school shopping this weekend, and then immediately kicked myself (mentally) for caring what they thought.

“Come on, let’s get a drink.” Jamie grabbed my hand and pulled me through the crowd towards the juice bar. I followed, unresisting.

They bought me a green smoothie to match my shirt, and stayed next to me for the entire evening. Or kept me with them. I couldn’t tell the difference. Didn’t try to.

Ed opened and closed his set with tracks by Tycho, to ease in and out of his more uptempo grooves, all of them his own—some played as recorded, some augmented by jamming on his synths. The whole thing lasted a little more than an hour. It was solid, crunchy EDM, beats that pushed your body to dance.

And I did. I actually danced. With Jamie. Using my body. And it was, when I managed to forget that this was my freaking body dancing, actually fun.

I told myself it was Ed’s music making me dance, but I knew that was a lie.

When the set was over and we were walking around on cooldown, Jamie said, “By the way, I released the video yesterday. Thanks again for the edit—it’s easily the best episode yet.”

“Um, okay, sure.” Yes, I’m totally smooth that way.

“Dana,” Cam said over my shoulder, “the word you want is ‘you’re welcome’.”

“That’s not—” Not a word, I almost said. “I mean—”

Jamie laughed and Cam made a sound of mock-frustration. I think it was mock. Before I could sink even further into the floor, we were interrupted by a boy-and-girl couple, holding hands.

“Jimbo!” the boy said. “I thought I saw you.”

“Hey, Brad,” Jamie said, clasping his hand. “How’s it going?”

The guy looked like a Brad, too, of the buff, blond jock variety—given Jamie’s acceptance, probably not a threat, though. The girl was nearly as tall as him but much more slender, and—oh, wait, I knew her. From the trans-kids support group. Not the usual girlfriend for a jock kind of Brad.

“Hi, Ariel.”

“Oh, Dana. Hi.” She nodded. Her voice was breathy, but not as exaggerated as it used to be. She cocked her head. “Are you...?”

“Okay? Yeah, more or less. You?”

“Oh, yeah, good.” She shook her head. “I meant, though, are you still...?”

My stomach clenched around a core of ice. She was asking about my gender, whether it had changed. Whether my identity changed. “Agender? Yes—always have been, always will be.”

“Oh.”

“Listen,” Brad said to Jamie, “it’s been great, but I gotta get Ariel home before her curfew. Bye.”

He left, shepherding Ariel with a hand on her back, without having said a single word to me—or even acknowledging my presence.

Jamie was frowning at me. What had I—?

“From your former support group?”

Oh. The frown was for Ariel. I nodded.

“You were right to leave.”

When Dad picked us up, Jamie helped us carry out Ed’s gear. Before I got in, I looked in Jamie’s face, shadowed in the parking lot lighting.

“You willing to read another script for me?” they finally asked.

I told myself I didn’t know why I felt disappointed, but knew it was a lie. I nodded anyway.

“Great,” they said. “See ya.” They paused a moment, then headed back into the club.

I told myself it was a good thing they didn’t kiss me, and I almost believed it.

As Dad pulled out, Cam asked me, “You got Jamie’s number, right?”

I stared at her. What?