Page 8 of Outside the Lines
That was a dangerous question for me. I wasn't good at telling people that I liked them, so I jumped onto what I probably should have figured out years ago but was just beginning to realize. "Telling her and not getting your feelings returned is a whole lot better than never asking."
"You think so?"
"Sure."
Naran smiled at me; the expression was genuine and nearly took away the pain in her eyes. "Thanks."
I nodded and watched her get up and leave the room. Alex took her place on the floor in front of me as soon as she was gone. "Knew you could do it."
"Because we're both outside of gender norms?" I asked him.
He nodded. "Yeah. Sorry, I knew that they were having a hard time with things and so—"
"She," I interrupted him. "Naran feels like a girl."
Alex smiled and looked a bit relieved. "Good. I'm glad she pinned that down."
"It could change," I reminded him. "Gender is fluid."
"I think I gave you that speech when you were crying one morning because you couldn't figure out why you felt like a boy one day and a girl the next and most days neither," he countered.
"I remember. I was sitting on that top bunk." He'd put his head on his arms on my bunk while I'd sat there crying with my back against the wall and a pair of jeans in one hand and dress in the other. We had talked for a good hour, and I'd ended up wearing the jeans under the dress with sneakers and a baseball cap for the rest of the day.
That might have been the day I decided that I wasn't comfortable being completely one side or the other but instead was somewhere else entirely. I'd had some idea of that initially, but having a solid idea was a lot different than an initial guess.
"You're good with the kids," Alex complimented me.
I straightened up a bit under his praise. "Thanks."
"I bet you're good at your job."
I shrugged. "I try to be. I'm still just human so I can admit that I do make mistakes sometimes, but I don't screw up too badly, and I fix it when I do. I'm still learning my kids and they're learning me. They're not the precious little angels that we were here."
He laughed and I grinned. We weren't necessarily bad, but going from the streets to having structure again was a hard adjustment for a lot of us. Some of the kids I was with ran away, others fought, most lied, and all of us snuck food and hoarded it in our rooms until one of the counselors, usually Alex, found it and made us put it back so that others could have the food too. My personal vice was cookies.
He'd stayed with me through withdrawal, depression, anxiety, and more tears than I cared to ever remember. He'd only ever let me down once, and I knew that I was ready to ask him about that moment now.
"I have a question," I said.
"What's up?"
I took a breath and pressed my palms together on my lap. I knew where to start and what I wanted to say. But knowing that and making the words come out were ideas that were on completely different planets. Finally, I took the plunge. Like I'd told Naran, it was better to ask than to never know. And I'd been stressing about it for the past six years. It was enough.
"When I was eighteen, I graduated from this place. I went to live with another counselor, but I asked you. And you said no."
He'd gone still. I didn't know him well enough to know what that meant. He'd never given me the look that he was giving me now either. "I remember. You went with Kim. Stayed with her for six months then got accepted into college and moved into the dorms."
I nodded. "You took someone else to live with you. I want to know why."
"Didn't you enjoy your time with Kim?" he asked me, avoiding the question.
"Of course I did. She was a great counselor and treated me like her own child. But you were my best friend, and I want to know why I couldn't go with you." I was being insistent and I wasn't about to let him back out now. I'd come to thank him for what he'd done for me, and I'd come for this answer. After this, I could walk away from Alex with only his memory. He'd hurt me the day that he'd rejected me, and though the pain had long since passed, I needed to know what I'd done to make him say no to me that night.
"I couldn't, Trin." His voice was soft and his eyes showed his pain. I should have dropped it. If he'd been a kid in my care, I would have. I knew when I was close to getting too deep. But Alex wasn't one of my kids, and he didn't get to brush me off. Not this time.
"Why not? I'm not asking for a lot here, Alex. Just an answer. Just tell me why. That's all I want to know. Please?"
I was ready to beg him. If he made me, I would. There was a time I would have done anything for him. I didn't feel all that different right then.
