Connected to the bedroom was a washroom, which was currently occupied, the sound of a running shower emanating from within. She had told Ty to come by right after work so that they could hang out, which he had obliged so long as he could use her shower. Being Ty, and being the youngest person working in the kitchen, he seemed to possess a need to work himself to the bone. Probably felt he had to prove himself or something. It meant he left work feeling gross and sweaty, apparently. Erika was thankful he’d made the time to come see her. It had been a while since they’d last spoke.
She had gone over to his house after school, a day he hadn’t been there. Even knowing what she was walking into, it was a bit of a shock. She knew he had a penchant for getting into fights, but this time it looked like the fight had turned especially sour on his end. As she went in for a hug, he pushed her away. It turned out he’d fractured a rib and so hugs weren’t exactly in the cards for the next little while. She settled on a kiss and they’d spoken over tea. Ty explained what had happened with the Carters, and how his brief encounter with Ivy had likely precipitated it. Much as she’d wanted to march up to Ivy the next day and tear a strip off of her, Ty implored her to leave it alone. There was something more important at that particular moment.
He’d bought her a gift. Two of them, though the first was a glass pipe that broke when the Carters jumped him. The second were beautiful – two small circular resin studs, with petrified leaves embedded inside. They were apparently made by some local craftsperson. It was thoughtful, and it was kind. Two things only few people associated with Tyrell Lahti. It made her think that maybe she’d meant more to him than a friend to get high and fool around with. He meant more to her, too. That and the fear of what he’d find with her clothes off was the reason she’d pushed him away the first time.
Why me? Why not someone more… normal?
He didn’t ask for an answer as to what had happened, at least not right away. Only that she not cut him off, and that he’d be ready to talk about it if and when she was. Then, they just hung out and talked. Not about why she’d avoided him, or the attack at the river. Just about music, classes they both hated, and Ty’s newfound contact with his sister. Erika was sure he didn’t tell anyone else about that last one. Katie had a loving husband and young daughter, a startlingly normal life given what she’d started out with. It was clearly painful for Ty to hear about. After they’d gone through few melted ice-packs and cups of tea, she left.
That was a while ago. They’d texted and seen each other in school, but not much else. It had taken her that time to build up the courage to ask him to come over again. She knew what she had to do, and she knew it wasn’t going to be easy.
I’m so fucking sick of keeping this to myself. There’s only a few months left. Then I’m gone.
There were so many factors to consider. How did he feel about queer and trans people? A sophomore once referred to Lorenzo Tavares with the f-word in his presence, and Ty turned around and backhanded the kid in the face, on the spot. Was that a lack of tolerance for intolerance, or just standing up for someone? It was hard to tell.
Plus he’s been friends with that guy for a while and they haven’t fucked, which at least means he’s either straight or picky. Either is not good news for me.
She’d played some Against Me! for him and talked about how Tom Gabel was now Laura Jane Grace, and how it was really cool that she was making music about being trans and it was actually well-recieved. Ty had thought the record was pretty rad, which was good, right?
“Well, punk’s for everyone, at least it should be. It’s a solid album, I like his – no, I guess her lyrics. It sounds really raw and real.”
Why was she doing this? She could just hang on until the end of the year, and disappear off to Berlin. No one would ever have to know. All of her trans friends online were jealous as fuck that it was so easy for her to be stealth, and that she’d known so early. Was it really right to risk it all like this? People knew Ty and her were something of an item, at least they’d seen them together at school. What if the wrong people found out about her? Ty didn’t need that on top of everything else.
Am I just doing this because I know I’m leaving? That’s really shitty, dude.
Those thoughts raced through her mind as she sat at the small coffee table in the middle of her room. She mostly used it as a flat surface for drugs, but it occasionally was the spot she found herself in when working on various crafts. Small crumbs of cannabis were scattered across the desk next to an errant ball of yarn and a few old photographs. One particular photograph she held in an unsteady hand.
Hey there, little guy. I’m still here, just like I promised I would be.
She stared into the young boy’s eyes, and he seemed to stare back. The picture was taken near the Oberbaumbrücke, one of the first times her parents had taken them to Berlin. He had this haunted expression, a “thousand-yard” stare. She knew what was going on in his head at the time.
”Why are you taking a picture? Can’t you see I hate pictures? Why are we here?”
Some people felt they had to erase their past. Remove all traces of their old name, destroy old pictures. Her parents certainly seemed to think that was the best idea, so long as they lived in a part of the world that wasn’t especially friendly to transgender people. Much as she’d tried so hard to keep it hidden, she didn’t really want to erase part of her life. It was painful. Some of her earliest memories were her worst ones.
Yet, it wasn’t all bad. That trip had been fun, all things considered. It was the first time she’d been on an airplane, and couldn’t stop asking questions about how it was they were flying all the way across the ocean. It was cool to see where her Dad had come from, and as they walked the streets he’d point out all the ways that the city had changed since he was a kid. It was exciting to be in a place where everyone spoke German – it didn’t feel so much like the secret language between Erika and her parents anymore. She wasn’t going to pretend that period of her life didn’t exist. It had made her who she was now. It showed how far she’d come.
At least, not until I find myself somewhere safer.
That’s what this was about, wasn’t it? Trying to stay true to a principle, even when it wasn’t practical to do so? Telling Tyrell meant that at least someone really knew her; there was someone she didn’t feel like she was lying to all the time.
Why him, though?
Erika had been so deep in thought she hadn’t noticed Tyrell emerge from the bathroom, clothed save for his upper half. He was still drying off his hair, and was holding his black t-shirt in one hand and a towel in the other. Erika was very suddenly reminded just how uncomfortably attracted to him she was, and how obvious it was that he knew it.
His chest had a few obvious, nasty-looking scars. The only ones that troubled her were the straight ones, since she knew at they were self-inflicted. None of them were new, thankfully. It looked like he was healing well, as what was once a horrible purple mass of bruises was now more of a faint discolouration on his left side. He had a startling lack of body fat, and was clearly the kind of person who didn’t have to work very hard to stay in fantastic shape. She couldn’t tell whether it was the insane pace he kept his life at, the boxing, or just good genes. He was beautiful.
“Uhh, Erika? You alright?”
Oh.
She was staring off into space, still drowned in her anxieties about what was or wasn’t about to happen. Ty had clearly been a bit lost in thought himself, though as he noticed the expression on Erika’s face, his focus turned entirely to her. He pushed the hair out of his eyes and wrapped the towel around his neck, sitting down across from Erika on the floor.
“Y…yeah.”
Even sitting down, he was still much taller than she was. It was hard to meet his eye. Hard to say what she needed to say. He didn’t know it, but he wasn’t going to like it.
“You don’t look okay. What’s up?”
Then, a gentle hand on her face, urging her to turn her gaze upward. She met his eyes. They were kind, but not without his characteristic intensity. A strange pit formed in her stomach. She had to power through this.
---
This wasn’t good.
Something had really rattled Erika that night, and Ty was completely at a loss as to what it was. He’d appeared to mend things as far as them seeing each other and talking again, but it was clearly still an issue. What had happened? He’d respected her boundaries; she made it clear she wasn’t uncomfortable with anything he did. It couldn’t have been that. Had something happened to her in the past that made getting close to people so difficult?
I fucking hope not.
That wasn’t exactly unlikely, though the thought of what may or may not have occurred brought about dark thoughts he had a hard time suppressing. Who would harm someone like her? Who even could? She was so kind.
Better than me.
No, he couldn’t just run possibilities through his mind. It wasn’t productive, and he knew he’d only think the worst. He just had to wait for her to feel like she could say something, and then he’d know. If she felt she could say something. He kept his mouth shut and waited for her to reply. What came out of her mouth was barely a whisper.
“I. I want to tell you what it is but it’s hard for me to get the words out. It’s like, I know what to say. I literally have the words in my mind, they just won’t come out.”
He nodded, even though that was hard for him to imagine. Most of the time he just spat out whatever he was thinking without much care as to what people thought. He thought she did that most of the time as well, it was part of the reason they got along. Even if they didn’t agree on everything, they had bonded on the feeling that they were always the people in a room to speak what they thought were uncomfortable truths.
What could be so difficult? I know you’re a bit guarded but this is something else.
No, but she cared what he thought. It was different for the two of them. That must have been why. She needed reassurance, maybe something to relate to. Something that let her knew they were on the same page.
“I can’t say I know what that’s like. Are you worried I’m going to react badly to something?”
Erika glanced to her side, and then nodded. Ty took a moment to formulate his reply, trying his best to wear his heart on his sleeve. It was never easy.
“You know, I’m more honest with you than anyone I’ve ever met. More honest with you than I think I am to myself, actually. I don’t think there’s much you could say that would really upset me that badly.”
He looked down, nervously clasping his hands. There was a shaky quality to his voice. Erika looked skeptical. It wasn’t that she doubted his sincerity; it was almost as if she was upset he could be so mistaken.
“Why? What’s so special about me?”
A lot.
“Look Erika, I’m probably not a very good person. In fact just off my track record, I’m kind of a shitty human being-”
Erika was about to speak up, but Ty held out a hand. There was more to this. She had to hear it.
“-at least, most of the time. Not on purpose. I run on instinct, ‘cause it’s usually right. I get through every day on whatever emotion happens to be strongest in my mind at the time; because that’s the only way I can. If I don’t do that I end up in a really dark place. If I didn’t have my impulses, my random manic drives-”
Ty paused, briefly preoccupied with the scars on his arms.
“-I don’t think I’d make it past twenty. So I can’t spend a lot of time thinking about other people’s feelings because everything’s just like, feeding that instinct. Whatever seems like something I want to do, I do. I’ll see something that looks like it’d be fun to break, or I’ll think of something clever or biting to say, and I just go for it. I’ll only really realize feeding my instincts might not something people are okay with well after I’ve thought through how I’m going to do it. Sometimes I figure that out too late.”
They both knew what he was referring to there, as Erika’s eyes briefly fell to at the faint discolouration on his side.
“Maybe I can think about it, and figure out why someone feels something. It’s not like I don’t know why people act the way they do. There’s a rationale behind most emotions, I get that. I don’t have a hard time figuring out how to say something so that someone reacts the way I want them to, like you’re having trouble with doing now.”
It might’ve sounded like an accusation, but she seemed to know that he wasn’t bothered by it.
“If I have to force myself to just tailor everything I say to the situation, I will. Most of the time it’s the only way to deal with people. It’s gotten really easy to do at this point, because I’ve been doing it for years. Growing up with my Dad, everything I had to say and do was calculated so that I didn’t say the wrong thing. I’d do everything I could just to avoid setting him off. That could get me hurt.”
Erika looked up at Ty, and locked eyes with him. Something struck a chord with her. He noticed this, and continued after that brief moment.
“I have a bad habit of hurting people. Like, it really is a habit. I just don’t think about it. Sometimes it’s miscalculation, sometimes I just feel like I don’t know what I even did. I’ll say something and people will tell me I should feel bad about it, but like – why? Whatever I said was probably true. I only question my impulses when it doesn’t seem like I should handle the consequences. Even then it feels like something I did, like I didn’t do a good enough job at turning a given situation to my benefit. I think, ‘It must be my fault.’”
It was hard to look into Erika’s eyes as he told her this, though she didn’t look away from him.
“The truth is, there’s something missing. I’m sure that something is broken up here.” Ty tapped the side of his head.
“I think I’ve spent so much time doing this I don’t know what I even am anymore. Any time something seems real, I just… There’s this voice in my head. It’s distant. It tells me that I don’t need to feel, that I’m not beholden to the things that make me helpless and weak. So I just… don’t.”
His voice softened, and wavered slightly.
“I’ve done it for so long I’m wasn’t sure I could let myself feel anything real, anything that’s not just a game to satisfy one drive or another. I feel like the voice is really me, it’s what I am. Everything else is just some illusion, some act. That’s why I don’t think I’m a very good person for it. I know I should care, but I wouldn’t know where to begin. It’s too hard to see outside of myself.”
Erika took Ty’s hands into her own, and spoke up.
“I know.”
How could you?
“I know what it’s like to hold things back. But it doesn’t make you a bad person! It doesn’t mean you can’t feel. You’re just so used to cutting off that part of yourself, like for self defense. To survive. You’re doing it even though you don’t want to. Ty, you’ll find your way out of it. You need time to heal. You’ll find little things that you’re okay with, and you let those little things affect you. If you can do that…”
Ty squeezed her hand gently, then let go.
“Erika, that’s where you come in.”
Once again, she found herself at a loss for words.
“I wasn’t sure at first. We were just smoking weed and hanging out. Good frens, right? Then, I dunno. At some point I stopped trying to figure you out. Stopped lying. It’s not hard to like you. You’re kind, and I don’t have a hard time believing it comes from a good place. You know, I started to talk about myself more than I thought I could. Things that I’d never really told anyone. Then it was hard to stop thinking about you. It scared me. I tried to stop. I wanted things to stay like I wanted them. My own plans were the most important. I couldn’t let that change. When I thought I was going to just sort of fall apart, to lose my shit – I didn’t do that, either. I was more okay with it than I thought. It’s weird. I wasn’t sure what to think, but then I guess, I just worked it out in my head.”
He offered a reluctant smile.
“If I couldn’t figure things out, maybe you could. Maybe I didn’t have to be a slave to my impulses, if someone else knew the right way.”
As he was talking, he saw Erika place a photo in front of her. It was a young boy, no older than twelve. He looked miserable, but otherwise a whole lot like Erika. A brother? Erika didn’t have a brother, did she?
That’s new.
Unable to continue, his mind raced. Had she lost one too? Was that it? She couldn’t be close to him because he brought up bad memories? No, that didn’t make any sense. Why wouldn’t she want to talk to him about it? If anyone knew what her experience was like, he did. What had happened to that kid that was so terrible she couldn’t bear to bring it up to him?
“Ty, I’m leaving after school’s done. Leaving the country.”
---
It was all she could manage to get out. Maybe it was all that she felt she was able to say. He must’ve felt that opening up to her would’ve made her more comfortable with talking to him, but when he started talking about what she’d done for him, just by – what, being herself? She choked. Ty really had fallen for her. There was no good way to do this. There was no way she could let him down easy. Maybe he’d just have to cut her off, too. Of course he would. It would be too hard to face that. He’d probably never think he was going to be loved by anyone.
I’m such a piece of shit.
The wind had been completely taken out of his sails. He wore a wide-eyed look, somewhere between panic and heartbreak. Blinking more than normal. She could see the gears turning in his head, see that he was struggling to keep his composure. Though he’d seen the picture, he clearly had no idea who it was or what it meant. Maybe that was for the best. Maybe if she just framed it like this, it would be easier to break this off. It never should have started.
God, how could you be such an idiot?
After an uncomfortably long pause, he spoke again. “…why?”
“Ty, I… I just have to. The program I want to do is out there. Berlin’s a really cool city, it’s more up my alley in terms of like, activism and the culture. I just have to get out of here. You really think I fit in here?”
Another uncomfortable pause.
“Okay. I’m not sure what to say.”
“Look, I just don’t want to lead you on.”
You already did, you fuck.
“Erika, I...” Darting from side to side, he seemed to find it hard to look directly at her. She’d never seen him like this. The kind of person who always had something to say, who never shied away from speaking his mind, was unable to put a coherent sentence together. He was falling apart in front of her, and it was entirely her fault.
“I’m sorry. I really am, I shouldn’t have-“
Tyrell interrupted her, though he sounded defeated more than anything else.
“Shouldn’t have spent hours and hours talking to me every other night on the phone, trying so hard to convince me that people were worth saving, that the world looked better if you tried to be hopeful about the future? Gone completely out of your way to ingratiate yourself with me, the guy who’s probably going in the yearbook as “most likely to be dead before thirty”?”
At this point, he almost seemed like he was trying to work this out as he was talking. Trying to figure out why this had all happened. Erika tensed, her shoulders rigid as she found it difficult to interrupt him. Speaking the truth was an impossible task. It was agonizing to keep making this worse for him.
You fucked up the moment you invited him over.
“You didn’t let me be an asshole. You saw right through everything I tried to do. Made me consider for the first time whether or not I was really as fucking wonderful as I thought I was. You showed me I was missing something, something important. You went through all of that effort for… what? To get a test run of a relationship because hey, it’s not like it matters or anything. It’s not like anything you do here matters if you’re just fucking off in a few months, anyways? God-damn, and I was worried I was a heartless bastard-”
Erika raised her hand, almost as if to ask a question, before slamming it down loudly on the coffee table, right next to the photograph. It silenced him. She picked it up, holding it in front of Tyrell. Flipping it around to the back side, it read:
Phillip Erich Stieglitz, 2012, Berlin.
“This! This was my name. This was me, six years ago. This is why I am leaving! Do you get it?!” It was hard not to shout at him. Why did she have to do this? Why did she have to be special to him? She wasn’t special. She shouldn’t be special to anyone. Just another burnout granola girl who’d live alone in a tiny house somewhere. That was all she wanted.
That was the whole fucking point.
For the second time, Tyrell was at a loss for words. His anger seemed to defuse, at least. It gave way to confusion. She hoped she didn’t have to spell it out for him, but she started to anyways.
“I was born a boy but I couldn’t live as one.” She spoke matter-of-factly, but quickly. It was the only way to get the words out; words she’d never spoken before to anyone her age.
“I got that.” Nevertheless, he still sounded confused.
“So now you know why I have to keep people at a distance. Everyone.”
“Yeah, no shit.”
“A lot of transgender people aren’t open about it. They call their old names their ‘dead’ names. Like it’s got to be erased, like years of your life just never happened. I don’t wanna do that. I’m love who I am, I don’t want to hide it. I’m a girl, but I’m a transgirl too. I can’t be that here in the South. Like, you had to be careful with everything you say because your father is a monster. I have to do that, still because if people knew the truth… well, people like me get killed a whole heck of a lot. There are a lot of monsters out there.”
Okay. I did it. I’m doing it. Jesus fucking christ holy shit, I’m actually going through with this.
Ty answered slowly, as if he had just woken up and was trying to make sure what he was saying made sense.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t expect that at all. Not that I'm upset, it's just... this is a lot to take in. It’s fucked up. For you, I mean, that you have to keep it hidden. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to hurt you if they had ever met you. I suppose that’s it though, people like that don’t really care about who you are, just what they think you are. I’ve been called a faggot more times than I can count and I don’t even like-”
Tyrell stopped, suddenly aware of what he was saying. Erika frowned, but nodded sadly in agreement.
“You don’t like guys. I know, you’ve told me how you’re not serious when you joke around about it with like, Lorenzo or whoever. I know you’ve been with a few girls before.”
His eyes searched around the room. Ty did this when he was nervous and trying to think of what to say. It was cute.
You don’t deserve this, Tyrell. I’m so fucking sorry.
“I… no, I don’t. I dunno what to say, but I don’t think it changes what I thought before. At least, I’m pretty sure.”
Stop. Stop trying to salvage this.
“You’re not attracted to dudes. You don’t fuck dudes. You don’t like dick. Like, those are facts, Tyrell. So I couldn’t let things go further, because that’s just not what you’re into. I didn’t want to upset you. I was afraid of what might happen. That’s why I pushed you away.”
Erika couldn’t help but put words in his mouth. It was probably true, and the faster they got through this the better. It hurt too much to see him like this, to see him try and justify what he’d already decided on. He needed to know that she agreed with the choice to stop seeing her, he had to.
She didn't at all expect what she heard next, and it threw her train of thought completely off the rails.
“...but you’re not a guy.”
1/2