Sing A Song Of Sixpence

Chapter 4

So. That's the story of my expulsion from Maiwand. But that's not what this story is about. This story is about how unexpected and dramatic the change to my life was afterwards, and how I was introduced to the most peculiar and intriguing girl I have ever met.

But just hang on. There's still a little bit more I have to breeze through about that summer.

About a month after the incident, I was drinking a smoothie at the park a block away from my parent's house, baking in my jeans but unwilling to expose my legs.

I heard a small group of boys conversing among themselves as they approached, and couldn't help but listen in. I'd spent the last few weeks wandering around my parent's small town, people-watching, since my father had been rather hostile towards me since my dishonorable return from Maiwand.

"Dude, did your cousin seriously decide he -"

"She, Jackson, God!"

"- decide he was a girl?"

"She's a girl, you idiot. Show some fucking respect or I'll shove this ball in your nuts." He made a low pass with his basketball at Jackson as a warning.

Jackson sidestepped the ball and snorted. "So she's a transvestite."

"She's transgender, Jack, what the fuck's wrong with you?" Chimed in the third boy.

The first boy redirected the conversation. "Anyway, so she chose the name Ava and my mom was a little weird at first, but today she's making breakfast, right, and she just goes, 'Ava. That's a really pretty name. I like that better than I liked Kevin.' And you know what? She's right. And I was thinking..." They faded out of earshot.

Something in their conversation hit me and stuck like a tennis ball hitting one of those velcro-covered mitts you'd strap to your hands and play catch. Transgender. I chewed the end of my straw in thought as I looked down at my boobs and curves. It made perfect sense. The way my eyeball twitched slightly out of irritability whenever someone called me Jacqueline. My burgeoning discomfort with the feminine areas of my body. The way I envied the guys wearing tuxedos at school formals when I was stuck in some stupid, frilly formal dress. Could it be that this wasn't puberty, as my mom always dismissed it, but dysphoria?

I tossed my empty smoothie cup and walked home, my thighs slick with sweat from my long pants. I had some internet searching to do in the safety of my air-conditioned bedroom.

So I was a boy. And my name was Jay. Jay Watson. I liked the sound of that.

I won the scholarship on my 17th birthday. I know it seems like I should make a bigger deal out of it, given how excited I was about the concept of it. And I was excited! But my family dropped their disappointment in me to hold a huge celebration, and I think that sucked the joy out of me. I was relieved, so relieved. There wasn't the worry of finding another area school that would take me for my senior year. And I could start over somewhere completely and entirely new, reinvent myself as a boy, and introduce myself as Jay to people who hadn't known me my whole life. But the cloud of proverbial smoke from the night of the fire still hung over my head, and it wasn't in me at the moment to be outwardly joyful.

The 14th of August, with one week left until I moved into the dorms at the Musgrave Academy, I was cleaning out the crevices of my room and found the black dress from the party stuffed all the way under the bed, right up against the wall.

Bile in my throat, I grabbed my phone from the bedside table and texted Ellis, the first time either of us had initiated contact that summer. I found that dress I borrowed. You want it back?