Fragile Little Things

Warnings: misgendering, deadnaming, sexual assault, physical assault, self injury, mentions of suicide, transphobia. IT HAS A HAPPY ENDING AND IS MOSTLY POSITIVE I SWEAR

The first time Angie remembers being called a boy, she is four years old. She knows it's happened before then, of course, because she's seen it in cards and letters and home videos, joyful cries of "Congratulations, it's a boy!" and "He's going to be a big guy just like his dad."

But she isn't. Even as a child, she is small and waify and delicate, like her sisters rather than her father. She looks more like her twin sister than a boy of her own.

She asks why they can't shorten her middle name to Angie instead of her first to Kasey, but they just say, "Angie is a girl's name, sweetie. Do you want people to think you're a girl?"

That might not be so bad, she thinks, but everyone says she's a boy, and they're all bigger and older and smarter, so that must be what's true.

When Angie dresses up in her biggest sister's old clothes for the first time, it feels like home. They're soft and a little worn at some of the hems and they smell like her perfume, a light, soft, citrusy scent, and wearing them feels like she's finally real. Neither of her sisters think anything of it, her older sister Bailey nor her twin sister Dhalia, to them 'boy' and 'girl' don't mean anything, and clothes are clothes are clothes. Fabric and thread and sometimes ribbons, on the nice ones.

"Don't tell Mum and Dad," they say. "They might not like it if they find out."

Angie doesn't understand why it has to be kept a secret from some and not others, because they're just clothes, even if they do feel nicer than the ones her parents say she is supposed to wear. But she trusts her sisters. She loves them. They would never hurt her.

+++

Angie is twelve when she meets Cordelia. Cordelia is fourteen and pretty and smart and nice and everything Angie wants to be, and was once everything Angie is right now. When Cordelia was younger people called her a boy, too, but she told them to their faces that they were wrong, and now her parents buy her girl clothes, like they should. Angie wonders if maybe she could do that, too, but her sisters -- a younger one, now, too, named Courtney -- say that's a bad idea. Angie believes them. She hears the things her parents say about people who wear the wrong clothes and hair. She's heard there's even medicine you can take to be a girl, for real. Her parents say bad things about those women and girls. Angie couldn't take it if she was on the receiving end.

But Cordelia teaches Angie things her sisters couldn't, like how to stuff a bra and style a wig. Angie's sisters just dressed her up like a doll in the secrecy of their rooms, but Cordelia lets Angie keep some clothes at her house, where Angie's parents drop her off so they can walk to school together.

They don't say bad things about Cordelia, because they don't know.

Angie changes into her proper clothes at Cordelia's and they walk to school together, and nobody there recognizes her, but then, nobody really knew who she was to begin with. She tries to be friendly and outgoing but there's nothing special about her, nothing to make her more popular or well-liked than anybody else.

Her hands shake on her first day to class like that, in a long black wig and a knee length summer dress and little red flats with bows on them. She gets shoved a few times, and some of her teachers give her odd looks, but they have bigger things to worry about, like kids throwing rubbish bins at each other at lunch time and that one boy who brought a knife to school. They still call her Kasey, but she only has the strength to take one battle at a time.

It's two years later that Cordelia and Angie are in the Square Mile shopping for new clothes, because they are both outgrowing their old ones. Cordelia has ducked inside the loo and usually Angie goes with her because there's safety in numbers, but these are single occupancy, so Cordelia is safe. Angie still only wears girl clothes away from home. She thinks her sisters know, because they pulled her aside and told her they love her no matter what, and all they want is for her to be safe. But Angie hasn't told them yet. In time.