Pre-Everything
a preview to my next project, Who Will You Be This Time?
“Who Will You Be This Time?” is a trans time travel romance about a washed up high school bully who is incidentally a Time-God warps four of his victims 24 years back in time to junior year of high school to help him unfuck his life. This is Chapter 13, Pre-Everything, presented without anymore context. Happy reading!
(cw: gender dysphoria)
Veronica and I sit on the loading dock next to the dumpster over school lunch. Occasionally a rat scurries by.
“It’s been two weeks since the erm—” Veronica sets her lunch aside, feet dangling off the edge.
“The Superboy Prime thing,” I say.
“—I was going to say the incident. What are you talking about?”
“There’s a comic where Superboy Prime, he’s like, a copy of Superman, but evil, I think,” I explain, “And he gets really mad one day, so mad that he punches reality really, really hard, so hard in fact that it changes history and revives one of Batman’s dead Robins, Jason Todd.”
“Batman has dead Robins?” Veronica asks, mystified.
“Oh yeah, that guy cannot hold onto a ward to save his life.”
“Okay, um, well…” Veronica pulls her heels in. Wraps her arms around her knees. “It’s been two weeks since the, erm, Superboy Prime incident, perhaps we should consult Byron about this, he’s better with the nicknames—”
“Ouch.”
“—sorry, just telling it like it is,” she says briskly, “Anyways, we’ve got nothing. The Pep Rally is in a few days. If we keep this losing streak up, we’re going to enter October without any leads.”
She takes a deep breath, tapping at my waiting hand. It’s still so strange, to have been both a “boy” and a “girl” in her presence. I feel like she’s the only one in the New Timeline who understands the girl that I’m trying to communicate through my voice and body language alone.
“I mean, I guess I’ve made some personal progress lately.” Veronica turns away from me, suddenly embarrassed. “The reorganization of my team is going okay. Crystal has done a good job at picking up most of Randall’s First Assistant duties, but Lord help me, Randall is just so upset at being my Second. So much drama, it’s unbearable, Miriam.”
I hate to rock the boat with Veronica. There’s unsaid things that we aren’t supposed to get into with each other, but I can’t help myself.
“Why do you need two assistants, Veronica?” I try to keep my tone casual and nonjudgmental. “We’re high schoolers, I mean…”
Veronica flashes me an annoyed glance.
“I’m working with a copywriter in Sumatra now,” she explains dryly, “Dimas is the name. I’m ghostwriting ad copy for him in exchange for coffee beans.”
“Oooooh, Sumatran roast is your favorite, right?”
The right side of her mouth twitches upward, and she grins uncontrollably. “You remembered that?”
“Yeah,” I say, “Sumatran roast misto with extra hot coconut milk, extra foam—” I cast her a furtive glance. “—which, mind you, is next to impossible with coconut milk—” And she snorts loudly. Ha. I knew that’d get her. “—plus two shots of espresso and half a stevia.”
She holds that beautiful, wonderful smile. “You have no idea how many assistants I had to run through to get that right…”
Veronica goes on and on, complaining how horrible and inadequate both Randall and Crystal are. Apparently, they’re even worse than her old assistants. Crystal CC’d instead of BCC’d some clients on an email. Randall missed the deadline to request an emergency Fedex delivery. Crystal spaced out during a meeting and forgot to take notes. Randall flip flopped the routing and account numbers to Veronica’s checking account, causing a prolonged delay in payment. And they both wasted at least one hundred dollars each in valuable printing money.
All the while, Veronica drags her claws through the air, spitting out expletive after expletive. It’s clear to me that she’s having some kind of midlife crisis, but she’s way too into the swing of herself right now for me to say anything. For the record, I give her a look that says “Hey, the fuck? We’re talking about this later”, and she nods like “Uh-huh” while dunking hard on Randall.
“The thing is Miriam…” she says with some emotional distance. “...ugh. Can you handle a difficult conversation?”
“I’m very sensitive to critique against my guy, Randall,” I say, “This conversation has already weighed heavily on my heart.”
She snorts. Turns away, getting awful wistful awful fast. “If Leon ever figures out that he’s still a Time-God, it’s over. There’s practically nothing we can do. We need leverage on him, but that’s not happening right now. And if we fail, well, we’ll need to do Plan B.”
“Plan B?” We haven’t talked about this before. Usually, we recycle conversations and talking points, just hashed out in different ways.
“It’s the simplest of strategies,” she explains, staring out at the duck pond across the street, “We start over.”
I feel a faint tingling in my chest. Like a howl of chilling wind blew out all the candles.
“We’d have to become completely different people.” She looks at me, her face strained and agitated. “Live completely different lives. Different fields of work, different friends, different everything. If we did that, his leverage on us would mean nothing.”
She looks at me hard.
“The only way to stop Leon from controlling our lives is to surrender everything and truly start over.”
It’s four in the afternoon, and I’m sitting alone in a booth at the Boston Tavern, cradling a root beer. I take a swig.
“You want to order anything today?” the waitress asks anxiously.
“No, sorry.” I hand her the menu. She looks at me like I’m nuts then walks off.
I get it. It’s weird. I do this every day. After school, I make a stop at the Boston Tavern. It’s this popular restaurant that has absolutely nothing to do with Boston, but the name itself makes me feel like I’m at home. It’s dark and dingy with booth seating on the sides. At the center is a circular bar. A four-sided set of TVs hangs above it all, broadcasting whatever sports game is going on and not much else.
All I ever order is a glass bottle of root beer. I baby it for hours while I work on my homework (and Leon’s). Normally, I’d do this at a coffee shop or diner, but there’s no one else in town open late enough near my parent’s condo for me to set up shop at. I wish the waitstaff didn’t get so surly with me. It’s not like the Boston Tavern ever fills up, and I tip well. But whatever.
It’s strange looking so young that I can’t even get away with a fake ID. When I was in my early twenties, I would hang out at dingy, shitty bars in Boston and scope out marks. I had a whole plethora of scams I could pull at a moment’s notice to make some quick cash. But that’s not why I’m here, I’m just here… to stay the fuck away from them.
My parents haven’t done anything wrong… yet. But they will. I can’t forgive what they did: deadnaming me for years, misgendering me on purpose, criticizing every aspect they could of Amelia, abandoning me on the side of the road, et cetera et cetera. Woe is me, haha.
A man walks in. Fat guy, big gut hanging over his belt. He’s dressed like the fucking Penguin from Batman. Wispy, snow white hair and under his arm a blonde girl who can’t be older than twenty-five. So he’s a sugar daddy, eh?
If I ran home and back, I could return in some garb that’s business casual. Play it like a young, tech CEO. Y’know, I’m just starting up this company… oh, you want to invest? Eh, I don’t know, we’re kind of full on that front, but thanks for asking. We’ll keep talking and talking. As I sense his patience waning, the irritation at my subtle slights mounting, I start to flirt with his lady friend. Then WB’s answer to Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepott gets grumpo dumpo. He’ll try to show off. Cut a check that I can’t refuse.
Yeah. Let’s fucking go.
…Wait, nope. Ha ha. I can’t drink. I don’t think I can play an adult either, I’m a scrawny loser kid in a worn-out hoodie… Amelia would tell me not to do it anyways. She’d be disappointed that I’m even considering it. Amelia saved me, and maybe she can’t remember it anymore, but I won’t desecrate that.
I open my backpack and pull out some homework.
Minutes tick by, and I keep thinking about it: the scam. My eyes keep flitting over to the Penguin. His lady friend looks at me, and I stare back. A deer in headlights. Wave awkwardly and burrow back into my work, and—fuck, my elbow jabs my root beer, sending it spilling over the table, and—
I gotta go.
I leave a ten dollar tip with a note scribbled on my napkin. Sorry.
I shouldn’t expect my cat, Alan, to be waiting for me when I open the door, but I still sigh at his absence. In the Old Timeline, Alan would stare up at me with wide, yellow eyes, yelling at me in the highest register he could manage, and I would roll my eyes because it was hours before dinner time. Still, I’d scoop him up by the rear and cradle him like a baby.
The bones beneath his black fur would shift like an animatronic while he scouted the area from up high. Once he was sure it was safe, he’d lean back into my arm and stare up at me calmly, tail hanging limp.
My middle name used to be Alan. After my Dad. Of course he died, and when I went to legally change my name to Miriam Stromwell, it felt wrong to replace the “Alan” in me, so I decided to just not have a middle name. Somehow, that name ended up on my cat.
He hasn’t been born yet in the New Timeline, and oh God, what if some kind of butterfly’s wing effect happens and forces him not to be born—I can’t think like that. I can’t. I have to find him.
When the shelter that saved Alan rescued him from off the streets (it seems like he got separated from his mama at an early age), they caged him with a feral cat who beat the shit out of him, leaving him traumatized and skittish. I could probably save him from that, if I stay really on top of things. But then he’d be an entirely different cat.
Just like how I can become a completely different person.
I don’t want to think about it.
It’s the more subtle things that bother me when I take a shower. Not the loss of my breasts, hips, and surgically created vagina. I thought I’d be devastated. When I look in the mirror and see this lanky, gangly tall sixteen year old pre-everything trans girl staring back at me, it becomes easier to compartmentalize the bigger things. I’m a kid. A literal child. Of course I don’t have breasts and curvaceous hips.
It’s more how mannish the hair on my legs looks when matted down by water. It’s how much harder the roots resist my razor while it glides up and down. The oily, pimply skin. Skin that’s no longer soft to the touch. How my face isn’t shaped as it was, the lines and edges harder and more pronounced.
I can go on HRT. Fix everything while simultaneously losing everything that I was. This new girl I could grow to be, she could have bigger breasts. Rounder hips. A more feminized face. Maybe she’s happier. Maybe she smiles more.
But she is not me. She’s a fantasy I spent decades trying to give up, and I did. Because that Miriam was impossible and hurt too much. Now I’ve been dealt the perfect hand, do I take it?
I kneel down to the bottom of the shower, hovering above the drain. Hot water rains down and reminds me that I’m alive. I run the razor down my leg, swing it out, and let the jet streams of water knock out the little hairs caught between the blades. Hair scatters across the rubber mat and washes down the drain. I know I shouldn’t do that. I just don’t care today. I’m only showering because my stubble darkened during the day.
God, in the Old Timeline, I hadn’t had to shave my face in over a decade. I was able to get electrolysis for my face. You have to grow your facial hair out for a few weeks though so that the therapy can actually work. No one could tell at least, I never really stopped wearing my mask after the COVID-19 pandemic. But I could still feel the dark, bunched up hairs brushing against the inside of my cloth mask.
I notice my shaving strokes are getting more aggressive. They threaten to tear at my skin and draw blood—I set the razor aside and bow my forehead into my knee. I’m angry. Not just at Leon, but at myself. I feel like I didn’t appreciate HRT when it was happening. I used to be so self-absorbed, mostly because I was so unhappy. When changes happened to my body, I wouldn’t notice them for weeks. Then all of a sudden, one day I’d look in the mirror, and I’d be like…
Hey!
I have breasts now!
…Cool!
I turn the shower off with a squeak! and dry off. Look into the mirror and see that pre-everything girl again. Skinny and awkward. I bunch my hair up into my hand like I have a ponytail. I swish it about.
I’m going to Boston soon. I wish I had a legit appointment on the books with Fenway, but it’s all hush hush. I’m buying HRT medication off the black market. My seller was confused when I turned down the offer for estradiol. I only want the puberty blocker, spironolactone. I should probably just buy the estrogen, just to have it, but I’d be too tempted to take it. This, after all, is a compromise position.
The plan is to dress up all femme for Boston. Once I get onto the commuter rail, aka the Old Colony Line that leaves from Bridgewater State University, I can change into a dress in the tiny train bathroom. Throw some makeup on. Hopefully none of the other passengers are people that I know. If so, I’ll just wait until South Station. Actually, damn, I need a gender neutral bathroom. Good luck finding that in 2009. The train bathroom it is. Ride or die.
I purse my lips and pretend that I’m putting lipstick on. I imagine dark, violet paint trailing across my upper lip. I feel my fingers bounce up and down, drawing in the wings to my eyeliner. I want to do something really femme. I want to be Miriam again.
Towel pulled up past my chest, a second towel wrapped around my hair, I open the bathroom door.
My mother looks me dead in the eye.
“Hello, stranger!” she laughs, her voice warmer than I expected. She’s tall, like me, with sallow cheeks and a sharp, symmetrical bob cut. Pointed glasses and a strong jaw. “You’re home early.”
“I could say the same thing to you.” I brush past her in a hurry. Something about someone else seeing me in this state of undress reminds me that this is real, that this is my body. “Was work okay?”
“Yeah,” she drawls, “Dinner’s at six. We’re doing Zorba’s.”
Mario slowly shimmies his way across a wooden bridge in Whomp’s Fortress while upbeat music plays in the background. Twitch.com doesn’t come out until after I graduate from high school, but I figured I could maybe kickstart my streaming career several years early. Just gotta tighten up my Super Mario 64 sixteen-star speedrun.
Wow, you’re really dreaming big, Miriam. Be careful to not pull an Icarus.
This trick I’m doing is pretty difficult. You’re supposed to use a cannon to blow off the corner of this random wall, using the clue Blast Away the Wall. How an eight-year-old is supposed to figure that out, I have no idea. But, anyways, it’s possible to phase through the wall if you do a frame perfect jump. You just need to move Mario off the bridge when he’s exactly three quarters of the way across. Ah, but the fun doesn’t stop there, friend. You need to move Mario off the bridge ever so slightly, so that instead of parading off, he instead grabs the bridge as he falls. You pull yourself back up, turn the control stick counterclockwise from three o’clock to about seven. Mario should run off the bridge, skip over the gap, and careen right into the wall. You’ll clip through and get the Star.
Aaaand… got ‘em!
Next up is Shoot into the Wild Blue, this one’s easy. Again, you’re supposed to use a cannon, but you can just do a side somersault and wall jump combo to get up there. The platform with the Star isn’t that high up from the ground.
Mario turns and pivots into a wall jump. He hits the wall, rebounds off, and… misses completely, falling back to the ground. Come on, man, this isn’t a hard jump, it’s like billiards. You hit the wall, and Mario kicks himself off it at a ninety degree angle. Except we’re working vertically instead of horizontally. I try again and miss again. I check my timer. I’m running late on this one. Twenty seconds past the suggested time: five minutes, thirty-two seconds, which I happen to have memorized. I grumble and try it for a third time. Nope.
I try the jump a fourth time. A fifth time. Six. Seven. Eight. Each time, sloppier and sloppier. I’m a minute behind now. I should just get the Star normally and keep playing. But no, I want to win. I want to do it the way I said I would. This isn’t a fancy trick, it’s just a basic wall jump. Come on, Miriam. Make the fucking jump.
Mario goes “Wahoo!” and…
I fuck the jump up again. But I don’t set the controller down, I keep trying. I am not stopping until I get my sixteen stars and beat the game.
Mom presses a napkin deep into her pizza. Lifts it and eyes the oil stains. Tosses it aside and grabs for a second napkin. Pushes it into the cheese, soaking in the orange-yellow grease. Quirks an eyebrow when I dig right in sans the napkin pressing.
“Rex stuck at work?” I ask dryly.
“Yes,” Mom says coldly, “All week, it’s ridiculous.”
It suddenly strikes me that if Rex is always stuck at work, and I’m five minutes down the street at the Boston Tavern cradling my root beer, then Mom is eating alone regularly. Preparing dinners for people who won’t show up.
“Sorry,” I say.
“Thank you,” she mutters, “I miss you, you know, but I’m happy for you.”
A lightness in my chest. I glance up. Mom… is happy for me?
“Ha.” She smirks. “You’ve always been a loner, it’s nice to see you, or, ah, hear about you dating that Veronica girl finally.” She eyes me pointedly, over her glasses.
“Yeah,” I say, “Wait. Oh! No, uh, Mom, I’m not—” Veronica would be straight cackling right now if she saw this, my cheeks must be so red. “—Veronica and I aren’t…”
“Really?” she says, “Damn. You like her though, right?”
I cringe. “Can we talk about something else?”
She smiles coyly. “You’re just like your father, heart on your sleeve. Well, if you ever need advice on how to woo a lady, ▓▓▓▓▓▓…”
Ugh, that name. That horrible name. So comfortable on her tongue.
“How’d you know about me and Veronica?” I ask.
“Oh! Ha.” She finally takes a bite of pizza. Her face briefly convulses at all the grease she was unable to soak away. “I bumped into Drake Leon’s mother at Trucchi’s, apparently all he talks about is you and Veronica. Crystal too, I think and uh… whatshisname?”
I raise an eyebrow. “...Oh! You mean Byron.”
“Byron, yes!” she laughs. “The uh… the guy who… um…”
“You have no idea who Byron is, do you?”
“Not at all.” She shakes her head. “Drake Leon though? Really?”
A twitch in my jaw. I sigh. “It’s complicated, Leon and I aren’t… friends. So don’t worry about me hanging with the wrong crowd or anything like that.”
Mom snorts. There’s this scene in the Warner Bros. animated show, Freakazoid, that’s a PSA parody where a girl’s best friend starts hanging out with the wrong crowd and—you know what? Youtube it. I promise ya. It’s worth it. (Got any cookies, Mike?)
Anyways, it’s a running joke between us. She loves that show.
We return to eating pizza silently. Continuously, she peers past her food to make pointed eye contact with me, and every time, I ignore her. Finally, she sets her food aside and stares at me hard.
“I’m not mad at you, you know,” she says weakly, “I love ya, kiddo.”
But does she love me… or the idea of me?
“I, uh, love you too,” I mumble.
It’s been two hours and still, I’ve been unable to sleep. I should be more comfortable; I’m wearing these new “girl pajamas” that I got from K-Mart last weekend. It’s a two piece pastel pink flannel set. But I keep having paranoid thoughts. What if my parents decide to do laundry at one in the morning for some reason and somehow notice that I’m in femme pajamas?
I pull my comforter past my shoulders so that only my head is visible, but the fear doesn’t go away.
I turn onto my side, clutching a teddy bear close to my chest. He looks brand new, but only because he’s been so well taken care of. My dad bought him for me as a Christmas gift when I was four. I know it’s embarrassing that I still sleep with stuffed animals, but… I’ve just been so used to sleeping with somebody else for the past decade that I just… need the support.
I’m surrounded by stuffed animals in fact. Most of them I’ve bought recently from bargain bins at superstores and thrift shops. The only other one I already had is a stuffed elephant from IKEA. His name is Jattestor. In the Old Timeline, that stuffed elephant was Alan’s bed for many years.
God.
I can’t stop thinking about them, Amelia and Alan.
And when I manage to drift away from them, my mind turns to what’s between my legs. More specifically, the ballsack that’s sandwiched between my thighs. It’s the most aware I’ve felt of having a penis again since this all started. I think if I just reach into my pajama bottoms, I could shift it into a more comfortable position, but I really don’t want to touch it. So my mind drifts again. To Amelia.
Amelia is already on puberty blockers, she’s already out. I bet it’s Hell for her. I see her in my mind’s eye. She cleans off her makeup in the bathroom mirror, little by little. But then she looks at herself. There are tears shining at the corners of her eyes, tears she told herself she wouldn’t shed. But she’s alone now, it’s safe. No one has to know.
The eyeliner streaks down her cheek, and she accidentally sobs out loud. Her parents hear her, but they don’t care. Sure, they fund her transition, but they offer her nothing else.
I get up. Pull back the front of my pants and rummage around my groin. Snap the pants shut and go back to bed. I lay there, unable to concentrate. I can still feel it. It’s not supposed to be there. I got rid of it years ago.
Why me? What did I do?
Is this my fault? Did I do something wrong?
“Who—who are you?” Amelia stuttered at the sight of my new, old self. Her brown eyes quaked while her shrimpy body retracted in on itself.
Was that real? It felt real.
I hope I’m not imprinted into her nightmares.
I surrender at two AM. There’s no way I’m falling asleep until four AM at this rate, I’m too restless. Sometime an hour ago, I stopped thinking about my dick at least. Only for my mind to drift away to Leon’s plan. I’ve been imagining what exactly it is that he did to get so much information on us… beyond being a Time-God. He must have had help. Probably hired a private investigator or two. For how long were they watching us? How much did they see?
Tainted. My old life is forever tainted.
Fuck it. I call Veronica. If she picks up, she picks up. If she doesn’t, she’s asleep, and honestly? Good for her. Still, it’s worth a shot.
“Miss Zhang’s office,” some guy answers.
What the fuck? Is this not Veronica’s personal cell anymore?
“This is Randall, how can we help you?”
“Oh! Randall, uh.” I frown. “I was hoping to speak to Veronica.”
“Miss Zhang is indisposed at the moment, may I take a message?”
Oh, for crying out loud.
“Randall!” Veronica’s distinct voice shouts in the background, “Is it Dimas? I don’t want to talk to him right now!”
“Uh, excuse me.” Randall’s voice suddenly becomes muffled, I’m guessing he put his hand over the mic. “It says it’s from someone called Miriam, but I’m pretty sure it’s just ▓▓▓▓▓▓—”
Veronica says something else, I’m hoping it’s Randall you thoughtless, transphobic imbecile!
Randall returns. “Uh, sorry, ▓▓▓▓▓▓, I’m still getting the hang of this. Uh, what number is it again to transfer, Veronica?”
“POUND!” Veronica yells in the background.
“What is pound?”
“THE HASHTAG!”
“Oooooooh, okay.”
Click.
“I apologize about that, Randall is really struggling on the phones,” Veronica says briskly. She drops the cold, sharp tongue of the Veronica Zhang and drifts into something more familiar. “I might have to hand that duty off to Crystal too… uh, anyways, you’re up late, huh?”
“Yeah, I can’t sleep,” I say simply, hoping to just leave it there, “How about you? You were pretty loud back there, your parents okay with that?”
“Oh, uh, heh heh,” she chuckles nervously, “Actually, I’m still at school. I talked to the Bozzy, and he’s letting me stay the night. There’s a couch in the Teacher’s Lounge I can use. Randall gets the floor.”
“Ah.”
“Yes.”
A long pause.
“I am actually quite busy, Miriam, if could—”
“Oh sure, my bad,” I say, feeling guilty… and concerned as always, “I was thinking about all the prep work Leon did. He must have hired private investigators, right?”
“Yes, I figured. What of it?”
“Maybe… maybe we should hire a P.I.”
A quiet, thoughtful pause from Veronica. “We can’t. I’m sorry. Don’t tell the others, I hired a P.I. to tail Maria after her, erm, exit. I know it was wrong! I do, but… anyways, he was expensive. Not terrible for a CEO, but for us?”
Damn. I didn’t think of that. I figured they’d charge a flat rate for the job.
“We could pool our money,” I offer with zero confidence, “We could like, all get jobs and toss the money in—”
“That’s weeks of work for minutes of their team, Miriam. That time is better spent with us doing the work ourselves.”
“How? I can’t drive, none of us can drive,” I say and then I remember: Hank can drive. He stayed back a year, so he’s seventeen. But… we… Hank? No…
“Ugh. New paragraph. Hank. No thanks,” Veronica says, “We don’t need to stalk Leon anyways. We can infer. Obviously, he has intel on us, and clearly, he’s too stupid to memorize it, so there must be hard copies.”
“You want to break into his house and see what he’s got?”
“Yeah. But not yet. If we got caught…”
“He’d roll those stupid dice on us,” I say, but already, a plan is forming in my mind. It comes so naturally to me, the art of the con. But if I go deep down into that place again… I don’t think I’d come back. Not without Amelia. “We can’t risk that. It hasn’t even been a month.”
“Exactly,” she says grimly. “Besides, breaking in is so obvious. I’m sure he’s expecting it, which locks into this shit game of cat and mouse. He wants us to take the plunge, because it can only benefit him if we fail. Which we would. I wouldn’t be shocked if he has security personnel on the clock protecting his treasures.”
A shiver runs up my spine.
“So let’s put a pin on it for now, consider it our last stand,” she says, “Until then… well, we can’t do much of anything, can we?”
“No,” I rasp, “I guess not.”
“If you hold the mirror right there, you can see the back…”
Lesbians give the best haircuts, at least in my opinion. I run my hand down the back of my head. What was once a messy knotted mess is gone, wiped out. Instead it’s smooth in the back, I can actually feel my scalp past the soft, wavy hair.
I turn back around in the chair and face the mirror. They did a semi-androgynous bob cut for me. My hair frames my face cutely, dangling into neat little curls that bob along with my movements. As much as I wanted to go full femme, I need some protection and asked my hairdresser, Mimi, to not make it totally queer. Maybe lean into the scene kid angle a bit.
Even so, it’s a girl’s haircut. No West Bridgewater cis guy would ever do this. Hence why I’m in Boston, hence why this haircut is expensive. Weirdly enough, Mimi, who is technically only seven years older than me, had been my hairdresser for most of my adulthood. Now she doesn’t even know who I am, yet we have a good rapport.
“Do you think they’ll hurt me?” My voice cracks, and I bow my head away from my reflection, closing my eyes.
“I think they might call you names, but no one’s going to hurt you, Miriam,” Mimi says,. “You’re very emotionally mature for your age, you’ll be fine.”
I look myself in the eye. I’m in a dress that I couldn’t stop myself from buying at the H&M near Downtown Crossing. It’s emerald green. Button-up with a lacey front, plus a collar and pockets. It was eighty dollars. I’ll have to change once I’m on the train home. Better that than behind a dumpster, which I’ve also done. The dress is light on my body, my bare legs feel so free under the September sun.
“Yeah,” I say to myself, “I guess I have to be.”