“Look, it’s all right,” Nance says. “I’m not saying any of this is bad. Everybody does it when they’re new. It’s part of figuring out who you are. Like how you’re trying out every label in the gender-identity handbook.”
“There’s a gender-identity handbook?” Derek asks. “Wish I’d known. Can you order that on Amazon?”
“Quiet, you.” Nance nudges the back of Derek’s coat with the heel of a cowboy boot. Derek laughs. “The point is, you can’t decide your girlfriend sucks just because she doesn’t know all the details of how this works. She doesn’t know any trans people except you, and us. Most people don’t. That doesn’t mean she isn’t worth your time.”
“I never said Gretchen wasn’t worth my time.” I can’t believe Nance is lecturing me about this. “Gretchen’s amazing!”
“Yes, we are totally not tired at all of hearing how amazing Gretchen is,” Nance says. Derek laughs again. “I’m just asking you to check your labeling. Okay? You can pick your own labels all you want, but don’t try to put them on everybody else for them. You know how complicated this is for you? Well it’s exactly that complicated for everybody else, so stop shortchanging us.”
At the bottom of the steps, Eli’s voice is getting shriller, the pamphlets waving in the air.
“It’s six-thirty!” Eli yells. “Do you know where your soul is? How long will you wait to experience the abundant life God has planned for you?”
“It’s six-thirty? Crap!” I almost spill what’s left of my coffee.
“What now?” Derek asks.
“I’m late. I was supposed to meet my project group for Race and Politics at the Science Center at six-fifteen. Crap.”
“Damn,” Derek says. “You better get yourself together, man.”
Nance raises an eyebrow at me. “Think about it.”
I nod even though I want desperately to roll my eyes. I wave goodbye to the guys and hurry away.
The Science Center is past the Yard, about as far from Lamont as you can get. I have to forge my way through banks of dirty gray snow, elbow past Japanese tourists trying to take my picture, and shout “Excuse me!” three times at a bunch of freshmen throwing a Frisbee in the twenty-mile-an-hour wind. Plus I have to pee thanks to that latte, but there’s no gender-neutral bathroom out this way, and now that I’m binding every day I feel weird about using the women’s bathroom. I have no choice but to hold it until I get back to my room.
What the hell was that about? What gives Nance the right to analyze me? Nance barely knows me.
I don’t really do any of that. Put people in boxes. I’m opposed to putting people in boxes. It’s why I hate labels and pronouns so much.
Okay, sure, I do spend a lot of time thinking about labels and pronouns. And yeah, I did try to figure out Eli’s gender presentation right away on that first day—and Nance’s and Derek’s, too—but anyone would’ve done that. It doesn’t mean I did something wrong. Eli didn’t seem to notice. Besides, Eli likes me way more than Nance does.
I can’t believe Nance called me a sycophant. I’m not going around kissing up to Derek. We’re friends. Nance is probably just jealous. Anyway, why didn’t Derek tell Nance to shut up?
Unless...surely Derek doesn’t think Nance is right.
By the time I get to the lobby of the Science Center and see the rest of my project group already gathered around a table, I’m in a worse mood than ever. Then two of them glare at me and I forget about feeling grumpy. I’m late, and they’re probably right to think I’m a tool. Even my friends seem to think that.
“Finally, you’re here,” one guy says. “Did you bring the Katrina outlines?”
“Yes,” I say, taking the only empty seat left. “But, um. I didn’t completely finish them.”
The guy, who I’m pretty sure is named Mike, groans.
“I know, I know, I’m sorry,” I say. “Look, I really tried. I did as much research as I could, I flew Delta just so I could get the fastest Wi-Fi, but—”
Then the girl next to me interrupts.
“I didn’t finish, either,” the girl says. “I got through the first two sets of readings, but then I had to go to my grandmother’s, and—”
“Me, neither,” says a guy across the table. “I really thought I could do it, but there was too much going on.”
“We were all busy over Thanksgiving!” Mike says. “We agreed we were going to divide up the research and the outlines, and then today we’d put it together and come up with our presentation themes, and—”
The girl next to me bursts into tears. Mike looks like he’s ready to murder someone. People start grumbling to each other, shooting angry looks around the table. Soon it will be chaos and we’ll never get this project done.
“Look,” I say, trying to sound diplomatic. “We can still get an A even if we’re behind right now. I bet the other groups are behind, too.”
“I saw Tina Nguyen’s group already working on their PowerPoint last night in Lamont,” Mike says.