Ellis squinted at me, then at Tam. Without glasses her face was more angular, nymphish but male. For a moment I had a vivid image of her if she transitioned—a beautiful pixie boy, pretty enough to still make queer girls swoon—and it made me weirdly uneasy. Was I encouraging this in her? All my videos, groupies, the illusion of trans glamour—was I pushing it, like a drug? Take this pill for automatic male privilege and self-confidence. Rub this gel into your shoulders for instant muscle mass and internalized misogyny. Maybe she was experimenting for herself, or maybe she was trying to impress me. To feel like one of the guys.
Night after night in high school I’d watched transition videos, soft faces growing chiseled, soft voices hoarsening, and I’d felt a deep ache. Hunger for the body I didn’t have, the life that wasn’t mine. In Armin’s emotion map, jealousy lives in the core. In the bile and acid and bacteria of the gut. I’d felt it burning there, bitter and vile, as I watched other trans guys get ahead of me, grow facial hair and Adam’s apples and pass. I wanted to be like them.
When I told Ingrid, she said, Have you thought about whether you’re actually transgender, or just want to fit in?
It crushed me.
I put off transition for the first year of college. Took classes to help me understand society’s sexism better, and why it hurt so much to be seen as a woman. Examined my own internalized misogyny: Did I want to transition to escape being a girl, or did I need to do it because I was a boy? And why did it have to be one or the other? Was it so horrible if part of my identity was a revolt against the way I was treated for having tits and a vag? I never wanted them. Maybe I could have tolerated them, in a better world. But in this world I experienced my physical womanhood as a stigma. And why did everyone keep telling me I had to be 100 percent sure I was male before I put the needle in my thigh? I was 100 percent sure I wasn’t a girl. Wasn’t that enough?
College showed me how deeply gendered everything is. How society would remind me, for the rest of my life, that I was assigned female at birth. A lifetime of the wrong name, wrong pronouns, wrong bathrooms. Of mammograms and Pap smears. Of When are you having children? and Don’t be so emotional and Stuck-up bitch. When I died and was buried and my flesh dissolved to dust, the bones that remained would say to history, This person was female.
Inside it made me scream.
In one of those classes—Women and Technology—I met a boy. At first he reminded me of Ellis, geeky and shy, oblivious to his own hotness. It’s messed up, right? he’d said. Nobody believes you’re a girl online unless you say something they don’t like. Then you’re a girl until proven guy.
He seemed different. Clued in to the absurdity of gender.
I’m Adam, he said. What’s your name?
And I thought: I don’t know. Maybe Inge is right. Maybe Ren is just a manifestation of my internalized misogyny.
So I said, Sofie.
Weeks later, lying with me in bed, he said, You’re not like other girls, Sofie.
What am I like?
One of the guys.
And my chest filled simultaneously with nausea and elation.
“You’re having a deep thought,” Ellis said. “Share.”
It was too heavy, and I was still too tender from Laney’s refusal to help. Instead I said, “I’m thinking about Tamsin Baylor’s ass.”
Her eyebrows rose. “Are you guys, like, a thing?”
“We’re an It’s Complicated. Mutually attracted against our better judgment.”
“This is perfect. She’s totally your type. And you’re—well, she seems to really like you.”
I laughed. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, old sport.”
“Oh my god. I didn’t mean—”
“Kidding. Hey, by the way.” I cocked my head, feigned cavalierness. “What do you know about Tamsin, exactly? Give me some details.”
“Age, place of birth?”
“More like psych profile.”
Laney had commissioned Armin to profile us all, himself included. We’d done video interviews—Delaney too—confessing that we were members of Black Iris, as collateral. So no one would turn. Then we’d watched them together. Each of us talked about why we joined: Blythe’s devil-may-care love for Laney, Armin’s hopeless devotion to them both.
Tamsin must have done one, too.
I’d kill to see it.
Ellis fidgeted with her tie. “You should really ask Laney about that.”
“Why, is it classified?”
“I don’t want to step on her toes after we screwed up that last mission.”
Ellis Carraway was too pure of heart to lie to my face. Or so I thought—but once upon a time, she’d catfished her best friend by posing online as a man named Blue. Blue was Vada’s dream guy: nerdy, sensitive, sexy when he wanted to be, and completely obsessed with her. Blue had everything Vada loved about her female BFF, but with one key advantage: the all-important dick. When Ellis finally came out as genderfluid, Vada realized the body didn’t matter—it was the person inside she loved.
If only Ingrid had been so understanding.
Now I looked at Ellis and said, “Did we really screw it up, old sport?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, what was Tamsin doing there? Was she there to take Crito out, or for another reason?” I punched her shoulder playfully. “And how about you? You seemed pretty damn reluctant to let me go after him. Why was that?”
It took effort for Ellis to meet my eyes and say, “Because I was worried you’d get hurt.”
“By Crito?”
“By everything.”