May I first say this one is in no means related to the two introductions I posted earlier
I wrote this recently in one sitting (mostly), and haven't really showed it to anyone yet. For that reason, I was kinda wondering what other people think of it. Quick forewarning: if you have anything against trangenderism, you will probably HATE this.
But anyway, have a read, and tell me what you think!
Feel free to hate on me
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Chapter one -- HumanIt's kind of a big thing, that you hear people mention, explicitly or not, nearly every day. Hell, at times the idea even comes up in national news stories. It almost seems odd to hear them say things like that, without using the playground slang. The shortest, easiest way to say it, is that there is some kind of vision of what a 'normal' person is. Those who do not fit that impression of 'normal' are simply those who are 'different,' and also, quiet simply, have a much harder time tolerating the pressures of a 'normal' life.There was what was most likely some sort of serene view whipping by the van's window. The fourteen-year-old in the backseat was not paying all that much attention. As was typical, the young boy was very much absorbed in thought. Whether or not he could even hear the parents' conversation in the front seat would be impossible to tell, and was entirely irrelevant anyway. The boy didn't care. Their conversations were always about something boring going on at the father's work, or them worrying about their apparently troubled child, but the boy never found any of that interesting. They would talk of what they would, and that was none of the boy's concern.
What the parents were talking about, if the boy had cared to listen, was about the recent charges the family budget had been taking. Their child had been dragged into what could only be described as a bible camp from hell, which was expensive. Then, their child had ended up in a psychological ward, which was even more expensive. Then, came the bullying, the arson, the hospitalization, all of which was expensive. Moving three states to get away from all of that bullshit was somewhat less expensive. Still, after all of that, sending their child to a private school might push their resources to the limit.
It was worth it, they decided. The happiness of their child was worth whatever cost they had to pay.
But it isn't worth it, the boy continued to think to himself.
Putting all this effort people waste on conforming to whatever this 'normal' is, it simply isn't worth it. Why this is is rather simple. The difference between a 'normal' and 'different' group of people is nothing but an illusion. Everyone is human, more or less, their motions brought about by human motivations, those created by similar human needs. The separation only exists in how we see ourselves, and each other.The mother was becoming somewhat uncomfortable with the silence coming from the back of the minivan. Her child's silence was always somewhat unnerving to her, only magnified by the trauma of recent events. So it was with apprehension that she turned toward the backseat to speak. "Honey? You okay back there?"
The boy, startled by being spoken to, jumped a little. A dull thud marked the moment the boy's head hit the window, helped along by the car making a sharper-than-necessary turn. Giving a somewhat annoyed look to the father, the boy turned back to the window. "Yes, mother."
She nodded to herself, and turned back to the front of the car. A second passed before she turned back again. "Are you sure you are okay? You've just been quiet the whole trip."
Now the boy's annoyed look was directed at the mother. "I don't need you to make quite so much of a deal about it, mom. I'm fine." Again, the boy looked back at the window.
The father, more annoyed at the boy's treatment of his wife than anything, thought to speak too. "What are you thinking about back there?"
"I'm going over my affirmation. I hope you don't have a problem with that." The boy didn't even bother to look away from the window.
"Well it's good that you do that," the mother said, looking back to her husband. "I mean, I'm not telling you how your brain works or anything, I wouldn't try to. It's just good that you do whatever you feel you need to to make you feel better." She couldn't be more obvious if she stamped
awkward on her forehead.
"It was damn expensive too." At a glare from his wife, he decided to amend his statement. "Uh, good work then. That's my boy." And he couldn't be more obvious if he stamped
spineless on his own.
"More or less."
A person is not defined by how he or she dresses, or the body the cosmic accident of their birth graced them with. A person is not defined by what friends they keep, or the enemies they make. Nor even is a person defined by the output of their efforts, how good they are at sports, the grades they get in school, how much money they make. In the end, these are all external things separated from who they are. It is the internal qualities, the internal struggles, that define a person, make them unique. Make them 'normal' or 'different'.With a simulated trumpet sound from his lips that the father no doubt thought some sort of dramatic fanfare, the car pulled into a driveway. The house in which the family would now be living stood before them. The boy hardly even looked at it. It was a typical occurrence in suburbia, and not all that unlike the one they had just left in Nebraska. Besides, a house was a house. Did they expect the boy to be excited by this?
The looks on the parents' faces seemed to say they would have welcomed any sort of excitement expressed by their silent child. With sighs of varying sounds, the parents left the car, the father pausing to motion to the moving van behind them. The boy shrugged on a leather jacket, grabbed a bag from the floor, and left the car as well.
The door slammed shut, nearly as empty of empathy as the boy was. Blue eyes fell on the house with equal parts disdain and apathy, as the cold winter wind blew against the boy's clothes. This would be where the boy would live, at least until the family was chased out of this town too. The boy could not decide if this emotion was apprehension or resignation, or if it were truly an emotion at all. In the end it didn't matter. This would be where the boy would be staying, through apathy, apprehension, or whatever else might come to mind.
Done with standing there all useless and introspective, the boy decided to help with the rapid unloading of the moving van already underway.
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A screech came from the bike's tires as they dragged against the concrete of the sidewalk, which don't work nearly as effectively as they should when the concrete is half covered in ice. The boy behind the handle bars barely managed to prevent himself and the bike from tumbling off into the snow somewhere. The biker behind him barely managed to avoid hitting him.
"Dude!" the second biker shouted as she regained her balance. "What the hell did you do that for?"
The first was staring across the street. The street itself was one of those strange, winding, narrow strips of tar often found in the middle of housing developments suitable for a bad film adaptation of a worse horror novel. He was not looking at the street itself (that would be a little off) or the somewhat larger-than-necessary houses along it, but at a person standing in front of one of those houses. The house had had one of those for sale signs in front of it for a few months now, which was now gone, replaced by a hideous minivan alongside a moving van. Now walking toward the moving van was a girl about his age, a year younger at most.
His eyes widened as he looked on her. She must have been about two inches shorter than himself, and just on the edge of being unhealthily thin. Black hair hung to about her shoulders, parted a little strange so it covered a part of her face. Even though she apparently thought it was cold enough to wear a not-thin leather jacket (which fit pretty much perfectly), she wore a knee-length skirt, also black, her legs bare. He also noticed her ears were both pierced, and, when she turned, he saw a small, pentagram necklace. He didn't get a great look at her face, but what he saw he approved of.
The second biker followed his gaze across the street, also noticing the girl. It took her a much shorter time to take the scene in than her male companion, and soon turned back to him. "Yeah, my mom sold that house last week. Some family from Nebraska is moving in, I think, and their kid." Her voice seemed almost completely disinterested.
"So she's your new neighbor?" he said with an even further, if possible, raised eyebrow. He stared at her for another couple seconds, while his female companion grew gradually more annoyed. "I am like, so glad I passed puberty in time for this moment." In the seconds after he said that questionably socially acceptable statement, an annoyed-sounding grunt came from behind him, followed by a swift blow to the back of the head. "Ow!"
"Really, Kaiden," she said, replacing her right glove as she spoke, "I find it seriously annoying when you do that. I mean come on!" She opened her arms as if to accentuate her own presence in a way a very slow child could understand. "There's a pretty girl right next to you, damnit."
"You're right, 'Manda," he said, moving a hand to his chin. The hand stayed there, as if stroking a beard that simply refused to grace his boyish face with its magnificent presence, while he looked from Amanda, to the Nebraskan, and back with appraising eyes. Finally he nodded, and turned back to Amanda with a sly smile. "You're boobs are bigger." Amanda sighed, slowly tugging on a finger of her right glove. "Kidding, I'm kidding!" he quickly interrupted. "Jeez, 'Manda, a bit self-conscious there."
Amanda rolled her eyes, again straightening her glove. "Let's just get to your place already, okay?
Anime matteru ya."
Kaiden rolled his eyes back as he turned forward again. "Could you please not speak Japanese at me? I really hate that I have no idea what you are saying."
"
Kechikun," she said with one of her own sly smiles. With a long groan of annoyance, Kaiden took one last look at the girl who he had so quickly grown fond of, who was now carrying a full-length mirror into the house without any help, before starting on his way down the sidewalk. Amanda herself took a long last look at the Nebraskan. The new girl gave Amanda a strange feeling she couldn't place, as if something wasn't quite right with her, but she couldn't quite figure out what it was. Passing it off as imagination, Amanda took off down the street shortly behind Kaiden, who was much more of a slow biker than he let his manly pride admit.
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The Nebraskan 'boy' had gathered all of the necessary possessions in what would be the child's new bedroom. Carefully, the child adjusted the long mirror, which now sat in a dim corner of the barren room, and then let the leather jacket fall onto the lone mattress. The parents had already called for Chinese food delivered, and yay for that, but in the moment the child didn't really have anything to do. After a couple seconds of thought, the child went to sit in front of the mirror, legs tucked neatly under the skirt.
The child looked blankly into the mirror, and said the same exact thing that had gotten her family into this mess, caused them so much pain and trouble. "I am Miranda," the boy muttered into the mirror. "I am the daughter of Liam and Olivia Doherty." He, or more properly, depending on conventions of gender definition, she, stared for a few moments at her reflection. After a few moments of this, she couldn't take anymore, and had to look away.
Instead she gazed at the mirror itself. Her mother, the Olivia Doherty she had just mentioned when she introduced herself to himself, had insisted that she ditch this old thing. She liked it though. Apparently her great-grandmother was the first in the family to have owned it, and it has been sitting in some woman in the family's room or another since then. It sure seemed aged enough to be that old. The frame itself was oak, made of soft curves that appeared to embrace the glass between its arms. The glass itself was new, as it had broken a few years ago only to be replaced by her father, probably because she wouldn't stop crying about it.
She loved this mirror. She didn't really know why, only that she felt some sort of strange attachment to this inanimate object. Possibly, she thought as her gaze again fell on her reflected self, it was because it was before this inanimate object that she spoke her mind, the only place she did. This mirror, if it could talk, knew enough of her life, her most inner thoughts, to spout on for days without end, if it could know. And, before this mirror, many years ago, she had proclaimed to herself that all of her that is male is only a facade, a temporary blight on her body and on her psyche, that could not define her. Or so she insisted, to anyone who didn't seem to understand (see: most everyone). Sometimes, when she looked in this mirror, all she could see was a little boy, and she hated that little boy, and hated the mirror for not cooperating.
With a raised eyebrow she again gazed at the mirror as a whole. Maybe bestowing upon this inanimate object character traits, or at the very least, human actions such as 'cooperating', was not entirely beneficial to her continued mental and emotional integrity. Well, her dad thought her a lost cause anyway, so she couldn't think of a certain reason why she shouldn't take such luxuries.
"Miranda!" a voice came from downstairs. "The food is here! Come down if you want, mkay?"
She noticed with a smile that her mother had actually remembered to refer to her as a girl. Understandably, it wasn't very easy for her parents to get used to what she had only told them a few months ago, though her mother was putting in a much stronger effort than her father. Well, she probably couldn't really hold that to him and call herself fair, as he had come from a rather conservative family, and she was supposed to be his first and only son. Apparently, fathers have some kind of complex about that, if the media is to be believed. Possibly, he was taking it personally, as if she were denying the genes he so kindly provided, rejecting the whole father-son dynamic, refusing to answer to either the name he chose for her (which just so happened to be his own, the narcissist) or 'son', doing all this to him by choice. Which, if he did think it was that, a choice, would be the origin of the problem.
Oh well, at least her mother was decent, if a little uneasy, about it. She appreciated every time her mother actually remembered to call her Miranda, however rare they were.
She stood, and, after making sure her skirt was laying down appropriately (sometimes these things liked to stick up at weird angles, against all conventions of physics and fashion) left her room. The room her parents had set aside for her was on the second floor, which seemed to be made entirely of somewhat aged wood panels. She thought, with a strange sense of pride, that the wood of the mirror she so cherished was aged further. Anyway, she descended the stairs (also wood) and was soon on the main floor (most of which was also wood-paneled). In a nearby room, her parents were seated on the floor with a couple boxes of take-out in front of them, so she sat on the other side of the food from the couple, again tucking her legs under the rest of her.
"Okay," her mother said, holding out a pair of chopsticks, which Miranda took. "These three should be fried rice, and that one is yours, I think. Correct me if I got it wrong."
Miranda picked up the one that her mother had indicated, and popped open the top of the cardboard container. "OhmigodPeKingIloveyou!" she blurted out, following the nearly incomprehensible quasi-sentence with a small giggle. Her mom smiled back, while her father grimaced, and quickly turned to his own food. Miranda, despite her self-control, rolled her eyes back, and slowly started on her own food.
"So, Miranda," her mother said after a minute or so of near-silent eating, "how do you like the place?"
Miranda thoroughly finished chewing before speaking, withstanding the stares of both parents the whole awkward while. "Was there a surplus of oak trees at the time of building?"
"I don't know," Liam said with a roll of his eyes, "but your mom seems to like it."
She gave him a playful little glare before turning again to Miranda. "It reminds me a little of my grandma's old place. Do you remember the old house?"
Miranda did remember the old place, a farmhouse which her great-grandmother, the same one who had owned the mirror, had lived for the majority of her life. The house, she had always thought, was considerably large, but had fallen into just as considerable disrepair as it and the owner aged. She had liked that house. There were enough interesting things in it, including her great-grandmother, that she had always enjoyed the very few visits she got. "Yeah, I suppose it kinda does. I mean, don't get me wrong, I do like the whole wood motif, and it's much better than that fake stuff. I just think it's a little...I dunno, excessive. It doesn't need to be everywhere, does it?"
"It isn't in the kitchen," her mother said with a smile.
"You can do whatever you want with your own room, you know," Liam said, probably as what he considered a peace offering.
"Hmm," Miranda said to herself, giving off the illusion of honestly thinking of what she would do with her room while she chewed. "Well firstly I could get some posters in there. I can think of a couple cute boys I wouldn't mind populating the walls. Oh, and I am
so painting a pentagram on the floor. It has to be big enough that I can cast a circle in the middle of it."
What she had said had been enough to turn Liam's face into a white-ish hue, and he seemed to choke on his food a little. He, not even comfortable with her being a girl yet, also wasn't comfortable with her case of what would otherwise be a perfectly healthy interest in boys. He, being a home-grown catholic man, was if possible even less comfortable with Miranda being a neo-pagan, even though she didn't actually cast, especially indoors. It was funnier if he didn't know that though.
The conversation dragged on for a while about what each of the three of them thought about the house in general. Olivia seemed to like it, while Liam thought it was simply adequate, and Miranda had several half-hearted complaints, such as saying it was bigger than she felt they needed. Eventually talk of the house died down a little bit, letting a somewhat uncomfortable silence descend between the three. Olivia, apparently, wouldn't tolerate such awkwardness, and seemed to desperately draw a topic out from the air. "Uh...so you'll be starting school again tomorrow, Miranda. If you think you'll be up to it, of course."
"I've been out of class for so long, so I should probably make it in some day." Miranda, done eating for the moment, carefully placed her chopsticks laterally across the top of one of the boxes. "Besides, it shouldn't be too tough to start at a new school a month into the second semester the first day having moved into a new town several states from home with absolutely no friends and no idea what to expect."
Liam frowned a little at that. "She was just going for conversation, Junior. You didn't have to bite her about it."
"I don't bite anymore," she said, with a glare directed at her father for using the wrong name. "But with how much you pay attention to what goes on in this family, I could see how you would miss that."
"We know it's going to be hard for you,
Miranda." Whenever her mother accentuated Miranda's name like that, it usually meant she was trying to calm her daughter down and change the topic simultaneously. Oddly enough, that's not how she would handle this situations back when she thought Miranda was her son. "We just hope you will have an easier time here than you did at your old middle school. All of us will have to be careful of course. It isn't exactly safe to just trust anyone."
"How cheery," Miranda said with a roll of her eyes. "Anyway, I certainly hope less of a disaster should occur here in Minnesota. I mean, this is still a relatively small town but at least we aren't in the middle of nowhere, nor fucking Nebraska."
"Language, Ju--Miranda," Liam muttered. Miranda just ignored him.
Olivia took a glance between the two to make sure no further words were going to be exchanged before continuing. "Right, well a good chunk of the problem with Nebraska was the amazing ability of the schools to sidestep a little thing we call law. Minnesota was the closest place with a history of fair policy, this school especially."
Miranda shrugged, not really much for caring about all the legal stuff. The trial never really touched her everyday life anyway. "It shouldn't be so much of a problem. I mean, a lot of the issue came from people who had grown up with me thinking I was male, and 'switching sides' on them. That shouldn't be a problem if people meet me as I truly am, so I, if you can believe it, am somewhat optimistic."
Liam and Olivia exchanged a glance, long enough to leave a silence great enough for Miranda to immediately realize something was wrong. "Uh, on that topic," Olivia started, "this is a private school you will be going to tomorrow, and they do require uniforms. Yours is hanging on the banister."
Not really all that interested in the first place, Miranda turned to look in that direction. Of course she had passed the uniform, hanging heavily over the stop at the bottom of the banister, but had not been paying any attention on the way downstairs. When she saw it though, her face instantly fell into an expression of pure horror. It was a few seconds before she could speak. "That...that is a guy's uniform, right?"
Olivia, her face betraying that she was expecting some sort of melt down, stiffly nodded. "Yes, it is. I'm--"
"Why is there a guy's uniform?" she nearly screamed, her eyes falling on her parents with a seething glare. Already, her gaze implied she blamed her parents for this, as if they had no plans but to torture her, and had specifically planned this as the latest addition.
"The school and the state has policies about this sort of thing," Olivia started, her tone low and smooth in an obvious effort to calm her child. "We have already set up a schedule for regular appointments with a specialist nearby. After six months or so of evaluation, you should be able to move further on the treatment, and get certain papers into your record. Only with those papers will the state allow you to change your legal gender, and only then will the school allow you to attend as a girl. So it will only be for one more semester, okay?"
Miranda, no where near the kind of mood necessary to discuss this, very much thought that was not okay. Without even saying another word to her worried-looking parents, she turned and dashed for the stairs. Within seconds she was back in her room. She had slammed the door behind her, which she then collapsed against, holding her face in her hands.
No, damnit! Crying about this is not fucking
okay! She took somewhat shaky steps until she stood before the mirror. Again, she was on her knees, staring coldly at her own unfamiliar reflection.
It will be okay, she thought to herself, staring into her foreign eyes.
No one is going to freak out, so I shouldn't. People aren't going to hate me for it, so I shouldn't do it for them. Least of all, I'm not going to be attacked on the walk home again. I can do this. As Miranda tried to reassure herself with these thoughts, she tried to separate her fear and frustration from herself, and force them out and into the mirror. In a moment, all that was left was anxiety.
After an extra minute or two of staring at the mirror, she decided she would further calm herself by reading. It was a decent way to prevent thoughts from occurring anyway. She dug out of one of her boxes a novel she was part way through, a rather brainless romance story. Sure, it wasn't very intelligent or even that interesting, but things like this were very effective at keeping her from thinking about things she would rather not. She lay on the bed and buried herself in the book.
At some point, her mother had come in and hung the uniform on the inside door handle. She hadn't said a word, and Miranda had not even noticed she had come in, as engrossed in the book as she was.
A while later, she had finished the book. She had not been paying much attention to her surroundings, or the book for that matter, so she found a watch to check what time it was. There was still an hour or two before she should go to sleep. Then her gaze fell on the uniform on the door, with a mixture of the emotions from before on her face. Her resolve gathered, she got off the bed, stripped off her skirt and t-shirt, and reached for the uniform.
After a minute or so, she was again kneeling before the mirror, now in the high school uniform. That was a rather plain outfit, just black pants, a short-sleeved, white dress shirt, a thin black vest over that (which Miranda had to admit was actually rather visually appealing), and a thicker, long-sleeved black shirt over that. She kinda assumed that last one was only meant to be worn outdoors, so that was still hanging alone on the doorknob. It probably was the right size, despite how strange she thought it looked on her. It just seemed wrong somehow, she thought, as she stared again at her reflection, but that was probably just because she had already become accustomed to girls' sizes.
Taking a deep breath, she let herself fall into a more male-looking posture. Her legs came out from under her, and splayed at angles that made her a little uncomfortable, but that was similar to how she had seen boys sit rather often. She squared her shoulders a little, and lounged backwards carelessly. When she spoke, the voice didn't sound like hers, slightly lower, and without the usual intonational accent. "Hiya. I'm Liam Doherty." She frowned at how odd it felt, which itself seemed odd, as she had gone by that as recently as last month.
"Liam Doherty," she said again, flinching a little less than the first time. "Wait, would I have to say Liam Doherty Junior? I think I would, like,
die." She kicked herself for how she had said that, which sounded a little too girly. If she was supposed to be posing as a male, little slips like that could end badly. "I might just kill myself." That sounded more manly.
Now, using rather considerable imaginative ability, she imagined she was being approached by 'another' guy at school. She realized she would have to carefully control her facial expression. If the guy happened to be extremely cute, which she supposed was a possibility, she didn't know if she would be able to withhold the potential squeal completely. "I'm Liam, nice to mee'cha."
She kicked herself again at that one. Not only was saying it like that a little too polite, and perhaps a little too Nebraskan, it still sounded a little too girly. Focusing on it as hard as she could, she forced herself into her male voice that had had so little use of late.
"Yeah, hi. I'm Liam. No, I don't mi--ah, shit, I mean 'knock yourself out'. Ah, god, this is going to be hard... Yeah, I have that class next period. Chure, I'd love t--... I mean, sure, I can sit with you if you want. No, dude, I'm so not gay...actually, that's damn close enough. Yeah, I'm a girl. I don't usually dress or sound like this, but I'm not allowed to come as a girl, for stupid legal reasons, and believe me, I'd rather be in a skirt right now. Yeah, I suppose I could just try not to fake being all like a boy, go all androgynous, but that's really awkward. People keep on just calling me gay, which is stupid, 'cause not all gay guys are girly at all. That and I get all kinds of weird looks...so it's really just easier if I do this, try to be as guy as I can, no matter how hard it is."
Miranda looked into the mirror, where Liam stared back, looking like the fourteen-year-old boy she was so bad at getting herself to sound like. She sighed, letting her head fall further back. "Now that I have established exactly what I
shouldn't say, I guess I'm one step closer." Deciding to give up, she walked away from the mirror and changed out of the uniform.
So 'normal' and 'different' are really a matter of perspective. 'Normal' is simply what results from those conflicts that society at large deems to be the most typical to be faced. Those who are 'different' only have different forces acting in their lives, so have to grow in a different way to adapt to the different challenges. It is not so much the people themselves who are so 'different', but the situations they live in, which they can not help. Personal demons can come in many different forms, but everyone has them. In fact, one can't truly be human without having their own personal demon to help them develop.Miranda always smiled at that part of her affirmation.
So really, she added, thinking on the dichotomy of the her that was Miranda and the character that was Liam,
which is it that is the human, the person or the demon?She glanced at her clock, which she had already set up on a small table next to her bed. She wouldn't have to sleep for a short time yet. As she turned back to the mirror, her eyes fell on one of her boxes, which gave her an idea, so she got up and made a move for the window. Judging by the visible portion of the moon, and assuming she correctly recalled the lunar calender for this year, that night was most likely Imbolc. Now she took a much longer look at that same box, the one in which she had packed all of her magicky things, among others.
Eh, one little candle lighting ritual wouldn't hurt.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`
Yeah, it was a little short for me
But anyway, thanks
