Inciting incident

 This is the actual text of the inciting incident I turned in for my fellows to workshop.

Querida, Querido, Queride

Recap: Due to an overfull class at home college Haverford, Leandra is sitting in on three sections of the same intro biology class at Bryn Mawr to decide which one to try to get into. This is a common practice.

The 9 am class is on the physiology of feeding, which sounds kind of interesting, and kind of gross, and I decide halfway through that having to get up at the crack of dawn to catch the bus for a 9 am class outweighs the interest. The 10 am class is on invasive species, and much more promising. I decide to stay for the 11 am class just in case it’s even better—I’m over here, after all. Before it begins, a short perky blonde girl sits next to me.

“Hi!” she says. “I’m Eloise. Ella. Who are you?”

“I’m Leandra,” I answer.

“Cool. She pronouns?”

My brain stutters on that, restarts the question to see if it makes more sense the second time, decides it doesn’t, and comes out with, “What?”

“Do you use she/her pronouns?”

“Yes,” I answer—it’s the simple truth, and conveys nothing of the confusion—and what the hell, joy--flooding my lungs, most of which I can’t even put into words. Jimena tells me enough that I look like a boy, but I don’t honestly look enough like a boy that she would need to ask, would she? I mean, I have boobs. And a girly name. Ella appears to be satisfied with the answer, though, and carries on.

“What sort of music do you listen to? I love the Backstreet Boys. I know, I know, they haven’t been really big since the 90s, but their vocals, you know they sang a cappella a lot, which was just amazing, and so many artists these days rely on a sound bite and what the computers can do, I can’t stand modern pop, it just seems so faked all the time, you know? I always have the radio on oldies, but of course I can’t set the radio at work, and it’s always on modern pop, usually from a few years back at least so it’s not the stuff you’re totally sick of at least, I hear the preppers listen to a station that only plays the top like five hits and the rest is talk show, I feel so sorry for them, and I’m sorry, I’m not letting you talk.”

“Alternative, mostly,” I answer the earlier question, deciding it’s not worth to ask what a prepper is just yet. “Anberlin is my favorite band.”

“Why?”

It isn’t disbelief. It isn’t even polite conversation. She’s turned to face me completely, though we’re at a lab table, propped her elbows on the table and nestled her chin in her hands, looking for all the world as though the greatest mystery in the world was what I like about my favorite band. She looks about twelve in that position, though that might be the pigtails and the overall shorts over the purple t-shirt.

“I like a good synthesizer,” I begin, “but mostly it’s the lyrics.” Most people let me stop there and say something else about their music or tell me if I like synthesizer I should listen to Styx (which I have), but Ella just cocks her head at me. “They’re full of really interesting, unusual phrases that can mean some pretty deep things if you listen to them carefully, but you’re never a hundred percent sure what they do mean.”

“Can I have an example?”

“Like, um, ‘it’s not that we don’t talk, it’s that no one really listens and honesty fades.’”

“Ooh.”

“And, “it’s alarming how loud the silence screams no warning,” I add, warming to the sudden attention of this girl.

“That is seriously the best,” says Ella. The professor starts to talk just then—this section is apparently on the evolution of skin. Bryn Mawr has some super odd classes. We don’t talk through the rest of the class (Ella pays as rapt attention to the professor as she did to me), but when it ends, she turns back to me and goes,

“You wanna grab lunch with my people?”

I am kind of hungry. And my OneCard gets me into Bryn Mawr’s dining halls as well as Haverford’s. “All right.”

The main dining hall is about as far from the science building as it gets on this campus, but it’s still only a fifteen-minute walk. Ella continues chattering to me.

“Are you into sci-fi/fantasy at all?”

“Only kind of superficially,” I tell her. “Harry Potter. Marvel movies. Nothing really nerdy.”

“Aw. Oh well. Not like everyone at the Doublestar table is actually in Doublestar anyway.”

“Doublestar?”

“Our sci-fi/fantasy club. It’s awesome, it’s really more of a philosophy club that uses nerdy stuff for evidence. There’s nearly always somebody at the table, so you don’t have to look for someplace to sit.”

“Wait, your sci-fi/fantasy club has its own table? Not in the dining hall?”

“Yeah, in the dining hall!” She laughs. “It’s not official, of course, but if you tell someone who’s Doublestar, or friends with people who are Doublestar, that you’re sitting at the Doublestar table, they’ll know what you’re talking about. Our president is Fearless Leader, and our VP is Lackey. It’s an inherited position. Fearless Leader Hells her successor. Oh, do you know about Hell Week yet?”

“I go to Haverford,” I say, wondering suddenly if she doesn’t know that. She doesn’t.

“Omigosh, you go to Haverford? I had no idea. I figured you were a new froshling. That sucks.”

I am even more confused than before at her remark about pronouns. Ryan’s voice comes back to me: Bryn Mawr is all-girl. But she tells me a little about Hell Week and its traditions, and next thing we’re swiping our OneCards at the checker desk at Erdman. Ella leads me toward a table near the back. It’s got quite an assortment of characters. There are Haverford students, since there’s at least one boy, and I’m relieved. The dude has slicked hair, turquoise glasses and a feather boa. Gay, I’m guessing. There’s someone who I *think* is a girl, with a green streak in brunette hair with eyeliner to match and wearing a sequined shirt. There’s also a couple of way less unusual looking girls, and someone else who might be a girl, wearing a blouse and dark hair in a messy ponytail, sitting several seats down so I can’t tell if she (?) is with the rest of the group.

“Everybody, this is Leandra, she/her pronouns. Leandra, this is not everybody!” says Ella helpfully, dropping her stuff by a chair. The two girls, the dude, and the person with the streak all smile and say hello. I wave and set my backpack by the one next to Ella and follow her to the food. Ella gets hers faster than me, not being overwhelmed by options I guess. I put my food down and tuck in. It’s pretty good for dining hall food.

“So, how many of these people are Haverford?” I ask, figuring that might help me work out some of the sexes.

“None,” says Ella, giving me a weird look. “You’re the only one.”

Wait, what?

“But…” I lower my voice. “That…person, in the boa, looks like a dude.” Ella’s expression goes cold. What did I do wrong?

“Introductions!” she says, a little loudly. “Whitney. He/him pronouns.” Boa dude flaps his hand at me. “Chrys, with a Y. Ze/hir pronouns.” Streaky-hair nods. “Molly, she/her. Fearless Leader, she/her.” The two dull-looking girls wave and smile. The person with the ponytail doesn’t get an introduction, so I guess that one’s not part of the group. “All Bryn Mawr students.”

“Bryn Mawr’s all-female,” I say, completely stuck. Now that I really look, Whitney and Chrys don’t have Adam’s Apples—though there’s no sign of breasts, either.

“Officially,” says Chrys, and Ella’s not the only one who suddenly looks frosty. “But it has rather a large transgender population. Do you have a problem with that?”

“I don’t know what that is,” I admit. The expressions become more wary now than cold.

“We, Whitney and I,” says Chrys, “although our birth certificates say we are female, do not consider ourselves to be girls. Simply put…” Chrys—what’s that pronoun again?—stops and looks a little sheepish. “What’s a way to simply put it?”

“Deep down inside, we don’t feel like girls,” says Whitney. “I feel like a boy. I felt like a boy since I was a little kid and didn’t understand why people kept calling me a girl.”

“Are you a lesbian?” I ask. Everyone cringes except Whitney, who seems prepared for the question.

“Naw, I’m a gay man,” replies Whitney. “I like guys and I wanna be one. Some lesbians like dressing in button-downs and wearing their hair short, sure, but as far as I can tell, they don’t hate their boobs and crave a penis. I do. And it’s not about sex, I just feel wrong all the time without one. And I hate it when people use ‘girl’ or ‘she’ for me, it just feels so wrong, like they’re talking about someone else.”

“How did you go your entire life without knowing this?” bursts out Ella, who can apparently keep silent no longer.

“I don’t know,” I admit.

“’S okay,” says Whitney. “Just use ‘he’ for me and ‘ze’ for Chrys and don’t tell us we’re confused or going to hell or disgusting, and we’ll be good, yeah?”

I nod, because it would be rude as hell to say any of that, regardless of what I feel, and I have no idea what I feel, beyond that I think as soon as I let myself process, it’s going to be terrifying.

Whitney changes the subject, to what I have no idea. I pretend to listen and finish my meal relatively quickly. I make my excuses about needing to catch the bus (which is true, in the sense that I’ll miss it if I don’t leave now, more than in the sense that I actually need to be on it), and bolt. Thank goodness, lab doesn’t start until next week, or I’d be stuck here until late afternoon. The bus seems to take forever, purposely landing the reds at every intersection and waiting an extra second to pull away every time it turns green. When it pulls up by Stokes, I’m first off, making a beeline toward Barclay. Antigony isn’t home, and I thank anyone listening. I am so not in the mood to deal with my type-A roommate. I shut the door and the security of actually being alone washes over me. On its heels follows sheer terror. I lock the door with jittery hands, figuring Antigony has a key, drop my backpack on the floor, toe off my shoes, and climb into bed.

My breath pulls in—and stops, holding there for precious seconds before I force it out again. Deep down inside, we don’t feel like girls. A couple more normal breaths, and the hitch happens again. I can feel my heartbeat, which is way too fast to be accounted for by the walk. They don’t hate their boobs. I do. I burrow under the covers, although it’s early September in Pennsylvania and still breathtakingly hot, and feel marginally better. I hate it when people use ‘girl’ or ‘she’ for me, it just feels so wrong, like they’re talking about someone else. My breath seizes up completely for long seconds, and I can feel a whimper trying to escape my throat. Yes, I think, I hate it when people use girl, she, and more, I hate it when people use ella, chica, even Jimena’s querida, as kindly as it’s meant, is painful. I want Jimena, and I don’t want Jimena, I want the comfort, but I absolutely cannot share this with her. Yes, I hate my boobs. I thought it was the inconvenience, the way I had to be careful what shirts I bought after that, the irritation of bras, the way boys started staring. But I think about it, I imagine being free of them, having a flat chest like a boy’s, and I’m gripped with the urge to take them in hand, dig my nails into them, try to rip them off, and what’s worst is that isn’t a new feeling. My shirt is suddenly suffocating, and I pull it off, unclasp my bra and throw them on the floor. I run my hands over the bare bulges in my chest and I am filled with disgust, old disgust, my hands remind me, as they slide over raised ridges that I know are fading to pink by now, and it’s not that they’re breasts. I like women, as I told Ryan and Gary, and that includes their breasts. It’s that they’re on me. Deep down inside, as Whitney said, do I feel like a girl?

My bones echo a resounding No! and I start to cry.