Symptoms of Being Human (16 page)

I DON'T EVEN TRY
to sleep.

The last five hours feel longer than the whole last year of my life. The images and sensations—good and bad—flash through my head like a slide show: Sierra Wells's face, red with rage. The pop of Vickers's arm as I pulled it, and the thump of blood rushing past my ears. Bec's crooked smile. The feel of her fingers between mine.

And all at once the buzz is back in my chest; I wish my dad wasn't guarding my meds. I haven't felt the need to sneak an extra one since my little freak-out, but I could use one now. But if I can't have my pills, I need distraction. I pull my laptop toward me and turn it on.

I've only posted once since Andie Gingham's story went public, and I still haven't gone through the hundreds of messages clogging my inbox. If this is my new cause—helping
other people deal with their gender identity issues—then I'm doing a horrible job of it. I feel guilty for neglecting my blog, for not writing back to my followers—but it took me a week to get over one anonymous hate message, and I've been too afraid that if I log in, I'll only find more abuse.

But now, alone in my bedroom, my need for distraction outweighs my fear. No, not distraction—connection
.
I need
someone
—someone anonymous. Someone who can't judge me. Or see me.

Or know me.

My follower count has risen to just over forty-eight thousand, but my messages have maxed out at five hundred. I take a deep breath, then scan through a few of them. There are some random compliments, and considerably more criticisms, but most of the messages are requests for advice. At the moment, I don't feel qualified to help anyone. So I start clicking Delete.

The first few times, I see the message counter on my dash going down: 499, 498, 497, and so on. But after I've deleted maybe a dozen messages, the number starts creeping back up. Could new messages really be coming in that fast?

I scroll down to the very bottom of my inbox and see six—no, seven new messages all time-stamped within the last minute. I click on the first one.

Anonymous: i guess 50,000 fans can't be wrong

I sit back against my headboard and stare at the screen. What does that mean? A vague sense of dread settles in, tightening my chest. I open the next:

Anonymous: but i think u just want attention

My nose begins to tingle, then my cheeks. I should just log out, but something about this message compels me to read the next.

Anonymous: get it while u can. cuz no one is going to love u once they find out

Anonymous: u. r. a. freak.

I want to be angry. I want to be furious, but instead, heat builds up behind my eyes, and I feel tears coming.

Unable to stop myself, I click the next message. And the next.

Anonymous: who wants to love a dickless sewn up faggot dyke tranny

Anonymous: why dont u just go to the bathroom right now

Anonymous: and take all ur pills and kill urself

I think of Gabi's bottles lined up neatly in the medicine cabinet. The first tears stream down my face.

Anonymous: u know u want to

Anonymous: so easy. easier than facing what u r

My chest heaves in a sob.

Enough. I click Delete. I erase the hateful messages one
by one, as quickly as I can. But new ones pop up, one after the other, piling up faster than I can click.

Anonymous: ur school will be happy

Anonymous: ur fake friends will be happy

Anonymous: ur dad will be happy

Sobs shake my body. I pound at the keyboard, trying to stop the cascade of opening messages, but they just keep coming.

Anonymous: no one will cry for

Anonymous: poor.

Anonymous: little.

Anonymous: RILEY

The messages stop. I stare at the screen. At my name spelled out in all-capital letters.

My real name.

RILEY.

Unaware of what I'm doing, my whole face thrumming, tingling, numb, I dash to the bathroom. Hot bile rises in my throat. I open the tap, lean over the counter, and dry-heave into the basin as cold water runs down the back of my neck. All at once, the tingling in my face spreads like wildfire in a hot wind, head to chest to arms to toes. I try to take a deep breath, but my chest is too tight. My lungs won't expand. I can't breathe.

My heart pounds in my chest, stutters, pounds again. My vision goes dark at the corners.

poor.

little.

RILEY

A low moan rumbles up from inside me, and when it gets to my throat, it becomes a scream. Time and vision seem to fade and I feel myself thrashing, flailing, screaming in a void.

There's a distant crash, like a window breaking. A jolt of pain shoots through my hand and up my arm, and I hear my father's voice from the doorway.

“Riley, what's going on?”

I flinch back into reality as Dad crosses to the sink and grabs my arm. Without knowing it, I've put my fist through the bathroom mirror.

Red droplets fall from my knuckles to spatter the white marble basin and swirl pink down the drain. I look up at the mirror. From the place I struck it, a spider web of cracks spreads out like ripples on a frozen lake. A dozen dark reflections stare back at me.

And then my mother is in the room, enfolding me in her arms.

“What's the matter, Riley? What's wrong?”

I try to answer her, but I can't get the words out through my heaving, irregular breath.

Someone knows who I am.

WHEN WE PULL UP AT
Doctor Ann's office, I start to get out of the car, but Mom lays a hand on my arm. “Wait,” she says. I glance back at her, and she looks . . . old. The lines around her eyes seemed to have deepened, and I spot a few gray hairs among the auburn ones. I wonder if it's stress from the election that's causing it, or if it's me. I close the door and settle back into my seat.

“Riley, I'm . . .” She pauses, reaching up as if she's about to chew on her cuticle—then realizes what she's doing and lets her hand drop into her lap. “Your father and I discussed it. You don't have to go to the fund-raiser Tuesday if you don't want to.”

I whirl on her. “You think I punched a mirror to get out of going to the fund-raiser?”

“I don't know,” she says. But she doesn't sound angry; she
sounds worried. I start to reply, but I can't think of what to say. Mom stares out the windshield. “When I married your father, I knew what I was getting into. The crazy schedule, the media.” She lets out an ironic laugh. “I thought it would be romantic. It hasn't been all roses and bunny rabbits, but I love him. So I get through it.” She glances at me, smiles sadly. “But you can't stand it, can you? All the events, and the attention, and the dressing up. You hate it.”

I consider for a moment before replying. “I hate feeling like a liability.”

My mother shakes her head. “That's . . .” She stops and folds her hands in her lap again. “You've never been a liability. You're more important to us than this election. Than anything.”

I turn my head to glance out the window, and then she makes a weird sound—somewhere between a laugh and a sob—and I look back at her.

“Your father is better at this sort of thing,” she says. “He's the one who has the way with words. I never know what to say to people. To you.” She tucks her hair behind one ear. “I just feel everything, and then try to hold it in. Good manners, but not much courage.” She looks at me. “I guess you're somewhere in the no-man's-land between.”

My heart contracts as though it's being squeezed. I've always thought my mom was clueless about me—but what she just said is so . . . true. I wonder if she knows more than I think she does. Before I can say anything, she goes on.

“Riley, this . . . thing that you're going through. You can tell me about it. All right? You can just tell me. Sometime.” She looks at me. Her mouth is a thin line. Her eyes are moist.
She's never been this open with me—it's moving, and a little frightening, too.

“I will,” I say. “I will when I know what to say.”

When Doctor Ann finally calls me into her office, she's seated in her usual chair, her legs crossed at the knee. I flop into one of the cow chairs.

“Sorry for making you work on a Sunday,” I say.

“No one is
making
me work, Riley.”

“Yeah, but when a congressman calls, you sort of have to come. Right?”

Doctor Ann's smile fades slightly. “Is this a test?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” Doctor Ann says, dislodging a stray hair caught in her lipstick, “sometimes we test people. We want to make sure they care, and that we're safe with them. We want to find out what their motivations are so we can predict their behavior.”

“So you think I don't trust you because you came in on a Sunday?”

“I think you want me to say I'm here for some other reason than it's my job.”

I stare at her. “Are you this honest with your other patients?”

She blinks. “I'm this honest before my second cup of coffee.” I let out a small laugh. She says, “You want to tell me what happened last night?”

I shift in my seat, and then suddenly the words just sort of blurt themselves out. “I got in a fight at the football game and then I went on a date with a girl.”

Doctor Ann raises her eyebrows. “You went to a football game?”

I manage to smile—and then I tell her about last night. I start with Bec holding my hand as we walked into the stadium. I recount the fight with Vickers. I even talk about Bec's sister committing suicide—but I end the story there. When I'm finished, Doctor Ann remains quiet for a long time, just looking at me. I catch myself picking at the bandage on my hand, and I fold my arms.

Finally, she says, “Are you going to tell me the rest?”

“That wasn't enough?”

Doctor Ann takes off her glasses and begins cleaning them. “For some people, there's a delay between experiencing a stress trigger and having an anxiety reaction. They get in a car accident, and they're fine afterward. But then, three days later, safe and secure in their cubicle at work, they have a massive panic attack.” She puts her glasses back on and regards me. “That's not you. Your episodes usually have an immediate trigger.”

I take a long breath and let it out through my nose. Where do I even start?

“Did you hear about the trans girl in Oklahoma?” I ask. “The one whose father beat her up when she came out?”

Doctor Ann nods. “Andie Gingham.”

“Yeah. Well, I'm . . .” I wrap my uninjured hand into a tight fist, willing the fingers not to go numb. “I'm Alix.”

She frowns. “I'm sorry?”

“The journal blog you had me start? I go by Alix. I'm the one Andie reached out to online. The one who told her to
have empathy for her abusive parents. The one she thanked in all those interviews.”

Realization dawns slowly on Doctor Ann's face: first confusion, then understanding, and then I think I catch a hint of fear before she puts on her clinical face again. “I see.”

And then I tell her everything.

I start with my first post and the overwhelming response it received, about Mike/Michelle featuring my blog on QueerAlliance.org. I describe that first hate-mail message—“your a fag”—and my seething reply. My advice to Andie, the subsequent news coverage, and the explosion of followers that resulted. In as much detail as I can remember, I tell her about the anonymous threats—and finally, about the stalker who identified me by name.

When I'm done, Doctor Ann walks over to her coffeemaker, pours herself a second cup, and then leans against the edge of her desk. “So. What are you thinking of doing?”

I blink. “What?”

“What are you thinking of doing?”

“About what?”

“About all of it.”

I cock my head in disbelief. “That's what you're asking me? I tell you that someone knows all my secrets—that I have a real-life stalker—and you ask me in that casual fucking tone, ‘What are you thinking of doing?'”

Doctor Ann's face remains impassive. She sips at her coffee. I want to yell at her. Slap her coffee cup out of her hand. Anything to get a reaction. But she just sits there, waiting me out. When the silence grows too uncomfortable, I clear my throat and speak.

“I don't know,” I say. My voice cracks. “What do you think I should do?”

Doctor Ann looks down at her feet—something I've never seen her do before. I think she'll look up after a few seconds, but she doesn't. She just stares at her tan flats, gripping her coffee cup in one white-knuckled fist. After an uncomfortably long interval, just when I'm convinced she's going to stand up and dismiss me as a patient, she says quietly, “Have you ever shaken up a two-liter soda bottle?”

I open my mouth, close it again, then reply, “Yeah.”

She looks up at me. “That's you. Right now. You're the bottle. And the world just keeps shaking you up. Move to a new school: shake, shake, shake. Kids harass you at lunch: shake, shake, shake. Get a threatening email: shake, shake, shake. All that pressure building up. You feel like you've got to let some of it out, or you'll explode. So, every now and then, you unscrew the cap, just a little. Just enough to let out some of that pressure. You ditch school. You yell at your parents. You punch a mirror.” She shrugs. “But no matter how many times you vent, life keeps shaking you up. And eventually, if you don't take the cap all the way off and deal with the mess, that bottle is going to explode.”

“What does that mean?” I ask.

“What do you think it means?”

“I hate it when you do this,” I say, standing to pace behind my chair. “I mean, what are we even talking about? Are we talking about coming out?”

“You tell me.”

A spike of fear drives its way into my chest, and I shake my head. “I'm not ready.”

Doctor Ann considers me over the rims of her glasses. “You know how you're always telling me to stop asking you ‘therapist questions' and give you actual advice?”

I stop pacing and grip the back of the chair. “Yeah.”

“Talk to your parents about what you're going through.”

“You mean come out to them?”

“I mean talk to them about what you're going through. Tell them how it is at school. What it's like for you to get dressed in the morning.”

I shake my head. “No way. Not two weeks before the election. He'd have a stroke.”

“You don't know that's true.”

“Trust me.”

“Okay. But what if this anonymous person outs you before you have the chance? Wouldn't that be worse?”

“I'll delete my blog. I'll just shut it down.”

“You could,” she says. “But after all that publicity from the Andie Gingham article, I don't know if that will make a difference. Besides,” she says, uncrossing her legs and leaning toward me. “I don't think you want to delete your blog. I think you're proud of it. Proud of yourself for writing it.” I blush furiously. Is she mocking me? But then Doctor Ann leans back in her chair and says, “I know
I'm
proud of you.”

I turn even more red—but this time, it's from embarrassment instead of anger.

I swallow, then drop back into the chair. “So. What do I do?”

Doctor Ann lets out another sigh. “Every therapist dreads this question.”

“What? Why?”

“Because if it goes horribly wrong, we feel responsible.”

“You're not making me feel better right now.”

“Okay, okay. Three things,” she says, ticking them off on her fingers. “One. You prepare what you want to say. Write it down, get it clear. That part should be easy for you.” I smile. “Two. Find the right time—not just before some big event, and not right after an argument. Pick a calm moment. Three, do it on neutral ground.”

“What's neutral ground?”

“Not in public. Someplace you feel safe. We could even do it here, if you want.”

I nod, then let out a long exhale. The feeling starts to come back to my fingers. “How will I know when I'm ready?”

Doctor Ann folds her hands, smiles. “You'll know.”