I press my forehead to my knees and close my eyes and fantasize about living without being ashamed of this. Without constantly needing to apologize for feeling too hard. Without beating myself up every single day for having Big Huge Hairy Heinous Feelings. I wish so hard that people could cry whenever we need to and then get on with the day. Like sneezing or burping or getting the hiccups. A bodily function.

None of those situations can be jammed into a neatly defined box. Really, nothing about how it feels to be alive is strictly a one-or-the-other game: happy or sad, scared or mad, hopeful or despairing. Introvert or extrovert. Boy or girl. Kid or teenager. There's a little of each one in its opposite, and that's what makes life so complex and interesting. More painful, yeah, but also... richer. More real.

While I'm switching, for that week or so, everything feels gross and inside out and bass-ackward until I can settle into what I'm switching to. That "identify as airport" thing Dad said was icky, but it also hit the nail on the head. I hate being in between. It's like when a lousy radio DJ doesn't know how to fade one song into another. That few seconds when both songs are playing but the beats aren't blending and you're like, Oh my god, go back to DJ school. It makes no sense to me how anyone can hang out in between. Or be so comfortable with looking the opposite of how they feel that they're like, This is who I am.

"Tears don't mean you're weak," Iris says. "They mean you care real hard about what's right and good. That takes balls." "Guts," I say. "It takes guts. My mom has no balls and she's a world champ at caring about right and good."

I look down at my outfit: red Converse with one of the laces coming untied, sorta fashionably ripped jeans I got at Goodwill, a purple T-shirt with a stegosaurus surfing on the back of a shark. An outfit that could go either way. I brush fur off my stegosaurus. There’s so much more to me than my gender. But people interact with me differently if they think I’m a girl than if they think I’m a boy. And if they read me as a girl during a boy time, or a boy during a girl time, nothing past that feels right. I really want Daniel to read me as a girl.