Oh sure, I’d gotten used to seeing that Jeep pull up outside our house, Jeremy grinning from the driver’s seat as I walked out the front door. And sure, maybe he was the type of person who seemed happy to see me, no matter what day it was. He was naturally cheerful, and while that should have been the bane of my sardonic existence, it was instead infectious like a communicable disease. He was infecting me with his jovialness, and I couldn’t find a reason to want a cure.
The rides weren’t long. On a day with bad traffic, it took us a little more than twenty minutes to get to Phoenix House. Usually it was shorter than that. But it still gave me enough time to learn some things about him that I was probably better off not knowing to protect my sanity.
First, Jeremy Olsen had the worst taste in music a human being could possibly have. We’d both agreed that talk radio was out, given that the state of the political world was toxic and most likely going to end in the destruction of the planet. So instead he would flip through his CD folder (yes, a folder filled with CDs; it was made of leather, and he proudly said that he’d had it since high school, because what), finding something he said he was sure I was going to love. “Broaden your musical horizons,” he said on the third day. I was helpless against the way he smiled, and could only nod.
I should have known it was a trap.
Unfortunately his version of broadening musical horizons meant listening to bands that I thought had been relegated to hold music at insurance companies (other than the one Sandy and Paul worked at, because please).
Have you ever sat in traffic while Coldplay blasted from the speakers so loudly that people in other cars knew you were listening to Coldplay? On purpose?
Because I have.
I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
And, as my luck would have it, Coldplay turned out to be quite prolific, seeing as how Jeremy owned seven albums by them. I was tempted to ask why record executives felt the need to keep giving them money to make their version of “music,” but managed to keep that thought to myself.
When I politely asked for a change on the sixth day of hearing Coldplay wail about unity and feelings and whatever-the-fuck, Jeremy decided it was time to introduce me to something called Ed Sheeran. I didn’t know what an Ed Sheeran was, but I assumed by the CD cover (because yes, Jeremy put those in the leather folder too: “I like remembering what the album cover looked like”) that he was a Hobbit of some kind on his way to destroy the One True Ring but had somehow gotten forced to sing songs about… whatever-the-fuck.
Second, nothing seemed to faze Jeremy. He didn’t blink an eye when, midway through the second week, I walked out the door as Kori. The blouse I wore was obviously feminine, and Sandy had done my makeup. I could have done it on my own, but for reasons I didn’t want to delve into, my hands were shaking and I couldn’t calm myself down. Drag queens aren’t known for using makeup sparingly, but Sandy was a bit of a wunderkind, having learned from Vaguyna Muffman, his drag mother. “She told me that sometimes less is more,” Sandy murmured, his breath warm on my face. “You don’t always need to go all out to prove your point. And sometimes it’s okay to just want to look nice. Don’t tell him I told you, but Dare’s got quite the collection himself.”
“Hey, Kori,” Jeremy said, and even though my names sounded the same, I knew he was using the feminine version. He didn’t even have to think about it. I wondered if it was really that easy for him. “You ready?”
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.
The first car ride as Kori was mostly quiet, aside from a new CD (and by new, I meant it was new to me, though it was probably at least a decade old) of something called a Snow Patrol. He didn’t blast it, though, and it was a quiet background for our commute. I kept waiting for the inevitable questions: why and what’s going on and is something wrong?
I didn’t quite know how to articulate it, though it was part of me. It was usually a low-lying current thrumming just underneath my skin. I didn’t ignore it. I acknowledged it for what it was, even if I didn’t get it.
The fosters didn’t get it either. I was twelve the first time I sneaked into their bedroom, feeling slightly feverish, unsure of what I was doing but unable to convince myself to stop. I went to the closet and opened the door. My foster father’s clot
hes were bunched to the right, the majority of the small closet for my foster mother. They weren’t wealthy. They weren’t middle-class. The clothes weren’t nice, but they were more than I had. I touched the blouses. I ran my hands over jeans that were cut differently than anything I owned: tighter in the hips, slender in the legs. They wouldn’t fit me; she was a small woman, and I was already taller than she was.
I felt guilty when I took one of her shirts, a Ship’n Shore blouse I’d never seen her wear. It was white with blue stripes. I didn’t think she’d miss it.
I ran back to my room and slammed the door, breathing hard.
It took me three days to work up the courage to try it on.
It was too short in the sleeves, too tight in the shoulders. The length wasn’t quite right either, but I felt good wearing it. Oh, the guilt was still there, clawing at the back of my mind, but the bands around my lungs were beginning to loosen, and I could breathe and breathe and breathe.
I went back to her closet again.
And again.
The fourth time, my foster dad caught me.
They didn’t understand. How could they? They probably never had to deal with anyone like me before, had probably never even heard the term transgender before. That much became obvious later when the word transvestite was thrown out carelessly, landing like a bomb at my feet, exploding and tearing at the fabric of who I was.
They turned my room over, accusing me of being a thief. They found the Ship’n Shore blouse, the stockings, the barrettes I’d swiped from their bathroom that I put in my hair when everyone else was asleep. All the while, I stood shamefaced near the door, wishing I could disappear into the floor. I was going to run away, I decided. That very night. I couldn’t stay there.
I did, though, because I didn’t know where else to go.
And it made me fucking angry. The word thief thief thief kept ringing through my head, and I hated it. I hated that I’d just taken it, taken their anger, my constricted throat making it impossible for me to say anything.
The third thing I learned about Jeremy Olsen was he did not like being cooped up in his office. He’d say he had work to do, that he couldn’t be disturbed, but ten minutes later he’d peek out from around the corner and ask what we were doing and if we needed any help. Marina would remind him that he had reports to look over, but he’d smile and shake his head, saying he’d get to them later.
Toward the end of the second week, I came out of the office I shared with Marina clutching a note that had been left on my chair. Music was blaring—the Chainsmokers, for fuck’s sake—to find him dancing with some of the kids.