I Know Very Well How I Got My Name by Elliott DeLine

Author:Elliott DeLine
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: lgbt bullying, ftm novel, lgbt, lgbt characters, transgender fiction, queer, ftm fiction, transgender ftm, transgender, trans, ftm

The Red Notebook

That summer I find dark blood stains in my underwear. I know what it is, but somehow I hadn’t known it was coming for me. My chest begins to change. It swells, like little balloons slowly filling with air. I start shaving my legs and armpits, because, well, that’s what’s expected.

North Syracuse Junior High, somewhat strangely, houses only eighth and ninth graders. It combines the two middle schools, and therefore half the student body is composed of complete strangers from Gillette Road Middle School. We consider them to be preps, except for Bridgeport kids—they consider us to be poor, except for Wildcreek kids. But soon everyone forgets and we all mix together in misery. New hierarchies are formed.

Nervous, bored, and in need of an outlet, I carry a red spiral notebook with me everywhere I go. In the notebook, I write poetry. Most of it is of romantic and erotic longing—much of it involves Amy. When I am bored in class, I write, and when I get home from school, I go up to my room and write some more. I close my eyes and wrap myself around a pillow, pressing to my stomach. It is pleasure and agony. I long without comprehension or release.

After school, Amy and I often hide up in the balcony of the empty auditorium. Sometimes we talk, usually about vague, philosophical things we only half-understand. Other times, we just sit in silence. Every time, the burning is there. Please let her touch me, I think. Please let her kiss me, lean on my shoulder, lie on the floor and pull me on down top of her. Anything.

She never does. But I can sense she feels the energy too.

One day, she steals my red notebook. We are staying after school with a purpose that day—we belong to Synergy, the school literary magazine. She knows I don’t let anyone read my notebook, and so she takes it when I’m not looking. I beg her to give it back and I chase after her in the halls. It becomes a game of Monkey in the Middle as she passes it off to different kids, all of whom laugh and ignore my pleas. Eventually I give up and let Amy run off with the thing. I sit down, humiliated, leaning against the cool lockers, and I wait for her to return.

In a half hour or so, she walks down the hall towards where I sit. She hands the notebook back to me without saying a word. I follow her into the classroom. What’s going on? No reply.

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