Stay Gold - Tobly McSmith Page 0,77

and knock on Ted’s bedroom door.

I hear a couple coughs, then, “Enter.”

This is my first time in Ted’s bedroom. It’s surprisingly clean and sparse compared to the rest of the hoarder headquarters. The bed looks like two king beds pushed together with a massive headboard.

“Come sit down,” he says, gesturing at a chair beside his bed. The mighty Ted London is propped up on pillows in bed, an oxygen machine beside him, looking weak. I sit down and try to read his face. Is he mad? Happy? Sad? He reveals nothing.

“Pony, why don’t you take a guess at who was sitting in that chair before you?”

“Lee Grayson,” I say. No reason to beat around the bush.

“Lee Grayson,” he confirms.

“How did it go?” I ask.

“How is that your business, my boy? Who gave you permission to reach out to Lee? I don’t remember asking you to do that. Yet here we are.”

I tighten my grip on the sides of the chair and steady myself. Sometimes I think about how I would do it. Pills seem like the easiest option, but there are none around my house. Jumping out of a window or falling off a ladder seems extreme. I would probably cut my wrists. Messy for someone to see, but maybe I could call the cops, and they could find me instead of my mom.

“Pony, you are a naive high school boy. How could you have any idea what I have been through?”

He glances over, challenging me to speak. The thing about cutting my wrists would be the pain. I would hate that pain.

“I’m trans,” I blurt out.

Ted raises his eyebrows. “You’re what?”

“Transgender.”

“So, you were born a girl?”

“I was assigned the gender of female at birth.”

“And now you are a boy?”

“I have always been a boy,” I say.

Ted shakes his head and laughs but not in a mean way. It was a the-world-sure-has-changed laugh. He clears his throat. “Pony, back in my day, it was hard for the gays, but it was nearly impossible for the trannies.”

I channel Max. “That word has been retired. We just say transgender now.”

“Why are you telling me this?” he asks.

“Because you shouldn’t say that word anymore.”

“No, son, why are you revealing your secret to me now?”

I didn’t really have a reason to tell him, it was more of an urge. “No one knows at school. I’m hiding it.”

“I see,” he says, thinking. “I suppose we both know something about hiding who we are to protect our image.”

I scoff. “I don’t care about my image. I just want to be normal.”

“Normal isn’t an image?” Ted asks, laughing one of his famous laughs, followed by a cough. “Pony, you see how hiding who I was turned out for me? I kept lying and lying until I didn’t know who I was anymore.”

Victor enters with a tray of medicine. I take my cue and get up to leave.

“Pony,” Ted says, then finds my eyes. “You are stronger than you think.”

“Thanks,” I say, not believing him.

6:39 P.M.

I get into my car and take a deep-ish breath. Sunday night and I have nowhere to go. I could go home, obviously, but my thoughts have been so dark. I could hit up some Hillcrest friends, but I can’t tell them about my Love Actually fail. I start my car and feel completely and utterly alone. How about that car exhaust thing? People take their lives like that in movies all the time. I’d need to google it. Seems peaceful.

My thoughts are disrupted by my sister FaceTiming me. I don’t have the energy to pick up, but I do. I see her face, but it’s dark. And loud.

“Rocky?”

“Hello, Pony,” she says, holding her hand to her mouth like it’s a reporter’s microphone. “Reporting live from Metropolitan Bar in Brooklyn. It’s happy hour, and I’m surrounded by queers.”

I laugh (maybe for the first time today?) and ask, “What are you doing?”

“I wanted to introduce you to a few of my new friends.” She swings the phone around, revealing a table of awesome-looking people, all waving at me.

“Pony, this is Tuck,” she says, handing the phone to a hipster guy with a light beard wearing a Yankees cap.

“Hi, Pony, cool name. I’m a trans guy, just like you. Rocky told us about that girl. What you did was brave as hell. Good for you, my man.”

Someone grabs the phone. She’s beautiful, like a young Indian punk rock singer. “Pony, you’re adorable! I’m Sai. Tuck is my partner.” She kisses him on cheek. “Get yourself