Lucy, Uncensored

1


I’ve only been practicing this whole “presenting as a girl” thing for a year, but I’m killing it with today’s outfit: black turtleneck, white power blazer, high-waisted slacks, hoop earrings. Plus the sharpest, most symmetrical cat-eye liner you ever saw. It only took about a hundred tries and three YouTube tutorials.

Callie, on the other hand, still has a drool mark on the left side of her chin, and so help me goddess if she’s about to pull a stained hoodie over her button-down.

“You can’t wear that, Cal.” I lick my thumb and wipe the crust from her chin. “There’s literally a ketchup stain on the boob.”

She pouts and bats her eyelashes. “But I need the comfort of its familiar embrace to carry me through this momentous day.” Her voice is scratchy. She probably didn’t wake up until I texted her that Dad and I were on the way. I’ve been up for hours, even though Callie and I stayed up until two, texting about how the day would go.

“Girls?” Asha, Callie’s stepmom, calls from downstairs. “Almost ready?”

Callie’s fluffy five-pound Chihuahua emerges from a pile of crumpled clothes on the chair. “What do you think, Meatball?” I ask, petting him on the forehead. He opens his mouth in a huge yawn. “See? He says, ‘Where’s that new cardigan we picked out?’ ” We hit the thrift shop last weekend--the best place to stock up on new, cheap clothes for a baby trans like me. And great for Callie, too, who’s already spent her September paycheck on an exotic snack subscription box and color-changing LED strips, which light up her room like a year-round Christmas tree.

Callie groans and peels a beige cardigan off the iguana cage in the corner. Queen Elizardbeth--who, I must specify, is five feet long, nose to tail--gazes back at her sympathetically.

“I look frumpy in this,” Callie says, but puts it on.

I don’t tell her that the sweater smells like the romaine lettuce rotting under Liza’s heat lamp. “You look great,” I say. “Let’s go.”

“Girls?” Asha shouts. “We’re late!”

“Hip bump power up!” Callie says.

We raise our arms and bump our hips together three times--the “handshake” we invented in middle school and are still doing as honest-to-goddess legal adults. Then Callie sticks her ass at me and wiggles it.

“You idiot.” I smack her booty and we head toward the car.

The ride to Central University takes a little under an hour, since Dad’s driving. Mom wanted to join, but the pillow pulled over her head this morning told me she wasn’t up for a day of walking around campus. Her cancer’s in remission, but her fatigue isn’t.

Asha sits up front drinking a baby-shit-green breakfast smoothie, and Callie and I slouch in the back scrolling through our College Dreams Pinterest board. Since I last checked, Callie has added three new images of a make-your-own-waffle bar that allegedly exists in one of the dining halls, plus some photo mural ideas for our dorm room. (We have a roommate pact, obviously. An added perk of me being out as a girl.) I added a tip sheet for students applying to the Hughes drama program. Number one: Nail your audition. Number two: Slam dunk your application. Number three: If you should be so lucky as to land an interview, schmooze those fools to the moon and back.

Luckily, today is just a tour, so we aren’t being evaluated. Officially. But you better believe I’m going to be on. Just in case.

By the time I wrangle my body out of Dad’s SUV, my legs are stiff as uncooked pasta. I check my makeup in the window, ignoring Dad’s side-eye. Trust me, he’s come a long way from the shouting tornado he turned into on the nights I came out--first as gay and then, after I figured my shit out, as trans. But he still acts shifty when I dress extra girly or dare to swallow my hormones in his presence.

“This is it, Lucy!” Callie yells. Callie jumps straight into the Footloose dance we used as an audition piece for our freshman-year musical, and I hop in next to her. It’s no surprise that we worked crew for that show.

“The Dream’s almost here,” she says, arms flailing, toes pointing. “We’re college kids now.”

“Or are we college adults?” I ask, since we both turned eighteen over the summer.

“You’re college kids in eleven months,” Dad says, locking the car. “Don’t get carried away.”

Asha takes a brush from her purse and pulls it through Callie’s shoulder-length dirty-blond hair. “Honestly, Callie, on tour day?” The contrast between Callie and her stepmom is stark--Asha is Indian American with brown skin and silky black hair, and she doesn’t start the day without her green smoothie and eight-step skin care routine. Callie is white, pays no mind to her acne, and doesn’t leave bed before eleven a.m. if she can help it.

“It’s not like it’s the interview.” Callie pulls away and adds some of the signature muss back to her hairstyle.

If we get through the first round of the Hughes selection process, they’ll call us back for a formal interview with the board of directors and some of the theater professors. The Hughes program is super good but super competitive, especially for a state school. And that means a whole extra application process, with essays, fees, and the perfect excuse to dress up like the badass professional lady I truly am. Maybe next time I’ll brave the formidable pencil skirt.

“Well, you ready--?” Dad starts to say my deadname and inelegantly slips into “Lllllucy?” He draws it out as if it’s an unfamiliar word he picked from of the dictionary.

I can’t tell if he’s still messing up by accident or if he truly has not climbed aboard the transgender train so long after departure. Either way, best to take care of this issue now. “If you pronounce my name like that, everyone will think you’re some creepy stranger instead of my dad.” I’m not the person who can straight up call somebody out--that’s more Callie’s style--but the joke should keep him in line. Hopefully.

“Sorry, kid,” he tells me. “I’m trying.” He usually tries harder when Mom’s around.

“Let me get a picture, girls,” Asha says, ushering Callie and me in front of the Central University sign. “Beautiful, Lucy. I love the blazer.”

“Thanks. Thrift shop.” Asha always makes a point to call Callie and me girls and squeeze my name into casual conversation as often as possible, without its being awkward. Did I mention I love Asha?

A chilly October fog blankets the ground, which makes the campus seem even bigger than it is--like it’s a vast city that goes on forever. As we step into the cloud world, Callie takes under-the-chin selfies in front of everything. A bench with an abandoned soda cup. A tree exploding with orange leaves. A pedestal with a bearded man’s statue head on top.

Asha sighs. “I don’t know why you insist on looking ridiculous in every picture you take.”

“Because I’m a wrinkly-necked ghost roaming my ghost kingdom,” Callie replies, gesturing to the fog. She juts her chin down to create more neck folds. “Plus, beauty is a social construct. Get in this one, Luce.”

She pulls my body into hers, and we pose in front of a half-eaten sandwich abandoned on a railing. I extend my head away from my neck and smile with my eyes. I’ve practiced this pose in the mirror, not quite as ready as Callie is to defy conventional beauty standards.

The campus is empty, which gives the fog an eerie, malicious feeling. Everyone must be sleeping in after crazy all-night parties. The kind of parties Callie and I have dreamed about for years--drinking cheap booze out of red Solo cups, dancing atrociously with other drama nerds, smoking pot on the roof of the theater at two a.m. and then making chili cheese fries in the dorm microwave while we sing along to cast recordings of underappreciated Broadway shows.

Eventually we make it to the quad, where we’re supposed to meet our tour guide. The mist hangs low on the grassy area, and the trees rise up like towers that disappear into the sky. Finally, we spot some humans through the haze, bundled in jackets and knit caps. I probably should’ve added an outer layer to my getup, but covering up this blazer would be a punishable crime.

I imagine myself from the other students’ perspectives: a tall girl with pale skin and a dark brown, grown-out pixie cut, emerging from the fog like a mysterious forest nymph. I lighten my stride to look a little more graceful. To them, I could be anyone.

“Callie Katz and Lucy Myers?” the tour guide chirps. He’s a clean-cut college kid with a clipboard in his hand. We nod. “Looks like we’ve got everyone.”

Dad gives me a thumbs-up. “Nice. They got your name right,” he says under his breath. “I was afraid they’d have you listed as--” But I wallop him with my eyeballs. The tour hasn’t even started yet and he’s already poking at my self-esteem balloon with a deadnaming needle.

Thankfully, I signed up for the tour with my real name. My application will be a different story, though, since I’ll have to send my transcript and Social Security number and who knows what else. Yes, I’m saving for a name change. My parents don’t see the point, since everyone already calls me Lucy. For Dad, coughing up the cash for my hormone copays every month is more than enough financial allyship.

My balloon deflates a little more when I spot two guys from our high school across the tour group. Lewis and Ben--the human equivalents of stale toast. They’re part of the susurrus of school life--the never-face-to-face deadnaming, misgendering, and general ignorance that float around me every day. College was supposed to be my bug-fixing update for that issue. But obviously we’re going to run into high school classmates at a Pennsylvania state school an hour from home. Duh.

Callie meets my gaze and rolls her eyes. “Ignore those poop quesadillas,” she whispers.

I hold my head a little higher and put all my senses on red alert: one ear on Dad and one eye on Lewis and Ben. (Are they snickering at me or did the tour guide crack a joke?)

Our first stop is the Elmo Henderson Memorial Student Center and Dining Hall. A few dozen students sit around drinking coffee and typing on laptops. While the tour group gathers in the lobby, Callie strides straight to the serving stations to suss out the waffle bar situation.

“Not here,” she says when she gets back. “Must be in a different dining hall.”

“We’ll find it,” I tell her.

“What I can say is that college cuisine appears to be much more sophisticated than high school food.”

“Waffle bars are sophisticated?”

“Yes! They’re rumored to include fruit.”

“Next to the Reese’s Pieces, of course.”

“Naturally. You’ll also find this institution offers not chicken nuggets but rather delicate poultry morsels,” Callie says in the snooty British accent she’s been working on. “You must eat them with fork and knife. And you shan’t be excused from the table until you’ve sampled the leavened flatbread with herbed tomato and aged milk garnish.” Pizza, I suppose.

She’s trying to egg me on, but all I can manage is a dry laugh. I’m too distracted to really get into it. Lewis stares at me as Callie and I rejoin everyone. He elbows Ben, who gives me a look that’s hard to interpret. Amused, maybe? Amusing definitely isn’t what I was going for when I got dressed this morning. I love my outfit, but I probably would’ve toned it down if I’d realized people from school would be here. I’ve kept my Monday-through-Friday outfits on the androgynous side to make life easier. I herd Callie to the edge of the group, keeping as many bodies as possible between us and the guys.

Before long, we enter the lobby of the Hughes Auditorium. Callie gasps as if we’ve just infiltrated an ancient Egyptian pyramid. Framed playbills paper one wall, and colorful sculptures hang from the ceiling. The guide doesn’t have to tell us that the school’s theater department lives right here. I feel it intrinsically, and Callie’s ecstatic drama-nerd face tells me she hears the same Hallelujah choir bursting into song.

“Can you remind me of the different drama concentrations?” Callie asks, as if she hasn’t already memorized the theater-major page on Central’s website.

While the guide answers, my ears yank me around to face Dad, who’s talking softly with another parent. “Yeah, she’s been in drama club all through high school.” I smile at the woman, who smiles back. So far so good, but damn, Dad is putting me on edge.

“You said there’s a directing concentration?” Callie says, urging me with her eyebrows to get excited. “That’s so cool.”

I smile to reassure her that I’m enjoying the tour. For years, our Dream has been to go to the same college together. This college. This theater program. But running surveillance on Lewis and Ben, who I swear keep staring at me, wasn’t on our College Dreams board.

“Do students, uh, get the chance to run their own shows?” I force myself to ask.

Throughout high school, I’ve waffled between acting, crew, stage managing, and directing. I loved all of it (though audiences could do without my singing), but something about watching a piece come to life from the metaphorical director’s chair takes me to the next level. It’s like I can take a vision directly from my head and project it onto the stage. And bossing people around is the best. Most people don’t expect bossiness from me, just because I’m quiet. But directing is a great way for a quiet person to get folks to listen, because, you know, they have to.

“Absolutely,” the guide says. “That’s one of the great things about the Hughes program--each and every student in the directing concentration gets to direct a show as part of their senior thesis.”

One show? Senior year? A sense of not-quite-rightness settles on my shoulders like a scratchy blanket. I thought I’d get to start next year. But I guess in a big program like Hughes, there’s only so much stage time to go around.

As we leave the auditorium, a girl walks beside us. “Are you applying for Hughes, too?” She straightens the hair tie at the end of her thick, black braid. Damn. I want that hair.

I run my fingers through my own not-yet-shoulder-length hair, urging it to grow faster. “Yeah, both of us,” I say, offering Callie another I’m-invested-in-this-tour smile.

“Cool! I’m doing my audition piece next month.” She crosses her fingers. “Acting concentration.”