A World Worth Saving

Chapter 1
2022 (kind of)


“A_________! It’s time to go! Are your shoes on?” Mom’s voice drilled through my closed bedroom door.


Aglets. That’s what they're called. Those little plasticky things at the ends of shoelaces. That would be a fun name, too. Aglet Izenson. I clicked out of the Wikipedia rabbit hole that led me to “shoelaces” and closed my laptop.


I grabbed the laces of my left sneaker. They dangled from my fingers like limp black worms. Come on, I urged myself, but my hands remained rebelliously still.


“Almost ready!” I called back.


I didn’t forget how to tie my shoes, I swear. Shoe-tying was a skill I mastered in first grade, the loops and knots and everything. But once my shoes were tied, I’d have to leave.


“Well, hurry up!”


It’s not like I loved my bedroom, this featureless box painted a babyish shade of lilac. All I had in here were books; battered old paperbacks from my mom’s youth, the ones she loved enough to keep and pass on to me, the ones I had a complicated relationship with. No posters on the walls, no flags or pictures torn out of magazines, just a small bump in the plaster above my desk shaped like a teddy bear, and a cobweb hanging in the corner that I hadn’t knocked down yet. I was saving that task for a day when I got really bored.


After spending approximately twenty-one percent of my life in this room except for going to the bathroom, shuffling downstairs for bowls of cereal, and long meanders around our backyard—thanks, COVID—you’d think I’d be thrilled for any excuse to leave. I mean, even wandering around the grocery store without a mask on still felt like a risky, thrilling adventure. But tying my shoes would take me one step closer to an intolerable fate.


“A____, we’re going to be late! Let’s get a move on!” That was my dad.


“One more minute,” I yelled.

It wasn’t too late to fake-cough and tell them that I couldn’t smell anything. There was still the lingering fear of a new variant, one that wouldn’t register on a rapid test. Mom would freak out about a breakthrough infection, I’d go stir-crazy sitting in my room for ten days, but I’d get to miss two SOSAD meetings.

That felt like a nuclear option, though. One to save for if I really needed to get out of something.

Mom rapped her knuckles on my bedroom door, then poked her head in without waiting for my response.

“You’re wearing that?” she asked. Well, “ask” isn’t quite the right word. It’s more like she was telling me I wouldn’t be wearing that if she had anything to say about it.

“I am,” I said anyway. Because it was true, I was wearing that, “that” being plain black sneakers, my only pair of baggy jeans with decent pockets, and a red polo shirt I bought at a neighbor’s yard sale for a quarter. I wished I still had the binder I got, from this collective that shipped donated ones all over the world in discreet packaging. But when my mom found it, she whisked it away without a word, and I never saw it again. I figured she cut it into pieces or buried it in the trash or ritualistically burned it in the backyard. Now I squeezed myself into too-tight sports bras. If you didn’t look too closely I could pass as a boy with, uh, unusually well-developed pectoral muscles.

“Why don’t you at least change your shirt, sweetheart?” she asked, her voice like that stuff they have to advertise as “breakfast syrup” because there’s not a drop of true maple in it. Too sweet, and bad for you. “I bought you those nice new blouses, I’m sure everyone at the meeting would love to see you in one.”

I tried to keep my body language relaxed and nonchalant, while girding my mental loins. “I like this shirt,” I told her. “And besides, you’re the one who’s always told me that girls get to wear whatever they want. If this is how I want to dress, isn’t it the feminist choice to let me?”

Her nostrils flared. “We both know that’s not what’s going on here,” she said flatly. “Change your shirt. It’s time.”

Two options lay before me.

One: I could argue with her. Explain, again, that being trans wasn’t a phase, and that I would be a boy even if she forced me into a bikini or a prom dress. Remind her that she was the one who gave me all those books about girls disguising themselves as knights, or princesses who didn’t want to be princesses anymore, and I was just taking those lessons to their logical conclusion. But that conversation would end with one or both of us crying, and it would solve exactly zero problems.

Two: I could put on a freaking blouse.
Yes, it would feel like a paper bag filled with hair. And yes, I would be betraying myself, letting her win this battle, like I let her win every battle. But it wouldn’t change anything about who I was, or what I knew about myself. All I had to do was disconnect my mind from my body, shut down emotionally, and I’d be fine. Piece of cake.
Also, once I was dressed to my mother’s satisfaction I could see Yarrow. And Sal. They were worth it.

“Okay,” I said. “Be down in a minute.”

Chapter 2

A fierce fall wind pummeled Mom, Dad, and me as we made the short walk from the front steps to the driveway. Dust and grit danced in the air, and the car door slammed itself shut as I plopped into the back seat.

“We need to pick up half-and-half on the way home,” Mom reminded us.

“Mm-hmm,” said Dad. He eyed me in the rearview mirror. “What’s that schmatte you’re wearing?” he asked, like I had any say in it. But a laugh crept into his voice, and his eyes crinkled warmly. Like this was an amusing moment of typical teenage rebellion that we would someday reminisce about fondly.

“Mom’s idea,” I muttered. I had thrown on this frilly peasant blouse, the kind that was probably more popular when she was my age than today. At least I was still wearing my preferred jeans and sneakers.

And the tight sports bra. It wasn’t a good look, but if they insisted on forcing me to these meetings, this is what they got.

“It’s not some ugly rag!” Mom insisted, swatting his shoulder playfully. “I think she looks nice.” Yeah, right.

Dad put on his usual Simon and Garfunkel playlist. When I was little I liked their music, but once these meetings became one of the only places we drove to, the melodic guitar meant that I was on my way to the hour and a half of misery fittingly called SOSAD. “Save Our Sons and Daughters.” A support group that offered zero support. I tapped my phone awake as two soft-voiced men sang about being “just a poor boy,” and snuck into my secret messages.

My parents couldn’t take away my laptop, because that was school now. And Sal, computer nerd that she was, got me to download an app she built, invisible on my phone’s home screen, that allowed us to text without it showing up in our history. Then she helped me get around the parental setting my parents installed, and foiled their attempts to take away my phone by requiring constant two-factor authorization. After three days of digging my phone out of its hiding place so I could log onto my virtual classes, they gave it back to me.

Being in touch with my friends was better than ten mental health hotlines put together.

A: In the car, hoping for a flat tire. You two coming tonight?

S: Almost there. I tried to get us stuck in traffic but my dad wouldn’t listen to my directions

Y: We’re the first ones here  Mom and Joanna are comparing manicures. I don’t think my black nail polish is a hit
A: Try rainbow next, see if they like that better.

Y: But black has every color! It’s like a goth rainbow

A: Are you goth now? You’re too perky to be goth.

Y: Maybe a Visigoth? Is that a thing?

A: I . . . don’t know what that is but sure, I support you

S: I tried to get away with green nail polish once but my mom cleaned it off immediately. Green must not be my color.

Y: I think you’re more of an autumn anyway.

S: What does that even mean

Y: Gotta put my phone away, don’t want them to see me texting

A: See you soon, Yarrow!

S: There’s a transphobically low amount of traffic tonight so I’ll be there soon too, oh joy oh rapture

It was a little ironic that the only place in the world I got to hang out with trans people my own age was at meetings where adults thought our friendships were more dangerous than vaping or Tide Pods. Luckily (but also unluckily), critical thinking skills weren’t their top priority.

I spent the ride playing an alphabet game as my dad sang along to the music, enthusiastically but off-key. I spotted an A on a passing Toyota, and a B in its license plate. I found a C and a D in the sign of a roadside McDonald’s. Focusing on something that required my full attention but had zero stakes helped keep me from spiraling out about the meeting, replaying the latest frustrating conversation with my parents, or stressing over whatever horrible piece of news caught my eye most recently. I made it to V by the time we parked in the giant lot of the Creekwood church.

The annex—this little building off to the side of the church—hosted the meetings we’d been going to for months. We walked into the windowless “community room,” with its buzzing fluorescent lights and stained carpeting.

As always, it felt like being squished under a steamroller. Lungs couldn’t take in enough air, heart beat sideways, thoughts felt as compressed as I wished my chest was. The smell of burnt coffee and stale doughnuts wafted through the air, making me nauseous. The low hum of voices screwdrivered into my ears.

Several sets of parents and kids had shown up already, sitting in pairs or clumps on the uncomfortable metal chairs. Some I recognized, and a few new ones. No one my age, which wasn’t surprising. Younger kids tended to last longer, maybe because they were easier to control.

Older teenagers usually only came for a handful of meetings. After that, their parents would come alone, saying that Joanna was helping them with further treatment, and they were hopeful that their son or daughter would come back to them soon. Then we never saw any of them again.

I perked up when I saw Yarrow, who was examining a poster on the wall, Jesus hanging out with a bunch of little kids. I had nothing against Jesus specifically; my parents always joked that he was the original Nice Jewish Boy, but being surrounded by crosses made me feel prickly. My parents didn’t enjoy it either, but they chalked it up to another selfless sacrifice they were making to get their “daughter” “back.”

While my parents beelined to the leaky coffeepot, I sidled up to Yarrow.

“Hey man,” murmured Yarrow, husky voice soft but strong. “I hate your shirt.”

“Aw, thank you so much,” I muttered back. Insulting the clothes our parents forced us into was one of our favorite running jokes. “That skirt is pretty bad, too.”

Yarrow laughed quietly. “Yeah? I think I look fetching.”

While my parents had forced me into a ladylike top but let me keep my jeans, my agender friend had been wrestled in the opposite direction: a knee-length mauve skirt that looked like it had been crumpled up at the bottom of a dirty laundry hamper for months, aggressively clashed against a bright orange sweatshirt branded with a life insurance company’s logo. This was clearly a parental compromise rather than a nonbinary fashion statement but somehow Y, as always, managed to look cute. Yarrow had a confidence I lacked, I thought. This aura of self-love that nothing bad could ever penetrate. I wished I was like that.

We weren’t the only ones who had been forced into embarrassing fashion not-choices; Sal clomped in a minute later, trailed by her parents, wearing these ugly, boxy khakis, baggy but with creases running down the front. Even I wouldn’t wear those. As Sal’s parents found seats, she casually made her way over to us. The chaos of everyone coming in and settling down usually gave us a couple minutes to hang out, if we were lucky.

“You think Lily is going to come?” Sal asked with her usual abruptness. “She hasn’t texted me all week.” Lily was this trans girl around our age who’d been coming to SOSAD for about two months.
She’d missed last week’s meeting.

“Maybe,” said Yarrow, with a hopeful lilt.

“Maybe,” I echoed, less hopefully.

“I’m pretty sure she was flirting with me. Especially with that last story? I hope she shows up.” Sal had convinced Lily to download the secret texting app too, but hadn’t added the new girl to our group chat. Still, Sal would sometimes forward us the memes Lily sent her, or links to her Doctor Who fanfic, which I hadn’t gotten bored enough to read yet.

“Did you hear about the lesbian couple that stole a U-Haul and moved into it together?” Sal asked, in a total non sequitur that probably made sense inside her head. “That’s literally goals. Except that they got caught, which is how it got in the news. I wouldn’t get caught.” Sal started attending SOSAD meetings a few weeks before I did, and at sixteen was usually one of the oldest SADs in the room, a few months ahead of Yarrow. Skinny, angular, and ghostly white like she never left her darkened room, she could keep a sneer on her face for an impressively long time. At first I thought she hated me, but I soon found out that she hated everything. She was a useful person to be friends with despite—or because of—that.

Yarrow laughed even as flashes of concern crossed both of their faces. Sal was worried about Lily. Yarrow worried about Sal. I just worried.

“You’ll find the girl of your dreams someday,” Yarrow assured her.

“Probably not here,” Sal retorted.

“Yeah, this place is for the girl of your nightmares,” I joked. “No offense.”

Sal shrugged agreeably. “None taken, I identify as a nightmare girl.”

“I look forward to seeing your community’s flag,” Yarrow said with a suppressed chuckle.

“Come sit over here, A______,” Mom called, her voice slicing through the air. Of course, what she was really saying was “Get away from those gender-confused freaks so someday you can make normal friends.” I sighed, nudged them both goodbye, and made my way over to my parents. I lowered myself onto the cold metal chair wedged between them and settled in for an hour and a half of being talked at and over.

Even though these meetings were supposed to save us, were all about us, we—the sons and daughters and nonbinary offspring—were never given much time to speak. Half the time we weren’t even allowed to introduce ourselves, if we stubbornly insisted on using our real names instead of the syllables that emerged from our parents’ mouths. Even at home I could go days without talking at all, and longer without saying anything more than “Good morning,” “Yes please,” or “No thanks.” I used to talk so much, at school, at home, with friends, and sometimes I wondered where all those words went. What happened to them.

“My name is Yarrow, and I prefer that you use my name instead of pronouns,” Yarrow had announced at the first meeting I went to. Even though Yarrow had been going for long enough to know that it wasn’t the kind of place where you got to use your own name or tell people which pronouns you used (or didn’t). It gave me the tiniest bit of hope, to see Y take up space like that, even though everyone ignored it and kept using Yarrow’s wrong name and original pronouns.

But Yarrow’s like that. Always positive, always believing things could get better, always giving people a chance. Always honest, no matter what. Even when that honesty had consequences.

Chapter 3

“Good evening, everyone!” Joanna exclaimed. About a dozen families had shown up. Most of the parents responded enthusiastically, and one or two kids murmured wan hellos.

Our group leader wasn’t physically intimidating, at least not at first glance. She was petite and blond, with a button nose and a tiny waist that my mom pretended not to envy. She always dressed professionally, in skirts and blazers, and she smiled a lot. But her smile looked like it was held up with toothpicks, and it never reached her eyes. Her voice sounded sweet, until you listened to what she was saying. Her nails were sharp, and her hands were strong. All us kids were terrified of her, and I think some of the parents were, too.

We usually started with an introductory circle, but tonight Joanna looked like she was a talk show host about to give everyone a car.

“Before we get started,” she announced, “I have some wonderful news. We’ve talked about how frustrating it is to live in this supposedly progressive state, where it’s legal for doctors and activists to perform medical experiments on young children.”

I usually tuned her out, but that pricked my ears to attention. This didn’t sound good.

“And while the primary goal here at SOSAD is to support you, and to help your children find their way home to their true selves, we have also been working tirelessly behind the scenes to force Governor Pettersen to enshrine our parental rights into law.” Her voice was like a woodpecker hammering into my ear, the phrase parental rights a wriggling worm.

“Thanks to our advocacy, I have it on very good authority that one of our congressional representatives is about to introduce a bill to help us Washingtonians catch up to our more enlightened neighbors. And I even heard that they’re naming it after us!” She almost shrieked with joy. “The Save Our Sons and Daughters Act, Proposition 284, ensures that everyone under the age of twenty-one will be protected from unproven medical treatments for temporary emotional issues. But it won’t pass without your support. It’s going to be a lot of work, but can I count on you to help SOSAD ensure a safe future for our children?”

Thunderous applause answered her question. Or at least, as thunderous as applause could get with a couple dozen adults clapping and every kid slumped silently in a chair, still as statues.

That didn’t sound half-bad, at first—I mean, medical experiments and unproven treatments does sound fully bad—but slowly the pieces came together in my mind.

By “medical experiments,” she meant letting trans kids stop the puberty I wished I could opt out of by using hormone blockers. “Unproven medical treatments” referred to letting people my age go on estrogen or testosterone. “Temporary emotional issues” was us being trans, and “parental rights” was code for making us fully the property of our parents, instead of human beings with needs and wants of our own.

I stopped breathing, the veins in my neck beating in time with my heart. Under twenty-one. Freedom had just moved an unimaginable almost-decade into the uncertain future. When I finally gasped for air, it started coming in pants. I imagined turning eighteen, nineteen, twenty, still kept from making my own choices, still trapped in a life and a body I couldn’t see myself living in much longer.

Stop that, I reprimanded myself as animated parents peppered Joanna with questions about the bill, how close it was to passing, what it meant for their kids. Having a panic attack—or a tantrum, as Joanna called them—in the middle of a meeting wouldn’t fix anything.

At least I wasn’t alone. I tried to catch Yarrow’s eye, but Yarrow stared at the floor, hunched over, avoiding eye contact with everyone, even me. I checked on Sal and she was even paler than usual, her jaw clenched. She met my eyes, and I found a shred of comfort in being miserable together.

As Joanna explained more about what this bill was going to do, I forced myself to think of a four-syllable word starting with the letter A, breathing in and out once per syllable. Then I moved onto B, and C. Dromedary, encapsulate, fingerspelling, garbageperson. I got stuck on X, as always, but by the time I got there my heart rate had slowed, a little. I was past the immediate plunge of despair.

“Once the bill passes we’ll have a real party,” Joanna wrapped up to restrained cheers. “But now, on to the rest of the meeting! Who has anything they’d like to share about the last week?”

Yarrow’s mom, Abigail, raised her hand before Joanna hit the question mark. She loved to talk, but it was always the same litany. She immediately launched into a familiar speech about how she would never let go of her little girl. Apparently she had caught Yarrow doodling the nonbinary pride flag in the corner of a notebook over the weekend, which was proof that her poor delusional daughter was refusing to take any of this seriously, and she was worried that soon it would be too late. Too late for what, she didn’t say. Yarrow’s dad, Matt, nodded in confirmation.

I caught my mom raising her hand out of the corner of my eye and hunched over, hugging my rib cage. This was the worst part of the meetings, when they were allowed to say the most hurtful, dishonest things about us, and we just had to take it. But luckily for me, I guess, Yarrow’s mom kept talking, explaining how her daughter used to be so beautiful, like a sculpture of an ancient Greek goddess, and there had to be some sinister reason she was hurting herself like this.

Yarrow’s head had stayed down during most of the monologue, coils of bright black hair trembling. As Abigail slowly ran out of steam, Joanna nodded in my mother’s direction, inviting her to start. But before she could say a word Yarrow saved me. My friend sat straight up, stark cheekbones casting shadows onto hollow, olive cheeks.

“Mom. Dad. I love you both. But you need to understand.” Yarrow’s low, reasonable voice thrummed painfully with hope. “You never had a daughter to let go of, but I’m still here. I’m still your kid. But if you keep dragging me to these meetings, if you make me keep my hair long, if you throw away the clothes I buy for myself, if you force me to be someone that I absolutely cannot be, you will lose me.” Yarrow’s voice almost broke at that, but didn’t fail. 

“Forever. I’ll be gone forever. In one way or another.”

I started to shake. Not from cold. Not from fear. From anticipation. From the power coming from my friend’s voice, backed by a fire that I had never heard before but  always suspected was there.

“Shut up,” Matt warned. But Yarrow ignored him, along with the other parents’ muttered protests and the snakelike glint in Joanna’s narrowed eyes.

“You need to decide whether you would rather have a dead daughter or a living child,” Yarrow declared, standing now, body poised like an arrow, eyes flashing defiantly. “You all need to decide. Before this bill passes you need to know what this will do to us, how many of us won’t make it, and that it will be your fault!”

By the end of that sentence Yarrow was shouting, like all of that self-love had been channeled into a fine, honest, burning rage. Abigail broke out in sobs. Matt cracked his knuckles and ground his teeth, which I guess is the straight-man version of crying.

“Yarrow’s right,” said Sal, her fists clenched tight on her knees.

“Yeah, leave us alone!”

“I don’t wanna come here anymore.”

“You’re not going to convince me to be a girl!”

“You can’t make me be a boy again!”

I sat up straight, focusing on Yarrow, and I could feel my parents’ eyes boring holes into me, daring me to speak. I couldn’t think of anything to say but I wanted to join in, wanted to join the chorus that was growing in volume, growing in strength. The tone in the room was shifting, and I had the feeling that we were on the brink of something big, something good, something transformative, but before anything could happen, before I could raise my voice, Joanna stalked over in her high heels, grabbed Yarrow by the arm, and hustled my defiant, beautiful friend out of the room.


A few minutes later she came back. Alone.