Chapter 1
Maya and Carina have a child named Lucia Katherine Bishop-DeLuca, who is 14 years old. They had decided to name their child after both of their moms but chose Katherine as a middle name because Maya’s mom was still alive, and it would be weird to have two people named Kathrine. But most people had called their child Lucy anyway, only Carina had always stuck to Lucia.
Carina and Maya were loving moms and the last fourteen years had been mostly stable and blissful.
Maya had gotten her captaincy back and her captains’ office was where their child was currently waiting for her to come back from a meeting at a different station. There was a picture of their little family on Maya’s desk; it showed Maya and Carina cuddled up next to each other on their couch with a newborn Lucy on their arms; both of them proudly and lovingly looking down at their child’s face. Andy had taken that picture without them even realising when they had first gotten home from the hospital.
She had added the phrase “our little girl”, framed it and given it to both Maya and Carina when each of them had returned back to work. Ever since then it'd had a secure spot on both moms’ desks.
A tear rolled down the fourteen-year old’s face and dripped onto Maya’s desk, when the door suddenly swung open and Andy came in enthusiastically until she saw Lucy’s face:
“Hey Lucy… what’s going on?”
The tears were being forced back quickly: “Nothing, it’s all good.”
“Are you sure?”, Andy asked, “you know you can always come to me, trouble with kids at school, your first boyfriend…”, Andy wiggled her eyebrow.
This was so stupid that the tears turned into laughter. If only that was the issue. If only there was certainty that Andy would react positively to the ‘problem.’
Just then, Maya came in and immediately hugged Lucy:
“How is my little girl?”
“I’m fine.”, Lucy said curtly, not hugging Maya back.
“Why does everyone keep asking me that?”, Lucy snapped before leaving the office and rushing to the bathrooms. The reaction left Maya and Andy puzzled.
“I’m sure it’s just puberty”, Andy tried to reassure the mom.
“I know… it’s just that she has been acting like this a lot lately and Carina and I have noticed that she’s lost weight, too. She’s not really talking to us anymore.”, Maya opened up to her best friend.
“Let’s not jump to any conclusions yet. I can try to talk to her if you want me to.”
Before entering the bathrooms, the pictogram of the women’s bathroom crossed their eyes. They were angry, frustrated and scared at the same time. Why couldn’t they just be a normal kid? They curled up in a ball in a bathroom stall.
The thing is that Lucy had always known that they weren’t a girl. They also didn’t feel like that name belonged to them. They had tried calling themselves by a few other names before deciding on Sam. They weren’t a boy either. When they had come upon the term non-binary, it was like an epiphany. Finally, there was a word that described them. And there were other people like them, too. Lately it became more and more unbearable whenever anyone called them she/her or their deadname.
But nothing hurt as much as their moms calling them their ‘daughter’ or ‘little girl’. They knew that Maya and Carina loved them and that they weren’t homophobic, after all they were in a same sex marriage. But gender identity was something different. They knew that their parents would never throw them out or hurt them physically when they’d came out. But they were too petrified that their moms woudln't accept them as anything other than “their little girl”.
Ever since they could remember they had called them that. Hardly any family gathering went by without Maya and Carina proudly explaining how their child was named after both of their mothers.
Before puberty had seet in, they'd thought that maybe they just weren’t as girly or feminine. But ever since their body started changing, they became more and more certain that there was no way they are a girl. They were extremely dysphoric about their chest, their voice, and the curves of their body.
They would also like to try a different haircut but were too scared that their moms would pick up on that. They were sure that their moms had heard of people identifying out of the binary genders, but would they accept that they were neither a boy nor a girl?
Sam left the stall and caught sight of themself in the mirror. Their long blonde hair went past their shoulders. They didn’t exactly think that there was anything wrong with the reflection starring back at them, it was just that it wasn’t themself. They despised their curvy body. In the last few months, they had deliberately started to eat less, cut out any sweets and exercise more frequently and they could already see small changes. They knew that their behaviour wasn’t exactly healthy; their moms had even mentioned it a couple of times, but they always deflected.
They had never liked wearing dresses or skirts and their moms had never forced them to. But the skinny jeans and the top they were wearing just didn’t fit how they felt inside. It felt like they were wearing a costume, pretending to be someone they were not, hiding the real person. The real Sam. That thought made them smile. They wiped away the last remnants of tears on their face and decided that they couldn’t bear to be in the closet much longer.
They had chatted with a few people on the internet; the “Trevor Project” had some really good chatrooms with other queer teenagers; they had heard other coming out stories, few who went wonderfully, some that went ok and some that went horribly. They knew that they could count themself among the lucky people that had queer parents and knew that they wouldn’t evict them or hurt them no matter what. But it was scary, nonetheless.
They were so scared of losing their moms, of never being able to let them be held by either of them again. But they also couldn’t pretend to be their daughter much longer. The next few days the mulled over different versions of coming out to their moms, different scenarios but it felt impossible to get it right.
The next day in school one of the teachers announced that a new pupil would be joining their class.
“Hi, my name is… Robin.”, Robin stuttered almost too quiet for any of them to hear. Robin looked at their teacher, who gave them an encouraging nod, “and I… I am non-binary which means that… that I’m neither a girl nor a boy. And I…”, their gaze had dropped to the floor, “I… I use they/them pronouns.”
The class was eerily quiet. Sam frantically looked around the classroom, trying to see how their classmates would react. Most of them looked a little confused, some looked interested but to their surprise and horror, their best friend Laura started chuckling pejoratively. Some other girls and some boys started joining in until Laura asked out loud:
“What do you mean you aren’t a boy or a girl?”
The way she was asking it made it very clear that it wasn’t out of curiosity.
“And why should we call you a they, you aren’t multiple people, are you?”
Robin looked like they were about to run out of the room as most students started laughing at the last comment.
The teacher tried to calm everyone down and mediate, but Sam couldn’t hear any of that. They had never guessed that Laura of all people would make fun of something like that. They started panicking. After the teacher had started with the lesson, Laura asked them:
“Hey Lucy, why didn’t you say anything about this freak?”, it was loud enough for Robin to hear who was seated one row behind them.
“Don’t call them that.”, Sam snapped at her without even thinking about it.
“Them? Are you kidding me? Don’t tell me that you are going to accept what ‘it’ wants us to call it. I bet that ‘Robin’ isn’t even its real name.”
Sam couldn’t believe what Laura was saying. They were too perplexed to say anything.
“What are you one of those, too?”, Laura asked jokingly, but her expression changed to anger and disgust when Sam turned beet red and evaded her gaze.
Laura spit on their worksheet and scooted over to the other end of their table. Sam felt tears coming in hot in their eyes.
They couldn’t believe that Laura had just found out about their secret and that she hated them for it. Why did this have to happen? They were glad that this was their last lesson for the day. All they wanted was to run out of this classroom and never return. How could she have been so wrong about one of her best friends?
As soon as the bell rung, Sam practically fled the classroom. They were so deep in their own thoughts that they only realised that Laura had followed them when their face collided with the door of the boy's bathroom.
Laura had tripped them:
“Couldn’t find the right door, could you?”, she sneered laughing at them laying on the floor and walking away. When they got back up, they saw that that some of their classmates had seen the whole thing. They realised that their nose was bleeding, and they could already feel a bruise forming on their temple. Sam tried to force the tears back, they already felt so humiliated, they couldn’t start crying now. They saw Robin walk down the corridor, but they hurried to get out of the building.
They didn’t want to face them right now. If Robin hadn’t joined their class, none of this would have happened. They knew that this wasn’t exactly fair, but nothing was fair about this. They got some tissues and tried to slow their nosebleed. They remembered that today was soccer practice, but there was no way that they would go there today. Laura and some of the other girls who had laughed today were also on the soccer team. They hated being on that team anyway, the female- cut shirt they always had to wear felt too uncomfortable. Maya and Carina were both on shift, usually on those days Sam would go down to the station instead of being home by themself, but all they wanted right now was to be alone.