All But One

This story contains partly vague descriptions of transphobia, please take care of yourself while reading.

There was a new family just down the road from Juni's house. From what he could tell it was a big family, with 2 brothers and 5 sisters, and a cat, and a dog. There was nothing out of the ordinary about said family, in fact, Juni thought it was a pretty cool family as far as families went. See, they had built a big treehouse in their front yard on their first week in the neighbourhood. 

    Well, that is, there wasn’t anything wrong, unless you asked the others in the town. You see, when there is something new and different, that is when people start being afraid. And that was the case with the new, different family down the street. It was an ok family, like Juni’s family, they had a mom and a dad, like Juni’s family they had dinner together every night, like Juni’s family they went to their kids' sports games (even when Juni didn’t want to watch his sister's game), and like Juni and his sister, the siblings even fought a lot.

    No, what was different about this family was their middle child, Rocky and the strange ideas they brought to the town. How Rocky dressed, how Rocky talked, how Rocky didn't use the name their parents had given them at birth. 

    The other parents in the area didn't understand why this was allowed, it confused them, they found it strange. And so children were told to stay away and teachers read Rocky's wrong name (as their parents had not yet been able to change it to Rocky legally) on the roster each morning. That did not stop Rocky from correcting them each and every time they did this though. It didn’t seem easy for Rocky, as they’d started to realize having to sit there with their hand up for a turn to talk every morning was going to be a regular occurrence, and that sometimes they wouldn’t be answered.

    Not that this treatment didn’t have an effect on the rest of Rocky’s family. Juni had heard a rumour that Rocky’s oldest sibling, his brother, a tall rugby player, had had to stay home after being picked on so much about Rocky.

    Rocky’s brothers and sisters and parents were avoided just as much as Rocky was, as if being associated with just one of the family members would “turn your children into one of them”. For the most part, they held their ground and pretended they didn’t notice the looks, comments, and exclusion. The kids “forgot” to tell their parents about the mean notes left on their lockers and desks. Juni didn’t know anything about what they said, but he assumed that they weren’t very nice when he saw Rocky follow his crying little sister to a corner of the playground. They looked furious when she showed them a piece of paper.

   For Juni, it was different. His parents didn't address that there was anything wrong with the way Rocky was. It made Juni question who was right in the situation. On one hand, the rest of the town seemed to have the same hostile attitude, but his parents taught Juni to “love thy neighbour” and the town wasn’t doing that. 

    Unlike everyone else, Juni’s parents addressed Rocky by their preferred name and pronouns, and never talked about them the way other parents would when picking up their children from the school parking lot. When Juni asked his parents questions about Rocky and their family they answered calmly and made Juni feel safe, unlike when his teacher shut down any questions he had about why Rocky liked these things. 

     They made it clear to Juni and his big sister that they were allowed to wear what they wanted, play with who they wanted and they would love them no matter what.

    All the parents that said that Rocky was just confused seemed dumb to Juni, as Rocky seemed the least confused about who they were out of all the kids in the 5th grade. The parents said that it was abuse to let Rocky wear dresses and suits and skirts and hats and anything they wanted, any given day of the week, which came off as bigoted as Rocky held their head up high and happily skipped off to school in their mismatched skirt and tie (the sense of whether or not it went well together would come with age, right now they just made memorable pictures).        

   The community's point of view seemed very backwards to Juni, as it would take only looking at Rocky to see how happy they were with being themself. But his friends just look at him weird when Juni said this, and continued to talk about Rocky behind their back like their parents did, and ignore them, as their parents did, and make rude comments about how Rocky dressed, as their parents did.

   It was in fact one of these very remarks that encouraged Juni to do what he did the next day.

   That night he asked his sister if he could borrow one of her items of clothing for the next day. Confused as he had never shown interest in anything of the sort before, but not one to object as long as it came back in good shape, she agreed. She even helped Juni pick an outfit he liked and pin the item from her closet in the right place so it would stay on the next day.

   And so the following morning Juni waltzed into school wearing a bright pink shirt and a purple skirt to match. He walked right up to where Rocky stood at their cubby, alone as they always were. Rocky looked surprised as the boy stopped right in front of them. 

  The child, in this act of defiance to the unjust norm, held out his hand to Rocky and said: "Hi, I'm Juni, and I live down the street from you. I really like the treehouse in your front yard, wanna play there after school?"