Free Nevada by Imogen Binnie Page B

ride my bike, and there’s a reason for that. I think I’m only happy when I’m alone.
    Which was the wrong thing to say, or at least the wrong way to put that. Though maybe there is no good way to say I’m only happy when I’m alone. Steph’s teary eyes spill over.
    Maria says, I didn’t mean that that way. I just mean, I’m barely here in my life, and I need to figure out what’s not working.
    Everybody feels that way! Steph yells. Then she drags her index fingers along the bottoms of her eyes, blows her nose, slurps from her empty soda.
    Everybody does, it’s not just you, she says.
    I know, Maria says. I just... I’ve been thinking about trans stuff, like, all the time, and I don’t feel like I can talk to anybody about it, because I totally fucking hate everybody else who’s trans, and I don’t want to deal with it. You know this story, Steph, I’ve told you about how I can’t figure out a model for my life, my body, anything.
    Maria’s talking out loud about being trans in a burrito restaurant, which hasn’t happened in a while. Her steam runs out and she slumps.
    God, I don’t know what to tell you, she says. Maybe I need to be in therapy, or go to that support group again.
    Maybe therapy, Steph says. That support group never helped. And what am I supposed to do? Just wait for you to be okay? You’re telling me things now but definitely not in a way that lets me in. Still.
    Maria sighs. Okay. Let’s talk about it tonight at home, okay?
    Okay, Steph says.
    Maria was supposed to be back at work fifteen minutes ago, but whatever. She can do whatever the fuck she wants, apparently, and nothing truly bad will ever happen.
    Steph gets in her car—Maria can’t believe Steph just finds parking and pays meters, here in Manhattan, every single day—and drives off. She doesn’t hug or kiss or even look at Maria. They are in limbo.
    Maria didn’t actually get any food the whole time they were at Burritoville, and she’s not hungry, but her blood sugar will drop through the ground and she’ll get panicky, depressed and anxious if she doesn’t eat anything. She gets a bagel on the way back. Sesame seeds, sun-dried tomato tofu cream cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion, salt, and pepper.

18.
    All afternoon, her hands shake. Her chest feels heavy and she kind of feels like she could sob at any goddam moment. It sucks. She’s like, why don’t I have these responses when I’m actually, like, face-to-face with her? I mean I kind of know what is wrong with me, but seriously, what is wrong with me? It’s so easy just to check out and leave your body. This is like an abuse thing, isn’t it? Abuse survivors dissociate like this? As far as Maria knows she was never abused, but maybe repressing and policing yourself so hard for so long before transitioning can look like abuse, function like abuse. It sounds all dramatic but the funny thing about it is how undramatic it is when it’s you doing it to yourself. It’s just a thing you do. She thinks about looking into what abuse survivors can do to dissociate less so she can maybe adapt that to her own life but mostly she spends the afternoon running through the conversation she’s going to have with Steph tonight.
    She’ll be honest regardless of whether anybody gets hurt, which is hard when you’ve spent your whole life like, I don’t care if I get hurt, if this repression hurts me, I just can’t transition and hurt my mom that way, or I can’t upset my father’s standing in our quiet little community that way. It is second nature, or maybe just her nature, for Maria to put other people ahead of herself. Coming out as trans was the first change she ever actually made to my own life that felt like it was leaving the map that was laid out for her at birth, and she only went against that grain because she felt like she’d die if she didn’t.
    She figured out that she needed to transition because she’d been going to work, coming home, drinking whiskey and