Author: theopoling

Leo dropped the cardboard box onto the carpet of his bedroom with a heavy thwump. His arms and back protested from the labor, his calves begging not to have to march up and down the stairs another time.

There was a bed with a mattress in the center of the room, but it didn’t have any sheets on it to hide the weird stains that old mattresses had. Still, Leo flopped onto it, letting out a long sigh and looking up at the ceiling.

He didn’t want to be here.

“Leo!” His dad called out, voice muffled through the door. “Get down here!”

Okay, that wasn’t what Leo had in mind.

With a labored grunt, Leo sat upright, forcing his angsting, teenage body out of the room and down the stairs.

His mom and dad were standing in the entryway to the house with twin smiles on their faces. Stepfordian smiles.

Leo slowed as he reached the front hall, glancing warily between his parents. “Uh, what’s up?”

“Look!” His mom exclaimed. She gestured outside.

Leo leaned forward, looking out the screen door at the disturbingly normal American suburban scene. He looked back at his mom with a question on his face.

“Trick-or-treaters!” His mom said.

Leo looked again. Sure enough, even though the sun hadn’t set, some kids were already out, mostly the young ones toddling around in Pikachu costumes, holding hands with their parents.

“Cool,” Leo said.

“[DEADNAME]*, we know moving can be tough,” Leo’s dad said. Yeah, understatement. “So we want you to go out and have some fun.”

Leo’s dad pulled out a costume from behind his back. Leo had to bite his lip to stop from making a noise of disgust.

It was a princess costume, with royal purple velvet and a sheer, sparkly, pink decorative material spread all over it. It was girly and infantile and not Leo’s style.

*We wanted to respect Leo’s privacy and not use his birth name, which he dislikes.

Leo Castellano was not your regular boy. Not because he was a transgender boy–Leo had known his true identity his whole life. It was as normal to him as eating cereal for breakfast. He knew his pronouns were he and him and his. He knew who he was, even if other people didn’t.

No, Leo was not your regular boy because he was just plain weird. He knew that. His classmates had always made sure to remind him. He’d embraced it. If the alternative was being mind-numbingly boring along with everyone else, then he was perfectly comfortable being weird.

Being weird was awesome. Being weird meant you could chase frogs and watch old French movies and imagine crazy worlds, and no one could stop you.

For some reason, as Leo got older, his parents were less okay with the general weirdness. It was like the moment he entered high school, all those dreaded Parental Expectations exploded out of them at once in a miasma of pink confetti.

You see, Leo’s parents didn’t know Leo was trans. Leo’s parents still called him by the wrong name and used the wrong pronouns.

Which, to Leo’s horror, meant that, now that Leo was in high school, his parents expected him to be on the girl’s soccer team. Or ballet, if he preferred. But they wanted him in some group activity, something to get him some friends and into a decent school. Only problem was, those activities were all gendered out the wazoo.

Leo didn’t want to wear the women’s soccer uniform and only hang out with girls. Don’t get him wrong, girls were awesome–most of his weird friends were girls. But it was just a painful, constant reminder that other people didn’t see him how he was, that he wasn’t right in his skin.

It wasn’t fair.

And, just to make things worse, Leo’s parents had to move to another state just two months into Leo’s freshman year because of Leo’s mom’s job.

Just when he’d made a few friends. Just when he thought he might want to join photography club. All of it was gone.

Now, here Leo was, sulking in the back seat of their minivan, staring up at the new, cookie-cutter, two-story house that they had officially moved into. Today.

On Halloween.

Leo usually loved Halloween. He loved trick-or-treating with friends. You were never too old to get free candy in a terrifying costume. He loved watching scary movies and carving jack-o-lanterns.

Now, here he was, on Halloween, with school the next day. A new, unfamiliar school, where assignments had inevitably already built up. And boxes in the trunk for Leo to unpack. Boxes and boxes of sketches and books and toys that Leo’s parents said he was too old for.

Leo did not want to start life in Red Oaks.

He just wanted things to be the way they were before.

And, he wanted to be himself. His real self.