It was difficult to talk about other things when the three of us knew that Cody was jerking off right over there, not even behind a tree or anything. Each time I snuck a peak, I could tell he was using his right hand, but I gleaned no further information.

“This is weird. I feel weird about this, don’t you guys feel weird?” Danny stood with his arms crossed over his chest, tension lining his body. The canopy of brown and orange leaves scattered light across him, and over his shoulder I caught a glimpse of the same golden light on Cody’s back, on his black t-shirt. I stepped so that Danny blocked my line of sight. He looked at me for confirmation, and I shrugged. 

Of our little troupe of four, Danny and I had known each other the longest; our parents went to the same church. At Sunday school, we bonded over our shared status as outcasts, recognizing our mutual gender rebellion long before Cody gave us the language for it. Danny could read my discomfort like it was his own, seeing that I wanted to be cooler than I was about our friend’s masturbatory claim.

Beside me, Alec spoke around the vape pen between his lips. “There’s no non-weird way to do this.”

“It must be way weirder for Cody.” I couldn’t help myself: I shifted again to spy on him, but it told me nothing, from here he barely seemed to be moving. What did I expect, theatrical moans? Full nudity? 

“It was his idea. It’s probably a prank, it’s not possible.” Maybe Danny would benefit from a hit off Alec’s pen, which now released vapor into my face. Was it marijuana or nicotine? Alec had begun showing up with it a couple weeks ago, and I now thought it strange that I’d accepted his new habit as a given, too embarrassed or too oblivious to ask which chemicals he consumed.

“That’s what they used to say about girls turning into guys, and look at us, waiting together for our buddy to shoot his load. Who’s to say what’s possible?” Alec punctuated with an O-shaped breath that was almost, but not quite, a smoke ring. Vapor ring? 

“Right, look at us,” Danny said, sarcasm thick as he gestured to three sets of bound chests. Three baby-soft jaws, three high voices, three periods syncing each month. Our church was evangelical; Alec’s parents were Mormon. Medical transition was impossible for us until we escaped our hometown. 

Cody was different. Cody had cool parents. They’d fought to get him puberty blockers and, now that he was older, testosterone hormone therapy. Cody was living the dream. 

“Hey, on the inside, I’m all man,” Alec said.

“So much for your enby phase.” Danny looked at me and we shared a small smile, not quite a laugh at Alec’s expense. The summer before our freshman year, he had come out as non-binary two weeks after Cody announced his transition, but Alec’s they/them pronouns didn’t last. Later, he admitted to me that he’d only tried being non-binary first because he’d been afraid that going Full Dude would seem like he was copying Cody. Cody was the first person to ever present Boy to us as a real option, and if Alec was copying him, we all were.

A bird called, then took flight from a branch over our heads. The rustling leaves almost covered the noise of a heavy sigh and a soft grunt behind us. 

“There! All right, you pervs,” Cody called. “Take a look at this! Who’s full of shit now, huh?”

A shallow wave of dread splashed over me before I tamped it down. We trooped over to him, and I almost turned an ankle on a snarled root. Cody grinned at us, his cheeks faintly flushed. Alec was the only one who met his eyes, crowing.

“You look like you just shit a gold brick! Come on, dude, it’s just an orgasm. An orgasm and that five bucks you’re gonna owe me.”

But Alec’s cackle broke off when we saw the boulder that Cody had masturbated onto. The evidence: three stripes and several scattered dots of pearly white semen, fading to translucence as we stared. Of course this would happen to Cody, who never accused us of plagiarizing his transness, who’d been eager to share information about binder safety and puberty blockers. Lucky Cody, Saint Cody.  

“No way,” Danny said. “Is it–that’s not–”

“Maybe it’s female ejaculate,” I said. “Girls can squirt, right?”

“Squirting requires G-spot stimulation,” Alec said, gazing at the cum with a half-smile. He slipped his vape pen into his pocket and rocked back on his heels. “Usually from penetration. Difficult to do in the woods.”

“Yeah, also I’m not lying,” Cody said sharply. “It’s not girl cum. Look at it.”

We looked, but I had never seen semen in real life. Had any of us? Danny had a boyfriend once, briefly, in eighth grade. So he might have, but not me. My cheeks felt hot, standing there and nodding as if I had any idea.

The semen was fully translucent now, but it didn’t seep into the rock or evaporate like water. It remained globular, like a slug trail. I wanted to touch it so bad. My face flamed hotter and I stepped back as far as I could without drawing attention to myself. When we met up in the woods today and Cody announced his new ability, after hours of mysterious group texts re: “mind-bendingly huge” news, he’d delivered a mini-lecture on male biology and how trans men couldn’t get testes and sperm, not through bottom surgery and not via testosterone. Therefore his slimy boulder spunk displayed the impossible: Cody jerking off with his girl parts but shooting like a cis boy. He’d performed a miracle with enough confidence to brag first. 

Cody had reached a place where I couldn’t live vicariously, and my urge to touch the jizz died. I wanted to sink into the forest floor, decompose into the leaf litter and let fungi grow on my back, transition with the changing seasons. Twenty, thirty years from now, maybe life would be easier for trans kids around here, and maybe Cody’s magic semen will have inspired medical revolutions, and I’d feel sneaker soles on my head from carefree boys all thrilled with their trans puberties, all capable of what Cody could do and more. And it wouldn’t matter that at seventeen years old it was already too late for me, because pine voles would nest in my uterus and roots would grow through my dysphoric brain. 

Alec cleared his throat. “So we’re all men here, all bros. Cody? I think you should drop trou and show us what’s in your pants.”

Cody giggled and covered his pink cheeks with one hand, a gesture I immediately judged as feminine, then felt guilty for judging. “Only if you guys want. I’ll do it, I don’t feel modest or anything.”

Danny’s uptight frown melted into amusement, and I knew he was imagining his parents’ reaction to the one known scary transgender in our grade getting naked in front of us. Cody thought he knew how much he bothered the population of our conservative town, but his sheltered, loving life meant he knew only a fraction. Danny and I kept our friendship with Alec quiet, too–our parents didn’t like the Mormons–so the four of us had a separate, secret life known only to each other.

“The group agrees,” Danny said. 

I said “Hell yeah,” trying to show some enthusiasm. If Danny was in, I had to be too.

Cody heard my hesitation, glancing my way. I lifted my chin, and he shrugged and undid his jeans. He was wearing boxer-briefs and a packer, the entire bulk of cotton and plastic and denim falling softly to the forest floor. 

“See? I didn’t get a dick transplant.” Cody smirked, the first real smirk he’d allowed himself this whole time. I could never smirk with my junk and ass all out like that.

His junk didn’t look that much different from ours. His clitoris was bigger, sure, protruding slightly from the downy fluff of his pubic hair. No penis. Nothing to explain the still-glistening rock next to him.

“Oh shit, someone’s coming!” Alec said, looking over Cody’s shoulder. Cody yelped and grabbed for his pants, diving behind a tree for cover and rolling and scooting to get dressed. By the time he sat up, white butt once again covered, the three of us had dissolved into laughter.

“That was mean,” I told Alec, because it felt like someone should. Alec hugged me, just with one arm, but enough to make me gooey. We’d been texting each other outside of the group chat for a few months. I tried not to read into it. Alec probably thought we were bro-bonding or something. 

“Come on, Pete,” Alec said. My face brushed the shoulder of his t-shirt in our few seconds of contact before he let me go. He smelled like Old Spice and trees, and the stale candy scent of his vape. “I just had to. It was too perfect.”

“You guys are assholes,” Cody grumbled as he got to his feet, brushing twigs and dirt off his knees. “See if I ever strip for you again.”

“We’ll be stripping for you tomorrow morning,” Danny said. 

Every weekday morning we gathered in the same spot, in secret, to put binders on. Those of us with longer hair styled it like boys, stuffing it up beneath beanies, thinking of that screenshot of Jesse Pinkman from Breaking Bad which circulated Reddit as a transmasc meme. These were symbolic gestures to represent leaving solitary confinement, even if school was still the prison yard. Danny, Alec and I didn’t dare to request our real names or male pronouns from anyone but each other—Ms. Jackman had almost gotten fired last year when members of my parents’ congregation raised a stink about her using Cody’s correct pronouns. 

My arms still tingled from Alec’s hug. The four of us didn’t touch much, maybe to distance ourselves from any behavior resembling the girl cliques that clambered over each other at school. Whenever physical affection was exchanged, I realized how much I hungered for it. Especially from Alec.

“Thank you, Cody, for showing us your big clit,” Alec said. Cody smiled and gave us a dorky bow. 

“Don’t you see how amazing this is? It isn’t supposed to happen! It’s not supposed to be an effect of testosterone or puberty blockers or anything. And ohmygod, I wish you guys could feel how it feels. Orgasms are great and all but this kind of release is like, pow, phwoom, you know?” He made explosion shapes with his hands, demonstrating the kind of powerful orgasm out of reach for us. “And what if this is just the beginning? What if I could grow a real dick?”

This question hung in the air, transforming the atmosphere into glitter. We knew that you couldn’t grow a penis by testosterone, or by wanting it more than you wanted anything. But semen coming out of a vagina shouldn’t be possible. Cody’s whole existence was barely possible in our town now. These woods were the closest we came to real freedom, where we could revel in each other’s masculinity. Here existed the only validation that we—at least, Alec, Danny, and me—could expect from the world.  

“It’s really cool, man.” Alec stepped forward to hug Cody. Danny hugged him, too, and then me. I stepped away quickly, away from the excessive cologne Cody had been wearing since senior year started. I was happy for him. I really was. 

The next day, I dragged my feet walking to meet them for video games. It was raining, so the woods were out; Danny’s basement was in. I hoped to put Cody’s new ability behind us, but I was sure that the others would still be buzzing. I didn’t want to keep talking about it, because talking about it made me wonder whether I’d be able to ejaculate someday. I knew that I wouldn’t, just like I knew that in that hazy someday when I left home and achieved some kind of real transition, I wouldn’t pass as a man. Maybe if I’d been able to get puberty blockers years ago, but not with my body as it had become, with my wide hips and tiny hands and height of five-foot-two. We couldn’t all be like Cody.

In the basement, we squeezed together on the one couch, a blanket spread over our laps. I grew frustrated at coming in fourth in Mario Kart. I was shit-talking Alec, telling him to be prepared to choke on my dust this next round, not fighting the grin that hurt my cheeks as he giggled at me. Then Danny said, “Shit, she’s coming, move.”

He’d heard a floorboard creak above us. Cody slithered to the ground, letting us quickly cover him with the blanket so it looked like only three were on the couch. The door at the top of the basement stairs opened, and Danny’s mom poked her head in, asking if we wanted snacks. We’d had practice hiding Cody, and she had yet to catch us hosting him. 

When Danny politely declined and the door was shut again, Cody sat back up slowly, pushing the blanket down. “I hate doing that. I feel like I’m your mistress.”

“The secrecy sucks, but it’s necessary,” Danny said. “If our parents see you with us, they’ll ask questions. I don’t want to get sent back to Jesus Camp, dude.”

“At least we can live through you,” Alec said. “And protect your jizz superpowers from discovery! If an adult found out, government scientists would, like, swoop in and whisk you away to a secret bunker.”

Cody scrunched up his nose. “I didn’t do anything cool. All I did was shoot my load onto a rock.”

“Don’t downplay it. You’re the Chosen One,” Alec said grandly. “The Chosen T-Boy, Cody Skywalker.” Alec’s dumb joke made Danny shove his shoulder so that he bumped into me. I leaned into the contact, wondering how far I could push plausible deniability.

“Ha, ha. But seriously, you guys know I don’t want to be the only one with sperm, right?” Cody looked between us. I didn’t know what to say, fiddling with the Nintendo controller in my hands. He was being as good-hearted and selfless as you’d want the Chosen T-Boy to be. His sensitivity annoyed me sometimes; he forced feelings out in the open, put words to them before I was ready to.

“Maybe it’ll happen for you guys too,” Cody said, voice cracking as it went high and hopeful. He cleared his throat. “Maybe Orcville is where freaky things happen. Like the Stranger Things town, a hub for the paranormal.” We lived in Orchardville, but we only ever called it Orcville.

“It won’t happen for us if it’s an Orcville thing.” Three heads turned to look at me, and I tried to sound less harsh. I pointed to Alec, Danny, myself. “We can’t get testosterone until we get out. We couldn’t hide any changes from our parents even if we wanted. It’s hard enough to hide our friendship with you.”

“But we know there’s not anything you can do about it,” Danny said when Cody’s hopeful face drooped. “We know it’s not, like, your fault.”

Cody scratched his head, looking down at the blanket on his lap. “I guess. But—but what if there was?”

“Was what, your fault? Whoa, did you go back in time and make my parents convert?” I felt Alec’s shoulders shake as he laughed. I was experimenting with how much weight I could lean on him before he nudged me off. Smoothly, he slipped an arm around to hug my shoulders, and I felt a jolt right down to my toes. 

“I meant, what if there was something I could do about it?” Cody pushed off the couch and started pacing in front of the TV screen. Alec slid his arm off my shoulders and scooted sideways into the open space on the couch. I tried not to feel disappointed. “Like, obviously it’s not cool that you guys can’t medically transition, and now I’ve got this new crazy thing, and it’s like–I should’ve found ways to share the wealth, I should’ve been advocating or something.”

“You’ve literally been advocating, in front of the state legislature and everything,” Danny said. “Trust me, the trans teens of Indiana thank you.”

“I meant for you guys.” Cody stopped pacing and looked right at me. I’d barely said anything–could he sense my annoyance? I didn’t want to let anything show.

“Don’t worry about us. You have a legit superpower; this is your origin story, and soon you’ll be fighting jizz-related crimes. In ten years they’ll make a movie about you.” My friends all laughed at my deadpan voice, but I figured I was mostly right. Maybe not about fighting crime, but about Cody being special, unique.

“They’ll have to make that movie about me and all of my friends. ‘T-Boy Never Fights Alone’!” Cody pointed a finger at each of us as he spoke, cheesy as hell. We protested and groaned. He went on about friendship and brotherhood, and I must not have been alone in needing a subject change, because Danny and Alec called for him to sit down so we could continue racing. Cody dropped the subject, but his eyes held a stubborn light that made me nervous. 

You’re not a superhero yet, I wanted to tell him. Don’t go trying to save anyone.

It was October of our senior year. Our plan for saving ourselves involved moving from Orcville to New York the second we graduated. Sometimes I imagined that first morning after my departure, how my parents would wake to the absence of their daughter, how they’d go from room to room calling for me. Maybe I’d leave enough clues to piece together who I became in spite of them. Maybe I’d leave behind a phone number and email address. Maybe not.  

Alec and I developed a long text thread about Cody. Alec was full of jokes about supernatural jizz powers, and I was trying to feel out how much I could complain about our friend without letting on how much his new gift and his earnest, holier-than-thou savior attitude bugged me. I badly wanted to gossip, and desperation made me brave enough to invite Alec over Thursday night, suggesting that he could climb up to my window with my parents none the wiser. I didn’t expect him to go for it, but when he stopped replying, I was so disappointed I couldn’t concentrate on my essay for AP English. 

Hours later, doing homework in my room, I heard a soft tap against the window. I almost knocked my chair over as I rushed to answer.

“It’s late. I thought maybe you wimped out,” I said as I opened the window. I reached out to help Alec climb from the outside trellis into my room, hating the breathless sound of my voice, my jocular words failing to disguise the girly pitch. I felt girly around Alec sometimes, an infuriating mood whenever I noticed it, even if the feeling itself wasn’t bad. 

“Mom sprang a family game night on me. Best I could do was sacrifice my troops in Risk to escape early.” 

Family game night would explain why Alec’s messages dropped off. He straightened with one hand still on my forearm, looking around my room with interest. Noticing the pink walls, the lilac bedspread, the framed picture of Jesus on my nightstand. 

“It’s awful, I know. Not my choice of decor.”

“It’s cool. Your room is huge.” 

“It’s bizarre having you here. But—in a good way. Like, I don’t know why we’ve never done this before.” I wanted to staple my babbling lips shut. 

“Maybe because it’s always the four of us together? Us alone feels taboo.” Alec waggled his eyebrows at me, then went over to my desk, sitting backwards in my computer chair. “But dude, we gotta debrief over Cody’s magic cock.”

“You make him sound like a porn actor.” Debrief was a good word for this, less girl-coded than gossip. I sat primly on the bed, then caught my body language and tried to relax, spreading my legs and bracing my elbows on my knees, hoping I looked boyish. Though maybe I didn’t have to try so hard around Alec. Often my awareness of how hard I tried, of the way I monitored my movements and words, was enough to trigger a dysphoria spiral. If you were really a boy, you’d never have to try, you’d just naturally sit on the bed like a boy every time, etc. 

“I’ll bet he could be once he turns eighteen, if he can still bust a nut by then and this isn’t a fluke. He could be a porn sensation.”

“Yeah, that doesn’t sound exploitative at all.” 

“I’m not saying it would be good porn. Just that he’d be a hot commodity. Other trans dudes would pay big to watch him do his thing. Chasers too, for sure. He could start with OnlyFans, and then take over the world.” What was OnlyFans? 

It’s not your fault you’re sheltered, Alec told me once. It would’ve sounded like a backhanded insult from anyone else, but I could take his bluntness at face value. He was right: I was sheltered. It doesn’t make you any less cool, not to me.

Was that when my crush on him began? Or was it in April, when I had the flu and missed school and the woods for almost two weeks, and Alec texted me every day just to make me laugh? That was the first time we exchanged messages outside of the group chat. Over the summer, he remembered that my favorite Icee flavor was cherry, and surprised me with one on our way to the woods, shrugging off any reason when I asked him why. My feelings seemed to rewind and renew each time I saw him, and each time my body pulled toward him, ecstatic, it took me by surprise. 

Alec made me feel like it was okay for me to be sheltered or sometimes boring. He made me feel like nothing I did was stupid enough, weak enough, embarrassing enough to disqualify me from boyhood. He made me feel like I might already be living a tiny sliver of the life that might be out there if I could only leave home. 

“I didn’t see you in history class today,” I said. “Did you only show up to school for lunch?”

Alec spun my chair in a circle and groaned. “So what if I did?”

I didn’t want to sound like a nagging mom, but I also didn’t want him to flunk out. “The best way for us to move to New York is to get into college there. Which means passing your classes, dude.”

Alec gave me a glum look. “We are the nerdiest group of school outcasts that has ever been.”

I shrugged, unapologetic. “I don’t want to leave without you.”

My words came out too sincere, more like a confession than a gentle reminder of the stakes. I winced but kept my gaze steady. It would be worse if I looked away.

He regarded me too long, eye contact melting the seconds together. My heartbeat sped up, and I pictured the old man having a heart attack meme, a stock image over my own face. 

“I don’t want to go to college without you, either.” He paused, brow wrinkling. “I don’t want to go to college at all, actually. But without you there’d be absolutely no point.”

I wondered if there was a non-clumsy way to ask, decided there wasn’t, and plunged ahead. “Would it be pointless without the other guys, too?”

“Not as much. You’re special.”

I couldn’t reply, just breathed through my mouth as he got up from my chair and sat on the bedspread next to me. His index finger brushed my pinkie.

“You’re—you’re—” I was trying to say, you’re special to me, too, because ingrained politeness fought to keep my verbal centers firing on automatic, but I couldn’t get it out. My words were stolen by his presence, solid and warm and dipping the mattress so that gravity nudged us closer together. 

Alec’s breath brushed my cheek and then he kissed me. I kissed back too eagerly, pulled him in too hard, my thoughts screaming because this was the first time I’d ever kissed anyone, and it wasn’t ‘anyone,’ it was Alec and it was me in my girl bed with its girl bedspread, and it was the two of us, and we were right here at the center of a space-time-warping astrophysical event. 

I learned quickly that I couldn’t keep up a masculine front while kissing. My breath hitched into tiny moans, my back arched, my body curved into his arms. Our weight dragged us down until we were horizontal and tangled. If I had a mirror on the ceiling, would I look up to see two boys kissing? Or would it look like two funny-looking girls? I hated that my brain devoted space to this right here, right now. 

We kissed until we were gasping for air, then stopped kissing and grabbed at each other’s clothes, pushing and pulling and unzipping fabric until greedy hands found bare skin. I listened for any sign of my parents on the stairs, but the house’s silence cheered us on. My eyes were either squeezed shut or zoomed in on parts of Alec: strands of his honey brown hair as I kissed his earlobe, the birthmark under his right armpit, the red and green plaid of his boxer briefs. The pink walls were beyond my field of vision; I had no evidence that we remained in my bedroom, maybe we’d left the house altogether, we could have been anywhere, in New York, in the woods. I half-expected to feel moss beneath my shoulder, dead leaves at the small of my back.

I kept thinking about what we were doing instead of experiencing it. I thought about how much I liked Alec and how exciting this was. I thought about how cool it was to do this with another guy. I thought about my pathetic body and hoped it could turn him on. I thought about how I needed to be thinking less, how stupid it was to be hornier than I’d ever been, yet my stupid brain wanted to think stupid thoughts. I tried not to think about Cody and his magic genitalia versus the girl-seeming clit I had to work with.

After we’d finished—I couldn’t determine what signaled that we were finished, but backs had arched and noises were made, and it had felt good, and I hadn’t stopped thinking for a single second, but now, by silent, mutual agreement, we definitely were finished—Alec and I lay side by side, spread-eagle, breathing hard. My underwear was bunched up around my ankles; his was on the floor. 

Something was on his mind. Sporadically, he reached out to stroke my arm or my thigh. He kept pursing his lips and glancing at the opposite wall before looking back over at me, or up at the ceiling. Finally he rolled onto his side to face me.

“Do you think Cody could get a girl pregnant?”

“Oh, my god. That’s what you’re thinking about right now? Seriously?”

“Sorry that I’m awestruck by witnessing the impossible. Our friend is a walking, talking miracle. Aren’t you obsessed with it?”

‘Obsessed’ put it mildly. “Maybe I don’t want to pillow talk about my friend’s sudden ability to—you know.” It was one thing to make jokes about cum when all four of us were together, but naked in bed with Alec, I felt strangely shy.

“Aw, you can’t say it?” He grinned, cupping my cheek. “That’s adorable.” 

I stuck my tongue out at him and he kissed me. When we parted again I felt raw, too open and honest, like a landscape after a forest fire, all its underbrush burned away.

“Part of me never wants to see Cody again.” If I spoke quietly enough, my lips barely moving against Alec’s neck, maybe I wasn’t saying it at all. “Like—I wish he’d never told us. I don’t want to know something like that is real and not be able to do it myself.”

Alec stroked a hand through my hair before cradling my hip. “I get that. It’s not enough that he has the nice parents and the hormones and shit. He gets to be a real boy, too.”

I pressed my face into his neck. “You’re a real boy.”

“Thanks. You are, too. But you know what I’m saying. Cody could knock some girl up right now, if he wanted. He could be a Teen Dad. Do you think he could impregnate himself? Like, how do genetics even work?” 

“First of all, you are disgusting. Second of all, doesn’t being on testosterone make it impossible to get pregnant? Or at least way less likely?” 

I pushed myself up on an elbow to look down at Alec’s pensive frown. The same thought occurred to both of us.

“He’s already doing the impossible,” Alec said, at the same time that I said, “But Cody’s special, so.”

I flopped back onto his chest. 

His words had been proud, almost reverent. I sounded bitter. 

Soon Alec would have to leave. My parents liked to check on me and say goodnight close to 10pm. I liked to imagine a year from now we’d be living in the same dorm, or maybe an apartment building, somewhere in the heart of the city, with no one caring what we did in bed. 

Alec’s arm snaked around to hug me close. “Sure, Cody’s special. But I’ll bet you a hundred bucks he’s still a virgin.”

“That’s right. Keep him humble.” We laughed. 

Unlike us, went giddily unsaid. 

“I have gathered you here today with an exciting proposition,” Cody said a week later. He stood with his chest thrust out and hands clasped behind him, feet planted square on the ground, trying to give—I don’t know, army general? Businessman? It kind of worked; he conveyed authority. The last of the day’s light haloed his outline, dappling the orange leaves that floated down around him.

“We gathered ourselves. Who are you again?” Alec said, and everyone laughed, including Cody. Our backpacks slumped in a heap at the base of the giant poplar tree, fluttering its dead leaves down upon our heads. A persistent wind whistled through my light jacket. 

“All right all right, so anyway. I, uh—I really do have a proposition.” Cody’s jawline was getting sharper, more pronounced. Or maybe I saw testosterone-driven changes in him because I looked for them, though I didn’t know if I wanted to see them. “I brought all the stuff that I use for my testosterone injections. I’ve been giving myself smaller doses for a while but requesting the same amount, so I have a stockpile going.” He put his hands on his hips, then dropped his hands to his sides as he looked at each of us in turn. “I brought enough to share.”

No one had a glib response to that, not even Alec. I had dreamt of similar scenarios. Three years ago, after Cody went to his first gender clinic appointment, I indulged in fantasies of his parents adopting me through some kind of freak accident, one that took out every blood relation with a legal claim to me. After the adoption, his parents would enable my transition, just as they’d done for their real son. 

I’d grown out of my daydreams. Fairy tale endings and magic weren’t real. Except, apparently, for Cody.

“I don’t know if the whole jizz thing is because of my specific testosterone, or because—like, I don’t know if sharing my hormones will mean all of us will get it, but it’s worth a shot, right? And aside from the magical sperm, I should’ve shared a long time ago. Because it’s not right that I’m the only one that gets to transition. It’s something we all deserve.”

“But you got yours with your parents’ permission, and you had to get clearance from the doctors first.” My voice didn’t sound like my voice, it was sharper, more vicious, exactly like my mother’s. I wanted to sneer at the sentimental syrup dripping from his words—we all deserve. Like it was that easy to disguise an act of charity. 

“Sure, I had to get bloodwork done first, but people skip that all the time. Here, I have a whole zine about DIY HRT.” Cody crouched down to unzip his backpack. There was nothing I wanted to see less than his darling zine, which he’d probably picked up from some confident and body-pierced and tattooed and passing passing passing trans adult in Indianapolis, which might as well be New York or Tokyo or the moon, it had about as much bearing on my stunted life in Orcville. 

I kicked. I’d meant to kick leaves onto the backpack, but my foot connected with the backpack itself, and a bit with Cody’s fingers, and he lost his balance and fell back. 

“I don’t care about your fucking zine!”

“Hey, hey!” Danny grabbed my arm, keeping me steady but also holding me back, because I’d advanced on Cody, and I’d been shouting, and Cody was sprawled on the ground and staring up at me with wide blue eyes. “Chill out, okay? What’s your deal?”

“What’s my deal? He’s acting like this is some easy thing, like we’re all in the same boat when his situation is light-years away.” I turned to Alec, but he was leaning against the poplar, looking at Cody’s backpack. I couldn’t read his mind, but I knew what desire looked like on his face. Dirt and moss were climbing up my esophagus, foulness in my throat like I needed to spew a mulchy torrent of my worst emotions, everything that made me less qualified for boyhood than Cody. All my jealousy and resentment and spite had remained manageable when I’d had no hope. Now that everything I’d yearned for was offered, my bile became a wave cresting over my head, a flash flood ready to strip life from the forest. 

“I know it’s not some easy thing.” Cody had grabbed the zine from his backpack, holding it protectively in front of his chest. Three pairs of eyes looked at me in confusion, anger, hurt, seeing a rabid dog snapping at a helping hand. “And I know we’re not all in the same boat, that’s why it’s only right for me to share. I want to, you guys are my friends. You’re like family.”

“We’re not family! My family hates you! And you’re the special one, the boy that gets interviewed on TV, your parents are gonna pay for your surgeries the second you’re eighteen, and that’s not even counting the jizz. So don’t offer me your secondhand testosterone, don’t give me this condescending bullshit about sharing and family, don’t try to save me, you’re not god’s gift to the oppressed trans fags of the world, just—stop.”

I started crying partway through my rant, and with tears came the same panicky weight that pressed onto my lungs whenever I cried. The self-loathing brought on by weeping, by the most abject expression of my femininity, always made me feel worse than whatever might have triggered the tears. I’d read online that hormones affected crying, and that many trans men struggled to cry after starting testosterone, whereas many trans women appreciated estrogen’s changes to their emotions: the ease of crying, the sensitivity, the biological and cultural permission to live as emotional beings. 

Those posts made me ache for what trans women rejected. I knew this was fucked up, but I envied anyone who’d lived a stoic life for so long that tears became welcome. 

I turned and ran, forgetting my backpack, ignoring the shouts of my friends. I stumbled and tripped and careened off of trees and didn’t know in which direction I fled, towards the school or the road or a suburban neighborhood. I ran from the zine and Cody’s testosterone and everything I wanted even more than I wanted Alec. Everything I knew I couldn’t have, everything that seemed further denied when it was given with Christlike benevolence. I already had Jesus on my nightstand; I didn’t need another martyr in my life, didn’t need Cody swooping in to remind me that I was not an apostle, but one of the needy.

Running in a binder quickly became painful, and I didn’t reach the edge of the woods. I collapsed to the forest floor, panting, listening to the wind rustling through leaves and the sound of my own sniffles. Alec found me a couple minutes later, sitting on the ground with my back to a maple tree.  

“It’s not fair,” I told him as he sat beside me. I’d stopped crying, mostly, but the puffy skin around my eyes still stung. “I can’t stand Cody. I can’t even look at him.”

Alec sat and plucked a twig from my hair. “Yeah. I feel that way sometimes, too. I’ve never heard you yell like that.”

I sniffed, trying to hork snot back into my sinuses. “That’s because I never yell like that. I don’t know, maybe when I was a little kid. Danny’s probably heard me yell.”

“Yeah, you and Danny have been friends forever.” There might’ve been a note of jealousy in his voice, or maybe I just wanted there to be. In the three days since our one night together, we hadn’t talked about what happened. Alec, who had no respect for authority, who skipped his classes but still acted like Orcville was an easy stepping stone on the way to a freer existence, who seemed so much cooler than me, didn’t strike me as the kind of guy who wanted to be in an official relationship. 

He shifted until his head leaned on my shoulder. I waited for him to say more, to rebuke me for what I’d said, but he stayed quiet, both of us watching a squirrel run up a tree trunk. Adrenaline and running had warmed me up, but the wind bit at my damp cheeks, and I’d be cold again soon.

“I want to take Cody up on it.” Alec mumbled this into my shirt, quietly enough that I could’ve pretended not to hear.

“There’s no way his stockpile will be enough for all of us to do it consistently.” I couldn’t believe in a universe that made testosterone so hard to get, while granting perfect genius boy Cody an unlimited supply. “And even if he had enough, what about your parents? What happens when your voice drops and you start growing facial hair?”

“He says he has enough,” Alec said, shrugging as if Cody’s word was all that mattered. “And those changes will happen eventually. Might as well be now. And if Cody’s superpower comes from something to do with this place, I wanna do it here.”

“That’s such a stupid theory though, come on.”

He shrugged. “If t-boys in other places could shoot swimmers, it would be all over the Internet.”

I grabbed a curled yellow leaf and started to devein it. “I don’t want you to be homeless. I don’t want Danny to get sent away.”

“I also don’t want those things, but like… when will it ever be easy for us?”

“In New York. It could be easy in New York.”

“And what if we don’t get into those schools? What if we don’t have enough money, have you looked up rent prices there? Because it’s pretty grim.”

“This was always the plan.” I could hear the hysterical edge to my voice. I couldn’t handle it if, on top of everything else, Alec wanted to back out. 

“I’m not saying I don’t believe in our plan, but it won’t be easy. And we’ll need health insurance, and jobs, and your rich-ass parents will stop giving you money if you come home for Christmas with a beard.”

I used the sleeve of my jacket to scrub at the tears and snot on my face. “They’ll cut me off before that, once I tell them I’m going to New York. They think New York is where the woke mob will get me.”

“Well, they’re half right about that.” We laughed, and Alec slid an arm around me, pulling me into his side. 

“I want to start hormones now,” he said, his cheek resting on the top of my head. “But I want to do it with you, and Danny, and obviously Cody. It should be the four of us together.”

“But getting it from Cody—that doesn’t feel wrong to you?”

“What, do you secretly hate him? Has he done something shitty that I don’t know about?”

“No, of course not. He’s perfect.” I pressed my eyes into Alec’s jacket until I saw spots. “I know it’s stupid. I know I’m being—I guess I’m just jealous.” 

Alec scooched around until he was sitting in front of me, our dirty knees touching. My shredded leaf was trapped where his denim met mine. He took my hands, and I looked up at his face. 

“Bro, we’re all jealous.” He stopped and wrinkled his nose. “Sorry—should I not call you bro if we’re dating?”

“We’re dating?” I hoped I sounded casual and maybe even smooth to him, and not like a corny simp. 

“We’re dating. For sure. Unless you don’t want us to be.” His eyes widened slightly, then widened more when I let out a burst of laughter.

“No, no—I mean, yes—” I pulled his hands forward until he was half in my lap. We kissed, then I pulled back, realizing I might be mucusing on his face.

“That’s cool. That’s awesome, actually.” Alec shook his head and sat back, trying to look serious again. “But you got me off-track. What I was saying is that I’m jealous of Cody, too. I’m sure Danny would say the same. It comes with the territory. But why let that get in the way of a good thing?”

“It won’t last,” I said. “There’s no way.”

“All the more reason to jump for this chance,” he said. “Maybe one dose is all it takes for us to get his powers. Or maybe it just helps us grow mustaches, whatever, I still want that. The changes are supposed to be irreversible, right?” He smirked. “And let’s be real, we both know Cody doesn’t have what it takes to be a porn star, so when I get the sperm phenomenon I fully intend to take that lane.”

My earlier objections didn’t sound convincing to me, and I clearly hadn’t convinced Alec. Any attempt at risk analysis, I knew, was a front for my real logic: Testosterone was what I wanted; the universe up till now had taught me that the more I wanted something, the more unattainable it became; preemptive rejection was therefore the only way to avoid getting hurt. 

But I had wanted Alec, and here he was, dating me. Defying the laws of nature, my parents, Orcville, probably Jesus. 

If it wasn’t too late for me—if my life could change while I was still in high school—that opened a door to the unknown, more terrifying than the disappointments I could expect or control. But was it worse than the alternative? Worse than watching my friends change without me? Than leaving most of myself here in the woods, bitter and small, sunk down into the subsoil, even as my body left for college? 

“Okay. Okay, let’s do it. I’ll do it with you guys.”

We held hands as we walked back to the others. I wished briefly that we were somewhere with a bathroom so that I could wash my face, embarrassed at the evidence of my tears. 

“Cody, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean any of that shit I said.” I could see Danny looking at mine and Alec’s clasped hands, frowning slightly. I dropped Alec’s hand. We could tell them later; I could only navigate one seismic change to the group at a time. 

Cody looked everywhere except my face. “It’s okay, I get it. I feel guilty for being the only one of us that can medically transition. Like, a lot guilty.”

I’d thought it would feel good to hear Cody admit guilt, but now that he’d said it, I felt bubbling anger at myself, the world, everything except for Cody. “Don’t say that. It’s the rest of the world that should feel guilty, not you. It’s good that you have cool parents and miracle semen and everything. You deserve it all. And I’m sorry my parents hate you, and I’m sorry I said that. You’re my family, not them.”

Now Cody looked at me, his eyes huge and a little scared. “You mean that?”

“Of course I do. Even with your annoying savior complex–” Cody winced, and I tried to smile, to show that I was just ribbing him. “I shouldn’t’ve blown up. I like that about you, that you try to be a good guy, and you’re such a good friend.” 

“And I want your secondhand testosterone, actually.” I held out my hand in a silly Oliver Twist motion. “Please sir, can I have some hormones?” 

Cody barreled into me for a hug. I squeezed him tight and pressed my face to his hair. His chin stubble scraped my neck. He’d gotten the level of cologne right today; it was subtle but nice. It smelled like wilderness, a fancier and more mysterious forest than the one surrounding us. Probably not the kind of woods that you could find in Indiana. 

We sat in a tight circle, four sets of knees touching. Cody had brought four syringes and four needles, each plastic-wrapped. He did it to himself first, explaining the steps: First you sanitized the injection site and the vial lid with rubbing alcohol; while injecting, you positioned the syringe at a 45-degree angle to your skin, piercing either your belly fat or butt; you started at a low dose before titrating higher over the course of a few months. 

I’d never imagined myself sitting on sticks and leaves for my first testosterone shot, but it felt right considering all the revelations I’d had about my gender beneath these trees. I plunged the needle into the vial’s soft plastic cap and watched the syringe draw down gold liquid. Anyone else in my life would’ve found this crazy, four boys secretly shooting up hormones in the woods like some Mad Libs-style Fox News headline. I laughed to myself; maybe I was in a cult, or maybe my parents had been right about the woke scourge this entire time. 

Despite my giddy thoughts, my hands remained steady as I punctured the skin of my belly. It barely hurt. My thumb pushed down the plunger, and I watched 0.2 milliliters of testosterone enter my body. One of the boys handed me a band-aid, and I smoothed it over the bead of blood, my hands were starting to shake. 

The warm press of Cody’s palm on my shoulder startled me. I’d been still, staring at my stomach, mouth hanging open. I looked up.

“Holy shit.” 

“Holy shit!”

“Holy shit!”

“Holy fuck!”

I’d been the last to finish. Alec and Danny grinned at me, their own shirts still rucked up over their bandaged bellies. 

The forest floor had become one long shadow, and the wind brought out gooseflesh on my exposed skin. I wasn’t yet cold because my brothers’ arms were around me, Alec holding me by the waist and Cody hugging my shoulders, Danny’s forehead bumping mine. All four of us started laughing and couldn’t stop, and church words sprang into my head—the righteous path.

I felt nothing for my parents’ god but with my friends, in that moment, I knew myself to be on a righteous path, our righteous path, the one we’d been seeking our whole lives. 

We’d injected the future. 

Our euphoria scattered birds into flight. It carried our laughter up and up, far beyond anything we could see from the ground.