Maya was in a foul mood. Or, more precisely, she was doing her best to look like she was in a foul mood. Technically, Mason was the one everyone needed to see sulking. After all, Mason had just lost his spot in woodworking one of the few electives guaranteed to keep his reputation intact. Woodworking was solid, practical, and, above all, manly. It was the kind of class where splinters and sweat were expected, and few girls ever ventured. It wasn’t quite as good for his reputation as something like metalworking or a class focused on being a mechanic, both of which were offered, but Maya couldn’t face either of those, she refused to even contemplate them.

But the schedule had been thrown into chaos when an error in the application system had been discovered, and when the dust settled, woodworking as a class was full, and not everyone who had signed up for it could be accommodated. Maya, who had signed up for it mainly as a way of protecting herself from discovery, had privately dreaded the idea of spending hours sanding planks or fumbling with chisels. Still, she hadn’t expected to be shuffled out of the class without warning. Someone, she still didn’t know who, had mentioned the little sketches she sometimes scribbled in the corners of her notebook. The doodles were never meant for anyone else’s eyes, but apparently, they’d been noticed. And with that tiny slip of information, Mason had been reassigned. To art of all places.

It was far from the best news Maya had ever had, but it was also far from the worst either, art wasn’t exactly the most manly elective, but at least it wasn’t Fashion. That thought alone was enough to keep Maya’s protests from being too convincing. Maya had felt it was her duty to complain and cause a fuss about this lest she seem too happy not to be doing something more manly. Because the truth was, when she’d heard that Fashion still had seats available, her stomach had flipped in two directions at once. Interest, sharp and undeniable, had clashed with horror. She couldn’t possibly sit in a fashion classroom without her cover shattering in the first ten minutes. Her secret, the part of herself she wasn’t ready to share, would be obvious before she’d even unzipped her bag.

Truthfully, Maya was secretly delighted to be doing art instead of spending long hours bored out of her mind in woodworking. The more she thought about it, the more excited she got, so Maya did the only thing she could. She put on a scowl, muttered complaints under her breath, and tried to look like she was truly devastated about losing woodworking. Inside, though, she knew she had been lucky. One day, she promised herself, she would be ready. She would walk into a class like Fashion without fear. She would stop hiding and let the world see her for who she was. But not yet. Not today. So with all that in mind, Maya had been forced to accept Art, more than that, she had found herself secretly embracing the chance. After all, she told her jubilant self severely, Art was far more manly than a fashion course ever could be.

******************

Walking into the art room, Maya was struck first by the quiet. Not an awkward, empty quiet, but something steadier like the stillness of a millpond, steady, dependable and full of promise and expectation. It was a chill, almost meditative calm, so unlike the loud, laddish chaos she was used to enduring in other classrooms. The air smelled faintly of paint and charcoal, and that alone felt like a promise of something better. The space itself was wide and open, the desks scattered rather than lined up in strict rows. Only a few students had claimed them, sitting far apart as though distance were part of the uniform. There was no clatter of chairs scraping, no forced conversation. Instead, there was calm and focus. Heads were bent low over sketchbooks, pencils scratching faintly, or from one or two, there was the faint murmur of quiet, calm conversation shared between friends.

Maya let her eyes wander. The group was a fairly even mix of girls and boys, but beyond that, they shared little. Some wore their hair long, others short, but more than a few had boldly dyed streaks of blue, purple, or pink. They looked like the kind of people who would stab anyone who so much as mentioned football with a stick, possibly a paintbrush. For once, Maya felt like she had walked into a place where she might not be the odd one out. She slipped quietly toward the back, choosing a seat far from the front where a teacher’s eyes might linger too long. From here, she could watch without being watched. She settled in, adjusting the strap of her bag, her gaze flicking from one student to the next.

The girl next to her immediately caught her attention. She had a crop of short spiky hair dyed a vivid blue, the kind of colour that demanded confidence. She was bent over her sketchbook, drawing with a kind of fierce concentration, as if the world outside her paper didn’t exist, but Maya could see that she wore thick black eyeliner and a fears determined look. Rings glittered on her fingers, catching the light whenever her pencil moved. The girl also wore a hoodie that read “Feelings are a scam”. From the look of the girl Maya could well believe that the hoodie was not an idle boast. She didn’t glance up when Maya sat down, but there was something in the girl’s posture, a mix of defiance and ease that made Maya wonder what it would be like to live inside her skin, even for a moment. Maya felt an unexpected pull, a curiosity that edged close to envy. This girl seemed so utterly at home in herself, in this room, in the act of creating. Maya, by contrast, still felt like an intruder and was at all times on edge, in any environment, worried that she might be showing too much of the girl she was instead of the boy she was trying to be. She sat back, trying not to stare, but her eyes kept drifting sideways. The girl, whom Maya now recognised as Bethany Thorpe, found Maya’s gaze examining her and met that gaze with her own much more fiery one. Maya felt that if a stare could cut metal, then the one that Bethany had fixed upon her certainly would have. It was a powerful, heady mix of disdain, arrogance and antagonism.

Maya tried to remain unfazed by that look, though it was harder than she would ever admit. Bethany’s gaze was the sort that made you feel seen in ways you didn’t ask for, sharp, curious, and tinged with a mischief that hinted at far too many stories that might be better left untold. Maya had never met her before, not properly, but she had heard the whispers.
Bethany wasn’t just another girl at the edge of the crowd. She had a reputation, an uneven one, shifting depending on who told the story. Some said she was wild, unstable, the sort who laughed too hard at chaos. Others spoke of her as though she were a folk hero, someone who turned disorder into a weapon when the right people deserved it.

Bethany had dated Matt, one of Maya’s teammates, for a couple of months the year before. Ryan, another teammate, had gone to middle school with her and had a dozen half-believable tales. He swore she once set a trashcan on fire behind the gym. Another time, she’d sabotaged a school play with nothing more than a can of deodorant and a lighter. Ryan recounted those stories with a smirk, half-proud to have, at the time, been in the orbit of someone so legendary.
But the thing was, most of those tales, once you peeled back the bravado, ended up sounding less like pure destruction and more like justice. The school production, for example, hadn’t been random vandalism at all. The teacher in charge had been cruel, mocking and belittling younger students. Bethany, who was only a couple of grades above them, had taken that cruelty personally. Her solution was drastic, yes, but also deliberate and decisive, she made sure the play collapsed before it could become another stage for the teacher’s meanness. Reckless, perhaps. Unfair and unilateral, definitely. Malicious? Not exactly.

Maya remembered Matt’s words about her, tossed out during one of those late practices when everyone was too tired to filter themselves. He had grinned, eyes glazed with pride, lust, infatuation or exasperation. Maya couldn’t tell which and said, “She’s still a little deranged, you know. Like, fun-deranged. But don’t stay around her too long unless you like chaos.”
Then he’d gone off on that bizarre tangent about “grippy socks, grippy…” laughing like a maniac while the rest of the boys howled along. Maya had shuddered at the sheer stupidity and masculinity of those words, the way boys revelled in their own nonsense. It wasn’t just immaturity, it was insecurity dressed up as comedy, and Maya could barely stand the memory of it.

Yet one thing Matt had said stuck with her, “Bethany’s art is legit.” That, Maya, was prepared to believe without question. Every whisper about Bethany’s work painted it as extraordinarily strange but brilliant, with a kind of rawness that made even teachers insist she was destined for some prestigious art school on the East Coast. That reputation carried weight, a counterbalance to all the chaos in her stories.

And so, Maya sat there, facing Bethany’s knowing look, trying to quiet the shiver that threatened to betray her. The rumours had prepared her for a lunatic, a pyromaniac, a chaos agent. Now she wasn’t sure what to expect.
“Not much of a talker,” Maya ventured, more out of politeness than any real desire to start a conversation.
“Nope.” Bethany didn’t even look up. Her pencil moved across the page with quick, precise strokes, as if the world around her barely existed. The scratch of graphite was her only answer, and it said more about her focus than words ever could.
Before Maya could decide whether to try again, Mrs Williams swept into the room in a gust of perfume and jangling bracelets. She was late, of course, teachers always were, but the kind of late that seemed less like forgetfulness and more like ritual. Without pausing to catch her breath, she launched into action, clapping her hands and bustling down the rows with a stack of identical, school-issued sketchbooks.
“Here you go, here you go, fresh pages, fresh possibilities! Remember, art is about finding your truth!” she trilled, her smile too wide for the hour of the morning.
Maya accepted her sketchbook with a mumbled thanks, already suppressing a sigh. Mrs Williams, it turned out, had an uncanny ability to fill silence with words, and not the good kind. The moment the sketchbooks were all handed out, she dove headfirst into a lecture that felt less like teaching and more like a manifesto no one had asked for.
“Art must have emotional pull,” she said, pacing at the front. “Without truth in art, you may as well be copying photographs! Art is as much about skill as it is about baring your soul!”
Maya’s eyes glazed. She tried, she really did, to keep her attention from drifting. But it was like trying to hold onto water; every phrase Mrs Williams lobbed at them slipped through her grasp. Emotional pull. Truth in art. Soul-baring. And through it all, Mrs Williams droning voice was too much. What does she think we are, Maya thought miserably, tortured poets? We’re just tired teenagers who had to drag ourselves out of bed this morning.
Bethany, unsurprisingly, didn’t react at all. She just kept sketching, her pencil whispering steadily against the page like she had already tuned Mrs Williams out from the moment she’d arrived. Maya wondered, fleetingly, if that was a skill she could learn. Finally, mercifully, the lecture wound down. Mrs Williams clapped her hands again and gestured toward the table at the front, where a sad arrangement of fruit, a ceramic vase with a wilted sunflower in it, and a limp sprig of greenery sat under the harsh classroom lights.
“Your first assignment!” she declared. “A still life. Capture it as you see it, but remember make it true.”
Maya almost laughed at the absurdity, but bit her tongue. Instead, she cracked open her sketchbook, staring down at the blank page and reminded herself not for the first nor the last time that no matter what, this was a million times better than woodworking ever could have been. Around her, pencils began to scratch, erasers squeaked faintly, and the room settled into the kind of uneasy quiet that comes when everyone pretends to take something seriously. She let out a slow breath, telling herself she would at least try. Still life. Flower. Vase. Truth. Whatever that meant.

The sunflower lay limply in its chipped vase, its yellow head turned to brittle brown, bowing under its own weight. Once, the vase had been ornate, with yellow flowers ringed around the rim and base, painted patterns curling like vines. But time had battered it down, left it scarred and chipped, until it was only a relic, a cast-off destined for classrooms like this one.
Maya sketched quietly, pencil tracing out every crack in the ceramic, every bent petal. There was something about the dreary combination of wilted flower, broken vase that mirrored the way she felt most mornings, worn thin, surviving on habit. After a while, Bethany leaned over just enough to glance at her page. She gave a small, approving nod.
“That flower’s seen better days,” she murmured, lips quirking. “God knows where Mrs Williams dug it up. But hey, so have we all.”
Maya paused, her pencil still mid-line, then said softly, “Guess we’re all faking it, then.” She meant it as a conspiratorial whisper, something shared between them.
Bethany’s brow arched, and a subtle shift crossed her expression, something sharp, curious, maybe even amused. “Ha. Got me there, Mason. But seriously? You, faking it?”
Maya blinked at the sound of her last name. It landed wrong, felt jagged in this space between them. Still, she tried to keep her face neutral. Bethany didn’t stop. She leaned in a little, voice low but cutting in its certainty.
“You’re the mystery loner on the football team. Pretending? Please. You could have anyone you wanted. Football players don’t fake it; too many girls throw themselves at them. If anything, they’re more likely to… well, fuck it than fake it.”
Maya flinched. The word Mason still echoed in her head, twisted and off-key in a way she couldn’t quite control. Bethany must have seen something flicker across her face, because her eyes narrowed, sharp as a scalpel.
“Unless,” Bethany said slowly, “you’re hiding something. Maybe you don’t even like girls. Maybe there’s a boy you’ve got your eye on. Is that it? Are you gay, Mason?”
The question hung in the air, heavy, stale, impossible to answer without revealing herself. Maya froze, praying her expression didn’t betray her, her hand tightening on the pencil until the tip snapped against the page. Bethany studied her a moment longer, then leaned back, as if she’d read enough. Her voice softened.
“Or maybe not. Maybe it’s something else. Look, sorry if I crossed a line. I can get… intense. It freaks people out, I know. Just ignore me.” She bent her head back over her sketchpad, her pencil racing again, as if nothing had happened.

Maya let out a shaky breath she hadn’t even realised she’d been holding. Her chest felt too tight, her thoughts too loud. She forced herself back to the sunflower, to the chips in the vase, to the safety of lines and shapes. But all the while, Bethany’s words lingered, leaving her with the strange, unsettling sense of being seen.

As the bell rang and chairs scraped back, Maya shoved her sketchbook into her bag, eager to escape. But before she could swing the strap over her shoulder, a hand caught her arm. Firm, but not unkind. She looked down at the hand, then up, unsurprised to see Bethany watching her with that same steady, unsettling gaze.
“I really don’t mean to pry,” Bethany began, her tone softer now, stripped of the earlier edge. “And I’m sorry about before. I just…” she hesitated, searching for the right words, “I wanted to say, you draw really well. I mean, really well. But… you don’t draw like a football player.”
Maya bristled, heat rushing into her cheeks. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Bethany tilted her head, studying her. “It means there’s softness in your lines. Feeling in them. It’s not rigid, not mechanical. There’s something… vulnerable there.” She paused, catching the confusion clouding Maya’s expression, and exhaled in frustration. “Ugh, I’m not saying this right. Look…” She straightened a little, her voice careful now, deliberate. “What I’m trying to say is, I get this… vibe. Effeminate, maybe. Feminine. Like someone’s hiding. And I don’t know if that’s you or just me reading too much into it, but I’m usually a great judge of character, and it’s there. I feel it.”

Maya froze, heart hammering. The words clung to her, too close, too sharp, like Bethany had peeled something back she hadn’t meant anyone to see.
Bethany finally let go of her arm and stepped toward the door. She stopped just before crossing the threshold, hovering there, her shoulders tight like she was arguing with herself. Then, with a small sigh, she turned back. Gingerly, she made her way back to Maya’s side, as if she knew that her words had been heavy and now hung in the air between thick and difficult to move through, as though she now waded back through molasses. As if she were now walking back through the emotional weight of her words, made into a physical obstacle. She walked right back to Maya’s desk and pulled a scrap of paper from her bag.
“I don’t know if I’m right,” she admitted, scribbling a number. “Maybe you’re just good at pretending. But, Mason, if you’re not, if there’s something you don’t feel like you can say right now, if you need someone to talk to who won’t freak out, call me. Really, I mean it, call me if you, like need to talk to someone about something.”
She folded the paper once and slid it into Maya’s hand, her fingers brushing against hers just briefly.
Maya stared at it dumbly, the numbers blurring before her eyes.
“Why… why would I need that?” The words tumbled out clumsily, dazed, as though she couldn’t quite catch them in time.
Bethany only shrugged, her mouth curling into the faintest hint of a smile. “Just a hunch.”
And with that, she was gone, leaving Maya clutching the slip of paper like it was far heavier than it looked, the silence around her suddenly deafening.

*****************************

Maya sat on the edge of her bed in the dark, a blue plushie shark crushed to her chest until the seams groaned. Her grip was so tight her knuckles had gone bone-white; the tiny plastic eye of the shark stared up at the ceiling like an accusation. Tears streamed in surging rivers, rivulets of searing pain cutting down her cheeks. It had been a terrible week and a terrible day to end that terrible week. Every day, she had felt like a fraud, there was no reprieve, everywhere she went, she was either a freak as a girl or a fraud as a boy. Maybe she was a fraud either way, Maya wasn’t sure anymore.

She felt hollowed out, as if whatever made her, her, had been chipped away a little more with every passing hour. Around other people, she was a performance. At school and around other people, she tried desperately to always wear the mask of the person they expected her to be, but alone, at home, the mask slipped, and the rawness and pain underneath were terrifyingly loud. Every day, she had felt like a fraud, there was no reprieve, everywhere she went, she was either a freak as a girl or a fraud as a boy. Maybe she was a fraud either way, Maya wasn’t sure anymore.

Tyler didn’t help. Tyler, with his new girlfriend, Rachel, or Randi or something, Maya still wasn’t quite sure. He announced his stories about her like trophies, crude and proud, the rest of the boys hooting along. Tyler and his friends, who mostly consisted of the rest of the football team, plus other assorted jocks, did not seem to see anything wrong with the way they were talking about the girl, but it made Maya sick just to hear it. They treated the conversation like halftime banter: disposable, meant to be laughed about and forgotten. But Maya heard every crude joke as if it were aimed at her specifically, and each joke scraped a little more paint off whatever thin shell she’d managed to keep in place.

It wasn’t just disgust at their talk. It was a sharp, ugly twist of jealousy that she hadn’t been prepared for, an unfamiliar, shame-shadowed jealousy that made her stomach clench and her chest ache. Maya fundamentally didn’t like how focused Tyler was on this new girl. It did things to Maya and made her feel things that she wasn’t ready to admit, even to herself. She felt irrational jealousy and hatred of the girl whom she had not even met. She was angry at Rachel for existing, at Tyler for being too obsessed with his new toy to spend any time with her anymore, at herself for feeling so small and wrong. The rage was fierce and biting, she wanted to hurt something, anything sometimes the thought was violent in a way that frightened her more than the boys ever did. On top of her dysphoria and feeling like a fraud, she also now had to contend with all these new feelings. Every time that girl was even mentioned, Maya felt a burning rage and need to rip the girl's head off, well, at least punch her or something, and that was just not the kind of person Maya wanted to be.
Worse, the feelings were private, a secret storm she had nowhere to dump them. There was no one she could tell without risking ridicule, betrayal, or something worse. The idea of speaking aloud about the twisting, complicated truth of her heart felt impossible. So she swallowed everything. Alone, in the dark, all her truths were laid bare before her, and they were far more than Maya could handle.

A fresh set of sobs were wrenched from Maya by that thought, and she held her plushie close to her, sobbing, pitiful agonized torment and tears into the plushie Shark affectionately named Susie. If it would have helped in any way, Maya would have even talked to the Shark about her problems, but she was sure she, as in the shark, knew all of it already and was powerless to help. So Maya instead elected to cry into Susie’s embrace and lament how utterly alone and tormented she was.

In her sadness and desperation, Maya remembered Brittany’s offer to talk and listen without judgment. Maya had dismissed that notion then, even considering telling someone made her nervous, let alone someone from school, someone who knew her as Mason. But Maya wasn’t as desperate then, she hadn’t felt so alone and pitiful then, she hadn’t felt such a need to be heard by someone, anyone, then. Right now, a non-judgmental ear felt worth the terrible risk, because Maya needed someone to talk to, someone who wouldn’t judge her, someone more than a plushie Shark. However soft and understanding Susie Shark might be.

With trembling limbs and sniffles, Maya walked towards her chest of drawers and pulled out the piece of paper with Bethany’s number on it that, for a reason that Maya had not been able to fathom when she had set it there, she had not thrown away. The number was still there, the ink slightly smudged from Maya’s fingers the day she’d accepted it. She had not called. She told herself a dozen reasons why not, it was unnecessary, it was too risky, it would change nothing. And yet the paper felt like a lifeline in her palm, and she was too broken right now to care what might happen if she opened up to someone about who she was, who she felt she was on the inside.
She turned the scrap over, smoothed it with a trembling thumb. Bethany’s words echoed, “If you need someone who won’t freak out, call me.” It wasn’t an ultimatum. It wasn’t even a promise. It was just the offer of another human voice on the line, and Maya wanted that so badly.

Maya pressed the shark against her ribs, seeking its soft comfort. For a minute, she just sat there, the phone dark on the bedside table, the number a faint script between her fingers and the humid, familiar ache in her chest. She didn’t dial, not yet. She paused for a fraction of a section, not debating what to do any longer but gathering the courage to do it. Hands trembling, Maya dialled the number and waited, clutching to Susie Shark to her chest, now not out of sadness and desperation but out of fear and anticipation.