Page 19 of You’re No Better

Wilderness therapy? Where they throw a bunch of mentally ill kids in the woods with “counselors” who learned their rehabilitation tactics from Guantánamo Bay?

“How’d you almost die?” I ask.

“Um. Heatstroke.”

I nod. This will work fine.

“Do you have any preferences for when to use one pronoun over the other?” I check my nails for chipped paint so I don’t seem too invested in the answer, because I’m not. “Is it a safety thing, random, what.”

“I mean, she/her only around my parents. And teachers. And grown-ups that might know them at all. But otherwise—I don’t get to hear they/them all that often. So if you want to use that one a little more. Unless that’s weird.”

It hits me that they think I’m a girl.

“That’s fine,” I say, stopping the recording and shoving my phone back in my pocket. “It’s he/him for me, by the way.”

Their head whips around to face me.

Right at the edge of the skull case, there’s a part of the display where there’s not enough backlighting, and I can make out the outline of our reflections looking back at us: Felicity in their hoodie and jewelry and French tips; me with my uniform skirt and red nails and hair tied back with a ribbon.

I’ve gotten really, really good at being a girl. When I finally get to throw it all away, it probably won’t feel as good as putting Dad behind bars, but it’ll be pretty damn close.

“What’s your name?” Felicity asks.

“Still Morgan. For all it matters.”

And with that, Felicity holds out their hand, pinkie outstretched. I wrinkle my nose.

“A pinkie promise,” they prompt.

I don’t move. I’m fully aware of what a pinkie promise is. I’ve just never been asked to make one before. Also, it’s stupid and childish. We were supposed to have grown out of this in kindergarten.

“Either we help each other,” they say, “or it’s mutually assured destruction. Deal?”

This feels like a suicide pact I’ve been forced into at gunpoint, but I hook my pinkie through theirs anyway. “Yeah.”

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