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  The Secret Origins of Samantha Kendrick!!!

  10 Years Earlier

  I got off the Orange Line bus and hiked a half-mile through the burning te-spring Torrance afternoon. Everything looked like a strip-mall here, all one-story structures built wide with ft roofs and arranged on a grid so unnatural it gave you whipsh. I wore my orange and bck backpack around my front, a Los Angeles Dodgers’ cap fastened to my head. Mom had cropped my bck hair short again that month, same as she always did. I’d long since given up trying to protest it- Mom always wrote it off as me throwing a tantrum, told me to stop acting like an angry little boy, that the world wasn’t kind to angry little boys and would only get less kind as I grew up and became an angry little man.

  Her words, not mine.

  I cut across the dry river bed, my overly-worn sneakers cpping against the concrete, and wound up at the ass-end of my cul de sac. The depressing little house I called home was surrounded by other depressing little houses, and they all looked exactly the same: cramped and ft and brown. I ambled up to my house and retrieved the key from under the mat and twisted it inside the lock.

  I opened it up and was immediately buffeted by a wall of sound. Specifically, my parents screaming at each other. They were locked up in their room at the end of the hall, as usual. Don’t know what I expected. I ignored the pit of anger in my stomach and went to my room. I had homework I probably should have been doing, but I decided against it. I had stuff to read, five new comics Uncle Paul had gotten me.

  I’d finished three of them by the time Dad ripped my door open, his posture haggard and his eyes defeated. He was a burly, barrel-chested man with a patchy bck beard and graying hair shooting out in every direction. “Pack a bag, we’re going.”

  “Where?” I asked, not looking up from my comic.

  “I’m taking you to your Uncle Paul’s pce,” Dad said.

  “Why?”

  I heard the front door sm shut, and I looked outside to find a silver sedan in the driveway with Mom’s coworker Jared behind the wheel. And Mom loading her suitcase into the trunk of his car.

  “Need to work some things out with your mother,” Dad said ftly. “Now c’mon.”

  I swam in a turbulent sea of confusion and fear, tossed about by frigid waves of anxiety. I didn’t have much, so I settled on packing a few changes of clothes, my toothbrush, and the comics I still had to finish. And then, wordlessly, breathlessly, my father ushered me into the family car and drove me across town.

  Even by age nine, I’d long since given up attempting to have meaningful conversations with my father. Normal dads, near as I could tell from what other kids said and what I saw on TV, talked to their kids; they particurly talked those they thought of as their sons about things like sports, movies, how they were doing in school, what they wanted to be when they grew up, what their friends were like, took them fishing or pyed catch with them or taught them curse words and then made them swear not to tell Mom where they’d learned such nguage; my dad preferred to rant about politics endlessly, dropping names I was too young to recognize and attempting to articute the nuances of the failures of the current California government to a third-grader. All while screaming at the top of his lungs, his beady brown eyes darting back and sweat dripping off of brow.

  He talked…well, ‘ranted’ is probably a more accurate descriptor…he ranted, and I listened. I couldn’t even read while he did it- st time I tried, he’d ripped the comic from my hands and told me how ‘those things will make you stupid. Read a real book.’

  When I’d asked him what constituted a real book, he’d handed me a political manifesto that he’d personally written during one of his day-drinking binges.

  I’d gotten real good at pretending to listen. At that point, Dad couldn’t even tell the difference.

  The drive was long, exacerbated by the custrophobic monstrosity of Los Angeles traffic. Finally, Uncle Paul’s house came into view. My beloved uncle stood in the driveway, looking ready to start throwing punches. My dad pulled me out of the car and handed me off to my uncle, who in turn said, “Just so we’re clear: if you do this, there’s no going back.”

  “That’s fine,” Dad said, not even looking at me or his older brother.

  “You’re throwing something away here, you know,” Uncle Paul said, grabbing Dad by the pel and ripping him forward.

  Dad’s shoulders went limp, and his face contorted with a rage he usually didn’t show out in public. “Fine. It’s not something I’ve ever really been qualified to handle. As you’ve reminded me on many an occasion.”

  “It’s not just Sam, it’s me, too,” Uncle Paul said. “If you do this, if you walk away, you’re not just gonna be childless, you’re gonna be an only-child. Understand?”

  “Just like I’ve always wanted it, then.”

  Uncle Paul blinked. And so did I. I think that… That was when it really sunk in for me, what was happening. What was about to happen.

  “You disgust me,” Uncle Paul said. “You always have.”

  “Why are you telling me what I already know?” Dad asked. He seemed… He seemed genuinely confused. That made it a hundred times worse.

  “Dad,” I said. “Where’s Mom?”

  “Gone,” Dad said. “And so am I.”

  And with that, he got into his car and drove away.

  The tears came, then. I wiped them out of my eyes, desperate for them not to be seen. Mom had always said to man up when she saw me crying. But Uncle Paul just leaned down and put his arm around me, held me tight and whispered, “It’s okay, kid. Let it out. Let it all out.”

  “I don’t have a mom or a dad anymore, do I?” I sobbed.

  “I guess not,” Uncle Paul said. “But you’ve got me, and not to toot my own horn, but I think that’s way better.”

  I cried into his chest for a while, until finally, he shepherded me inside his house. The pce was a mess, had been since Uncle Paul’s boyfriend had left him st year, but the guest bedroom he led me into was freshly vacuumed and had a good, clean, friendly smell to it.

  “I’ll let you unpack,” Uncle Paul said. “I’ll order us a pizza for dinner- Hawaiian good?”

  I nodded.

  “Good. And, uh, why don’t you take tomorrow off from school. We can swing by your dad’s pce and pick up the rest of your stuff, and then you can come to the shop with me and hang out. Okay?”

  I nodded again.

  He sat next to me on the bed, on my new bed, taking off my cap and running a hand over my short, brittle bck hair. “Hey. I know this is a lot. I know… I know you feel like your whole world just fell apart. But I promise you, I’m gonna do everything in my power to keep that world together for you. Okay?”

  Once more, I nodded. I even cobbled together a smile this time. To this day, I still have no idea if it looked in any way, shape, or form genuine.

  But Uncle Paul hugged me the same either way. That was the more important part, I think.

  6 Years Earlier

  I climbed off the 212 bus and braved the short trek down the block to Uncle Paul’s shop, backpack actually worn on my back. Middle school was full of harsh lessons, not the least of which being that any infinitesimal way in which you stood out was akin to wearing a neon sign around your neck that said ‘I’m weird, bully me.’

  The shop was decently crowded that afternoon, mostly high schoolers flocking in after the test superhero movie release, plus a few college kids picking up manga to read ahead before the next season of their favorite anime came out. Uncle Paul and our current hire, a surly and broad-shouldered seventeen year old named Trey, stood behind the counter. He was on his school’s wrestling team, as he never failed to mention, but wrestling season was only during the winter. He grunted at me as I walked by, halfway through ringing up a sale, while Uncle Paul was showing an elementary schooler some of our selections for newby readers.

  “Hey there, Sammy!” he said with a wide smile.

  I tried my best to return it as I shuffled back into the stock room. Ostensibly, I was there to do my homework, but that rarely happened. Instead, I pulled a horror comic off the shelf, something from the old Vertigo line, with my favorite character of all cd in his long tan trench coat and chronically chain smoking silk-cut cigarettes. I wasn’t supposed to be reading it, I was too young for it, but c’mon, when has that ever stopped anyone?

  I opened to the first page, and found the leading man, gnarly and snarky and British, engaged in a primal scene. I found myself pausing at it, looking up and around to make sure I was alone.

  I was.

  And I was mesmerized. I couldn’t stop looking at it, at him. My heartbeat shot up like a rocket, while a warm tingling feeling overtook my chest and… Lower regions.

  I blinked.

  I closed the book.

  I breathed in and out my nose, slowly, deliberately. Time for an experiment.

  I went outside into the main room and scanned for the sight of a girl. Any girl. Literally anyone my age or older. I was thirteen, I was supposed to have started liking girls by now, that was how it worked, that was how it was supposed to happen.

  Granted, there weren’t MANY girls in there that fateful afternoon, but there was one: she was either in te high school or early college, cd in a bck tank top and a matching miniskirt, midnight-colored lipstick and eyeshadow adorning her face, raven hair worn in long flowing ringlets down her back.

  My first thought was that she was beautiful.

  My second thought was that I didn’t feel what I’d felt before, looking at that image in the comic.

  I kept staring at her as she knelt down and looked through tankobons, trying desperately to feel something, anything. And there was a flicker of something, but it wasn’t the tingling excitement and hypnotic allure I’d felt before. It was… Appreciation. Admiration.

  But it wasn’t attraction.

  So instead I turned my eyes over to Trey, his bulging muscles showing through his tight-fitting short-sleeved shirt.

  The sensation returned, in my stomach and my chest and my head. In my entire body.

  “Paul, your nephew is being creepy again,” Trey said as Uncle Paul walked over to the counter to ring up the young customer he’d been helping. “Please make him stop.”

  I gulped, then immediately darted back into the stockroom before I could hear any other words I didn’t want to hear. Words like ‘nephew.’ And ‘him.’

  I tried to concentrate on what felt good.

  So I opened the comic back up to that first page and just let myself drink it in.

  After about twenty minutes, Uncle Paul came into the stock room and asked, “Is everything alright?”

  “Hey, Uncle Paul?” I said.

  “Yeah?”

  “I think I like guys.”

  He blinked. “Oh. So you’re gay.”

  That… That didn’t feel right. Something about that…bel, that category felt so…so incredibly wrong. Like someone else’s skin, damp and cloying and greasy, pstered over mine, making it harder and harder to breathe by the second.

  But it was the only thing that made sense. I liked guys, and by all accounts, I was a guy, so that meant…

  “Yeah, I guess I am,” I said. Because what else could possibly be going on?

  “Okay,” Uncle Paul said. “You’ll get no pushback from me on that. Probably goes without saying, but I love you no matter what. Just, uh, try not to stare at Trey too much. He’s a bit surly.”

  “Okay,” I nodded.

  Uncle Paul went back to work, leaving me to mull over my discovery.

  I opened the comic back up, and let myself get lost in it.

  2 Years Earlier

  My shift at the shop started right after school. Wes was kind enough to drop me off, though he didn’t hesitate to remind me several times over that he wouldn’t be doing that on the regur. Don’t get why he always had to say that. Why he felt the need to specify. I hadn’t even asked him, he’d freaking offered to drive me to work after school and then spent the whole damn ride telling me how inconvenient this was for him when he had to get to El Segundo for his job right afterwards.

  I really wish I could say it was the st time I’d accepted a ride from him.

  I really, really, REALLY wish I could say that.

  After my asshole boyfriend dropped me off, I went inside and clocked in right away.

  The pce was sparsely poputed today. Not really surprising- Quarantine had hit us hard, and we’d only kept the lights on through a series of government loans. Uncle Paul was behind the counter as usual, ringing up a teenage boy’s purchase of a mammoth-sized pile of single-issues, while our sole other patron was in the back-left corner parsing through our indie books. She had long brown hair parted down the middle, thick eyebrows and thicker gsses that nearly swallowed her brown irises, a single stud in her nose and five in each ear, and a choker with a heart-pendant around her throat. She wore a pin bck tank-top and a long orange skirt, and her lips were painted blue. For some reason… For whatever reason, I wanted to keep looking at her. I wasn’t sure why. I wasn’t into girls, no matter how hard I’d tried to be over the years.

  But still… Something about this girl…

  I remember thinking, oh what the hell, why not? I do work here, after all.

  “Hi there,” I said, slowly walking up to her. Not that I ever moved any other way with my fat fucking ass. “Anything I can help you find?”

  She looked at me, squinted and raised her eyebrows at the same time. Felt like she was cutting directly through me. Then she held up the book in her hands- some graphic novel with cheerleaders on the cover- and said, “No thanks, I’m all set.”

  Her voice was… Deeper than I’d expected it to be.

  I flinched. At the time, I wasn’t sure why I did that, but… But I did. Hindsight, as they say, is twenty-fucking-twenty. It clicked in my mind then, that I was talking to a transwoman. I hadn’t even considered the possibility going into this interaction. Up until that point… I’d never knowingly interacted with one. I remember thinking a lot of thoughts I’m now incredibly ashamed of, namely, I wouldn’t have guessed it if you hadn’t said anything.

  Yeah, I know. Fucking asshole, fucking bigoted piece of shit waste of space fatass worthless idiot bastard. That’s what I was. What I am.

  I flinched.

  And she noticed me flinch.

  The scowl erupted on her face without hesitation. She shoved the book into my fbby chest and said, “Oh, fuck you!”

  She stormed away, smming the door behind her as she tore past the teenager my uncle had been helping.

  I wanted to cry, but the tears remained damned behind my eyes.

  I spent the rest of my shift in an incoherent haze, barely processing anything happening around me. I kept the graphic novel the girl had been parsing through on my person the entire time, and finally, as the sun set and Paul began taking inventory, I started flipping through it myself.

  It was the story of two cheerleaders falling in love: one a cis lesbian, the other a trans lesbian. And inside me, something…something flowered. Something came alive. In the gss of the front desk, I saw my pupils dite while flipping through the book, while my hands trembled and my heart rate shot up.

  “Everything alright?” Uncle Paul asked.

  I smmed the graphic novel closed. “Yup!” I said, too quickly, too forcefully.

  He gave me a skeptical look, but I didn’t blink, didn’t say anything. Finally, he sighed out his mouth and said, “Alright, if you insist. Ready to go home?”

  I nodded.

  The whole ride home, I said nothing. I went straight to my room when we got back, and turned on my computer to search up anything I could find about trans people.

  It was a very, very long night. The amount of hate directed at trans people was fucking terrifying: entire political ptforms based around persecuting them, websites devoted to discerning ways to out trans people in public, articles about how to trick trans girls into sleeping with you…it was a lot. And the closer I looked, the more familiar what these girls went through sounded to me.

  I hated my body. I always had. It was a disgusting, hairy, bloated monstrosity of a flesh-prison, and I spent half of every day wishing it was different.

  But I needed to know more. Being trans meant a life vastly more difficult than the one I was living already. So I researched, and I found myself looking for stories like mine.

  I found comics.

  Webcomics, mostly. Stories of girls figuring out that they were girls and learning to live their lives. Some were wholesome, some were tragic, others still were somewhere in between. But they all had one thing in common: they conjured a warm, stirring feeling in my chest and my stomach, like water slowly coming to a gentle boil. Thawing me out after I’d been frozen for so long.

  For my entire life, it felt like.