“You good?” Karey grins at me.
My mouth full of water I’m too breathless to swallow, I nod.
“You’ll be glad when we get to the tournament,” she promises. “Which reminds me”—she tugs the end of Melissa’s ponytail—“remind me to post the link for registration. I need full names, numbers, and genders to give the refs, and if I don’t get that link posted soon then everyone is going to forget to fill it out.”
“Well, you know most of the team, right?” I ask.
“Yeah, but people change.” Karey shrugs. “Erin wasn’t out as nonbinary until spring semester this year. I could make assumptions, but I’d rather not.”
“Oh really?” I ask too quickly, uncool in my eagerness to be cool about knowing people with nonbinary genders outside of the internet. “Have I been using the wrong pronouns?”
“Social media says she’s still using ‘she’ and ‘her.’” Karey says. “But like I said, things change.”
I nod too fast, wanting to ask more questions even though it’s probably not cool to grill someone about someone else’s gender.
“I keep seeing posts in S.P.I.F. about the quidditch gender rule,” Melissa says, “but I haven’t seen it in action at all yet. How do the refs manage?”
“With varying degrees of success.” Karey grimaces. “People don’t have time to memorize every roster, but they can double-check with the captains before the game starts so they don’t accidentally misgender people. I also know a lot of folks who just leave it up to the honesty policy. Teams are better at knowing when they have too many people of the same gender on the field. It gets tricky sometimes. I heard about a team in the UK that messed up by putting too many nonbinary players on the field at once, which is probably the only acceptable way to mess up the rule.”
I’m hit with one of those sudden waves of quidditch awe. I knew S.P.I.F. was inclusive, but I’ve never heard of any sport where the rulebook actively encourages—requires!—gender diversity. I spend a lot of time wondering about gender things, relating to Eevie’s posts on Tumblr, and generally going in circles about what I’m feeling, but I always catch myself worrying that if I didn’t know my identity as an absolute fact from birth it must be fake (which I know is not true! But my brain doesn’t listen!). And then here comes the International Quidditch Association (and my team captain) just announcing to the world that gender isn’t always straightforward and static.
Having questions is probably okay. Having options is good for everyone. And a sport that recognizes that people can change? That’s pure magic.
We take our final breaths and head back toward home. Twenty minutes (not even an impressive run) feels like twenty miles to my whiny muscles.
I’m tempted to collapse straight into the slightly overgrown grass in my front yard, but I force myself to walk back and forth, hands laced behind my head, like I’m supposed to.
When Melissa grins and holds out a hand, I slap it with my own and smile. I hate running, but I love finishing a run.
“Do you want to come inside and grab water?” I offer. Melissa nods and starts to follow me inside, but Karey holds up a finger. She’s gasping worse than I am, I realize, her chest rising in short shallow leaps. She digs in her pocket, pulls something out, and holds it up to her mouth. Sucks in a few breaths. Waits.
After her breaths start to come more easily, she catches me staring. “Asthma,” she explains. “It’s usually only bad in the winter, but the allergens have been bothering me this week.” She kicks the ground under our oak tree, disturbing the carpet of yellow-brown pollen clusters. “Nature is truly the worst.”
“I used to have an inhaler,” Melissa says. “When I was way little. Swimming pools bothered me, and I felt like I couldn’t breathe in the water.”
“You’re not supposed to be able to breathe in the water, goof.” Karey laughs. “That’s called drowning.”
Melissa sticks out her tongue and shoves Karey. “Shut up; you know what I mean.”
“Do I, though? You always say that, but I keep proving you wrong.”
They bicker for another minute or so while I stand aside, third-wheeling harder than a wheelbarrow full of tricycles.
Karey’s the one who remembers I exist. “So you’ve known Melissa forever,” she says, and I feel a little bit better even if it might be a pity acknowledgment. “What do you think are the chances that she comes from a family of asthmatic merpeople?”
Before I can think of a clever response, Karey’s laughter turns into a cough.
“Fuck the pollen,” she sighs, checking her phone. “And of course, my little brother hasn’t left to pick me up yet. Do you mind if I take you up on that water?”
“Of course.” I gesture for her to come inside. “And I can give you a ride if it’s easier. I just have to borrow my stepmom’s car—”
“Wait!” Melissa grabs Karey’s arm. “Don’t do that. Um, I’m already driving home anyway. And I have extra water in my car. And you don’t want to go in there, it’s full of homophobic microaggressions. Do you want homophobic vibes in your water? Or do you want to go get rainbow smoothies instead?”
Her voice is jokey, but it doesn’t make me laugh. Like, yeah, I told her Connie was kind of awful today, but I didn’t expect her to call out my whole family in front of Karey just like that. I don’t go around announcing to all our acquaintances that Melissa’s mom has unexamined racist biases. Should I? Is Melissa super mad at me for not fighting harder against Connie this morning? What is happening?
“I feel like the fact that I’m still gay proves that homophobic vibes have no power here.” Karey shrugs, “But you know I’m always weak for smoothies.”
Melissa pulls open the passenger door of her car and tosses her a sweating bottle of water. I stay by the front door, biting my lip, until Karey looks over her shoulder.
“Ellen? Smoothies?”
“Uh, I’m grounded.” And not really invited. And Melissa seems to be actively avoiding eye contact as she slides into the driver’s seat.
“Oh no. Another time?”
“Sure.”
The car pulls away and I stomp through the front door, face burning with embarrassment and confusion. And there’s Connie, peering out the front window like a ninety-year-old busybody.
“That’s Karey?” Connie asks. Her voice is unnaturally neutral, and within it hide a thousand judgments. “With the shaved head?”
I wheel to face her. “Yeah, so what? God, I can’t believe you.”