Page 52 of Leaving the Station
She sighs. “I’ve spent the past six months living my life in a way where the only thing I’ve cared about was knowing the truth. Findinganswers.” She shakes her head, and a strand of hair falls in front of her face. “And because of that, things have sucked, but it’s meant that I’m not living a lie. I’ve now read every single book I was told not to my whole life, all the ‘anti-Mormon’ literature my parents warned me about. And you know what that ‘anti-Mormon’ literature has been? History. Thetruth.” She blinks hard at this.“So when I see someone who’s lying for their own convenience, yeah, it pisses me off.”
“What did you find?” I ask, and when Oakley gives me aconfused look, I add, “You said you only cared about finding answers—what were they?”
She closes her eyes. I know now that when she does this, she’s formulating a response in her head.
It’s funny what you can learn about someone in a couple of days.
“That deconstructing the beliefs you had about the religion you grew up in means losing all the good parts too.” She’s looking down at her hands. “That it means I don’t have a path laid out before me like I once did, or the hope of an eternal family. Nothing is promised to me anymore, because all those promises were tied up in a religion that I now know is racist and homophobic and sexist. And yet Istillcan’t make my brain understand that it’s for the best.”
I don’t know what to say. I’ve never deconstructed a religion. I’ve never had beliefs that strong about anything.
But when I think back on my life in recent months—or, more specifically, Alden—a part of me understands.
“Was it better than living a lie?” I ask, because I need to know.
Oakley’s eyes are still closed. I’m about to repeat myself when she says, “Yes. The knowing is always better.” She nods, agreeing with herself. “You can’t go back, can’t get rid of that knowledge. But at least now you get to find out who you are in the knowing.”
The way she said it all in the second person wasn’t lost on me. It could’ve been subconscious or maybe she really was opening the door for me to talk.
“Did you find who you are in the knowing?”
“I’m trying.”
“Me too.”
If she’s surprised by this, she doesn’t let on. “What do you know now, then, that you didn’t before?”
She asks it so casually that it disarms me. Or maybe it wasn’t that question in particular but the past day on the train with her in such close proximity.
Either way, against all odds, I answer half honestly.
“That I might not be who I thought I was,” I tell her. “In regard to my gender, I mean.”
It’s the first time I’ve said anything like that out loud.
“That’s big.” She says offhandedly, her tone not matching her words.
“It is.”
“How’d you come to that conclusion?” Oakley’s expression is curious, and even though my whole body is tense, it’s not because of her. She has a way of asking questions that makes me want to answer with the whole truth.
But this whole truth is a hard one, one I’m not even certain I can articulate. So I go with the version of the truth I can give her right now.
“I’m still figuring it out,” I tell her. “But part of it was because of someone I knew at school.”
It’s the world’s biggest understatement. Calling Alden “someone I knew at school” is like Juliet calling Romeo “a guy my dad doesn’t like.”
But Oakley just nods and stretches, accepting my answer for what it is: a start.
Seven Weeks into College
It was a bright, cloudless day at the orchard. We parked in a large open field surrounded by trees whose final leaves of the season were barely hanging on, the last gasps of autumn in every shade of orange, green, and red.
I hadn’t wanted to leave my dorm to do anything,let alone go apple picking, but Alden had borrowed his uncle’s car for the weekend, and he wanted to put it to use. He planned out a whole day for us, which I would’ve thought was sweet if I wasn’t hyperfocused on my body, and his, and the decidedly non-girlfriend-like ways I was thinking about both.
The farm was packed with couples and families. Everywhere I looked there were tall boyfriends in flannel shirts and Cornell hats who’d been brought to the orchard by their tiny girlfriends in adorable athleisure sets.
And then there was the two of us.
