As most things when they were no longer needed, the farm had been auctioned off, along with the animals it housed. Most had probably been sold for slaughter, as Orion had always planned. During his life, he’d been responsible for providing the community with meat and dairy products. He had taken this job very seriously. Each of his sons, beginning at the age of ten, would accompany their father to prepare the animals for slaughter. Monty had heard stories from his brothers of how it felt to neglect the animals, tag their ears, line them up to enter the darkened van. Everybody knew what happened to farm animals when they were taken away. Everybody pretended they didn’t.

Since moving in with Zina, Monty had been legally adopted by the woman. She’d taken to bringing him along to appointments with her gender specialist, who was an understanding cisgender man who listened to what Monty had to say. It still felt strange to be listened to with openness, to speak his mind without feeling anxious of the repercussions. That morning, Monty had been given the go ahead from the specialist to begin his medical transition, and he felt both excited and nervous.

Zina clicked her keys in her hand outside the gender clinic, speaking under her breath on the phone to her husband. Zina had been married for a year, and seemed to be unhappy. She always spoke to Atticus with downturned eyes, wary of what he’d have to say next. Monty had become more observant and empathetic in the past year, learning to speak up and becoming better at standing up to others.

“I told you it wouldn’t take long.”

Zina unlocked her small smart car, throwing her purse into the back seat. Monty held a prescription in his hands for a vial of testosterone and a bag of needles. He’d seen Zina do her shots. He was afraid of needles.

“Thank you.” Monty had a lot to thank his sister for. She’d given him a place to stay, and healthy meals, and a listening ear, and permission to transition. At seventeen years old, there wasn’t much he could do without permission from a legal guardian - and Zina was the motherly figure he had always longed for. “I can’t believe I’ll finally get to be a boy.”

Alma’s death, according to the coroner who examined her, had been quick and traumatizing: lack of oxygen to the brain caused by restriction of the airways. Though it was obvious she’d been attacked, there was no trace of a perpetrator at the scene. Monty had been told of the scrubbing away of the fingerprints on Alma’s body and the footprints in the carpet of her apartment. Esther, who had woken to a quiet room, had run up two flights of stairs to Joseph’s apartment after she was unable to wake her sister from sleep.

“You seem sad,” Monty said late the night before, when Zina returned home from work. “What’s wrong?”

Zina often returned home from work looking sad. Monty imagined he would too, if he worked in a job where he watched people die. It wasn’t as if Zina saw a lot of deaths: but she knew of the ones that there were. Removing her heavy orange jacket, she’d sighed. “I’m just tired.” Monty hadn’t believed this. Zina wasn’t one to unpack her emotional struggles on him.

She waited in the car while Monty picked up his prescription. He felt self-conscious, standing in line outside the small pharmacy, worried how he would be received by the pharmacists. Zina had picked up her estrogen vials from this pharmacy many times, and nobody had ever said anything.

Monty was starting the twelfth grade. It seemed pointless to attend a public school for only a single year, but Zina insisted it would be good for him to make friends. On weekends and during the summers, he worked part-time at a fast food restaurant, where he had made several acquaintances, but didn’t seem to fit in. Monty felt he didn’t truly fit in anywhere. Perhaps one day, when he was older and had learned to feel at home in his body, the feeling of fitting in wouldn’t matter so much.

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Until recently, Monty had assumed everybody had their lives together except for him. The more time he spent with Zina, the more he realized this simply wasn’t true

“Does it hurt to give yourself a needle?”

Zina had been doing it for four years. For her, it had become as second-nature as brushing her teeth in the morning. She’d finished her phone call, and listened to a music playlist when Monty returned to the car. “I don’t like needles.”

He’d been given other options. There were patches, gels, creams; Zina’s specialist said injections would give him the most consistent results. She turned the music down, took a sip from her travel thermos. “I can give you the first one if you want. It takes a little bit of getting used to.”

More than anything, Monty disliked his hips. He had a very distinct image in his head: how he hoped to look in five years, how he dreamed all his life of looking like. Zina, on their way to the pharmacy, had suggested he not get too caught up in his end goal, and to focus on celebrating every little milestone. Everyone had to start somewhere. At some point, even Zina had been clocked in public.

He examined his new vial. It was small; a piece of paper with his medical information hung off the side. Someday, he would never see his birth name anywhere again. “Yeah, maybe.” Since Alma’s death, Monty had fallen victim to frequent nightmares. They were always dreams of strange things: being chased by monster cats, seeing teeth coming at him from the corner of a book, clouds in the sky opening to swallow him whole. He often woke feeling breathless and confused, needing a moment to remember where he was.

“Zina? How long did it take you to notice changes when you started estrogen?”

Monty knew the timeline was different for everyone. He’d done enough research to know what to expect. Zina wore a short skirt and platform shoes, atypically feminine for a day on the town. “My skin started getting smoother within the first few weeks. In the first few months, my boobs started to grow.”

For a boy who’d been forbidden to speak about bodies growing up, it wasn’t uncomfortable to share these things with Zina. He had many questions, and some had been answered through online forums and transmasculine friends. “Did you track the changes anywhere? I might keep a journal.”

When they arrived home, Atticus was absent. This seemed to leave Zina relieved. “I kept a journal. I still have it, but there aren’t many things to track anymore.” Monty was excited; in his hands, he held the key to self-confidence. “Come here. I’ll show you how to prepare the needle.”

The week before, Zina had taken Monty on a shopping spree, and he’d come home with bags of boyish clothing. Dressing this way left him with a sense of guilt and panic, as though he’d disappoint a Higher Being by wanting to change himself. This, of everything, had been the hardest fear to unpack. Zina had overcome the same fear, and had reassured Monty. He questioned, sometimes, if there was a God. He felt ashamed for thinking this way.

Monty’s new needles were very thin, and came in a small orange bag. Zina disposed of her needles in a Sharps container, which sat on the top shelf of her bookcase, and was nearly full. Monty had a stomach that was chubby and pale, often hidden underneath oversized tee shirts and sweaters. Ripping open the package which contained his new needles, he thrust one at her. “Can you do it for me?”

That summer, Monty had plans to attend pride with Zina. He was eager for this because, not only would it be his first pride celebration, he’d be able to attend it as himself. It had to have meant something, that relief that Monty felt after picking up his hormones. Nobody chose to be transgender, Monty wanted to shout from the rooftops. Some people were just privileged enough to do something about it.

Zina filled the syringe quickly, tapping out the air bubbles before poking the needle quickly into Monty’s stomach. He hadn’t been prepared - he hadn’t had a moment to become anxious. It didn’t hurt. He had expected it to. It felt as though he had been pinched, quickly and tightly, and then the cap of the needle was placed back on to it, the whole thing tossed into the disposal container.

“Today,” said Zina, grinning at the boy, ignoring her husband coming through the front door, “is the first day of the rest of your life.”

If I’m a girl, why do I spend all of my free time imagining what it would be like to be a boy? Mother told me I looked like a boy the other day, and I felt happy about it

Outside of Monty’s small group of transgender friends, nobody understood. The fact of the matter was that you could pretend all you wanted that you understood, but it was impossible to truly do so if you hadn’t lived something yourself.