My Cardboard Balcony

Let The Paramour Wear Gold by Belinda Roddie Love took the shape of a snake in the bathtub, scaring the color out of an old lady's face. It curled in cursive on a post-it note stuck to a textbook belonging to the college professor. When it got too cold, it wound itself around someone's throat, trying to be a scarf but instead tightening like a noose. And you were there, and you saw how it struggled to take a form that was gentle and elegant and charming and refined, all in the same hour, at the same damn time.

Joshua's teachers were quick to assume that he was "on the spectrum," but the fact of the matter was that he was just very introverted and terrified of public speaking. He much preferred to sit at his desk or in the library, reading a new book that his father had bought him from the bookstore, or finishing his homework and scratching away at his dittos whistling to himself. The second fact that he was transgender did not help matters, and he would rather stay quiet so as not to expose his identity in any way at his new school.