“Mr. and Mrs. Peterson, please come in and take a seat. And you must be Maya,” said a pleasant, attractive woman with a bob of permed hair as she gestured to her desk.

  The three of us entered what was to be my fifth grade classroom. It was not unfamiliar to me; I had a vague recollection of it from my former timeline, but if anyone asked it was the first time I had ever been there. We were here for the preliminary fifth grade parent/teacher meetings, so that the students could meet their teacher for the first time and the parents could learn who will be in charge of their precious children for the next school year. The classroom had a fresh and friendly feel to it; as if it was being prepared for a room full of children to tear it apart.

  “My name is Ms. Foster, and I’ll be Maya’s teacher for fifth grade,” she stated as we took our seats in front of her desk.

  I searched the memories of my former life, when I was a boy named Matthew, about Ms. Foster. She must have been in her early 30s, and I knew she was married but preferred Ms. She was thin and stern, but not at all unfriendly. In fact, she was quite possibly the most confident modern woman you could ever hope to have as your child’s teacher. I may have had a childhood crush on her when I was Matthew. Now that I was Maya, I doubted I would. Or would I? I squashed thoughts like that and focused.

  “I do want you to know that I have been fully apprised of Maya’s situation. It’s quite unusual, I must say.”

  “Well, you see,” Mom began for the hundredth time, “the doctors say that she may have been born with external male features, but…”

  Ms. Foster raised her hand. “I read her file. It’s unusual, but not something that we can’t work with. Hilldale is perfectly fine with making accommodations to fit her needs. I’ve even been in touch with your caseworker, Dr. Walters.”

  “Dr. Walters has been very helpful working with us,” said Dad.

  “I imagine so.” Ms. Foster turned to me. “Hello Maya, I’m sure this has been very difficult for you.”

  “You have no idea.”

  Ms. Foster smiled. “I know that you’ve had to explain to people your situation and your transition for months now, but I think I know how we’ll be able to handle it in September. We’ll get it over with so that we can move on from it. Does that sound good?”

  I nodded.

  “Well then, let’s see,” stared Ms. Foster, opening up her folder. “My records say that the registration officially lists Maya as a girl, and even has her correct name. That’s good. The next step will be…” she trailed off onto a bunch of official-sounding terms and matters of business that I wasn’t expected to follow. Yet another example of the mundane realities of being stuck as a child: being talked over while expected to sit patiently.

  The first day of school was going to be bustling, as it usually was. I steeled myself for an ordeal, and mentally I had been preparing for days before. On the morning of, I wore a light green t-shirt with a small amount of frill on the sleeves and a pair of jean shorts. Every stitch of my clothing down to my socks was for girls, but it was just neutral enough to not attract attention. I had only grown about two inches of hair, so while it was a bit longer it was not particularly long enough to be a girl’s cut. Mom had said it would be a while before we would be able to trim it. I looked pretty ambiguous, for the most part.

  Tim was starting second grade, and it was my job to walk him to school. Mom took the usual back-to-school photos, and gave us both hugs before we went out the door. She whispered a few words of encouragement to me, which I appreciated. We got to the end of the street and turned right, and we bumped into my friend Randy. I hadn’t seen much of him lately, mostly because I hadn’t been actively playing with the neighbor kids, but I knew he was in Ms. Foster’s class with me.

  “Hey, dude,” Randy greeted.

  “Hey, Randy,” I responded.

  He looked at my shirt quizzically. “That’s kind of a weird shirt. That’s not a – I mean, are you wearing a girl’s –”

  “It’s just a shirt Mom got me,” I said quickly, cutting him off. “We’d better get to school or else we’ll be late.”

  Randy clammed up, and kept pace with me but not really saying much. Tim was under orders to not say anything about me, though I saw that it was a strain for him to not mention anything about my clothes. I just kept mum because I knew what was coming, and I wasn’t about to deal with that stuff before I had to.

  When we arrived at Hilldate, Tim wandered off to the second grade classrooms while Randy and I went to our own. I recognized a lot of the students, and they were already socializing and putting their things away. The desks all had name cards, and when I saw MAYA PETERSON I quietly flipped it over before Randy could see it. I dumped my backpack and lunchbox in my cubby, and sat at my desk numbly, trying to force myself to not be nervous. It was going to be fine, I thought to myself. Besides, who cares what a bunch of kids thought? Somehow that didn’t make me feel better.

  Eventually Ms. Foster settled the class down, while we listened to the morning announcements over the intercom. She did the roll call, going in alphabetical order and giving each student a smile as she said their name. I was towards the end, and there was a bit of a commotion when Ms. Foster called out, “Maya Peterson,” and I raised my hand. I could feel most of the class, who I had had in previous years, do a double take. Ms. Foster simply continued with the list and ignored the murmurs.

  “Matt, why did the teacher call you Maya?” whispered Randy, who was sitting on my left.

  “Because I changed it. It’s my name now,” I replied matter-of-factly.

  Ms. Foster, who had been listening in, set aside the student list when she was finished. “I understand that there is a little confusion about one of our students. They have changed their name from Matthew to Maya, and that’s the name we are going to use in class.”

  A boy in the back, an oily kid named Josh, snickered. “But that’s a girl’s name!” A few kids giggled along with him.

  I was thankful that I had the composure of an adult brain, because the reaction of the class probably would have crumbled the average kid. Some of the students chuckled, but a lot seemed very confused. I could hear the students whispering to each other while studying me intently. I pushed the butterflies in my stomach down and reminded myself that they were just children and there was no point in getting upset.

  Ms. Foster let the moment fill the room before settling the class down. “That’s right. Maya is a girl, and always has been. And because of this, we will be referring to her as a girl. All of the teachers are aware of this, as well as your parents, and if you would like you can always ask Maya or myself any respectful questions privately. With that out of the way, we’re going to pass out our reading textbooks.”

  The rest of the morning went on as usual after that sudden news, though I could tell that some of the kids were still whispering among themselves and gesturing at me. After about the first hour of class, the whispering had ceased and the other students were focused on their coursework. All in all, it wasn’t as painful as I thought it was going to be, but I knew that would still be a hassle to deal with. While it was a relief openly being female, a major problem remained. I would still have to sit through fifth grade again. Every day for the next year. I could already feel the boredom weighing down my eyelids.

  The first month of fifth grade was rough. There has been a few bouts of complaints from some parents, but the faculty dealt with them professionally. The coursework, naturally, was easy. Technically, this was my second time going through fifth grade, and with the memories of my previous life in my 10-year-old brain, school was simple. Tortuously simple. In my previous life I had had a college education and a penchant for trivia; it took a grand total of five minutes to complete a math worksheet. Sitting in class everyday, bored out of my mind, was a test in patience. My mind wandered often.

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  While being stuck at my desk all day was the bulk of my misery, I was still getting used to being a girl. Or rather, getting used to being “that girl who used to be that boy we knew since Kindergarten.” While I knew that my circumstances came from some sort of cosmic time traveling mishap, the official story was that I was born a biological female, but had been mistaken for a boy until recently. It was the hypothesis that the doctors settled on, and that was the story I went with.

  I often spent time by myself during school, as the other students tended to avoid me. On rare occasions students interacted with me, they peppered me with questions, being particularly frank. Adults took my youth as an excuse for me not realizing my gender had mysteriously changed, but the children would have very targeted questions for me when no one else was listening.

  “Matt, er, Maya, why do you want to be a girl?” They would ask.

  “It’s not a choice, I’m a girl whether I like it or not,” I would reply simply.

  “Did you have a…thing…before?”

  “When I was little, it looked like a thing,” I lied. “But it wasn’t. I got older, and it went away. Now I have…the other thing.”

  “But didn’t you know?”

  I would shrug. “Everyone kept saying I was a boy, so I thought I was. Then the doctors told me I was actually a girl.”

  “So where did your dick go?”

  I would throw up my hands. “I don’t have one!”

  The story still sounded hollow to my ears, but I had to stick to the story that I was some type of intersex person until late in my childhood. Obviously they wouldn’t know what that was, but if they had a better theory they were welcome to it. Instead of mysteriously being transported back in time and into a different body, I was some type of unique medical case; I’m sure there were doctors writing papers about me right that second.

  Eventually the questions ceased, and the more mundane realities of a fifth grade schedule took hold. I became a sort of pariah in my classroom. Boys that I had known for years, including my best friend Randy, kept their distance. I was no longer “one of the boys” even if I had never been particularly popular. Matthew had never been an athlete or a cool kid, but this new girl Maya was an unknown quantity. Familiar, but not in the tribe.

  If the boys were aloof, it was nothing compared to the coldness from the girls. They had known Matthew as just another one of the boys who would occasionally tease or bother them. But suddenly, now that particular boy claimed they were a girl, one of them. The sheer audacity, I could imagine, of me claiming to be one of them was pretty off-putting. What hurt most is that, mentally speaking, they were right. I constantly felt like a pretender as I sat acting like a child in a classroom.

  While my mind may have been out of sync with 1991, my body was constantly at odds with my brain. I would observe the girls in their cliques and groups, and a pang of loneliness would hit me. I dismissed it, assuring myself that they were just children, but my body retorted and asserted that I was a child, and what’s more a girl like them. It wanted to run around and be accepted, despite the logical reasoning my brain offered. In fact, if I was becoming used to being female, and furthermore a young female, why shouldn’t I be one?

  Ms. Foster, to her credit, noticed that I was isolated in the classroom. She usually assigned the groups, and I was always placed with other girls. Perhaps Ms. Foster thought that I needed more exposure to interacting with girls of my own age. If I was being quite honest, I preferred when I was grouped with girls. I had a sense of security, and felt like I related more to the calmer nature of the girls than the rambunctiousness of the boys. In my previous life I had a bit of a temper, but this time around I didn’t usually get aggressive or angry. I was far more pliant in my girlhood than I was during my boyhood.

  Near the end of September, there was a particular morning when I caught the ire of Josh, a smarmy little kid who I hadn’t been friends with even when I was Matthew. He had been unable to answer a particular question in social studies, and when Ms. Foster called on me next I lazily answered the question. I think he took it personally, since I noticed him giving me dirty looks for the rest of the morning. When lunch time hit, I could hear him laughing and throwing out my name at the boy’s table.

  At recess I sat off to the side by myself. This was pretty normal for me, since I wasn’t interested in running around in the playground. I usually found one of the benches and when I remembered to, I smuggled in a book and just waited until recess was over. As I sat in the shade lost in the book I had chosen, I noticed I was suddenly surrounded by four of the boys in my class, led by that shifty Josh.

  The boys loomed over me, and I had a pang of helplessness. Not for the first time did I feel especially small, but I squashed that feeling and reminded myself that these were just a bunch of dumb kids. It felt hollow, because I was also just some kid, even if I wasn’t dumb. To make matters worse, there was only one of me and a gang of them. I steeled myself as best I could.

  “Well well, if it isn’t the little book girl,” Josh sneered. “Enjoying your book?”

  “It’s fine,” I replied, meeting his eyes.

  “Or maybe it’s book boy? Which one is it, are you a little book boy or a little book girl?”

  “You know that I’m a girl.” The tenseness of the situation made me refer to myself as a girl without a second thought.

  “Maybe you’re just a sissy whose dick fell off,” said Josh, as the other boys chuckled.

  “I’m not a sissy, but yeah, I don’t have a dick. Because I’m a girl.” I had raised my voice at that last bit, and saw a few heads on the playground turn in our direction.

  “So you say,” replied Josh. “It’s not like anyone has seen it for themselves.”

  I leaned back on the bench and gave a theatrical sigh. “So wait, you want me to pull down my pants so you can see? Gross, Josh. You’re gross. And weird.”

  One of Josh’s goons interjected, “Yeah Josh, that’s kind of weird.”

  Josh was livid. “She’s weird! She just up and changes her name like whatever, and then brags about how smart she is!?”

  A few students had wandered over to the commotion, and I came up with an idea of how to get out of this situation. I raised my voice once again. “So do I have to fight you guys now? Who do I have to fight first?”

  That was not something that the boys expected to hear. After a few beats, Josh responded with “You can’t fight us, there’s four of us.”

  “Actually, the teachers gave me permission to fight,” I lied.

  “That’s not true,” one of the thugs retorted.

  “It actually is. You know that girls don’t actually get into trouble when they fight boys, but boys get into a lot of trouble if they fight a girl. Especially if there are a lot of boys fighting one girl. People will say they’re wimps because they needed four boys to fight one girl.”

  The boys looked at each other nervously, trying to digest the story I was feeding them. I took the moment to stand up, looking down at Josh. I had a good three inches on him; at age ten a girl typically had a physical advantage over a boy, since they tended to hit puberty earlier. It’s probably one of the last times in their lives that a girl can intimidate their male peers. I noticed that a few more kids were wandering over to see what was happening.

  “You wanna go first?” I asked Josh squarely. “I don’t want to fight, Josh, but if we do, just remember that either you win and get into huge trouble fighting a girl, or I win and it looks really bad for you. Plus, I don’t get into trouble. But like I said, I don’t want to fight. Especially in front of all these other kids.”

  Josh jerked his head around, noticing the crowd of boys and girls that was starting to gather. Even his three cronies backed away a little bit. Josh waved his hand and turned around quickly.

  “I don’t want to fight some girl anyway,” he mumbled, and made his way over to the merry-go-round with his friends following closely behind. The crowd, finding nothing interesting, began to disperse and I sat back down on the bench. While I had kept my cool, the palms of my hands were sweaty and I took a deep breath. That probably could have ended up much worse; it still could, I reminded myself nervously. I was really going to have to be on guard.

  “Did the teachers really say that?”

  I looked up, and saw Randy standing there. It was the first time he had spoken to me in weeks. “Say what?” I asked.

  “That girls are allowed to fight and won’t get into trouble?” asked Randy. “Because I really wanted to see Josh get punched for picking on a girl all by herself.”

  I chuckled. “No, they didn’t say that. But it’s not like he knows that. Boys don’t know anything and they just assume girls get treated better by teachers.”

  “I can’t believe you picked a fight and they backed off,” observed Randy.

  I shrugged. “I don’t want to fight anyone. I just want them to leave me alone, I guess.”

  A whistle blew from the other side of the playground, signaling that it was time to line up and go back inside. I stood up and we walked to our respective lines – Randy to the boys’, and myself to the girls’.

  “Matt – I mean Maya, if you want to, we could hang out after class today.”

  I gave him a shy smile. “Sounds like a plan.”