Chapter Text
“From a young age, Adam Jacobs knew he was different from the rest of his family. His older brothers, Nate and Aaron, had excelled at sports since elementary school. Despite his parents enrolling him in every sport known to man, Adam never found one that he liked. Or was good at. He hated going to practice, going to games, all of it. He would try every possible excuse to get out of going.”
“Dad, I don’t feel good.”
“Mom, I have a lot of homework.”
“Last week they told us practice was cancelled today.”
“As he got older, Adam’s differences from the rest of his family only grew wider. In fifth grade, he had to start wearing glasses. His father blamed video games and took them away from Adam for a month. In retaliation, Adam refused to participate in that week’s softball practice.”
“Come on Adam, go out there and practice your pitch with the others,” the coach encouraged.
“No thanks,” Adam replied, reading a fantasy book from home.
“Adam, it wasn’t a request. Come on, you’re part of the team.”
“I don’t want to be part of the team.”
Eventually the coach gave up and left Adam alone for the rest of practice.
“Adam’s dad, Cal, was angry when he picked Adam up that day, but he still refused to participate until he got his games back.”
“I will throw that thing in the trash if you don’t honor your commitment to that team!” Cal told Adam after the second time Adam had sat out practice.
“I don’t want to be on the stupid team!” Adam yelled back.
“By the end of elementary school, Cal had given up on trying to make Adam an athlete like his older brothers. Adam saw his father retreat from his life, until sometimes entire days would pass without the two ever talking. And that was okay with Adam. They were just too different.”
“If Adam’s relationship with his dad was strained, his relationship to his brothers was worse. Aaron and Nate would mock him about how bad he was at sports, or his glasses, or his interests. His brothers would hide his video games or books to mess with him, sometimes keeping them for days at a time. One time Adam tried to hide one of Nate’s jerseys for revenge, but he stopped after Nate hit him.”
“Do something like that again, and next time it will be worse,” Nate told Adam, who was crying on the floor.
“Adam had a black eye for the next few weeks. His mother wanted to punish Nate, but Cal told her it was just boys being boys. Eventually, Aaron and Nate mostly stopped picking on Adam as they got older. Like their dad, they just started ignoring him. That was fine with Adam too. He thought he liked feeling invisible.”
“The differences between the brothers grew even more pronounced as they got older. Adam was by far the shortest member of the Jacobs family. He stopped growing when he was 5’4”. Nate was over a foot taller than Adam, and the rest of his family was six inches or more taller than him. Nate or Aaron would occasionally make jokes about it, but Adam didn’t mind. He saw the way people looked at Nate and Aaron. Especially Nate. To his face, people would act like they liked Nate, like he was the coolest guy and everyone wanted to spend time with him. But Adam saw how some people avoided him or left a room when he walked in. They were afraid of Nate. No one was ever afraid of Adam. Why would they be? He was small. And no one expected him to do ‘manly’ things, which were usually things he didn’t want to do anyway.”
“Nate, Aaron, come help me unload the truck,” Cal ordered. They left, Nate shooting Adam a judgmental glance as Adam and his mother were left alone at the dinner table.
“Until high school, Adam was never really passionate about anything. He was good at school, but he wouldn’t say he liked it or hated it. It was just a thing he had to do. He liked fantasy and sci-fi video games, TV shows, movies, and books, but it wasn’t like his life revolved around them or anything. Not like how his brothers’ lives revolved around sports. But then, in his first year of high school at East Highland, Adam auditioned for the school’s production of A Christmas Carol.”
Adam saw a throng of kids surrounding the casting decisions. He leaned against the wall to wait until the crowd thinned out, but then another freshman, Lexi Howard, came out of the crowd and walked up to him.
“Congratulations!” she told him.
“Oh, who did I get?” Adam asked, surprised. He hadn’t thought his audition was very good.
“Young Scrooge!” Lexi said. “I checked role because I got Fan,” she explained.
“Congrats! Looks like we’re siblings,” Adam said. It would be nice to have a sibling he actually liked.
“Looks like it. See you later, brother,” Lexi laughed as she left the theater room.
“At first, Adam was apprehensive about the rehearsal schedule. It reminded him a lot of his sports practice schedule. But to his surprise, he fell in love with it.”
“I can’t believe I said yes to this,” Adam said as BB grabbed her eyeliner. Lexi had asked her to help with make-up for the play.
“Stop complaining. I had to practice on someone,” BB said, turning back to him and starting to do his eyeliner. “And stop moving! God, your worse than Kat.”
“I’ve never-“
“I said stop moving!” BB said, holding his face in place with one hand while she kept working with the other. Adam sat quietly as BB finished putting on the make-up. She stood up to examine her work as Lexi walked into the dressing room.
“You look adorable,” Lexi said, grinning. Adam turned in the chair to look in the dressing room mirror. “Great job BB.”
“I think Maddy would be jealous,” BB laughed. The two kept talking while Adam stared at his face in the mirror. BB had been practicing make-up for Belle, young man Scrooge’s love interest. Adam had never had make-up put on him before. Seeing his face like this made him feel… weird. Not bad, but weird. What did make him feel bad was the stubble he could see on his chin and neck. It usually didn’t bother him, but something felt wrong seeing it contrasted with the make-up.
“Alright, let’s get you cleaned up,” BB said, grabbing Adam’s shoulders and turning him back to her. Adam felt oddly disappointed as she cleaned his face with a make-up wipe, although he didn’t know why.
“Adam did all three of the school’s shows every year. He spent more than half of the school year with daily rehearsals, but it never bothered him. For the first time in his life, there was something he was passionate about. He loved rehearsal and performing, but most of all he loved the other theater kids. For the first time in his life, Adam had what felt like a family. None of them cared that he wasn’t tall or that he needed glasses or that he wasn’t athletic. They liked him for who he was.”
“Hey, I checked out that book series you were talked about,” Ethan said as he found Adam backstage. Ethan had done tech work for A Christmas Carol and kept coming back for each show.
“Mistborn?” Adam asked.
“Yeah! I’m really liking the first book,” Ethan said, pulling it out of his backpack.
“How far are you?” Adam asked excitedly. He’d never succeeded in getting anyone else to read Mistborn before.
“Of his family, only Adam’s mom would attend any of his shows. Well, except for that one-time Nate and some players from the football team came to a show drunk. Sometimes Adam would feel jealous that his dad somehow made time for all of Nate and Aaron’s games, but he usually tried not to think about.”
“Then, on the first day of his junior year, Adam met a girl named Jules.
“And he fell completely in love with her.”
“Alright class, turn to a neighbor and introduce yourself,” the English teacher said.
“Hi, I’m Adam,” he said, turning to the girl to his left. She had light blond hair that was dyed pink at the ends, and her eyes were highlighted by light blue eye shadow
“Jules, nice to meet you,” she replied, shaking Adam’s hand. He saw a bandage on his left arm, and then he realized who she was.
“Hey, I’m really sorry about what happened between you and Nate at the party,” Adam said sheepishly. He found himself hoping she wouldn’t hate him because of who his family was.
“Oh, you heard about that?” she asked. It clearly wasn’t the first time someone had talked about it.
“Yeah… Nate’s my brother,” Adam said, feeling his face go red. “But, I hate him, so…” he followed-up quickly before she could say anything.
“That makes two of us,” Jules laughed.
“You’re not going to hold it against me?” he asked.
“Something tells me you’re different,” she replied, smiling at him.
“Adam found himself looking for excuses to spend time with Jules. He would talk to her most days in their English class, and, much to Adam’s excitement, one time they were paired up on a project.”
Adam sat with his back against Jules’ bed as he typed on his laptop. Jules was laying on her bed tapping away on her phone.
“Who are you talking to?” Adam asked as he worked on their presentation. He didn’t really mind that Jules didn’t help much; he just liked spending time with her.
“Just some guy,” Jules said. Adam turned to her, and she was smiling at her phone. He expected to feel jealous, but for some reason he didn’t. He was just happy to see Jules happy.
“How’d you guys meet?” he asked.
“Uh…” Jules said, turning to Adam and grinning. “No comment,” she said finally, sticking her tongue out slightly. Adam thought it was the most adorable thing he’d ever seen.
“There’s no shame in using Tinder,” he guessed.
“Sure, let’s go with that,” Jules giggled, going back to texting.
“Adam tried to convince Jules to audition for theater, mostly as an excuse to spend more time with her, but she wasn’t interested. He knew Jules was talking to someone, and he was a generally shy person anyway, so he never tried to get any closer to her than he already was. But he caught himself staring at her walking in the hallways or sitting for lunch. He was always afraid she would notice, but she never did.”
“He sometimes found himself dreaming about Jules too. Most of the time he just dreamed about being with her, but sometimes…”
Adam hopped off his bike when he got home and walked inside. He went to the kitchen to grab a glass of water, where he saw Nate sitting at the dinner table. Nate looked up at him, surprised.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“I live here,” Adam replied flippantly, grabbing a glass from a cupboard.
“And when did that start?” Nate asked, getting up and walking over to him. Sometimes Adam forgot how big Nate was.
“Nate, what are you..” Adam started to respond before he saw his reflection in a mirror in the dining room.
Adam was Jules.
Adam’s eyes snapped open as he woke up. Breathing heavily, he looked down and saw that he was still himself.
He didn’t know why, but he felt disappointed.
“Jules started avoiding Adam after the night of the carnival. He didn’t know why, but he suspected it was because of what Nate did Maddy. He didn’t blame Jules; he was afraid of Nate too. Adam gave Jules the space she wanted, but he kept thinking about her more and more. He started dreaming about her almost every night. He didn’t know why. He’d never had a crush like this before, and no matter what he did he couldn’t get Jules out of his head.”
“And then, on the night of the Winter Formal, Adam saw Jules and I dancing. And suddenly, he realized why he felt the way he did about Jules. His chest tightened and he had trouble breathing. Finally, he figured out why he couldn’t stop thinking about her.”
“Adam wasn’t obsessed with Jules because he wanted to be with her.”
“Adam was obsessed with Jules because he wanted to be her.”
“Adam, what’s wrong?” Ethan asked him. A bunch of kids from theater had gone to the formal as a group.
“Uh, I, um…” Adam stumbled over his words. He had no idea what to say. “I have to go,” he said simply, walking out of the dance.
“When Adam got home, he had a panic attack. He locked himself in his room and spent hours trying to calm down. While he’d never been particularly masculine, Adam had never questioned his gender identity. But the more he thought about it, the more he realized how right the image of himself as a Jules, as a girl, felt. And that thought, and everything it implied, terrified him. He didn’t know what to do. He tried to push the thought aside and couldn’t. He wanted to talk to someone but didn’t know who. He felt completely isolated.”
Adam slid to the floor of his room with his back against the door. He felt tears in his eyes as he breathed rapidly. He clenched his fists so hard his nails dug into the palm of his hand and he started to bleed, but nothing could distract him from thinking about this new revelation.
“Adam couldn’t get the feeling out of his head over winter break. Soon, it became all he could think about. He played out telling each member of his family over and over again in his head, but he couldn’t see how any of it could go well. He did imagine plenty of ways it could go badly. Maybe very badly.”
“Ultimately, his thoughts kept coming back to Jules. He thought she must be the only person at East Highland who would understand how he was feeling, who had been through what he was going through and come out on the other side of it. If he could just talk to Jules, she could tell him what to do.”
“Like me, Adam came to pin all his hopes on Jules. I hope it goes better for him.”