Page 80 - North Star Magazine 2022

You don’t look like River.
The voice in my head stopped me completely and I turned my body from side to side, squinting. I didn’t look like me. I looked like [xxx], posing in a new dress before going out on a date, long hair flowing down my shoulders and skin completely unmarked. This wasn’t me, it had never been me, and yet it had. It was her, whoever I was before I realized my life was a lie, whoever I was before this feeling stood up and screamed at me to be different.
The reflection before me seemed to shimmer and everything that had been beautiful about the dress melted into nothing, leaving me trying to claw my way out of a black straight jacket.
Too feminine, too pretty, too much too much too much too much.
I threw the dress over my head with a gasp and watched it fall to the floor, suddenly nothing more than a heap of mesh and satin. The figure in the mirror watched me with amusement, mirroring me yet not. All at the same time.
“I can be pretty if I want to be,” I told my reflection. They mouthed the words in tandem, but had no voice to contribute.
“I can wear dresses and still be River.” I don’t exactly sound convinced.
Too much too much too much too much
“It’s not too much if I say it’s not,” I responded to the voice in my head out loud, prompting a questioning hum from my friend outside.
Turning my back to the mirror, I put the dress back on and opened the door.
“What do you think?”
She made me twirl so she could inspect it.
“I think that is gonna make the coolest androgynous witchy dress
ever,” she said enthusiastically. “Androgynous, huh?”
“Dude, have you seen yourself? Literally everything you wear, you make perfectly gender neutral. You could literally pull off anything.”
I can do neutral. Neutral is safe. Neutral is River.