Something made me go back to a certain photo.

Her arms were bare. Light fell at just the right angle to reveal dozens of hash mark scars.

there’s a bomb inside me, waiting to explode

“Oh my god,” I said aloud.

I stood up. Walked from one end of the room to the other in a gray haze.

Took out my phone.

Ellis wouldn’t answer.

I kept moving, touching things, trying to distill order from the chaos in me. I could never do it without her. She grounded me, centered me. My anchor. My everything.

I walked to the clothes rack, slowly.

On the shelf above the bar, I’d tucked the box of animals beneath a pile of old T-shirts.

But now, like the missing envelope, the box was gone, too.

One pair of footprints led up the snowy steps to the old oak tree house.

I followed them, stepping inside the soles. The cabin was dusky blue, the afternoon light already dying. Snow swirled in when I opened the door.

She sat hunched on the floor against the wall, knees up, head down, facing the light.

“Ellis,” I whispered.

Her head lifted partway, hair tumbling into her eyes.

I shut the door. Walked to the wall across from her and leaned on it. Hands behind my back, my tailbone holding them down. Lest I do something unkind with them.

“You’re angry,” she said, her voice hoarse.

“Yes. About so many things.”

“Do you want to hurt me?” She finally looked up. Red-eyed, her lips swollen. “I’ll let you.”

“I don’t want to touch you.”

Ellis flinched as if I’d struck her.

I took a step forward. “Give me the autopsy.”

She reached into her coat, held the envelope out.

Ryan Francis Vandermeer.

I scanned through a litany of horrific injuries. Blunt force cranial trauma. Contusions, abrasions, bone fractures. I’d seen these words on my charts last year. Amazing, all the ways you could break a body and glue it back together, stronger than ever.

But not this one.

Scarring of the arms and legs, unrelated to cause of death.

Medications: spironolactone, estradiol, progesterone (for treatment of gender identity disorder).

Sex: F (transitioning from M).

The paper trembled in my hand, matching my pulse.

“Ryan was Skylar,” I said. “Skylar was transgender.”

Ellis didn’t say anything.

It all clicked.

Rejected by the military because they didn’t allow trans people to enlist. Beaten for going to winter formal in a dress. Cutting and drinking to deal with the pain. Max clinging to memories of a son. Let me keep my memories, at least.

How inexpressibly sad that the name on the autopsy was masculine. She didn’t even get to die as herself. Skylar hadn’t officially changed her name.

Like Ellis.

I knelt beside her, not quite looking at her face. Set the paper to one side and reached into my coat pocket. When Ellis saw the knife she startled, pulled away, but I seized her arm and wrenched her palm toward me.

“Give me the box,” I said.

My voice was guttural, unfamiliar.

She withdrew it from her coat. I knocked the lid off. Pressed the wooden figurines into her hand, the knife into the other. I gripped her wrists, shaking so hard she trembled, too.

These were the hands that fit. The photo, the bruises in my heart. The same hands I’d drawn a thousand times yet had somehow not recognized when I thought they were a man’s. Blue’s hands.

We looked at each other.

“Fuck you,” I said.

I rocked back on my heels, jumped to my feet. I meant to walk right out the door but when I reached it my knuckles hit a glass pane and went straight through. I pulled out and tried again, but all I did was smash another.

“Please stop,” Ellis said.

My hand burned, tingling, dripping blood. I smeared it on my coat.

Red and Blue.

The same person.

In the ancient past, there was no separate word for blue. It was just an inflection of red.

I closed my eyes for a moment. Heat built there, an inferno, but of water. “Why, Ellis. Why did you do it.”

“Because it’s who I am.”

I turned partway, feeling nastiness twist across my face. “You’re some imaginary fucking guy who catfished me?”

“I think I’m like Skylar.”

My entire body cringed.

“What the fuck are you saying?”

“I don’t know a clearer way to say it.”

“You’re not this fucking man you were pretending to be.”

“I wasn’t pretending. I am him. I am Blue.”

“You asshole.” My hand was raw. I wrapped the fist in my sleeve. “All this time. Gaslighting me. Pretending to be jealous of yourself. What the fuck, Ellis?”

Her head lowered, half cowering. She was crying. “I don’t know. I felt like two different people sometimes.”

“You planted that bug in the code. That’s how Max got through. You planted it to give yourself full access to me.” I laughed. “Sergio never existed, did he? God, that night you walked in on my chat with ‘Blue,’ tricking me into thinking it couldn’t be you. How’d you do it?”

“It was a macro. I knew how you’d react when I walked in.”

“Where’d the money come from?”

“My mother.”

“You devious little bitch.” Another flinch. “You never needed the job, you just needed access to me. You are so fucked-up, Ellis. You talked about getting hard. About your fucking dick. About coming in your fist and imagining it was me.” Now I couldn’t look at her. I stared at the red dots spattering my boots. “I believed you. I fantasized about you as a man. You messed with my head. This is so fucked-up.”

“It wasn’t like that. It was real to me.”

I laughed again, viciously. “News flash. In real life, I’m a girl. I never lied about it. But in real life, you’re not a man. You don’t have a fucking dick.”

“That’s what makes someone a man?”

“I can’t believe I’m saying this. This is the most insane conversation. Anatomically, yeah, that makes you a man.”

“No, that makes you male. How you feel inside is what makes you a man. Your body doesn’t define you. If your hand doesn’t work anymore, you’re still an artist. If I’m born with two X chromosomes, I’m still not a girl.”

“Stop with the fucking gender politics. The point is you catfished me. Nothing was real.”

“It felt real to me. It felt real to you, too.”

“Want to know what real is?” I lunged at her, dropped to my knees. Shoved my lacerated hand at her chest. “This. Flesh and blood. Not online bullshit. Not catfishing, fucking with my head. Not inventing a person who does not fucking exist.”

“He does exist. I’m right in front of you, Vada.”

I shoved her away, pushing myself back at the same time. And then sat there on the floor, crying.

God, fuck. This was happening.

“You liar,” I said.

“I’m sorry.”

“You broke my fucking heart, Blue. And you’re breaking it again right now.”

“Vada, I’m sorry. I didn’t know how to tell you. I was scared.”

I spoke to the space beside her, unable to face her full-on. “You were scared? You? The one hiding behind a keyboard, spinning out fucking fairy tales? I bared my heart to you. I built my life around you. And the whole time you’ve been lying to me, hiding who you really are.”

“You could barely stand me as a girl. Can you blame me for hiding it?” She sniffled. “I tried to show you, in Bar Harbor. To see how you’d react to me as . . . a guy. I wasn’t trying to hurt you, I was just afraid. Vada, will you look at me, please? I didn’t change into some monster. It’s me. Ellis.”

The little wooden figures had fallen to the floor. Me, and her, and him.

I wanted to go somewhere and curl into a very small ball and cry till the world disappeared.

“I don’t know who you are,” I said hollowly. “And I don’t think I want to anymore.”

Ellis gave a miserable cry and covered her mouth, muffling it.