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Jamie is seven, and he wants to be a witch for Halloween.
"Oh, honey, that costume's for a girl," his mom says when he grabs it off the rack, and Jamie turns to her with a blank look.
"It's a costume," he says, like she's the child who has to have things explained to her. "It's for anybody."
"Kid's got a point," his dad says with an awkward little laugh. "But wouldn't you rather get one that was made for a boy to wear? Look, they've got Harry Potter, that's kind of the same thing, right?"
Jamie is not sure what he did to be surrounded by this kind of idiocy, but whatever it was, he's sorry for it. "Harry Potter's a wizard. I want to be a witch."
(And if he was going to go with Hogwarts robes, they would absolutely not be in Gryffindor colors, but that's beside the point.)
He stands his ground, clutching the cool, slippery fabric of the costume in both hands, and his mom pulls his dad aside for a hushed conversation. Jamie hears snatches like "it's just for Halloween" and "do you want him to get picked on? Obviously in a perfect world he could wear whatever he wants, but--" . He stands there holding a cheap polyester witch dress and listening to his parents argue about him like he's not standing right there, and he starts to feel his cheeks flush and tears sting the back of his eyes, and the only thing worse than being in this situation would be crying about it. So he takes a deep breath, and instead of going hot, he goes cold.
"Fine," he says, and jams the dress back onto the rack so forcefully it knocks two nearby costumes off their hangers. "Forget it, I don't want it anymore."
His parents look at him, and then at each other, with all-too-familiar 'well, we messed that one up' expressions. "Do you want to try a different one on?" his mom offers, hoping she can salvage this.
Jamie folds his arms and starts walking toward the front of the store, not looking either of them in the face. "Whatever. Maybe I just won't go trick-or-treating, it's dumb anyway."
Three days later, after a cold shoulder Jamie's proud of himself for maintaining and several more fights that he hears a lot more of than he thinks they realize, there's a witch costume waiting for him at the breakfast table. It's way nicer than the first one, even--crushed velvet instead of slick polyester, with long drapey sleeves and a ragged hemline. There's a black hat with it, wide-brimmed and pointy and perfect.
He wears the costume for trick-or-treating, and then he wears the hat for months afterward--not to school, because he's not looking for trouble, but when he plays in his room or goes exploring in the little patch of scrub forest behind his house or sits cross-legged on the floor reading every book about magic and witches he can get his hands on, it's there. Sometimes he just puts it on and stands in front of his bathroom mirror, trying to look cool and mysterious and dangerous.
It's supposed to be a costume, but it makes him feel more like his real self than anything he's ever worn.
***
Jamie is thirteen, and he doesn't think he wants to be a boy anymore.
At least, not all the time. Sometimes it's not so bad, and there are definitely times when it seems easier and safer to be a boy than to be anything else. But more and more, he wishes boyhood was like a tool he could keep in his back pocket for when he needed it, or a jacket he could slip on and off as it suited him. Instead, most days it feels like an anchor around his neck, dragging him down under a bunch of bullshit rules about how boys don't like this, don't wear that. The thought of having to live the rest of his life according to those rules makes Jamie want to go lie down in traffic.
The thing is, he would also rather lie down in traffic than sit his parents down and tell them he's...nonbinary? Genderfluid? Genderqueer? (He doesn’t even know if those are all different things, or different words for the same thing.) The only benefit he can see to talking to his parents about it is they might stop fighting for five fucking minutes, but once the shock wore off it would probably just give them something new to fight over.
There are steps he can take without having to talk to anyone, so he does. He reads up on stuff in the back corner of the school library, mostly on his phone, occasionally risking the librarian’s attention by consulting an actual book (the librarian is friendly and helpful and puts up book displays for LGBTQ History Month every year and if Jamie could bear the thought of talking to any adult about this, it might be her). He googles “androgynous fashion” and starts an extremely locked-down Pinterest board for stuff that speaks to him. Alone in his room with his music turned up, he practices saying “my pronouns are they/them” out loud. The words feel weird and awkward in his mouth, but no more so than having to be ‘he’ all the time feels.
Jamie’s not sure ‘they’ is going to stick, but it seems worth a try.
They keep going, keep finding little ways to try on this new identity, this Jamie who doesn't have to be a boy all the time. They never do find a way to broach the subject with their parents, partly because it gets more and more difficult to talk to their parents at all, about anything. The fighting and the icy silences that follow the fighting continue, Greg takes more and more "business trips", and the two of them stop even pretending they sleep in the same bed anymore. By the time they all end up in divorce court, the only surprise is that it took them until shortly after Jamie's fifteenth birthday to get here.
Well. That's not the only surprise.
Greg's secret boyfriend Mr. Flowers doesn't strike Jamie as particularly impressive, but then, Jamie's only ever seen him in the courtroom, morose and defeated and seeming vaguely embarrassed about his entire existence. Greg's secret boyfriend Mr. Flowers has a kid right around Jamie's age, and being stuck in the back of a courtroom with a total stranger going through the exact same experience they are is halfway between oddly comforting and too cringe-inducing to be borne.
"Hey," Greg's secret boyfriend Mr. Flowers' kid (Jamie thinks her name is Abigail, or Annabelle, or something like that) says at some point, out of fucking nowhere. "Hey, dude, I just wanted to say...I'm really sorry."
Jamie looks at her. Blinks slowly. "What for? Don't tell me you fucked my dad, too."
Abigail (Ariel?) looks caught off guard for a second, then scrunches up her face. "What? Ew, no, that would be so gross! I mean--" instantly shifting to apologetic, "not that your dad's gross. Or that he'd be gross to sleep with. Y'know, for an older guy."
Jamie studies their nails, chipping off a bit of black polish. "Your dad certainly doesn't seem to think so."
Abigail (Adelaide?) groans and scrubs a hand over her face. "Ugghhhh, this is all so weird. Like, I didn't even know my dad was into guys at all? And I mean, no judgment there whatsoever, I think I might be bi myself, but I also never would have pegged him as the cheating type? Especially with another married guy?"
Jamie is wildly uncomfortable with the degree of openness they are being forced to witness. "Sadly, I can't say I'm at all surprised Greg's a cheater. The guy thing was a bit of a curveball, though." Out of some weird pity impulse, they lift the bag of candy they've been snacking from and hold it out. "Sour Patch Kid?"
Abigail (Adrienne?) brightens like Jamie's offering water in the desert, taking the bag eagerly. "Oh, hey, thanks! It's..Jamie, right?"
Jamie nods. "And you're Abi…?" They draw it out, hoping for that thing where you start to say someone's name really slowly and they throw you a bone.
"I like to go by Aff, actually," Greg's secret boyfriend Mr. Flowers' kid says, way more quickly and loudly than she's said anything else so far. Quieter, she adds, "Like my initials, see? Aff. Not Abigail."
Jamie has no intention of ever seeing or talking to this kid again once divorce court's finished with them, so it doesn’t matter much to them what she likes to be called. But there's something in the way she's talking that reminds Jamie of themselves practicing their pronouns, so they meet her eyes and nod. "Okay, then. Aff."
***
Jamie is sixteen, and they cast their first real spell in their bedroom in their dad’s New York apartment.
It’s barely anything, sparks dancing across their fingertips for just a second, but it’s something existing where there was nothing a second ago and Jamie did that. They want to shout in triumph, but Greg’s asleep down the hall, so instead Jamie pumps both fists in the air and then flops onto their back inside the circle of chalk and salt and candles they’ve made on the floor, shaking with giddy near-silent laughter.
By the time Greg taps on Jamie’s door the next morning, the candles and other supplies are stowed in their box under the bed, the salt is cleaned away, and the chalk circle is once again hidden by the rug Jamie knows Greg never bothers to clean under. Jamie opens the door and accepts the offer-slash-bribe of coffee and a bagel, and when Greg asks what their plans for the day are, Jamie shrugs and talks vaguely about exhibits at the MoMA and the Guggenheim.
Greg’s never been much of a museum guy, which means that developing a sudden appreciation for art is a foolproof way for Jamie to find themselves unsupervised in the city with whatever cash Greg had on hand to give and a curfew that’s more of a suggestion.
They make the rounds, following up on some leads, stocking up on supplies to bring back to Cinderbrush. There’s a trick to this sort of thing, to feeling out who to talk to and how to talk to them, and Jamie’s discovering they have a knack for it. And then, once their business is concluded, they make their way to the dingy little occult shop they found earlier in the week.
Jamie's been picking things up in bits and pieces for a while now, starting with what they can get anywhere, like candles and chalk, and working up to more esoteric things. They've long since exhausted what Cinderbrush’s meager selection of shops can offer, which is, Jamie supposes, a reason to be grateful for Greg. If he had to blow up his marriage, their family, and also his secret boyfriend's marriage and family so badly that the only recourse was to flee to the other end of the country, at least he had the good sense to relocate to a city where Jamie can find pretty much everything they need.
By the time they head back to Cinderbrush, they've gotten a lot of magic practice in, but so far never cast a spell on a person. They have a feeling that’s coming—they've been experimenting lately with telling their pronouns to people who seem reasonably safe, and with dressing the way they want instead of the way they think they should, and it's not going to take long before that nets some of the wrong kind of attention.
When it happens--when some jock in the grade above whose name Jamie doesn't even know elbows them into a locker with a "the fuck are you wearing, fag?", Jamie doesn't hesitate in reaching out to grab a few strands of hair and pull.
"What the hell?" The jock winces and grabs them by the shoulder, slamming them back against the lockers again, and it occurs to Jamie that this better work, or they'll have turned what could have been a casual driveby bullying into something much worse.
But the hair is clenched in their first and the words of the spell are clear in their mind and they spit them in the jock's face without hesitation, and think You're more scared of me than I am of you as hard as they can.
Jamie sees the spell take hold in the jock's widening eyes, feels it in the way the hand on their shoulder shakes. The jock lets go of them and takes one shaky step back, then two. "Wh--what the fuck did you just do, you little freak?"
Jamie lets a smile curl the corners of their mouth, cruel and delighted. “Nothing,” they say calmly, “compared to what I’ll do if you ever fucking touch me again.”
The jock staggers a few more steps back and then practically turns tail and runs, leaving Jamie the focus of a growing crowd of onlookers. Jamie watches them go, then brushes off their shoulders, straightens the wide-brimmed black hat they found at the thrift store last week, and walks to their next class.