Shaun T, Thundering Black Trans Boy From Bishop County
short fiction
Here’s what I know for sure: it was an accident. I left class sobbing, as one is wont to do after being publicly, soullessly outed by his P.E. teacher. I changed out of my cobalt blue gym shorts and my white t-shirt that both had ‘Shaun T.’ printed on them in bold…I don’t know why he ignored that. I tossed the tear-soaked uniform into my locker and fled…toward the baseball fields.
I slid into the empty dugout, heaving and clutching my chest — wrong day to wear a binder, I know. It was day one of class at Valley…I’d begged my mom to transfer me from Brittany for two summers before she gave in last week. I wanted my new classmates to see me, correctly, and the binder was going to help with that…ugh. Then I chugged some water, shifted an old Easton bat out of the way, and laid down across the dugout bench, hoping to wake up and discover it’d been nothing more than a nauseating dream.
I swear…I thought I’d be alone the rest of the day. No one comes to the fields, ever. But suddenly the rest of the class was there. I’d forgotten it was ‘baseball day’ — and that meant the whole seventh grade would be out gracelessly bumbling through a full game of ball.
I woke up from my nap sprinting toward first base, screaming. Thundering like every Black trans boy in…
