Lucas could not have been more stunned than if I had hit him over the head with a two-by-four, and his mouth flapped open and closed like a Magikarp as he stared in shock at the other boy.

  The other boy who was, as a quick glance showed, rapidly losing his nerve.

  “You… want to go to the festival… with me?”

  I sighed as Kevin gulped, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down.

  “Yes?” The word, a single syllable, somehow cracked halfway through.

  “But… isn’t that only something that couples do? We’re both boys, I don’t get it.”

  “Ha!” Kevin said, voice completely faltering. “I’m just kidding! As if… as if anybody would want to go out with you.”

  Then he turned and ran away, stumbling slightly as he did so, leaving the three of us standing in shock.

  “Goddamnit.” I swore, causing Lucas to jump in shock as he realized we were still standing there. “God damn it.”

  “What… just happened?” Ted asked.

  I tried not to glare at Ted or Lucas. It wasn’t their fault but… these things were tricky at the best of times.

  “Kevin just mustered up the courage to ask a terrifying question, and Lucas didn’t answer. And to Kevin, a lack of an answer is worse than a no.”

  “He asked… me?” Lucas said, dazed. “But… why?”

  “He’s gay Lucas. Or bi.”

  “Huh?”

  “You-” I pointed to Ted. “Stay here and walk Lucas through what just happened. Give him the birds and the bees, or the birds and the birds if you have to.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  I sighed again.

  “I hate playing relationship counselor. Which is why I’m going to go talk to Kevin, what do you think?”

  With that settled, I turned on my heel, and stalked after a sad, hormonal, immature young man who didn’t quite understand social cues.

  Fantastic.

  /^\

  Thankfully it didn’t take long to find Kevin, he hadn’t made it that far, but my heart ached when I finally found him.

  He was huddled in an alleyway between the Pokémon Center and a neighboring building with his Crobat, the bat-like Pokémon wrapping its four wings around him as he quietly sobbed.

  My pace slowed, and I sighed as I saw him. It wasn’t good, but at least he was physically safe.

  Stepping around a small snow drift, I carefully sat down on the ground a few feet away from him.

  Kevin stiffened, and shot me a panicked look from the corner of his eye.

  “Go away.” He said, voice muffled from his winter coat.

  “Not going to do that.” I said.

  “What, are you here to laugh at me? Go ahead then, laugh.”

  “I’m not going to do that either.”

  The next few minutes passed in silence as Kevin tried to ignore me, and I tried to figure out what to say next.

  “I was nineteen.” I said slowly. “When I first really figured it out.”

  Kevin didn’t say anything.

  “I mean, there were signs when I was younger, that’s for sure. Thoughts that I believed everybody had, and everybody else was just keeping quiet about it.”

  I wasn’t looking directly at Kevin, speaking instead to the brick wall in front of me, but my peripheral vision caught some movement. A red-rimmed eye poked out from the crook of his elbow, but he didn’t say anything else.

  “Where and when I grew up, it wasn’t okay to be different. Gay and lesbian people were becoming more accepted in the wider cultural consensus, but even then they were more like oddities, something to point out and say ‘look, they’re different’.

  “Things were getting better when I left but… it was bad out there in places.”

  “You’re… like me?” Kevin finally asked.

  I waggled my hand side-to-side. “Yes and no. How much do you know about queer culture?”

  He looked at me blankly, and I sighed. Right. The internet really hadn’t taken off here yet besides some old-school forums, and if he grew up in a small town like Sandgem, he likely wouldn’t know that there was a whole world out there of people like us.

  “Oh boy, you’ve got a lot to learn. First of all, you’re not alone.”

  Kevin stiffened, and a new wave of tears trickled down his cheeks, glittering in the cold afternoon light.

  “There’s millions of people like you and I, in all different fashions. I bet growing up you were only told that there could only be a man and a woman in a relationship, right?”

  He nodded slowly.

  “And every time you thought about what you wanted, it didn’t seem to fit into that particular mold?”

  Another nod.

  “And so you felt like an outsider, like nobody else understood you, that every time you tried to step out and show people who you were, they looked at you like there was something wrong with you. And so you got angry. Angry that they didn’t understand, that they didn’t seem to want to understand, that they expected you to fit in a mold.”

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  “...You too?”

  “Me too, kid. Except my flavor was a little different than yours. I didn’t… I didn’t always look like this.”

  I gestured at myself.

  “It’s a long, long story, with more magic than I can safely explain, but I’m transgender. You’ve heard of that at least, right?”

  Lucas and Ted had at least been familiar with the concept, so I was hoping that Kevin had as well. Thankfully it seemed like I was right, and Kevin’s mouth opened in a small ‘o’ of surprise.

  “I was born, Giratina, it’s a long story, but I was born into a body that didn’t match what I knew I was supposed to be. And I was a lot like you growing up, angry.”

  “How did you fix it?”

  I couldn’t help myself, and laughed. Kevin looked all affronted, especially after I reached over and ruffled his hair.

  “I didn’t fix it, Kevin. There’s nothing for me to fix. There’s nothing that you have to fix either. I embraced it. I made myself miserable for years trying to be somebody I wasn’t, and when I finally accepted who I was, I was able to become… Well, me.”

  “Is it that easy?”

  My tone sobered immediately.

  “No. It’s not easy Kevin. It’s the hardest thing I ever did, and will ever do. I lost friends over it. I lost my family over it. So many people hated me just because I was different and they didn’t understand it. I was miserable a lot of the time.”

  My head thumped against the wall as I leaned back, looking up at the darkening sky.

  “Then why did you do it? Why did you put yourself through all of that hurt, that pain?”

  “Because pretending to be somebody else was even more painful. I thought about what would happen when I died. If I continued hiding who I was, they would never mourn me, they would mourn another person. But when I did come out, when I did let people know who I really was, I alienated a lot of people. But those few friends who did stick by me? Who did try to understand and accept me for who I really was? Those were my real friends. The people I knew I could count on through thick and thin.”

  “That sounds nice.”

  I smiled sadly. I wouldn’t see any of those people again, not in this new world. It stung, to be sure, but I was happier here than I ever could have been back home, and I knew they would be happy for me. I knew that whatever my parents had decided to do after I disappeared, my friends would have given the real me a proper funeral and goodbye.

  “It was.”

  “So… how do I do that? How do I get to where you were?”

  “Time. Self-acceptance. Effort. A whole lotta loss, and a whole lotta growing up.”

  His face twisted, but his tears had stopped. “That sounds tough.”

  I laughed again. “It really is. Now come on, let’s go back to Lucas.”

  “I don’t want to. He’s going to laugh at me again.”

  “Did he laugh at you before?”

  “Ye-” Kevin cut himself off, thinking about what had happened.

  “Well, maybe he didn’t laugh, but he was thinking it.”

  I gently cuffed him on the back of the head.

  “What did we just talk about? Not even an hour ago.”

  “That… we were talking past each other? Lucas and I?”

  “Exactly. You have no idea what he’s actually thinking, and here you are, making assumptions again. Did you consider that Lucas was just stunned and confused?”

  “I…”

  “Did you consider that maybe Lucas was more focused on a Pokémon Battle than any romantic subtext?”

  “Well-”

  “Kevin, I want to believe your heart is in the right place. Maybe it’s my fault for pushing you a little too fast, if it is, I’m sorry.”

  We were quiet for a long moment, the cold air blowing through the alley way.

  “I really screwed up, didn’t I?”

  I shrugged.

  “Not a lot. A bit, yeah, but everybody screws up. It’s part of growing up.”

  “So what do I do? Go back and apologize? Again?”

  “I don’t know, is that what you want to do?”

  Kevin grumbled and returned Zee to his Pokeball.

  “You suck.”

  /^\

  It was an awfully familiar scene, the two of us returning to the battling courts where Lucas and Ted were standing awkwardly.

  Of course instead of an air of latent hostility and competition, the entire court seemed to be filled with tension and teenage angst.

  “I-”

  “So-”

  Both Lucas and Kevin started talking at the same time, before they cut themselves off.

  I shared a commiserating look with Ted as we both held back a cringe.

  “You go.” Kevin said.

  “No no, please.”

  “I… I’m sorry for dropping that on you. It wasn’t fair of me.”

  “I’m sorry for acting like that.” Lucas sighed. “I was just surprised, I didn’t mean to make it seem like I was making fun of you.”

  “I’m sorry for running off too. I know now you didn't mean it but… that really hurt.”

  “I know, and again, I’m sorry. It wasn’t my intention to hurt you, but my intent doesn’t really matter right now.”

  Ted had a small, self-satisfied smile on his face. That didn’t exactly sound like something a teenage boy would have thought of, even a deceptively smart one like Lucas, and I figured that Ted had done some life coaching of his own.

  “I…” Kevin took a deep breath. “I forgive you.”

  “And I forgive you too.”

  Huzzah! Progress!

  Keven tentatively extended a shaking hand, and Lucas reached out to take it.

  “You don’t… I take back my invitation.” Kevin said, still holding Lucas’ hand. “It wasn’t right of me to ask you like that.”

  “No!” Lucas said, causing both Kevin and I to blink in surprise. “I mean, I wouldn’t… Okay.”

  “Okay?”

  A red flush began to creep up Lucas’ neck and face, despite the chill wind.

  “I mean… I’ll go to the Ice Festival with you.”

  Kevin froze like a Deerling in the headlights.

  I sighed, and turned away from the scene developing in front of me.

  Dealing with second-hand teenage angst was not my ideal way to spend an afternoon, and even if they seemed to be figuring things out.

  In fact, I was feeling exhausted.

  “This seems to be going… well.” Ted murmured as he walked over, still eyeing the boys who were crawling their way through a conversation.

  “Yeah. I wasn’t expecting Lucas to say yes.”

  “I won’t get into everything we talked about, but it seems like he’s at least willing to give it a try. I’m not sure about his choice of potential partners but…”

  “Kevin isn’t bad.” I said. “Just… not very socialized.”

  “Do you see it working out?”

  I looked over my shoulder at the two boys, both of whom were blushing and trying not to stumble over their own words.

  “I don’t know. Statistically? Probably not, I get the feeling that this is going to be a first for both of them, and that’s always rough.”

  “Personal experience?”

  Shrugging, I stuffed my hands back in my coat pockets.

  “I know a thing or two because I’ve seen a thing or two. This whole thing has made me tired though.”

  “Same.”

  “I’m going to get another coffee, leave those two alone to talk some things over. Wanna come?”

  He stared at me like I had two heads and checked his watch.

  “It’s like, four o’clock.”

  “Yeah, and?”

  He shook his head, but followed me anyway.