Warning: This episode deals with themes of transphobia.

I swear the worst flight in the world was LAX to IAD. Six and a half hours (if you were lucky) of being packed into a sardine can with people who didn’t shower that day and have a cough they swear was just allergies.

But I hated going back to Pennsylvania for the holidays for more reasons than just the flight.

My childhood house hadn’t been much of a home since I was eighteen and my brother and his wife passed away in a horrible accident while my mother and father were babysitting Sky.

It was a day I chose not to think about often.

I'd repressed those memories hard and never wanted to relive them.

I loved my brother even though he was ten years older than me. He left for college when I was eight, and after that, I only saw him when he visited.

He married right out of college and lived anywhere but the small bumblefuck town in central Pennsylvania that we grew up in.

I always wished he'd visited more.

He was the only member of my family I kind of liked, and he never judged me while I dealt with every part of my identity.

It was in the following months after the tragedy that I started to realize my parents liked Nick way better than they liked me. Their perfect child was gone, and all they had was their gremlin teenager who stole their liquor, wore weird clothes, and cut their hair in ways that made them look androgynous.

They’d never say it to my face, but I knew they’d have preferred if I’d died instead of him.

And so started my descent into hell.

Mom started trying to force me into gender-confirming clothes, and then leaving me out of the family photos when I didn’t comply. They vocalized more about how they hated that I took classes in martial arts and fencing after I quit ballet and gymnastics. And heaven forbid I brought up my dreams to move to Los Angeles to work in action movies.

Hollyweird. That's what they'd called it.

But still, when it came to large family gatherings or social events, Mom and Dad would put on a smile and pretend everything was okay because outward appearances were far more important than internal trauma.

They couldn't let people know they despised every fiber of their only remaining child's being.

Naturally, when Sky felt comfortable enough to come out last year, I got all the blame. I’d obviously influenced her to think she’s a girl. I'd obviously brainwashed her to think wearing girl's clothes was okay.

The only reason I even agreed to come home for any holiday anymore was to check in on Sky a few times a year... and because Mom and Dad paid for it. Nothing made me happier than thinking about how my parents paid six hundred dollars for me to make them miserable.

It was the little things that kept me going.

The plane landed just before five o’clock in the evening, Eastern time. My mom picked me up curbside, and we were off for the long, awkward drive home. I made it my goal to stay completely silent the whole time. It only took one round of:

“Your hair color is different.”

“Yup.”

“It would look a lot nicer if you grew it out—”

“Mom. We aren’t doing this.”

“Okay. I’m just saying how pretty you’d be if—”

“Thanks. I’ll consider it.”

And then neither of us spoke again. Sorry, but this new shade of purple did look damn good on me, and I didn't need to grow it out for that. Thanks.

We pulled up to our small suburban home where my dad had the trunk of their spare SUV open, piled high with bags and suitcases. Two of my parents’ best friends: Susan and Bernard, were dancing around the car, clearly already drunk.

And Susan still had half a glass of red wine to sip through.

“What’s going on here?” I asked as I stepped out into the chilly December air. I didn’t miss the cold weather; I could tell you that much.

“Mikaylaaaa!” Susan swished her arms in the air, dripping wine down her arm. I don’t even think she noticed before she swung them over me to hug me and smear it all over my jacket and nice white shirt. At least I had two dozen of the same one.

Between her hug and her way-to-heavy perfume, I couldn’t breathe. “It’s just Mikkie, now. It has been for over seven years.”

Mom swished her hand at me. “Don’t make a fuss, honey.”

Never did the sleeping toddler come out of me faster than when my mom called me honey, or sweetie, or dear. I hadn’t been her "little darling" in decades but when friends came around she pulled out the cutesy words. I wanted to stomp and huff and throw a tantrum, but I held it in.

“How are things going in LA? Been in any movies I might’ve seen?” Bernard asked before belting into one of those suburban dad laughs. Nothing funny was said, but he just roared away anyway while he popped open the top of a beer bottle with the side of my parents' car.

“Haha. Yeah. Good one. But no, probably not.” I said it all with the flattest expression I could. I never understood why Hollywood made movies about 'simple suburban life.'

It wasn’t simplicity and romance. It was Susan and Bernard and their cheap alcohol.

I tried to avoid more comments and hugs while dodging splashing beer and wine, making my way to the car as my dad slammed the trunk. I eyed the suitcases through the window and asked, “Why are you packing the car?”

Dad dusted off his hands before wiping them on his cargo shorts. Cargo shorts? In winter? “We’re leaving in 20 minutes.”

“For?”

“Flooorrriiidaaa!” Susan threw her wine glass in the air and swooshed her arms around, making jingling noises with her thirty-seven thousand bracelets. She chugged back half of her remaining wine and cheered like she'd just done a keg stand.

Sixty-two was the new twenty, I suppose.

It took probably a solid thirty seconds to figure out exactly what she was cheering, or why she was cheering it. They weren’t serious, right?

“Um…Florida?”

“Exactly.” Mom popped up beside me, now with a wine glass in her hand. I couldn’t tell you where she got it from. I wouldn't have been shocked if she'd had it in the car the whole time. "Your father, Susan, Bernard, and I are spending the month on the Florida coast. Why would anyone want to be in Pennsylvania for the winter when they could have sun and the sea? That’s just barbaric.”

They all laughed their weirdass, middle-aged, suburban, lower-middle-class laughs.

Good god, just end me right then and there. Relieve me of this misery.

I pulled my eyes from Susan’s short-sleeved Hawaiian blouse to my dad’s cargo shorts, Bernard's flip-flops, and then my mom’s sun visor smashing down any volume her hair could have ever had. “You’re joking, right? I just got here.”

“Oh don’t worry, dear, we’ll be back before your flight home.” Mom patted me on the shoulder and swung around to open the back seat for her friends.

“You’re actually serious?” They had to be. I was freezing in my open puff jacket and beanie. Not even the alcohol was enough to make those clothes make sense, even for a joke. “Why did you fly me here then?”

Dad coughed as he slipped into the driver's seat, shut the door, and rolled down the window. “Skylar needs to finish out a few more weeks of school before the break—”

“You brought me here to babysit my niece?” My voice got loud and tense, even though they were only doing me a favor.

Realistically, everyone's lives would be better with my parents gone, but still... What the actual hell?

At that moment, the partying ground to a halt. Records scratched. I swear the wine just about sucked itself back up into whatever bottle it came from to escape the scene.

Mom slammed the door on Susan and Bernard, locking them away from me as her eyes grew narrow and hell’s flames themselves exploded from her irises.

She grabbed me by my elbow and dragged me behind the compact car she’d picked me up in.

When she released me, she threw one finger right in my face. “Mikayla, let’s get one thing straight, Skylar is your nephew. You will not take these weeks to continue poisoning his mind. In fact, I fully expect you to use this time to talk to your nephew about how all your horrible choices led you to be unemployed and alone at thirty.”

Oh…the anger.

The unceasing anger.

I wanted to smack my mom right then and there, go grab Sky, and run away like I did when I was seventeen. My fists clenched, but I held back and only said, “I’m twenty-five.”

The difference meant nothing to my mom. She removed her finger and continued to drag me closer to the house.

“Think about your choices and your life. Do you want Skylar to end up the same? He is your fault. Now fix it. Or you can come with us to Florida and we’ll hire a sitter who will do it for us. I’m sure one would love to correct his behavior, and you can sit in the middle seat between Susan and Bernard.”

I glanced back at the car where Susan, Bernard, and Dad were laughing and slamming their bodies around in the car with more spilling alcohol.

Yeah. No.

In a choice between warm weather and horrible company and constant degrading comments about my life and my identity, or horrible weather and babysitting a teenager who god only knows what would happen to with some kind of hired correctional babysitter, I’ll choose the latter. Thanks.

“Have a good time in Florida, mom.”

“Thanks, sweetie,” Mom said with a sudden smile and a sip of her wine. She backed up to the car’s passenger door as she kept shouting, “Skylar and his friends will be over after their little party tonight. We figured you didn’t mind watching them all since none of the other parents wanted to. See you in the new year, dear.”

She climbed in and shouted, “Let’s roll!”

The car squealed out of the driveway and down the road like they couldn’t get away from my queerness fast enough to not be infected.

Alone, in my shit-ass small-ass boring-ass hometown.

Lovely.

If nothing else, somehow this was better than actually spending the entire month of December with my family. I just had to keep one teenager alive for four weeks then I could return to my normal, miserable life.