"mom, dad, i'm transgender. i'm a boy."

that's what ryan told his parents on the evening of june twenty-second. he could remember everything about that night. his palms were sweaty, knees weak, arms were heavy. his remembered wiping his palms on the inside of his pockets and not making eye contact with either of his parents. 

he remembered his parents exact reactions. his mother laughed directly in his face, and his father just told him that it was a phase. 

that was four years ago to the date. now he was sixteen, and he was still a boy. 

"so, maggie," ryan's father hissed at his birth name towards him at the dinner table, watching his son visibly cringe, "how was your day?" 

ryan sighed. "it was fine, i met a person on tumblr the other day and they started calling me ryan the rooster because i texted them at five am this morning," he told his father, picking at the spaghetti on his plate. 

ryan's father slammed his hand on the table, causing ryan to jump in his seat. "when are you going to stop with all this ryan bullshit, maggie, that's not your name! you're a girl. in this house, while you are still under my roof, you are my daughter, is that clear?" 

ryan wiped his tearing up eyes and stood up. he balled up the paper napkin that he placed on his lap and threw it onto his plate. "i'm going out, i'll be back whenever."

"don't even bother coming back if you don't want to." his father yelled, to which his mother shouted at him that they needed their 'daughter' to come home. 

ryan grabbed his keys off the table by the door, clipping them to his belt loop, along with his father's pack of cigarettes and book of matches. he left the house and slammed the door loudly behind him.

he fumbled with a cigarette and placed it loosely in his mouth, lighting it quickly with one of the matches. he shut his eyes and took a long, deep inhale of the tobacco filled stick. he took it out of his mouth and blew the smoke into the air, watching it dance in the slight breeze. 

with the cigarette still held loosely between his pink lips, he walked from his front porch into the backyard, leaping over the fence that separated his parents' property and the small bit of forest behind his home. he had never gone into the forest there, despite living in that house for about seven years. 

maybe today was a good time. 

he walked through the forest, putting the cigarette out on a large tree and tossing the remaining butt to the soil. he stuck his hands into the pockets of his cargo shorts and watched his surroundings. the birds flying above, singing their songs, small rodents just scurrying about. he smiled at how peaceful it was. 

he had been walking through this forest area for a while, possibly about twenty minutes, when he heard yelling in the distance, followed by the sound of a train passing by. he picked up the pace, reaching the end of the forest and was about thirty feet from a railroad track. 

he watched the train pass by, and then looked across the tracks to see a group of teenagers. they were all joking around, smoking cigarettes, sharing a drink, but none of them could've been any older than eighteen. 

picture your stereotypical group of 'outcasts' in a school. what do you see? that's what ryan saw that day.

he must have been staring for a while, because one of them whistled loudly to him, getting his attention. his head jerked towards the one who whistle, and was greeted with a bright smile. 

and that person yelled across the railroad.

"welcome to the tracks, kid." 

(OKAY HI I LOVE THIS SO MUCH THIS IS MY CHILD ILL UPDATE THIS WHENEVER I FEEL LIKE IT IM SO H A P P Y)