The Ship We Built - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Lexie Bean is a queer and trans multimedia artist from the Midwest whose work revolves around themes of bodies, homes, cyclical violence, and LGBTQIA+ identity. Lexie is a Lambda Literary Award Finalist and passionate about creating honest and complex trans narratives that "transition and grow" alongside them. Their writing has been featured in Teen Vogue, Huffington Post, The Feminist Wire, Ms. magazine, Them, Logo's New Now Next, Bust Magazine, Autostraddle, and more. The Ship We Built is their debut novel supported with residencies at the Sundress Academy, Paragraph New York, and the Santa Cruz Bookshop.

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Monday, September 1, 1997

Dear Whoever Gets This Letter,

I used to hum happy songs on my way to school. Today I just kept my mouth straight and made up excuses to stop and pretend to tie my shoes. It was the first day of the fifth grade, which I heard is never easy. When I finally reached the flagpole outside of William Henderson Elementary, I kneeled down by the dewy grass to tighten my already double-knotted laces. I wanted to make myself small and easy for groups of friends to step over me. Their backpacks were mostly empty and the girls didn’t look back once.

In case you find this letter, you should know that our school is in the Upper Peninsula, not in the downstate part of Michigan that’s shaped like a hand. Some people here say we’re in God’s Country because it’s so beautiful, but the truth is that a lot of mapmakers forget to even include us on their maps because so much of the land is just forest and abandoned mines. My mom always jokes, “We’re actually everything that The Hand let go of,” but she never laughs when she says it. I think that’s her way of saying that sometimes life can get hard because God gets busy in other places or reads the wrong maps. Maybe she’s right, or maybe the people who say we live in “God’s Country” are right. I am not so sure sometimes. I guess you should also know that everyone calls me Ellie. It has never been my favorite, but I guess you can call me that too.

Anyway, the first day of school can be a tough one because over the summertime friends miss a lot of each other changing. Some of us get taller or different haircuts and some of us get new trampolines. Some of us move houses or get more secrets.

This first day was extra tough because a lot of my friends have decided that I am too weird. They say it is weird that I sometimes call myself a boy, and they don’t like me now for some other reasons too. These friends are all girls, but we actually like a lot of the same things. We like seeing dogs on the street, Hula-Hooping, ice-skating, watching Boy Meets World, and eating pepperoni pizza. Do you like those things? It’s okay if you like other stuff too. To be honest, I don’t really care if the person reading this is a boy or a girl, but for some reason picking sides seems to matter more now than ever.

Hope your day was better than mine.

Sincerely,

Ellie Beck

Tuesday, September 2, 1997

Dear Whoever You Are,

I hope that you find this letter, and that you’ll read it and won’t throw it away. I have some things to tell you. I hope that’s okay. I’ve been just feeling kind of alone.

This summer, all of my BFFs—Courtney, Gina, and Mary—just wanted to read magazines that have quizzes for fun, horoscopes, and things that the stars say. They didn’t even want to go berry picking like we used to. Instead we had makeovers, and they called me “the most improved” when they gave me eyeliner. A few of them even used yellow highlighters from their back-to-school shopping to make their hair more blond-looking. You’d think they would have known highlighters are for books, because they all have professor parents that teach at that big university across town. The point is that these friends started a new club at the end of summer vacation without me.

It happened when Courtney had a big slumber party, and almost everybody got under the backyard trampoline that was the size of a swimming pool. They huddled together, and pointed at me from under the shade until it was obvious I was un-invited. You would have thought I had mad cow disease. The thing is, I don’t.

I have to admit, I got the idea to write this letter while I was at that slumber party. Courtney had a lot of balloons that stood so confidently around the table full of presents, but there was one pink balloon that got away. I bet I was the only person in the backyard to notice since they were all too busy laughing over that “I’m a Barbie girl in a Barbie world” song. The balloon floated up and up until it was too far to see. Watching it disappear gave me a bright idea. If I attached a letter to a balloon, and secretly let it free from my bedroom window, it could be a way to meet someone new. At the very least, I could meet someone who wasn’t at that dang party.

I stood there alone on the deck with the party balloons for so long. I felt my arms and ears getting burned by the sun. All the confetti cake was gone and the chip bowl was empty with only yellow crumbs on the bottom. Courtney’s unwrapped presents sat lonely on the table. I tell you what, her new pink hunting jacket, the T-shirt that said boy crazy, and bottle of cucumber melon lotion all just stared at me. There was nothing in that backyard for me. The song on the boom box changed, but the girls kept laughing and pointing. Even that stupid bobblehead owl perched on the fence gave me a funny look.

I finally went inside through the noisy screen door. Courtney’s big sister was watching me too. I don’t think she likes me so much either. She’s a high schooler and wears purple spray to smell like a celebrity. She stuck to her side of the room, and turned up the volume on her music video countdown show when I picked up their house phone to call my mom.

All Mom said was “Ready yet?” She said it loud over Dad’s TV in the background. I nodded my head as if she could hear me.

I tried my best not to look at Courtney’s big sister when I hung up the plastic phone. I swear she didn’t move an inch the whole time. I rolled up my sleeping bag and looked for my socks super fast, trying not to block her view of Tim McGraw singing in a palace. I put on my backpack and left behind the goodie bag with a pencil and scoubidou keychain on purpose.

On the front steps, I sat down next to an ant castle and watched the little bugs build their home with rocks. I don’t know how they carry things that seem so much bigger than them. The concrete felt cold on my legs, and Mom was taking forever to come pick me up. Five red pickup trucks, two white ones, and so many teenagers on bikes passed by, but not my mom’s noisy blue car with that peeling “906” area code bumper sticker. I bet Mom was busy buying radio bingo cards or putting pop cans in that grocery store machine. Or maybe she got busy watching TV with Dad. I don’t know.

I have to admit, though, after about twenty minutes of alone time, one person joined me on the front porch. Her name is Sofie Gavia. She sat only a few inches away and watched the street with me. I hoped right away that none of the girls from the backyard could see us together like that. I’m surprised she left the trampoline at all, but I guess she was mostly quiet at the birthday party too. I think she was only invited because some of the moms are PTO friends, which is just a secret club for parents to talk about school in their free time for some reason.

I didn’t really want to talk to Sofie even though she’s really, really nice. I just wanted to be alone and keep quiet, but I didn’t want to be alone either. It’s kind of hard to explain. I tried turning my knees away from Sofie so she would get the hint, but she broke the silence anyways.

She turned her head and said “I like your shoes” like she meant it. You should know that my shoes aren’t anything special. They’re just white with green laces. I tried ignoring her, but then she said, “Do you want some of my lemonade?” and she held her red cup closer to me. Don’t judge me, but I decided to reach for it. When I turned around, I noticed that Sofie and I actually had matching scraped knees....