Make an Effort

Chapter 3: System

He was sure the school had sent out a note to all the parents, explaining what he had done. It was something they would do, to make everyone ‘aware of the situation’. Ethan’s lip curled at the idea that he was deemed a ‘situation’.

He hadn’t even seen August again after their fight, it had been two days and he wasn’t in biology. Ethan had tried to force himself not to care; to see that it didn’t matter, but he kept glancing over at the boy’s empty seat. He was beginning to think August had been a figment of his imagination. He hadn’t even seen him all week. He would be worried if he wasn’t so pissed off at him.

The office was cool despite the heat outside and the walls were bare and white, it was almost like being in the hospital again.

After what felt like the whole lunchtime had passed, his mother hurried through the door. She didn’t seem to notice him waiting there until he was pointed out by the receptionist. Her hair was windswept and wild, having been court up by the humid breeze that blowing through the whole town.

“Hey, Sweetie, has anyone come out to speak to you yet?”

“No, but they know I’m here.” Ethan didn’t want to say that he made them nervous, but he felt like that had to be reason why most of the teachers hadn’t tried to talk to him about it alone. “I think they’re waiting for you.”

“Well, I’ll suppose they’re waiting for us in there.” She glanced up as the door to the principal’s office swung open with Mr. Dane the principal standing in the entrance.

Mr. Dane was a tall man who was rather large around the middle, he had a full head of white hair and thick round spectacles. He looked a lot like the monopoly man, he was just missing the cane and mustache.

“Mrs. Andrews, thanks for coming in so soon after this tragedy.” His usually loud voice had become a whisper as he let them into his office.

Ethan’s house teacher was there as well, along with the head of the senior section of the school. They were all looking at him like he was terminal, as though he could drop dead at any moment. He couldn’t stand the pitying. They had no idea what he had done or what he was going through they only knew the outsider's story, the story that everyone was fed.

Ethan was sure that if he wasn’t there they would be angry, they would berate his mum for being a terrible parent or even saying that he should have finished the job. He knew what it was like, people acted as if they were sorry for him to his face but as soon as he was out of range they would say that he was sick, or weak or even that he should be put in a clinic. That’s what all of his classmates thought anyway, he knew they did. Ethan had decided he didn’t care either way, his life was none of their business so how they felt about the way he lived it was inconsequential. He didn’t want their pity.

He sat down next to his mum, facing the three teachers. They all thought it was a tragedy, but he didn’t see it that way. Yes, he was still depressed but now he was on anti-depressants and despite the side effects, they seemed like they really worked, now that he had been properly diagnosed. Yes, he had failed, but in this case, failure was a good thing and he could start again instead of giving up.

“Hello, Mrs. Andrews, I’m Mr. Thomas, Ethan’s house teacher,” his teacher introduced himself, holding out his hand for his mum to shake. She took it and asked to be called Liza, instead. It was strange to hear his mother being called anything except Mum.

The head of the senior school introduced herself as Ms. Murphy and also shook his mother’s hand. It was all very formal, making Ethan feel like he was a piece of furniture

“Well, err, I suppose we should start.” Mr. Dane was beginning to sound more awkward as he pushed his glasses up his crooked nose.

“Firstly, we want to know how you’re recovering, Ethan.” Mr. Thomas said, bending forward as if he actually wanted to hear what Ethan had to say. “I haven’t been able to bring it up during study period with everyone listening in.”

“I’m fine, I would still be in hospital if I hadn’t recovered.” He shrugged. His comment came out bitingly and he could see Mr. Thomas’ expression change with every word he spat out. He didn’t care.

“Ethan,” his mother scolded softly. “Try to be civil, we’re just worried about you.”

“You don’t need to worry; it won’t happen again.”

“I hope you’re right about that, Ethan, but we still need to discuss a few things to prevent something like this from happening again.”

Anger boiled up uncontrollably. They wanted to talk about preventative measures like he would do it again? Like he was always on the vague of self-destruction? Yes, he knew that a lot of people who did what he did would try and do it again, but he wasn’t like that. And he had told them that, but no one was listening to him. He had barely been able to use a plastic fork for the past two weeks.

“Why won’t anyone listen to me! I’m not going to do it again!” He screamed, standing up and slamming his hands onto the table.

“Ethan, you have to understand that-” Mr. Dane began, trying in vain to calm him down.

“No! No one is listening to me. No one understands what happened. You all think I’m just a problem child now.” He screamed again tugging roughly at his hair, feeling a few strands become uprooted.

“Then make us understand. What lead up to you making that decision?” Ms. Murphy asked, unfazed by his emotional outburst.

“I just…I felt like… I couldn’t…” he began, unable to come up with anything to say; he didn’t know what to say. He didn’t even know where to begin. Maybe one day he would but not today. He slowly sank back down into his chair.

“Ethan, Honey, it’s okay, you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.” His mum reassured, putting a hand on his arm. But he did want to, he wanted to tell them everything, he wanted to make them understand why he did what he did. But he couldn’t. Maybe that was because he was weak, he didn’t know anymore.

“I’m seeing a psychologist and taking the right medication. I don’t want to do it again. I’m not like that anymore.”

“What I was really trying to say was I don’t want any of the students hearing about what you did and thinking it was a good idea.” Ms. Murphy said in her steely calm voice.

Ethan could see his logic. Everyone he knew just wanted to fit in and find their place, and to do that some will go to extreme lengths to achieve that. Some might think his fifteen minutes of fame was something that they want for themselves. Some people would just be encouraged to see what he did as being a viable opinion.

It wasn’t, and Ethan would tell them that their face if he could. But he knew what it was like to be them, so he understood why they might do it as well.

“Say something about it at assembly or ask the house teachers to talk to their students directly, or don’t say anything at all. Kids our age don’t have object permanence, if no one talks about it everyone will forget about it.” He said bitterly, pausing to think for a moment. “If you see a student who looks depressed, talk to them. School is demanding and stressful, I’m sure there are a few.”

Mr. Dane nodded, scrawling down notes on a spare sheet of paper. Ethan had no idea if it would work, but he felt as though the school should try and do something about it. You didn’t need to be transgender to want to do what he did. All you had to do was feel nothing and there was a good chance something bad might happen. For Ethan, it wasn’t the school’s fault, he wasn’t being bullied more than anyone else, and he had only been back at school for a week before it happened.

He didn’t blame his parents either. Neither of them would have known he needed medication for what he had. Because he didn’t know that either until it was almost too late. It was only at the hospital that he had been properly diagnosed and given the proper help he needed.

But he still felt like there would be other students like him, not getting the help that they needed. They weren’t broken but they still needed some help. Ethan understood that it was due to a hormone imbalance in the brain and he knew that he wasn’t the only person at school to have that problem. It was everyone’s job to try and fix that in some way. Because it could be their child, it could be their student, it could be their friend.

“Mrs. Andrews, I mean Liza, did you want the school to help with counselings?” Mr. Thomas asked.

“We are already going to a psychologist who Ethan seems to like, so it’s up to him whether he wants to go to someone both in and out of school hours.”

“Keep in mind, even if you don’t take us up on our offer now, you can always go to her whenever you need to talk to someone about anything.” Ms. Murphy reminded, smiling at him. She smiled was crooked, making Ethan wonder if she knew how to smile properly.

“Yeah, I’ll keep that in mind.” It would be good to have someone he could go to at any time and not have to fork out hundreds of dollars in doing so. Sure, it was his parent’s money, but he still felt guilty about it.

“We want to make sure that Ethan won’t feel the need to do that again, we’re willing to change how our school, as a community, functions to be more inclusive and welcoming.” Ms. Murphy said kindly.

“I don’t believe that will be necessary, it was done for personal reasons, I don’t believe there was any connection between school and what he did,” Mum said shakily.

“I’ve worked with Ethan for almost two years and it seems as though he was slowly become more distanced from the friends he used to hang out with, so far this year I haven’t seen him with any of those boys. I know that being isolated in a school environment is hard.” Mr. Thomas chipped in.

Ethan knew what Mr. Thomas was trying to say, he was trying to say that he should move schools. And he was right, maybe he should have, begin a new school with a fresh start where what he had done was nothing but rumours. But Ethan had liked it here, he liked the teachers and he was sure that they would be okay with him being a girl if he told them. They let August wear the right uniform and used the right name after all.

“If it had happened at the end of last year we would have moved, nothing against the school but a fresh start would have been good for Ethan, for all of us, but Ethan had already started year 12 and not many schools will take a student in after missing four weeks of year twelve. Ethan wanted to stay, so he did.” His mum affirmed, wringing her hands nervously, in her lap.

It was clear that his mother struggled as well. She didn’t know what to say to people or even how to rationalize what he had done. He knew that he had hurt her, that he had hurt his family in a way he didn’t know how to fix. It was hard to come to terms with failing at the last possible moment at something that he had been planning for what felt like months. It seemed to him to be just as bad as succeeding, if not worse as he had to face his family after what he had done. He had to wake up in hospital to reality and had to come to terms with what he had done. That took a lot of strength that he didn’t even know he had.

He had stayed home for a week after coming home from hospital. He couldn’t bear to face the students, the teachers, the classes, to be surrounded by people who didn’t have to worry about dangerous thoughts or taking their medication, they were just leaving their lives. He saw them as being carefree, perfectly happy people. He knew that that wasn’t always true, but it was true for him.

Everyone else was happy and he wasn’t. Everyone else was perfect but he wasn’t. He was lonely and everyone else wasn’t.

“Be that as it may, Ethan has missed a lot of work and doesn’t seem to be catching up.” Mr. Thomas pointed, and rightly so, Ethan hadn’t even thought about going to talk to his teachers. That wasn’t something he did. He knew it would help him, he had missed three weeks of school after all, but he didn’t like the idea of being alone in a room with a teacher. He didn’t want them to see first hand how poor he was in their class.

He couldn’t stand the idea that they might be disappointed in him, like how everyone else was disappointed in him. He didn’t want them to give up trying to help him. Maybe that was hypocritical, after all, he had given up on them. But he just couldn’t bear it.

He liked his teachers and wanted them to be proud of what he was doing. Even if what he was doing at the moment wasn’t worth that.

“This has come at a difficult time,” Ms. Murphy noted, stifling a yarn. She also looked tried, but Ethan hoped it was because of a different reason for his mother’s. “We understand that Ethan needs time to recover but we also need him to continue his studies so that he doesn’t fail. We want him to pass this year as well as he possibly can.”

“We understand that he hasn’t gone to any of his teachers, we want that to change. We could discuss with his teachers to use homework time to catch up on things he has missed instead of the set homework.”

His mother nodded and so did he, it sounded like the best plan; catch up during homework time and go to the school counselor when he needed to.

“Excellent, and of course, you can come to any of us if you need to talk to us about absolutely anything.” Mr. Dane said clapping his hand loudly, making everyone in the room jump. It was highly unlikely that Ethan would take him up on his offer, but he nodded anyway, giving him what he hoped was a good summation of a smile.

He thought about what his mum had said about talking to the school about being trans. He had thought back then that that would be a dumb idea, that the school would never let a student wear the ‘wrong’ uniform. They were a conservative kind of school when it came to uniforms, after all, they had strict rules like what socks you could wear or how long your skirt should be.

But now that he knew August was allowed to wear the uniform he wanted to wear, he should, in theory, be able to wear the right uniform as well.

Of course, Ethan didn’t say anything yet. He felt like there was a lump in his throat, preventing him from telling them that he was trans. He didn’t even know where to begin, it wasn’t something you could really bring up out of nowhere. And they might think that he did what he did because he thought he was trans and that simply wasn’t true.

Instead, he walked out of the room when Mr. Dane said goodbye and his mother said how wonderful it was to meet them all and have this ‘little chat’.

“I met someone the other day, they were new and they talked to me.” He began as they walked towards the front gate.

“That’s great Sweetie, why didn’t you tell me this before? How did it go?” His mum sounded excited and Ethan’s stomach twisted painfully. How little faith do you have to have in your son to be excited by the idea of him talking to another student? She must have thought he was cutting himself off from all the other students.

In reality, Ethan didn’t really know why he wanted to stay at this school. His parents were the first ones to suggest that he moved but after everything the happened, he honestly just wanted some normality in his life. He was sure that moving to a new school would have logically been the best solution to his isolation. He saw that it worked for August. He was able to walk up to anyone and introduce himself as anything he wanted.

“We didn’t end up getting along that well but I find out he was transgender, like me,” his voice rose as a small bubble of happiness welled up inside of him at the idea of not being alone; of having someone who was just like him.

He could see that, out the corner of his eye, his mum was looking over at him, smiling. It was a genuine happiness, not the smile she put on to make him feel better. She was happy because he was happy.

“That’s too bad, but you know, you have something to talk about, to bond over. I’m sure you’ll be able to get back together and maybe even friends. It’s hard going to a new school this late in your education, everyone already has their friendship groups set up and most won’t want to add to it. It can get lonely.” She mused aloud, looking up at the sky.

It was a clear, vibrant blue. Although it wasn’t hot anymore it was still warm, the kind of weather that made you want to still under a tree and fully asleep.

“Maybe that’s why I didn’t want to leave.” He said absentmindedly.

“Ethan, you don’t really have a group of friends here, to begin with.” She sounded almost tired as if it drained her to even say the words. It was true. The truth was draining, but that didn’t make it any less true.

“August, the boy I met, seemed nice, it was just that there was something wrong with him, he just got angry for no reason,” Ethan explained. Their meeting had become somewhat blurred in his mind and he wasn’t quite sure why the boy had stormed off in anger. He couldn’t remember what he had said other than he didn’t need help.

Sure, that hadn’t been true, he had needed help. As Mr. Thomas had pointed out, he had missed so much school, but that was no reason to get angry at him. Much less ignore him like he had been doing.

“You seem happy talking about him,” She pointed out.

“He was nice to me, usually people just talk about me behind my back, but he thought that that was a horrible thing to do.” He felt almost childish, standing up for a boy who had yelled at him in a library for not wanted his help. He didn’t even really know this boy and he was standing up for him. There was something about him that he couldn’t put his finger on. He made him felt something he wasn’t used to.

They were at the gate now and Ethan stopped, not wanting to leave the school boundaries. It sounded to him like the faculty needed any small excuse to get him to leave. And although it wasn’t a strict rule and not many of the teachers enforced it, especially with the year 12s; he didn’t want to push his luck. He was sure he would get in trouble if he left school grounds, as ‘volatile’ as he was.

“Your Father will be here to pick you up this afternoon, I have to go back to work.”

“Okay,” his voice was small as he looked at her tired blue eyes. He wondered if she got any more sleep than he did.

“See you, Sweetie. Make sure you get to your last class on time and take as much of it in as you can. Try hard and you will succeed. I love you.”

That was the one thing he couldn’t stand. The fact that she loved him. It made what he had done even worse. He hadn’t realized that she loved him until it was almost too last.

“Love you too, Mum.”

Ethan’s Maths teacher scolded him in front of the entire class when he asked if he could borrow a calculator for the third time in a row. She was usually a nice woman who would make sure that the whole class, including Ethan, understood the equation and how to apply it before moving on. But today he had pushed her too far.

Ethan waited awkwardly for all the students to leave the room before giving Mrs. Watson his full attention. He didn’t want her to start berating him while other students were listening. He didn’t want them to have more of a reason to gossip about him.

“I understand that what you’re going through must be hard but you’re only making it worse for yourself when you don’t pay attention.” Mrs. Watson asked as she slowly closed the lid of her laptop.

Ethan didn’t say anything; he didn’t know what to say. He could tell her that she was wrong, that she didn’t understand at all but he didn’t. because he didn’t care. He just wanted her to continue on with her rant so that he could leave.

“Ethan,” she sighed, leaning against a table. “I want to help you, I really do. But I can’t help you if you don’t want it.”

“I’ll try harder, I promise,” he said, not really meaning it.

If he tried harder that would mean that he would have to care more and he didn’t want that. He didn’t want to have to care, it was just too painful most of the time.

Make an effort.

“Ethan, I’ve been your teacher for the past two years. You used to be great at maths when you applied yourself. I don’t want you to waste that potential, I want you to do better.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“I know it’s not, life isn’t that easy, but you’ve got to push through it. I’m not your family Ethan. I’m not here to tell you to get better and do things at your own pace; I’m here to pull you to be the best person you can be.”

Ethan didn’t quite know what to say, no one had talked to him like that before like he was an adult, not a child. His chest tightened oddly as his brain processed what she had said.

It was what he had wanted all along, to be treated like a person, not some kicked dog. And yet, her words stung more than he had expected. The truth did hurt after all.

“If you continue the way you’re going, you’re not going to pass your exams, and I know you can do better.”

A childish voice in the back of his head wanted to say; well, actually, you can’t pass or fail on the year twelve exams. But he didn’t say anything out loud. He went to one of those school that cared a lot about what number their students got in their exams. Ethan wouldn’t be surprised if most of the teachers saw a seventy as a fail. He definably wasn’t going to get a seventy the way he was going; he’d be lucky to get a forty.

“I… I just don’t think I can do it,” he said lamely, wiping sweat from his forehead.

“Ethan, getting bad test scores in subjects you know you’re good at, isn’t good for your self-esteem. It’ll only get worse if you don’t make an effort.”

Make an effort.

“I’m trying.”

“I know you are, but you have to try harder, I don’t want you to let yourself down. I’m here to help you, come to me if you have any questions outside of class, and don’t be afraid to put your hand up in class. Everyone’s aware of your situation; they understand.”

Ethan wasn’t really sure about that. He remembered how angry August had been when he told him other students were talking about him. He was sure that they weren’t being positive. But she had a point. He was happy when he did well on tests, who wasn’t. After he got depression he had stopped trying, his marks became steadily worse and therefore so did his mood. He couldn’t help it as he spiraled downwards faster and faster, unable to stop. Until he did.

“I’m trying.”

Ethan’s dad was late. It wasn’t unusual for his father to be late, in fact, it was his trademark. The school grounds were an almost empty apart from a few teachers and some dedicated students.

Ethan had pulled out his English homework while he waited. They were studying a text this term and it was Shakespeare, much to Ethan’s horror. He had already missed out on weeks of context for the text and he was struggling to get through the first act. He wasn’t a great reader at the best of times, but the weird terms coupled with the old-fashioned language nearly put him over the edge.

He had, however, found the irony in the play he was studying; Twelfth Night. It was essentially about a girl whose twin brother dies, and to survive she dressed up as a boy to work for the Duke. The Duke is in love with this Countess, Olivia, but she falls in love with the girl, Viola, who is dressed as a boy. And to top it all off Viola falls in love with the Duke.

It was a proper love triangle and Ethan couldn’t help but smile when the teacher told the class about gender and s*x being different and fluid.

Of course, Mr. Thatch had no idea that Ethan was an ‘in the closet’ trans person but he felt like he was talking directly to him when he said that one’s gender does not always align with the s*x they were born into. He had gone on to say that although Viola doesn’t fall into the category of being transgender she is shown to enjoy being treated as Orsino’s- the Duke- equal.

The fact the Viola feels stronger and more empowered wearing men’s clothes, not only spoke volumes about the time in which Shakespeare lived but was also paralleling Ethan’s own journey of gender identity.

Of course, Ethan had learnt this by reading the synopsis on Wikipedia. He hadn’t even gotten to the point where Olivia and Viola meet. There were too many thees’ and thous’ in his opinion.

He jumped as a car horn sounded close by. He hadn’t even noticed his dad pulled up in their red Mazda.

He shoved his books back into his bag and walked slowly towards the car as if it was the gallows.

“How was school?” His dad, pulling out of the pack. “Learn anything new?”

“Boring. Not really.”

“Come on, that can’t be true, what classes did you have today?” He laughed, giving his son a half smile.

“Bio, Spare, English and Maths.”

His most boring subjects. He hadn’t paid much attention to any of them and had spent his spare trying not to cry while doing his Biology homework. It had been hard not to as he sat in the library looking down at questions he didn’t know the answer to and trying not to imagine how helpful August could be if they had stayed friends.

Ethan didn’t have the energy to tell his dad about August, he felt that if he began to talk about him then he would just start crying. August had given him bitter glances as they passed other in the locker halls. His hair flopped into his brilliant blue eyes.

“Sounds pretty boring to me, but you must have learnt something. What was the book you were reading?” He sounded almost interested. Ethan couldn’t help but notice that he hadn’t left any silence between them.

“Twelfth Night.”

“That’s Shakespeare, right? I don’t think I’ve ever read that one. Tell me what happens in it?”

You’ve never read any Shakespeare in your life, let alone shown an interest, Ethan thought bitterly.

That’s how his relationship with his dad was nowadays, full of conversations that went nowhere and emotionless responses. It was like his dad was trying to black out the last few weeks in his mind, wishing in vain that they had never happened, but Ethan knew that couldn’t happen.

It hurt Ethan to see his dad acting this way around him because they used to be really close.

Of course, his dad wasn’t much of an emotional person and would all but refuse to talk about them, but their conversations at least had a bit more substance than ‘how was your day?’.

His dad had been the first one he told about being transgender. Back then it had been just speculation, a hypothetical question to gauge how he would react. To his surprise he had reacted just fine, he didn’t fully understand but it was clear that he wouldn’t have been angry about it.

Looking back, Ethan knew that that was because his father loved him, but at the time he had not wanted to know that, he wanted nothing to do with the idea of being loved. It hurt too much.

“Dad,” he began, after explaining the plot of Twelfth Night to a man who had never read a Shakespeare play in his life. “Are you happy that things worked out the way that they did? With me, I mean.”

It was a weird question, one that he couldn’t quite rationalise asking. It seemed to have busted out of his mouth before he could stop it. He was sick of the silence, he was sick of the meaningless conversations, especially after everything that had happened.

He looked over at his father, the man’s eyes didn’t leave the road to meet him. His knuckles had turned white as he gripped the stirring wheel of dear life. That was the only sign that Ethan had even said anything. He had successfully silenced the man, despite that being the opposite of what he really wanted.

They were almost home before that silence was broken again.

“I’m just glad you’re alive, son.”