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Show 102 said, "Yep." We watched the headlights blur over the murky pavement like fireflies in the dark. I was sad but resigned and unsurprised to see Erin leave. By now she was wearing skirts and makeup every day and was walking more deliberately. I had walked around with her as she'd transformed. Usually it was just whispers, but once I was hit in the face with a pear that was solid as granite. As a defense mechanism, I had to remember what I used to act like when I was trying to intimidate people, and happy to get in a fight. New York would be better. Erin was already creating YouTube blogs about her experience transitioning and had a surprisingly large and devoted following already. In two hours, we would say goodbye and Erin would walk through the airport gates without looking back. In five hours, she would fly over Great Salt Lake for the last time. She would read during takeoff and not take her eyes off the page. In two days, she would take the first job she found at Halloween Adventure, would ride underground and over water every day to work, would play guitar for tips on the subway singing lyrics like the following: "Glad I'm off that track / Never going back." She saw more people in one train ride into the city than she did during a full shift at Hogi Yogi, the sandwich and yogurt shop where she used to work. The Airport It took two years to bracket off the time and to save enough money to visit Erin in New York. By this time she was a manager at Halloween Adventure and was dating and living with a girl named Morgan in an apartment in Brooklyn. I mostly kept in touch via Erin's YouTube video blogs, which she posted weekly. |