Melissa

My point is, it takes a special person to cry over a book. It shows compassion as well as imagination...Don't ever lose that

George stopped. It was such a short, little question, but she couldn't make her mouth form the sounds. Mom, what if I'm a girl?

She’s always going on about how we’re not supposed to let people’s expectations limit our choices.

She looked in the mirror and gasped. Melissa gasped back at her. For a long time, she stood there, just blinking. George smiled, and Melissa smiled too.

The play passed by quickly, and yet it seemed to George as though she had been onstage since the beginning of time, as if she were born there and had only now found herself where she had always been.

where Mom’s eyes were filled with concern and confusion, Scott looked at George as if his sibling made sense to him for the first time. George had never been gladder to have an older brother.

She told Kelly about her bag of girls’ magazines, and about Mom taking it. “But that’s not fair!” Kelly was indignant. “You didn’t steal them! What right does she have to take them from you?” “Sometimes transgender people don’t get rights.” George had read on the Internet about transgender people being treated unfairly. “That’s awful.” “I know.

She had genuinely started to believe that if people could see her onstage as Charlotte, maybe they would see that she was a girl offstage too.

Trying to be a boy is really hard.

SUPPORT SAFE SPACES FOR GAY, LESBIAN, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENDER YOUTH. Reading

The play will begin at six sharp. Parents and family, I hope you'll stay for the PTA meeting that will follow." A few parents coughed in response. George knew that coughing was the adult equivalent of groaning.

Well, you can’t control who your children are, but you can certainly support them, am I right?” Principal Maldonado’s earrings sparkled in the auditorium light.

Artists are never appreciated at lunchtime," Kelly mumbled as she stuffed her camera into her pocket.

His words crawled under her skin, settling deep into the crevices of her bones. Without

She immersed her body in the warm water and tried not to think about what was between her legs, but there it was, bobbing in front of her.

Scott looked at George as if his sibling made sense to him for the first time. George had never been gladder to have an older brother.

Girl problems?” Scott asked, his eyes focused on the television screen as the cloud creature announced the start of the next course. “No,” George said. She knew that wasn’t true. Being a secret girl was a giant problem.

Her body felt light as air, and she wasn't completely sure her shoes were touching the ground.

A sign in the far corner showed a large rainbow flag flying on a black background. Below the flag, the sign said SUPPORT SAFE SPACES FOR GAY, LESBIAN, BISEXUAL AND TRANSGENDER YOUTH. Reading the word 'transgender' sent a shiver down George's spine. She wondered where she could find a safe space like that, and if there would be other girls like her there.

George thought for a moment about kissing a boy, and the idea made her tingle.

If you're gonna be transgender and all, you're going to have to be a lot more careful. You won't be able to throw up on every bully you meet.

You know what? Ms. Udell is wrong. You should be Charlotte. And by the time she realizes it’s you, it’ll be too late. You’ll already be onstage and there won’t be a thing she can do about it.

I still don’t see why I can’t just take the next bus,” said Scott as he buckled himself into the front passenger’s seat. [...] “Because the next bus isn’t for forty-five minutes, and by that time you’ll have missed first period.” Mom backed the car out of the garage and down the driveway. “It’s only English. I already speak English real goodly.” “You’re a laugh riot, Scotto.

My dad’s cleaning!” Kelly announced. “What do you think?” “Wow,” said George. That seemed to cover the extent of the damage. “Got to mess it up before you can fix it up,” Kelly’s dad yelled over the music.

Some of us take death very seriously.” Ms. Udell’s words were icy. She looked at Jeff and Rick in turn; they each stared at their sneakers. “It is a solemn topic, and I hope that you will respect yourselves, your classmates, and life itself by treating it as such.

Você é forte. Mas o mundo nem sempre é bom com as pessoas que são diferentes. Só não quero que você torne seu caminho mais difícil do que precisa ser

Ms. Udell leaned against her giant desk, reading to her fourth-grade class from a tattered copy of Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White. She wore her shiny black hair in a loose bun, and wooden earrings dangled from her long earlobes. In her seat by the window, George couldn’t listen. She couldn’t think. Charlotte, the wonderful, kind spider, was gone and nothing was good. The whole book was about Charlotte saving the runt pig Wilbur, and then she goes and dies. It wasn’t fair. George pushed her fists into her eyes, rubbing until rows and rows of tiny triangles twirled and twinkled brightly in the darkness. A tear dropped onto George’s book and spread into a spiderweb on the page. She breathed in carefully, trying not to make a sound. Shallow