If I Was Your Girl

Amanda thinks back to when she woke up in the hospital after attempting suicide. That was the first time she admitted to her mother that she should have been born a girl. She didn’t think her mother would accept her, but she said, “Anything, anyone, is better than a dead son” (11).

On the morning Amanda starts her new high school, she takes her hormone replacement pill “to feminize my appearance and stand in for the testosterone my body could no longer make” (13). She tries to blend in, but a handsome boy named Grant sits down beside her at lunch. He’s clearly attracted to her, and she’s equally attracted to him.

Amanda tries to go to art class but realizes it’s been canceled. Instead, she finds a girl named Bee smoking pot outside. They instantly connect. After school, Amanda tries walking home from school, but the heat of the day makes it unbearable. A group of girls from school pick her up, and they all become quick friends over lunch. They eventually drop Amanda off at home, and her dad is angry that she’s late because he was worried.

Amanda thinks back to her first meeting with the counselor after her suicide attempt. He called her by her birth name, Andrew, but she was clearly uncomfortable. He invited her to a support group for people with “gender identity disorder” (31). 

Amanda goes to the football game with her newfound friends Layla, Anna, and Chloe. Amanda finds Chloe and Bee alone together and acting strangely, and later it’s revealed that they’re secretly dating. Amanda realizes that even though she doesn’t like football, she’s having fun, which she equates to “friendship or acceptance or maybe fitting in” (36).

Bee takes Amanda to her secret hiding place out in the middle of nowhere. Bee takes pictures, and Amanda draws. Bee talks her into playing the truth game, which is where they tell each other progressively private secrets. Amanda gets high for the first time while playing, and she almost tells Bee that she was born a boy. Instead, she tells her that she once tried to commit suicide.

Amanda thinks back to the first time she attended the support group. She was immediately befriended by the leader, Virginia, and it was the first time she decided her name was Amanda, not Andrew.

Amanda goes to a party with the girls. Parker, Grant’s closest friend, tries to hit on her, but she rejects him because he reminds her too much of the guys who used to beat her up. Later, she and Grant talk instead. Things get tense when Grant’s football friends, including Parker, start making fun of him for once having a “little gay boyfriend” (58). The derogatory comments make Amanda feel uncomfortable, and she leaves.

Amanda thinks back to a story she wrote at school when she was younger. In the story, she wrote about herself growing up to be a woman. When she tells her dad about the story later that day while they’re driving home from school, he said, “Boys who really think the things in your story are confused. They don’t have good lives” (63). Amanda decided that she couldn’t tell her parents how she really felt after that moment.

Grant follows Amanda out of the party and invites her to his favorite spot: a treehouse on a lake. They talk and swim, and Grant calls her beautiful. She’s shocked because a boy has never said this to her before. They kiss, and she’s thrilled, but she can’t help but wonder if he would have done that if he knew the truth about her past.

When she goes home that night, her dad is drunk, and he tells her that he’s sorry. He also says he loves her, and she realizes “it had been a decade since he’d said those words” (73).