In his free time, he thinks about the life cycle of salmon. Of coming full circle, coming home, of his flesh flaking away into the gravel that birthed him. He thinks of salmon, and when the leaves turn red he goes out to find the fish, their death adorned in the same color as the leaves.
It’s not raining, but it was, and now the sun cuts through frost and wind bites his ears. The water flows fast and cool. The leaves disintegrate under his steps and he stops to greet a slug, making its long journey across a rock.
The fish are making their own journey, tails fighting against the river. Their home doesn’t want them to return, it seems. Or maybe it does, but gravity is too strong for even water to fight.
He watches the water, and the names in the back of his head settle like sand.
***
When he was fifteen and dating a girl for the first time, he told her he’d never liked the word lesbian. Not the meaning, or the identity, but the word itself. It felt sticky on his tongue, a commitment he couldn’t fully take on.
She’d laughed and said that she used to say the same about the word straight, and then realized it was the same feeling she got about the word boy.
Before they broke up, she helped him make a list of names he liked. He still has the sticky-note somewhere, with the little hearts she’d drawn in the corner, testing out the new initials with hers.
***
At the end of her life, a salmon lays her eggs. She finds a place with shade, with shallow water that is cold and oxygen dense. She thrashes her tail in a strange dance, carving out a space in the creek bed to hide her children. The ideal redd is a nest made of fine gravel deep enough to protect the bright orange roe from predators.
Here, she lays her eggs and dies.
***
Last spring, he and Elise hiked Lake 22, just as the snow was starting to melt. The cold seeped through even his thick wool socks—they hit just above his boots, because he’d rather have gooseflesh ankles than wool against his skin.
At the lake, they sat on their raincoats and watched the frogs, shifting in the reeds as they woke up from hibernation. They ate squished peanut butter sandwiches and argued about Taylor Swift.
“Tell me about the salmon,” she prompted, “what are they doing right now?”
He flicked a piece of crust back into his lunchbag. “Incubating. They’ll start hatching in a few weeks when it gets warmer. There’s thousands in each nest, but less than a hundred will make it to adulthood.”
“It’s blind hope, then. Laying all those eggs in defiance of nature’s cruelty.”
He shrugged and twisted a piece of grass between his fingers. He’s never liked reading into facts very much.
“Did you know,” he started—and she laughed, because that’s how he starts so often--”that trans people call their past self who didn’t know yet an egg?”
“Yeah, I did.”
“Did you know that I’m trans?”
Elise paused and stared out at the water. “Is it rude if I say yes?”
***
At the creek, he kneels in the leaves and mud and lets a roly-poly crawl onto his hand. The bug tickles as it moves across his palm, but doesn’t curl up in self-defense. He smiles. Even if he can’t be the woman everyone expected him to be, at least this fragile crustacean feels safe with him.
“Hello,” he says, as it continues up to his wrist, “I’m Rheo."
***
Humans, contrary to popular belief, have stripes. It’s not visible—he can never remember if it’s because it’s outside the range of vision or the difference is so subtle it isn’t processed. This is the fun fact he shared during his biology ice breaker, and everyone looked a little bit uncomfortable.
He clarified that they are multiple kinds of patterns, but that didn’t really help.
Salmon have stripes too, though theirs are visible and change throughout their life. In preparation for the journey downstream, they grow stripes on their backs to better camouflage with the creek bed as they make their way downstream. This is when their days as fry end, when movement becomes more advantageous than stillness and they are called parr.
He has spent a lot of his life hiding by being still. He thinks, like the parr, that he needs to start moving.
***
In third grade, he clambered off a school bus and to the shores of this same creek. It had rained that day and everyone huddled in groups under umbrellas while a park ranger taught them about salmon. She said they were threatened, their numbers dwindling.
That day, the fish were few and far between. The class crowded the banks hoping to catch a glimpse of the jeweled fish as they raced to their deaths.
Someone stepped on his toes, and when he started crying, the teacher took him aside.
“Oh, Miriam,” she said, tucking his hair back into his hood, “you’re alright, honey.”
***
There is no scientific definition of salmon. All fish considered salmon belong to the taxonomic family salmonidae, but they share the family with all trout species.
Years ago, he shared that fact with Elise.
“But they’re salmon,” she said. “They go to the ocean.”
He sat on the edge of her bed, twisting the blanket in his fingers. “So do steelhead trout, at least some of them. And there’s an endangered species called kokanee salmon that spend their adult lives in Lake Sammamish. They never touch salt water but they’re still called salmon.”
“If trout can live in the ocean and salmon can live in lakes, does it even matter which one is which?”
“To nature? No,” he said, pulling his feet underneath himself. “But to humans? Yeah, it matters.”
***
When a salmon first meets the ocean, it is afraid. There is salt and tides and currents. The fish swarm the estuaries, taking salt into their gills for the first time. They dart between tides and each flick of their tail is stronger than the last.
In these days or weeks, they become smolt. There is something magical about salmon and the way they travel so effortlessly between fresh and salt water. If you ask the salmon, there’s nothing effortless about it.
***
His mother thinks it’s suicide. When he told her, she pressed her lips so thin he could see her teeth through the skin.
“You’re killing my little girl,” she said. “You weren’t a boy. I would’ve known if you were a boy.”
He’d thought about that a lot, whether he’d ever been a girl. He stared at this one photo, from the Halloween he’d dressed up as Mary Poppins, and decided that he had.
He set down the knife and passed his mother the mirepioux. “Sometimes girls grow up to be men.”
The vegetables hit hot oil with a loud pop.
Mom sighed. “I just want the best for you. You need to accept who you are.”
“I have, though. That’s the point.”
“Here, can you finish the cornbread?” She pushed the mixing bowls over to him and handed him an egg.
He stirred a well into the flour mixture and cracked it in. The egg must have been one from the neighbors who kept chickens, because the yolk was bright orange as a salmon.
“You need to listen to me,” he said. “I’m not lying about being trans. I need you to trust that I know myself.”
She pressed down on a can opener and the tomatoes hissed.
“Can you do that? Can you try?”
She dumped the tomatoes into the pot. “I’ll try.”
***
Today, there are more salmon. He remembers the Tulalip woman who joined them on the field trip, who told them what her parents remembered; salmon so plentiful you could cross the stream on their backs. The salmon don’t run quite that thick, but it still gives him hope to see more dorsal fins than he can count.
One of the salmon stops her fight against the current, turning back to look at him.
“You seem brackish,” she says.
Rheo crouches at the bank, his toes sinking in the mud. The gap in treecover sends sunlight glaring off the water, the salmon herself shimmering.
“Yeah,” he laughs, “I guess I am a little salty.”
“You’re trapped in an estuary, refusing to swim out to sea. The ocean is frightening, and the salt stings at first, but the freedom is immeasurable. Moving from fresh to salt water means learning a whole new way of living. To even approach the sea is feat in itself, but it takes time to follow the current. Are you ready for the ocean, smolt?”
***
“I’m sorry about Mom,” Elise said, sitting on the end of his bed when she came home for spring break.
He shrugged and moved his sketchbook so she could pull her feet up. “I kind of get it. Change is hard. I just wish she’d stop trying to make it even harder for me.”
“I glad to have a little brother, y’know? No offense, but you were a really shitty sister.”
He laughed and opened his sketchbook. “Wanna help me choose a name?”
By the time they fell asleep, they’d added, crossed out, and highlighted nearly a hundred names on his list.
***
To the fish, he says, “I know how to be a girl. To fully commit to not being one… I’m afraid that I’m wrong. That I’ll return to the fresh water anyway.”
“I’ve returned to fresh water,” the fish points out, “but there is still salt in my gills, and I am forever changed by my time at sea. Impermanence is not a flaw. In the ocean, things are less solid than on land. I imagine it is difficult to be insubstantial when you have no fins.”
“Isn’t solid better? More stable?”
“Is water not flowing through your veins? The rocks resist the flow and water bubbles for myself and mine to breathe. It all has a place. Challenge the unmovable with your fluidity and you will create something necessary.”
She turns to rejoin the surge upstream, and Rheo could swear she has more red scales than before.