If I Was Your Girl

“My heart screamed that they knew, that the one with those piercing eyes was attracted to me for a moment and his friend was making fun of him for it. That was the kind of scenario that got girls like me killed.” 

When Amanda first arrives at her new high school, she and Grant are immediately attracted to each other, but her elated feelings are laced with anxiety. She’s worried that somehow Grant and his friends can see her past, and she’s afraid of the violence that could ensue if anyone finds out the truth. Russo speaks to the very real dangers that trans women face in America. 

“I remembered the days after I woke up in the hospital and realized I was still alive. I remembered having nobody to keep me company but the nurses and Mom and the television—no friends, no family, no Dad.”

Amanda’s relationship with her dad is complicated. Her parents got divorced when she was younger, and she was raised by her mother without any support from her dad. She’s always interpreted his lack of engagement as a sign that he doesn’t love her, a feeling that was solidified in her mind after he didn’t come to the hospital after her suicide attempt.

“It feels wrong that I’m a boy, though. When my hair gets long and people mistake me for a girl, I feel happy.” 

Amanda says this to her counselor when she is still known as Andrew. This is the first time she has ever admitted these feelings out loud. She feels relieved to finally say it, but she’s also nervous about what will happen next. She doesn’t know if her parents will accept her, but she knows that things will never be the same after saying it out loud. 

“I had only used a women’s room a few times since I’d been attacked, and the idea still made my heart race.” 

Amanda feels traumatized after she was attacked for using a women’s restroom shortly after her transition surgery, and the lingering fear makes it difficult for her to use the women’s restroom at school. Although she feels more confident that her feminine appearance will hide the secrets from her past, she’s always acutely aware of the violence that could result if anyone finds out the truth. Russo reveals some of the hidden hardships trans women face in their daily lives, even with something as simple and natural as using the restroom.

“I thought of how I’d stopped doing so many of the things I’d enjoyed so Dad wouldn’t be mad. I thought of going the rest of my life pretending I sprang to life from nothing at sixteen years old and felt my cheeks flush with shame and anger. I was so tired of cowering. I was so tired of hiding. I wanted to tell the truth, to say it out loud.” 

As Amanda finds acceptance and friendship at her new school, she feels emboldened to reveal the truth about her past. She doesn’t think it’s fair that she is forced to live a half-truth for fear of rejection or violence, and she wants to live openly as her full self. In this moment, she almost tells Bee the truth about her past, but she ultimately decides that she’s not quite ready yet.

“I couldn’t be one of them anymore. I’d been crazy to think I ever could.” 

Amanda feels so comfortable and accepted by her new friends that she decides to go to a party with them. She just wants to feel like a normal teenager, but she realizes she’s not the same as them when Grant’s friend makes an offensive derogatory joke. The joke feels like a stark reminder that people will never truly accept her, and she again feels isolated. This moment is pivotal to Russo’s theme “Identity and the Search for Belonging.”

“I would keep going on with my life and keep seeing Grant, and I would take things day by day. What was my big rush anyway? I knew I should want to take things slow—I should be afraid of getting close to Grant, because growing closer meant knowing things about each other, and there was so much about me that I didn’t want him to know, that he could never know.” 

Amanda feels internally conflicted after moving to her dad’s house in the South and starting a new life. She wants to tell her friends and Grant about her past, but she doesn’t want anything to change between them. She’s worried that the truth will cause rejection and maybe even violence, but she also feels like she can’t be fully herself unless the people she cares about know her past. In this moment, she decides that she’d rather keep things stable and happy with Grant and not tell him the truth yet; Russo increases tension in the novel by bringing Amanda to the edge of her revelation and then back again multiple times.

“Raising me was so hard that my parents were stressed out all the time, and they disagreed on basically everything about how to help me.” 

In this moment, Amanda is telling Grant that she feels like she was the reason for her parents’ divorce. She thinks back to how her dad always wanted to change her and make her more masculine, while her mother didn’t like his tactics. When Amanda thinks about her childhood, she mostly recalls these tense moments between her parents and the friction caused by their differing parental strategies. That she blames herself for their divorce develops the “Power of Family” theme. 

“I still remember that letter you sent when you started your hormone pills, where you told me you’d been a girl all along. I hadn’t understood it then but now I think I do, because you’re acting like a girl now.”

Amanda’s dad says this to her in anger. He’s afraid that she’s not being careful enough after moving in. She’s hurt by his words, but he’s being honest about his feelings. He has never understood her, and he doesn’t understand how she can be so wild without thinking about the possible repercussions of her actions. He’s afraid of what will happen if her peers find out the truth, and he doesn’t think she’s thinking about the potential consequences. We see here, too, that some of her dad’s reluctance comes from sexism. 

“I thought about what he had said, that I could tell him anything, and I knew that he was right—or at least that he thought he was. But until the moment he learned the truth, I couldn’t know how he would feel, and that was a risk I wasn’t ready to take.” 

Amanda constantly feels conflicted in her new life. She desperately wants to be completely honest with her newfound friends, and especially with Grant, but she’s afraid of how they will react. This fear keeps her from telling them about her past, but it also makes her feel like she’s living a double life. Russo again ramps up the tension with Amanda’s almost-revelation. 

“For the first time ever I was living my life, the life I was supposed to live—I was finally the truest version of myself. I just happened to be keeping an enormous secret at the same time.” 

Amanda thinks about this as she’s hanging out with her friends. She realizes that this is the first time she’s been truly happy and felt like she fits in somewhere. She correlates this feeling of happiness and acceptance to the realization that she’s living her life the way she wants to live it, rather than doing what others expect from her. 

“My relationship with sci-fi was a little more complicated than Grant’s, because it was one of the things about me that was typically male.” 

Amanda constantly negotiates how she should present herself after her transition. She’s aware that she looks like a girl physically, but she’s often worried that her demeanor or interests will be interpreted as too masculine. She loves sci-fi, but she’s also aware that males often adore sci-fi more than females. This awareness makes her question whether she should read sci-fi in public lest she be viewed as too much like a boy.

“It had taken me a little while to figure out what I was feeling, but now I understood: it was the sense of two parts of me coming together. It felt honest.” 

Amanda feels this sense of honesty for the first time while hanging out with Bee and Virginia at the same time. Bee and Virginia represent these two parts of herself—her past and her present—and bringing them together makes her feel fully herself. 

“I had never been good at being a boy, and I didn’t enjoy it very much, but there were parts to it that made a certain kind of sense—when boys were angry, they showed it with their fists, and then it was done. With girls, I knew it was different.” 

Amanda acknowledges that there are vast differences between boys and girls when it comes to how they handle emotional situations. She intuitively understands the way boys handle their anger, but she doesn’t intuitively know how to handle hurt feelings from the perspective of a girl. 

“He reached under my skirt and I stiffened instinctively, still not used to that territory being safe.”

Amanda is attracted to Grant and desperately wants to be with him intimately, but she’s afraid because of the trauma of her past. She wants to give herself to him sexually and emotionally, but the fear of the unknown prevents her. 

“I realized that under the bravado and the alcohol was a girl who had just made herself vulnerable and been shot down.”

Bee professes her love for Amanda on the night of the homecoming dance, but Amanda rejects her affection and reminds her that she doesn’t like girls like that. This rejection causes Bee to turn against Amanda. 

“I remembered Mom telling me how frightening men were, all men really, how helpless it often felt to be a woman among men, and for the first time I understood what she meant.”

Amanda thinks this after she’s alone in the woods with Parker, who is making her feel cornered. In her feminine body, she realizes how much bigger and stronger Parker is than her. This awareness makes her feel helpless against his ensuing advances. For the first time, she understands how scary it can be to be a girl next to an angry man.

“I was a late bloomer at fifteen, tall but beardless and scrawny, with a high voice that still squeaked sometimes, but I could feel the changes coming like a swarm of insects skittering across my bones.” 

Amanda recalls the time she attempted suicide. She wanted to end her life because she couldn’t bear the thought of her body changing into man’s when she had always wanted it to be representative of a woman. She was also tired of the bullying and felt like it would never end. 

“Ever since coming out and living as a girl full-time, Mom and I had been informally exiled from all family functions.” 

Amanda’s life changed for better and worse after her transition. Internally, she finally felt at peace with herself because she felt like her outward appearance matched her internal feelings. But outwardly, she suffered the consequences of others’ misunderstandings and judgment. 

“Sometimes I wonder what my past self would think if she saw me, and I wondered what our past selves would think if they saw us right now.” 

Amanda says this to her dad as they’re playing catch. This moment is a pivotal moment of bonding for Amanda and her dad because it represents how they’ve reached a middle ground of understanding. Her dad shows that he’s accepting of who she is now, and she reveals that she forgives him and wants to move forward. It’s significant that they bond over a traditionally father/son activity, as it represents them both compromising. 

“I felt like, as Amanda, I could face things that would have kept me cowering in bed before.” 

Amanda thinks back to when she first started the hormone therapy and how the first small pill gave her so much hope. That moment was a turning point where Amanda moved from living the life others wanted her to, to living the life she had always wanted for herself. By the end of the novel, Amanda has come full circle to a place where she is living how she wants with her parents’ acceptance.

“I was always a girl, always.” 

After Amanda first comes back to high school after being humiliated during homecoming, she and Grant finally have a chance to talk. When she tells him that she was always a girl, it’s her way of expressing her deepest feelings about herself. She knows that he can’t understand her feelings, but the fact that he’s listening to her explanation demonstrates a sense of hope that they can move forward together in some way. 

“I wanna know everything, if you’re okay with telling me.” 

In this moment, Grant finally says what Amanda has been waiting to hear ever since they started dating. All along, she’s wanted to tell him the full truth about herself and her past, but she’s been afraid of the consequences. Here at the end of the novel, Grant knows part of her past and is welcoming her to share the full story. This gives her permission to be her full self with him.