Wyatt Maines is a transgender child. He is born with a boy’s body, but he is convinced that he is actually a girl from a young age. He starts going by the name Nicole and using female pronouns when he enters fifth grade. He is clear which gender he identifies with long before that, though. His favorite toys are Barbies, his favorite characters are witches and mermaids, and his favorite clothes are pink and sparkly. He wants to wear skirts in public, but his parents won’t let him do this for many years. Those items are for at home, where he is safe from the prying eyes of strangers. Wyatt tends to befriend girls and want to be them. He expresses hatred for his penis around age 3 and tells the other kids at school that he is a “boy-girl.”

Though he realizes that it is unusual for a boy to feel like a girl, he is not ashamed about it as a young child. He is outspoken and wants to be open about how he feels. He can be stubborn, too: “Wyatt was never one to doubt his interests or himself. He knew what he liked, who he liked, and what he wanted to be” (68). He also isn’t afraid to stand up for himself, even when bigger, older kids begin to question his feminine presentation.

As Wyatt gets older, he begins to assert his femininity more forcefully. This leads to tension with his brother, Jonas, as well as some people in the community. The tension with his brother is especially important. Wyatt and Jonas are identical twin brothers. When Wyatt looks at Jonas, he sees someone who looks just like him but feels very different about his identity. Jonas can be himself and feel at home in his body. He can dress how he wants and act how he wants, for the most part. Wyatt is always being told no, and he never truly feels like himself, no matter how hard he tries to express his identity through his clothing, actions, and personality.

After Wyatt becomes Nicole, he becomes the victim of bullying at school. The bullying revolves around Nicole’s use of the girls’ bathroom, and Nicole soon has to use a different bathroom from the other students. Nicole eventually becomes the center of a discrimination lawsuit her family files against the school district. She also becomes an activist for the rights of transgender people, especially transgender kids, and spends time making speeches, talking to legislators, and talking to reporters. Nicole is someone who has always loved performing, and she finds a way to apply her performance skills to her moments in the limelight. She hopes to become an actress one day, after she has sex reassignment surgery. Nicole is terribly worried about going through male puberty and expresses these concerns to her pediatric endocrinologist, Dr. Spack. She hopes that her surgery will help her to finally feel like herself. She also looks forward to having a relationship with a boy once the surgery is complete, though she has some doubts about whether a boy will ever love her for who she is: a girl who used to live in a boy’s body.

Jonas Maines is Wyatt’s identical twin. He has always known that he is a boy. He has a tight bond with Wyatt, but the two have very different personalities. Whereas Wyatt tends to project confidence and certainty, Wyatt is filled with doubt. He is an introvert like their mother, while Wyatt is an extrovert like their father:

He didn’t seem to fit the mold of other boys his age, and the more he retreated into himself, the less confident he became. He was curious, a questioner, dissatisfied with simple explanations and therefore more comfortable being alone (68).

In addition to being a quiet questioner, Jonas is loyal and very protective of Wyatt—and, later, Nicole. He sees Wyatt as a sister, even before Wyatt becomes Nicole. Jonas sometimes feels like he is playing a supporting role in his own life because Nicole’s life is so dramatic and all-consuming. He turns to theater in high school to deal with this frustration, and he finds success and validation on the stage. So does Nicole, but for different reasons. For Jonas, acting is a way to process emotions and be the star of a scene.

Jonas is also an excellent student who excels in math and science. He is described as thoughtful, rational, and analytical. Despite this, his emotions sometimes take over. Jonas occasionally gets into fights when he is angry about someone else’s actions, typically when those actions harm Nicole.

Kelly Maines is the mother of Wyatt/Nicole and Jonas. She and her husband, Wayne, adopted the children from a cousin of hers who became pregnant as a teenager. Teen pregnancy is a pattern in her family, and she herself was adopted by a relative when her teenage birthmother couldn’t care for her. Kelly is fiercely loyal, especially when it comes to her children. She is also brave and articulate. She wastes no time standing up for her kids when people in the community are mistreating them. Nutt describes Kelly as an introvert who avoids the limelight. Kelly has a talent for drawing but spends most of her time worrying about her kids, in particular Wyatt/Nicole, and trying to find ways for them to have a good and happy life. She is also an avid learner: she spends lots of time educating herself about what it means to be transgender and sharing this information with others.

Like her husband, Kelly was raised in a small town and embraces values such as dedication to one’s family and country. But these values do not keep her from seeing beyond her own experience, a trait Nutt highlights on several occasions. It’s a characteristic she shares with Jonas as well. Nutt describes it thusly: “Jonas […] had that same strange ability his mother had, the capacity to look at himself as if he were floating outside his own body” (186). Kelly also has few expectations about how a family should look or act, largely because the family that raised her was unusual in many respects. This helps her quickly accept that she has a transgender child and quickly shed any concerns she might have had about what others think of her and her family.

Kelly assumes the role of problem-solver in her family, whose day-to-day struggles require a great deal of attention. She is the one who believes Wyatt when he says he’s a girl at a tender young age, lets Wyatt wear pink to school, finds him a therapist and doctors to help him transition from a male body to a female one, works tirelessly to curb the bullying Nicole experiences, files a lawsuit against the Orono elementary school, and moves the kids to Portland when their safety can’t be guaranteed in Orono. Since Wayne cannot accept Wyatt/Nicole’s transgender identity for so long, she must guide her child through life on her own, without much support from within her family. This causes tension in her marriage, but she never gives up on her kids or her husband, and Nutt often depicts her as the heroine of the Maines family’s story. Without having such a supportive and loving mother, Wyatt/Nicole’s life might have turned out much differently. As Nutt explains, Wyatt “was unhappy as a boy—that was the bottom line, and so [Kelly’s] job was to make sure he received the kind of help or assurances or whatever it was that he needed in order to be happy” (47).

Wayne Maines is the father of Wyatt/Nicole and Jonas. He lovingly calls the twins “my boys” after they are born and dreams of doing traditionally-masculine activities with them, including hunting and fishing. Like Kelly, he grew up in a small town and places great value on family and country. He also served in the military, where an incident of cruelty motivated him to go to college and eventually earn a Ph.D. Wayne is a safety expert who gravitates toward planning, analysis, and weighing risks and benefits. He dislikes surprises and often struggles with change. When he discovers that Kelly’s cousin will be giving birth to twins rather than a single baby, he is uncomfortable at first because the family hasn’t planned for this. It takes him years to accept that Wyatt/Nicole identifies as a girl and to fully support his child’s efforts to express this identity and live in a way that feels authentic and fulfilling.

Though Kelly long argues that Wyatt/Nicole is a girl and should be treated as one, Wayne doesn’t budge much in his views until he starts receiving a similar message from medical experts such as Dr. Spack. To a large degree, Wayne is hung up on his own insecurities: when others don’t understand why Wyatt/Nicole is acting feminine or asserting a transgender identity, he feels that he and Kelly are being judged. Kelly, meanwhile, thinks that people should mind their own business. Wayne eventually begins to defend and support Nicole when the family is exposed to public scrutiny through their lawsuit against the Orono School District, and when a bill that threatens to limit transgender people’s rights is introduced in the state legislature. He begins making speeches about how his daughter deserves to be treated fairly and pursue a good life, and he eventually becomes comfortable in this role. He also allows himself to learn and grow. An important part of this growth involves recognizing the many ways and times he has abandoned Kelly during this journey, leaving her to do all of the heavy lifting that comes with guiding a transgender child through the world.

Paul Melanson is a conservative Orono, Maine resident in his late forties. He used to be in the military, and he is the grandfather and guardian of Nicole’s classmate, Jacob. When Melanson hears that a boy who identifies as a girl is using the girls’ bathroom at Jacob’s school, he uses Jacob to intervene. He tells Jacob to make a point about how wrong it is for the school to allow a boy who thinks he’s a girl to use the girls’ bathroom. For some reason, Melanson has a very personal attachment to whether Nicole should be able to use the restroom of her choice. He sees this choice as an affront to his beliefs and values. He feels that if she gains this right to choose, he loses rights. This bothers him a great deal since he risked his life fighting for other people to have rights.

Melanson isn’t afraid to transgress boundaries, speak out of turn, coach others to repeat his talking points, or make a mountain out of a molehill. He is also fond of filing lawsuits that align with socially-conservative causes, such as outlawing same-sex domestic partnerships. Melanson threatens to sue Jacob and Nicole’s school, claiming that it’s discriminating against Jacob by not letting him use the girls’ bathroom. even though it lets another boy do so. He fails to acknowledge that Nicole is a girl, despite her anatomy, and that she sees herself as such. His anxiety about males in female bathrooms is linked to his concept of fairness as well as an assumption that girls will feel uncomfortable if anyone with male anatomy uses their bathroom, even if they don’t want to have this anatomy. He also doesn’t seem to care that he is making life a living hell for a 9-year-old girl.

Jacob is Paul Melanson’s grandson and a fifth-grade classmate of Nicole’s. He starts bullying Nicole after Melanson suggests giving her a hard time. Jacob starts referring to Nicole using slurs about gay people, and he follows her into the girls’ bathroom, which leads the school to prohibit her from using it. Jacob lives with Melanson because there were some problems in his mother’s home, and he often has trouble making friends at school. He often tries to find out where Nicole will be and when, and Nicole often feels like he is stalking her.

Dr. Virginia Holmes is the child psychologist who is Nicole’s first therapist. She starts seeing Nicole when Nicole is still known as Wyatt. At first, she thinks Wyatt might be gay rather than transgender. She urges Kelly and Wayne to move slowly when it comes to letting Wyatt express his femininity in public. In general, Dr. Holmes is a supportive presence in Wyatt’s life. When Wyatt is upset about having to wear an athletic supporter and cup with his girls’ softball uniform, she doesn’t shy away from acknowledging that he has boy parts. She tells him she’s proud of him for knowing who he is—a girl—even though he has these parts. At first, Wyatt is angry that she has mentioned the thing he hates most about himself, but he soon absorbs the other part of her statement and takes pride in it.

Dr. Norman Spack is one of the nation’s first pediatric endocrinologists to specialize in treating transgender children. He develops this specialty after working with gay and transgender youth who are living on the streets of Boston. When Nicole meets him, he works at the gender clinic in the Boston Children’s Hospital. She becomes one of his first American patients to transition from a male body to a female one. He is portrayed as patient and rational, and he establishes a fatherly presence in Nicole’s life. Dr. Spack quickly gains the trust of her parents by demonstrating his knowledge about hormone therapy, transgender issues, and more. He helps Nicole avoid the trauma of going through male puberty and assists her when she is ready to find a surgeon for sex-reassignment surgery.

Lisa Erhardt is the counselor at Nicole’s elementary school. She is in her late twenties and possesses a wealth of wisdom about children and the problems they face. Erhardt often refers to herself as a conflict resolution specialist, and she has a talent for listening to kids in a way that helps them open up and discuss their problems. She knows every child at the school where she works, and she develops a strong relationship with Kelly. She acts as an advocate for Nicole and shows Kelly some new ways to do this as well. Though Erhardt is often prohibited from talking to the Maines family during their lawsuit against the school, she stays connected to them and even sends presents to the twins when they graduate from high school. After the lawsuit is decided, she also shares anecdotes about how the school starts to grow and change for the better with regard to transgender issues and bullying.

Bob Lucy is the principal at the middle school in Orono and the acting principal at the elementary school Nicole and Jonas attend. Nutt describes him as an intimidating figure who gained respect in the community by excelling at several sports as a student. He has also served as a coach, and he tends to view many issues through the lens of coaching athletics. He prefers to direct others, not collaborate with him, and he expects others to comply with his demands, rather than ask for cooperation. Kelly finds Lucy to be rigid and endlessly frustrating because he shuts down communication and refuses to work with her to find a way to address Nicole’s safety at school. She also thinks Lucy is dishonest. He institutes a policy that prohibits Nicole from using the girls’ restroom at the elementary school, then denies any memory of restricting her access to part of the school building when lawyers question him about it. He often gives Kelly non-answers to questions that are keeping her awake at night. The only time Kelly sees Lucy smile is when she tells him the school’s lack of action will force her family to move to another town:

Here was the acting principal of an elementary school and the principal of a middle school, and he seemed pleased a family felt forced to uproot their lives because of an intolerable situation at his school—a situation he had all the power in the world to change but for whatever reason had decided not to(172).