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Three weeks ago, a police officer walked into a hospital in Owasso, Oklahoma, and kept his bodycam rolling. He was there to figure out why a 16-year-old kid named Nex Benedict was lying in intake complaining about head pain. Nex tells the officer, “I just got jumped.” The way Nex tells it, it went down like this: Some kids didn’t like the way Nex dressed—didn’t like the way Nex laughed. And they wouldn’t quit. So, Nex emptied a water bottle on their heads. That’s when these other kids got violent.

Nex identifies as trans—uses “he” and “they” pronouns. But his family is still adjusting to all that. His mom, who is sitting in the room with him, addresses him as “she.” The cop does, too. But it’s all friendly. It almost seems too friendly. Nex and his mom don’t seem to expect much from the encounter. The cop openly discourages the family from pressing charges against anyone.

To NBC’s Jo Yurcaba the really telling moment comes when this police officer asks, “When you felt bullied, did you tell an adult what was going on here?”

“Nex says, no, he didn’t do that because he didn’t think there was a point,” Yurcaba said. “There’s not really a lot of faith from Nex in this process.”

When he’s finished taking their statements, the officer says his goodbyes, cheerfully. He works at Nex’s school, so he’s like, I’ll see you later. Nex is a little funny here. He says, “Hopefully not!” But, this officer never would see Nex again. Because Nex died the next day. We still don’t know exactly how Nex died. Was Nex fatally injured in this school fight? A full report isn’t expected for weeks. But to many, those full results don’t matter. “At the end of the day, their friend is dead,” Yurcaba said.

On Wednesday’s episode of What Next, we discussed what exactly happened to Nex Benedict. Our conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Mary Harris: I want to introduce my listeners to Nex Benedict, but before we really get into it, I want to get on the same page about what pronouns we should be using for Nex. Because in newspapers I’ve seen they/them pronouns. In videos from before Nex died Nex’s mom refers to Nex using she/her pronouns. She’s since said, “I was in a process of learning and so I wasn’t using the pronouns Nex preferred.” And now I know that you’re using he/him pronouns. So tell me about how we should be talking about Nex.

Jo Yurcaba: This has been a very delicate line to walk in that we want to make sure we’re being respectful of who someone was as a person. At the same time, we don’t want to reduce them to a set of pronouns or to one part of their identity. And initially, what we knew was that some people said Nex identified as nonbinary. Like you said, the family went from using she/her pronouns to they/them pronouns. But since I’ve been here and I’ve talked to a number of people who are really close with Nex, they have all told me that Nex primarily used he/him pronouns and preferred that. And sometimes, Nex would say he used he/they pronouns, so either pronoun would be fine. But, at the same time, during the vigil, Robin Gray Ingersoll, who dated Nex on and off, said, “Nex uses he/him pronouns. He was transgender, and he was so much more than his transness.”

To me, it highlights how fluid these identifiers can be for all of us—and then, how much Nex was learning about themselves. Nex was a teenager. Nex was not fully an adult yet. And so, they were coming into their own.

Exactly. Nex was probably still figuring it out. It’s also really common among the trans community to use pronouns with certain people in your life, but not with other people. So, for example, at school you use one set of pronouns, use a different set at home, or you might not be out at home. And so that kind of fluidity is just normal.

I know you went to a vigil over the weekend to honor Nex. Can you set the scene for me of what that was like, and who you met there, and what they told you about Nex?

That was on Sunday night in Owasso at the Redbud Festival Park. There were at least 100 people there. Some........

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