The starter pistol cracks, the foot-falls thud-thud-thud against the track. High school runners await their heats, mostly girls with girls and boys with boys.

One runner — Cherokee High School junior Matt Dawkins, who broke records as a freshman — traverses the geography of gender.

On the sidelines, the Marlton 17-year-old razzes one of the guys. Later, he grins and joins the easy banter in a knot of girls.

And why not? Last year, he was one of them.

Sophomore year and all his years before, he was Maya. But he believes Matt was always in there, wanting to break free.

The road to liberation has been long, confusing, at times quite painful.

TOM GRALISH / Staff Photographer Between heats, Matt Dawkins (right) with his twin sister, Jada, and their father, Nigel Dawkins.

“Now I feel I don’t have to hide,” said Matt, who came out to his family as a transgender boy in late 2013 and to his school last fall. “I don’t have things hovering in the back of my mind. Everything is out in the open.”

In many ways, his journey has just begun. His body is only starting to change from female to male. Decisions loom on what medical options to pursue.

That he has gotten here is a testament to his determination to be who he is, support at school and home, and a mother who, despite her own sense of loss, never stopped advocating for her child.

Matt Dawkins (left) and his twin sister, Jada Dawkins (right) with their mother, Tammi Grovatt-Dawkins, when they were around 7.

His experience is by no means the norm. In a survey by the National Center for Transgender Equality, 41 percent of transgender people ages 18 to 35 responding had attempted suicide. Seventy-eight percent said they were harassed at school.

An estimated 0.3 percent of the adult U.S. population, transgender people are often misunderstood and marginalized, even disbelieved. Alienated from their own bodies, many plummet into desperation and despair.

Friends of Riley Matthew Moscatel, a Bucks County transgender teen captured on video last August walking in front of an Amtrak train, said he had supportive friends and family. Yet before his apparent suicide, he wrote on Instagram of being “a prisoner of my own body.”

An Ohio teen, Leelah Alcorn, committed suicide by stepping in the path of a tractor-trailer in 2014. She left behind a Tumblr post that would be read internationally about feeling like a girl trapped in a boy’s body. She wrote that her parents would not accept her trans identity and sent her to Christian therapists, who told her she was selfish.

“The only way I will rest in peace is if one day transgender people aren’t treated the way I was,” she wrote, “they’re treated like humans, with valid feelings and human rights.”

In Matt’s family, being different from other little girls was accepted. They just did not know how to define it or what to call it.

For a long time, neither did he.

One Christmas, the Dawkins twins, then about 5, posted wish lists on the refrigerator.

Jada, a future cheerleader, loved dress-up and dolls. Her list was long. Maya’s was not.

“I said, ‘You need to put more things on your list,” recalled mother Tammi Grovatt-Dawkins. “’Is there anything else you want?’”

She wasn’t prepared for the answer: “‘I want a penis. That’s all I want.’”

Fraternal twins Maya (left) and Jada Dawkins. The young Maya - now Matt - hated wearing girl’s clothes, preferring boy’s clothes and boxers. In first grade, Maya asked to be called Michael.

Tammi, a therapist, didn’t fuss; she just gently asked questions.

“Maybe she’s sporty girl. Maybe she’s a lesbian. Maybe’s she’s a boy. But there wasn’t fear about it.” Tammi Grovatt-Dawkins, when her twins Maya and Jada were 5

“Maybe she’s sporty girl,” the mother thought. “Maybe she’s a lesbian. Maybe’s she’s a boy. But there wasn’t fear about it.”

The child was allowed to just be.

Looking back, the family can point to many signs.

The young Maya hated wearing girl’s clothes, preferring boy’s clothes and boxers. In first grade, Maya asked to be called Michael.

Halloween choices were Captain Hook or Batman. No princesses.

“For Christmas, I bought Matt boy toys — trucks, a Darth Vader mask,” said Faith Kaye, his maternal grandmother, a retired teacher. “He just was never a girl.”

When it was time for her first bra, fraternal twin Jada, like a lot of girls, was excited. Matt remembers crying. He hated it.

What he loved was running.

TOM GRALISH / Staff Photographer After running in their 100 meter boys heat heats, Matt Dawkins (left) walks with a teammate during a meet at Washington Township High School.

“Literally I just would be sitting on the couch and I’d just get up and say, ‘I have to run!’” Matt said. “I liked to do it barefoot. … I felt I was going so fast. It was really empowering.”

In middle school, life got more complicated. Boys and girls started dating.

“I forced it because I tried to convince myself that I had to because everyone was getting into it,” Matt said.

He tried different things, like letting Jada put makeup on him for a dance. He even had one serious boyfriend.

Then came high school and track.

He knew he was fast, but not how fast. As a freshman, Maya broke school records. The scary seniors invited her to run with them. There was talk of college scholarships.

That year, Maya also decided to come out as a lesbian, first to a friend and then in a letter to her mother. Everyone was accepting. For a little while, there was relief.

But in time, identifying as a lesbian didn’t feel right either. Matt didn’t like being called someone’s girlfriend.

He sought answers on the Internet, where one Youtuber talked about his transition to male.