Good message, spotty execution.
It may be unfortunate that it needs to be more obvious, but I think that it's important that Laurel be explicitly recognized as somebody who is doing the right thing and not just kind of be assumed to be doing the right thing because she's at the end of the book.
Message
Sometimes a person who has the body of a boy feels like she is a girl instead. Or, everyone should be accepted for who they are inside.