One of the trans guys at the meeting announced that he’d finally figured out his permanent name (he’d been trying out different ones, like me). That reminded me again that I needed to think more about my name. Amanda was nice, but it wasn’t quite right, any more than Natalie, Amber, Isabella or any of the others I’d tried on for a few hours.

After several hours of reading, I had at least skimmed everything in the American Politics textbook up to the chapters the professor had said she would cover in Wednesday and Friday’s lectures, and made a start on the human rights textbook and the supplemental reading for tomorrow’s class. This body with no endocrine system or fatigue poisons made it easier to concentrate on something for a long time, as well as easy to fugue out and not think at all. I’d been a fast reader before, but I was faster now — at least mentally. The physical chore of turning pages was no longer trivial, but I still had a net gain in reading speed. The light outside Carmen’s window got dimmer and then dark, and I kept reading. I was startled when I heard the key in the lock, and I turned around and froze in my usual position. The door opened and Carmen came in, followed a moment later by a white girl with short reddish-brown hair.

“You left the light on,” the girl said.

“Apparently,” Carmen said, throwing me a glance as they set their messenger bag down on the floor next to the desk and moved some clutter around so they could move their laptop. “I was pretty sleepy when I left this morning.”

“The great environmentalist, leaving a light on for who knows how many hours? The horror! Gasp!” the girl teased. I liked her already. She looked around as Carmen pulled the laptop’s power cord out from under the stack of papers so it could stretch over to the bed. “Whatever will you do to offset the — oh, neat. When did you get that dragon?”

“Last weekend.”

“It’s really cool. Looks like the sculptor was looking at theropod models, as well as Chinese art, but those claws are almost like human hands... does it have a name?”

“She hasn’t told me her real name yet. I’m calling her Amanda for now.”

The girl gave me an exaggerated curtsy, which looked silly with her in jeans. “Pleased to meet you, Amanda. I’m Serena.” I was strongly tempted to curtsy back and speak up, but I figured I should listen and get to know Serena a little better, and talk with Carmen about her, before I did that.

While Serena was being intentionally silly and unintentionally polite, Carmen finally got the laptop free of the mess on the desk and set it on the bed, then started messing with it. They plugged an external speaker into it and said, “Okay, we can start whenever.”

“Cool.” Serena turned off the lamp I’d been reading by, pulled a bag of cheddar popcorn out of the tote bag she’d brought with her, and sat down on the bed, on the other side of the laptop from Carmen. The glow of the screen illuminated their faces. Carmen looked at me again. I later realized they were wondering if they could figure out a way for me to watch the movie with them without blatantly telling Serena I was a venned runaway they were illegally hiding from my parents and law enforcement. They didn’t, though, and a moment later they started the movie.

I thought about trying to sneak around in the dark until I had a vantage point where I could see the laptop screen, but decided against it. Unable to follow the plot of the movie when I could only hear the soundtrack and see Carmen and Serena’s reactions, I tried to think about the stuff I’d been reading, and mostly succeeded until the movie came to a funny scene and Serena’s cackle yanked me out of my musing on the Brazilian abolition movement. She had such a cute laugh. Not a girly giggle, but still feminine. After that point, I was paying more attention to Serena’s reactions than to the movie’s dialogue or music. Carmen’s laugh wasn’t on such a hair trigger; they smiled a lot, but laughed only about half as often as Serena did.

The movie was a short one, and after it was over, Serena and Carmen turned on the light and talked about the movie for a little while. It turned out it was a new indie movie that Carmen had supported the Kickstarter for. The conversation drifted from the movie to their plans for the coming week.

“Are you coming to the meeting on Thursday evening?” Serena asked.

“Probably, yeah.”

“What about the Venn trip on Saturday?”

I would have perked up my ears if I’d had any.

“I’d like to, but I don’t think so. After spending last weekend with my sister, I need to spend more time studying. I might work extra, too, if I can get the hours.”

Serena nodded. “Well, I’ll swing by afterward and show you what I’ve venned into. It’ll be a surprise.”

“Sure, just text me before you come.”

“Well, I should go pretty soon,” Serena said.

“Good night,” Carmen said, standing up and picking up the laptop off the bed.

Carmen set the laptop down next to the open book I was sitting on, and then Serena hugged them, and left.

“Well,” Carmen said once she was gone, “what did you think?”

“I like her. How did you meet?”

“At a Queer Student Union meeting. She’s more active in the club than I am. And she organized the Venn trips and goes almost every Saturday.”

“How does that work? I guess a bunch of people carpool to the nearest Venn machine and change each other?”

“Yeah, pretty much. It started last semester with a few people from the Queer Student Union, but it’s grown beyond that. We usually carpool over to the Venn machine in downtown Burlington, although on rainy days we go to the one in Catesville, because it’s the closest one that’s indoors. Most people do short venns, eight hours or a day; maybe two, if their first class on Monday is more than forty-eight hours away. I go about a third of the time.”

“Neat. But do you ever have people getting changed into things they don’t want to be? I mean, if it’s a big group where not everybody is close friends with everybody else... How do you make sure you can trust whoever you pair off with?”

“Well, the group keeps everyone honest. You hear people talking with their partners ahead of time about what they want to be venned into, and if what they get is too different, and they can’t speak in their new form, somebody’s gonna call shenanigans. Probably Serena. Of course, accidents happen, but they generally get changed back pretty fast.”

“Cool.” I wished I could participate. I wondered if it might be safe for me to venn into a girl, human or dragon, and then have Carmen venn me back into this body using my history? “What time do you go and come back?”

“Usually we leave around ten and get back around noon or one after eating lunch. People with long-term venns like me or Serena go back on Sunday evening to have someone call up our preferred form from the history.”

“Do you think I could go with you sometime?”

“No. Think about it; I’d have to tell everybody in that group, a lot of who I don’t know at all well, that this dragon statuette is a venned person. That doesn’t mean we can’t go to a Venn machine, but it’ll have to be just the two of us. I could venn you into something else and change you back into your statue form a while later.”

“That would be nice. I know you’re gonna be busy next weekend, but maybe later on?”

“Sure.”

* * *

I got a lot more out of the lecture in Human Rights in History than I had from American Politics. And even though I hadn’t had time to look at Carmen’s Biology textbook before Tuesday’s lecture, I had a halfway decent background from my biology course in high school and the books Sophia had been recommending, so I wasn’t totally lost in that class either. And at least in Human Rights, the professor didn’t rely as much on the whiteboard and projector as the other two.

Thursday after we got back to Carmen’s room, they asked me, “So are you still determined to audit all these classes with me?”

“I think I’ll stay here tomorrow when you go to American Politics,” I said. “I’m not getting as much out of that one. But I’d like to keep going to the Human Rights lectures, and I guess I’ll hang out in your bag during Biology too, since you don’t have time to come back here between classes.”

“You and Meredith were talking about you basically finishing high school with self-study so you could take the GED after you turn eighteen. I’m a little worried this might get in the way of that.”

“I don’t think it will,” I said. “I read faster now. I’ve already caught up with all the reading for Human Rights, and a lot of the reading for the other classes, so if I cut the other two, and I’m spending most of the day Monday, Wednesday and Friday alone here, I should have plenty of time to read in other subjects.”

“Hmm, yeah. Have you already had the lab science and foreign language courses you need in high school?”

“I had already taken Chemistry and was taking Biology when I dropped out. And I’ve already had French I and II.”

“I should figure out how to let you see and hear what I’m doing in Biology lab. That’s something you can’t get from books. I’ve got some ideas, but let me think it over.” They had Biology lab on Wednesdays after American Politics, and went in to work a couple of hours later than on Mondays and Fridays.

That evening, I rode along in their messenger bag to the Queer Student Union meeting and overheard a lot of conversations. I recognized Serena’s voice (and her laugh) several times. I wished I could hang out with these cool people as an equal, and I resolved to introduce myself to Serena next time she came around to visit Carmen at her dorm room.

The conversations I overheard gave me a lot of food for thought. Queer people were really diverse, and the handful of trans people I’d gotten to know on the chatroom and by email were just a tiny sample of that diversity. I’d never gotten to know a gay man, for instance, although there were rumors about a couple of guys at school. Listening to some of the gay people talk about the problems they were having at work was an eye-opener, and made me wonder what kind of problems I might have finding and holding a job once I turned eighteen and started living as a girl. Should I try to keep the fact that I was a lesbian secret from my employer? I decided it was way too early to worry about that.

One of the trans guys at the meeting announced that he’d finally figured out his permanent name (he’d been trying out different ones, like me). That reminded me again that I needed to think more about my name. Amanda was nice, but it wasn’t quite right, any more than Natalie, Amber, Isabella or any of the others I’d tried on for a few hours. That night after Carmen went to bed, I spent a long time thinking about names, and for each one that sounded good, I imagined several little scenarios. Meredith calling me that name. Carmen calling me by it. Writing the name on the top of a test or homework assignment. Signing a contract to buy a house...

When Carmen got back from the shower Friday morning, I said, “I think I’ve figured out my name.”

“Oh, congratulations. What should I call you?”

“Lauren. And Lydia for a middle name. Lauren Lydia Wallace.”

“That’s a pretty name.”

“Thanks.”

“Well, Lauren, I need to get something to eat before class, so if you’re not coming with me, I’ll see you in a few hours.”

“Bye.”

I wrote my name on the back of one of Carmen’s index cards several times before I settled down to studying geometry for my GED with a book they’d checked out of the library.

* * *

Friday morning, when Carmen came back after breakfast and American Politics, they had a couple of pieces of mail. One of them was something to do with their grant, and the other was a letter from Meredith.

“Dear Amanda and Carmen,

“How are you settling in as roommates? Has Amanda figured out any more about her name?

“We haven’t had any more trouble here. I’ll let y’all know right away if anything happens, but so far there’s not much. Mom had lunch with your (Amanda’s) mom a couple of days ago, but she didn’t tell me what they talked about. She asked me more questions about what we’d been venning each other into, but when I asked her if she and your mom were friends again, she said, ‘I’m not sure. It could happen, but I’m not going to force you to endure her company until and unless I’m sure she’ll be decent to you.’

“I hope to hear from you soon.”

I wrote back to her that evening while Carmen was at work. I tried to write as large as I could, but I’m afraid my lettering was a bit on the small side and hard to read. (You try writing with a pencil that’s three times longer than your arm, and twice as thick.) After trying to decipher it, Carmen suggested that I type out the letter and they would print it out at the library or study center.

My new short story, "Race to the Altar", is up now on DeviantArt. It's a contest submission, so it won't be posted to BigCloset or other sites until after the contest is over.