“So what’s your story?” Poppy asked. “Trans, lesbian, or both?”

 

I gaped at her. “How did you know?”

Wednesday in homeroom, I told Jada how I expected to have a working phone before long. I also asked her about her other friends Lily had mentioned.

“Oh, yeah, I could introduce you to them too, if you want. They’re a little less mainstream than Lily and her friends that I introduced you to Monday, though, so don’t say I didn’t warn you, okay?”

“Are they into unusual venns?” I asked. “You know that’s not going to weird me out, right?”

“Well, yeah, some of them do a lot of venning, but most of them do less of it than me. I mean socially non-mainstream. But they’re good people,” she said defensively.

“It’s cool,” I said. “I won’t judge. But I did want to ask... is it a large group of people? The group we ate with Monday — I ate with them again Tuesday — it’s a little large for me. I’m having a hard time keeping everyone’s names straight and following the conversations.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Yeah, this is a smaller group... three girls besides me, but they aren’t all always there. Some have other friends they eat with sometimes, and one of them...” She hesitated. “She skips school or get suspended sometimes.”

I must have looked alarmed, because she hastened to add: “Nothing bad! Not, like, bullying or anything. Mostly just dress code violations, or coming to school venned without filing the paperwork.”

“Ugh, paperwork. I sympathize.”

She grinned. “You’ll get along with them, I expect.”

“Lily told me where to look for you. In the courtyard, or in the corner near the freshman classroom hall if it’s raining?”

“Yeah.”

The weather was a little cloudy, and the forecast had said it might rain at some point. But it wasn’t raining yet, so I went to the courtyard during my free period and read. I’d gotten over a week ahead in American Literature, and I was already ahead in my other classes, so I read The Art of Starving, the novel I’d checked out Monday; I’d started it last night before bed.

Someone suddenly said: “What’s that about?” I looked up and saw Dawson, the boy I’d met the day before.

“Oh,” I said. “It’s about this gay anorexic kid who develops super-powers. So far it’s mostly enhanced senses, but I think there’s more later on? And the less he eats the sharper his senses get, so it’s making his anorexia worse.”

“Cool,” he said. “Well, I mean, that sucks, having your powers tied to a mental illness like that, but that’s a cool premise for a novel. It reminds me of...”

Twenty minutes of discussion of superheroes’ personal problems later, some offhand remark he made about Buffy the Vampire Slayer constantly losing her cell phone during fights made me remember the phone plan. “Oh,” I said. “That reminds me. Could I borrow your phone? I’m just gonna call an 800 number,” and I explained the situation.

“Oh, sure,” he said. He loaned me his phone, and after a few minutes talking with a customer service tech, I had a new phone number and a working phone. I asked Dawson to text me to test it, and it worked.

“Neat!” I said. “Thanks. Where were we? Oh, yeah, characters losing their phones to drive the plot...”

That was a fun discussion, but apparently he’d seen more in it than I had. When it was about time to head toward our next classes, he said, “You’re really cool, Lauren. Would you like to go out somewhere this weekend?”

I gaped at him. Had he been flirting? Had I given signals like I was interested in him that way? Not intentionally, but I hadn’t been living as a girl for long and there was only so much Meredith and Sophia could teach me...

“I, uh... I mean...” I wasn’t sure I wanted to tell him I was a lesbian, but it wouldn’t be honest to say I wasn’t interested in dating right now. If I met a single lesbian here at school and I had the courage to ask her out, I would. On the other hand, we’d been talking about the gay protagonist in The Art of Starving and a couple of other gay or bi characters, and he hadn’t said anything stupid or bigoted, so he’d probably be okay with it. After a few more moments of stammering, I finally decided to risk it. “I’m not into guys, okay? I like you, you’re cool and you have good taste in books, but... I’m sorry, I don’t deal with situations like this well.”

“Oh,” he said. He looked disappointed, but not disgusted or angry or anything. “Okay, then. You want to talk about books some more tomorrow?”

I smiled. “Yeah. Let’s do that.”

* * *

By lunchtime, it had started raining. So after I got my tray, I went over to the corner where Jada had said to look for her and her friends. I didn’t see her, though I did see some people with unusual venns, heavy goth makeup, and so on. I wondered which of them were Jada’s friends and was standing there indecisively when Jada came up beside me and said, “Hey, Lauren, over here.” She led the way to a table and sat down, saying “Hey, gals, this is Lauren, she’s a new girl in my homeroom.”

“Hi,” I said nervously as I sat down next to her. The girl Jada had sat down next to was tall and muscular, with four arms and light brown skin. She was wearing a sweatshirt with swirly dark colors that was probably venned, and ripped jeans that probably weren’t. Across the table from them sat two white girls dressed in black; one was taller and wearing a dress and... maybe a corset? Or something like it. She was extremely pale, her black hair was long and loose, and when she smiled at me, she showed pointed teeth. The shorter girl was wearing a black band T-shirt and slacks; her black hair was in a kind of double mohawk with two strips of hair (not super long and spiky, just standing up an inch or two like a pixie cut). She’d been talking with the girl to her right, but glanced up as Jada and I approached, and waved at us.

“Hey,” she said as we sat down. “You’re Lauren, right? Meredith told me several days ago you’d be starting here. Haven’t seen you until now, though. I’m Poppy.”

“Hey,” I said. “Meredith told me about you.”

“What’d she say about me?”

“Oh, um...” My loose tongue had put me on the spot again. I was 99% sure that Poppy was out as trans to everyone. She’d transitioned while continuing to go to the same school, after all. But she’d transitioned over the summer and might have been able to pass herself off as a new student to most people. If the other girls didn’t know...

“Pretty fucking bad, huh?” Poppy said as my silence stretched out. I wasn’t sure if she was joking.

“No, no! It wasn’t anything bad, it was just... I wasn’t sure if I should say it in front of, um...”

“We know,” Jada said, nudging me. “Everybody knows.”

“Oh. Well, anyway, she told me she was happy to meet someone else at school who was trans.”

Poppy nodded. “Yeah, it was nice to have someone to talk to in person when I was figuring this stuff out. I talked to some people online too, but my home Internet is pretty crappy and the chat kept disconnecting. She seemed like a nice girl, but we don’t have that much in common besides being trans.”

“I kind of got that impression... she didn’t really say that, though.”

The girl in the corset sitting next to Poppy introduced herself. “Hey, I’m Lisette,” she said. “Poppy’s girlfriend.” I nodded; I wasn’t sure if I should say Meredith had mentioned her, too.

“So what’s your story?” Poppy asked. “Trans, lesbian, or both?”

I gaped at her. “How did you know?”

“Your parents kicked you out, or you had a fight with 'em and left, you dropped out of the ultra-conservative Christian school to go here, and you’re living with a family that has a trans daughter. I figured it had to be one of those. Sorry if I outed you, but everybody here’s fine with you either way.”

“No, it’s fine, it’s not a big secret, I just haven’t gone around telling everybody either.”

Jada was nodding. “I wondered if you might be, but I wasn’t going to be blunt about it like Poppy.”

“So which is it?” Poppy asked, and I realized I hadn’t directly answered her question.

“Oh! Um, both.”

I knew Lisette and Poppy were a couple. Jada was sitting pretty close to the girl with four arms, who hadn’t introduced herself, and I was starting to wonder if maybe she and Jada were a couple as well. I thought Jada looked pleased when I said “both.”

“I told them about our date to split up,” Jada said, and my brain exploded at the word “date,” so I didn’t hear her next few words. “...but Britt said she might join us later. Did you talk to Meredith about it?”

“Uh,” I said eloquently, “who’s Britt?”

“Oh, duh,” the girl with four arms said (her mouth was full, as it had been the whole time the rest of us had been talking). “I never introduced myself. I’m Britt.” She finished her mouthful and swallowed, then said: “Yeah, I might hang out with y’all later in the day Saturday, but I can’t meet up before Jada goes to work. Got to work on a car with my dad.”

“Oh, sure, cool. And... I kind of forgot to mention it to Meredith. We didn’t have much time to talk last night after she got home from work, and by this morning I’d forgotten it.” I double-checked my phone calendar. “I’ve got the reminder here, though. I won’t forget.”

“Good,” Jada said. “That’ll be a trip.”

“Yeah,” I said, smiling in anticipation.

Having broken the ice like that, I wound up telling them more about myself, though I didn’t say anything that would incriminate Meredith and Sophia. Jada might figure out where I’d been if we venned together enough that she saw my history, but she’d only been over to Meredith’s house while I was living in her bedroom once, almost eight months ago, and might not remember the little Chinese dragon on her desk. After that, the others started sharing their coming out stories too, but we got derailed with talking about horror movies partway through Lisette’s story about hugging her best friend for support during a scary movie, and I didn’t find out what Jada or Britt’s deal was until later.

Near the end of lunch, I finally remembered to send out a text telling people what my new phone number was. I sent it to Meredith, Sophia, Nathan, and Mom, and swapped numbers with Jada and the others, too.

* * *

When I checked my texts on the way home from school, I found a smiley emoji from Nathan and a message from Mom saying: “Please call me sometime before 6:15 tomorrow evening. I don’t think we can talk tonight. I’m going to have to work late and won’t get home much before your father does.”

Tomorrow night would be the study group. I said to Meredith, who was driving us home, “Mom wants to talk on the phone tomorrow night, and there’s just that one narrow window when we can talk. I think I might bail on the study group for this week, at least.”

“I think you can come,” she said. “Let’s talk to Lily about it. She can probably find you a private place to make the call.”

“Okay,” I said. “I guess I’ll sit with her at lunch tomorrow so I can talk to her.” I felt a little reluctance even as I said that. Lily seemed friendly enough, but her social group was so large... the group studying at her house wasn’t that large, but it would probably be bigger than the group I’d sat with that day, especially if everybody who sometimes came showed up tomorrow night.

Meredith picked up on the implication of what I’d said. “Did you not sit with her today?”

“No, I sat with Jada and her other friends. She introduced me to Poppy and Lisette and another girl I’m not sure you know, Britt?”

“Oh, yeah, I’ve got second-period World History with her. Doesn’t say much, does she?”

“Not that I noticed. Poppy and Jada did most of the talking. And, uh, I came out to them... and also to this guy that asked me out.”

“What?” Sophia exclaimed, turning her doll’s head 180 degrees like an owl and mildly freaking me out. When had she gotten someone to add that capability to her doll body? “Details!”

So I told them about meeting Dawson yesterday, about our conversations about Langston Hughes and superheroes, and how he’d asked me out and I’d told him I was a lesbian.

“Did you tell him you were trans?”

“No... I guess he didn’t need to know that. I kind of did feel, in the moment, like he deserved to know why not wanting to go out with him wasn’t personal. If I had a conversation like that with a lesbian, I’d definitely want to go out with her.”

Sophia shook her head. “If you were straight, that would be a meet-cute for the ages. Did he take being friendzoned hard?”

“No, he seemed cool with me being gay. We’d been talking about some gay characters in the book I’m reading and in the Marvel universe and I figured it would be safe to tell him.”

“Was anybody else in earshot when you told him?” she asked. “Or when you told Jada and her friends?”

I hesitated. “I don’t actually know. There were some people at the same table with us at lunch, but they seemed to be pretty engrossed in their own conversations.”

“It’ll be all over the school,” Sophia predicted. “Don’t worry, though, we’ve got your back.”

My short gender-bender fantasy novel, A Notional Treason, can be found at Smashwords in epub format and Amazon in Kindle format. (Smashwords pays its authors 80% royalties, vs. 35% or 70% at Amazon.)

You can find my other ebook novels and short fiction collection here: