Fear can be such an incredibly basic sensation. Your body and brain detect danger, making you change your current actions into doing something to steer away from whatever it is that is causing the fear. It can make you run away from a dog that is behaving in an aggressive manner. It can make you run away from a bully who wants to ruin your day. It can even make you run away from your own mother and her judgmental gaze. All of this seems easy enough. But what if you’re afraid of something closer to home? What If you’re afraid of something you can’t run away from? What if you are afraid of yourself?

I really want to just come into this weekend and enjoy myself. To let all the stress of life just fall away. But with every mile closer we got to the town of Battingham, so was my mind getting closer to a state of total collapse. Because if Riley was right, if I was indeed trans, what kind of life would I even have? Potentially losing every single person in my life, becoming a pariah to general society, and being stuck taking drugs for the rest of my life. However, I couldn’t deny that deep inside that crazy brain of mine there was a tiny little voice. Emily’s voice. A voice that completely terrified me and couldn’t run away from. Because Emily’s voice was my voice.

Having opened this Pandora's box for myself and feeling its consequences had made one thing clear for me though. Don’t tell anybody about it. Because once this cat is out of the bag, it’s never going back in. Whatever I do, wherever I am, and whoever I’m with. If this gets out it will take permanent residence in the heads of my peers, making them think differently of me forever. So instead of thinking of more idioms and sayings that communicated my current thoughts, I sought to focus on the here and now.

Looking out of the window on my left, rows of trees were forming a barrier hiding away a beautiful prize. Behind them flowed the mesmerizing Merrimack River like a blue piece of yarn hiding in an otherwise orange-red colored sweater. While on my right Riley was deeply entrenched in her own musical world through the power of noise-canceling headphones. Since we have been joined at the hip for as long as I can remember, we have learned to respect one another’s tiny moments of ‘me time’. But while for the last 45 minutes, I had been alone with my own thoughts, our imminent arrival was about to free me from my inner monologue.

I gave Riley a little poke in her side as the bus entered downtown Battingham. “We are almost at our stop,” I said while calculating that it would be about 5 minutes before we arrived at the place where Rachel said to pick us up.

She looked me in the eyes while slowly pushing back her headphones, allowing them to rest on her neck. Slightly muffled by the jazzy tones coming from those same headphones, Riley answered sheepishly. “Eh…? Oh! That was a lot quicker than I expected it to be.” And looked down at her phone to check the time.

When we left the bus, it took me mere seconds before I spotted a tall brunette standing next to a small mini cooper in the parking lot close by. I gave a little wave to Rachel while we made our way over.

“Hey there! good to see you again!” Rachel said while nervously rubbing her thumb into the palm of her other hand. Her curly hair looked to be even more voluminous compared to last week, and her clothes looked a bit more put together as well. She was wearing a brown corduroy skirt with a big white turtleneck sweater. Looking down at her legs I could see a slight shake even though they were covered in dark wool tights. Clearly, this weekend had even made my ever so confident Team Captain nervous. Because there was no way she was shaking due to the non-existent cold.

Riley looked to be a little distracted watching all the old buildings of downtown Battingham around her. And since she would normally take the lead in pretty much any social interaction there was a slight pause before I decided to pick up the metaphorical tab myself and greeted Rachel. “Hi! Thanks again for planning this whole weekend, I’m very curious about what you have planned.”

“And uhm… I’m also happy that you decided to tag along. Riley, it was right?” Rachel said with her eyes pointed towards my friend, pretty much completely ignoring my greeting. For a second, I thought it was a bit strange how she acted. But I figured she was simply trying to make the person who she didn’t really have a connection with feel more included.

Hearing her own name Riley was brought back to the present and responded to Rachel without a second thought. “Yup, that’s me. This little doofus here told me y’all got a space and who am I to say no to a weekend of fun? Or at least, that is what I was promised” she said while putting her hand on my shoulder.

“Oh yes, it’s going to be fun for sure. Everybody else is already at my place, so let’s not keep them waiting too long.”

***

The girls would often make little jokes to Rachel about living in a ‘McMansion’ and arriving at her family’s house instantly made me realize why. Their home was built into a little artificial hill creating a ground floor that almost felt part of that same hill. At the back of the house, there was a little dent dug out of the hill to make place for a white marble terrace where I could already see the girls enjoying the last few days of decent weather of the year. The wood paneling was colored a bright white and the giant 3 story building was towering over the people seated at the terrace below.

“Emily! You’re here!” a high-pitched voice I recognized as Lizzy’s gleefully shouted when we came around the back of Rachel’s house. Before any proper nerves could set in, an excited girl with fiery red hair ran over and embraced me tightly. I felt a little uncomfortable with the overwhelming amount of affection suddenly thrust upon me.

“You are exactly like Rachel described” Lizzy’s voice emerged from the ginger girl wearing a big smile on her face.

Behind Lizzy, a very short girl no bigger than 5’1 walked over. Her hair was a similar golden blonde as Riley’s but a lot shorter and had some more layers to it. I quickly identified her voice as Jade’s when she spoke with a slight valley girl accent. “Hey Emmy, very cool that you could make it.”

There was one more person already present on the terrace, who according to my process of elimination had to be Kelsey. Built with broad shoulders and firm hips she shuffled over last and looked unsure of how to approach the situation. Her black hair was done up in a long fishtail braid that came halfway down her back. She gave me a simple smile and chose not to speak over a very excited Lizzy.

“It’s so weird that we have been playing together for months and this is the first time I’m seeing your face! I can’t believe you have been hiding yourself from us for so long. Because girl, you got nothing to hide” the redhead said winking cheekily.

Was this really the moment I had been dreading over the last few weeks? Compared to the internal strife I experienced on the bus ride earlier; this was a cakewalk. It was very comforting instead. These girls had become great friends I hung out with on a regular basis, why had I been so scared to meet them? Probably because I had been lying to them the entire time, but as long as they didn’t know, it was fine. No harm no foul as they say.

“Thanks, it’s great to see you all for the first time!” I said while I took a seat to join them on the terrace. “This place is huge!” I followed up attempting to steer the conversation away from myself.

The other girls quickly caught on to my social strategy and didn’t even entertain my comments on the house for a second. Instead, it was Lizzy who fired a barrage of questions my way, almost making me feel like I was being questioned by an overeager police officer. What it’s like living in Shamesburry, If I have any brothers or sisters, and where I bought that fabulous jumpsuit. I simply had no choice but to answer them since Lizzy’s resolve seemed limitless.

“What about boys? Are there any cute Shamesburry boys that we should know about?” She suddenly brought up smirking at me.

This was not a question I was prepared for in the slightest. Luckily my stammering was quickly interrupted by Jade who chimed in. “Liz! You can’t just ask that! How about we talk about your boy troubles instead?”

It was almost like Jade had noticed that I had grown a little exhausted with all the questions being thrown my way and used this opportunity to turn the conversation around. I was elated that Jade’s social awareness had saved me from this awkward line of questioning Lizzy had introduced.

With my romantic life off the table, it didn’t take long before the girls would start sharing stories and explaining little in-jokes among them. Apparently, Lizzy’s mother hated the fact that she didn’t use her full name outside of the house. So, whenever her family was around the group all needed to switch to calling her ‘Elizabeth’ instead. And they would often use this as a bargaining chip, threatening to call her Lizzy when her family was around as well.

“It just makes me sound so old!” Lizzy yelled out after Jade called her by her full name jokingly, while the redhead’s arms were flailing around in multiple directions to express her dissatisfaction. I couldn’t help but chuckle a bit from the interaction. Seeing Lizzy’s hyperactive behavior in real life made it feel even more intense compared to what I had already experienced online.

“The years are counting girl. You just got your driver’s license, before you know it there will be a ‘baby on board' Jade shot back at Lizzy calmly. Her protectiveness and confident demeanor formed a perfect foil for Lizzy’s chaos.

“I believe none of us are ready for that. Just this 1 Lizzy is already more than enough to deal with” Kelsey carefully interjected into the conversation. Both me and Jade couldn’t help but laugh while Lizzy looked slightly embarrassed knowing that she could indeed be a bit much sometimes. While timid and shy, Kelsey’s words never lied. She was like a silent monk, only speaking sometimes, but dispensing great wisdom, or great comedic timing, when she did.

Looking around the table, I couldn’t help but miss some people. I had been so absorbed with all the questions these 3 had been asking me, I didn’t even see where Riley and Rachel had gone off to. I turned around to look through the big glass doors separating the inside of the house from this outside terrace but couldn’t spot them. However, Lizzy did notice me looking around and didn’t waste a single moment to ask me what was going on.

“What are you looking for?” She asked me with raised eyebrows.

“Do you know where Rachel and my friend went? I assumed they were just dropping off some stuff inside, but that was more than 15 minutes ago.” I said while looking down at my phone. Turning my head to face the house, I was once again confronted with how huge it was. “They couldn’t have gotten lost right?” I joked back towards the group.

A mischievous smile emerged across Lizzy’s face “Oh Rachel got lost alright? Lost in your friends’ eyes that is.”

All the girls laughed loudly after Lizzy’s comment, but my own face showed nothing but confusion. Was there another in-joke here I didn’t know about?

Jade took note of my confusion and decided to bring me into the fold. “Why do you think Rachel insisted you ask your friend to come along? Big Miss Perfect has been crushing hard on that Riley girl. She hasn’t been able to talk about anything but her for like a week.”