Scribble Hub Author - miriamrobern

London, June 1813

“Miss Wright, welcome to Catherwood House,” intoned the butler at the door.  He looked past her to the hackney cab waiting at the end of the townhouse’s steps.  Jut beyond it flowed the noisy bustle of Mayfair street traffic.  “Shall I send a boy out for your luggage?”

“Please,” she nodded and stepped inside out of the sweltering London air.  “There’s just a single trunk, I shan’t stay long.”

“Because you have to get back to your gainful employment as the governess of your own heirs,” came the arch but still bemused voice of the Countess Catherwood.  The lady strode down the stairs into the hall, as immaculately dressed as she ever was, today in buttery yellow silk.  “Your recklessness is seconded only by your audacity, girl.  You should see the letters Enid sends me.  She cannot make heads or tails of you.”

Amelia crossed the room to embrace the woman.  “She was very put out when I told her I was leaving for a week.”

“It’s not exactly in keeping with your purported profession,” she observed with an elevated eyebrow.  The arch look might have looked judgemental if she did not then cackle immediately thereafter.  She turned and led Amelia deeper into the townhouse; a footman was setting out tea service in the parlour.

“I did explain that my contract affords me generous leave, and that I am fetching teaching materials for the boys, but that wasn’t enough,” said Amelia, lips twitching. “She only relented when I told her I was staying with you.  You’ll safeguard my reputation, won’t you, CeeCee?”

“Safeguard her reputation, more like,” the lady chuckled, rolling her eyes, and sat.  “Tea or punch, my dear?  And how are you for your equine constitutional?”

Amelia settled into a couch that was leagues more comfortable than either the coach she’d spent the last two days in or the cab that had brought her the last leg of her journey.  Her body seemed to root itself into the cushions.  “I did hold off this afternoon in the hopes that you’d have ice,” she admitted with a sigh.  “But punch as well, please.  I am parched.”

“Of course,” the lady answered, waving a footman out the side door and then bending over to pour, herself. The decanter dripped condensation as it spilled out its pink contents into two snifters.  “You do realize I must grill you for all the details that Enid left out of her letters, either through propriety or ignorance.”

Amelia accepted her glass gratefully.  “Am I to earn my keep with gossip?”

“That’s how society works, my dear,” CeeCee laughed, lifting her own glass.  “You do know Enid is quite aware of how you and Miss Chesterley made use of your adjoining rooms.”

Amelia nearly spat out her punch, both at the lady’s revelation as well as the surprisingly potent tang of alcohol in her drink.  “Is she?”

“Not her first lesbian houseguests,” the lady shrugged, swilling her boozy punch as if it were just fruit juice.  “Although I think she’s more accustomed to bored married women with terrible husbands.”

“I do admit to some curiousity on her opinion of Theresa,” Amelia admitted.  “She has a… signature character the likes of which I can’t imagine Mother approving.”

But CeeCee waved a hand.  “Bluestockings are old hat for your elders, Amelia.  Enid was, though, amusingly voluable about Miss Chesterley’s sartorial choices.  Not so much in the ‘how dare she’ vein but more in the sense of ‘she’s too round for breeches.’”

Despite her disappointment at her mother’s pettier judgment, Amelia wasn’t terribly surprised, either.  “And your opinion?”

“Chesterley is delightfully round,” the lady answered readily, “in ways your mother is not constitutionally equipped to appreciate.”

Amelia couldn’t help but laugh.  “I did actually mean your broader opinion on her character.”  She steeled herself; CeeCee would not hold back.

“Theresa Chesterley has always struck me as a dour woman,” Catherwood opined readily, “so full of purpose she is almost a boor.  I am surprised at your pairing, but that’s not to say it doesn’t work.  You might be good for her yet.”

If Theresa Chesterley ever consented to see Amelia again, that is; not that CeeCee seemed to know about the woman’s abrupt departure.  But Amelia was still curious:“And she for me?”

“That remains to be seen,” she replied, voice dry and lips twisted in amusement.  “Although I can see the obvious appeal.”  She refilled both their glasses and pointed accusingly at Amelia.  “But the flow of gossip thus far is the reverse of what it should be.  You need to tell me what you’ve done to anger Iris Sommerset.”  She then tipped her head to the side.  “Not that she needs much to set her off.”

Amelia rolled her eyes.  “She thinks I’m blackmailing her, which I am not.  But her fantasy of being blackmailed bears little difference from actually being blackmailed, at least in terms of her fears and resentment.”  She winced slightly; she hadn’t meant to divulge all that.  She blamed the punch for loosening her tongue, and concluded that she might as well explain the situation, at least in selective detail.  “I had already told her that I would keep a secret of hers, because it was harmless.  When I encouraged her to keep another secret—of a third party—she concluded that my silence was conditioned on hers.”

“Her secret being that she’s sleeping with the new coachman?” CeeCee asked, eyebrow lifted.

Despite her best efforts, a tiny surprised sound escaped Amelia’s lips.  Luckily that very moment, a footman arrived with a tall amber glass on a tray, and she used the interruption of his laying it out for her and then thanking him for doing so to regain her equilibrium.  “I didn’t think Mother knew.”

“She doesn’t,” CeeCee shrugged.  “As far as I know, at least.  But Enid tends to tell me everything she uncovers.”

Amelia took a deep breath and started knocking back her virus amantis equae in not-particularly-ladylike gulps.  CeeCee would understand.

“I rather like her, actually,” the lady confessed while Amelia alternated between breaths and downing the remaining contents of her glass.  “Iris, that is.  Crossed paths with her a few times, mostly at your father’s Glorious Twelfth events.  Sad, in retrospect, that you always had to go hunting and could not have stayed back to gossip with the rest of the girls, my dear.”  She shot Amelia an apologetic look that she barely caught between gulps.  The lady continued. “She was a terrible match for Eustance, of course.  The late Eustace, I suppose we should call him, now.  Eustace the Elder.  Whichever.  He needed someone to ground him, manage a tight household budget while the Duke kept him on a short leash, not let him go gallivanting off on that ridiculous canal scheme.  But that was not Iris.”

“I am finding it hard to appreciate her appeal when she  insists on staring daggers at me whenever Mother isn’t looking,” Amelia sighed.  She set aside her empty glass and took up her punch to banish the aftertaste lingering in her mouth.

“She has an artistic soul,” Catherwood sighed, half-heartedly defending the lady.  “Insightful, creative, passionate, devilish sense of humour… none of which helped her in the life she chose.  I wish I could have seen what she’d have become without marrying your brother.  Or—forgive the morbid thought, my dear—if your father’s passing and your brother’s subsequent inheritance had come earlier.”

“As a housemate, she is snappish and hostile, and as a mother, she is… inconsistent,” the girl groused, pushing herself back into her seat.  “She lies to the boys.”

CeeCee clucked her tongue, not at absent Iris, but at Amelia.  “All mothers lie to their children on occasion.  Sometimes it’s necessary for the children’s well-being.  Sometimes it’s necessary for the mother’s sanity.”  She put up a hand before Amelia could reply.  “I’m sure she’s made missteps.  But the path she’s had to take has not been easy, either.  Your job as governess is a sprint; hers as a mother is a marathon.”

Amelia dug herself into the cushions a little more.  “Point taken.”

“You are fetching teaching materials for the boys,” her host changed the subject, “and no doubt meeting Miss Chesterley as the real purpose of your London visit.  Anything else?”

“I will call on Miss Chesterley, but she is not the focus of my visit,” Amelia protested weakly, even though she was grateful for the conversational shift.  “I am also visiting Miss Marianne Woods at the grammar school where she is teaching now.  I hope her advice will steer me towards better finds in the bookstores for the boys.”

CeeCee studied her for a moment.  Amelia steeled herself for the countess to tell her she wasn’t very subtle.  But instead she said: “Miss Chesterley is not expecting you?”

“My first errand is to the printer’s, to pick up my new calling cards,” Amelia explained, and could feel her cheeks flushing.  She was a little embarrassed at how excited she was to see her new calling cards, with her proper name on them.  “I’ll use them at Theresa’s if she’s not in residence.”

“I don’t think she keeps any help,” the countess warned.  “You might be pushing your calling card through the mail slot rather than handing it off to a dutiful servant.”

“I’m not entirely unworldly, CeeCee,” the girl laughed.  “I have called on people outside high society before.”

Theresa Chesterley’s address was more than a little outside of high society.  The Shadwell address was close enough to Mayfair and Piccadilly, Amelia surmised, to allow Theresa access to her society connections, while also sitting far enough away (and close enough to the docks) to make rent affordable on the woman’s modest stipend.

Amelia watched from the window of the rickety hackney she’d hired as the streets narrowed, the buildings grew thin, the doors and porches shrank.  She began to worry that the progression—or degression—of the neighbourhoods would continue until she found herself in some dark, squalid slum she dared not step foot in.  So she breathed a sigh of relief when the cab lurched to a halt outside a narrow building on a relatively clean street.  Respectable—if only just.

The hackney driver agreed to wait a few minutes while she walked up the three steps to the door and, finding no bell, knocked.  Only silence greeted her.

With a short sigh of disappointment, Amelia withdrew her reticule and from it the little case of freshly-printed calling cards.  She’d already annotated the top three with CeeCee’s address for while she was in town.  This she slid through the mail slot.

The moment the card dropped from her fingers, however, the tromp of approaching footsteps sounded through the door.  Amelia stepped back just in time for the portal to be wrenched open.

The woman who had opened it was not Theresa Chesterley.  She was lean, blonde, and young, wearing little more than a shift and a knitted housecoat which looked to have been tossed on top.  She folded her arms underneath her breasts and scowled softly at Amelia.  “Wot?”

“My apologies for intruding,” she answered reflexively.  “I was looking for the home of Theresa Chesterley?”

“You found it,” the woman replied, leaning on the doorjamb.  “She’s not in right now.”

“A pity.  Do you know when she might return?” Amelia asked hopefully.  “Does she take visitors at certain hours?”

The woman twisted her lips together in amusement.  “We don’t often entertain here.  Theresa goes out to visit.”

“I see.”  She gestured down at the woman’s bare feet.  “Just before you opened the door, I slipped my card through the slot.  Can you see that she gets it?”

“Sure,” the woman answered without even looking down to spot where the card had fallen.

Amelia nodded, as if nodding would bring the exchange back into alignment with her expectations and things would start making sense again.  It didn’t work.  “Well.  Good day.”

The woman nodded curtly and shut the door.

At least the hackney driver had waited.  Amelia boarded again and gave him her next address.

“If it’s all the same to you, miss,” drawled the driver as he opened the carriage door for her a half hour later, “I’ll walk you to this door.”  He scowled suspiciously up and down the street, which was as dark and dirty as Amelia had feared Theresa’s neighborhood might be.

The door to the school was not even ten feet from the hackney, but the driver walked protectively behind her the whole distance.  She rapped on the door and fished out her fare, plus a generous tip.  “Thank you, sir.  Your gallantry is appreciated.”

The man scoffed good-naturedly at her language and doffed his cap as he accepted the coins.  When the door behind Amelia opened, he took one step back but no more, waiting to make sure it was opened by someone she recognized or trusted.

It was Marianne Woods, looking a little worn around the edges, but still capable of summoning up a bright smile.  “Miss Wright.  So good to see you.  Won’t you come in?”

With a final grateful nod to the cabbie, she did so.  “I’m not interrupting?” she asked the woman leading her deeper into the building.  The poorly-lit foyer gave way to a dingy hall, but the next room was wide and bright, full of long tables with benches along one side.

“No, the morning class is gone and the evening class won’t be here until six.”  Marianne kicked a bench out from its table and sat down with a huff, leaving enough room for Amelia at the end.  “Start showing at six, that is.  They don’t exactly come from households with clocks on the mantels.”

“A markedly different clientele than your last school.”

“Quite,” Marianne nodded, and then looked around the room with a tender look.  “Sometimes it seems strange to be teaching girls to read English rather than French.  But they are good girls, mostly, and eager to learn.  When they’re allowed.”

Amelia lifted an eyebrow.  “Who’s stopping them?”

“Parents, grandparents, the odd uncle, their employers, since most of them have some sort of job,” the teacher sighed.  “If anyone needs anything—tend to your sick aunt, do this laundry that didn’t get done yesterday, watch the baby while Mother tries to find work—it falls on the young women of the household.  I never know who’ll be attending any given class.”

“How many do you typically have at once?”

The teacher shrugged.  “Anywhere from ten to thirty.  When we’re full to bursting, it’s quite the cacophony in here.”

“I can only imagine,” she answered, and her mind’s eye filled the room with charmingly dirty little girls shouting excitedly, ready to learn.  For a moment, she placed herself into the scene, and thought about coming here, or someplace like it, once Gregory was off to school.  Perhaps she could do some good, here.  “I hope it is more challenging than overwhelming.”

“Depends on the day” Marianne laughed, and then scoffed, “Day before last—”  But then a cloud passed over her features.

“What is it?”

“Not all the stories are pretty or funny,” she warned. Amelia nodded encouragingly, and the teacher steeled her nerves to continue.  When she did, her voice came soft and quiet.  “Day before last, one of the girls asked what ‘rape’ was.”  She shook her head, as if she couldn’t believe her own story.  “And of course I told her, and the rest of the class, because… well, I don’t believe that such things should be kept from them, and honestly it’s not like there’s anyone who will get me in trouble for speaking of taboo subjects.  But still.  Not what I was expecting when we opened our grammar books.”

Amelia reached forward to squeeze the lady’s knee.  “And here I thought my two were a handful.”

“I’m sure they are,” Marianne commiserated, shaking her head to clear it of her own complaints.  “Educating children raised in luxury has its own challenges.  These girls are no strangers to hard work, and they know that learning is worth the effort.  By contrast, I’ve had high-class students who had never exerted themselves at all.  Who frankly didn’t even know how.”

Amelia thought of Eustace on his worst days, when it seemed no inducement could rouse him to putting in an honest effort, and nodded softly.  “And the solution, then?”

Marianne smiled wanly.  “Find the prize that they care about, which is, I’m afraid, idiosyncratic to every child.  For some, it’s time alone; for others, it’s access to books or art supplies.”  Her face crumpled a little as she added, “And for some it’s a kind word and a smile, which I’ve always found simultaneously validating for my own prowess and heartbreaking when I consider what their home lives must lack.”

Amelia nodded.  “My boys have had a hard time of it with their parents, and with their grandmother, for that matter.”  She shook her head.  “The pressures of rank and society can inflict brutal demands, and there’s little left over for the children.  You would think that adults would put the children first, but…”

“Not when the adults are essentially children, themselves,” Marianne sighed.  “We’ve had our share of those.”

“At the seminary?”

Marianne scoffed.  “Yes, but also here.  Possibly more so, here.”  She gestured around the room, as if to indicate the whole school.  “All of this depends on the charitable donations of…” There she faltered, smirked, and finished with “generous ladies of strong moral convictions.”

Amelia snorted.  “What were you about to call them?”

Marianne looked left and right as if to check that they would not be overheard.  “In private, we call them the charity mavens,” she giggled.  “They swoop in to visit with no notice, and they always have opinions.  Sometimes they also come with bank notes, which is appreciated, but they always come with opinions.”

When Amelia raised her eyebrow, Marianne elaborated: “Last week, a worthy lady of considerable means informed me that the girls would learn better if they were better dressed, and suggested we devote some of our class time to learning to mend and sew.”  She snorted delicately.  “Half the girls do piecework or weave ribbon for pay; they’re no strangers to needle and thread.  Chances are good that some part of the lady’s own wardrobe was made by some of my girls.  But she saw a few tatters and concluded the problem was ignorance, not poverty.”

“Did you dissuade her?” Amelia wanted to know.

“I estimated the cost of fabric and thread to clothe the whole class… and may have pretended to believe she was offering to supply it,” Marianne laughed.  “She dropped the subject soon thereafter.”

“Money is no object until it is,” Amelia observed drily.

Marianne sniffed.  “Money is how we encode what matters to us, as has recently been made clear to me.”

Amelia winced.  “I’m sorry, sore subject?”

“It is, and it will be for some time, so I might as well build up a tolerance for it,” the teacher sighed.  “Jane and I thought we had solved all our problems when we won the suit, but it’s like the verdict tied the money to Lady Cumming Gordon admitting she was wrong.  If she never pays the money, she never has to admit wrongdoing.  So therefore she’ll use every ounce of leverage and connection she has to forestall both payment and admission of guilt.”

“How is Jane?” she asked, hoping it might be a change of subject.

It was not.  “Living on a pittance with her aunt in Edinburgh, and not doing at all well.”  She gestured helplessly to what might have been north.  “We write.  She’s despondent.  She worries that she is being punished by the Almighty.”

“It must be difficult being so far apart,” Amelia sighed, forcing herself not to think of her own, far more petty, separation.

Marianne nodded, tears beading in the corners of her eyes.  “We said it was temporary, but I… sometimes I worry that… that I’ll never see her again.”  And then the floodgates opened and the woman broke down into sobs.

Amelia rushed forward to wrap arms around Marianne, who collapsed into her embrace.  They sat there on the school bench, Amelia making soft placating noises and Marianne alternating between sobs and sniffles, for some time.

Eventually the latter woman roused herself, reminded that Amelia had come for guidance on teaching materials, and the conversation shifted to more pragmatic concerns.  But as Amelia bid her farewell, she found herself more grateful that she had been there to comfort Marianne than for book recommendations, no matter how useful they’d be.  She gave the woman a fond smile, and resolved herself to find some way to better the situation of the two estranged and struggling lovers.

It was later than Amelia expected when she stepped outside, and darker, too.  Only a narrow strip of sky was visible between the soot-stained building fronts, and along it roiled a mottle of dark clouds limned by the sun.  Little light made it down to the street where Amelia had to hail a cab.

The school had once been a factory, and the road it was on had once been a thoroughfare, but time had strangled the business out of the first and traffic out of the latter.  A few delivery wagons and the stray rider came clattering down the cobbles, but there were no hackneys to hail among them.  With a sigh, Amelia adjusted her skirts and resolved to walk to the high street, which she was relatively sure was a few blocks up the road in this direction, and try her luck there.

She didn’t get far.

A man came teetering down the road toward her, one hand outstretched to trail along the wall beside him.  By his drunken stagger, he needed the wall for support as much as guidance.

Amelia stalled her steps at the sight of his approach, and an involuntary “oh” escaped her lips.

The drunk raised his eyes at the sound, took in Amelia and her bright frock, and then looked past her to the door of the school.  Then his gaze settled back on her as a leer smeared across his lips.  “You’re that teacher-lady.”

Amelia took a step back.  Could she make a mad dash for the door?  “I think you mean Miss Marianne Woods,” she said.  “I’m not—”

But the man leveled a crooked, dirty finger at her.  “You’re the teacher-lady who fed lies to my daughter,” he insisted.

“No, I—” Amelia stammered, and tried to flee.  But no sooner had she turned, than the man was on her, shoving her back against the wall, his face inches from hers.

His breath washed rancid over Amelia as he shouted at her: “My daughter’s no better’n me, even with her letters!  But you tell her lies, you tell her that her pa’s a criminal, you turn her ‘gainst me.”

Amelia kicked, the thin heel of her boot scraping up his shin.  His balanced faltered and she twisted to the left, out of his grip, scrambling along the wall.  She ran, stumblingly, half-ducking half-falling into an alleyway, pumping her legs to put as much distance as she could between herself and the drunk.

He howled in frustration more than pain, then charged down the alley after her.  When his panting turned to laughter, she knew he was gaining on her, and then she was shoved against the dripping wall.  She tried to twist around and run, but it was no use.  His balled his hands into the front of her jacket, pinning her in place.

“A man has a right to his wife’s body,” he wheezed at her.  “But I reckon you dun know how any of that works, do you?  Prissy old maid, never felt the touch of a man.”

This time when she made to move, he shoved his elbow up, knocking her head back against the bricks.  She saw stars, and then his forearm was jammed up against her throat.

With his other hand, he produced a knife.  “Maybe I’ll give you a little prick, enh?” he sneered, running the tip down her side.  “Teach you a lesson, teacher-lady.  I’d enjoy that!”

This is where I die, Amelia concluded, heart hammering.  She couldn’t move, and nothing she could say would placate the drunk.  Either he simply stabbed her to death in the alley, or he tried to rape her and in that assault discovered details about her that would incite him to stab her to death, anyway.

But then a shout sounded from the mouth of the alley, and the man’s balance shifted as he turned towards the noise.  Amelia shoved him back again, turned to flee—

—and his grip bashed her back into the bricks.  A lance of pain skewered into her upper thigh, trailed up to her hip.  Her leg went out from under her, and she fell.  The man made no move to catch her, flinging himself away and dashing further down the alleyway.

Other footfalls came rushing in from the street.  Amelia’s vision swam; her fingers slapped uselessly against the bricks and cobbles, trying and failing to steady herself.  The insides of her thighs were wet, hot, and sticky.

Gentle hands guided her down to lie flat on the ground.  The strength of her body, the scene around her, the whole world seemed to be spiralling away from her, and in seeped a soft, quiet blackness, replacing all of everything.  The last words she heard were: “Don’t worry, miss.  I’m a doctor.  I’m afraid I’ll have to lift your skirts to examine the wound…”

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Sussex, June 1813

The evening following Theresa Chesterley’s sudden departure, Amelia dashed off a letter which struck the balance, she felt, between fond affection and her growing panic at her lover’s disappearance.

Had country life disagreed with Theresa’s sensibilities?  Had Mother taken Theresa aside and said something pointed and cutting?  Or had Amelia herself been impetuous and presumptive in sharing her fantasy of domestic lesbian bliss, and then without any warning all but shoved Theresa directly into it?

There was no real mystery as to what had spooked the woman.  Amelia hadn’t even asked Theresa’s thoughts on marriage in general before dumping her impossible dreams on her.

She put none of that in the letter, no reiteration of her matrimonial fantasies and no acknowledgement that those dreams might have been too much.  Instead she communicated her hope that Theresa’s trip home had been at least uneventful if not necessarily pleasant, thanked her for the visit, and mentioned—briefly but pointedly—her surprise at the alacrity of Theresa’s departure.  She conducted the woman all her best wishes and, after a moment of hesitation, signed it Your Duchess Regent.

The letter went out on the evening mail coach, and very well might arrive at Theresa’s London address before the woman herself would.  Amelia resigned herself to wait for the response and climbed into a bed that had never felt more empty.

It was a week later—no letter—that Gregory looked up at Amelia on their morning walk and asked, “Why does our mother not want to see us?”

The lady in question had just come into view, sitting atop another hillock with her stool and easel, probably distant enough to feel unreachable to the boy.  Amelia gave him a weak smile.  “I don’t know if that’s true, dear.”

“It is,” opined Eustace from where he was, from a standing position, rolling himself along the side of the hedgerow that followed the path.  Amelia had winced to watch him do so at first—the leaves were sharp and a little barbed—but he seemed to enjoy leaning into the shaped hedge, and it had become unremarkable over time.  She still had to pluck leaves out of his hair before they returned to the house, though.  “Mother doesn’t like us.  Father did, but he didn’t like being at home.”  He paused his rolling and walked alongside them, brow furrowed as he thought.  “Perhaps he only liked us in small portions, and that’s why he disliked staying at home too long.”

“Your father was a very busy man,” Amelia heard herself say.  “He had great ambition.”

Eustace gave her a look.  “Did you know him?”

Did she know her own brother?  She was surprised by the answer: “Not well.”

“But Mother,” Gregory reminded the both of them as to the part of the conversation he cared about.  “If she didn’t see us all day, she’d be happy.  All week!”  He looked uncertainly from Amelia to Eustace and back.  “Does she not like us?”

Amelia sighed.  She had resolved not to lie to the boys, especially after hearing the ice cream story, but this was more than fraught.

Looking down at either of them, on either side of her—they’d both linked hands with her at some point in the conversation—she remembered her own youth.  Raised as a boy, told nothing about motherhood, about womanhood: such details had been withheld like sacred mysteries.  And when she had finally become herself and other women began speaking with her in confidence under the aegis of their shared sex… all those mysteries had been revealed as tragedies of circumstance and social pressure.  Secrets not shared with boys because of shame, and probably the hope of preserving their childish innocence by maintaining their boyish ignorance.  And then the boys grow into men (most of the time, at least) and stride through the world, largely unaware of the extent to which they walk through a garden of tragedies.

Amelia wanted better for her boys.  Wanted better from her boys.

“Not all women are maternal in nature,” she said carefully.  Both boys’ heads snapped up to listen, having apparently resigned themselves, in her long pause, to adult silence instead of an actual answer.  “But most are forced to have children.  And when you are not maternal by nature, but have motherhood chosen for you… it can be… uncomfortable.”  She squeezed their hands.  “Which is very different from not loving her children.  Does that make sense?”

“No,” came Eustace’s immediate reply.

“The two of you love each other,” Amelia tried again.  “I’ve seen it, don’t even try to pretend otherwise.  But you are not always kind to each other.  Especially when you are tired, or hungry, or angry about a missing grenadier.”

Gregory giggled; Eustace had lost a toy soldier the day before and had made it everyone’s problem.  He’d blamed Gregory until his younger brother found the painted lead figurine under Eustace’s pillow.  The elder boy muttered darkly and performatively, but Amelia thought she’d caught an embarassed smile on his lips before he looked pointedly away.

“Imagine you are always angry,” she went on, “about something that you can’t change and never will be changed.  Imagine how that might make you act, even with those you love.”

Eustace growled, “So Mother is angry she had us?”

Gregory double-stepped to look across Amelia to his brother.  “Mother is angry about losing Father,” he corrected quietly.

Their governess could have left it at that, but it felt like a half-truth.  “Both can be true,” she told them gently.  “She is very angry about losing your father.  She is also angry that the life she thought she’d have… never quite happened.”

“She wanted to go paint on the Continent,” Eustace said, remembering the overheard altercation in the conservatory.

“Life is often unkind to women with ambitions outside of being a wife and a mother,” she told them.  “So perhaps you can understand why they might be angry.”

“Is that why you’re a governess?” asked Gregory.  “Instead of a wife and mother?”

Amelia found her lips twisting ruefully.  “I may yet marry,” she said, even if the words felt like knives coming up her throat.  “And may even raise children of my own.  But in the mean time—” she squeezed their hands again “—I am quite content borrowing the two of you.”

Gregory giggled, and even Eustace looked up at her with a smile.  The elder boy detached himself to roll along the hedgerow again; his brother pulled on Amelia’s hand.

Amelia bent down and Gregory cupped his hands around her ear to share a secret: “I wish that you were our mother.”

She couldn’t help herself scooping up the boy to give him a crushing hug.  She also took that time to try to think of a good response to the boy’s pronouncement, not that she found one.  Instead, she said: “If I do ever get to raise a child, I hope they’ll be half as sweet as you.”

My dear D. R.—

Your company this last week did me more good than I have the talent to express in a letter.  You are a woman of many charms, and I am both glad and honoured to have enjoyed them.

I also enjoyed spending time with your young charges, who do your attention and tutelage great credit.

In your recent letter you asked after my precipitous departure.  I do apologize if I seemed to act in haste.  I had delivered Mr. Hawley’s box of lenses (and that gentlemen was eager to have it promptly returned along with Eustace’s order) as well as performed my London history for the boys.  My charges fulfilled and with no wish to overstay my welcome, I took my leave.

On that subject of welcome, please conduct my thanks to Lady Suffolk; her hospitality was nothing short of superlative, especially since she did not know me from Eve.  I cannot imagine I will enjoy such hospitality again, but I will always look fondly on my time there.

Yours,

Theresa Chesterley

The damn letter, which had taken more than two full weeks to materialise, prompted more questions than it answered.

It offered some polite admiration, but the missive seemed absent any affection.

Overstay her welcome?  Hadn’t Amelia made it clear to Theresa that “Youngest” had made it clear to Mother that she should be afforded every hospitality?  Three days fell well short of that mark!

At least Theresa had not used the easily available phrasing that she had no reason to stay once box and history were delivered. That may have crushed Amelia’s heart to paste.

Amelia read the letter over again, more than once.

Between the oblique references to ‘charms’ and abbreviating ‘Duchess Regent,’ did she think that Amelia’s post was being read?  (For a moment, she considered if her mother would actually read the governess’s post, only to conclude that if she had done so, she would not have bothered to re-affix the wax seal.)

Worst of all, nowhere did Theresa suggest or even imply that they should ever repeat the experience.

Amelia considered dashing the letter into the fire.  Instead, she read it again.

“Miss Wright, a word,” called Mother one evening after dinner.  Iris had just swept out the door after half an hour of tight-lipped conversation and avoiding eye contact.

Amelia had risen from her seat but not yet left the room, which left her standing while the Lady Suffolk still sat at her place at the head of the table.  Exactly as her mother had planned, no doubt; her daughter repressed a smirk.  “Yes, milady?”

“I couldn’t help but notice that young Eustace has taken to reading with spectacles,” the lady noted, voice strangely even and for once unreadable.

“Yes, milady,” Amelia answered with a smile. If Mother disapproved—thought spectacles inappropriate for a boy, or for a future lord—she had to quash that impulse with as much enthusiasm and cheer as she could squeeze into the conversation.  “They make reading much easier for him, and he’s discovered a surprising enthusiasm for the written word.”

Mother sniffed.  “The enthusiasms of boys are fickle things.  We shall see how long his infatuation lasts.”

Amelia bobbed her head.  “As you say, milady.  But I have my hopes.”

“Where did they come from?” the lady asked next.  “The spectacles, not your tenuous hopes.”

“Miss Chesterley brought them with her,” she answered with another smile, but this one went brittle entirely too quickly.  With a knot in her stomach, she said, “That was the chief purpose of her visit.” Not, apparently, seeing Amelia, according to Theresa herself.  She realized she was still talking: “She collected a box of spectacles of various powers from a Mister Hawley, along with instructions—“

Mother waved a hand; she didn’t want these particulars.  “Mister Hawley was convinced to part with an entire box of precision-ground lenses so that an untrained woman could try them on a boy still in short pants?”

Convinced, yes, by a large sum of money that Julian had arranged to sit in surety that the box would come back intact.  Hawley had wanted to come, himself; Amelia had wanted an excuse for Theresa to visit.  But her mother didn’t need to hear those particulars, either.  She pasted on a smile.  “I understand your Youngest directed Mister Clark to arrange the details.”

Her Mother shook her head softly, looking towards the door out of the dining room.  “I thought he’d never read,” she breathed.  “A dullard and, inevitably, an ignoramus.  In line to inherit.  I had steeled myself for such… disappointment to the family name.”

Amelia stilled where she stood.  Her Mother had never been so candid, not with the governess foisted into her household.  She felt like if she moved, she’d startle the lady out of her confession.

“I’ve met many men of name and title,” the lady went on, “and in most of them, I think, I could find something to respect.  But there are always some who fall short of the… rather generous standard I extend to gentlemen.” She nodded to the dining room door, to the house beyond, to Eustace’s bedroom, upstairs.  “I thought he’d be one of them.”

Her mother’s gaze flicked from the door to Amelia, and the lady smoothed away the storm of emotion on her face.  “Perhaps a fresh perspective on the boy and his tutelage was not so bad an idea after all.”

Amelia smiled softly and dropped a gentle curtsy.  It was as close to a compliment as she expected to get from the lady of the house.

When her mother smirked in response, Amelia tamped down her surprise.  When she then chuckled softly, Amelia willed herself to not look out the windows to see if the world was ending.  “How did Youngest even know to do it?” her mother asked in wonder.  “It could not have been you, Miss Wright; there simply hasn’t been the time for you to see Eustace’s struggle, send post to Iceland, and then Mister Clark to receive a reply and arrange the details for Miss Chesterley’s visit last week.”

Amelia’s mouth went dry.  How had she been so careless?  Too much, too fast; she’d shown her hand.  How much did her mother suspect?

But Mother was saying, “Youngest was always perceptive.  And curious about so many things.  What impressive foresight, don’t you think, Miss Wright?”

Was this a trap?  Or was her mother actually complimenting her, albeit more directly than she thought she was?  She nodded, swallowing so that she could reply.  “Yes, milady.  And clear sight for Eustace.”

The lady of the house bestowed a tight smile on her.  “Quite.” She rose from her own seat.  “Now all you have to do, Miss Wright, is cram three years of reading into three months, before term begins.  I imagine you have your work cut out for you.”

Amelia dropped another curtsy.  She knew a dismissal when she heard it.  “Indeed, milady.  Good evening.”

“Sleep well, Miss Wright,” her Mother bade her, already moving towards the door.  “You’ll need to be well-rested to dive into all those books in the morning.”

Perhaps because of her mother’s encouragement, Amelia packed three different books for Eustace to read under the shade of their favourite copse of trees the following day.  She tried not to push too hard, and he gamefully attempted all of them, to various degrees of success and interest.  Eventually it was his brother who peeled him away to play muskateers with sticks.  Amelia let them fence, considering it a productive day.

An hour later, the three of them turned the last corner in the path that eventually led them back to the house.  There before them was Iris, easel and canvas over her back, bag of paints and brushes at her side.  Also returning to the house, she was perhaps fifty feet ahead of them and moving slower; it would only be a matter of time before they caught up.

“Mother!” Gregory shouted and ran to greet her.  Even after their long walk and the dozen or so trees he’d climbed, the boy was still a ball of energy.  Despite his enthusiastic scramble, however, Amelia could detect the hitch of tension in his shoulders.  Would his mother be happy he was invading her walk back to the house?

Iris paused and turned toward him, too far ahead for Amelia to read her expression.  He wrapped his arms around her middle, causing her to throw her arm and elbow out to balance herself under her painterly load.  Nearly dropping her precious supplies might have upset the lady, but Amelia could hear her laugh.

The two of them exchanged a few words and then she handed Gregory her bag.  He took up the load as if it were a great honour, and strode forward with weighty purpose.

By that time, Eustace had caught up with her.  They talked for a moment and, after a noticeably longer hesitation, she handed over the easel and canvas.

As Eustace tromped away, careful under her precious load, Amelia came up beside the lady.  “Good afternoon, Lady Marbury.”

“Miss Wright,” the lady replied, doing little more than acknowledging her presence.  But then the lady fell into step beside her.

It was clear to Amelia that Iris had not made up her mind how to handle her, or if she even needed to be handled, after she had walked in on the late-night tryst three weeks past.  She alternated warm and cool, sometimes even going so far as to smile at the governess who’d promised to keep her secret.  Other times, however, Amelia caught her staring daggers across a room when she thought she was unobserved, and there had been a few curt, if not actually cutting, remarks over breakfast and dinner.

All of which made Amelia’s job—her actual job, as the boy’s governess—that much more difficult.  There were a raft of things she wanted to discuss with her charges’ mother: major issues like her having lied to her children, rather cavalierly, for so long, as well minor issues like supplying the boys with adventure novels that were by no means academic in nature.  All of it was impossible to broach if Iris still viewed her with suspicion and distrust.

More than anything, though, she wanted to encourage the lady to spend a little time with her children.  They shouldn’t be telling their governess of less than two months that they’d rather she were their mother.  The trio had a long history—the boys’ whole lives—and as dour as Eustace might be about his memories, Gregory’s rosier recollections strongly implied that it hadn’t all been frustration and neglect.

If Iris wanted to grieve her husband by painting, that was fine.  But surely she could check in with the boys most evenings, if only for a few minutes.  It would make such a difference.

And here was perhaps an opportunity: two brief, positive encounters with her boys, with the both of them industriously pattering ahead of them.  They were good boys (most days), and perhaps she’d like to spend just a little more time with them.

“They’re always so eager to help,” Amelia observed, with entirely unfeigned affection.

“They are,” the other lady allowed. “When they’re not trying to kill each other.” The addendum was offered so drily it took Amelia a moment to realize the lady was amused.

“Brothers,” Amelia smiled wanly.  Even if she hadn’t been one, she’d had one.

Iris looked sidelong at her.  “Oh, I know all too well.  I had five, growing up.”

Amelia lifted her eyebrows.  “Any sisters?”

“None,” the lady groaned.  “I begged my father to send me away to a girls’ seminary, just to escape them all.”

“I can only imagine.” And she had, even if her dreams at Eton had been more about being at any other school than that one.  A school for girls was so fantastic a dream that she had reserved it for the longest, loneliest nights.

The boys had disappeared up ahead, ducking through a trellis-screened passage that led into the service yard and thence into the house.  “Propriety be damned,” Iris scoffed, but it sounded a little like a chuckle around the edges.

“They haunt the kitchens when they’re not out with me,” Amelia giggled.  “Gregory wakes up almost as early as Cook and ‘helps’ her by eating the tarts that aren’t pretty enough to be put on the platter.”

“Surely Enid’s cook is not so sloppy as to make ugly tarts.”

Amelia smirked.  “Not on accident, at least.  She likes spoiling him a little.” They’d reached the trellis, and she raised her eyebrows at Iris.  “The boys are right, though, that this is the quickest way inside.”

The lady rolled her eyes, good-naturedly.  “I am just following my easel,” she explained, and ducked down the stone-lined path behind the trellis.

The shade was cool and green, the morning’s brief rain still seeped into the brick wall that ran along one side of the servants’ passage.  Amelia could feel the tension unwind from her shoulders as she followed after Iris.

But then the lady was brought up short, loosing a surprised and strangled cry.  Amelia ran into her back.  “What?”

Before them the hidden servants’ passage widened, stacks of baskets stored along either side, and among them stood Mister Grant, the estate agent, and Mister Hawthorne, the estate shepherd.  Both were hurriedly pulling up their coats; Grant was trying to simultaneously tie his cravat.  Hawthorne’s short naval ponytail had come undone and his greying hair splayed out all around his face.  The men huffed and stammered, trying to find an excuse that would obscure the fact that they had just been pressed up against the wall, kissing.

Mister Grant was, Amelia realized, trying to tie his cravat in order to hide the blossoming bruise of a love bite on his neck.  “Lady Marbury, Miss Grant,” he said finally, and dipped his head in a little perfunctory bow.

“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” Amelia answered, thinking: I have to stop walking in on people’s clandestine lovemaking.

“We were just… inspecting the… baskets,” Hawthorne all but mumbled, knowing how ridiculous he sounded.

“It’s perfectly clear what the two of you were doing,” Iris spat.  “Did my boys see—“

“They tore through here at a gallop,” Grant answered with a shake of his head. “I don’t think they saw the baskets, let alone us.”

“What are your names?” Iris asked, voice tight and resigned.

Both men filled their lungs to answer, knowing that Iris would report them to the lady of the house, that they’d lose their positions, that they wouldn’t find another one, not at their age and not with the reputation that would follow them, that they were almost certainly looking at a future of penury in the form of Iris Sommerset.

“We don’t need to know their names,” Amelia put in before either of them could answer.  Iris looked back at her, eyebrow raised high.  She spoke quickly but gently: “Lady Marbury, they haven’t done anyone any harm.  We’re the ones who aren’t suposed to be here.” She bobbed her head at the men.  “Excuse us for invading your privacy.”

Iris stared at her, agog.  “Miss Wright, we can’t just overlook—“

Amelia nodded to the two men, hoping that they’d take the hint and take their leave so that they could not be interrogated for their names.  She said soothing things to Iris, trying to talk her down.  “It’s nothing to worry yourself over, milady.  The heart wants what it wants.  Who are we to judge?”

But the Lady Marbury’s eyes flashed.  “The heart wants…?” she sputtered.  “You wouldn’t dare.”

“Just let them go, milady,” Amelia pleaded, and was pleased to see the two men were, indeed, creeping backwards out of the awkward scene.  “I promise nobody will be scandalized.  Nobody has to know.”

Amelia’s mouth was running like a babbling brook, simultaneously trying to distract and placate the lady. She nearly said again, “The heart wants what it wants,” and stumbled to a stop.  The last time she’d said the same to Iris, she’d just walked in on the woman’s tryst with the Master of Stable.

Iris evidently remembered the phrase, and drew exactly the wrong conclusion as to what the governess meant to imply with her repetition.  Amelia’s silence for that night—in exchange for Iris’ silence today.  But before Amelia could clarify, Iris backed away.

“Nobody has to know,” the lady echoed, all but snarling.  “Fine.  As you like it, Miss Wright.” And without looking back, she stalked away, back out of the servant’s passage, out to the grounds, and presumably to a respectable door on the ground floor.

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When Rowan had said “Next week is Pride,” she meant she had a whole slate of events planned out for Sammy, starting just two days later.  She shoved a multi-appointment calendar invite into his inbox, and without thinking, he just clicked Accept All.  First his week of orderly coloured blocks were invaded by more, overlapping blocks, and then the stream of notifications about conflicts made his phone and laptop start dinging repeatedly, in chorus.

Rowan had made at least a token gesture of avoiding Sammy’s actual classes—mostly—as well as his voice training lesson.  But she apparently thought any other scrap of time, especially through the evenings, was fair game.  Time that Sammy had set aside for reading, for revising essays, for preparing for quizzes—all of it—got bulldozed under Rowan’s plans.

Sammy considered begging off a few of these—what was a Drag Brunch, anyway?—but by the way Rowan’s stream of excited texts kept making his phone buzz long after the tide of schedule conflicts receded, he knew it would be a futile effort.  He let her burble away, scowled at his schedule, and started shifting things around.

There were some things that were more precautionary review than they were deadline-driven projects, and he could skip those for a week.  Everything else he shuffled around to make space.  He could also wake up early on Saturday, tomorrow, to get stuff done before Pride took over everything.

Okay, I’m really excited about all of this, he told her once her tour guide monologue had ground to a halt.  He’d barely registered any of the specifics, but he had cleared the time, theoretically.  But if you’re gonna drag me all over the City all next week, I’ve got an essay to write and reading to do.

Aren’t you an adorably diligent little school girl, she responded, and he could hear her laughter.

See you Sunday.

As a final parting shot, she told him: Wear something skimpy!

Rowan led him down the street towards the noise and the gathering crowd, then leapt up onto a concrete planter at the corner to throw out her hands across the whole scene.  “Our people, Sammy!”

Long rows of square canopies lined either side of the street, with a vast mob of colorfully-dressed people flowing between them.  The result was basically a sluice of rainbow polyester, bared skin, and sweat.  Music pounded from somewhere down the way; the smell of beer and fried food filled the air.

The Brooklyn Pride Multicultural Festival looked a whole lot like the Hunterdon County Fair that he’d volunteered at every year, except three or four times as big and infinitely more queer.  Couples wandered up and down the stalls—two men, two women, various gender rebels, even apparent straight people—all holding hands, all laughing companionably at each other, a whole lot of them kissing or just straight-up making out in public.

He’d had a complicated relationship with the County Fair.  It had once been exciting, when he was little and easily impressed; but in later years it had grown… intimidating, with too many people giving him too many appraising looks.  Trying to figure him out, how he fit into everything else, and usually how hard they could dismiss him for being so patently out of place.  He still went, still did his part for the scout troop and the mini golf course they ran, but he hardly ever ventured far from the course, and went home immediately once his shift was done.

At the first look at the sea of people, Sammy’s heart leapt up into his chest, and for a moment he thought he’d have to tamp down the familiar almost-panic that the Fair crowd had triggered in him.  But he breathed, and looked, and realized that the looming vibe of intimidation was missing.  He wasn’t here to Have Fun or Else, he wasn’t here to fulfill the role of Dutiful Boy Scout Performing Community Service.

Rowan stepped down off the planter, grinning and holding out her hand to pull him in.  He was invited.  He was welcome.  There were so many people here just like him.

He took her hand and dove into the crowd.

“So don’t say it out loud,” Rowan told him a little while later, leaning conspiratorially close, “but this is like… baby pride.  Neighbourhood pride.  It’s cute, and they do their parade in the evening, which is, seriously, so obviously sensible I don’t know why everybody else doesn’t do the same.  No heat stroke, what a revelation!”

But Sammy was hung up on ‘baby pride,’ looking around at the sea of rainbowed humanity that they swam through.  “This is small?”

“Compared to the real deal?  This is tiny,” she nodded.  “But it’s also, you know, comfy and homey.  Even if you don’t actually live in Brooklyn.”

They hit up the food trucks and came away with their hands full of fried food, then meandered their way through the stalls.  About half presented local organizations with ties to the queer community—some, like the Queer Street Opera, more significant than others, like the Brooklyn Credit Union.  The other half sold merchandise, mostly clothes and hand-made art.

It was in the latter half that they spent the most time, poring through racks of brightly-coloured clothing and tables spread with wind chimes, blown-glass bongs, and incense holders.  Rowan kept showing him items bearing the trans pride colours, insisting that he needed some “trans bling.”  He begged off each time.  What would he do with trans pride stuff once he detransitioned, anyway?

But he was absolutely surrounded by people decked out in rainbows or bearing other pride flag colour schemes—when they weren’t just trailing a pride flag off their shoulders like a cape—and he found he was not immune to the ambient peer pressure.  He started looking at rainbow things, and for the much more rarer pink-yellow-blue of the pansexual pride flag.  He was still a little shaky on which labels he qualified for or wanted to claim, but maybe if he found just the right thing, it would tip him over the threshold.

He held up a likely cardigan—featuring chunky bands of pink, yellow, and blue, even if they weren’t quite the right pink, yellow, and blue—and wrinkled his nose into a tall, thin mirror propped up on the clothing rack.  He was pretty sure it would stretch across his tits rather nicely, but was that enough if the colours were off?

“You’d look awesome in that,” came a voice to his right, and he glanced over to answer with a polite little smile.  He’d assumed it was the owner of the stall, but this girl looked like she’d just walked in from the thoroughfare.  Her eyes dipped down and back up, appraising, and licked her lips.  “But I bet you look awesome in most things.”

“Oh, um, thanks,” he stammered, and could feel his ears burning.  The girl was hot and, as if that weren’t enough, wasn’t wearing very much at all.  “I, um, er—”

Before he could fumble for any more words, Rowan interposed herself between Sammy and the newcomer.  “Sorry, she’s taken,” she declared with a wide grin.  “Happy Pride!”

The girl took a moment to size up Rowan, and stepped back with a smirk.  “Can’t blame a girl for trying,” she said, and then nodded farewell to the both of them.  “Happy Pride.”

Rowan waited until she was out of earshot before giggling.  “I forgot to mention: the lesbians will be on the hunt.”  She gestured out across the festival.  “Target-rich environment.  Safe bet most girls here are into girls.”  She poked him in the side.  “You coupled up a week too early.”

“I’ll take notes for next year,” he giggled.

“Actually, I just assumed, but are you guys exclusive?” Rowan asked, pawing through a basket full of bangles in various primary colours.

Sammy paused in his perusal of the maybe-pansexual top.  “I don’t actually know.  Back home, girlfriend just meansexclusive, but that’s probably not a good assumption here.”

“Or with Finn,” Rowan bobbed her head.

Sammy decided that, colours slight off or no, the sweater’s long sleeves were going to be impossible in the summer heat, so he didn’t need it.  He returned it to the rack.  “I don’t think I’d mind too much if we weren’t,” he was surprised to hear himself say.  “It’s a temporary thing, anyway.  They’re destined to find somebody else in California, and I’ll be happy for them when that happens.”

“Just as long as they smooch you a lot now,” Rowan grinned.  He smiled back, with a little self-conscious nod.  Spying his vulnerability and her opportunity, she then added, “…and give you a good fucking every few days.”

He rolled his eyes and left the stall, primarily to hide what felt like the fire-engine-red blush taking over his face.

At the end of the block, the festival terminated with another circle of food trucks, so they grabbed a “bouquet” of pickles to share.  Rowan made a joke about trans girls and pickles that Sammy didn’t quite understand, but let slide unexplained.  He was too focused on watching the crowd, and watching the crowd watch him, and marvelling.

Rowan had gleefully informed two more girls that Sammy was taken, and then when one of the girls mistook Rowan for Sammy’s girlfriend and suggested all three of them have some fun together, turned that offer down, too.  And that was both funny and kind of awesome, but it was also just the tip of the iceberg.  Lesbians on the hunt or no, when people looked at Sammy here, it seemed to work differently than other places and other times.

They didn’t see some awkward brown kid who stuck out.  They didn’t have questions about who he was or what he was doing there.  He was just another queer, in a sea of queers, and there was a delight in most everyone’s eyes, of seeing another queer, maybe saying Happy Pride or that’s a fabulous skirt you’re wearing, and it was all permitted.  It was all so normal.  It was like a parallel reality, a private little world just for queers, carved out of a Brooklyn street.

Pride was special.  He got it now.  It made perfect sense to set aside a whole week for this every year for the rest of his life.

“Our people,” he murmured to himself, a little hesitantly, and couldn’t help smiling.  “My people.”

The next evening, Sammy looked left and right as they stepped into the hotel lobby.  “This is a Pride thing?” he asked Rowan uncertainly.  There were no flamboyant costumes, no acres of skin on display, no melange of body odour, sunscreen, and cannabis wafting through the aggressively-conditioned air.  It was just a scrupulously clean hotel lobby.

“This is a Pride thing,” his cousin confirmed, striding across the lobby to jam an elevator call button.

He read the logo over the elevator doors.  “What the fuck is a skylawn?”

“It’s a very ostentatious name for a roof that’s only three stories above street level,” she responded with a roll of her eyes.  The doors opened and they stepped inside; once the doors closed, she rooted around in her purse.  “Oh, you’ll need this.”

He took the proferred card from her hand.  “Why do I need some rando’s New York driver’s licence?”

“That’s your New York driver’s license,” she corrected him with a laugh.

He snorted.  “Rowan, this doesn’t even look like me.”

She shrugged.  “Don’t worry, your cleavage will make up the difference.”

“And it says I’m 24!” he blurted as the elevator chimed and the doors opened.

Rowan leaned closer to whisper as she pulled him out of the elevator and into the evening air.  “That is the purpose of a fake ID, Sammy.”

“Good evening, ladies,” called a smiling attendant behind a kiosk.  The rooftop was festooned with fairy lights and little potted shrubberies, the latter of which had been positioned to create a little foyer area, complete with hostess kiosk.  “Tickets and IDs, please.”

Rowan strode up to the kiosk, presenting her phone with a barcode showing and then her own fake ID.  With his own already in hand, Sammy mutely held out the card to the attendant.  Unable to make eye contact with her, he instead looked over at the array of chairs that took up most of the roof.

“Thank you very much,” the attendant smiled and gestured them through.  “Welcome to the Rooftop Cinema Club.”

It was only then that Sammy spied the movie screen stretched out across the next building over, and the fat outdoor speakers mounted along the sides of the grid of chairs.  The chairs which all faced the screen, and were all, obviously, audience seating.  It was a movie theatre, except on a rooftop.  “Holy shit,” he breathed.

“Innit cool?” Rowan grinned, and then grabbed his hand to pull him across the space, past the seating area.  “Ah, there’s the bar.”

They both ordered cocktails with a side of popcorn, a juxtaposition which made Sammy giggle.  He tried to present his ID again, but that was unnecessary, apparently.  “You can put that away,” she told him quietly as they navigated to their seats.  “Only show it when you need to.  You don’t want somebody to look too hard and get you tossed out.”

So not as foolproof as all that, he noted absently.  Popcorn tucked into his elbow and cocktail held awkwardly in hand, he dropped the card into his purse.  He was amazed he hadn’t spilled booze all over some unsuspecting, already-seated moviegoer, and took a deep pull to make that less likely in the future.  He blinked; the drink was strong.  “Wow, that’s—” he almost coughed, and then covered, “um, tasty.”

“They make great drinks here,” Rowan agreed, settling into her seat.  “So you’ve never seen this?”

He sat gingerly, succeeding in spilling neither alcohol nor popcorn.  “Um.  I didn’t really watch a lot of cheerleader movies in Oak Grove.”

“It’s not a cheerleader movie,” she giggled.  “Thats just kind of tangential.  Or I dunno, not really.  It’s part of the main character’s thing, and—oh, but I don’t want to spoil anything for you.  It’s great.”

“What is the whole title, again?” he asked as the lights dimmed and the screen flickered on.

“But I’m a Cheerleader!” Rowan stage-whispered, eyes sparkling in the half-light.

“She didn’t know,” he was telling Rowan as the lights came back up.  He was dimly aware that he was slurring his words, and more than a little.  Rowan had kept fetching them more cocktails throughout the movie.  “She didn’t knooow.  Everybody around her knew, but she didn’t.  She thought she was just… doing what everybody expected of her, so therefore she had to be, or I mean she thought she had to be, what everybody expected of her.  But she wasn’t.”  He looked up at the dead screen.  “She never was.”

Rowan lolled, loose-limbed, in her own chair, smiling beautifically.  “Right?  And then she figures it out.”

“She figures it out, and then they’re happy.”  Sammy’s thoughts skipped like a stone across a pond.  “That place they went to, though, was so silly.  Are there places like that, really?”

“Conversion camps or gay bars?” Rowan snorted.  “Doesn’t matter.  Yes, they both exist, but they’re a lot less silly than in the movie.”

He snorted, which made his nose feel funny.  “I know gay bars exist.  We’re going to one tomorrow, right?”

Rowan stood up—carefully—and looked down at him with a grin.  “Assuming your hangover doesn’t fucking kill you in the morning.”

“Are we sure this is necessary?” he asked again while they shuffled along in the slow-moving line.  His head was pounding, and the cute little round sunglasses he had on barely cut the morning light that was trying to stab out his eyeballs.

“Necessary?  No,” answered Uncle Henry.  “Fun?  Yes.”

“It’s also kind of a family tradition,” Uncle Gideon put in from further up the line.  “We’re so happy to have you with us this year, Samantha.”  From the poorly-hidden smirks his uncles shared with each other, his condition was not lost on either of them.

“We’ll get you a little hair of the dog once we’re inside,” Rowan promised, patting his elbow gently.  “That’ll help, I promise.”

It was an age before they got to the front of the line and Gideon brandished their tickets, each one printed on a separate piece of printer paper.  The ticket-taker, dressed in a sequined dress and wearing a very bad wig, gave them all a manic grin.  “Welcome home, fam.  Grab whichever table you like.”

It was a gay bar, attested by the rainbow lights everywhere that looked like they’d been up for years, not thrown onto the walls last week like every other bar in New York right now.  It was not large, and for all the twinkle lights, neither was it well-lit.  Tables and chairs were scattered across the room, with a few wide aisles striking through the tumult.  An empty stage took up pride of place against the wall opposite the bar, and above it was spread a banner that read: Stonewall Inn.

Sammy squinted at the banner as they sat down.  Rowan ordered a round of mimosas and then a pitcher of the same to follow, and still he couldn’t resolve the tickle in the back of his brain.  “Okay,” he finally hazarded, waving up at the wall.  “I feel like I should be recognizing the name, but… I’m not exactly firing on all cylinders right now.”

His uncles and cousin blinked at him as one.  Finally Henry stammered, “The— the Stonewall Inn.  You don’t… recognize.  Stonewall.”

Gideon put a gentle hand on his husband’s shoulder.  “Did you know what Stonewall was when you were living in Oak Grove, honey?”

Luckily the mimosas arrived then, and Rowan passed one to Sammy insistently.  “This is the Stonewall Inn, Sammy.  It’s where everything began for queerdom.”

“Not everything—” Gideon tried to interrupt.

But Rowan waved a hand in his face.  “Spare me your historical precision for a minute.”  Turning back to Sammy, she said, “This is where the first Pride happened, and it was a riot.”  She grinned.  “Like, a literal riot.  Queers fighting cops.”

Sammy downed his mimosa and slowly poured another from the pitcher.  Both the fructose and the alcohol hit his bloodstream almost immediately, and it was like his whole body groaned in gratitude.  “Wait, what? How did Pride go from that to…”—he waved at the door, indicating the whole of New York and the rainbows vomitted all over it—“what it is now?”

“A lot of hard work by a lot of activists,” answered Gideon.  “But the spirit of the first Pride—that riot, where queers fought back against oppression—was what inspired a whole lot of it.  And arguably kicked off the modern queer rights movement.”  He tapped the table with splayed fingers.  “It all started here.”

Uncle Henry nodded.  “Which is why our family comes every year, for—”

“It’s Drag Brunch, bitches!” shouted an announcer as she mounted the stage.  She held a bedazzled microphone in front of a face that had… a whole lot of makeup on it.  Sammy wasn’t even sure what, exactly, he was looking at.  Eye shadow spiked out to her ears, contouring gone absolutely mad, lipstick so vibrant it seemed to glow, and false eyelashes that he was pretty sure would kick up a breeze if she blinked.

She was wearing a wig—it had to be a wig, right?—that was easily twice the size of her head.  Her golden sequinned gown shimmered under the stage lights, wrapped around curves so generous they had to be exaggerated.  Nor did Sammy miss her nails—not that she allowed anyone to miss her nails, the way she waved her hands around—which extended at least two inches from the tips of her fingers and were painted cheeto orange, with sparkles.

For one brief moment, Sammy wondered if the mimosas had been spiked and he was experiencing a drug-induced hallucination.

But the show went on, the announcer kept braying into the microphone, and the Roth-Masters all smiled and cheered like this was all perfectly normal.  The woman on stage, who identified herself as Merri Mountains with a shake of her very solid bosom, promised a string of performances, encouraging the audience to cheer, to sing along, to tip generously, and to stay out of the aisles while the performers strutted their stuff around the room.

“That reminds me,” grunted Uncle Henry, leaning forward to dig his wallet out of his back pocket.  He then unceremoniously dropped a stack of twenties on the table.  When Sammy boggled—it had to be a few hundred dollars—his uncle gestured up at Miss Mountains.  “For tips, like she said.”

And then the announcer in question completed her schpiel, waved, and strutted off stage.  The coloured lights winked off, and the room dropped back into silverware-clicking muttering.  A server materialized beside the table.  “What can I get you?” she asked, and the Roth-Masters all studiously consulted the menus that Sammy hadn’t even noticed on the table.

He reached a hesitant hand out to his cousin’s elbow.  “R— Rowan.  Ro.  What the fuck is happening?”

She didn’t look up from the menu.  “They don’t have the waffles this year,” she told him as if that was an answer.  “They used to make them with rainbow sprinkles; they were my favourite.  But I think the bennies are pretty good.  I forget who supplies the menu; it’s obviously not Stonewall’s kitchen doing the brunch.”

“No, I mean—” he stammered, but then it was Rowan’s turn to order, and he didn’t want to interrupt.  He numbly opened his menu.

“And for you, miss?” the server asked him not even thirty seconds later.

“Um.  The eggs benedict?” he answered, having spied the first item on the list and connected it with Rowan’s vague recommendation.  “With bacon.”  The last was muscle memory, really, but you couldn’t go wrong with bacon.

“I’ll have that out for you in a few minutes,” the server promised, collected the menus, and then the stage lights spun up.

Spears of light in every colour of the rainbow danced across the stage and the wall behind it.  A pop song started blaring through the room.  Another woman, in a costume just as colorful, curvy, and eye-gougingly sparkly, spun onto the stage and began lip-syncing to the lyrics.

The performer was, Sammy was pretty sure, trans.  The announcer, too, and almost certainly the ticket-taking hostess at the door.  His eye for spotting tells had sharpened in recent weeks, but the women also didn’t seem to be avoiding them.  Instead they seemed to call attention to each and every clocky tell they could by overdoing it: mammoth wigs, exagerrated makeup, generously padded underwear.  Their prancing was ludicrously swishy; their flirting—with literally everyone—full of farcically overblown mannerisms.

The Roth-Masters hooted and cheered along with the rest of the crowd.  When the performer came down off the stage and into the crowd, still prancing and lip-syncing, all three of them scrambled to grab a twenty and wave it at her.  When she came by, they stuffed the money into her fake cleavage and under her garter belts.  All three of them were clearly having the time of their lives.

Sammy profoundly didn’t get it.

The first song drew to a close and in the brief respite following, their food was brought to the table.  The eggs benedict were rather good, but before he could get even halfway into them, new music started blaring, the announcer crowed a new silly name into the microphone, and another dancer strutted her way up onto the stage, shaking her ass and winking at everyone she passed by.

He weathered the second performance, even picking up a twenty to wave at the dancer and slide into her garter belt, but it wasn’t pleasant.  At first he thought it was the too-loud music and his hangover, but as the performer broke out of her lip sync to catcall one of the customers eating brunch, he realized it was something else.

Sammy looked sidelong at Rowan, thinking that she must be feeling what he was feeling, but his cousin was grinning and cheering and banging on the table.  He looked from her to the dancer and back.  The difference was night and day.  Rowan was made up carefully, dressed immaculately, seamless and inarguably a young woman.  The dancer, by contrast, was all seams, all exagerration, playing up her man-in-a-dress schtick for laughs and tips.  It was grotesque.

When the music died down, Sammy tried to excuse himself to use the restroom, but Rowan invited herself along.

The bathrooms were small—no surprise there—but Sammy pushed his way directly into a stall.  Rowan hung by the sinks, checking her hair and lipstick.  “What do you think, Sammy?” she asked, all excitement.

He sat on the toilet, skirt bunched up around his hips, not knowing what to say.  “I shouldn’t be here.”

“Oh come on, Sammy, you can miss one class,” she chided, good-naturedly.  “It’s only, what, Physics?”

“It’s not that,” he told her through the partition, although now that he’d been reminded, he could worry about that, too.  “I just… I’m not really enjoying the show.  I don’t think it’s my thing.”

What he didn’t say was: I feel like each drag performer is mocking me, and worse, mocking you.  Prancing around on display, laughing at the seams in their presentation, just in general doing really shitty job at being trans.  It was as if they were declaring that this was the best any trans girl could hope for, that every effort to look like a girl was doomed to ludicrous failure.  The drag queens seemed to be inviting the whole world to laugh at them, and at Rowan, and at Sammy.

“It doesn’t have to be your thing,” his cousin assured him.  “It’s kind of a queer culture thing, but you don’t have to enjoy every single thing about queer culture, you know?  You’ll never see me wearing fucking rainbows.  Pick a damn colour and commit, already.”

That drew a chuckle out of Sammy, which brought back the ghost of his headache.  “I might need more mimosa,” he grumbled.  “Hey wait.  We just… drunk a bunch of mimosas in front of your dads.”

He could hear her shrug in her voice.  “We’re adults, the venue didn’t card us, it’s not the dads’ responsibility to police our behaviour.  Besides, mimosas are hardly even drinking.”  A moment later asked, “Are you actually peeing in there or just hiding from the drag show?”

He thumped his head back against the wall.  “Hiding.  Or at least just catching my breath.”

“You should have said, silly,” she laughed.  “You want some time alone?”

“No, I feel silly enough already,” he told her with a sigh, and stood up.  “How many more songs do you think there will be?”

The answer was four: another new performer, then the ticket-taker hostess in her debut performance, followed by the announcer taking a turn, and lastly a duet-trio-quartet blowout finale.  There was glitter in the last one, thrown by hand, which got absolutely everywhere.

Afterwards the performers lined up by the door so the audience could gush about the performances and take pictures.  Sammy’s family was the last group in the long line-up.  Some of the performers recognized the Roth-Masters from prior years, and his uncles insisted on taking pictures with everyone.  Sammy let himself be roped in, not wanting to dampen their annual ritual.  He could still feel his shoulders slumping a little, though.

The uncles were chatting up the ticket-taker, saying encouraging things about her number, leaving Sammy trapped behind them, standing next to Merri Mountains.  Feeling awkward, he raised a fist and said, “Trans pride solidarity.”

But Merri laughed it off.  “Oh honey, I’m not trans.”

Sammy scowled, checked that the rest of his family was still engrossed in conversation.  “You’re not?”

She—or maybe he?—shook her head, paired with a quiet smile.  “No honey, I’m a cis gay man.”  She splayed a hand across her very-obviously-fake-up-close cleavage.  “Merri Mountains is a performance.  It’s camp.  It’s all the things that we’re not supposed to do, according to the world of the straights, piled together into a disco dance number.  It’s raising a middle finger at expectations.  Which is half of what Pride is about, you know?”

“Yeah, but…” he protested, verbally staggering until he waved a hand at her whole get-up, and the rest of the performers, for good measure.  “It sure looks trans.”

“I mean, some of us are,” the drag queen allowed with a shrug.  “At least for a little while.  Clarice over there, in the red?”  She nodded down the line to one of the other performers.  “She performed for years before she realized she was a woman, and started transitioning a few months ago.  This will be her last performance.”

“She’s quitting?  Why?”

Merri laughed.  “Because it’s not drag, anymore.  Sure, she could maybe do a drag king routine, drag celebrities or something, or just shift over into burlesque, but… once she figured herself out, I think performing lost some of its lustre for her.”  She smiled.  “She’s so much happier, now, though.”

The uncles were saying what sounded like the beginnings of actual goodbyes.  “This was my first drag show,” he told Merri.  “And I… didn’t really get it.”  She only nodded.  “But maybe I’ll understand it better next time.”

“That’s the spirit!”  She clapped him on the shoulder like Andrei liked to.  He staggered, chuckled at the thought that Merri was betraying a little of her buried masculinity, and then caught her eye.  She gave him a look, and he realized: the gesture had been just as much a part of her performance as any shimmy to the beat or lilting flirt with an audience member.  She peaked one eyebrow: she saw that he saw, and she winked.  “See you then, honey.”

“I told you that you’d eventually need an evening gown,” Rowan grinned, unzipping the garment bag and then clapping her hands as tulle spilled out everywhere.  The two of them were in her bedroom, getting ready.

He stood behind her in a comparatively simple outfit: just a cami and a skirt, with some strappy sandals.  He was planning on wearing the sandals with the gown and had just worn them over to Rowan’s, which she chided him for, even if she couldn’t really explain why he should have needlessly switched shoes, too.

Rowan seemed intent on making this an event, even more than the rest of the Pride festivities she’d lined up for them.  Sammy was just going with the flow.

They’d found the evening gown—three weeks back, now—in a second-hand boutique that still had prices larger than anything Sammy had ever seen in Abby’s little clothing store back home.  The strapless bodice and skirt were a deep shimmery red, scarlet at the bustline but brightening to cardinal at the bottom hem, with coils of white tulle studded with little red sequins.  It seemed to Sammy to be a bit much, and by a bit, his brain meant a whole lot.

It also didn’t have pockets.

On the other hand, Sammy had found some pearlescent hair clips that would set off nicely.

Rowan insisted that they both do a full face.  She’d wheeled Gideon’s office chair into her bedroom and propped her full-length mirror sideways on her computer desk so they could work side-by-side.  Sammy sat down to humor her, but once they were underway he found himself enjoying the process, doing makeup alongside his cousin, each step sprinkled with light chit-chat, compliments, and pointers.

When they were both near done, Gideon rapped on the door and stuck his head in.  “Your dates are here.  So are Agatha and Zoey.”

“Well tell the girls to come up,” Rowan told her father as if that were obvious.  “Are you or Daddy going to do the shotgun talk?”  Here she waggled her arms, elbows out, to poorly imitate a masculine swagger while still seated.  “‘You’d better treat my daughter and niece proper if you know what’s good for you’ and all that?”

Gideon snorted.  “I’m more worried what the two of you will do to them, poor things.”  He smiled.  “Samantha, you look stunning, and once you’re in that dress?  You’re going to knock their socks off.”

Their faces were finished by the time Aggie and Zoey got to the room, and then there was another round of compliments.  The couple had gone with simple sheath dresses, Aggie in white and Zoey in black, with chunky necklaces in the opposite color.  They looked adorable, and plainly a couple, and not at all overdressed, which is what Sammy knew he was going to be momentarily.

Rowan and Zoey helped him step into his gown while Agatha righted the full-length mirror.  He zipped up his side, smoothed the lines over his hips, and turned to face his reflection.

“Holy fuck,” he breathed in wonder.

The full-length mirror showed a girl decked out to the nines, looking a little shocked but otherwise… good.  He looked good; that was as much as he would allow.  He’d been expecting the worst, and it wasn’t that, and he was just surprised, was all, that he didn’t look like a shimmery trainwreck.

The girls wouldn’t stop cooing over him, so he declared he was going downstairs.

“He’s a doctor,” Gideon was saying, voice wobbling on the brink of laughter.  “He knows how to dispose of bodies.”

“Which is good, because I don’t think we even own a shovel,” Henry rejoined with a guffaw, “Can’t bury you, so the only option, really, is to disarticulate all your joints and dissolve you in hydrocloric acid.”

“This is what passed for humour throughout my childhood,” Rowan commented drily, coming down the stairs behind Sammy.  “If you ever wondered what’s wrong with me.”

That was enough to announce their presence, and both Finley and Vikram stood up from where they were sitting.  Vikram was in a trim suit jacket and slacks, with a black tie over an electric blue shirt.  Finley wore a tuxedo jacket, ruffled shirt, and a black knee-length skirt, pleated like a school girl’s.  Fading smiles creased both of their faces; they’d been laughing along with the Roth-Masters’ jokes about their own murders and dismemberments.  As they took in Sammy and Rowan (and Aggie and Zoey behind them), the looks of merriment were replaced by admiration.

“You look amazing,” Vikram said, at the same time that Finley said, “Wow, Samantha, you look incredible.”

They accepted the compliments and then the corsages that their dates had brought with them.  As Finley slipped the collection of button red roses onto Sammy’s wrist, he spotted the boutonnière on their lapel, also composed of little red roses.  He touched it gently with his free hand and giggled, “We match.”

“That’s the whole point,” said Vikram, and turned Rowan gently to display her corsage of blue orchids, held close to his boutonnière of the same.  The flowers matched his blue shirt and Rowan’s dress, which was a deep sapphire blue on top, fading gracefully to white at her feet.  (Upstairs, she’d crowed: “I’m Elsa, bitch!” and made pew-pew noises while flinging her hands out at the walls.)

“Oh, I didn’t know,” Sammy admitted, colouring slightly.  “I’ve, uh.  Never done this before.”

Rowan had her eye on the clock on the wall.  “Okay, pictures!  The limo will be here in fifteen.”

Vikram laughed.  “You rented a limo?”

She scoffed in mock affront.  “It’s Pride Prom, Vikram, of course I rented a limo.  You’ve gotta do these things properly.”

Pride Prom was weird and fun and weird and frustrating and weird.  It was held at a hotel event center, in a mammoth box of a ballroom decorated with streamers and balloons.  The walls and floor would probably have been various shades of beige under the house lights, but pinwheeling rainbow floor lights splayed colour all over everything, instead.

The center of the room was dominated by a wide dance floor before a stage from which a DJ shouted at the crowd in between tracks.  Around the other three sides of the dance floor were tables and chairs; against the walls were circles and horseshoes of couches.

The seats were half-full when they arrived.  The attendees ranged from teenagers to hipsters to doughy middle-aged folks to white-haired boomers; most of them looked a little dazed.

They’d checked coats and bags and then found a little circle of couches around a coffee table festooned with crepe paper.  In the center of the table was a fishbowl filled with tea lights and glass beads, topped with a plastic groom-and-groom cake topper.  It sat at an angle, and throughout the night they’d try to right the poor gentlemen, but they never stayed straight for long.

Which was kind of appropriate, Sammy figured.

The event was dry, for which Rowan had accomodated by stocking the limo generously.  They had pregamed hard and arrived at the venue on the far side of tipsy.  But as their buzzes wore off, the energy seemed to curve the wrong way for an evening of partying.

Once they were situated, Rowan and Zoey dashed across the room to the refreshments table and came back with arms full of punch in clear plastic cups.  Once these were passed out, Rowan raised hers high.  “A toast,” she crowed, “to queers getting to party together, as is our right and our solemn duty.”

Everyone cheered merrily, at least at first.  With a chuckle, Vikram put out a hand and clarified: “As I am not a queer—sadly, I know; grown men have wept over it—I am happy to see you all get to celebrate in ways you might not have in high school.  And so I am here in solidarity with you.”  He raised his glass towards his date.  “As a favour to Rowan, to even out the numbers.”

The rest of their little party was quiet for just a moment too long, and then lurched into lifting their glasses, cheering gamefully, and sipping at their punch.

His date smiled sweetly.  “Vik, it doesn’t matter under what auspices you come tonight.  I’ll make sure you have a good time.”

For once in his life, Sammy caught the innuendo—and he was pretty sure Vikram had not.  In any case, for the rest of the evening it seemed like Vikram’s presence had an asterisk over it.  He was here as a favour.

But Sammy couldn’t pay too much attention to Rowan’s pursuit of Vikram and his apparent tone-deaf ignorance of what was happening.  He had his own awkwardness to deal with.

It was Sammy and Finley’s first time out as a couple with friends.  Nestling into the crook of Finley’s arm, which Sammy had only ever experienced as comfortable and familiar, took on a distinctly performative cast.  More than once he spotted one of the girls making moony eyes at him.  He felt put on display, at least until he solved that problem by closing his eyes.

“You two are such a cute couple,” Rowan gushed at him when all four of them decamped to the bathroom.

“She speaks the truth,” Zoey chimed in.  “The way they look at you?  Amazing.”

Agatha only shot him a smile, but even that felt a little patronizing.

The best defense, he figured, was a strong offense.  “Don’t think we’ve missed the two of you making eyes at each other,” he said, waving his fingers at Agatha and Zoey.  “I think you’ve mentally undressed each other a dozen times each.”

Agatha shrugged.  “It’s like a fun minigame.  At this point, I’m really good at it.”

They passed by the refreshments table on the way back, returning to the table laden with glasses of punch, plates of chips and dip, and a few cups filled with candy.  Finley laughed at their approach, and it didn’t take long to see why.  They and Vikram had had the same idea while the girls were in the bathroom, and had already provisioned their little coffee table.  Soon it was filled to overflowing, and they all tucked into the feast of junk food.  It was surprisingly comfortable, even if it did feel a bit like a high school party.

Which Sammy figured was also kind of appropriate: nothing said ‘high school’ like prom, after all.

Sammy sat down next to Finley and was about to burrow into them, then thought better of it.  He leaned back, tapping his collarbone invitingly, and Finley leaned into him with a contented sigh.  Like taking turns opening doors, he thought to himself.

“I’m so glad you guys came down into the city for the weekend,” Rowan was telling Aggie and Zoey.  She was cuddled up against Vikram, looking exceedingly content.

“I was all set to do our local Prides in Hartford and New Haven, compare and contrast, see whose was better, but this one”—and here she rolled her eyes over at Zoey—“insisted that nothing beats New York Pride.”

“She’s right,” Rowan said with a diffident shrug.

“Like you’ve ever done any other Pride in your life, bitch,” Agatha smirked.  “Anyway, it’s not like either of us actually have vacation days, but we can take a couple days off to come to the City.”

Sammy had to adjust how he was sitting to take into account the weight of his enbyfriend pressed up against him.  He forced a little giggle as he did so, jostling Finley but bending over to brush a kiss across their forehead while he had the opportunity.  He settled into seated position; Finley settled into him.  It still wasn’t quite right, but Sammy would figure it out.

“Did you fly or train?” asked Vikram.

“Train,” Agatha answered.  “It was actually kind of nice.”

He nodded and then made a face.  “I’m on a plane next week.”

“Me, too,” said Rowan, bobbing her head, but with a calculating look in her eye.  Not one that Vikram would be able to see, given his vantage.

Instead he scoffed.  “Yeah, my flight is fifteen hours long.”

“Mine’s eighteen,” she countered sourly.

He craned his neck to look at her.  “Where are you going, girl?  My parents are roping me into the annual pilgrimage to fucking New Delhi.”

“What?!” Rowan gasped, just a touch theatrically.  She planted her hand on his chest as she turned around to face him.  “We’re going to New Delhi.  What the fuck!  That’s such a weird coincidence.”

Sammy strongly suspected that it was not a coincidence at all.

Vikram, by contrast, did not appear to suspect anything.  “Holy shit, you’ll have to visit,” he insisted with a bright smile.  “Come save me from all my cousins.”

“I would love that,” she gushed, grinning from ear to ear.  “Tate’s doing some research stuff and Daddy’s got colleagues he wants to see, so I’ll be at loose ends a bunch—”

“I can show you the city,” he suggested.  “All the good food.  You can’t miss the food.  I bitch about the place, but it has some bright spots.”

“I love this plan,” his cousin enthused, and turned around to lean up against her date again.  She smiled like the cat who ate the canary.

Sammy looked from Rowan to Zoey, who caught his eye and rolled hers.

They danced, they took silly photos at the selfie booth, they kept making trips back to the refreshments table to refill their inconveniently small plastic cups.  But by ten o’clock, their pregaming had dissipated completely and everyone was distressingly sober.

“It feels strangely offputting to get less drunk as the night grows long,” Vikram observed.  “Remind me why there’s no alcohol at this thing?”

Zoey rolled her eyes.  “Vik, there are teenagers present.”

When he looked immediately at Sammy, Rowan laughed. “No.  Hun.  Real teenagers, like fucking fourteen-year-olds.  They’re not going to give vodka tonics to fourteen-year-olds.”

“Nobody wants to see that,” Agatha concurred with a solemn nod.

“And there are other things to do than drink,” Rowan pointed out, grabbing Vikram’s hand and pulling him to his feet.  “Come dance!”

With an arm under the small of Sammy’s back, Finley scooped him off the couch, onto his feet, and out onto the dance floor.  Sammy clutched at their shoulders, giggling. The music had been a truly unholy mish-mash of styles and eras as the DJ tried to cater to the vast breadth of ages among the attendees.  By now they were inured to it.  “Tainted Love” had just segued into “Pink Pony Club” without so much as a raised eyebrow.  They just danced.

An indeterminate number of songs later, the tempo had shifted downward and Sammy was curled up against Finley as they did little more than sway.  Who needed booze when you had exhaustion?  “This was a weird night,” he told them, stifling a yawn, “but I’m glad I got to spend it with you.”

“I’m glad, too,” Finley replied, their chest vibrating against his cheek, and one corner of Sammy’s brain noted that that’s what he was learning not to do when he spoke.  He giggled at the thought.  And then Finley curled a finger under his chin to lift his face so he was looking up at them.  “And I don’t think I’ve said it explicitly yet, but you look beautiful tonight.”

A slow smile spread over Sammy’s face.  “You gonna take my picture, now?”

Finley shook their head.  “No,” their voice was soft, tender; Sammy wasn’t sure how he could hear it over the music.  “I just wanted you to know.  You’re beautiful.”

Sammy couldn’t bring himself to deflect or dodge, so instead he pressed his cheek against Finley’s lapel again.  Buried his nose in ruffles.  He didn’t want to deflect or dodge.  He wanted, just for a moment, to believe what Finley was saying.  “Thank you,” he managed after a moment, unsure if his enbyfriend could even hear him.

The DJ announced the last song of the night, and they spent more of it kissing than dancing.  They were hardly the only couple on the dance floor so occupied.  Then they returned to their group’s corner, where Vikram and Rowan were waiting, tapping on their phones.  Aggie and Zoey fell into the couches a moment later, only to stand up again as the party emptied out.

The limo rental had only been for dropoff, so the six of them shuffled their way to the subway station along with at least a hundred other tired queers.  There most of them parted; Finn offered to escort Sammy all the way to his dorm room, but doubling back would cost them almost an hour, and Sammy was too exhausted, anyway, to take advantage of the close proximity of Finn and his bed.  He demurred, and Rowan promised to get her sleepy cousin home safe.  Vikram was taking a different train, anyway.

Finley kissed him once more on the platform, and then Sammy dozed on Rowan’s shoulder as the train rattled homewards.

On Thursday morning, he awoke to a text from Rowan: Rest up today for the big push!

So Sammy rested.  And went to class.  And caught up on reading.  But as he traced a simple, tight triangle between dorm, class room, and dining hall, never once leaving campus, it felt like resting.

He even got his voice exercises done, and went to bed at what felt like the decadent hour of ten p.m.

“Why is it called Bliss Days?” he asked.  The four of them—Rowan, Agatha, Zoey, and Sammy—had just cleared the front desk of the venue and were crossing a rather sedate dining room towards the stairs.  The thumping of bass along with shouts and cheers coming through the ceiling made encouraging promises about the party awaiting them.  “Nothing about that name says it’s an event for queer women.”

“They used to call it Femme Fatale,” explained Zoey.  “Which was a pretty clever name.  But, you know, not all women are femmes, I guess?”

“Or they didn’t want ‘fatal’ to be part of their event name,” observed Agatha.

“Regardless, we’re going to drink and dance and maybe-probably drool over all the eye candy on display,” Rowan declared, heading up the stairs.  “I dunno about you girls, but I kind of need this.”

The second floor of the club was a maelstrom of flashing lights, upbeat music, and dancing bodies, nearly all of them women.  No windows, here, not that natural light would have had any chance against the flashing, actinic glare that permeated the room.

Rowan’s hips started bouncing as she came up the final steps, and she reached backwards to grab Sammy and pull him into the fray.  The crowd parted for them easily, half of the dancers lost in their own groove and the other half plainly checking out the four new femmes who’d joined the party.  The dress code mirrored the crowd at Brooklyn Pride—rainbows and skin—just with, somehow, shorter skirts.

Not that Sammy had much room to criticize: the girls had picked him up at his dorm room and decreed that his first outfit just wasn’t slutty enough, and had made him change.  He’d protested that he was spoken for, that he didn’t have the least interest in getting picked up that night, but they insisted right back that it was the principle of the thing.

Zoey and Agatha had simply recycled their prom wear from Wednesday, the hypocrites.  “Have LBD, will travel,” Zoey had said with a shrug, and then they’d all tried to explain to Sammy what an LBD was, and he had to roll his eyes and insist that he already knew, he had a Little Black Dress in his closet, and why couldn’t he wear that?  But he’d been overruled.

“They’re living out of suitcases; you’ve got access to your full closet, so you can go way skimpier,” Rowan admonished him.  A woman of convictions, she herself was wearing a red triangle bikini top and daisy dukes so short the bottoms of the pockets poked out under the frayed bottom hems.  “Think of all the lesbians, Sammy.  They’re going to this event to see some skin; are you going to be the one to disappoint them?”

So here he was in the shortest, flippiest little skirt he owned, plus fishnets, and an irridescent top that he’d only ever considered as something that would be supplemented with other layers—significantly longer layers—but was tonight making its solo debut, and doing a poor job of covering his bra.

But as Sammy danced alongside Rowan, surrounded by skin and laughter, he found a certain sense of peace.  Sure, he was nearly naked, but he was dancing, too, and dancing was about bodies, and the joy of how they moved and how they looked while moving.  So maybe wearing something that showed a little more of his body made some sense.

It certainly made sense for the girls and the bodies around him, who were grinding and jiggling and swaying to the beat.  Rowan had been right: there was a lot of eye candy on display, set out to be drooled over.  But Sammy’s appreciation of individual parts—a shapely leg, a perfectly-rounded belly, the soft gradient of squished cleavage—faded away if he didn’t focus.  He found himself enjoying the whole picture, like one of those massive oil paintings in the Met, where the details added up to something greater than the parts.

And if Sammy felt like he was contributing, that he and his body were part of that beautiful picture, then maybe he could let go a little.  Just dance.  Just join in.  Just be one of the…

“Drinks!” Rowan shouted in his ear, and started tugging him towards the stairs.  Aggie and Zoey were leading the way, striking through the crowd so that he and Rowan could follow after.

The next floor was full of leafy trees and fairy lights, a greenhouse that took up the whole third floor, with a retractable roof presently open to the stars.  Tables and couches curled around the trees, all of them mobbed with women and femmes.  The bar—massive, rectangular, and polished until the wood shone—stood out from the sea of organic shapes and textures, bright backlit bottles beckoning with the promise of inebriation.

Rowan and Zoey bellied up to the bar to order their drinks while Agatha and Sammy scouted for seating.  He almost despaired at the slim pickings until a knot of women all stood up right in front of him and beelined for the stairs down to the dance floor.  He threw himself at the little circle of seats and then waved frantically for Agatha.

“Well done, Sammy!” crowed Rowan when they regrouped.  “I got doubles,” she explained, hands full of drinks, “because who knows how long it’ll take to get the next round.”

They settled in, with both Agatha and Zoey groaning happily as they got off their feet.  “We’ve been walking all over the City for two days straight,” Zoey sighed.  “I wish I had a pedometer, just to see how far we’ve gone.”

“Wait, was there Pride stuff that Rowan didn’t drag me into?” Sammy laughed.

“Not Pride events, just the quixotic farce that is looking for an affordable apartment in New York City,” Agatha groused.

“Good luck with that,” Rowan put in.

“I know I’ll probably be in the dorm with you,” Zoey sighed at her roommate.  “And Agatha can train in on weekends.  But it just… would have been nice to get a place together.”

“Insert U-Haul joke here,” smirked Rowan.

“We’ve been together six months next week,” Zoey retorted with faux hauteur.  “We do not qualify for U-Haul second-date punchlines, thank you very much.”

Sammy blinked; things didn’t add up in his brain.  Not the U-Haul lesbian thing; the other thing.  “Wait, why will you be training into the City?” he asked Agatha.

“Because I graduated?” she laughed in response.  “They don’t let you live in the dorms if you’re not a student.  And I’m taking a year off before med school, because… I really need a year off before med school.”

“Oh, I just… assumed you were all sophomores like Rowan,” he admitted, and shook his head as if to clear it of misconceptions.

“I’m a year ahead of Rowan,” explained Zoey, “and Aggie was a year ahead of me, along with Finley.”

“And Vik’s my year,” Rowan added, just a touch sourly.

Nobody responded immediately; finally Zoey just said, “Yeah.”

His cousin flopped her hands onto the plush arms of her chair, sloshing but not spilling her vodka tonic.  “Seriously, should I just go back to dating girls?” she asked.

“Yes,” Agatha answered without a second of hesitation.

Zoey was a little more diplomatic.  “Or maybe just… not fixate on the one boy who… doesn’t seem interested.”

“He’s interested,” Rowan maintained truculently, and slurped the last of her drink out from the ice.  “I’ve sat on his lap enough to know: there is—ahem—pointed interest, there.  He’s just… being difficult.”

“Honey, you’re hot,” her roommate tried to explain, “and I’m sure you… inspire a reaction in him, especially with the way you flirt, but there’s… other aspects to consider when dating.”

Rowan scowled into her empty glass and stood up.  “I’m getting another.  Anybody else?”

The other girls had barely put a dent in theirs; Sammy reluctantly asked for a second—his first wasn’t even half gone—just so his cousin wouldn’t feel awkward.  She stormed off, back to the bar.

“What is with her and Vikram?” he asked Zoey once Rowan was out of earshot.

“He told her no,” the girl replied, shrugged, and sank into her chair.  “Which only makes her want it more.  Just to show him.”

“If he wanted to be rid of her, all he’d need to do is take her on one medicore date,” Agatha sighed.  “Then she’d lose interest.”

Sammy looked back to where his cousin had gone, caught one glimpse of her shoulderblade, waiting by the bar, and turned back to the girls.  “So like… why doesn’t he?  I mean.”  He struggled to put together the question he actually wanted to ask.  “She’s told me that he said he can’t date a white girl, but also that he has dated white girls before.  And he likes her, right?  He’s all jazzed to see her in India.”

Zoey rolled her eyes.  “Don’t even get me started on that nonsense.”

Sammy nodded and waved his hands sideways, as if he could brush the largest democracy in the world back out of the conversation.  “Yeah, that’s… that’s a whole nother thing.  But.  He seems to like her company, he’s attracted to her… what other, uh, aspects is he considering that’s holding him back?”

“What do you think?” Agatha all but spat, and focused on her drink.

Zoey saw that he wasn’t jumping to the conclusion that she and her girlfriend found obvious, and she gave him a soft, almost apologetic smile.  “Cause she’s trans, honey.”

“Really?” he asked incredulously.  “Vikram?”

She shrugged.  “He’s a decent guy—as guys go—but for some guys, that’s just a non-starter.”

“You can bet he’s under pressure from his parents to produce grandchildren,” Agatha added sourly, “and that’s not gonna happen with Rowan.”

But he kissed me, Sammy thought but did not say.  Because so had Agatha and Zoey, that same night, and it had meant nothing.  And because if Vikram had kissed Sammy as a lark, but wouldn’t date Rowan because she was trans… the memory of that kiss curdled in Sammy’s mind.  That kiss, performed right in front of his cousin, had meant less than nothing.  It had been something cynical, something for show, something to push Rowan away.  To hurt her, just a little, and get her to back off.  He felt a little sick.

But then Rowan was back with drinks, and he polished off his first so that he could accept the next one, and the girls talked about something else for a while.  They abandoned their lucky seats to go downstairs and dance some more, and later when they came back up for more drinks, they had to sip while standing around and fending off propositions from hopeful single lesbians.  Then they went dancing some more, everything blurring together into a wash of lights and beats and bodies again.  They stumbled home in the early hours, when the City was as quiet as it ever got.

Rowan didn’t mention Vikram again for the rest of the night.

“Okay, so what is the difference between a March and a Parade?” asked Sammy as they plodded along Fifth Avenue.  The four of them had reconvened Saturday afternoon, first at a barbeque place to fuel up on tacos and beer, and then across the street in Bryant Park, for the start of the Dyke March.

Now they were walking down the middle of the street with a whole bunch of lesbians.  There were so many, in fact, that they stopped traffic; teams of volunteer marshalls linked arms at every cross street to hold back the cars so everybody else could pass by.  A lot of the marchers were waving signs or carrying banners, which bore slogans from the straightforward—“My Body My Choice”—to the arcane: “Even When Her Shackles Are Different Than Mine.”  Sammy wasn’t complaining, exactly, but being in a throng of lesbians had been more fun the night before, when there was dancing involved.

“A march advocates for change,” explained Zoey.  “It’s an expression of how things are not okay, that we are organized to take action, and those in power ought to take notice.”

“Whereas a parade,” put in Rowan, “is a reminder to ourselves and everybody else, that—”  She inflated her lungs and then shouted across the assembled heads: “WE OWN THESE STREETS!”

A moment later a dozen voices echoed back, “WE OWN THESE STREETS!”  Rowan repeated the phrase again, and this time even more voices took up the chant.

She kept it up long enough until it had a life of its own, and she didn’t need to cheerlead.  She turned to Sammy with a grin.  “New York isn’t New York without us.”

“Yeah, but…” Sammy protested weakly.  “This is a march, not a parade, so… chanting that we own the streets seems… contrary to your point?”

But Rowan shrugged off his confusion.  “There’s overlap.”

“The Parade has a city permit,” Agatha pointed out laconically.  “Dyke March does not.  This is, technically, an act of civil disobedience.  Walking in the Parade is participating in an event condoned by the government.”  She waggled her hand.  “Kind of a different vibe.”

Different vibe or no, it was a lot of walking: more than thirty blocks of slow steps.  The only entertainment was spotting clever new signs and occasionally shouting call-and-response chants.  Sammy was… less than enamoured of this particular event.  And perhaps part of that was just simple exhaustion on his part: it had been a long week.  Now he was walking two miles in the thick summer air, for obscure political reasons.

Thinking about politics prompted Sammy to ask Rowan, “Why aren’t your dads in the march?”

“Because it’s only open to dykes,” she answered easily enough.  “Self-identified, of course.”

Ah.  So this was another thing that Sammy probably shouldn’t be involved with that Rowan had just swept him into.

He looked around him, at all the dykes shouting and chanting and smiling at each other.  Everyone cared so much.  You could see it in their faces; you could hear it in their voices.

Thanks to Gideon’s reading list, Sammy had a tenuous grasp of activism—collective action, solidarity, exposing and addressing inequalities and oppression—but until now, his understanding had been entirely theoretical.  But looking up and down the thronged street, he was surprised to see all those parts in evidence right in front of him.

He could see how all these dykes had gathered, agreed that many things in the world had gone wrong, and so they stood up and made a scene.

Suddenly, it was amazing to witness.  There were so many people in this march, so many people who’d taken time out of their lives, who’d come out to flout the laws and stall the traffic and shout to the rooftops until they were heard.

He wished he could be a part of it.  But here he was, merely walking while they marched.  Stealing a little of that glory.

Because that’s all he was doing: pretending to be something he wasn’t so he could get into a good school.  Take what you can get, babe, except Gideon’s advice had been predicated on a marginalized identity that Sammy had no right to claim.  Selfish.

Selfish, and now witness to such community, such solidarity, such vision, that it shamed him to his core.

It was as if the circumstances which had wrapped him up in this ridiculous ruse had also brought him closer to all this, dangled him here where he could witness this marvelous, beautiful, powerful community.

A community to which he did not belong.

A community that he was mocking and denigrating just by being here.

A community to which he was an outsider at best and an imposter at worst.

The pace of the march wavered; squeals and shouts sounded from up ahead.  Sammy craned his neck to see what the commotion might be.  On the horizon were trees and a plume of water arcing up against the afternoon sky.

“You can’t call this the best part of the march,” Rowan appeared at his elbow to confide, “but this is the best part of the march.”  And without any further explanation, she peeled off her shirt.  No bra underneath.  His cousin ran giggling under the great stone arch that served as the Fifth Avenue entrance to Washington Square Park.

Sammy followed uncertainly, his eyes widening to saucers as the scene before him came into view.  Sunk into the center of the park’s plaza and surrounded by thick stone steps was a massive fountain.  Water shot six stories into the air before falling down into a broad, shallow pool.

The pool was full of dykes, in various states of undress, all sopping wet.

Zoey went streaking past him a moment later, and then Agatha came up to stand beside him.  She was still clothed, and holding Zoey’s shirt and shorts.  She gave Sammy and his astonishment a short smile.  “This is how the Dyke March always ends,” she told him.

“You’re not… joining?”

Agatha shook her head.  “I don’t get naked for everybody.  No judgement, it’s just not my style.”  She paused a beat.  “I’d be happy to hold your clothes for you, if you like.”

Sammy looked down into what was becoming a party in the fountain.  People of all shapes and sizes waded and splashed, laughing.  Almost all were topless; a smattering were completely nude.  A few couples kissed under the spray.

Sammy did a double take to confirm that, yes, one of the naked dykes was, well, trans and hadn’t had bottom surgery.  Her little girldick flopped around merrily as she danced in the fountain.

“You not going in?” asked Agatha, voice neutral.

Sammy shook his head.  He didn’t belong in there.  He might have marched with the dykes today, he might have partied and danced with them last night, but he shouldn’t have.  He didn’t understand then, but he understood now: he’d been trespassing.  He’d taken the wonderful world that they’d painstakingly created and defended, and he’d smeared himself all over it.  Not that he could say any of that to Aggie.  So instead he joked: “I think my tits would fall off.”

Agatha nodded.  “That would be awkward.”

So they stood and watched as a few hundred dykes splashed and laughed and danced in the water, insisting on being seen in all their glory.  Sammy’s heart thumped in his chest with longing.  Eventually he turned away, and told Aggie he’d catch the subway home on his own.

“Rowan, I’m not sure how much Pride I’ve got left in me,” he tried telling her the next day. They were coming up out of the subway station, meeting Aggie and Zoey and Finley for the parade.  “After yesterday?  And the night before?  You didn’t tell me Pride is an endurance trial.”

She turned and walked backwards so she could grin at him.  “The best endurance trial ever, though.  You’ve had fun, yeah?”  A flicker of uncertainty squeezed the corners of her eyes.

“I have,” he nodded, and only after answering actually thought about it.  He wasn’t lying, at least not in part.  There’d been a lot that he had enjoyed, even if there’d been some rocky bits, too.  At least the parade today was actually for queers like him, and he wouldn’t end up frustrated at himself for infiltrating events he had no business at.

He’d worn a rainbow tie-dye crop top that he’d picked up at Brooklyn Pride, because the rainbow thing was for all queers, and he qualified for that.  He’d also managed to find yellow, pink, and blue bangles for his wrists, so he had a little pan bling, too.  He was wearing entirely too many different colours (remembering Rowan’s bathroom admonishment about picking a colour and sticking with it had almost prompted him to ditch the whole outfit), but he was resolved not to care.  He was here to have fun and be with his people.

“So where are we sitting?” he asked Rowan’s back.  In Brooklyn, she’d insisted they go claim good seats more than an hour before the parade even started.

“Oh, we’re not sitting,” she laughed back at him.  She grabbed his hand and pulled him up the street.  Fifth Avenue was closed, this time with police barricades, but each street leading east and west was crowded with masses of people, trucks covered in glittery tinsel, and actual parade floats.  It was to the one of the floats that she directed him.  “We’re riding in style!”

The float was essentially a very flamboyant flatbed trailer: all rainbow glitter shimmering in the morning light.  A railing snaked around the outside edge, defining a little walkway around the float’s centerpiece: a massive papier mâché recreation of The Thinker.  The real sculpture sat outside Philosophy Hall back on campus; this one had been embellished with a thought bubble above his head.  It read: “I Think, Therefore Gay.”

Columbia’s name and logo were emblazoned across the sides of the trailer, along with the names and logos of CQA and GendeRev.  Rowan pulled Sammy over to the short ladder at the back corner of the flatbed, all but hidden under the reflective tassles of tinsel.  “I’m on the float?” he asked needlessly, even as he climbed aboard.  “Is that even allowed?”

Rowan pulled herself up after him and shrugged.  “You’re a Columbia student, so sure, why not?”

“Yeah, but not… really.”

“You take classes at Columbia, that makes you a Columbia student,” she told him, rolling her eyes.  “And besides, it’s stupid hard getting volunteers to ride this thing outside of the school year.”

“They even let me on, and I don’t even go there anymore,” said Finley, coming around the walkway from behind The Gay Thinker.  Smiling wide, they slid their arms around Sammy’s waist; he leaned in eagerly for a good morning kiss.

“You work there,” Rowan pointed out with good-natured exasperation.  “This is as much about Columbia as a queer-friendly workplace as about Columbia as a queer-friendly school.”

Finley had settled their arm onto Sammy’s far hip.  They snorted.  “Queer friendly because we drag them there, kicking and screaming every time.”

“Exactly.”  Rowan returned with a large cardboard box, and shoved it into Finley’s belly, under his free hand.  “And now we celebrate our victories on a sparkly parade float in front of millions of people.”

Sammy reached into the box.  Inside sloshed little rainbow foil squares, each one bearing the school’s logo.  He pulled one out and squinted at it.  “We’re celebrating with condoms?”

“Damn straight,” Rowan nodded.  “Safer sex for everybody!”  She bustled away to talk to some of the other volunteers, having an earnest conversation about something-or-other and directing them all to space out the little cardboard boxes all around the base of the central statue.  Rainbow condoms within reach no matter where you were on the float.

“We’re going to throw these out to the people watching the parade,” Finley tried to explain to Sammy.

“Oh, I assumed as much,” he nodded.  “Some floats did that at Brooklyn Pride last weekend.  I thought about making a little collection out of the ones I caught.”

Finley passed him one with a grin.  “Well here, add to your collection.”

Not having pockets, Sammy took the foil packet and slipped it into his bra.

“Oh my god, could you two be any more disgustingly adorable?” asked Zoey as she pulled herself up the ladder behind them.  When Sammy detached from Finley self-consciously, she waved her hands.  “No no, you were doing a good job.  Be disgustingly, publicly adorable.  It’s Pride!”

Sammy chuckled at that and looked sidelong at his enbyfriend.  They were wearing the sparkly green dress they’d worn at the club when Sammy had first met them, and makeup even bolder than the look they’d been sporting that night.  It was probably their most gender-bendy outfit, and also had the benefit of being skimpy and therefore cool for the hot summer day.  Standing beside Sammy, who was decked out in rainbows and all his obvious transness, they were very clearly a queer couple.

And now they’d be on a float in front of—Rowan had said—millions of people.  Held up as… what, exemplars of queer life on Columbia’s campus?  So many people, so many pairs of eyes, all of them seeing him… like this?  Was he really comfortable with that?

Sammy was surprised to realize he was.

It was Pride, after all.  The streets were lined with queers and allies, and they’d all be smiling and waving and cheering.  He had nothing to worry about.  It was a big, queer love fest, and they were all there to cheer each other on.

Agatha had climbed aboard after Zoey and was now poking at one of the cardboard boxes.  “Ah, the good ol’ rainbow condoms, eh?  Good to see we’re continuing our tradition of erasing cis lesbians dating cis lesbians.”

Rowan came around the corner of the float with another box, this one labelled: Open In Case of Agatha Bitching.  She thrust it into her friend’s hands and then patted her cheek.

Agatha pried open the box.  “Ooo, rainbow dental dams!”

They waited for nearly an hour before it was their float’s turn to rumble to life and creep onto the parade route.  And then they spent the better part of three hours smiling and waving and throwing condoms and dental dams into the crowd.

There was a sound system buried underneath The Gay Thinker, so they blasted queer music as they went, singing along when they knew the words, shaking their hips when they didn’t.  Sometimes the crowd joined in, which seemed a little like magic.

And sure, it got tiring, and towards the end Sammy’s smile and wave were both getting a little strained, but how could he stop?  These were his people, who were happy to see him, and he was happy to see them.  There were families and little kids, and he wanted to show them, beam into their little brains, that it was okay to be who you were, that being queer was totally normal.  Teenagers, too, with fierce grins and who may or may not be here with their parents or their knowledge, taking a chance to see what was possible in this big wide world.  So he waved, and smiled, and threw rainbowed prophylactics until the boxes were empty.

The float pulled past the end of the parade route and onto a side street, rumbling to a stop next to the curb.  They disembarked sloppily, bending and flexing their legs after having stood and braced on a moving float for hours on end.

Rowan’s fellow organizers had to push her off the float, reminding her that she’d signed up for setup, not teardown, and she was done for the day.  She turned to her friends with a sheepish smile.  “Something something avoid burnout, you stupid bitch,” she paraphrased, and then clapped her hands.  “And the next step of that is beer, right?”

PrideFest was only a few blocks away, the same kind of square-canopies-lining-the-street sort of affair as Brooklyn Pride had been, only bigger and louder.  A beer garden had been set up in an adjacent park; after filing past the bored-looking attendant checking IDs, they bought overpriced beer and settled into a spot of grassy shade.

Rowan pointed at Sammy around her tall plastic cup.  “See what I meant about last weekend being baby Pride?”

“Yeah, this is huge,” he agreed, and leaned sideways, up against Finley’s shoulder.  “Seems too big to see it all.”

“Oh, absolutely,” his enbyfriend laughed.  “Especially after the parade.”

But Rowan was intent on at least giving it a good try.  They roved up and down the streets, poking their heads into every stall they passed, picking up pamphlets for weird community organizations, colourful souvenier condoms for Sammy’s new collection, even fridge magnets from the City explaining how to properly recycle your motor oil (why did they even have a booth?).  Aggie and Zoey bailed after they completed the first street, citing their tired feet.  Rowan, Sammy, and Finley pressed on.  It felt like half the stalls they visited they’d already seen at Brooklyn Pride, or maybe they were all just blurring together.

“Oh my god!” shouted Rowan, and went squealing towards the next stall, a double-wide pavillion filled to bursting with sequins and technicolour wigs and sex toys.  The Transformations Boutique had made an appearance at Pride, and staffing the booth was not just Gloria but also Lucille herself, in the flesh.  “The Riviera’s too hot this time of year,” she confided to Rowan after introductions had been made.  “And besides, I couldn’t miss Pride.”

Sammy’s cousin dove into chatting with Lucille, catching up what sounded like years of backlogged life stories.  He chimed in a few times, but it quickly became clear that the conversation was between the two ladies, with Finley listening in.

Finally he took a step back, made sure nobody had noticed his quiet withdrawl, and stalked across the booth to the register counter and Gloria.  Along the way he scooped a cardboard box off the display table and quietly set it down next to the register.  “Can I get this, please?” he asked the tattooed clerk.  “In a, um, in a bag?”

The sales girl smirked, first bagging the box before ringing it up.  “Nothing to be ashamed of, Samantha.”

“Not ashamed,” he told her, and managed a smile that was equal parts genuine and embarrassed.  “It’s just a surprise.”

Gloria’s eyes darted from Sammy to Finley, across the stall.  “They’re cute.  Hope you two have fun.”

He handed over money; she gave him his change and a receipt.  “Not returnable if it’s opened, obviously,” she advised him.

“Jeez, I hope not,” he laughed, and then turned around to walk right into Rowan, done chatting with Lucille.

She made a show of trying to look down into his bag.  “Whatcha got there, Sammy?”

“You don’t want to know what this is,” he told her, and couldn’t help giggling.

She lifted one eyebrow.

“It’s just more rainbow shit,” he admitted, or half-admitted.  It was, indeed, rainbow-coloured.  She slitted her eyes theatrically and then turned away.

The bag burned in his hand, alternately weighty or as light as air.  He couldn’t believe that he’d bought the thing, and he was also so immensely relieved that he had.  He simply didn’t have time to go across town to the actual Transformations Boutique, and he didn’t know the first thing about ordering this sort of thing online.  He tried not to think about it, but his attention kept wandering back to the bag and its contents.

It was only when he volunteered to stand in line for lemonade while both Finley and Rowan ran off to the restroom that he could peek again at his purchase.  He had to be careful, though, lest the people ahead and behind him in line saw what he had.  Not that they were paying much attention; ahead, a gaggle of teens were laughing with their friends, and behind him two bare-chested men were passing the time making out.

Sammy tipped the bag so he could peer down at the box inside.  Yep.  He’d actually bought it.  The top edge was labelled Training Dildo with Flared Base.  The name, and the product itself, were indeed rainbow coloured.

It was the rainbow part that caught up with him, and not the thing-to-stick-in-your-butt part.

Knowing that he’d bought yet another rainbow pride thing and still hadn’t picked up some proper trans bling seemed to incense Rowan.  She started pointing out every iteration of baby blue and pink (sometimes white got in there, but not often) that she spotted, waggling her eyebrows in an unintentional caricature of a used car salesman.

Trans pride hoodie.

Trans pride incense holder.

Trans pride skirt.

“Programmer socks” with bands of the three colours all up and down their length, without any explanation what they had to do with programmers.

A trans pride flag made out of coloured glass to hang in his window.

A trans pride flag sticker to go on his laptop.

By the time Rowan held up the seventh trans pride coloured item for Sammy’s consideration—this time it was a pink-blue-and-white knit beanie with a cartoon animal patch on the front—her desperation was starting to show.

“Don’t you think I’m a little old for Pokémon?” he tried to laugh it off.

“Sylveon is eternal,” she insisted, and then looked down at the hat with a slight smile.  “Honestly, I might… nah.”  And then it went back on the hat rack, but the conversation topic itself was not so easily discarded.  She followed him out of the booth.  “Really, Sammy, I don’t get it.  Do you just not like the baby colours?”

“It’s not that,” he hedged.  Finley was in the next booth, talking animatedly with the vendor about windchimes.  Maybe he could slide into that conversation to get out of this one.

“It’s because you’re embarrassed,” his cousin said, half-accusingly, half-despondent, and stopped dead in the middle of the flow of people.  “You don’t want to wear the colours, you don’t want to… advertise that you’re trans.”

He turned around, already shaking his head.  “No, it’s not that at all.”

“It’s not something to be ashamed of, Sammy,” she told him, far more earnestly and desperately than he was comfortable with her acting.  “Even if some people don’t understand.  Can’t understand.  It’s wonderful and amazing and… and it’s Pride, Sammy.  Samantha.  This week of all weeks, we get to be proud of who we are.”  Fuck, did she have tears in her eyes?

He wrapped her up in a hug.  “Rowan, I am proud, I am so proud,” he said, his lips to her ear.  “You have no idea.  This week has been… it’s been magical.”  He pulled back so he could look her in the face.  A few tears had fallen down her cheeks during the hug.  “My first Pride, Ro, and it’s been amazing.  And you made it amazing.”

“Really?”

He nodded his head so hard it felt like it might fall off.  “Really.  Really-really.”  He hazarded a weak smile and considered just going back and buying the damn Sylveon beanie.

As if he wasn’t wearing enough pride bling already.

Maybe that was an angle that could work.  He nodded Rowan’s attention down to his rainbow crop top, gestured with his pan pride bangles.  “But Ro, it’s my first Pride,” he told her.  “I’ve never been with so many of my people before.  Our people.  It’s amazing, and it’s a lot, and… I just want to kind of savour it?  Let me just celebrate being queer this year, okay?  Next Pride I can focus on being trans.”  He immediately felt a little shitty about the disingenuity—next Pride he’d be detransitioned, and he was pretty sure there wasn’t a detransition pride flag—but pushed the thought away.

She considered him for a long moment and then heaved a sigh.  “I mean, I guess, even if it means you’re wearing fucking rainbows.”  She giggled, then wrapped her arms around him.  “I’m glad you’re having a good Pride, Sammy.”

And at least for a little while, Sammy thought he’d fixed things.

Five hours later, Rowan was slumped across the table and also melting onto Sammy, cheek pressed against the tabletop as she explained to him, slurring: “It’s no use, Sammy, it’s stupid, I’m stupid, none of this is gonna work but also I can’t stop.  I’ve never been able to stop, Sammy, not with anything, and I’m always this runaway train car which is also on fire.  You know?  You know.”

Sammy did know, or at least he knew that his cousin had started drinking at PrideFest and then indeed had not seemed able to stop.  Finley had said goodnight and headed home before she’d got sloppy.  Now it was well past midnight and the two of them were in their third club of the night.  Rowan had just drained her last cocktail before deciding to take a burbling nap on the table.  “Maybe we should go home?” he suggested.

She glared at him as if he had suggested admitting defeat, inflated her lungs, and pushed herself up to sitting straight.  “No.  No, I just need to go to the bathroom.”

“That’s not going to—”

Rowan flailed her hand at him.  “Just help me to the bathroom, dammit.”

If Rowan never could stop, Sammy never could tell her no.  So he pulled her up to standing and then braced his shoulder under her armpit.  He was not particularly steady nor sober, himself.  A moment later he remembered to turn around and collect their purses and bags of pride bling, and then they lurched off to the bathrooms.

Pressed up against his cousin, Sammy could feel her diaphrahm lurch, and worried that she’d puke before they even got there.  She held it down valiantly all the way to the door to the ladies’, which they kicked open only to find a five-person line waiting for a stall.

The woman at the head of the line took one look at them and beckoned.  “Oh wow, sweetie, come with me.  I’ve got you.”  And she lifted Rowan off of Sammy’s shoulder and conducted her directly into the next open stall.  A moment later the sound of Rowan retching echoed through the room.

Sammy looked worriedly back at the rest of the line, but nobody seemed upset about Rowan skipping to the front.  If anything, they looked concerned.  He supposed waiting another minute or two was better than somebody puking in the middle of the floor in here.  He crossed the room to park his butt against the baby changing station.  It was nice and stable, and didn’t require him to do difficult things like stand without drifting to the side.

“That your friend?” asked a plump redheaded girl at the adjacent sink.  Her eyes went to the not-quite-closed stall door and back to Sammy, her pupils moving in the laconic slide of the thoroughly inebriated.

He nodded, slowly and carefully.  “My cousin.”

“Is she alright?”

He shook his head, also slowly and carefully.  “I don’t think so.”

The redhead reached over to pat his elbow.  “It’s okay, we’ll fix her up.”

A few minutes later, Rowan staggered back out of the stall and to the sink, looking disconsolably at her reflection.  “I’m so ugly,” she pouted.

Sammy’s stomach lurched in surprise and sudden fear.  Rowan calling herself ugly?  What was happening?  The very foundations of his world were trembling.

The redhead shushed her, digging into her purse.  “Oh hush, your mascara’s running, that’s all.”  She produced a little crinkly packet of makeup wipes, pulled out the last one, and went to work on Rowan’s cheeks.

“That’s why nothing works, because I’m hideous, look at me.” Rowan told the room, gesturing at her reflection.  “Why would he even want this?”

“If he doesn’t, he’s blind or stupid,” answered the woman who had helped Rowan into her stall.  She crossed the room to share a sink with another woman, quickly washing her hands and fluffing her curly brown hair.  “Which: par for the course.  You should try playing for the other team sometime.”

“Girls are just fucked up in different ways,” Rowan slurred, watching her reflection lose its raccoon face.

“True that,” agreed the girl cleaning her up.  “You got a lipstick, honey?  Cause this is smeared real good and it’d be best if we just started over.”

“Oh, that’s in… here,” Sammy muttered, digging into Rowan’s purse.  He found the blocky lipstick inside and passed it over.

The brunette leaned towards the mirror to make eye contact with Rowan.  “If he doesn’t appreciate all this,” she said, gesturing up and down Rowan’s reflection, “that’s a him problem, honey, not a you problem.”  She jabbed her pointer finger at Rowan though the mirror.  “You’re gorgeous.”

Rowan’s shoulders slumped.  “No I’m not.”

“Do you know how hard I would be hitting on you right now if you weren’t completely wasted?” the woman laughed, sloppily, and Sammy realized that she was just as drunk as everyone else here, just better at hiding it.  “I’d scoop you up and take you home under my elbow.”

“But he won’t,” Rowan insisted, sniffling.  “No matter how much he wants to. I know he wants to.”

“That doesn’t mean he knows how much he wants to.”  The redhead had shifted to sit on the counter, facing Rowan, as she deftly worked the twisted-up end of the wipe around the girl’s eyes.  Dribbles of mascara and stray smudges of eyeliner were carefully erased, leaving behind a surprisingly intact wing.  “Always remember: boys are dense and slow.  It takes them forever to see the pretty girl standing right in front of them.”  She leaned left so Rowan was facing herself in the mirror.

Rowan’s lip wobbled as she took in her amended reflection, like she was fighting to actually look at herself, actually see what she looked like, and not what her brain told her she looked like.  Finally, she said, “I am pretty cute, huh?”

“Yes you are,” smiled the redhead, and held her arms out, weaving slightly on top of the counter.  “Do you hug?”

Rowan collapsed forward into the girl.  “I love hugs.  Specially with pretty girls,” she sighed, squeezing.  The redhead squeezed back, and the two of them just kind of tipped back and forth for a little while—long enough that Sammy looked away.

The brunette was frowning at her own reflection.  “I should have brought clips,” she sighed.  “I’m gonna chop this all back tomorrow, it’s ridiculous.”

“I have clips,” Sammy heard himself say, and pulled out of his purse a trio of purple ones, clipped onto each other in a little bundle.  He held them forward.

“You sure?” the brunette asked with a trace of doubt.

He shrugged.  “They came in a pack of other colours I actually wanted.  These are just my emergency backup clips.  Take em.”

She did, and slid them into her hair, squinting at her reflection.  “I dunno if these are big enough for all this,” she said doubtfully.

“No, you’ve just got to—” Sammy started, and then pushed himself forward, reaching.  “May I?”

The brunette nodded, cocking her head towards Sammy.  He made quick work of pinning back her hair into something that looked more like a style and less like a tangled mess.  She looked back into the mirror, eyes popping wide.  “Oh wow, that’s amazing.  Those little clips can hold, like, a lot.”

“I wear them most every day,” he explained.  “I’ve learned some tricks.”  He smiled into the mirror at her; she smiled back.

“Oh gosh, you are not too fat,” Rowan was half-whispering at the redheaded girl.  “You are hot as hell, girl.  Seriously.  You should go for it.”

His cousin stepped back from the hug that had apparently gone on the whole time he’d been fixing the other woman’s hair.  She dropped a hand on Sammy’s shoulder and gave him a bleary smile.  “You need anything, Samantha?  Touch up?  Relationship advice?  Hair care?”  His cousin’s spine was straight again, her face immaculate and poised.  She’d been completely put back together.

“Um.  I’m good,” he answered, and giggled.  He looked around the cramped little bathroom.  At the other end of the line of sinks, two tipsy girls were fixing each other’s eyeliner and trading fierce compliments.  Over by the door, three people waiting for stalls were engaged in a fervent if slightly slurred conversation about how one of them—it wasn’t clear who—should dump their bigotted boyfriend.  He looked back to Rowan.  “But if I ever need any of that, I know where to get it.”

“Thank the goddess for drunk girls in the club bathroom,” Rowan crowed.  With a final wave to the brunette and redhead, Rowan hooked her elbow into Sammy’s and guided them toward the door.  Just at the threshold, though, she spun them both around to look back.

The redhead was still seated on the counter, but she’d drawn the brunette over to stand before her.  Her head tilted back, her eyes flashed, and her full lips curved into a victorious smile; the brunette leaned forward and they kissed.

“Oh wow,” Sammy cooed.  “Good for them.”

Rowan sighed contentedly, and whirled the two of them around again.  As the bathroom door closed behind them, she giggled.  “God, I love being a girl.”

“Me, too,” Sammy giggled, stumbling merrily along the dimly-lit hall.

It wasn’t until they were on the subway home that Sammy’s sluggish and still half-drunk brain caught up.  While Rowan rested her head against his shoulder and talked about nothing whatsoever, Sammy grew quiet.  His heart started hammering in his chest.  His vision blurred, and it wasn’t the alcohol.

He’d agreed with Rowan without thinking, but also without lying and without a trace of deception.  He’d just blurted it out, in drunken honesty.

Sammy loved being a girl.

Fuck.

miriamrobern

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Finley was waiting outside the building when Sammy arrived for Biology.  They pushed themself off the wall to amble over to him.  Sammy couldn’t help but smile, and lifted his chin just slightly, hoping for a kiss.

But Finley looked left and right awkwardly.  “Hey.  So.  I mean.  Good morning.”

A tendril of dread curled around Sammy’s heart.  “Uh.  Good morning,” he managed.

“Listen, I’m… pretty sure that it’s perfectly ethical for me to date you,” they said, voice kept low enough not to carry and with the measured cadence of rehearsed wording.  “But I’m not sure that the professor would see it that way.”

Sammy looked from Finley to the door into the building, as if the professor in question would be standing there, glowering in disappointment at them both.  But it was just a flow of students heading into the building for morning classes.  He said something intelligent, like “Oh, okay.”

“You all right?” they asked, tipping their chin down to scrutinize his face.

He nodded, smiled, lied.  “Yeah, I’m fine.”

Finley gestured at their own eyes.  “It just looked like you got kind of teary all the sudden.”

“Wind, I guess?” he shrugged.  He did not ask, “Are you breaking up with me?”  Because they weren’t even together, right?  They’d been on one date.

“The university code of ethics for TAs is really strident about dating students,” Finley was saying, “but that was negotiated with the TA Union, and I’m not allowed to join the TA Union for the summer program, so I’m not sure if their code of ethics even applies to me.”

“Yeah, totally,” Sammy said, bobbing his head.

“Anyway,” Finley sighed, and slipped their hands into the back pockets of their jeans.  “We just have to keep things quiet, okay?”

“Yeah, I— I won’t tell anybody about last Friday,” Sammy promised, and forced himself to smirk.  “It was just an apology dinner anyway, right?”  That’s it, he thought to himself: deny everything, pretend it meant nothing, because then it won’t hurt to lose it.  It wasn’t a strategy that had ever worked well for him, but one of these days, it might.

“I seem to remember you wanting it to be a date,” they smirked back.

Sammy’s smile grew wan as he answered automatically.  “You asked me on a date,” he corrected, keeping his voice quiet.  But his heart was thudding and he knew he had to cut this whole thing loose from his life.  He heard himself saying,  “We can just call it a misunderstanding.”

Finley stepped a little closer.  “Well this Friday is definitely a date, right?” they asked, elbows cocked behind them, hands kept rigidly in their pockets.

Sammy’s brain ground to a halt.  He blinked.  His heart lurched against the inside of his ribcage.  “I thought… I thought you just said you couldn’t—”

“I’m just not sure about what is and isn’t allowed,” Finley said with an elaborate roll of their shoulders, approximating a shrug.  “So we’ll need to keep things quiet.  No flirting in class, or right outside of class.  That sort of thing.”  They waggled their elbows behind their back.  “And I’ll keep my hands safely in my pockets, to resist temptation.”

Sammy’s lips refused to put words together for a full thirty seconds.  Finally he managed, “…but keep dating.”

Finley bobbed their head, grinning.  “Secret dating.  Kinda sexy, yeah?”

Relief flooded through Sammy and he could feel his cheeks burning red.  “Oh, yeah.  That’s um.  That’s totally cool.  Secret dating.”

Finley threw him a wink and hooked a thumb behind themself.  “Okay.  Well I’ve got to get in there, I promised the class I wouldn’t be late again.”

“Yeah, see you in there,” Sammy heard himself say.  “But I won’t, you know, flirt across the classroom or whatever.”  But Finley was already bounding to the door and didn’t hear a word.

He’d shuffled and reshuffled his schedule, compacting a few blocks of reading and streamlining his essay-writing, to free up some time.  He’d managed to open up Tuesday evening, from seven to eight.  But he was still reading, sitting in front of his laptop, while the video chat service told him to wait to be admitted to the meeting.  He needed every scrap of time he could get.

He was still dressed up, not that he really stripped off his daily costume until it was time for bed most nights.  But when he’d got back from the dining commons, he’d touched up his make up and gave himself a once-over in the mirror.  Just a cami-and-cardi set, striped white and mint green, with matching hair clips to bring it all together.  It was basically casualwear.  Especially since his black skirt with the lace edging was going to be out of frame, anyway.  But he wanted to look at least presentable for Rowan’s friend.

Rowan’s friend, who needed work and refused to accept charity, who helped Rowan back when she needed it, and now Sammy could help her.  He’d been hoovering up privileges and opportunities—on Uncle Gideon’s advice to “take what you can get, babe,”—and if he could help somebody by spending an hour a week pretending to take voice lessons, well then, he was all for it.  It was a dumb way to give back, he’d told himself at lunch, but it was what was available to him.

The video conference lurched into activity with a tin-can bwong and the video pane lighting up with a smiling woman’s face.  Somewhere in her mid-thirties, Black, and wearing makeup that had probably been striking when she’d put it on earlier that day.  She smiled out of Sammy’s laptop.  “Samantha, right?”

“That’s me,” Sammy nodded, suddenly more self-conscious of his voice than he’d ever been in his life.  He put the biology textbook aside with shaky hands.

“And I’m Vanessa,” she smiled welcomingly.  She glanced down and shuffling paper came over the audio.  Checking her notes.  “Oh, you’re Rowan’s cousin, right?  How’s she doing?”

“Kicking ass and taking names,” Sammy said with a weird laugh, and then wondered why he’d said that.  Why was he so nervous?  But he decided to cover whatever nervousness he had by adding,  “At full volume, of course.”

Vanessa laughed along as if any of that had made sense.  “Yeah, she’s become quite outgoing.  It’s been so good to see her coming into herself on social media, but you should have seen her back when I was coaching her.  Timid little thing, afraid of her own shadow.”

Wait, what?  Sammy shook his head in disbelief.  “I uh, only met her a few months ago,” he explained after a stunned moment.  “I can’t even imagine her as ‘timid.’”

The voice coach cackled.  “She was, she was.  Which only goes to show how dangerous voice training is: it’ll unlock things that nobody thought was inside you.”  And at this she winked at him, as if he was in on the joke.

But Sammy’s heart thudded.  This was supposed to be learning some parlour tricks so he could make his voice sound girly when he needed it to.  But now this was going to unlock things?

Vanessa was settling into her office chair and smiling.  She’d just asked a question.  What had she said?

“Sorry, you broke up,” he lied.  “What was that?”

She smiled again, with the practiced confidence that knew exactly how bright and welcoming that smile was.  “I asked you what you’d like to get out of voice training with me.”

“Oh, uh…” he stammered.  “I just want to… sound like a girl?”

Vanessa gave him a look through the video chat.  “Okay so first, honey, you already sound like a girl, because you are a girl, yeah?”  She speared him with eye contact until he nodded mutely.  “But leaving that aside.  There’s lots of ways to sound like a girl.  There’s lots of girls to sound like.  Have you given any thought to your options?”

Sammy tried not to squirm in his desk chair.  “Um.  Can you… I’m not sure what the options are?”

“Well,” she said with an indulgent smile.  “You can go perky,” she said like a helium-infused cheerleader, and then switched to “…or smokey and sultry.  Or more… girl next door.”  That she delivered in a voice Sammy was sure he’d heard in a thousand teen drama shows.  “There is,” she went on, shifting her voice up and down and sideways to suit, “clipped, confident businesswoman or friendly midwestern housewife or hard-talking urbanite from the streets or bubbly ditz, tee hee.”

Sammy boggled as Vanessa’s voice leapt and danced and changed, over and over again.  But beneath his amazement was a growing disquiet.  This was the breast forms all over again.  Getting handed the proper way to be a girl was one thing; picking out the kind of girl he wanted to be was… daunting.  Probably impossible.  Because he didn’t want any of this, any which way, right?

Except.

“Sometimes people give me… funny looks?” he heard himself say.  “When I talk, I mean.”

Vanessa bobbed her head, her face a picture of sympathy.  “Yeah.  People can be shit, huh?”

“Yeah.  And I uh.  I’m not out, back home?  And in a few weeks I go back home for about a month, and I don’t want to…” he trailed off, unable to articulate the nightmare scenario blossoming in his head.  Him slouching off the bus in hoodie and sweatpants, no tits and no bra even, greeting his parents in a bright, lilting falsetto that he couldn’t stop.

The voice coach saved him from spiralling.  “Nothing we do is permanent,” she promised.  “And you can retain your masculine voice as long as you like.  Switch back and forth as you need.”

He nodded slowly, slightly mollified.  A thought occured to him, and he looked up at the screen.  Rowan had said Vanessa was trans, didn’t she?  Which meant—  “Does that mean that you can…?”

The woman’s lips twisted slightly.  “You can lose your masculine voice,” she admitted, “if you don’t ever use it.  But that takes months.  And that is what I did, years ago now, before I knew I wanted to do this.  So I had to go searching for my old masc voice, or something close to it, and… I’m afraid I sound like a woman making fun of how a man talks, now.”  She smirked and cleared her throat, and when she spoke it came out deep and rough, and just slightly laughable: “But it’s good enough to demonstrate the fundamentals.”

Sammy snorted in surprise, hands flying up to cover his lips.  “I’m sorry, I just—”

“No apologies necessary, I know how I sound,” Vanessa replied, back in her normal voice.  Face still full of sympathy, she added, “But we’ve gone the long way around to dodge the original question.”

Deflating a little, Sammy nodded.  “Yeah, I uh.  I don’t really know what I want to sound like.”

“That’s fine, honey,” she responded gently.  “We don’t need to have a destination in mind.  What we can do is work on expanding your range, in both pitch and resonance.  And probably do a little breath work and shake up your cadences a little bit.  Later we’ll worry about fine-tuning with creak and breathiness.  And I know I’m throwing a ton of new terminology at you—”

“That’s kind of my life right now,” Sammy cut in with a smirk.  “So don’t worry about it.”

Vanessa hit him with the smile again.  “Okay.  But the point is: we can go looking for a voice that suits you.  Kind of explore the territory, see what we can find, see what you’re comfortable with.  In my experience, most girls find something that just clicks for them, and then we’re off to the races.  Sound good?”

Sammy nodded slowly.  This was sounding more like what he’d hoped for: some tricks to learn that he could bring out when needed.  He didn’t need to unlock anything.  “Yeah, let’s do it.”

“Great,” she smiled, and he realized that it wouldn’t be long at all before he’d do his best just to make her smile at him like that.  “Well, we’ve still got a chunk of time left in the hour, so let’s start on some exercises.  How do you feel about making a bunch of funny sounds?”

“I take it back,” declared Leon a moment after his tray clattered onto the table next to Sammy.  “I dread the Literature class and the Composition class and also the History class.”  His bag hit the floor and he slumped into his chair.

Sammy looked up from his reading.  His own lunch, half-eaten, had been pushed to the side a while ago.  He still had three chapters of Persuasion to polish off before class tomorrow, but he slid a finger into the book to hold his place.  He lifted his eyebrows to show he was listening.

“In Ukraine, history is names and dates and nations and movements…” Leon griped, and put extra emphasis on “…and events.  History is the story of what happened, yes?”

“Gid— er, Doctor Roth-Masters said we’d get to all the names and dates eventually,” Sammy pointed out.  “We’re just not starting there.”

“But what are we starting with?” Leon responded rhetorically, and shoved half of his burger into his face.  He went on with a full mouth, which Sammy tried not to look at directly.  “Patriarchy? Homophobia? Feminism?  Theories and theories and theories, nothing—” He waved his burger, which dripped ketchup onto his fries, and swallowed.  “—nothing substantial.  Nothing concrete.  Not like Ukraine.”

Sammy shrugged.  “But that’s the point of the Marginalized Scholars Program, right?  To teach you how to do academic stuff the American way.  Although,” he stumbled, and then confessed: “I didn’t really pay much attention in high school history, so I can’t really tell you if that’s what I missed in the US version of history class.”

“Pretty sure your high school,” Leon said, emphasizing ‘high school’ like it was a bizarre, alien concept, which Sammy supposed it was, to him.  “They didn’t teach you that, what, homophobia is the immune system of patriarchy and used to quash dissent within the state.  And the state is, of course, a patriarchal structure in and of itself.  Everything is patriarchy.  Everything bad, at least.  And this is history?”

Sammy considered the young man from Ukraine for a long moment.  “So just… to be clear, you’re straight, right?”

Leon’s eyes slitted slightly.  “Yes.  But that shouldn’t matter to the ideas. The ideas should be true no matter what my sexuality.”

Sammy waved his hands to quash Leon’s preemptive response, and sat up a little in his chair.  “But it does matter to how you hear the ideas.  Where you’re coming from, the experiences that you’ve had in your life so far, they have an effect on how new ideas sound to you.”

Leon frowned softly, nodded reluctantly, and consoled himself by making the rest of his burger disappear.

“Because like, I’m queer, right?” Sammy went on, patting his collarbone (his fingertips touched skin and not fabric and he really should be used to that by now, right?).  “And so from where I’m standing?  Based on what I’ve experienced in the world?  Homophobia being the thing that keeps everybody in line? That makes perfect fucking sense to me.”

Leon shook his head.  “But homophobia is just the fear of gay people,” Leon protested, gesturing with a french fry.

“It’s not fear of, like individual gay people; it’s the fear of gayness,” Sammy corrected, and then clarified: “Of queerness.  It’s the fear that, at any time, for any number of random-ass reasons, somebody might think you’re queer.  That you’re not measuring up, that you’re not acting your part, that you’re less worthy of respect.”

Leon’s face placed him somewhere between skeptical and uncomfortable.

“Cause me?  That’s my every day,” he pressed on.  “Because I am queer, so when I get clocked as queer, I know what’s happening, cause I’m always hyper-aware of it.  And when somebody decides that they think you’re queer, you can see them respect you less.”

Leon wasn’t convinced.  “I’m sorry, that does sound terrible, but it only explains the oppression of queer people.  It’s not the… foundation of empire that the professor made it out to be.”

Sammy waved his hands in frustration.  This had been so clear to him in class; why couldn’t he explain it now?  “You’re looking at it like it’s something that happens to just me, but it’s happening to everybody, all the time.  Homophobia means that everybody’s constantly watching everybody else to make sure they don’t act queer. And that makes everybody a little bit scared, a little bit easier to control.  Easier to take advantage of by the, uh—”  He struggled to remember the right word, and then it popped into his brain and he snapped his fingers. “The elites, right?  When everybody else is scared of getting called queer, or not manly enough, or not fulfilling their womanly duties or whatever, and they go along with all that bullshit to avoid it, then they’re more likely to go along with other bullshit, too.  That’s what Gid— that’s what Doctor Roth-Masters was after in class today.”

Leon scrunched up his face, considering.  “Is conditioning, then, yeah?  Hm,” he finally said, nodding slightly, which seemed to be, if not agreement, at least understanding.  He ate a few more fries and Sammy was about to go back to his book, when Leon asked, “So you are queer?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“So you like girls?” he asked, speculatively.  “I am unsure if transgender counts as queer or is something separate.”

“Oh, uh,” Sammy stammered.  Right.  He was a trans girl, at least for the purposes of this conversation.  “I mean, it’s… complicated.  Trans people are queers, but some are straight, but they’re still queers.”

“That makes no sense,” Leon told him flatly, and then pointed a french fry at Sammy.  “But you.  You are transgender, sure.  But you like boys, so you are a straight queer?  Or you like girls, and then you are a queer queer?”

Sammy tried not to laugh at Leon’s earnestly-delivered question.  “I like… both?  And nonbinary people, too.  I mean.  All that doesn’t really matter to me.  At least,” he added hastily, “for, uh, romantic partners.”

“Are you seeing anybody now?” Leon asked, entirely too casually, not making eye contact.

Urk.  Leon was nice and all, but Sammy was less than interested in his romantic attention.  He and Finn were supposed to be keeping things quiet; could he even say yes, he was already spoken for?  Maybe if he was very stingy with details.  “Um.  I am, actually,” he said carefully.  “Not a student here.”  Technically true, since Finley had graduated a month ago.  “And with my class load, we just see each other on weekends.”

The boy from Ukraine nodded for a moment, and when he looked up he smiled.  “Good for you.  I hope he makes you happy.”

“They,” Sammy corrected after a moment of consideration.  There were lots of nonbinary people, right?  He could be dating any of them.  “They make me happy.”

‘Eeee eeee eeee eeee,” chirped Sammy at higher and higher pitches.  He had his phone up in front of his face like some boomer on a video call, watching the numbers rating his pitch wobble higher and then lower again.  The concrete blocks of his dorm room surrounded him, hopefully affording enough sound insulation that his neighbours wouldn’t hear… whatever this was.

Voice training wasn’t just one hour of video conference a week, it was that plus exercises every day, exercises that Vanessa had said he could plow through in fifteen minutes but if he did he’d be robbing himself of any progress.  So here he was, taking his time to make funny sounds into his phone, filling up the hour he’d somehow managed to scrape out of his already-jam-packed schedule.

“Eeee eeee eeee, eeeeeee!” he squeaked, and then coughed.  That last one had crossed over into falsetto, maybe, which he was supposed to avoid.  The only problem was that he couldn’t really tell the difference between the top of his normal range and the forbidden zone above that.  But falsetto or not, that ‘eeee’ had set something in his nasal passages quivering in a very unpleasant way, so he was happy to call it falsetto and not do it again.

He lifted his phone to start again and a text message popped onto the screen.  Finley, saying: Hey.

Frowning softly, Sammy wiped the text message away.  He’d respond after he was done eeee-eeee-eeeeing.  But he’d only got two ‘eeee’s in when another text came in.

Finley again: Whatcha up to?

The cheap freebie app that measured pitch didn’t know what to do with the phone vibration brought on by the text message and simply stalled out.  Sammy’s precarious flow on the awkward task of tweaking his voice had been thrown off, too.  He decided to take a short break, and collapsed backwards into his desk chair.

Studying, of course, he texted back.  Voice training was a kind of studying, right?  He didn’t want to explain that he was doing voice training on top of everything else, or why.  He felt foolish devoting so much time to this thing he didn’t really want, but he also couldn’t not do the thing he’d told both Rowan and Vanessa that he’d do.  All I do is study.

I could fix that for you. Finley texted back, with a winky face.

Sammy couldn’t help smiling.  Oh?

Finley responded with a photo, two pints of ice cream in one of their hands (the green nail polish gave their identity away), plus a pair of spoons sticking out from underneath.

Rolling his eyes, Sammy tapped out: You’re sweet but I’m not getting on a subway to come eat ice cream.

Okay, first of all, came Finley’s immediate response, you are on record as saying you would never say no to ice cream.

Sammy smirked, but didn’t answer because the dots were already bouncing, heralding another text.

Secondly, they went on, I’m downstairs.  Just buzz me in.

“What?” muttered Sammy.  He enlarged the ice cream photo and, sure enough, he recognized the concrete stoop in the background.  That was his dorm’s porch.

He was supposed to do fifteen more minutes of voice exercises, and then he had an essay revision for Comp in the morning.  He’d also scheduled a review of the week’s Physics material for the quiz that may or may not happen on Friday.

But he rolled across the room to jam his finger on the button to let Finley into the dorm.

“And then what happened?” Rowan wanted to know.

Sammy smiled at the video chat, trying not to blush.  “We ate ice cream and cuddled a little as we watched a movie.”

His cousin lifted one eyebrow.  “Cuddled a little?”

“Do I have to define cuddling for you?”

“In this instance, yes,” Rowan nodded emphatically.  “Were clothes involved?”

“Of course clothes were— Jesus, Rowan!”

“Cuddling is better without clothes,” opined Zoey. “That’s just science.”

Sammy groaned at the ceiling.  “We kissed, we made out a bit, there was some… light petting.”

Rowan looked confused.  “I’ve heard of heavy petting, but is light petting even a thing?”

Zoey shrugged theatrically.

“Okay fuck you,” he told the screen lovingly.  “All I’m saying is my gentlethem caller brought me ice cream last night and I thought it was sweet of them.”

Zoey tilted her head quizzically, “A bit early in the relationship to attempt a booty call, isn’t it?”

“It wasn’t a booty call,” he all but howled, “because there wasn’t any sex.”

Rowan smirked, and Sammy could tell the look was meant for Rowan, not him.  “I mean, most attempted booty calls don’t result in sex.”

“You guys are terrible and I have a study group to get to,” he told the screen.  “Chat again tomorrow?”

Sammy felt self-conscious the whole way there, clutching his silly little picnic basket and fretting that making the date he’d planned “a surprise” was sort of silly, since he was literally lugging a picnic basket onto the subway.  All he’d divulged was that they’d be active, so wear some sensible shoes.  Which Finley had taken to mean dress casual: a band tee shirt, jeans shorts, and tennis shoes.  That meant Sammy, in tight light jeans and a flowy pale pink blouse plus still-pristine frat shoes, looked just a bit overdressed in comparison.

Worse, he realized: standing next to each other, they looked like a straight couple.

They made small talk on the subway, with Sammy’s attention split between Finley talking about their roommates’ hijinx and the automated subway announcements.  He didn’t want to miss their stop.

And then he led them into Central Park.  The day was warm and clear, perfect weather for picnicking.  Given it was a Friday afternoon in the summer, the green landscape was dotted with people taking advantage of the massive park.

Frustratingly, he had to drop Finley’s hand to check the map on his phone, but then he set it down on the flat top of the picnic basket so he could glance down at it.  His free hand found its way back to Finley’s.  He was surprised how soon they came up on their destination: a scenic pond with a fake castle rising up on the opposite side.

There were a few other people scattered about, some of them on their own picnic blankets.  Sammy led his date to an open spot and turned to face them, both hands clutching the basket handles.  “It’s a picnic,” he explained.  “I packed us a picnic.  And it’s… pretty here.  And afterwards, I made us reservations at the Metropolitain Museum of Art.”

Finley grinned.  “I love the Met!  And a picnic sounds great.  Where’d you get the basket?”

“My uncles,” he said with a shrug.  “So you’ve been before?  To the Met?”  He’d told himself that his date idea probably wasn’t terribly original, and the museum wasn’t going to be anything Finley hadn’t already done before, but he’d still held out some stupid hope that it would all be new and exciting.

“I mean, yeah, I’ve lived here for four years, I’ve been,” they said with a gentle smile.  “But not for ages.  I’m excited to go!”

Sammy set the basket down to open it.  Finley had clearly noticed his anxiety over the date and was trying to mollify his fears.  He wasn’t sure if he liked that they’d noticed and that they cared or if it only made him more self-conscious.  He’d never planned a date before, and he wanted so much for this to go well that he knew he’d start flailing if he thought about it too much.  “I, uh, I looked online for date ideas.  Picnicking at the Turtle Pond seemed nice, and with the Metrop— I mean, the Met, right there…”

Finley reached out to take the other side of the thin picnic blanket and help stretch it out across the grass.  “Absolutely.  Samantha, this is great.”

Sammy unpacked the picnic lunch, which was mostly just sandwiches and fruit and a sort of half-assed charcuterie board, minus the board.  Finley laid across the opposite side of the blanket, watching with a bemused little smile on their face.  When he looked up to explain what he’d packed for their picnic—which was all obvious, really, but still—his date just smiled and said, “You’re adorable.”

Whatever Sammy was about to say was lost under his sudden full-body flush.  “It’s just a picnic.”

“And you care a whole lot about making it just right,” his date pointed out.  “Which is nice.  It makes me feel good that you care about the details.”

Sammy sniggered, and when Finley raised an eyebrow at the odd reaction, he explained: “Me caring makes you feel good, but you telling me about me caring is just you caring about me feeling anxious, and it’s just like… a big echo chamber or something.”

“Exactly,” his date smiled, and picked up one of the soda bottles that had rolled out onto the blanket.  They held it out in toast.  “Here’s to echo chambers of caring.”

Sammy scooped up the other soda bottle and tapped its neck against Finley’s.  “I’m not sure we’re supposed to be this sappy on Date Number Two.”

“Is it Date Number Two, though?”

Sammy handed Finley a sandwich and then levelled a warning finger at them.  “You asked me out first.  Last week was a date.”

They lifted their hands as if they were being held up at gunpoint instead of fingerpoint, trying to look innocent.  “I wasn’t saying this was Date Number One.  I was just thinking after Wednesday, maybe this counts as Date Number Three.”  They unwrapped the sandwich and made appreciatory noises at the contents: his mother’s chicken salad.  “Maybe even Date Number Four if we count our first kiss.”

“Okay, now you’re reaching,” Sammy laughed, settling more comfortably on his side of the blanket.  “May I remind you that I kissed three other people that night, too—at your direction.  Kind of weird.”

“Kind of sexy,” Finley shot back, grinning.

Sammy busied himself with his food, ignoring Finley’s eyes on him until it became unbearable.  Finally, he allowed, quietly, talking almost directly into his sandwich, “Yeah, it was.”

They ate in companionable silence for a little while, enjoying the simply made food and artfully constructed view.  Sammy regretted sitting opposite Finley; he wanted to cuddle, but he also wasn’t quite sure how cuddling would work with picnicking at the same time.  There had been a lot of juggling with the ice cream on Wednesday.

He snorted in sudden amusement, and told Finley, “I told Rowan and Zoey about you showing up with ice cream, and they thought it was a booty call.”

Finley quickly took a pull of their soda, covering for something.  “…ha ha, yeah, that’s funny.”

Sammy looked across the picnic blanket, eyebrows raised.  “Okay, that was a lot of hesitation and not the quick denial I was expecting.”

Finley collapsed onto their back instead of making eye contact.  “Um.”

Sammy leaned a little closer.  Was Finley… actually blushing under their beard?

They looked up into Sammy’s face, smiling faintly and apologetically.  “It wasn’t a… booty call booty call, but it was… the same impulse, I guess?”  When Sammy only lifted his eyebrows, Finley tried to explain: “When you’re in a relationship—”

“We’re in a relationship, now?” he asked in mock surprise.

Finley covered their face with their hands.  “I swear to god, Samantha, half of your transition is just you getting sassier.  Shut up, let me finish.”

Sammy gave them an expansively sassy gesture to continue.

They repeated, “When you’re in a relationship,” and then cleared their throat.  “Sometimes you just… want to see your person.”  They tried to shrug into the ground, which only bunched up the blanket underneath them.  “And sure, if it’s a sexual relationship, that maybe-probably involves sex, but if it’s not a sexual relationship yet, maybe it just means… making out while you watch a movie.”

While Finley was focused on explaining themself, Sammy had taken the opportunity to creep a little closer.  He wasn’t quite looming, but he was smiling down into Finley’s face.  The genderqueer’s features were all twisted up, uncertain how their explanation would be received.  “That’s sweet,” Sammy told them.  “And I totally get what you’re saying, I accept your explanation, and I’d like to go back to the part where we’re in a relationship.”

Finley heaved a relieved exhale while also rolling their eyes.  “Not going to let that go, are you?”

Sammy leaned down slowly, descending until Finley’s lips puckered for a kiss, and then he stopped, smirking, withholding.  “Nope.”  He could feel Finley’s breath on his face.

“I feel like I need to reiterate that I’m leaving in five weeks,” Finley said soberly, and then smiled ever so softly.  “But until then, I think I would like to call this a relationship.”

Giggling in unabashed delight, Sammy closed the remaining distance between their lips and kissed them, hard.  He broke off long enough to breathe, “Yes, please.”  And then for a little while they were both a tangle of limbs on top of smooshed sandwiches and tumbled tupperware.

When they separated, Sammy back lay on the grass (the blanket sat in a tangled heap three feet away) to catch his breath.  His body still seemed to be fizzing and popping, heart hammering, head spinning.  Finley lay beside him, their only contact two of the genderqueer’s fingers lightly stroking the side of Sammy’s thigh.

After a long moment of fingertip caresses and watching the clouds gather in the sunset lighting, Finley spoke up: “Okay, because it’s always a thing at this point?  I prefer enbyfriend.”

“What?” Sammy couldn’t help asking the sky.

Finley propped themself up on an elbow to make eye contact.  “‘Datemate’ always sounds weird to me.  The rhyming, I think.  And ‘theyfriend’ and ‘themfriend’ are just… this whole thing with confusing pronouns for genders?  Pet peeve of mine.  So.  You can call me your enbyfriend.”

Sammy smiled up at them.  “This is Finley Aceves,” he said, gesturing with one hand as if he were introducing people, even though he was laying on the ground and didn’t quite have the right range of motion.  “My enbyfriend.”

They definitely blushed, this time.  “Yeah.”  Sammy’s enbyfriend laid a hand on his belly, warm through the thin fabric of his blouse.  “And I take it you’d like to be my girlfriend?”

His heart skipped a beat.  Fuck.  Why had this not occured to him?  “Yeah,” he heard himself say in a smiling exhale.  That was not the right answer, nor was it the right word, but it was the best he was going to get, wasn’t it?  It’s not like he could confess everything to Finley here and now, tell them that he wasn’t really a girl, he just pretended for… reasons even he was having trouble articulating, anymore.  It was just too much to explain right now, in this moment, and the last thing he wanted was to ruin this moment.  So he smiled again and said, “I’m your girlfriend.”

The Metropolitain Museum of Art was a blur.  He rented a locker for the picnic basket and they walked, hand in hand, through exhibit after exhibit.  Egyptian art, Roman art, European art, American art, Japanese art.  But Sammy barely saw any of it.

He was Finley’s girlfriend.

There was a room full of instruments, for some reason.  You could push buttons to make them make noises.

He was Finley’s girlfriend.

There were suits of armor, for people and for horses, and Finley made a joke about codpieces that Sammy just barely realized wasn’t serious commentary before he nodded along with it.

He was the girlfriend.

There was a whole stone temple, transplanted from wherever the colonizers had uprooted it from.

Girlfriend.

He couldn’t even translate it in his head.  For a little while—through the whole Impressionists section, in fact—he wondered if, when Finley or somebody else said “girlfriend,” his brain could just find-replace into something more appropriate, so inside his head he could be Finley’s—well, boyfriend.  But that fantasy dissolved as soon as Finn asked one of the docents for directions, saying “my girlfriend and I,” and his brain didn’t find-replace, it didn’t come up with anything more appropriate, it just sort of sat there in his skull and drooled.

He was back at that CQA meeting, on Finley’s arm again, everybody looking at them.  Everyone seeing Finley and their girlfriend, the trans girl, which meant that they must—

Finley asked if Sammy would mind if they bought a cinnamon roll from the cafe for them to share.  He said no, of course not, why would he mind, and it wasn’t until they were sitting down at the table that he remembered that this was his date and maybe he should have done that, or planned for it, or something.

Which was when Finley gave him a piercing look across the table. “Samantha, are you okay?  You’ve been kind of… not all here.”

Oh, fuck, now he really was ruining the date.  Sammy blinked rapidly, shook his head.  Pushed through the cobwebs when they didn’t clear on their own.  “No, I’m good.  I’m good.  I just.”  A thought struck him, made him laugh, and then he had to say it out loud. “I never thought I’d be somebody’s girlfriend.”  It was, after all, the truth.

Finley made a satisfied little sound and held out a forkful of steaming cinnamon roll.  “Well you’re mine,” they purred.  “Until you get tired of me.”

“Or until five weeks is up.”

They rolled their eyes.  “Put this in your mouth and stop talking.”

Sammy did as he was told.

“Sometimes I forget this really is your first rodeo,” Finley said while he chewed.  “There’s a whole lot of feelings.  This isn’t even my first time and I’ve got lots of feelings.  But the first time, it’s huge and intimidating—”

Sammy opened his mouth to say something and had it stuffed with cinnamon roll, instead.  Finley gave him a warning look, so he chewed.

“You’re my girlfriend,” they said insistently, and then couldn’t help smiling at the statement.  “And none of your feelings are too big or too much for me, okay?  I look forward to hearing all about all your feelings… that means all your fears and all your misgivings, too.”  They reached forward to wipe a dribble of syrup off his chin.  “You never have to hold back with me.”

He waved a hand around and around over his head, and Finley’s fork stilled, tacitly allowing him to speak.  “Its all kind of spiralling around in here,” he admitted.

“Not too surprising.”  His enbyfriend mirrored the twirling gesture with the bit of cinnamon roll on their fork, and then popped it in their own mouth.

Sammy looked left and right; the museum was emptying out, the end of the day approaching, with fewer and fewer people around.  One woman walked purposefully from some half-hidden exhibit and across the interior plaza, and for a moment their eyes met.  She looked from Sammy to Finley and back, smiled, and went on her way.

They looked like a couple.  He looked like Finley’s girlfriend.  He also looked trans, which meant, when the lights were out and the making out escalated to something more…

Suddenly he was reminded of Uncle Gideon lecturing, and Leon complaining about Uncle Gideon lecturing, and Sammy himself explaining to Leon about what Gideon had been lecturing about, and that was it.  That was exactly it.  Sammy could feel the eyes on him.  He was being watched, he was being evaluated, he was being judged.

And for some reason he was going along with it.

He opened his mouth to speak and had to wave off another bite of cinnamon roll.  “No, um.  If you really do want to hear some of the… stuff in my head—”

“I do,” they nodded, and fed themself the lingering bite.

He dithered again, and then chided himself.  Even if this was a real relationship now, it still had its expiration date; it was still, essentially, Sammy’s practice relationship.  He could throw caution to the wind, right?  He could say anything.

“I’m anxious about butt sex,” he said, and Finley nearly choked.  “Sorry, too much?”

“No, no,” his enbyfriend assured him as they spared a glance around to make sure nobody was sitting nearby.  The museum really was emptying out.  “Just surprising.”

“That was what freaked me out, back at the CQA mixer,” Sammy confessed.  “That people would think that you were…”  He rolled his eyes at himself.  “That you were fucking me like that.  Which is stupid, even if I didn’t know it then, and I know it now and I feel foolish for worrying about it then but I also still worry about it now, a little.  Not that people will think that—well, not entirely that people will think that—but also just because… I don’t really know how it even works?  And if I… if I am your girlfriend—”

“Okay, let me stop you there,” they cut in, and supplemented the interruption by feeding him a bite of cinnamon roll.  They’d reached the center, and everything was especially gooey, now.  “You being my girlfriend does not require or even imply anything about anal sex.”

Sammy was slightly relieved that even Finley dropped their volume at ‘anal sex.’  He nodded slowly, swallowed.  Finley quickly replaced the bite to keep him quiet.

“I am in no rush, okay?” his enbyfriend assured him.  “Maybe we get there, maybe we don’t.  I’d much rather enjoy the journey than worry about any particular destination along the way.  Which means I would, if it’s all right with you, really like to make out before this date is over.  And nothing more than making out.  Okay?”

Sammy nodded, smiled.  “Okay.”

The problem with that plan, however, was that just a few minutes into making out in his dorm room, Sammy had his hands down Finley’s shorts and they had theirs up his blouse, and ‘just making out’ didn’t just seem needlessly limiting but rather increasingly impossible.

Sammy’s hips had started grinding on Finley’s leg in a way that he didn’t think he could willfully stop.  He had a handful of their ass and wanted nothing more than to pull them into himself… somehow.  The actual details of geometry involved weren’t especially clear.

It was Finley who finally broke off, panting, planting hands on top of Sammy’s shoulders and pushing to separate them.  “I should probably go.”

“You should stop being so considerate,” Sammy told them in between gasps, smiling wide and biting his lip and yes, Finley’s eyes went right to the intersection of his teeth and bottom lip.  He was going to have to remember that trick.  “And stay.”

Finley backpedalled in the half-dark room, smiling like a kid presented with a pile of candy.  “I want to save some of this—” and here he gestured vaguely up and down Sammy’s body, and also the space between them “—for later, to savour.  I don’t want to rush.”

“I kinda do.”

That got a laugh out of Finley, and the heat of the moment seemed to dissipate.  “Yeah, I can tell.  You are a very tempting… temptress.  Oof.  It’s late, and I’m tired, and that alone is a pretty good reason not to jump into our first time.”

Sammy rolled his eyes but settled down to sit on his bed, arms folded.  “That probably makes sense.”

“Now.”  They looked Sammy up and down again, this time like he was a trap that might spring on them.  “Can I kiss you goodnight without you dragging me back into your bed, temptress?”

“No promises,” he answered, but planted his hands at his sides and leaned forward, lips puckered.

They shared a long but mostly chaste kiss, and then Finley hurried out the door.  Walking a little funny, Sammy noted with satisfaction.

He threw himself backwards onto the bed with a sigh.  He could feel that too-many-emotions exhaution creeping up on him, and grudgingly acknowledged that perhaps Finley had been right, after all.  If he had kept pushing and overloaded himself, who knows where he’d have ended up.  Probably crying into Finley’s lap.  Or their naked crotch.

Well that was an interesting image to consider.

He pulled his little purse out of the picnic basket on the floor, and then pulled his phone out of that.  10:20.  He nodded to himself and opened up the texting app.

Home safe after picnic date, he told Rowan.

Early bird! she responded almost immediately.  I’m just about to head out.  How’d it go?

There were so many ways to answer that question, but he finally settled on, I’m Finley’s girlfriend.

Rowan responded with a gleeful torrent of emojis and gifs.

Sammy set the phone on his desk and shifted his butt over to sit in the chair.  The images kept coming on his phone while he woke up his laptop, checked his calendar, and opened the rough draft for his LIT50 essay.  He looked tiredly at the long series of paragraphs, fixed a misplaced comma, then leaned back in his chair and picked up his finally quiescent phone.

Is it sad that I scheduled study time for after my date? he texted.

No that’s good, his cousin replied.  You should get as far ahead as you can.  It’s not like you’re getting anything done next week.

He frowned softly at his phone and texted a single question mark.

It’s PRIDE, Sammy! came the response.  Next week is Pride!

Isn’t that just like… a parade?

Rowan reply was only: Oh, Country Mouse.

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Sussex, May 1813

Amelia woke without the warm weight of Theresa in the bed beside her.  It took her few confused minutes to realize her lover was across the room, sitting by the window and watching the morning sun spread across the estate.  She was beautiful there, in the sharp angled sunlight with one of Amelia’s shawls wrapped around her shoulders.  Amelia admired her silently for a long while before wishing her good morning.

“Good morning,” her lover responded, distracted, and then asked, “My dear Duchess Regent, how much is the duchy worth?”

Amelia rubbed the sleep out of her eyes.  It appeared the day was eager to get started, making her own preference for lounging in bed irrelevant.  “You mean the estate?” she asked.  “Technically the duchy’s not really worth anything, monetarily.”

Theresa shot her a warm smile full of fascination.  “Yes.  The ducal estate that is synonymous with the duchy, which you have an adorable way of seeing as a wholly disparate thing.  How much is it worth?”

“Well,” she responded, trying to goad her brain into motion, “it can’t really be liquidated.  Large portions of the estate are entailed to the title, and the value of much of it depends on ancestral rights that would not be transferred in any sale.  So it’s impossible to really ennumerate the assets.”

“That sounds like a dodge embedded so deep in the status quo that you lot don’t even notice you’re using it,” Theresa chided in good nature.  “Let me ask it another way: how much income does it bring in?”

Having just gone over the numbers with Julian, and then having gone over them again with the boys, Amelia had those details at her mental fingertips.  She told her, itemizing out the estate proper as well as the investments and bonds that were tied to the estate’s finances.

Theresa Chesterley’s eyebrows tried to float off of her face.  “More than I expected.  Orders of magnitude larger than my own little trust.”

“Well,” Amelia tried to say reasonably, piling up pillow roll and cushions behind her on the headboard.  “That sum supports the five people in the house, the staff of twenty-two, and hundreds of people attached to the estate in various ways.”

Her lover wobbled her head side to side again.  “But still.  I can’t help imagining what good I could do with a sum of that size.  It’s just where my mind immediately jumps when it hears the number.”

“I don’t think that’s unreasonable,” said Amelia with a soft smile.  She knew the numbers could be intimidating, and the last thing she wanted was to make her lover feel embarrassed.  But she also quietly resolved not to mention the duchy’s other estates, either.

Theresa’s lips twisted mischieviously.  “Do you know how many looms and frames we could destroy with that?” she asked, and then continued dreamily.  “How many schools we could build.  How many ragged little girls on the London streets we could teach to read?”

“Mother does a great deal of work with the unfortunates of Brighton,” Amelia offered, but then immediately shook her head.  “It hardly compares with what you’re imagining, though, I’m sure.”

Her lover smiled across the room at her, amused and wistful.  “Not really, no.”  She looked about to say something else, and then shook her head.  “My duchess, you look lovely over there, all tousled and cozy.”

Amelia opened her arms to her lover.  “We have a little time before breakfast.  Come cozy up and I’ll tousle you.”

Having had their horse ride the day before, Amelia and Theresa took the boys for a walk after breakfast.  Under a copse of willows, Theresa finished her history of London, complemented by a double handful of jelly tarts she’d tied up in a handkerchief.  The boys were vocally appreciative of both, to Amelia’s bemused gratification.

They returned to the house for luncheon and Theresa excused herself to attend to her correspondence.  Amelia took the boys to watch the workers at the ice house, knowing that after not going the day before, they’d both be adamant in going today.  They settled on a slight rise above the build site, watching the workers bustle about their business.  She’d brought along paper, pencils, compass, and square, and cajoled them to work out the surface areas of the nascent building’s sides.  With Eustace she went further, itemizing out the cost of lumber.

“It’s a great expense,” the boy opined.  “I wonder why Youngest even wants it built.”

Amelia tried to hide her smirk at the spread of her strange sobriquet to even the boys.  “I take it you’ve never spent a summer in Sussex.  It gets so hot that an iced drink feels like the most welcome luxury in the world.”  She smiled indulgently at the two of them.  “And if you are very good and Lady Suffolk is very generous, there might occasionally be ice cream for dessert.”

“We cannot have ice cream,” Gregory informed her, “until we are grown.”  He delivered it like it was a basic fact of life.

Amelia lifted an eyebrow.  “Why do you say that?”

“Mother told us,” the boy answered readily.  “Ice cream is bad for boys.”

“Father brought some home once, packed in blocks of ice,”  Eustace said, and looked up from the doodle on the margin of his paper.  “He wanted to celebrate: a big investor had signed on to his canal scheme.”  His eyes slid to Gregory, and then back to Amelia, expression deadpan.  “And Mother explained to us how it was a treat we might get to enjoy… when we were grown.  Mother and Father ate it all up that night, since it would not keep.”

Their governess nodded reasonably, and balled up her fist under her skirt so hard it hurt.

She brought the boys back to the house; she sent them to their dinner.  She changed for her own dinner and waited at the adjoining door for Theresa to do the same; she tried as best she could to ogle her half-naked lover properly, but her thoughts kept skipping away.  Dinner was quiet and reserved.  Amelia knew better than to trust herself with anything more than minimal conversation with Iris across the table.

By the time dinner was over and her anger had not dissipated, Amelia knew that she was going to have to do something about it, was going to have to have a very strained and complicated conversation with the woman, and so before she disrobed for the evening, she marched her way down the hall to Iris’s door.

You cannot lie to your children, she thought furiously.  They need someone to believe, someone they can trust.  They can not figure out, as Eustace plainly had, that the adults in charge of their very well-being were petty and greedy and willing to lie to cover it.  Without a foundation of trust upon which to build their lives, they’d spend their days in mistrust, doubt, cynicism, and, eventually, dissipation.

The door was half-open, with the play of firelight rippling out through the gap.  Amelia rapped on the door smartly.

“Come in,” sang the woman inside gaily, and Amelia pushed inside without registering, in her own anger, the woman’s tone of voice.

She came through the door and there was Iris Sommerset, stretched out across her bed, as naked as the day she had been born.  The lady’s back was to Amelia; without looking behind her, she beckoned with one arm.  She chuckled, low and sultry, and purred, “I’ve been waiting.”

Before Amelia could say anything—or more accurately, before she could turn around and creep right back out the door—that space was filled with the strapping shoulders of a man backing into the room, carrying a tray.  “Iris, love, you can’t leave this door quite so open,” he chortled, a touch louder than a whisper.  “Else somebody will find out we’re—well hello there.”

Horace, the new coachman, or new Master of the Stable, properly, who wasn’t properly new anymore anyway, had turned around and spied Amelia where she stood without a single idea in her head as to what she should do.  For his part, he hooked the edge of the door behind his heel and swung it shut.  His lips crooked into a delighted little smirk.  “Is it the three of us for the evening, then?”

“What are you—holy hell, what are you doing in here?” hissed Iris, who’d turned over and was now glaring daggers at Amelia.

The girl in question put up her hands and directed her eyes at the floor.  “Excuse me, I’m— so sorry,” she babbled.  “Iri— I mean, Lady Marbury, I only intended to speak with you about the boys’ education; I knocked, you said come in…”

Horace gestured from Amelia to Iris and back.  “So this is not a special surprise for me,” he observed, with no small measure of cheek.  He set the tray on a conveniently near vanity.

“How dare you barge in here,” Iris seethed at her, but it was plainly all bluster.  Amelia dared to glance up and the woman was blushing from top to toes.  “I’ll have you sacked for this!”

“No, milady, I don’t—” Amelia struggled to cut through, for the first time in months having trouble keeping her voice in check.  Finally, she blurted, “Iris, I don’t care.”

That, at least, got the lady to pause.  The fireplace popped and crackled.

Amelia pushed into the silence.  “I’m not going to tell any one,” she said, making eye contact with the naked woman.  “I have no interest in telling any one.  Whatever you do, with whoever you do it… I can’t see how it would ever be any of my business.”

“Well that’s refreshing, at least,” Horace remarked, settling onto the chair before the vanity.

But Iris narrowed her eyes at Amelia.  Still standing there and completely unashamed at her nudity, which Amelia would find rather impressive later, when she had regathered her wits.  The lady studied her for a long moment, and then her face relaxed minutely.  “Oh, I see.”

“We can talk about the boys tomorrow—”

“You think you’re above all this,” the lady accused.  “The pure-hearted governess, virginal and dedicated to higher purpose.”

A snort forced itself out of Amelia’s nose.  She was hardly virginal, but that was more complicated than she had any interest in explaining here and now.  “Milady—”

“You’re lucky, actually,” Iris sighed, and then she was smiling, but the expression in her eyes was sour.  “You got to escape the marriage trap.  Nobody told you that you’d have to wed, nobody forced you onto the market, nobody made your whole life dependent on signing your whole life away.”  Her voice turned sharp and vicious.  “Never got fucked, never learned to like it, never needed it when you weren’t supposed to have it anymore.  Got to float above it all.”

“It’s not like that, milady,” the girl assured her, backing towards the door, now.  “I am not above anything.  Which is why I have no cause to judge you.  The heart wants what it wants,” she said with a gentle shrug.  “And you’re not hurting anyone.”  She realized she was babbling, and stopped.

Iris just stared at her, uncomprehending.

Amelia found the wall, reached out and opened the door.  “Please just… enjoy your evening.”

As she slipped backwards out the door, Horace laughed.  “Oh, trust me, we will.”

By the time she returned to her own room, her breath was ragged and her forehead slick with worry.  Worse, she could feel laughter bubbling up inside her, distinctly at odds with her pounding heart.  She closed her door and leaned up against it, trying and failing to calm herself.

“There you are, Duchess,” Theresa said, stepping through the adjoining door.  She was half-undressed, in stockings and shirtsleeves, comfortable and ready for a quiet evening in.  But the smile on her face dropped as soon as she took in her lover across the room.  “Whatever is the matter?”

Amelia shook her head, as if she could simply dismiss the entire encounter.  When that didn’t work, she explained, “I just had a… difficult interview with Lady Marbury.”

“About the boys?”

A pale little laugh escaped her.  “We didn’t even get to the boys.”

Theresa had crossed the room and took Amelia up in her arms.  “Then what?  She’s upset you.”

Amelia let herself fold up against Theresa, grateful for the support and warmth of her.  She buried her face in the crook of her lover’s neck and shook her head slightly.  “It’s nothing.”

“It’s not nothing if it has my Duchess Regent this agitated,” the woman responded reasonably.  Amelia imagined that she was placidly facing the door, talking to it like a person, while Amelia clutched at her.  But the woman didn’t say anything further, content to simply hold her.

It took Amelia some time before she peeled herself back off of her lover.  Her face came away damp; she’d been crying into Theresa’s collar, somehow without even realizing it.  She was guided to the bed, where she sat down, hands in her lap.

“We had a… confrontation about something else, it’s.. irrelevant,” she started.  She’d told Iris she wouldn’t tell anybody, and she meant to stick by that.  “But in the course of it, she said—”  Here her voice crumpled and she had to take a moment to quell the sob that was trying to bubble out of her chest.  “I swear, Theresa, it is such a silly thing.  It’s nothing.”

Theresa only put one finger under Amelia’s chin and lifted, making calm, steady eye contact from where she stood before her.  “Tell me.”

And that was it: there was no way that Amelia wasn’t spilling everything, now.  So she took a deep breath to steady herself and said, “She said I was lucky that I’d never marry.”

“Ah,” was all her lover said, although not without sympathy.

“And I want to,” she went on helplessly.  Theresa had said to tell her, so she was telling her.  It was all coming out, now.  “I want it so much it hurts, sometimes.  I am so happy being myself, being Amelia, I can’t even begin to articulate it.  But the thought that… becoming me, getting to spend the rest of my life as me, that that has… walled off the possibility of spending the rest of my life with—”  She looked at the floor.  “With someone I love.  It’s too much to even contemplate, sometimes.”

Chesterley squatted before her, her expression built out of weary compassion.  “Women like us don’t get that,” she said gravely.  “Although the women not like us don’t get the dream of marriage, either, because it’s rarely the safe and loving partnership it’s supposed to be, but.  You don’t need me to rant at you.”  She sighed, and said with the weighty air of a inescapable conclusion, “Some things just aren’t for us.”

“Lizzie took me to visit the Ladies of Llangollen,” Amelia said with a pale little smile.  “Have you been?  Have you met them?”  When Theresa shook her head, she said, “They’re lovely.  Two ladies in love with each other and with the life they’ve built for themselves.”

“Two noble ladies,” Theresa pointed out gently, “of considerable wealth.  That’s not—” She didn’t say it, but it was plain that she was about to say “us.”

“Not as wealthy as all that,” Amelia corrected, shaky with hope.  Were they really talking about what she thought they might be talking about?

But that had been the wrong thing to say.  “Wealthier than I am or ever will be,” her lover said, with a new edge to her voice.

“My perspective is biased,” the girl said quickly, apologetically, backing away as fast as she could from the topic that they weren’t talking about, wouldn’t talk about, couldn’t talk about.  “And anyway, I have a long history of wanting things that I can’t have, and wanting more than is healthy.”

Theresa took Amelia’s hands in hers and put on a smile, generous and gentle and entirely a choice rather than a window to her own heart.  “We can still find happiness, Amelia.  I promise you.  Women like us… we find our own ways, we find our own purpose, we find our own work.  And the lives we build may not look like what other people expect a life to look like… but they’re still happy lives.  With purpose.”

Amelia leaned forward, broke Theresa’s hold on her hands, and embraced her.  She let herself be comforted, let her tears be wiped away, let herself be taken to bed, and held, and loved.

But in the morning, she woke to Theresa quietly packing. They shared light conversation over breakfast, not talking about the night before or the bags packed that morning. In a shadowed nook off the side of the foyer, her lover quickly kissed her goodbye and hastened out the door.

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• I also post epub and pdf versions of the book for everybody.

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Sussex, May 1813

The next morning saw the four of them walking out to the stables in their riding gear (or in Theresa’s case, her traveling clothes).  Amelia had been surprised to receive the dowager’s permission to take the boys for a ride, but was quick to take advantage.  Gift horses, etc.

Eustace picked out his favourite steed, a gelding named Trebuchet, whose name was the only thing necessary to secure the boy’s everlasting devotion.  Gregory selected Dapple, which made Amelia happy; the ancient mare would be no challenge for the young equestrian.

She stepped up to King Francis, another long-time resident of the ducal stables with whom Amelia was familiar.  The beast was getting on in years, but he was a well-built specimen who could put on speed if he—or Amelia, chasing one of her charges—needed it.  She wondered as she patted his neck if the stallion recognized her at all, or if her scent had changed beyond equine recognition.

Amelia glanced back at Theresa, who had stopped a few steps back, eyeing the horse stalls with trepidation.  “Perhaps,” her lover said shakily, “I should let the three of you enjoy your ride without me.  I fear I should only hold you back.”

“Nonsense,” Amelia insisted.  “You said you’d give the boys your condensed history of London when we take luncheon up on the summit.  And I’d like to show you the estate.  It’s beautiful.”

“I am not a accomplished horsewoman,” Theresa begged off, although her expression said, “Horses terrify me.”

“Then take Old Dapple,” Gregory offered, and led the grey mare out to where Theresa stood.  “Horace says she’s gentle as a lamb.  She won’t give you any trouble.”

“Who’s Horace?”

“The new coachman,” Amelia supplied.

“Properly speaking, I am Master of the Stable,” the man himself corrected her, coming down the shadowed length of his domain.

Amelia tried not to wince.  Horace wasn’t new; he’d been here for months.  More months than Amelia had been here as governess.  There was no plausible reason for her to call him new.

But the horseman did not seem to notice her slip.  He was too busy giving Theresa the exact same leer that he had given Amelia on their first meeting.  “The late duke wished to cultivate the pedigrees of his stable,” he said as if he were a sommelier discussing wines, “and by all accounts the new duke is also keen on horse breeding.”

Amelia pasted on a smile.  She’d told Julian that the estate should acquire sufficient broodmares to have at least one of them pregnant at all times.  Eventually, she hoped, the estate would produce its own virus amantis equae, but for now she was reliant on shipments from Uskweirs.  She understood how Horace had got from her obscure directions to “keen on horse breeding,” but it was still inaccurate, nor was she “the new duke.”  The new duke was presently patting Trebuchet’s nose.

But she was not in a position to correct the swaggering Master of the Stable, so she stayed silent and let him select a horse for her lover.

“Let’s leave Dapple to the young master,” Horace suggested, and gestured Theresa deeper into the stable with a smirk.  She followed with a roll of her eyes seen only by Amelia.  “Margaret is nearly as gentle, but twice as robust.  I’m not sure the boy could straddle her if you took Old Dap.”

The two of them were out of Amelia’s sight when Theresa said sharply, “I require no assistance in mounting, sir.”  Then a series of grunts and huffs sounded down the stable, followed by Theresa, sitting astride Margaret.  The horse ambled along with a sense of resigned disdain; the Master of the Stable did not bother to follow them out.

Their little riding party followed a well-worn horse trail out from the house and up the gentle incline of the north hills.  Mindful that the ride was a reward for Eustace’s cooperation the night before, Amelia refrained from layering lessons on top of the excursion.  Instead, she rode alongside Theresa, splitting her attention between watching the boys ramble ahead and back and keeping an eye on her lover’s tenuous control of her mount.

She pointed out a few of her favourite corners of the estate from her youth; Theresa informed her of the latest careful maneuvers of her bluestocking friends and conspirators.  Childhood reminisces and tales of political stagnation resulted in the both of them repeatedly remarking about how little things ever changed, until it became a joke through repetition.

Finally they crested the last ridge in Amelia’s mental itinerary and the estate spread out before them.  The house itself sat like a regal monarch wrapped up in golden fields, emerald groves, and the sapphire sea across the southern horizon.  They stopped to take in the view, and Amelia prompted Eustace to identify the visible points of interest and tenant farmhouses of his future domain.

The boy did so haltingly, until his brother’s corrections tripped his temper and the both of them were growling at each other.  Amelia sent the two of them riding in separate directions, there and back, so they could cool off.

She shrugged to her lover.  “Sometimes they’re attentive, sometimes they are distracted.  I take what I can get each day.”

But Theresa was paying no attention to the children.  “So this is all yours?” she asked, a little awed as she took in the sprawling estate.

Amelia frowned softly.  “This is all the duchy’s. Not mine.”

Theresa gave her a gentle smirk.  “You exercise sovereign control over all of this, which we common folk call ownership.”

The boys came thundering back, cheeks pink from the wind, and Amelia called to the elder boy instead of answering.  He turned Trebuchet to face the two ladies, eyebrows raised truculently.  “Eustace, dear, can you explain to Miss Chesterley the difference between ownership and stewardship?  Specifically as regards the duke’s relationship to his duchy.”

The boy screwed up his face in a caricature of focus.  “Ownership is when you get to decide what to do with a thing for your own purposes.  Stewardship is when you decide what to do with a thing—with property, I should have said—when you decide what to do with property for the greater good.”

Amelia bobbed her head in approval.

Seeing his brother getting attention, Gregory sidled in to add, “Cause we belong to the duchy, too.”

  Eustace rolled his eyes.  “That’s not how it goes,” he groaned, and then launched into recitation.  “The land belongs to the duchy.  And we belong to the duchy, too.  And we work with the land to make sure the duchy is here in the future.”  He smiled a beat, and then remembered the rest: “Both for our family, and for all the families that work on or with the duchy.  There’s hundreds of people who depend on the duchy,” he told Theresa, “and it’s the duke’s job to make sure they’re taken care of.”

Amelia tried not to preen too obviously at her students’ top-marks answer, as she smiled at Theresa.

“I take it they’re reciting lessons you taught them?” her lover asked.  The woman was trying to smirk away the children’s performance, but Amelia was sure she detected a little surprised respect lurking in Theresa’s face.

“They are,” she confirmed with a short, proud nod.  And then the boys decided they were going to have a race to that tree and back, and this time actually asked permission before tearing off towards the horizon.  Amelia granted it and watched them go, more than a little fondly.  “I don’t own any of this.  I steward it, for Eustace, and for his heirs, and for all the families who live and work here.”

“Ah, so you’re the Duchess Regent,” Theresa observed wryly.

“If such a title existed in England, perhaps,” Amelia allowed, hiding her own smile.

Theresa clumbsily guided her mare to sidestep towards Amelia; the old beast complied only grudgingly.  When she was finally close enough to do so, she leaned over and murmured lowly, “So I would not be entirely incorrect if I called you my Duchess… in private.”

The way her lover said the last part sent a shiver down Amelia’s spine, which she had to hide as the boys came riding back in a dead heat.  They immediately began arguing over who had won, and were only mollified by Amelia reminding them that she had brought a basket full of sandwiches.

They lunched in a copse of trees just under the breezy summit, on a picnic blanket spread out in the shade.  The two boys devoured their luncheon in what seemed like moments, and Amelia felt guilty asking Theresa to stall her lunch in order to give them her condensed history of London.

But her lover didn’t seem to mind as she rested her half-eaten sandwich on her knee and brushed crumbs from her fingers.  “Alright.  Tell me, boys, which do you think has the longer, more prestigious history: the English crown, or the City of London?”

The boys responded predictably—nothing could be more prestigious than the English crown—which gave Theresa all the rhetorical leverage she needed to amaze them at how old the city actually was, how it had been built by the Roman Republic, and when Rome fell away it had been kept alive by common men and women, without any help from any king, English or otherwise.

When the kings did appear in Theresa’s retelling, they came as conquerers and raiders; the boys were happy to imagine great battles and sieges.  After each time London changed hands, though, Theresa reiterated that the men and women of London did not change much.  They patched the place up, took care of each other, and kept the city going across centuries.

Amelia, at least, could easily see Theresa’s clear bias for her hard-working commoners over the exploitative kings and their knights.  As the story progressed, she watched the two boys’ reception, wondering how much might sink in.  They had, like many young boys, a tendancy to favor the idea of knights in shining armor over anything else.  Could they even comprehend that the blacksmith who made the armor might be just as interesting, if not more?

No matter whose story was more interesting, the boys’ eyes started glazing over around the time the guilds started losing ground to the banks and factories.  Amelia reached over to touch Theresa’s shoulder and suggested, “Perhaps we can finish the story tomorrow?”

While Theresa finished her lunch, the boys rolled around in the grass.  Amelia watched carefully so that playful wrestling didn’t turn into murderous intent.  “I have to admit,” she told her lover idly, “I was expecting a larger emphasis on the roles of women Londoners in your condensed history.”

“The historical record isn’t kind to us,” Chesterley answered with a shrug.  “We have hardly any names of the women who no doubt were there.  You noted, I’m sure, me saying ‘the men and women of London’ at every opportunity.  That’s the best we get.”

Amelia made an agreeable sound.  “A pity.”

Theresa plucked the last sandwich from the platter.  “It’s all the same story, though.  The same themes.  The same political goals, at the end of the day.”  When Amelia asked her to elaborate, she said: “Rights for women requires rights for common folk, because women are common folk.  Sometimes even when they’re nobility.  And rights for women requires rights for workers, because all women are workers, even the nobility.  So when I tell the story of London, I tell the story of Londoners cleaning up the mess that the conquering kings and nobles leave behind.  The idea is to wrench the focus away from those in power and onto the common people—all the common people—and understand the story from their perspective.”

Amelia realized she was smiling sappily up at Theresa, and interrupted the smile to say, “And that’s what I wanted the boys to hear.”  Oh, the boys.  She darted her attention over to them.  They’d rolled a little down the hill, but now seemed intent on watching a snail slide down a log.  “Don’t poke the poor thing!” she called down the hill, laughing as Gregory’s hand dropped the stick he’d just picked up.

“Do you think it will matter?” Theresa asked.  Amelia looked over to her lover and saw that she, too, was watching the boys.  She elaborated: “Will what you teach these two now stand up to the… torrent of chauvinism they’ll get when they go to school?”  She shook her shoulders slightly.  “I only ask because I never experienced school first-hand.”

“I try not to think about my school days,” Amelia sighed, looking down on the boys.  “They weren’t very positive.”

“My apologies, I shouldn’t have—”

“No, it’s fine.  It’s a good question.”  She considered the boys for a long moment.  “I don’t know if it will work.  It’s certainly not a guaranteed success.  But… in the time that I have them, I’d like to prepare them as best I can.”  She looked back to Theresa, trying to force a smile through her own bad memories.  “Because it certainly is a… how did you put it?  A ‘torrent of chauvinism?’  That’s perfectly accurate, functionally, but the… emotional reality is… hellacious.”

“Why put them through it, then?”

“Reasonable question,” she sighed.  She could, after all, refuse to pay the tuition; simply accomplished.  “And I don’t have a good answer.  Because it’s always been done that way?  Because if Eustace takes the title without the network of connections he’ll get at school, he’ll be less capable of stewarding the estate, less likely to find a good match in marriage.  It would be bad for the duchy.”

“Bad for the duchy,” Theresa mused, “but better for him?”

Amelia shook her head.  “He’d be plagued his whole life wishing he went to better schools, got in with a better crowd.  I’ve known society men, titled men, who didn’t go to Eton; they’re kept on the fringes.  They spend their lives on the outside looking in.”  She took a ragged breath.  “I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”

The ride back down was shorter in absolute terms but felt longer and lazier.  Fatigue had siphoned off the worst of the boys’ impulsiveness and they all let their horses take the lead, watching the landscape pass through what felt like an endless afternoon.

At one point Margaret decided to take Theresa on an unplanned trip down to the creek.  Her rider had somehow misplaced her own reins and no amount of kicking or pulling on the horn would stop her.  In the end, Amelia had to follow after, scoop the reins dangling into the water, and hand them back to her lover.

“I told you I am not an accomplished rider,” the woman sighed.

“That’s all right,” Amelia laughed, and checked that the boys were still up on the horse trail, out of earshot.  “Tonight you can ride me.”

“Such scandalous talk from the Duchess Regent!” Theresa grinned in the dappled shade.  “And that does sound delicious… although at this point my thighs may be too sore for me to do anything but lie on my back and moan.”

“That can also be arranged,” Amelia winked, and wheeled King Francis around to return to the horse trail.

By the time they returned to the house, the boys were both dragging but Amelia insisted that they seek out their grandmother and thank her for the day’s outing.

Grandmother was in the conservatory, but not alone.  The boys, Amelia, and Theresa trailing behind were already within the green space when the matriarch’s voice cut through the screen of foliage: “The only impressive thing about you, Iris, is your eternal temerity in asking repeatedly for things that I have neither the willingness nor the basic ability to provide you.”

Both boys halted in their tracks; Gregory looked back at Amelia, confusion written across his face.  His governess considered clearing her throat and interrupting what sounded like one of her mother’s thorough dressing-downs, but knew that, once Mother got going, very little could halt her.  Instead, she lifted one finger to her lips and nodded back to the doors into the house proper.

“I am trapped!” wailed Iris, also out of sight.  “I cannot believe that you do not see or understand my situation, and I will not believe that you are so unfeeling as to disregard it.  I have no wish to be a burden on you, milady, but I have no other options unless you provide them.”

Gregory had responded to Amelia’s gesture towards the door, and Theresa gamely collected the boy and bundled him towards the exit.  His elder brother, however, had started creeping deeper into the conservatory, craning his neck to get a better look at whatever was happening.

“I understand your situation perfectly, you vapid little girl,” Mother spat back.  “I understood it before you were even in it!  Do you not remember I told you that this was exactly where you would end up if you married my son?  That you were not at all the bride that he required, and he would be the worst possible husband for you?  And yet you insisted.  You were in love,” she sneered, the expression on her face perfectly plain to Amelia even if she could not see it directly,  “and all sense and forethought be damned in the face of it.”

Amelia quick-stepped after Eustace, praying that her riding boots would tread quietly on the flagstones.  The boy was nearly at the bend of the path that would bring him into view, and did not seem to be slowing his steps at all.  With a quiet huff, Amelia lunged forward to wrap one arm around his middle and clamp her opposite hand over his mouth.  She hauled the boy backwards, clutching him up against her body and staggering, as quietly as she could manage, towards the door.

“Forgive me if I did not believe your powers of prophecy,” Iris hissed.  “I didn’t understand, then, that you personally make sure they come to pass.”

“I’m sure I have no idea—”

But the Lady Marbury refused to back down. “When he courted me, Eustace insisted we need not have children, that we could live on the Continent, that we could leave all this nonsense behind.  But then you whispered in his ear about his solemn duties and you cut his allowance and—”

Amelia shoved Eustace the Younger through the door and then made sure it closed quietly behind them.

Theresa and Gregory were waiting outside, the little boy’s eyes wide as saucers.  “Is Mama in trouble?” he asked Amelia, in the kind of tone that suggested he’d already asked Theresa and got no answer.

“Your mother and your grandmother are having an adult conversation,” Amelia whispered, even if the door behind them was closed.  “And while we did not intend to overhear it, it is rude to eavesdrop any further.”

Eustace crossed the hall to drop onto a mahogany bench opposite the conservatory door.  “They hate each other.”

Looking from the boys to Theresa and back, Amelia groped for something that she could say.  Something that the newly-arrived governess would know to say.  Something that would help the boys understand how adults sometimes talked to each other.  Something that was, if it was even reasonable to hope for, actually true.

Finally she sighed and said, “Remember, they’re both in mourning.  It’s difficult to lose your loved ones, especially the loved ones you depend on.  Which I think you both understand, possibly better than I.”

The boys made no answer to that.  A few moments later, Gregory crossed from Theresa’s side to sit next to Eustace and quietly took the older boy’s hand.  His brother did not protest; a moment later he squeezed it.

Amelia prompted the boys to go wash up before their suppers and watched them walk out of earshot before heaving a sigh.  “I’m sorry you had to hear all that.”

“Families are complicated,” Theresa answered with a shrug.  “You should have seen the rows my family had.”

“I thought you were raised by bluestockings?”

“There’s nothing bluestockings love more than arguing,” Theresa replied with a wan smile. She then collected Amelia’s hand and pulled her down the hall, towards their rooms and away from the conservatory. “We should wash up before our suppers, too. Would it be gauche of me to say I’m looking foward to the table conversation?”

miriamrobern

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Thanks for Reading!

If you’d like to see more like this, please consider subscribing to my patreon at http://patreon.com/miriamrobern

• I post all chapters a month early for subscribers, so you can read ahead.
• I also post epub and pdf versions of the book for everybody.

Thanks for your support, whether it’s becoming a subscriber or posting comments online.  It’s people like you who let people like me make stuff like this!

Sammy, you have to text me when you get home from a date!  Rowan’s message was waiting on his phone when Sammy woke up the next morning.

How do you know if it was really a date? he texted back, bleary-eyed.  I never told you how that shook out.

It was always a fucking date.

The only question was if you’d realize it.

Before you were like a dozen ‘apology dinners’ in and they fucking proposed or something.

Sammy wasn’t particularly happy with how accurate that sounded.  Im home, im safe, he texted back.  Finn was a perfect gentlethem.

Did you put out? she shot back, followed after a moment with a winky face.

Sammy rolled his eyes and did not dignify his cousin’s question with any response.  Instead he pushed himself out of bed.  He needed to get up and moving.  He had so much reading to do this weekend.  But a moment later, smirking in sudden perverse inspiration, he dove back to grab his phone and texted Rowan:  Good girls don’t kiss and tell.

Who the fuck wants to be a good girl? was the—in retrospect—inevitable reply.

Grinning, Sammy shook his head as he packed his bag to straining with all the books he needed for the day.  The dining commons was a short walk away, and held the promise of waffles and bacon to wake him up and endless soda refills to keep him that way.  Twenty minutes later—he was getting quick at simple makeup looks—his study materials were spread out across a table towards the back of the room, along with a tray bearing two plates of food.

He took his time with breakfast, but his eyes kept wandering to the stacks of books around him.  He’d like to start with something light, but… he wasn’t sure any of it qualified.  The same went for “something he was comfortable with.”  Everything in this program was a push for him.  Everything was uphill.  Everything was so much effort.

Why couldn’t it be easy just once, he sighed… like the date last night. Sure, he’d had butterflies like whoa and the start had been a little rocky, but once he got over himself—and really, that had mostly been him making it harder than it ever had to be, right?—the rest of the evening had been… effortless.  Comfortable.  Finn had really gone out of their way to put Sammy at ease, and that was, apparently, exactly what he’d needed.

His eggs had gone cold.  Sammy realized with a start that he’d been sitting there, picking at his breakfast and staring off into space, running back and forth through the date.  He rolled his shoulders, set aside his half-eaten food, and picked up whatever book was on top.  He had reading to do.  He was going to read.

Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellnych Hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage; there he found… wow, that was a lot of commas.  And what the heck was the Baronetage?  Scowling, Sammy pulled out his phone and searched.  Apparently it was… a bunch of English nobles?  But this seemed to think it was some sort of book.  He pressed on—the opening sentence just kept going on and on, taking up almost the whole first paragraph—and apparently, okay.  It was a book that listed out all the English nobles?  Maybe.

Sammy sighed and settled back into his seat, reading about this dude and his daughters and his dead wife and his big house in England.  He was just about to get sick of it all, and especially this rich fucker, when he hit Vanity was the beginning and the end of Sir Walter Elliot’s character, and he actually snorted out loud.  Okay.  So he wasn’t actually supposed to respect this guy.  He could do that.

But then the book started going on about his dead wife, and Sammy struggled to keep his attention on the details.  By the time he got to the dead wife’s friend and the noble guy’s daughter that nobody liked except the dead wife’s friend, Sammy realized that he was thinking as much about sharing bites of ice cream with Finley than he was about this girl who was apparently exceedingly boring.  He closed his eyes for a moment.  He set the book down.

Okay.  This was just not the best choice for a good start.  He traded Persuasion for Intro to Biological Systems and dug into the third chapter (the class had skipped the first chapter and covered the second already).  But no sooner had he hit something that he remembered from class—radial symmetry—than Sammy also remembered how Finley had laughed when the professor had made a joke about octopuses telling left from right.  And then he was thinking about Finley laughing on their date, and how Finley’s laugh was low and warm and—

Fuck.

He set Biological Systems aside and picked up something else.  And then something else.  And another thing.  No matter what the subject matter was, all Sammy could think about, apparently, was his date last night and how Finley had… wanted him to be there, wanted to be there with him.  And how they were so pretty, especially when they smiled.

And when Finley smiled at Sammy, and it was like Sammy was the only thing in the world, and—

Finally Sammy pushed a book titled—no lie—Feminism is for Everybody to the side and picked up his phone.  His text history with Rowan was still at the top of his screen. Hey advice? he tapped out. I’m supposed to wait, right, before like talking to Finn? After the date? Don’t want to come on too strong or whatever.

Rowan didn’t respond for almost half an hour, and Sammy was pushing himself through covalent bonds when his phone finally chimed with her advice.  That’s cishet bullshit.  Do what feels right, Sammy.

She went on, at length, in a series of texts that read a lot like the History reading that Sammy wasn’t doing, which wasn’t a surprise since it was her father that had assigned said reading.  A whole lot about the precarity of heterosexual courtship customs and negotiating through unequal power dynamics and so on.  With a healthy dollop of Rowan on top: those poor cishet girls, trapped in a situation where they couldn’t just be themselves and be loved for being themselves.

Sammy sent back short, agreeable texts as she ranted, and then switched over to his text chain with Finley.

I really enjoyed last night.  He smiled down at his phone as he hit Send.  It felt silly how happy it made him just saying how he was feeling, but then that was how the whole date had gone last night, too.  Easy and comfortable.

It was only a few minutes before Finley replied.  Sammy had tried to go back to his reading, which wasn’t working, but he smiled again when he saw the response:  I did, too. <3

He picked up his phone and settled back in his chair.  I’m sitting here trying to study but my brain keeps going back to last night and your smile

And that kiss, he added, with a touch more honesty, a moment later.

And your butt, he thought but did not commit to SMS.  Holding back a little might be a good idea, actually.

Sounds like I did a good job, then, Finley responded, along with a two-second video of Bugs Bunny bowing on a stage while getting showered with roses from the audience.  Good first date?

Good first date, he confirmed.  He stared at the short, bare text for a long moment.  That wasn’t enough.  Sammy screwed up his lips and tapped out: But practice makes perfect, right?

I have heard this, came back Finley’s reply, which seemed… curiously cagey.  When no bouncing dots followed, Sammy frowned down at his phone.  Now what?  Had they been distracted by some other thing?  Was there nothing else to say?

Notifications of Rowan’s continuing tirade kept trying to distract him from the suddenly anemic-feeling exchange with Finn.  Do what feels right, she’d said.

You wanna do it again? he typed out, but then frowned.  Too passive, too indirect.  Too much… implying that he’d be amenable to them asking him out.  And hadn’t Finn suggested, early on yesterday, that Sammy might do the asking for next date?  Sammy deleted his unsent text, and instead typed out May I take you out sometime? and hit Send before he could think better of it.

The response was immediate: I’d like that a lot. :D

The timing strongly implied that they hadn’t been distracted by some other thing.  Sammy imagined for a moment Finley hunched suspensefully over their phone, just like he was with his.

Friday? he asked.

It’s a date.

They didn’t text any further, and Sammy turned back to his stack of books, head a little clearer.  Just touching base with Finn and setting up another date alleviated the pressure of what had happened yesterday and the question if it would ever happen again.  It would happen again.  On Friday.  And as much as he was looking forward to it, Sammy felt a growing sense of peace.  Before he knew it, Sammy was almost a quarter of the way into Persuasion and it was 11 o’clock.

Eleven meant the grill was open, so Sammy finished a chapter, set down his book, and wandered over to his new and neverending source of cheeseburgers.

Sammy waited his turn behind a couple frat boys, poking at his phone to catch up on Rowan’s diatribe on cishet dating practices.  She’d apparently wound down eventually, and he felt a little bad about ignoring her in favour of texting Finley and then—worse—schoolwork.  He threw in a few laugh reacts and a silly joke to show that he had read what she’d texted.

“What can I get you, chica?” asked the guy behind the grill, with the sort of tone that told Sammy that he’d been staring at his phone instead of ordering for a bit too long.  The frat boys ahead of him were walking away with their food.  But the grill guy was smiling, with a little conspiratorial gleam to his eye.

There were two possible explanations for that look, and Sammy wasn’t sure which it was.  The guy was brown, too, and so maybe it was a look of camaraderie here among all the white folks.  Or possibly he liked how Sammy looked.  The casual ribbed tank that Sammy had pulled on this morning did display a whole bunch of fake cleavage.  Or there was the distinct possibility it was both.

Sammy struggled to parse the many connotations and inflections of “chica” here in the City.  It’s not like he ever got called that back at home.

But he had to order, so he lowered his phone and stepped forward.  “Sorry, uh, just a cheeseburger, please.  Oh, um.  With bacon.”  Because you could just do that here, and it didn’t even cost extra.  College was awesome.

But the grill guy only blinked, dumbfounded, in response.  A beat later, he nodded forcefully.  “Yeah, of course.  Coming right up.”  And he busied himself with the grill, not looking up.

The fuck was that?

“Oh hey.  Samantha, right?’ The student next in line had stepped up to put in his order and spotted Sammy.

“And you’re Leon,” he said with a nod, pulling his attention away from the grill guy’s weird reaction.  “From Ukraine.”

“That’s me.  One cheeseburger, please,” he sent over the grill counter with a curt smile and nod.  Then they both sidestepped along the curve of the grill station to wait for their orders to be prepared.  “How is your Saturday treating you?” asked Leon.  “Finally the weekend.  No classes.”

“No classes, but a lot of reading,” Sammy chuckled mirthlessly.  He tipped his head to the back of the room.  “I’ve sort of taken over a table to just power through it all.”

“Ah yes, Jane Austen and bell hooks,” the Ukrainian nodded.  “Quite a combination.  Do you ever wonder if the teachers think about how the books they assign contrast with each other?”

“Bilateral symmetry and covalent bonds,” Sammy joked, and tried to demonstrate both with the same gesture, the fingers of each hand splayed and wiggling at each other.

“Ta!” Leon chortled.  “Yes, exactly.”

Sammy leaned against the counter, back to the grill.  Leon was tall, and tipping himself back a little to increase the difference in their heights gave Sammy a little flutter in his belly.  Silly, but still fun.  “What’s giving you the most trouble?  I can’t even decide, between all six.”

“Oh, the Austen,” the young man from Ukraine answered readily.  “And I am reticent about the Composition work.  I am not so comfortable with the vagaries of the English language, you know?”

Sammy nodded, pretending that he, a native English speaker, absolutely knew what ‘vagaries’ meant.  “Not the science and math stuff?”

Leon waved a hand.  “Science is science, math is math.  The hardest part about the Bio and Physics classes is learning the new names for things.  Otherwise, it is all the same phenomena under the surface.”

“Yeah, I can see how that could be for you,” Sammy responded awkwardly, thinking: did the Marginalized Scholars program just import foreign geniuses and then lumped him in with them?

“Your cheeseburger, sir,” said the grill guy as he desposited a plate on the edge of the counter beside Sammy.

Leon frowned softly as he lifted the top bun of the burger, and then shook his head.  “This is not mine.  It has bacon on it.”

Sammy turned just in time to see grill guy point at him with his spatula.  “No, it’s his.”  The emphasis he put on the last word made clear how intentional the word choice was.  His eyes flicked towards Sammy but wouldn’t meet his eye.

Leon drew himself up to his full height, expression stormy.  “Sir, my friend Samantha’s pronouns are she and her.”

Grill guy put up his hands as if to say, “How was I to know?”  And then busied himself plating Leon’s burger with no bacon.

For his part, Sammy collected his bacon cheeseburger and left the grill behind, not rushing but not not rushing, either.  He wasn’t upset like he imagined Rowan or a real trans girl might be upset, but the barb still rankled.  He hadn’t been misidentified, after all.  But he had put effort into how he looked, even for a study day in the dining commons, and having all of that ignored was… frustrating.

And the curl of the guy’s lip when he said what he said was so plainly hostile, and over so little.  Because, what, he thought “I’ll low-key flirt with this chica,” and then discovered his own homophobia?  What a dick.

Leon caught up halfway to Sammy’s table.  “That man is… augh,” he growled, and said something in Ukrainian, with significant emphasis.  “I cannot remember the English.”

Despite his own frustration at the grill guy, Sammy couldn’t help but smirk at Leon’s considerably more voluable anger.  “There are so many options in English.  Easiest is just to say he was being a dick.”

“Ah, yes.  ‘Dick.’” Leon nodded, and then coughed, coloured, and looked sidelong at Sammy.  “Sorry if that is inappropriate language for… men speaking to girls.”

“Maybe in Persuasion, but it’s okay here,” he told Leon, and then his table and all his books was in front of them both.  He paused only a moment before inviting Leon to join.  “I’m kind of dug in for the day, but I can move some things if you want to sit?”

“Thank you,” he responded, sat down, and tucked in.  They talked sporadically about the reading—it was all spread out before them, after all—and their classes and professors, but neither mentioned the grill guy again.

He had been thinking about it ever since he saw it.  He’d gone back and forth on the idea all week.  He was hesitant to spend the money, and he wasn’t sure it would be all that useful, but the thought of it, the idea of it, the promise of it, ate away at his brain.  What if it helped?  There was so much happening in his brain right now and maybe this was the thing that would make all of it settle down and form up into rows or whatever was inside the heads of people better put together than he was.  And if it didn’t do anything for him, well then, it wasn’t that much of a waste, right?  He was here to try new things, after all.  So maybe, possibly, he should give it a try?

But when he went to go take one more look, he got ambushed by the stupidest consideration yet.

Here he was in the campus gift shop, standing before the display of day planners.  He knew which format he wanted, with the six sections of graph paper and the integrated calendar.  The problem, the stupidest consideration, the hiccup that he couldn’t believe was actually stalling him, was that they only had two colours: a very sickly-looking olive green and a bright magenta.

No, it wasn’t magenta.  It was pink.  Dark pink, but… pink.

“You have half a dozen pieces of clothing that are that exact colour,” he growled at himself.  “And the green is… terrible.  There’s a reason there’s a dozen of those left over after the real school year, because nobody in their right mind could want to see that every day.  And there’s one pink one left because the rest of them were snatched up, because it’s…”

He couldn’t bring himself to say, “it’s a nice colour” even under his breath.  And that, in turn, pissed him off even more.

It wasn’t even a contest.  He wanted the pink day planner.  So why couldn’t he pick it up?

He wore that colour all the time—and the thought of his day planner matching his outfit was appealing, too—but the pink clothes were part of his costume, the act, the ridiculous farce that he’d fallen into backwards, pretending to be a trans girl so that he could go to school in the City.  That was all necessary (if absurd).

Picking out a pink day planner for himself was a whole different thing.

“Boys can like pink, too,” he admonished himself, low enough that nobody could hear, because how would he explain that?

Oh fuck, did he like pink?

His traitorous brain immediately supplied him a list of colours he liked: pink and white and mint green, scarlet but not burgundy; sometimes blue but only very specific blues, and black when used as an accent colour.

He very nearly swore aloud at his brain in the gift store aisle.

Sammy forced himself to pick up the olive green planner.  He opened it: six sections, graph paper, the clever calendar.  This was what he needed.  The question was utility, not looks, and he’d be looking at it open more often than closed, anyway.  He snapped it shut and immediately flinched at the cover.

“It’s like vomit,” he despaired.  He wanted to put it down.  He didn’t want to even touch this thing.  Which would, some corner of his brain chimed in, make it hard to use the thing as much as he wanted to.  With a sigh, he put it back on the shelf and looked over at the pink one.

He knew if he picked it up, he wouldn’t put it down.  There wasn’t going to be a decision process after it was in his hand.  The decision was right now.

Someone was coming up the aisle.  Was she looking at the pink planner?  Sammy snapped it up before she could get close.  She walked right past.

He looked down at the pink planner.  Yeah.  He’d been right.  Now that it was in his hand, he knew he’d be buying it.  “What am I going to do next, go buy some pens with pink ink?” he grumbled at himself, and studiously ignored the part of his brain that perked up at the suggestion.  “Just the planner.  I’m only getting the planner.  I already have pens.”

Fuming, he took the planner to the front of the store and set it down on the checkout counter.  And there, in front of the cash register, was a display of Columbia-branded pens.  Most of them were blue; a handful of them were baby pink.  Behind those was a hand-lettered sign reading “Yes, we write pink!”  The letters were, predictably, inked in pink, and a rather fetching shade, too.  It was like the world was conspiring against him.

He grabbed two pink pens and slapped them on top of the planner.

It was late Sunday afternoon when Sammy, freshly showered and shaved, dressed and made up, received a video call request from his mother.  He looked from his phone to the vanity mirror affixed to his chest of drawers.  “Fuck,” he muttered at his femme-as-hell reflection.

He thumbed Audio Only.  “Hey mom!”

“Is your video camera not working, honey?” was his mother’s first quetion.

“No, it’s working fine,” he squawked, scrambling for something plausible.  “I’m just… uh, you caught me just as I got back from the shower.”  He looked in the mirror at his outfit.  “I’m naked.”

“Well that’s nothing I haven’t seen before!”

He lifted an eyebrow at his reflection and did not say, “Trust me, you’ve never seen this.”  Instead he made a strangled, awkward sound.  “Mom…”

“Okay, okay,” she relented.  “I can press my phone up against my head like it’s 2007 or something.”  She huffed a mock-aggreived sigh and said, “I just wanted to check up on you.  See your face, but I can make do with hearing your voice.”

“It’s good to hear your voice, too,” he said, a little too automatically.  “That is.  Sorry, I’ve been super busy.  I should have called earlier.”

“Honey, it’s only been a week.”

He laughed out loud.  “Has it really?  Holy shit, you’re right.  Like I said, I’ve been… super busy.”

“I’d love to hear about it, honey.”

He couldn’t help smiling a little at his mother’s voice.  “And I’d love to tell you.”

So they talked about his classes and his dorm room, about if he’d seen any of the city—“not much, I’ve mostly stayed on campus”—and the Roth-Masters, who his mother had never even met face-to-face.  When all the basics were covered, his mother asked, “Well, anything else exciting to report, honey?”

There were so many ways to answer that question, he mused, looking down into his cleavage.  Before he’d actually decided how to hedge, he heard himself saying, “Okay, so don’t freak out about this, but… I went on a date.”

“Oh!” she gasped, more than a little surprised.  “That’s excellent. I mean, I hope it was excellent.  What’s your date’s name?”

“Finley,” he said, intently aware of how his giddy smile was plainly audible.

“And Finley is…?” she asked, trailing off expentantly.

“A pre-med student,” Sammy answered immediately  He couldn’t help but grin at his mother’s leading question.  He knew exactly what she was angling for: is ‘Finley’ a boy or a girl, child of mine who started attending GSA meetings and never gave your loving, supportive parents the honor of coming out to them.  He decided to toy with her.

“Oh, that wasn’t exactly what I—”

“Oh, right, of course,” Sammy nodded, even though she couldn’t see him.  “Finley is—” Half a beat. “—Puerto Rican.  Finley Aceves.  From Nebraska, of all places.”

“Oh wow, a real out-of-towner,” she laughed, the sound coming across a little frayed.  Was it the connection or maternal frustration?  “But Finley is…”

“…really fun,” he finished for her, and couldn’t help but giggle.

“Okay, now you’re just fucking with me,” she laughed, and he laughed along with her.  It felt good; suddenly he missed her fiercely.  They used to laugh like this all the time.

“Finley is genderqueer,” he finally relented.  “Pronouns they and them.  And they are… amazing, and they make me feel amazing.”  He found himself plopping down on his bed.  “And yeah, the date was excellent.”

“What did you do?” she wanted to know, and so he told her.  Or at least he told her a very carefully editted version, without any of the discussion about the importance of passing or shouted transphobia on the street.

To her credit, his mother only stumbled on Finley’s pronouns once, and didn’t seem even vaguely discomfitted at the idea of her son dating a genderqueer.  “I’m so glad you got such a good first date experience,” she enthused.  “Mine was… less so.”

Sammy’s eyebrows rose.  His mom had always been cagey about her past, which he’d chalked up to her being Not From Around Here in Oak Grove, and not having the same bank of shared stories as all the natives.  “What was yours like?”

“Oh gosh, it was so pedestrian,” his mother laughed.  “Dinner and a movie.  But I was trying so hard.  I overdressed and looked ridiculous for what should have been a very casual thing.  And the movie I picked was nothing she was actually interested in.”

The pronoun did not escape Sammy’s notice.  She?  Mom’s first date was with a girl?  Watching family movies together, his mother always talked about how beautiful and sexy the female stars were, but he’d always thought she was doing it to wind up his father.  But she’d been queer this whole time?

“Sounds extremely awkward,” he said, just to keep her going.

“Oh, it was.  I still cringe when I think about it,” his mother laughed down the line.  “But somehow, despite all that, Amy agreed to go on a second date with me, and a third.  We were together for a little more than a year.  Ancient history, now.  I met your father the next year, and that was that.”

“…is Dad home?”

“No, he’s in Dover,” she answered with a sigh.  “I hate when he works weekends, but apparently this client couldn’t meet any other time, so.  It is what it is.”

“Next time, then,” he shrugged.  “Actually.  Why don’t we set aside a day and a time to call every week?  Sundays work for me, I’ll enjoy a break from studying all weekend.”  And if he knew when the call was going to happen, he could scrub off his makeup beforehand and throw on a hoodie.

“That sounds like a fabulous idea,” she responded eagerly.  “Same time I called today, like three pm?”

The time did strike Sammy as a little odd, given his mother’s usually industrious weekend schedule.  And then he realized what must have happened.  “After church with your parents?” he smirked.

“Guilty as charged,” his mother laughed.  “Or redeemed as charged, maybe.  But yes, I went to church today, because Richard left for Dover early and the house was too damn quiet.  So I called your grandparents and tagged along like old times.”

“Gramma must have been ecstatic.”

“Oh, she was,” she answered ruefully.  “Gave me the hard sell on making it a regular thing again.”

“Will you?” he asked.  His father had never been big on church attendance, which had given Sammy cover to opt out, excepting of course for Christmas and Easter and the odd First Communion of a cousin.  He’d never understood the Levchenko attraction to their little mountain church, or his mother’s ambivalence.  When he was small, she’d taken him to Sunday school every week.  He’d played and listened to stories in the Little Kids classroom; she taught in the Big Kids class.  And then they didn’t anymore.  He never went to Big Kids Sunday school.  That must have been when he’d been old enough to opt out.

“I don’t know,” she demurred.  “That place is full of memories, good and bad.  Lots of good ones, though.”  Sammy mouthed the words even as she said them over the phone: “Your father and I got married there.”  It was what she always said about the church.

“One day you’ll have to show me pictures,” he teased.  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen photographic evidence.”  He had, in fact, lost count of the number of times they’d gone through her wedding album on the couch.

“Just for that, I’m going to start texting you a new photo every hour,” she mock-warned, and then her voice shifted to musing.  “You know, I keep meaning to digitize that album…”

“Yeah, you have fun with that, mom,” he told her, standing up off his bed.  He’d spotted the time on his laptop screen; it was an hour later than he’d thought it was.  “I actually have to run.  The Roth-Masters invited me over for dinner.  Everybody keeps warning me that I’ll realize the dining commons is crap and then they try to lure me away with food from elsewhere.”

“Is the dining commons crap?” she asked, suddenly concerned.

“No, it’s good.  I can get a bacon cheeseburger fresh off the grill every day for lunch and for dinner,” he bragged, knowing she’d be cringing on the other end of the line.  Before she could tell him to eat a more balanced diet, he added, “But I don’t.  There’s loads of steamed veggies all the time, and a salad bar that’s… honestly pretty good.”

He crossed the room to step into his flats while his mother expressed her relief and then still admonished him to eat better.  He unhooked his little white purse from its hook by the door and wandered around the room, collecting his wallet and keys and lippy.  “Mom, mom.  Mom, I really do need to go.”

“Okay, fine,” she pouted.  “You get dressed and go.  I am mollified only because we’re going talk next week, with video, yeah?”

“With video,” he agreed indulgently.  “I love you, mom.”

“Love you too, pumpkin.”

Finley texted Sammy while he was on the subway to the Roth-Masters, asking Do I get to know what we’re doing on Friday?

It’s a surprise, Sammy texted back, since he had no idea what, exactly, he was going to do for the date.

Finley sent back a gif of Frodo Baggins telling Gandalf to keep his secrets. Sammy giggled and sat back in his seat as the subway train rumbled along.

He really should figure out where he could take Finley.  He’d never taken anybody on a date before, so he didn’t know where to begin.  He certainly didn’t want to make it something boring, the dinner-and-a-movie that his mom regretted doing.

Although, he mused, the fact that Finley had put an expiration date on whatever they were doing might have some advantages.  It was going nowhere, at the end of the day.  Or the end of the summer, as it were.  Finley would fly off to California and Sammy would stay in New York (whether he made it into Columbia or not; he’d work retail and share an apartment six ways if he had to).  So in a lot of ways, if (and when) Sammy screwed up, he wouldn’t have to deal with the consequences.

He scowled across the subway car.  That sounded callous.  He certainly didn’t want to do anything that would hurt Finley.  He wasn’t going to be an asshole.  But he could… experiment a little?  Try things out.  Which is what he was going to have to do anyway, since this was his first… he balked at calling whatever they had ‘a relationship’ but whatever word you were supposed to use before it was a relationship, that thing.

This was his first whatever-this-is, and therefore he was going to have to experiment and try things out and feel his way through how it worked.  But whatever he knocked over in his fumbling around in the dark, whatever mistakes he made, would all fly away to California in seven weeks.

He didn’t have to worry, like all the kids in high school always worried, about what if this was the relationship that they settled down with for the rest of their lives, or what if they broke up but then neither of them left Oak Grove and they ended up neighbours and attending PTA meetings together, and wouldn’t that be awkward.

It was kind of liberating.

He didn’t want to call this a practice relationship, but let’s be honest, it kind of was going to end up being a practice relationship, anyway.  Assuming it became an actual relationship.  He should ask Rowan where the dividing line on that one was; he was pretty sure neither he nor Finley even owned a letterman jacket that they other could wear around campus to make things official.

And after Finley flew off to the rest of their life, Sammy’s “detransition” wouldn’t upset them, at least not directly.  One less person’s feelings to worry about, since he was certain by now that Rowan was going to take it hard.  She’d say she wasn’t disappointed and she’d try and be supportive, but it was going to be an act, and a painful one at that.

Sammy shook his head.  He didn’t like to think about that, even if it was inevitable.  What would happen would happen.

And with Finley, what would happen would happen in California, which took a load off Sammy’s mind.  He could throw caution to the wind, practice having a relationship, and just enjoy what time he and Finley got to have together.

It was perfect.

“Samantha!” cried Gideon as he opened the front door.  “It’s been so long!”

“Friday,” he corrected needlessly as he stepped inside and hugged his uncle.  “We had class on Friday.”

“Yes, but I don’t get hugs in class, so this is plainly superior.”  He offered to take Sammy’s cardigan, which had been doffed and folded over Sammy’s forearm almost immediately after coming up out of the subway.  The city was hot and muggy; Sammy wasn’t sure why he’d worn it at all, outside of how it completed the outfit.  He was only too glad to hand it over.  Gideon opened the hall closet and gestured him further inside.  “Henry and Rowan are eager to see you.”

He didn’t even make it to the dining room before Rowan crash-hugged into him.  “Oooo, Sammy, it’s so good seeing you not on a screen!”  She held him out at arm’s length for scrutiny.  “And you’re looking good, bitch!”

He couldn’t help but smile at the compliment.  He had been embarassed to realize this afternoon that he had dressed for Rowan’s approval.  Having now secured it, he blushed.  “Thanks.  There was a cardigan, too, but it was just too damn hot.”

“You’re too damn hot,” she teased, and took his hand to drag him into the dining room.  “Summer’s hard to dress for, because mostly it’s just skin, and there’s all sorts of emotions tied up with that.”

“Are we talking about how high we can make the midriffs go?” Henry asked from across the kitchen island, where he was chopping vegetables.  When he turned, his eyebrows drifted upwards.  “I take it back, Sammy, you’re dressed very nicely.”

“That was a dig,” Rowan informed Sammy in an unsubtle stage whisper, and patted her exposed belly.  The girl wore a cropped white tank that did not cover so much as complement the flowered bra underneath, along with daisy duke shorts.  She did have a whole lot of skin on display.  “But I have to dress so fucking boring for the lab, I have to balance it out somehow.”

“So sorry your internship is such a poor fashion venue,” Henry mock-sympathized he brought a big bowl of salad to the table. “But if you do want to make endo your career, honey, all your fresh, hot looks will be swallowed up by lab coats most of your days.”

Sitting down across the table, Rowan mouthed “fresh, hot looks” at Sammy with a roll of her eyes.

Henry sat next to Rowan and shot a smile across the table.  “How is the Marginalized Scholars Program treating you, Sammy?”

“It’s good,” he answered automatically and immediately, and then nodded to assemble his thoughts.  “It is a challenge.  There’s… a lot of work.  A lot of reading.  Labs start up this week, for bio and… well, it’s called Physics but we’re doing chemistry in the labs.”

“Sounds like you’ve got a lot on your plate,” Gideon said as he settled into his seat next to Sammy.  Then he added with a smirk: “He says, being responsible for one-sixth of that courseload.”

“Oh, you’re more than one-sixth,” Sammy jibed back.  “You had us reading three different books just to start off!”

Gideon shrugged.  “Contrasting opinions, multiple perspectives.  History’s a complex field.”  He served himself some salad and passed the bowl along to Sammy.

“Is it too much?” Henry wanted to know, suddenly serious.  The man’s emotions and facial expressions seemed to turn on a dime.

But Sammy shook his head.  “No sir, I um.  This sounds silly, but I got a day planner?  And I wrote out all my assignments and figured out when I’m doing what so that it all gets done by the time it’s due.  And it’s—” he chuckled, or giggled, and it had just a hint of the manic to it.  “I mean, I’ve scheduled my every waking hour for the next two weeks.  So yeah, it’s… intense, but I think I’ve got a handle on it.”

“What about dating?” Rowan asked, all innocence.

He shared a secret smile across the table.  “I have kept my Friday nights free.  Just in case.”

“Do you have any free time on Sunday evenings?” Gideon asked, with a surprising amount of hesitation.  He nodded across the table to Henry.  “We were kind of hoping to make this a weekly thing.  Have you over for a home-cooked meal, have some family downtime.  If that’s something you’d want.”

Sammy leaned over to bump shoulders against his uncle.  “I kind of got the impression you would, so I set aside Sunday dinners, too.  Plus travel time.”

“Wow, you really are organized,” Rowan grinned across the table.

“Well, we’ll see if it holds up,” Sammy laughed.

“How are the classes?” Henry asked, cutting apart his chicken breast into little cubes, all exactly the same size.  “Remedial education is difficult to execute, especially in an accelerated format.  It’s so easy to lose students by moving too fast.”

“Well my history class hasn’t even started on the actual history,” Sammy said, with a sidelong smirk at Gideon.  “It’s all theory and feminism and economic justice.”

“Oh, don’t worry, we’ll get to the names and dates soon enough,” Gideon promised.  “Gotta lay the foundation first.”

Henry nodded.  “College works differently than high school.  It’s new ways of looking at old material.  When it’s not actually doing the work, rather than reviewing others’ work.”

Sammy frowned softly at his green beans.  It took him a beat before he screwd up the courage to say, “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

“In high school, you learn the biology that other people figured out,” Henry explained, gesturing with his fork.  “In college, and especially in university, you do the biology yourself.  You do labs, you do experiments, sometimes you help with research.”

“You titrate samples,” Rowan put in, “and then you titrate more samples, and after that, you guessed it, you titrate samples again.”

“You were just telling me how exciting the work was,” Gideon laughed at his daughter.  “Are you bored already?”

“No,” she sighed, drawing out the vowel.  “It’s just the data analysis is more interesting than the data collection.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” her other father sympathized.  “That’s the real reason why everyone wants to claw their way to the top of the academic pyramid, you know: because then you get other people to do the collection, and you can just sit at a desk and poke at the numbers.”

Gideon leaned towards Sammy, conspiratorially.  “It’s only like that over in the STEM side of things.  Over in the humanities, the data collection is the fun stuff, because then you’re talking with people.  Or reading new sources.  Or hunting through records, unlocking stories.  That’s the fun stuff.”

“Looking foward to it,” he grinned back.

But Gideon made a face.  “Sadly, I don’t think we’ll have time to actually do history this summer.  Not that I’d really know how to do it, anyway.  It’s not properly my field.”

“So how is it that you’re teaching it?”

Gideon twirled his half-eaten roll in the air.  “Vagaries of academic politics and scheduling.”

Sammy made a mental note to figure out what ‘vagaries’ meant.

Gideon went on: “The course was supposed to be taught by Christchurch—old departmental battleaxe, she’s awesome—but she had a medical emergency at the last minute.  Everybody else in the department was already out of town or committed to other projects, so they had nobody.  But Henry was paying attention to the program because you were in it, caught wind of their little scheduling crisis, and told them I was available.”

“Daddy got one person into the program, why not two?” Rowan giggled.

“I was supposed to be starting my sabbatical,” Gideon sighed theatrically, “but I’m not going to pass on opportunities to do favours for prestigious academic departments, either.”

But Sammy hadn’t missed what Rowan had said.  “Who else did you get into the program, Uncle Henry?” he asked, eyebrows lifted.

“You, of course,” Rowan answered for him, laughing.  Henry glowered gently at her, and she rolled her eyes.  “What?  I’m very proud of your bureaucratic wrangling, Daddy, and you should be, too.”

“I was kind of wondering how I got in,” Sammy admitted slowly.  “My best guess was that I’d applied to it accidentally.  There were so many scholarship applications and grant forms, I sort of lost track.”

“There isn’t an application process, per se,” Henry explained gruffly.  “It’s a vetting process that admissions does, typically with their international applications.  Students who look promising but who haven’t had all the educational advantages that they might have.”

“But I’m not an international student.”

His uncle shrugged his shoulders, minimizing the distinction and his own interference.  “I had lunch with the admissions director and gently pointed out that MSP made no provisions for queer marginalization.”

“He’s softballing,” Rowan put in.

Uncle Henry shot daggers at his daughter, but then admitted: “I may have described my own childhood and adolescence in Oak Grove, and how being a weird queer kid meant that there were fewer opportunities for me growing up.  And I happened to know that another queer kid from Oak Grove, trans and closetted, had just applied.”  He put up his hands.  “I made it quite clear from the outset that you were my niece.  I didn’t want any favours.”

Rowan rolled her eyes at that.

Henry apparently didn’t see.  “I just suggested that he might consider queer domestic applications,” he went on, but then he couldn’t keep a victorious smile from his lips.  “And the next thing I knew, you’d got in.”

Sammy put a smile on his lips.  “Well.  Thank you,” he managed, thoughts and emotions roiling.  His uncle was a big deal, and it wasn’t implausible that admissions had invited Sammy into the program just to mollify him.  But if Henry was to be believed, his application had still been considered, had still been part of their decision.  With a sinking feeling he realized that the distinction between his own merit and his family’s nepotism was always going to be murky.

Gideon’s warm hand gently covered Sammy’s, and his uncle gave him a gentle squeeze.  Sammy glanced over at him, and something about his expression brought his words from a week ago back to Sammy: Take what you can get, babe.

He nodded, mostly to himself.  “It’s an amazing opportunity,” he rallied, “and I’m going to make the most of it.”

Dinner conversation shifted to local politics, in which both Gideon and Henry were active and with which both of them were presently annoyed.  From there they talked about nothing: the weather, a recent movie, even sports for a few moments (Henry was a Yankees fan).  Eager to stop talking about baseball, Rowan let drop that Sammy had been on a date, and so he had to recount all those details all over again, ears and cheeks burning.

Gideon, at least, steered the conversation away once the basic details had been covered.  “Who wants cookies?  From Levain Bakery.  Not homemade, cause nobody in this house is that domestic.”

“I can make cookies,” protested Henry, affronted.  “Cookies aren’t hard.”

Gideon gave him a pitying look as he returned with a branded paper bag.  “Can you make cookies like Levain’s?”

“No,” Henry grumped, allowing the point with a short nod.

The cookies were distributed and they were, indeed, amazing.  Nothing like the cookies his mom or Gramma would make, not that theirs were inferior.  Just different.  These were light and fluffy and somehow also full of nuts and chocolate.  Almost more like cake than chewy cookies.  And they were huge: each one the size of Sammy’s hand.  He wasn’t sure he could eat more than one.

Sammy’s uncles fell into a conversation about different local bakeries which neither Rowan nor Sammy were interested or qualified to participate in, so they just smiled across the table at each other and enjoyed their cookies.  This was, Sammy reflected, rather nice.  He’d have to be sure to thank his uncles for getting him out of his school routine.  He knew he’d be looking forward to Sunday evenings.

“Oh, Sammy,” said Rowan, leaning forward to dig into her back pocket.  “I got you a present.”  She slid a small envelope across the table.

“Oh, thank you,” he answered automatically, picking up the unmarked envelope and opening it up.

Inside was a hand-made card; the outside read “Gift Certificate” in swooping letters, surrounded by flowers.  The colours had the look of being hand stamped, and not amatuerishly.  He smiled; it was pretty.  Inside was calligraphy reading: “This certificate entitles the bearer to Ten Weeks of Voice Training Lessons.”

Sammy looked to Rowan, confused.

“It’s with my old voice coach,” she told him, beaming with excitement.  “She’s trans, and specializes in transfemme voice training.  She’s really really good.”

“Oh, Vanessa?” Gideon smiled, apparently as surprised at the gift as Sammy.  “How is she doing?”

Rowan made an unhappy face.  “Struggling, unfortunately.  The problem with serving the trans community is that most of us are broke, can’t afford to pay her what would amount to a living wage, and she keeps taking on clients who pay her half-rate, so… she’s broke, too.”  She sighed.  “And she just lost her roommate.”

Both uncles made sympathetic noises.  Even Sammy knew how calamitous the rent was in the City, and he might have chimed in with a vaguely supportive noise.  But mostly he was staring at the card.

He looked up at Rowan.  “What is… what’s voice training?” he managed to ask, although he had a growing suspicion.

Rowan placed two fingers on the top of her sternum.  “It teaches you how to speak like this, soft and light and girly,” she said, eyes fluttering in overacted pride.  “Or however else you want to sound.  But you can’t just… put on your best girly voice, Sammy, it doesn’t work that way.”

“I hadn’t… really even tried to do that,” he admitted.  His mind’s eye flashed to the restaurant on Friday, to the grill in the dining commons.

Rowan snorted.  “Yeah, I know.”

“Is there… something wrong with how I sound?” he asked uncertainly.  Despite his best effort, he couldn’t keep the barest trace of hurt out of his voice.

“Oh no,” Rowan responded immediately, eyes suddenly wide in panic.  “Sammy, I didn’t mean to— fuck, I’m going about this all wrong.”

Gideon placed a hand on Sammy’s shoulder.  “You don’t have to do voice training to be trans,” he counseled gently.  “And a ton of transgender people never do.  They’re happy with how they sound, and that works for them.”

He looked over at his uncle.  “Did you?”

His uncle coloured slightly.  “I didn’t, but testosterone did a number on my voice all by itself.  Unfortunately, transfemmes don’t get the same.  If they want to sound feminine, they have to train their voices to sound that way.”

“Like everything else, it’s optional,” Rowan insisted from across the table, desperate to fix her overstep.  “But I can tell you that I got a lot out of it, and right now… listen, your voice isn’t wrong, but it’s kind of…”

“It’s a tell,” Sammy finished for her.  The server on Friday, flinching when he asked about fish.  Or the grill guy, who was all smiles until Sammy opened his mouth.

“Yeah, if you like,” Rowan bobbed her head.  “And there’s nothing wrong with being visibly trans, Sammy, but it’s also good to have options, and learn what you can do, you know?”

He looked down at the card, trying and mostly succeeding at not scowling at the inoffensive piece of cardstock.  His voice was giving him away, making it clear to everybody that he was just pretending to be a girl.  But did he care?  He could be visibly trans for seven more weeks, and then tell them all he was detransitioning.

Seven weeks was a long time for people to be staring at him.

He almost asked “Is it permanent? Can I go back afterwards?” but stopped himself just in time.  He didn’t want to tip his hand on his detransition plans.

Instead he said, “But I’m so busy.  I mean, I’ve got every waking hour scheduled.”

“She has a weekly appointment on Tuesday evenings open,” Rowan said, as if she were confessing a sin.  “I asked her to pencil you in, because I knew that wouldn’t conflict with your classes.”

Tuesday evenings he was… reading something, he forgot what.  This was why he’d bought a day planner.

“And it would really help out Vanessa,” his cousin sighed.  “She’s too proud to just take money to tide her over till she finds a roommate, so I just thought… two birds, one stone, you know?”  She looked from Sammy to her dads, hoping for some validation.  “She just doesn’t want to have to move back to Wisconsin.”

“It was a nice thought,” Gideon told her soothingly.  “But if Sammy’s too busy—”

“I’ll do it,” Sammy heard himself saying.  Hearing that Vanessa would have to move out of the City had twisted like a knife in his gut.  Even if he didn’t understand anything else, he understood that.  “It’s just an hour a week, right?”

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"Is anyone else kinda freaked out about just being here?" asked Samantha Jensen.  "If they find out–I mean, if they think we're doing something that we shouldn't be–" She turned her pale face to the bay windows, to where Cole's pillory still stood, now empty.

"To anybody else," I told her, trying to sound both perfectly calm and perfectly confident, "we just look like a little knot of friends sitting and talking in the Mess."

I turned my calm, confident smile across the gathered friends sitting along both sides of the long table.  Maggie sat opposite me, eyes fierce with excitement at finally bringing so many people in our network face-to-face.  Next to her sat Barry, whose facial hair was already beginning to resemble the civil war officers he used to impersonate in reenactments.  Then came Felicity, who somehow always looked clean and fresh despite taking weekly showers like the rest of us.

At the end sat the Jensens, Steven and Samantha, who I had not expected to turn up, especially as a pair.  I had mentioned the meeting to Steven without enthusiasm, angling for his disinterest and hedging that, if he somehow found out later, he wouldn't feel left out because he had known.  Instead he brought his wife, something of an unknown quantity to all of us.

Opposite the Jensens sat Mischa and his solemn-faced granddaughter Trina, there to dutifully translate for him.  George, sitting next to her, had tried to goad a smile from her to no avail.  His own daughters, about the same age, played under the watchful eye and half-listening ear of his wife Gini, one table over.

Hank had planted himself at the midpoint of the table, intent on making this meeting a success, even if he wasn't quite sure how.  He was quick to listen, at the very least, but by the way his whole body leaned forward, it was plain his top priority was getting something–anything–done before dinner.

Rachel and Rebecca had sat down next to me. Unsurprising since I was the only face the Grey Wolf girls knew.  They were all smiles and excitement, eager to make new friends.  Rachel had brought a guitar as promised.  I wasn't sure whether to wonder if they thought this was some kind of summer camp or to try and puzzle out how a poolie had kept her hands on a piece of personal property.

"If any sweeties look suspicious," the young woman spoke up, and patted the six-string behind her affectionately, "we can sing some camp songs to throw them off."

For a moment I considered the possibility that she had brought the thing entirely for that purpose–as cheery-faced cover for potential sedition.  Just how wily was this girl?

"I don't think we're doing anything wrong," Steven told the group, but primarily his wife.  "Like Susan said, we're mostly here just to… get to know each other, right?"

I nodded.  "It's my hope that the primary takeaway here is that we learn each other's names and faces, so we know there are sympathetic allies nearby, working alongside us, eating one table over at the Mess, sleeping two rows down in the barracks.  Although not that last bit for the two of you," I added with a nod to Rebecca and Rachel.  "In fact, I'd like to talk with you about branching out into Grey Wolf at some point this afternoon."

The young women smiled at that and started to agree when Steven interrupted.

"And that's what I'm saying right?  There's nothing wrong with that."  He looked up one side of the table and down the other.  "Nobody's said that we can't do that."

"Steven," I cut in with as much professional classroom authority as I could muster.  I paused a moment to get his full attention.  "Right now we are networking.  But our goal is to change how things work around here.  And at some point, we will hit resistance to that."

"If they are smart," piped up Trina's little voice, her grandfather speaking quietly to her in his native tongue, "they will be looking for poolies trying to organize, so that they can stop us."

"So then maybe what we do," suggested Steven, "is we go straight to them.  The Hosts, I mean.  The Director.  Transparency, right?  We tell them how bad it is.  We… make our suggestions.  We demonstrate solidarity.  Solidarity, right?  And, I mean… they've got to understand, right, that things have got to change."

"Speaking as someone who has been the Powers That Be," Maggie put in laconically, "I can tell you from experience that to those in power, the solidarity of the powerless looks… quaint.  We will not get the Hosts to budge without flexing our muscles."

George made a show of flexing his rail-thin arms.  After a few months in the refuge, though, the effort resulted in a display of lean, ropey muscle.  He seemed as surprised as anybody and quickly lowered his busted joke from view.

Mischa murmured to Trina, who declared, "The ones with guns will not listen to the ones without guns."

"Well then," interjected Barry, "let's get our hands on some guns."

I leaned forward to moderate, but Maggie spoke before I could.  "That's a bad idea," she said flatly.  As she spoke, she speared every other person at the table with a significant look.  "We are in no shape to do that, not yet.  We don't have the manpower, we don't have the access, we don't have anyplace to hide them if we get them.  Yet."

I pursed my lips.  It was a question I had expected, and had not wanted to be the wet blanket who said no.  But Maggie's response was hardly the way that I would have answered it, either.

"Susan?" came Hank's voice, querulous.  "Is that where we're going?  Is… gunning up what you aim for this group to do?"  He looked worriedly from me to Maggie and back.

"I don't know where we're going," I admitted, inwardly wincing at my delivery of uncertainty when Hank was clearly asking for the opposite.  "But I do know that right now, guns are not the answer.  Right now guns will just get people shot."  The table was suddenly silent, as if no one had realized that guns might get somebody hurt.  "The stakes are high.  We need to be very careful about what we decide to do."

"How…" started Hank, stumbled, and then tried again.  "How are we going to make those decisions?  I mean, not to put it so crudely, but who's in charge, here?"

"Oh, are we going to have elections?" George grinned like the Cheshire Cat.  "I'd like to declare my candidacy for Treasurer.  There being no money anymore, I think the work load will suit me just fine."

This question I hadn't expected on our first outing, but given Hank's involvement I should have known better.  He'd probably like to elect a whole board of trustees.  "I'm not sure we really need anyone in charge or elections, not yet," I moderated again.  "I think what we have right now is a loose network, and that's more than we had when we came through the gates–"

"You know what we need," put in Felicity with a bright smile, "to help us push past 'loose network' and into an organization that can really do some good?  We need a name."

"I think that could also give us a sense of purpose," agreed Hank.  "The banner we rally behind."

"The Grimy Revolution," suggested George.

"The Unwashed Masses," countered Rebecca with a display of faux disgust at her own shirt.

"Maybe something less confrontational," pleaded Steven.  "Like… the Improvement Committee."

"The Committee for Public Improvement!" George chortled.

The conversation fractured into a jumble of suggested names, increasingly trending towards the comedic.  I sat back and let them blow off steam.  What we were doing was, after all, mind-numbingly dangerous.  Might eventually get us all pilloried, if not killed.  I caught Maggie's eye and we shared a smile.

"Is this what you wanted?" I said with my eyebrows.

She shrugged, perfectly communicating, "It's a start."

“What about Tall Pines Underground?” said Rebecca with a shrug.  “It’s simple and to the point, right?”

“With just a little frission of linguistic surprise,” George chuckled.  “Tall Pines, but they’re Underground?  What?”

But a moment later the playful banter and now increasingly pun-derived names came to a sudden halt.  I looked to the rest of the table to see what had silenced them.  Half stared down at the table.  The other half stared just over my shoulder.  I turned.

Esther Bukhari loomed behind me, eyebrow arched.  "Susan," she growled.  "A word."

—

I scrambled to my feet.  Caught already, in our very first meeting?  Was Mischa right, were the Hosts and sweeties watching us?  But Bukhari was stepping away from the table, expecting me to follow.  Singling me out, not calling down judgement on the whole table.  I raised a placating hand to the others.  Stay calm, I tried to say with just a look.

"Sorry about interrupting Book Club," Bukhari drawled when I caught up with her.

The smile I gave her was far too bright, too relieved.  She thought we were up to nothing.  She thought we were a knot of friends chatting.  I dialed down my expression.  "It's okay," I heard myself say.  "What can I… what can I do for you, ma'am?"

If she noted the respectful address, she made no sign of it.  She took a pull from her ever-present, glaringly orange bottle.  "Jameson says you have a box," she said as if she were bored.  "I need to know where you put it."

That brought me up short.  "A box?" I stammered.

"You and your whippersnappers interrupted his people doing some work a couple nights back," she said, voice growing harder and sharper.  "You ran off with a box."

"I'm not sure I know what you're–"

The woman rolled her eyes.  "Don't even, Susan.  You called your kids by name in front of them.  It took them a couple days, but they tracked you down.  And they asked me to ask you where you put their box."

"It's not their box," I protested weakly.

Bukhari tipped her head to the side, her perfect glossy-black bang bouncing.  "You think I care.  It's Jameson, Susan.  He's a Host.  He tells the likes of you and I something in the refuge is his, it is."

My brow crinkled at that.  The woman kept her voice low as she spoke to me, as if she didn't want to be overheard.  My friends were easily out of earshot; a handful of poolies sat scattered throughout the Mess besides us.  Did Bukhari want no one to hear this exchange?  Why?

"Besides, it's not a box," I pressed for time to figure out her angle.  "It's a shrine."

The woman actually snorted at that.  "Well it's no wonder he wants it, then, is it?"

"He wants to destroy it!" I hissed, raising my voice just enough to draw attention.

She immediately stepped close, voice cautionary and low.  An unspoken demand that I do likewise.  "No shit.  And you and I are going to fucking help him, like good little footsoldiers."

It took me a few more heartbeats before I figured it out.  “Oh.  Jameson came to you," I said, "Directly.  Abernathy doesn't know you're here."

The flash of her eyes confirmed it immediately.  "Tell me where you hid the shrine, Susan."

I took a step backwards, considered my answer carefully, and said, "No."

Bukhari's eyebrows floated upwards as if they were about to leave her face entirely.  She tried to force a chuckle through her nose.  "I'm sorry, what did you just say to me?"

I dared not spare a glance backwards to my friends, but I did raise my voice.  "I said no, Bukhari.  I'm not helping you."

She studiously did not look around at the other poolies in the Mess.  We could both feel the eyes on us.  "You," she grated, "will do as I say, or I will make your life a living hell."

I laughed at that.  “You think it’s not already a living hell?"  Before she could respond, I waved a hand towards the Mess’s east wall, and Ponderosa beyond it.  "Tell you what, I'll go with you to talk with Abernathy.  We'll tell him what Jameson wants, and I'll tell him what it actually is, and we'll see what he thinks about it."

She stared at me with hatred boiling behind her eyes.

"If Abernathy agrees that the 'box' needs to be turned over, I'll cooperate," I told her, trying and failing to dampen the fierce grin digging into my cheeks.  I knew I had her, and so did she.  Her fingers flexed around her water bottle as if she wanted to throw it.  Suddenly I remembered the gun at her hip.

With an effort, I forced myself to step closer and lower my voice.  "I'm sorry, Esther," I told her as gently as I could.  The skin around her eyes leapt and tensed, uncertain how to respond.  "I've put you in a spot, and in front of an audience.  That was… unkind of me."

"I don't need your kindness," she all but spat at me.

"Well brace yourself, you're getting it anyway," I told her with a perverse smirk I'd seen on her face more than once.  "Cause I can tell you the way out of this little debacle."

She said nothing, which I took as permission to go on.

"You go back to Jameson," I told her quietly, "and you tell him I told you it's somebody's shrine.  Somebody's sacred place of fucking worship.  Which he didn't tell you, did he.  And you tell him that you can't be a part of whatever he's got planned for that shrine."

Her lips drew pencil-thin.  "And why would I do that?"

I smiled as generously as I could.  "Because you're a decent person, Esther."

Baiting her in front of poolies and challenging her authority in public paled before the response that got.  Her face flushed red, eyes flashing dangerously.  I could hear the bottle creak under her clutching fingers.  Through clenched teeth, she growled, "Have you met me?"

"I've seen the act," I answered. "Blithe indifference to everyone around her, easy acceptance of the crushing oppression she lives on top of.  The water bottle you pretend is full of mimosas every day.  Esther, there isn't that much orange juice in the refuge, let alone champagne or even hootch.  But you want us to think you're drinking.  I imagine it would have been a lot more bearable if you were."

She said nothing.

"You were a decent person once," I told her.  "You can be a decent person again.  And you're lucky, because today being a decent person saves you face."  I tipped my head to the side to indicate our audience.  "I've just told you that the box is a shrine.  That's why you're so angry.  Not at me, but at Jameson."

She looked me in the eye, unwavering, for a long moment.  "This is not acceptable," she told me, and then repeated herself, louder.  "This.  Is Not.  Acceptable."

And then she spun on her heel and stalked out of the Mess.

I didn't sit back down, just in case anyone was watching.  In case word got back to Bukhari after she decided she wanted to retaliate against me, against whatever friends she could identify.  I gave them a nod, a light encouragement to go on without me, and went for a walk.

It had been easy to think of the Hosts as a unified power block, as working together, as conspiring to keep us under their thumb.  But the world isn't as simple as that, of course.  It's not simple enough for the poolies to join together in solidarity and just magically fix every problem.  It's not simple enough for the Hosts to see and act and speak with one voice.  And that, I realized as I walked up the gravelly main road and up into the walipinis, was their weakness.

They were vulnerable.

I had spent months, now, skulking through the refuge.  Months watching and waiting, trying to puzzle out how dangerous the place was, and how.  If there were safe places, and where they were.  Trying to find some calm corner to squeeze my family into, where nothing would touch them for howeverlong we had to stay here.  And in that time, I was making such a simple error: I assumed the Hosts were unified.

Abernathy must be an aberration, or at worst a weak-willed enabler, I had told myself, hating the very idea, feeling guilty for even thinking so poorly of him.  But he was no aberration, just a tired old man.  Different from the other Hosts – as they were no doubt different from each other.

Each of them with more power than they had ever had, each of them with their own agenda.  Each of them suspicious of the others.  Each of them making moves, as carefully and quietly as possible, to preserve their vision for the future.

There was opportunity there.

I stepped down into a walipini, smiling as the warm, wet air hit my skin.  I found an empty bed, recently harvested, and sat on the soft, churned earth.  I looked up and down the length of the garden, at all the tender, growing green things, sheltered in this weird, half-buried greenhouse.

I would have to be careful.  We would have to be careful.  We would have to listen, to watch, to prepare, and in the right moment act.  Sow confusion, suspicion, dissention.  Sabotage when it served us, preserve when we could.  But most of all, slowly drive our jailers and overseers mad with intrigues, fouled ambitions, and bottled rage.

We would dismantle the refuge, host by host.  Sweetie by sweetie, if necessary.  Set them against each other, watch them squabble, and then dispose of the wreckage they made of each other.  And no one would be left but us poolies.

I watched the green leaves as the light through the polypropelene turned red and finally began to fade.  When I judged there was just enough light left to get back to the compound, I got up to go.

I had work to do.

—

Sound in the refuge was feast or famine.  In the press of poolies working and grumbling and gossipping, the cacophony was almost unbearable.  Rocks chipping, shovels biting into the ground, saws grating across felled trees, shouts at each other to step back, watch out, shut your lying mouth.  Arguments over trivia that no one could confirm or life-and-death decisions no one had any control over.

If you could get away from your work crew, though, sent on an errand or delivering a batch of whatever your crew was working on that day, you stepped into another, quieter world.  The distant rush of the wind would sigh up the mountainside, tossing the tops of the trees back and forth.  Lonely birdsong echoed through the forest.  It grew quiet enough that you could hear each claw on a squirrel's paw tap against the branch she climbed along.

No one was quite sure when the last commercial plane past overhead, but it had been a month at least.  No trembling grumble of high-up jet engines broke the stillness of the mountain.

Which is why, as I stepped out of the infirmary I could hear the faint pop-pop-pop of submachine guns from some distance on the other side of the wall.

I backpedalled to stick my head inside the door of the infirmary.  "There's gunshots outside the wall," I told the man behind the desk.  "Figured you guys might want to know in case you need to… get ready or something."

The receptionist only bobbed his head in answer and then ducked deeper into the building.

When I turned back outside, the front gate was boiling like a kicked-over anthill.  Wolfpack soldiers and other sweeties ran down the hill to charge up the stairs and up onto the walls.  Rifles, liberated from gun lockers upstairs, were tossed into waiting hands.

"Poolie!" shouted a man in uniform, advancing on me.  "What are you doing down here?"

I gestured vaguely at the infirmary behind me.  "I was dropping off a–"

"Nevermind, you need to get out of here.  This area's about to get hot."  He pumped his arm, two fingers pointing me back uphill. "Get back up to your work site."

With the sound of gunfire fast approaching, I wasn't about to argue.  I hurried up the gravel road.  "Are we– are we going to be safe?" I asked the soldier as I went.  I had to find the boys, get us to shelter.

"We'll keep you safe, ma'am," he responded with practiced confidence.  "The ringers following this patrol are going to get a real unpleasant surprise when they hit the wall."  He must have seen some consternation on my face because he actually chuckled.  "They're not getting inside."

I nodded numbly, and hiked up the hill.  The gunfire behind me was sporadic but nearing; the shouts of sweeties on the ramparts kept blotting it out.  As I reached the top of the first rise, however, shouts from outside the walls rang out.

From my vantage I could see only snatches of the treeline beyond the wall.  Small groups of figures, three and four at a time, burst from the trees.  In each knot of people, one or two were lugging heavy-looking cases.  The rest ran backwards, firing back into the trees, laying down cover fire.

"There they are!" someone on the wall shouted.  A trio of soldiers behind the main gate started spinning the huge silver wheel that would unlock the bank vault door.

I could no longer see our people, but now other figures were staggering out of the trees.  They were lean, dirty, hard-worn men, most in black leather jackets.  The sight of the wall visibly astounded many.  Most halted in their tracks and scrambled back to the cover afforded by the forest.  A few, though, let loose shouts and cries, pumping their legs to charge after their quarry before they could make the gate.

The rifles along the wall opened up.  The pursuers sprayed spurts of crimson and fell.

The great door finally swung open, spilling our returning people into the refuge.  Their entry aspired to orderliness and failed.  Some threw themselves onto the ground as soon as they were safe.  The rest stumbled over them.

A gangly woman lugging the lead end of a huge black footlocker kicked at their prone bodies as she came through the door.  "Up! Up!" her sharp voice carried over the rattling reports of the guns.  She and her compatriot on the other end of the locker hauled it ten more feet inside before dropping it to the ground.  She plopped down on it, elbows on her knees, to catch her breath.

I blinked, peered closer.  I recognized her.  Miranda.  We'd worked seminar weekends together.  Why hadn't I seen her in the refuge since lockdown?

Director Cole came down the stairs from the gatehouse and the woman on the crate greeted him.  I couldn't hear the conversation, but she patted the crate proudly more than once.  Cole's demeanor vacillated between concern and confrontation more than once.

The conference was interrupted as the two soldiers at the gate opened fire through the portal.  A man from outside careened into them, battering the pair into the gatehouse wall.  Unlike his biker gang friends, this one was decked out in riot gear.  He threw his body at the half-opened door, heaving it wider open.  Even from my distance I could hear him shouting encouragements to his compatriots.  I couldn't see if there was anyone behind him, or if he hadn't realized they had all been mowed down already.

But the invader had two guns of his own, and started spraying bullets left and right.  Soldiers and patrol members alike hit the ground to return fire.  Cole shoved Miranda down behind the crate she had been sitting on and joined her there, all in one fluid motion.  Belatedly, I realized I should do the same.  I was well within the range of stray bullets.  I lurched behind a thick trunk at the side of the gravel road.

I peeked around the other side of the tree just in time to see Cole make his move.  The Director grabbed something off the tactical vest of a fallen soldier and flung it at the attacker in riot gear.  A sudden flash and gout of smoke blossomed forth.  Even as I blinked, Cole catapulted himself over the crate and into the invader.  Both went down in a flailing heap of limbs.

The crack of a single shot echoed through the refuge, and Director Cole staggered up to his feet again.  The other man did not move.

It seemed silent for a moment, even though the guns on the wall were still shooting, sweeties and Wolfpack still shouting to each other.  All that seemed far away from the scene just inside the gate, where soldiers were quickly inspecting Cole for any holes.  He batted them away, pointed them at their fallen comrades, and everyone set to dragging bodies away from the still-open gate.

Just as I was about to worry about more invaders, the rip and roar of motorcycle engines filled the air.  Three dirt bikes tore past me, down the gravel road, and rocketed through the cleared gate.  The riders all wore the green and black uniform of the Wolfpack.  Two more trios of bikes followed in short order.  The gunfire from the wall had died down, and I could hear the dirtbike whines scale up and down beyond the wall.  Sporadic gunfire stuttered a few more times; the dirt bikes grew fainter.

It took me a moment to realize: the soldiers on the bikes were running down any surviving attackers.  No one could be allowed to stagger away with any knowledge of the refuge's existence.

The fight was over.

Down in front of the gate, Cole was shouting.  The huge black crate stood open, and the Director gesticulated wildly at its interior.  He snatched up other crates, snapping them open, and then throwing them down in disgust.  He turned to rage at Miranda.  At my distance, all his words were garbled, but the emotion behind them was clear.  Finally I caught one phrase: "Get me Abernathy!"

—

Miranda arrived at the barracks that evening with a ball of half-folded clothes in her arms.  Behind her trailed a young man carrying his own parcel.  His coloring was dark where hers was light, but their features were similar enough to mark him as her son.  His eyes and the tip of his nose were red, but now his face was screwed up in anger.  It was not pent-up rage, but the kind of anger that you hold on to, clutch close to you, so you don't drown.

His mother, by contrast, was surprisingly composed.  As she stepped through the garage door, her features were fixed in a willfull, if disappointed, expression.  She looked across the array of bunks and hammocks as if she were shopping for furniture.  "Excuse me.  Excuse me?  Are there any unclaimed beds?  Where can my son and I sleep?"

She still had trail dust on her, but beneath that she and her clothes were clean.  She looked tired and resigned, but not ragged.  She looked sweetie, not poolie, and so no one was eager to give her an answer.

I pushed myself through the gathering crowd.  "Miranda!" I called out, and stepped in to give her a friendly hug.

"Susan?" she responded, disbelieving. "Hey.  I didn't– I didn't even know you were in the refuge."  She offered me a sheepish smile.  "I'm out on patrol so often–"

"Likewise," I answered, before she apologized for things she had no control over in front of people who might be happy to blame her anyway.  "Not the patrol part, but the not knowing part.  I didn't even know there were patrols."

"There may not be any more now," she said ruefully.  Then she bounced the parcel in her arms.  "Um…"

"You need a bed," I nodded, and guided her deeper into the barracks.  "I'm afraid there aren't any bunks left, but we might find a couple hammocks next to each other…"

"Next to each other's not necessary," glowered her son as he followed behind.

Miranda cast a look of frustration and worry at the boy.  "Not necessary, but surely appreciated," she told me firmly.

"Miss Soza?" came a familiar voice behind us, and the entire barracks seemed to, all together, murmur and then hush.  I turned to see Joseph Abernathy at the door.  "May I have a word with you, please?"

"Of course," I answered immediately, and cast about for a friendly face.  "Gini!" I called, and waved her closer.  "Can you find Miranda and her son a couple hammocks?"

Abernathy faded back onto the slab of concrete that served as the barracks' porch, and waited for me under the floodlights in the gathering night.  A fluttery-winged bug turned wide circles above our heads, slamming its body into the light over and over again.

"Susan, I need you and your family to gather up your things."

My brow furrowed.  "I– I don't understand."

The old man tipped his head back towards the barracks and looked mildly ill.  "Miranda Jacobs has… vacated her suite in the lodge.  I would like to invite you to take her place."

"She got kicked out?" I asked without thinking.  Of course she had; that was already plain.

Abernathy's discomfort doubled.  "It's not my idea of justice, Susan, but she put every one of us at risk.  Five of her patrol members were shot.  Two died.  The refuge's location came very close to being revealed.  May still have been revealed."

"Yes, but–" I started, and then realized I didn't know what my objection was.  I pinched the bridge of my nose and took a deep breath.  "If you make living like a poolie a punishment, people are going to ask what the poolies did to deserve it."

Abernathy pursed his lips.  "Living in labor pool is not a punishment, but living in the lodge is a privilege, and one that can be lost."

"Living in the lodge is what we all paid for!" I all but shouted at him.  "Those lodges wouldn't even exist if it hadn't been for us."

He put up his hands placatingly.  "Susan.  As the man who designed, built, or rebuilt all five of those lodges, I am well aware of who paid for them.  I doubt I disagree with anything you might say right now.  Which is why I need you."

I ran a hand through my hair, or tried to.  Shower day was five days ago.

"Director Cole insisted that Miranda lose her suite," he told me wearily.  "I can't do anything about that.  But it does mean I now have an empty room.  I'd like you to fill it.  Because I can not think of anyone more qualified."

"Joe, I…" I started, stumbled, blundered onwards.  "I appreciate the thought, and the compliment, but I'm not sure I can accept.  I don't want to live like that when other people are living like…"  I swept a hand back towards the barracks.  "…this."

"Which is why I need you, Susan," he pressed.  "I need you to help me fix…" and here he mirrored my gesture, taking in the press of poolies crammed into the barracks, "…this."

I crossed my arms, uncomfortable and growing angry, and uncomfortable that I was angry at a man who was trying to do me a favor.  "I thought your plan was to hunker down and wait until it all blew over."

Abernathy heaved a sigh, and suddenly I could see all of his years hanging on him.  "A couple months ago, a young woman who I greatly respect guilted me out of that thinking."

"Young?" I snorted, and the tension between us melted.  "Flattery is a little underhanded for you, Joe."

He gave me a wan smile.  "If I wanted to use underhanded tactics, I'd ask you if you want your kids sleeping here or in the lodge."

"Oh trust me, I never lost sight of that consideration."

"There's two bunks waiting in the suite's second bedroom.  The Jacobs boy slept on top and played his video games on the bottom."

I closed my eyes.  "And we will work to make things better?  For everybody?"

"For everybody," he agreed.

Slowly, I bobbed my head.  "Okay.  I accept.  Let's do it."

The boys were waiting for me just inside the barracks' rolling garage door.  Each of them had their clothes, bundled up, under their arms.  Jackson hefted my milk crate footlocker in his free hand, and offered it to me.  With Miranda's entrance, everyone in the barracks knew exactly what Abernathy must have been talking to me about.  I took my milk crate without comment and stepped aside to let the boys file past.

Arthur came behind them, leaning on a cane on his left side and bearing a bundle of clothes on his right.

"Oh," I stammered, surprised and instantly flustered.  "Arthur–"

He looked to me, eyes bright and smile shining.  "I always knew you'd get us into a suite, Suze."

I watched as the enthusiasm written across his face dissolved, reflecting the scowl overtaking my features.  "Arthur, I'm sorry, but–"

He carefully schooled his expression, but couldn't hide the bitterness gathering in the corners of his eyes.  "What is it?" he asked in his best there-can-be-no-problems voice.

"There's only two bunks in the second bedroom," I said, heart sinking.

My ex-husband paused a beat, then shrugged and plastered on another layer of smile.  "Then I guess you and I will have to share."

My head was already shaking no.  "Arthur, I already told you, you and I are not–"

"We're not getting back together," he agreed with me, too easily.  The easy agreement he used when repeating back what he knew you wanted to hear.  "It's a queen bed, right?  You won't be using the other half."

Every wisp of compassion gathering in my chest immediately evaporated.  "I am not sharing my bed with you, Arthur."

The bitterness in his eyes glinted.  "Suze.  Come on.  No one else is going to sleep there."

My shoulders knotted.  "The only reason I'm not slapping you right now, Arthur, is because you'd fall down."

"What did I say?" he asked, the squint of one eye betraying that he knew exactly what he had said.

"Does it even occur to you," I grated, "that I might want someone else on that side of the bed?"

He actually laughed.  "What, someone here?  In the refuge?  You think anybody would– oh.  Somebody might put up with that fat ass of yours if it meant becoming a sweetie."

I took two deliberate steps back, knuckles white around the handles of my milk crate.  "Go reclaim your bunk, Arthur."

The boys were waiting for me at the edge of the floodlights, at the well-practiced distance that put them just out of earshot of their bickering parents.  I gave them a tight, bitter smile and we all filed up the trail to Ponderosa Lodge.

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Sammy had to make Finley wait downstairs while he put on his makeup, breathing very intentionally so he did not rush or mismatch his eyeliner.  That done, he tousled his hair until it looked vaguely correct, and added a few little white clips to keep his bangs under control.

The hiccup came when he went to grab his backpack, which had his wallet and keys in it, and stilled.  He couldn’t very well take his backpack on a date.  And the skater dress had no pockets.  Reluctantly, he turned to his closet and pulled out the little white purse that Rowan had insisted he’d need.  Wallet and keys inside, he looped it around his shoulder and scowled into his full-length mirror.

A girl with a purse scowled back at him.

He rolled his eyes at himself.  He was wearing a polka-dotted dress, sporting flawless if simple makeup, and had two almost-embarassingly-large tits pasted onto his chest.  And the purse was the thing giving him pause?

He didn’t have time to parse through these feelings.  He added his lippy to the purse and hurried out the door.

Finley was waiting outside on the dorm’s stoop, leaning against the railing and smiling up at the clear blue summer sky.  The wrap dress they wore was bright green with curls of tie-dye white reaching up from the skirt’s hem.  A few brightly-coloured, chunky necklaces dangled over their chest, under a beard that Sammy suspected had been recently trimmed.  Vibrant green eyeshadow and a comparatively muted lipgloss completed their look.

Sammy took his time getting to the door.  He couldn’t help smiling through the window at them.  At his date.

Eventually, though, Finley noticed his appraisal, so he had to push open the door and step outside.  Their eyes went a little wide.  “You look amazing, Samantha.”

Sammy rolled his eyes and touched his collarbone.  “It needs a necklace but I don’t have anything that goes.  And I… kind of ran out of time getting ready, worrying about if this was a date or not.”

Finley grinned.  Were they amused that Sammy had worried over the evening?  “And the verdict is?” they asked.  “You didn’t actually give me an answer.”

“Oh shit,” Sammy laughed, and reached forward to squeeze their hand in sympathy.  Which left him holding Finley’s hand.  Now what was he supposed to do?  And where had that gesture come from in the first place?  He looked from their joined hands to Finley’s face. “Um.  I’d… like it if this were a date.”

He willed himself not to blush.  He failed.

Finley turned their hand to squeeze his.  “I’d like that, too.”  The two of them stood there smiling at each other for what felt like a full minute before the genderqueer tipped their head away from the door.  “Shall we?”

Finley had made reservations at a restaurant at the north end of Battery Park, but they took the subway to the south end to have a leisurely walk before dinner.  For most of the way down, the subway was crowded and even when it thinned out enough to permit conversation, they talked about nothing.  Classes. Videos they’d seen.  Pizza toppings, inspired by the passenger who boarded with a stack of three very aromatic pizzas.

And then the train reached the end of the line.  They stepped out into the fresh air and the long leafy stretch of the park, and the lazily lapping water alongside it.  And out beyond the water…

“Is that—,” Sammy stammered, staring off at the horizon.  “It is.  Holy shit.”

Finley looked where he was looking and chuckled.  “The Statue of Liberty?  Yeah, that’s her.  Have you… have you not seen her yet?”

Sammy shook his head and shot a sheepish grin back at them.  “I guess I just haven’t been where you could see her.”

Finley gestured across the park to where they could get a slightly better view.  The two of them ambled, with Sammy hardly looking at anything else.  “You know she’s trans, right?” Finley finally broke their silence to ask.

That got Sammy’s attention, and he looked from the monolithic statue to Finley and back again, confused.  “Wait, what?”  They’d come up to the railing that separated the park from the Hudson river, and Sammy leaned up against it.  “They had trans people back then?”

“Trans people have always been here,” his date chuckled.  “But yeah.  Before she was Lady Liberty, she was Sol Invictus, the god of the unconquered sun.  That’s why her crown has sunrays around it.”

Sammy slitted his eyes at Finley skeptically.  “Seriously?”

The genderqueer shrugged.  “So the story goes.  And since she is a story, that’s about as good as we get, right?”

Sammy smirked.  “I should tell Rowan.”

“Who do you think told me?” Finley laughed, leaning up against the railing, himself.

“It does sound like a Rowan factoid.”

They looked out over the water.  “If I’d had known you hadn’t been out there yet,” mused Finley, “I would have taken you.  Distinguish myself with the most memorable first date you’ve ever been on.”

“That’s not exactly a high bar,” Sammy snorted, tearing his eyes away from the statue.  They were heading up the green length of the park, which was… this way.  He started walking, glancing back towards Finley to make sure they were following.

They did so with alacrity.  “What do you mean, not a high bar?”

“I um—” Sammy started, stopped, decided to press on.  He confessed,  “I’ve never been on a date before.”

Finley’s eyebrows jumped up their forehead.  “Oh!  Oh.”  They tried to compose their features, but couldn’t completely banish the ghost of a smirk.  “So this is a first date first date.”

Sammy didn’t think they were trying to be condescending, but he decided he wasn’t going to allow it, even accidentally.  He crooked an eyebrow at them. “I don’t know, first date implies that there will be more dates after this one, and if you keep acting like that…”

Finley laughed and threw up their hands to demonstrate their innocence.  “Understood.  Understood.  But I’m sure there will be.  More dates.  Somebody will ask you, or you’ll ask them… emphasis on ‘them.’”  They leaned in to waggle their eyebrows.

Sammy shoved them playfully.  “Only if you behave yourself,” he grinned.

But instead of grinning back, Finley looked away and cleared their throat.  “Well, I don’t have the best track record on that.”

“Okay, no.”  Sammy shook his head, and reached over to pull Finley back from spiralling away.  “I don’t want to rehash that all over again.  You apologized, I accepted, it’s over.”  They both walked a few steps before he added, “And apparently I just need to get used to it.”

“No,” Finley leapt to argue so fast they might have sprained something  “Nobody should touch you without your—”

“Not the touching, just the… attention,” Sammy clarified.  “I’m not used to it.  And like… I swear I’m not bragging, but you’re not the only one.”

Finley spread a hand across their collarbone.  “I have rival suitors?!”

“Oh my god,” Sammy rolled his eyes towards the sky.  “This isn’t fucking Persuasion.”

“I would make a clever literary reference here, but I’m a bio major,” his date admitted.  “Honestly I’m kind of impressed with myself that I recognized the book title.”

“Yeah well, we’re reading it in Lit class,” Sammy explained.  The park scrolled past them, the sun swollen fat on the horizon painting everything orange.  “And there’s a girl there who I bet you money is going to give me moony eyes over it.  She already told me if this date doesn’t work out, she’d like to be next in line.”

“I do have rival suitors!”  They pumped their fist as if it was an accomplishment.

Sammy couldn’t help but giggle, but his thoughts kept circling.  A few quiet steps later, he sighed.  “I’m worried about it being a distraction.  I need to focus on my classes.”

“Well, like you yourself said,” Finley pointed out, “you’re going to need some downtime, too.  Blow off some steam with a little flirting and dating.  Believe me, you can burn yourself out in eight weeks, and you don’t want to do that just in time for the final.”

Sammy made agreeable noises instead of answering and they kept walking.  Dating to avoid burnout?  That seemed even less plausible than people hitting on him in class in the first place.

Eventually he realized Finley had not spoken for a while and was in fact watching him.  They smirked when he looked up.  “It’s not the distraction that’s bothering you, though, is it?” they asked.  “You seem, like, really frustrated about puzzle pieces that don’t fit together.”

Sammy rolled his eyes to pointedly ignore Finley’s observation, but the genderqueer wasn’t letting go.  They just kept walking alongside him, waiting.  Sammy told himself that he could ice out Finley right back until they gave up and struck up a different conversation.  But they resolutely did no such thing, waiting while Sammy marinated in his own thoughts.  Finally his brain boiled over, and he gesticulated into the empty air before him.  “I mean, I don’t even pass!”

Finley quirked an eyebrow.  “What’s passing have to do with it?”

“Cause when they… pay attention to me, they pay attention to me like I’m—” He slapped his chest, a little harder than he meant to, and winced.

They treated him like a girl, even though he wasn’t a girl, and yes he did a whole bunch of things to look more like a girl, but even then he didn’t look all the way like a girl.  He knew what he looked like, and it was not girl.  Maybe at first glance, but not after any length of time.  He had so many tells.  But they still treated him like they were seeing a girl.

But how to put that into words, especially without admitting to Finley that he wasn’t exactly trans?  Fuck if he knew.  “I mean… I just… I don’t see what they see.”

“Is it not enough that they like what they see?” his date asked gently.

Sammy shook his head.  “They don’t.  They can’t.  People look at me and they… they know what they’re looking at.”

“I think they do, yeah,” said Finley, not quite suppressing a chuckle.  They reached out to grab Sammy’s hands and pulled him to the side of the walk path, under a leafy tree.  “Samantha, listen to me,” they said, voice so earnest that Sammy couldn’t help but look them in the eye.  “Passing isn’t important.”

“But—”

But Finley cut them off.  “Passing isn’t important,” they repeated, emphasizing each word.

Sammy frowned and looked away, would have scrubbed his face if his hands weren’t trapped.  “You think they’re… what do you call them?  Chasers?”

Finley burst out laughing and then scrambled to rein it in, not very successfully.  They squeezed Sammy’s hands before releasing them, and then wiped their own eyes.  “I mean… they might be curious.  But that’s a far cry from a chaser.”

Hands freed, Sammy went to rub the heck out of his face.  He remembered just in time that he had makeup on that he didn’t want to muss.  Instead he flexed his hands and wrapped them both around the back of his neck.  “Then… what?”

To their credit, Finley’s eyes only dipped down into the cavern of cleavage Sammy was presenting for a moment.  Then they made very deliberate eye contact and said, “They just think you look hot, Samantha.  I swear.”

He snorted, dismissive.  But he also dropped his arms so his tits weren’t squished together on lewd display.  He had to get better about that.

“You say they know what they’re looking at,” his date pressed, and gently guided the both of them back onto the path along the waterside.  “I think you’re right; I think they do.  They know they’re looking at a hot, femme-of-center queer chica.  Further details irrelevant.”  Before Sammy could object, they added, “Do they suspect you’re trans?  Maybe.  Embodying some flavor of queer or genderfuckery?  Probably.  But if they’re chatting you up, then they don’t care.  Passing is not a prerequisite for hotness.”

This time Sammy managed to get out a “But—”

“You think I’m a chaser, Samantha?” asked Finley, eyes rhetorically wide.  “I don’t just suspect you’re trans, I know you’re trans.  I think that is just one beautiful piece of a much bigger, grander picture.  Are my motives suspect?”

“No, of course not.”  All the emotion sluiced out of Sammy, only to replaced a moment later with panic.  “Oh shit, you didn’t think I thought—”

Finley smirked, disarming Sammy’s rising anxiety in an instant.  “I did not think you thought.”

“Because you’ve always…” he started to say, and then stumbled to a stop.  Closed his eyes.  His big stupid mouth.

When he finally looked back at Finley, their eyebrows bounced up, curious.  “Out with it.  Finish the sentence.”

Sammy rolled his eyes.  Fine, fuck it.  All the cards on the table.  “Because you’ve always been into me.  Even when I looked like I’d fallen through Rowan’s backup closet and landed face-first on her makeup palettes.”

“First of all, that is not what you looked like then,” they retorted.  “And secondly, and this may be a bit of a tangent but… fucking christ, you really have had a glow-up.  I’m just saying.  You went from noteable country girl visiting the big city to, like, fucking trans diva.”

“Rowan took me shopping,” he said weakly, fingering the hem of his dress.

“Yeah, it’s not just the clothes, Samantha,” Finley laughed.  After only a moment, though, the laugh died on his lips.  “Oh.  You don’t see it, do you?”

Sammy shrugged.  “It’s a costume.  It looks good, but it’s…” Fuck it, he could say what he was thinking without giving away the whole thing.  “It’s all façade.”

Finley considered him for some time before answering.  “Samantha, it’s not… allow me to revise myself.  I don’t think it’s the clothes at all.  Nor is it the… very on-point makeup.  It’s not the image you present.  There is a light in your eyes, a fucking spring in your step.  An ease in your shoulders that is… incredibly compelling.”

Sammy scowled off across the water instead of responding.  What was Finley seeing?  Maybe his new sense of purpose?  More likely his twice-daily microdose of party drugs.

“You were cute at Preview Days,” Finley went on.  “And also overwhelmed, awkward, and profoundly self-conscious—”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” they grinned.  “But now you… it’s like you’ve found your spine and you’re standing up straight for the first time in your life.  It’s fucking glorious to watch.”

Compliments on his appearance were one thing; Sammy didn’t even know how to deal with whatever this overblown and patently wrong bullshit was.  “I think you’re getting fooled by my Fake It Till You Make It act.”

“I think you’re further along in that process than you think you are,” Finley shot back immediately, a cheeky smirk on his face.  But then he nodded across the street.  They’d come to the end of the park.  “We’re here.”

The restaurant served as the western anchor of what looked like a shopping mall, but also had its own exterior entrance.  Finley led Sammy across the street—Andrei would be scandalized—and opened the door for him.

“Thanks,” he said with a small smile.  It was still new to have doors opened for him, even if it only happened a few times a day on campus.  He was slowly accepting the fact that for the next couple months, he’d be smiling and thanking helpful men who—oh fuck.

There was another couple in front of them talking to the hostess, so Sammy cleared his throat and said, “So um.  This is a dumb question, but like.  You opened the door for me…”

When Sammy trailed off, Finley raised an eyebrow.  “Is there a question part of your question?”

Sammy gave up trying to phrase it elegantly.  “Men open doors for women, for manners or whatever, but you’re not a man, so… how’s that work?”

His date grinned.  “Yeah, non-hetero dating can get confusing sometimes.  But there’s usually one half of a couple who likes having the door opened for them more than the other half does.  And in my experience, it’s usually a safe bet that a newly-hatched trans girl will enjoy getting a little chivalry laid at her feet.”

Sammy had to smile.  “Are we that predictable?”

“Follow me for more queer dating tips,” Finley quipped, tapped the side of their nose, and then shrugged.  “We can take turns opening doors for each other later, if you like.”

And then the hostess asked for Finley’s reservation and they were being led through the restaurant to a table by the window, overlooking the water.  The sun had almost reached the horizon and the river was all golden sparkles.

“There’s Jersey,” Finley remarked, nodding past the water to the dark, blocky horizon beyond.  “Your homeland, right?”

Sammy scoffed.  “I mean, yeah, that’s Jersey, but it’s not my Jersey.  Like that Real Housewives and Jersey Shore stuff?  I don’t even recognize it.  The Jersey I know is all backwoods isolation and winding mountain roads.”

Finley settled back in their seat.  “Tell me about it?” they asked, but were immediately interrupted by the server.

There were a number of specials that the server rattled off from memory—the curse of a seafood place—and the two of them listened to the litany with only slightly strained politeness.  Sammy was realizing that, while he liked fish when his mom made it for dinner, he had no idea what kinds of fish she’d ever served him.

“Um, what would you recommend?” he asked when the piscine diatribe drew to a close.  “Imagine that I like fish in general but I’ve mysteriously forgotten what all their different names are.”

Did the server flinch?  Sammy knew his question was odd, but that seemed like an extreme reaction.  But she recovered quickly to recommend the tuna steak.  That sounded straightforward so he ordered that, along with a diet soda.

Finley put in his order, the server retreated, and they were alone.  “That’s an interesting mysterious ailment you have, forgetting the names of fish.”

Sammy rolled his eyes at himself.  “My mom makes fish all the time and I love it, but like.  I say, ‘hey Mom, what’s for dinner?’ and she tells me the name of the fish, and I look at her confused and stuff and then she just says, ‘Fish.’  So I nod and then dinner is delicious.”

Finley grinned.  “Don’t go out for seafood much in the Jersey backwoods?”

“No, Oak Grove has got, like… a diner, a chinese takeout place, a pizza place, and, um, this place that calls itself a ‘grill’ but it serves exactly the same stuff as the diner.”

“What, no fast food?”

Sammy shrugged.  “Not unless you want to drive all the way to Dover.”

Finley whistled.  “Wow, you really do live outside of civilization.”

Sammy lifted a finger.  “Used to live outside of civilization.  Now I live in New York City.”

“Never going back?”

He shook his head.  “Not if I can help it.  I mean, go back for visits and stuff, sure.  But that’s the people.  I’ll miss people.  I won’t miss Oak Grove.”

Finley nodded. “I get that.  I miss my family, definitely, but I gotta admit, sometimes I miss home, the place.”

The server reappeared with their drinks and a basket of bread.  Sammy thanked her and waited until she’d left to ask, “Where is home again?  You said back during Preview Days but I was overwhelmed and awkward.”

Finley stuck their tongue out before answering, “Nebraska.” Sammy nodded.  That sounded like something he’d been told months ago.  “A sleepy little suburb called Waverly, outside of Lincoln.  Flat as hell.  Green in the summer, white in the winter.”

“And you miss it?”

“I miss bits,” they nodded.  “Outdoor seating at the Runza that looked out over a field.  The creek where my friends and I hung out.  My favourite club down in Lincoln.”

“What’s a Runza?”

“Sandwich place,” Finley clarified with a shrug.  “Fast food, because Waverly sits within the bounds of proper civilization.”

Sammy gestured with his buttered roll, plainly egging Finley on, because apparently he liked listening to the genderqueer talk.  “So you miss a fast food sandwich with a view across a green field leading to a flat horizon.”

Finley smirked.  “Yeah.  I do.”  They described a particularly memorable summer day with friends, hanging out at the sandwich place, and Sammy just listened, smiling softly and making encouraging conversational noises every once in a while.

When their food came, Sammy’s didn’t look much like any fish his mother had ever served him.  But he figured he was trying new experiences and dug in.  The tuna steak was surprisingly good.

His date was less than enamored with their food.  Despite trying to hide their disappointment, they finally admitted that the upscale restaurant’s mojo isleño sauce paled in comparison to their mother’s home cooking.  “I had a little spark of hope when I saw Puerto Rican food on the menu, but I should have known better,” they sighed.

Sammy made sympathetic noises and got two more bites into his own steak before his curiousity piqued.  “Are there a lot of Puerto Ricans in Nebraska?”

“Not really,” Finley answered.  “There’s, like, almost a real Boricua community in Omaha, but not in Lincoln.  Certainly not in Waverly.”

“Boricuwhat?”

“Boricua,” Finley grinned.  “It’s just what Puerto Ricans call ourselves.  I should be able to tell you why but um.  I really have no idea.”

“Well there’s no Boricua community in Nebraska,” Sammy pointed out, dimly proud of himself when he didn’t stumble over the new word.  “Who would have taught you, right?”

His date guffawed at that.  “I am, if you can believe it, third-generation Nebraskan Boricua.  My great-grandparents moved there when they were discharged after World War Two.”

“They were?” Sammy echoed, eyebrows raised.  “Not just him?”

“Women’s Auxiliary,” they answered with no small amount of pride.  “She was a mechanic, he was a driver.  They met in Italy, got secretly married in London a year before the war was over.”

“Secretly married?”

They grinned.  “You weren’t supposed to get married, it would distract you from your important work fixing jeeps.”

“That’s so awesome,” Sammy grinned.  The back of his brain told him that the story might have been mildly amusing, but certainly didn’t qualify as ‘so awesome.’ The rest of his brain, which was now sure it just liked listening to Finley talk, told the back to shut up.  “And then they chose Nebraska.”

“Nobody on the east coast was giving brown people mortgages under the G.I. Bill, so they had to go inland,” they explained, wrinkling their nose.  “But it worked out, I guess.  They opened a garage in Lincoln; my grandpa worked there his whole life.  My mom worked there part-time through college.  She’s an accountant, now.  Terribly exciting.”

“And the garage?” Sammy asked, thinking about his family’s patchwork collection of small businesses in Oak Grove.

“It’s my uncle’s now.  Mom moved out to Waverly to be closer to her clients.  All agribusiness stuff.  Taxes for farms are complicated, apparently.  But it kept us housed and clothed and fed, so I’m not complaining.”  They grinned.  “My mom is complaining, but more about the farmers and their bookkeeping practices than the tax codes.”

Sammy hesitated only a moment before asking, “Single mom?”

“Sometimes, not always,” they answered without hesitation, and then smiled.  “Had me when she was on her own; IVF.  These days she’s shacked up with a girl named Tiff who’s like half her age.  It’s kind of adorable.  She asked me a couple months ago if it would be weird for me if they got married.”

“What did you say?”

Finley took a moment to chew, swallow, and wash down the disappointing fish sauce with a gulp of water.  “I told her, ‘you’re not going to find another lesbiana boricua in Lincoln. You better lock that shit down while you can.’”

Sammy tried not to wince when Finley slipped into Spanish, which he didn’t speak, but the meaning was clear enough.  He grinned to cover the sudden spike of unease.

Finley just asked, “What about your family, Samantha?”

“Oh, not as exciting,” he demurred.  But then his brain railed against his own words: Now it’s your turn, now you have to be interesting to listen to, and tell a good story, and be engaging and clever.  You’re on a date.  So Sammy cleared his throat and said,  “My dad’s side has been in Oak Grove since, like, time immemorial.  They probably fought the British during the Revolution.”

Finley grinned at that, but the expression took a moment to hit their face, as if it wasn’t quite genuine.

Sammy suspected what was going through his date’s head, so he forced himself not to smirk as he set up a sort of conversational surprise.  “My mom’s family… they’re more recent immigrants.”

At this, Finley nodded and the trace of hesitation in their face faded.  “From where?”

“Russia,” he answered, and Finley visibly flinched.  Sammy grinned.  “What, don’t I look like I’m half Sons of Liberty, half Pushkin heroine?”  He only remembered to add the ‘-ine’ at the last moment and wasn’t even sure if there were Daughters of Liberty that he should have referenced, but Finley did not seem to notice.

“Respectfully, Samantha, you do not,” Finley laughed.  “Is there a story there?”

“Not really,” he said, shrugged, and tamped down a rising tide of panic.  He should have planned further ahead; now he was heading into fraught territory.  “I’m adopted.  A foundling left on the steps of a fire department in Jersey City.”

Finley hooked a thumb out the window, at the twinkling skyline across the water.  “So you are from over there, after all.”

Sammy snorted softly.  “Only technically.  My parents adopted me as a baby; I only remember Oak Grove.”  He looked down at the remnants of his tuna steak, picking the flake apart with his fork.  The conversation lulled, and he felt compelled to fill the silence, even if it would bring down the mood.  “It’s not like I was the only brown kid in Oak Grove, but… it was close.  And none of the Martinezes or the Sozas had kids my age, so.”

Finley reached across the table to put their hand over his, and had the good sense not to say anything.

Eventually Sammy turned his hand over to clasp Finley’s, and they sat in silence—companionable, not stilted—as the red sun sank behind the Jersey City skyline.

After dinner, Finley suggested they walk to a nearby ice cream place.  Sammy was more than eager to make the date last longer, so he grinned and said he was never going to turn down ice cream.

They left the restaurant by a different entrance, connecting into the mall.  Finley held open the door to the brightly-lit thoroughfare.

Sammy hesitated.  “I thought we were going to take turns opening doors for each other?”

His date grinned.  “Yeah, but you like this.”

He considered protesting, but a beat later stepped through, cheeks burning.  Sammy wasn’t about to admit anything out loud, but something deep within him blossomed warm and giddy.  He did like it.  Not because he was a newly-hatched trans girl, of course, because he wasn’t that.  Finley had said one half of the couple usually liked that sort of thing, and maybe he was that half of this couple.  He was okay with that.

He probably should not be thinking of himself and Finley as a couple, he realized, and flushed even more.

They ambled along the mall walkway without talking, but Sammy slowly became aware that Finley was less comfortable with the arrangement than he was.  The genderqueer was tapping their fingers on their thighs, looking furtively at Sammy and then away.  Were they actually nervous?

He leaned sideways to bump his shoulder against their upper arm.  “Okay, now it’s my turn.  Out with it.  Say the thing you keep not saying.”

“You got me,” they sighed, and then held their hand out, towards Sammy.  “I’d like to slip my arm around your waist as we walk.  But I don’t want to presume, for obvious reasons, so I need to ask…”

“Oh my god,” Sammy giggled, and stepped closer.  Finley’s hand slid across his back and settled against his far hip.  He mirror imaged his own arm around Finley and squeezed.  His head tipped against their shoulder, just for a moment, which felt wonderful.  “This is nice,” he murmured.  “And thank you for asking.”

“You didn’t actually let me get to the asking part,” his date pointed out, and added playfully, “Nor did you ask me—”

“Finley, shut up and enjoy this.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

They walked the length of the mall like that, talking only sporadically and about nothing of import.  Sammy could get used to… whatever this was.  A walking hug?  And Finley was smart and funny and charming, and something about their arm around him made Sammy feel… safe wasn’t the right word.  Taken care of?  Like Finley thought Sammy was worth holding onto—something special—and they weren’t shy about demonstrating it to everybody they passed in the mall.

Sammy’s musing was interrupted when Finley said, “Ooo!” and used their walking hug to steer them both into a hard ninety-degree turn, plunging directly into a store decorated in purple and pink.

“What’s happening?” Sammy asked, just slightly panicked, as they were suddenly surrounded by plastic teenybopper jewelry on all sides.  “Where are we?”

“Claire’s,” Finley answered cheerfully, and disengaged their arm from Sammy’s side.  He tried not to pout.  “I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that Rowan didn’t bring you here during your shopping spree.”

“Uh, no.  Isn’t this place for, like, twelve-year-olds?”

“Twelve-year-olds and working class queers,” Finley corrected with a smirk. They grabbed Sammy’s hand and dragged him between the display racks.  “It’s not that Rowan has no appreciation for trash fashion, she just prefers designer trash fashion.”

“So we’re shopping, now?” Sammy asked, bemusedly allowing himself to be pulled through the claustrophobic store.

“Just for one quick thing,” Finley promised.  “I thought I saw it through the window—ah, here.”  They plucked something off a rack and tore its cardboard holder apart.  Sammy could mostly see wide black ribbon.  “Turn around?”

More than a little unsure, Sammy turned his back on Finley.  A moment later, their hands passed over his shoulders and exposed collarbones, fiddled for a heartbeat, and then laid the cool, plasticky necklance against his skin.  Fingertips brushed the side of Sammy’s neck, and then they were fastening the clasp behind him.

“There,” Finley said proudly, and with their hands on Sammy’s shoulders, turned him to face a mirror.  “Now your outfit is complete.”

Sammy’s immediate “oh, that’s right, I look like a girl” reaction blossomed as he took in his reflection, but over the last week it had been worn down to little more than half a second.  So he focused on the necklace that Finley had put on him.  It was simple—a wide black ribbon supporting an oversized white plastic cameo—and if he looked close as he was now, it was plainly cheap.  But this last week had also shown him that most of humanity did little more than glance at their fellows, and he doubted anyone would think really think poorly about him wearing a plastic pendant.

And it did complete the outfit rather nicely.

…even if it did draw attention down into his fake cleavage.

“It looks good, yeah,” he told Finley, and put on a smile.  Something tugged at his memory, though, and he scrutinized his reflection for a little longer, and finally laughed.  In his blue skater dress, black hair in a swishy bob, and now this necklace…  “I look like Betty Rubble.”

“Like a hot Betty Rubble, sure,” Finley grinned back through the mirror.  A trace of uncertainly flickered acoss their features.  “You like it, though?”

Sammy touched the generic figure on the cameo and nodded.  “I do, actually.”

Finley waved the cardboard backing the necklace had come from.  “Okay, let me go pay for it.”

“You’re buying me jewelry on our first date?” Sammy smirked through the mirror, raising one arch eyebrow.

Finley checked the back of the cardboard.  “I mean, I’m spending eight dollars, here,” they grinned, and disappeared behind the displays.

Sammy looked back at his reflection.  The necklace might be cheap plastic and ribbon, but it worked with everything else perfectly.  He stepped back, fitting his reflection into the thin display mirror.  Leaving his dorm room, he’d felt thrown together and rushed.  Now he looked poised and put together.  Was it the addition of the necklace, or just fewer nerves?

Sammy really wanted it to be the latter option, because Finley had been careful, sweet, and gentle.  He was having such a good time, and he was a lot less worried about how the date might go, now that it was mostly over.

But if he was being honest with himself, he was pretty sure the outfit was the larger part of his looking better.  If only he could swap out these little earring studs he was stuck with for something that properly complemented the necklace…

Finley returned, slipping a thin billfold into the pocket of their dress.  Sammy tamped down a sharp flash of envy; where had they got a sleek dress with pockets? The genderqueer met Sammy’s eyes in the mirror and held their hands out over his hips, question plain on their face.  Sammy smiled, and Finley’s hands settled over his hips comfortably.  He leaned back against them.

His date dropped their chin onto Sammy’s shoulder.  “Ice cream?”

Sammy placed his hands over Finley’s, squeezing softly in the hopes of silently communicating how the contact had been nice and his date should do it again.  With actual spoken words, he said, “Oooo, ice cream.”

The ice cream place was out the far end of the mall and a half-block down the street beyond that.  Despite the sun setting almost an hour ago, it was still warm out and Sammy had been happy that they’d exploited the mall’s air conditioning.  It was also, somehow, less crowded in the mall.  Now they had to dodge pedestrians on the last leg to the creamery, and holding hands was off the table.  Sammy contented himself with frequent shoulder bumps.

“It’s not the most prestigious medical school,” Finley was saying, “and not even the most prestigious school that I got accepted to.  They just put together a better financial aid package for me.  I’ll still be in debt for decades, but you know… one decade fewer sounds nice.”

“Finley in sunny California,” Sammy grinned.  “When do you go?”

“I move out of my apartment August 12^th,” came the answer.  “Lease is up then, so it’s convenient.  I’ll head home for a bit… Mom wants me there till the last minute, like three weeks, but I think I need some time to settle in before things start getting hectic.”

“That sounds like a good idea, yeah,” Sammy grinned.  “Home in small doses, even if it has a Runza with a view.”

“What about you, what are your plans?”

Sammy shrugged.  “I mean, I go home after the final exam, and then hopefully I’m back here a month later.”

“You will be,” Finley nodded encouragingly.  “You’re gonna crush it.  But I mean in broader strokes.  Major?  Grad school plans?”

“Oh gosh, that’s so many steps ahead,” he said, shaking his head.  “I don’t have any plans beyond ‘get into Columbia.’  Anything more concrete seems like setting myself up for disappointment.”

“There’s no rush,” his date insisted.  “And honestly, I think spending some time figuring out what you want to study and what you want to do after school… that’s a good thing.  Or maybe I just hang out with too many pre-meds who are super focused on—”

“Hey Tranny!” The shout cut through the humid, acrid air from across the street.  Finley rolled their eyes.

Sammy moved to turn, but Finley grabbed his arm to still him.  “Don’t even turn around.  Come on.”

He didn’t turn, so he scowled at his date instead.  “If somebody’s gonna shout slurs at me on the street, I want to flip him off at least.”

The man shouted across the street again, this time backed by other voices laughing.

“He’s not shouting at you, Samantha,” Finley told him with a wan smile.  With their arm around Sammy, they hastened their pace down the street.  “His idea of a tranny is somebody wearing a beard and a dress at the same time.”

“Hey chica!” came the next shout.  “Ditch the tranny and come on over here.  I’ll show you what a real man is like!”

Finley tipped their head slightly.  “Okay, now he’s shouting at you.”

“Does that mean I can flip him off?”

“I wouldn’t recommend it,” they answered, pulled open a storefront door, and guided Sammy inside.  “They’re probably harmless, but you never know.”

In the process of turning and stepping into the ice cream shop, Sammy cast a hasty glance back down the street.  The view was complicated by a tide of moving vehicles and a wash of pedestrians on the sidewalk opposite.  But the culprit was most likely the scruffy-looking man in tattered clothing, leaning on a lightpost and leering across the street at them.  If whoever had laughed along with him had stuck around, Sammy couldn’t spot them.

“He looks homeless,” he reported to Finley in a whisper.  The ice cream shop was tightly packed with display refrigerators blasting hot air out along the floor.  A rainbow of colours beckoned to them, but another couple was ahead of them, being helped by the sole worker.

“Might be,” his date said with a shrug.  “Not getting my sympathy today, though.”

“Yeah,” he answered weakly.  The couple ahead of them were taking their time.  “Seems weird, though, that he thinks a trans girl would wear a beard.”

“I mean, some do,” Finley shrugged.  “But it’s more that… he saw something different than he expected, it had something to do with gender presentation, and he’s only got one word to apply to that situation.”

Sammy made an agreeable sound, and then it was their turn to pick flavours.

Later, hunched around one of the two tiny little tables in the front of the store and halfway through their dessert, Sammy said, “Hey um.  Can I ask a question about… I mean it’s not really about the guy outside, but it’s sort of… tangentially related?”

His date made a show of calculated deliberation, and then pointed their spoon at Sammy’s ice cream.  “Only if you give me a bite of that lemon curd swirl.”

Sammy scooped out a generous spoonful and held it out to Finley, who grinned before slurping it up.  “Good, right?” he smiled, and then switched tack.  “He thought you were transgender, yeah, but… I don’t know how to ask this right but… are you?”

“You mean, do I self-identify as transgender,” his date rephrased for him, and bobbed their head.  “It’s a good question. Wish I had a good answer.”

“Well if you’re not going to give me the answer I paid for,” Sammy smirked, “it seems like you owe me a bite of ice cream.”  He leaned forward slightly and watched Finley’s eyes wobble down and snap back up, not quite taking the bait of cleavage that Sammy had put on display.

“It’s good chocolate,” Finley said, and scooped out a bite of theirs to hold forward.  “Not as good as your lemon curd, though.”

After sampling the bite, Sammy tipped his head side to side.  “I’m not sure I agree with your ranking, there.”

“You want to swap?”

“No,” Sammy smiled.  “But I think I do need another bite, just to make sure.”

“That so?”

“I can make it worth your while,” he proposed in a soft, tempting drawl that surprised even him.  Then he dangled his spoon, lumped high with yellow ice cream, between them.

“Well,” Finley smirked, and prepared their own spoonful.  “In the interest of rigorous testing.”

The two of them traded bites back and forth for a few minutes, which inevitably resulted in melted ice cream on the tips of both of their noses.  And then as both their paper bowls neared empty, Finley said, “So like, definitionally, I am transgender.  My realized gender does not match the gender I was assigned at birth.  So yeah, I’m trans.  Technically.”

Sammy nodded, accepting the belated answer and sudden return to the previous topic because, well, he wanted to know.

“But, like, colloquially?”  Finley grimaced.  “There’s a picture of what people think of when they think of transgender people, and I share… only some of those characteristics and experiences, you know?  I will never pass.  In fact I am trying, every day, not to pass.  As either binary gender.  So I don’t know if it’s a useful label in most contexts.  I’m happy just claiming genderqueer and leaving it at that.”

Sammy bobbed his head and held forward his spoon with the last of the lemon curd.  “That’s a good answer.”

“I’m glad we got to do this,” Finley said as the two of them approached Sammy’s dorm, steps slowing to prolong the tail end of the date.  The long summer day had finally surrendered to darkness, not that the humid heat had gone anywhere.  Campus was lit up around them, floodlights spilling across red brick and up alabaster columns.

“Me too,” Sammy murmured, and leaned his head against their shoulder.  He’d maneuvered them into a walking hug when the dorm came into view, savoring the contact.

“I really enjoyed getting to know you better,” they continued, and then grinned down at him.  “And I’m glad you decided to make it a date.”

“I didn’t decide that!”  Sammy recoiled, a little more affronted than he wanted to be.  “I decided that I’d like it to be a date.” He poked Finley’s shoulder.  “You decided it was a date when you asked me out on a date.”

“Is that what I did?” they asked, all skepticism and cheek.

“You may have played it cool when I asked if it was a date,” Sammy argued, trying to play it off as funny.  Why did this suddenly matter so much?  “But we both know what you were doing.”

They came to the foot of the stairs up to the dorm’s front door, and their steps came to a halt.  “Plausible.  Certainly sounds like something I’d do,” Finley said, and then their performative musing cracked into a devilish smirk.  “So.  Since this is and always was a date… may I kiss you goodnight?”

Sammy turned to face his date, slipped his arms around their waist, and smiled up at them.  “Please.”

Finley mirrored his smile, then slid one hand up his back until their fingers nestled into the hairs at the nape of Sammy’s neck.  They drew him close and gently pressed their lips together.  Soft and warm.

Sammy felt his eyes flutter closed more than he shut them with any intention.  Finley was taking their time, with slow, light kisses along his lips.  He pulled the genderqueer closer and might have made a little quavering sound he’d feel ashamed of if he wasn’t presently consumed by sensation.

And then Finley was pulling away gently, which brought out of Sammy a frustrated little squeal.  This wasn’t over, not yet!  He stood up on tip-toes to push his face into theirs, parting his lips to plant a little, inviting lick on Finley’s lower lip.

The movement unbalanced him and he wobbled slightly—damn sandals—but his date caught him with the simple expedience of their free hand cupped under his butt, holding him close.  Sammy giggled into the kiss; he could feel Finley’s lips curl into a responding smile.  Lips parted; tongues darted; Sammy started to run out of breath.  He didn’t particularly care.

Eventually, though, Finley set him back down on solid ground.  They pulled back, and this time Sammy’s head was spinning too fast to mount a bodily counter-argument.  His date nodded up the short stack of stairs behind Sammy.  “It’s slightly more pragmatic chivalry than holding restaurant doors open, but I’d like to see you safely through your front door before I head home.”

Sammy nodded absently; that made sense.  He staggered up the steps, fished keys out of his purse, and managed to get onto the other side of the glass door.  It latched and locked with an audible kerthunk.

Through the glass, Finley waved; without thinking, Sammy blew them a kiss.  He watched them turn and go, heart pounding.  At some point, after Finley was long out of sight, he rested his forehead against the door.  “Oh, this is bad,” he sighed to himself.  “So much for no distractions.”

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Meanwhile, Maggie and I continued to expand our fledgling network.  I managed a one-on-one with another poolie every day or two, usually just chatting over work or at lunch.  People leapt at the chance to tell their stories after weeks of being little more than a body forced into labor.  Sharing histories and experiences felt like becoming human again.  It took the barest nudge to get them started, and then the stories started flowing out.

Barry was a city comptroller and wild for civil war reenactment; he actually signed up for the refuge with other "soldiers" in his "unit."  He wasn't sure if they didn't keep up with the subscription or if they just hadn't made it up the mountain once things went south.  His wife blamed him for bringing their family to the refuge; it could not be any worse out there than it was in here, she insisted.  He wasn't sure about that, but when I suggested that conditions inside the refuge could be improved, he was all ears.

Felicity had always loved the mountains and living in "the bosom of nature's abundance."  She'd signed on with the refuge as a sort of wilderness timeshare, letting her come camp and learn on weekends.  Abernathy had been a big draw for her, and I'd crossed paths with her on many seminars and retreats.  But at those events I hadn't learned that she practiced environmental law, operated a Clean the Bay non-profit, and had inherited one-third of a ubiquitous fast food chain along with her two brothers.  They refused to buy her out, and so the trade in saturated fat fueled her efforts to clean up the rest of the planet.

Mischa spoke little English, and so most of our conversations went through his eight-year-old daughter Trina.  As best I could tell, Mischa had acquired controlling interest in a number of oil fields, then banks, and eventually a television station.  I was never quite certain how he had come to head up such an impressive business empire; before he was a mogul, his daughter explained, he had been "a soldier."  But then he had run afoul of the powers-that-be.  He liquidated what he could and fled his home country.  Life as an international financier was harder—I got the impression that he had been losing money since he'd fled—but all that came to an abrupt end a few months ago.  He laughed as he explained that even though his subscription was an artifact of his refugee paranoia, in the end it had paid off.

Maggie found the one-on-ones harder to pull off, through some mix of inexperience and already burned bridges.  People were less eager to trust her, knowing her own sordid history and predilection for talking like a caricature of Che Guevara.  But she pushed past their suspicions of her ulterior motives and talked, sharing her own story as much as getting theirs.  We shared notes and pointed each other to those poolies who showed the most potential for taking action.  Maggie did her best, but she was always impatient.

"We've worked our way through half of the labor pool," she groused over the tub she was scrubbing.  "When are we going to actually do something?"

"Half of Ponderosa's labor pool," I corrected mildly.  We had swapped out parts of the water reclamation apparatus with spares and were now cleaning out the parts that had been in use for the past month.  "At some point we'll need to figure out how to make contacts outside our lodge."

"Yeah, well maybe if we do something," Maggie repeated, "they'll take notice and come to us."

I transferred my tub into the rinse bin.  "We do something public and more than just poolies will take notice.  Once the sweeties find out we're organizing, they will move to stop us."

"Bring it," she growled at the lime caked along the rim of a glass reservoir.

"These are the sweeties that walk around with guns on their hips, Maggie," I reminded.

"Those are for show," she sniffed.  "Most of them couldn't hit a barn door."

I paused in my scrubbing.  "It doesn't take a great amount of skill to fire into a crowd of people.  And I think you underestimate how eager some of those sweeties are to use the guns they've been carrying around for months."

She waved her scrub brush.  "So we do something not public.  So they won't find out."

I watched her for a long moment, long enough that she felt my eyes on her and looked up.  "Tell me what you're thinking about," I asked when our eyes met.

Maggie shrugged.  "I don't know, I'm not the expert, here.  A… rally?  We all get together and see how many of us are sick of things and… I just think it would do us good.  Right now we're all so isolated."

I exhaled, trying not to show my relief.  I'd half expected her to suggest some sort of midnight sabotage–something violent and dangerous.  In comparison, a rally was downright reasonable.  "So a meeting," I said, musing.  At her nod, I moderated, "Not everyone we've spoken with, or even everyone we've flagged as potentials, are ready for that sort of commitment."

"So we just invite the ones who are ready."

I nodded thoughtfully.  "We could do something like that.  Just gather in one corner of the Mess some Sunday afternoon."

"Next Sunday afternoon," Maggie corrected.  "This coming Sunday afternoon."

I couldn't help but chuckle.  "I doubt anyone will have prior commitments or schedule conflicts."

"We get together, we put names to faces for everybody else," Maggie said, riffing with growing excitement, "we tell some stories, air our complaints, maybe vent a little frustration, and… talk about a way forward."

That last set off my alarm bells.  "A way forward?" I prompted.

"Stuff we can do," she answered readily.  "I dunno, strike?  Figure out how to target the worst of the sweeties, get them demoted to labor pool?  It's happened before, we can make it happen on purpose.  Or hell, figure out how to get our hands on some of those guns."

And there it was.  "Maggie–" I started, exasperated, and then realized I didn't know what to say next.

"You don't think we're going to need guns of our own at some point?" she challenged.  "We won't change this place singing kum bay ya."

I held up a placating hand as I gathered my thoughts.  "I am enough of a realist to acknowledge that it may come to violence," I admitted.  "I hope it won't.  I will always strive to find a peaceful solution.  But you are right–at some point, we may need guns.  But.  We are not at that point yet.  We are nowhere near that point yet.  And stealing guns and hiding them is far more complicated and dangerous than we're capable of pulling off right now."

Maggie was quiet in response, intent on scrubbing.  I couldn't tell if her scowl was for me or whatever she was trying to scrape off the inside of the tub.

"Can you imagine, how fucked we would be," I pushed, "if we made a mistake there?  If we got caught?  If somebody got shot?"

My co-conspirator reluctantly nodded.  "I suppose.  But what do we do in the mean time?  How do we get to the point that we can start considering that kind of action?"

"Well we start with this meeting," I told her. "I think it's a great idea. You're right; we are isolated.  Seeing that we're not alone will do us some real good.  We can compare notes and get a better idea of what's happening all around us."

"We're being worked like slaves by idiots masquerading as feudal lords," Maggie grumbled.  "What's complicated about that?"

"Any system gets complicated when you look at it close enough," I told her, feeling like I was back in my classroom.  I shook it off.  "Like the cabins."

That got her attention.  "What about the cabins?"

"We laid foundation the other day and I sunk the heating and cooling loop with the Director."

"Came down off his lofty perch, huh?"

I tipped my head side to side. "I got the feeling he gets pretty hands-on on a regular basis.  It's not like we see how Golden Eagle works on the day-to-day."

"I can tell you, Beaver Lodge works exactly like we do, just with more pressure to squeeze performance out of labor pool."  Then she waved her hands.  "But you were talking about the cabins."

"Yeah, and the thing of it is," I went on, "those cabins aren't going to house a lot of people."

Maggie paused in her scrubbing.  "Like how many?"

"It's hard to say," I admitted, "but they're not much bigger than a pair of suites.  Maybe four bedrooms?  If we put a family of four in each bedroom, we'd need to build twelve cabins just for Ponderosa.  Expand that to the whole refuge, that's sixty cabins.  And it's not like the population actually breaks down into convenient four-person families like that.  We'd probably need twice as many until it's actually families in bedrooms and not random groupings of people."

"Yeah, I think your boys are great and all, but I'm in no rush to make them roommates."

"So a hundred cabins?" I pressed on.  "Even assuming we have the materials on-site and enough room for one hundred build sites–and I doubt that a great deal–it's taken Ponderosa six weeks to get one cabin half done and two more foundations dug.  Even if we speed up with experience, that’s at least a year for twelve cabins, assuming the other lodges are progressing like us. Take winter into account, and a conservative estimate says it's a year and a half until we have cabins for everybody."

"Mother fucker," Maggie breathed.

"Even if we get better and faster," I went on, "and this is still assuming we can dig up that many rocks and fell that many trees, it's at least a year before we're done.  And the Hosts aren't stupid.  They've got far more information than we do, and they can do math."

The woman scowled.  "You're getting at something but I'm still reeling at a year of grueling labor."

"The Hosts know that the cabins won't solve the poolie housing problem.  Not any time soon.  So the question becomes: what is the actual purpose of the cabins building project?"

Maggie stared at me for some time before repeating herself: "Mother Fucker!"

Maggie tried to go back to scrubbing and found she couldn't.  "I bet they're for the Hosts," she spat.  "Have you seen the little cubbyholes they've got to live in?"

"If they were for Hosts, we wouldn't be building one for Abernathy," I pointed out.  "He likes his cubbyhole, been living in it for years already.  And besides, we're building three, and the other lodges are supposed to be ahead of us, so even more."

"For sweeties, then," Maggie revised without missing a beat.  "Because the suites they're in aren't good enough for their delicate sensibilities."

I refrained from mentioning her own delicate sensibilities which she'd indulged in a lothario's suite for a few weeks.

"And when sweeties move into a cabin, that frees up a suite," she continued with the renewed vigor of fresh injustice.  "Which the Hosts use as an incentive to keep us poolies in line.  Favorites get promoted to the lodge.  So poolies, then sweeties, then whatever we call the fucks in the cabins, and the Hosts on top.  They've got this whole caste system game nailed."

"I'm not sure they're that intentional about it," I moderated, even as I remembered Cole talking about "building culture."

"They're entirely intentional about this," Maggie insisted.  "It's just like the empty suite in Beaver lodge."

I blinked.  "The what, now?"

"The empty suite in Beaver," Maggie repeated, and actually started scrubbing again. "Have you not heard of this?"  When I shook my head, she explained: "Clark keeps one of her suites empty, just waiting for the right subscribers to prove themselves worthy of it."

"Seriously?" I asked, incredulous.

Maggie snapped her chin up and down in one sharp nod.  "I've seen it."

"And it's not… damaged, or its bathrooms' broken or something?" I suggested, groping for some reasonable explanation.

"Aw, aren't you cute, trying to find an excuse for them," she sneered.  "No, Polyanna, it's a perfectly functional suite.  I tried the taps, and…" She faltered for a moment, then pushed on through.  "I can attest the bed works just fine, too."

Maggie fell silent after that, no doubt reliving old betrayals and recriminations in her head.  I, meanwhile, was trying to come to grips with a suite sitting empty in Beaver lodge while dozens of families slept in makeshift cots and hammocks just next door.  A functioning shower.  Space to stretch out, to feel comfortable, to feel human.  All of it, denied to homeless refugees (what else were we?) to make us work harder.  It was monstrous.

I set aside a clean tub and picked up the next one.  "I'm starting to look forward to our little gathering, Maggie.  Thank you for suggesting it."

I never told Maggie anything more about my interaction with Cole, about how I got him to talk.  I didn't tell her about Aubrey, either, but there was little secret to keep, there, outside of whatever was in those vials.  But I'd flirted with Cole and he'd responded.  Somehow that felt more significant than running drugs for a sweetie I'd slept with months ago.

Did I hold my tongue about Cole because I feared that Maggie would want me to exploit that link with the Director of the refuge?  Did I stay quiet about Aubrey because I knew Maggie would have nothing but disdain for an affair with a sweetie?

Or did I just want to keep those interactions to myself, a secret only for me to know–for me to mull over in my bunk at night?

Sometimes I wondered if I kept delivering Aubrey's envelopes just for her perfume.  Each time she gave me a handoff I would smell her for the rest of the day, as if I could turn around and she'd be there behind me.  When she stepped close, the heady mix of that fragrance, her body heat, her breath, even the barest hint of her sweat in the summer heat… it overwhelmed me.

I told myself that I trusted her, in my more sober moments, that I knew she was a woman of principles and if she said it needed to be done, it did.  But what did I know of her, really?  Two nights of drinking wine on the Lodge balcony, chatting and flirting: that was all I had to go on, and in that moment most of my attention had been focused on oh-god-is-this-really-happening, not some inventory of her moral character.

But I did know Cole.  Compared to my one weekend with Aubrey, I'd spent dozens working alongside Cole.  An intense man, and a driven one–so driven, in fact, that he'd disregard the little problems until they turned into big problems.  Reckless.  Your typical man-with-a-vision who'll stop at nothing to see it come true.  And this was the man whose eager smile and responsive chatter I was keeping to myself?  Why?

In all the time I'd known him, over the course of years, he'd never made a move, never expressed romantic interest in me.  Had things changed, cooped up in the refuge for who knows how long, putting him on the prowl for companionship?  Or had I, perhaps, imagined it all?

I was not young.  Two grown boys in my wake, too.  These were not the kind of things that men looked for, in my experience.  If Jameson could marry the three prettiest girls in his Lodge, no doubt Cole could, too.  For all I knew, Cole kept a rotation of sweet young things from Golden Eagle cycling through his bedroom.

Maybe I hadn't said anything about Cole because Maggie might laugh at the very idea I'd turned his head.  And that laugh would shatter all of it, like a house of mirrors collapsing.  If Cole couldn't possibly want me, neither could Aubrey. The only person who could want me was Arthur, and that for nostalgia more than anything else.  More accurately, the sense that he'd had something taken away unjustly and he'd like it back, if only to prove that he'd never really lost it, never fumbled it, never screwed up.

Every once in a while, though, I'd catch Arthur looking me up, not possessively but with a familiar hunger in his eyes.  It wasn't all nostalgia and wounded pride with him.  And if Arthur wanted me like that, perhaps it was not impossible that Cole and Aubrey might, too.

Which was the core of it, I realized: I kept these interactions to myself just to preserve the possibility of romance, that I might be wanted.  Day to day, I was a dusty, dirty, achey, stinky mess, accounted as nothing more than a strong back and a pair of willing hands.  Barely human.  But if someone might think of me as something more… even the hope of it made me feel alive.  Made me forget the grime and the stench.  Kept me sane.

Even if it was the resident despot.  Or some sort of drug-running rogue medic.  For the sake of retaining my sanity and humanity, I'd take what I could get.

—

"Hey, we remember you!" cried one of two young women who dropped their trays onto the table and sat down opposite me.  For a moment, I struggled to place them.  One plump, blonde, and cheery; the other lanky, brunette, and also cheery.  Neither could be more than twenty-five; I felt like I was back in the first few weeks of fall semester, trying to remember the names of new students.  "From church a few weeks ago, right?"

"Oh, right, of course," I responded with a nod.  They were the two girls from Gray Wolf Lodge who'd sat near me.  "How goes your hunt for some nice young men?"

They tittered at that, but the giggles died off quickly.

"Not so well," I observed.

"We are not the only applicants for the positions," the darker-haired one noted sourly.  "And we're not sure the others are playing fair."  She looked sidelong at her friend, who shared an aggrieved sigh with her.

"There are rumors," the other one explained, "that the Mountain Lion boys have a… secret hideaway somewhere in the refuge, where they…"  She waved a dispirited hand.

"Apparently it's pretty seedy," her friend put in.  "But it has a tatty old mattress, so it gets the job done."

I wrinkled my nose in sympathy.  "I'm sorry to hear that.  Remind me your names?  I'm Susan."

Rachel was the curvy blonde; Rebecca the brunette.  "Thanks for letting us sit with you, by the way. We don't know a lot of people in third mess."

Making conversation, I asked why we had the pleasure of their company.  "Oh, we were playing waitress for the Wolfpack while they had their–what was it–strategic planning meeting," Rachel said, and then giggled.  "Not that I think that will happen again."

Her friend shared her amusement.  "Did you see Tzavaras's face?" she laughed.  "She was so pissed."

My ears had immediately perked at 'strategic planning,' so I prompted the conversation along, hoping to steer it back towards what they might have overheard.  "Do they usually have… waitresses for their meetings?"

Rachel shook her head.  "No, it was some lieutenant's bright idea.  He got his hands on some hooch, and wanted… well.  I got the feeling he was hoping we'd wear less as we poured drinks."

Rebecca snorted.  "Yeah.  Because when I was packing to hike through the mountains to a secret summer camp to wait out the apocalypse, I made sure to grab my bikini."

"Well I did," Rachel said with a smile.  "But mostly because my one-piece was dirty and I thought, you know, maybe swimming?  Before we found out what it was really like."

I chuckled along with them, then applied a little pressure towards juicier details.  "You said Tzavaras was angry.  Did she just not want you two overhearing their bickering about poolie management?"  I hoped, though, that there had been more sensitive information bandied about.

"Oh, no, that's not what pissed her off," Rebecca laughed.  "She was upset that one of her guys wanted us to be eye candy.  Chewed him out for it but good, too."

My eyebrows lifted.  "Is she… normally so… concerned?"

Rachel looked uncertain but Rebecca nodded eagerly.  "Tzavaras has got our back.  I mean, I just assume it's from being a lady in the military for so long, but she takes no shit on the misogyny front."  Then she covered her lips with the tips of her fingers.  "Oh, excuse my language."

Rachel winked conspiratorially across the table.  "We may have… tested the quality of the hooch we were serving."

I laughed.  "Any good?"

"Oh, it was awful," Rebecca giggled.

Rachel looked dubiously at her friend.  "And stronger than it looked."

"Tzavaras okay with drunk soldiers at her strategy meeting?" I prompted with a smirk which I hope invited gossip.

Rebecca snorted.  "I think that's the only reason she let us stay," she tittered.

"I'm sure they were only talking about who digs what hole, anyway," I said.  I wasn't sure if I was more amused or frustrated at how diffident the two tipsy ladies were proving to be.

"No, they were all looking over maps and talking about–what was it–assault vectors.  Seizing targets."

"Force multipliers," the other put in. "Site B."

A scowl knit itself across my brow.  "Maps of the refuge?" I asked, trying to tamp down my instant suspicion, or at least make it less visible.  Was Tzavaras planning some sort of coup?

"No, road maps, city maps," Rebecca shook her head.  "Not here.  Other places."

I frowned.  "Were they… hypothetical war games and the like?"

Suddenly grave, Rachel shook her head.  "No, they were very serious about how much risk they were willing to take for each target."

"So they're planning raids,” I concluded soberly.

For a brief moment, Rachel met my eye and I could feel the full, terrible weight of the revelation.  The Wolfpack weren't happy guarding the henhouse.

Rebecca, missing the gravity between the two of us, shrugged.  "When all you've got is a hammer, right?  And Tzavaras is in command of a whole bag of hammers."  A beat later, she realized what she'd said and dissolved into giggles.

"If they piss someone off and lead them back here–" I said to Rachel fearfully.  She only shrugged helplessly.  As if we didn't have enough to worry about inside the refuge, now I could contemplate the spectre of raids against a poorly-selected target, more capable or more vindictive than they appeared, escalating to some sort of petty war.

Not to mention the sickening prospect that all our work would be supporting a band of plundering bandits.  A voice in the back of my head sourly noted that we'd jokingly called the refuge proto-feudal, and now we'd achieved full bloom.

The two women had gleaned no further details, so we moved on to other, less distressing topics.  Almost out of habit, I fell into the ebb and flow of a relational meeting, interviewing the both of them.

Despite appearances, Rachel and Rebecca were not old friends who had come to the refuge together.  Rachel was 19, fresh from taking a year off to backpack around Europe–a trip funded by her stock broker parents.  She had planned to attend her mother's alma mater in the fall, but wasn't very enthusiastic about the prospect.  Those plans had obviously been cancelled in the panicked flight to Tall Pines.

Rebecca, by contrast, was a university sophomore studying anthropology and dance ("because why have one useless major when you can have two?").  Her boyfriend had insisted on bringing her to the refuge when his parents decided it was time for the family to bug out of civilization.  They did not have a spare subscription for her; it was a terrible gamble that could have left her abandoned outside the gate.  But the boyfriend hadn’t made it–gunned down before they ever reached the mountain–and so Rebecca took his berth.

The two met in the Gray Wolf labor pool and latched on to each other immediately.  It was easy to see why: Rachel looked up to Rebecca's relative maturity while Rebecca relied on her friend's familiarity with the refuge and the refugee elites who populated it.  (Even tipsy, Rebecca had carefully deflected any questions about her family's wealth growing up.)  They served as each other's bulwark against the refuge's sometimes incomprehensible yet ever-present dangers.

I heard myself say, "Hey, after lunch on Sunday, there's a bunch of us meeting up here in the Mess.  Just to… chat, hang out, maybe vent our gripes to sympathetic ears.  If you wanted to join us?"  Why was I inviting them to the networking event?  Had I got caught up in the rhythm of the relational meeting and invited them by reflex?

They hardly struck me as the type to take action, but rather the type to roll over and vainly try to follow whatever rules were inflicted on them.  Perhaps they'd cry to each other in a weak, private moment about how it was all so hard.  But stepping up to change the rules themselves must have seemed as alien to them as bucking down to honest labor would seem to Bukhari.

Perhaps it was their youthful vitality (how much did I miss having students to inspire me!).  Did I unconsciously detect some hidden reservoir of determination beneath Rebecca's obfuscated past?  Or most likely, I told myself, it was that strength they clearly gave each other, the strength to persevere against an incoherent but plainly hostile world.  That was something that our fledgling network could use.

Both of the lit up like lightbulbs at the invitation.  "I'll bring my guitar!" Rachel promised, and before I could ask how she had come to possess one, they rose to leave.  "It was really nice catching up with you!" they smiled, and then disappeared into the press of poolies filing out the doors.

What had happened?  It felt like my head was spinning.  I chuckled at myself and downed the rest of the water in my mug.  Young people.

miriamrobern

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“Samantha!” Finley called out, ducking between foreign students as they flooded out of the classroom en masse.

Sammy had retained hardly anything from the hour-long class, distracted by the presence of the genderqueer at the front.  Finley hadn’t made it any easier, trying to catch his eye and offering little smiles as if nobody else would notice.  And now they were following him across campus, and their legs were a lot longer than his.

With a sigh, he turned to face them.

“Hey,” they panted, smiling, as they jogged up to him.  Their eyes dipped down and back up.  “You look fantastic.”

Sammy rolled his eyes.  He knew how he looked: like a fake.  Although he did have to admit he looked like a competent fake, so there was that.  “Uh, thanks?  You look nice, too.”

Finley looked downright respectable, which was a weird look on them.  Tailored dress pants, a matching blazer over a creamy silk blouse, and fucking loafers.  A pair of beaded necklaces dangled over their partially exposed chest.  Sammy forced himself to make eye contact.

They grimaced down at their clothes.  “Thanks, I… actually struggled with this outfit a lot more than I felt was necessary.  It’s my first TA gig, so I wanted to look… reputable and approachable and still queer and—” But then they shook their head and shoulders like a dog shedding water.  “All of that is besides the point.  I wanted to apologize.”

Sammy scowled softly.  He almost wished Finley wouldn’t apologize, wouldn’t ever say anything about the last night of Preview Days.  This promised to be awkward; Sammy had probably done something wrong, Finley would call him out for it, and he’d feel like a stupid child.  “What for?” he asked with trepidation.

“For how I acted at the CQA mixer,” they said, face crumpling a bit.  “I was just… I was really happy to see you and got… overly excited about it.  Which isn’t an excuse.  I trampled all over your bodily autonomy and didn’t check your boundaries and was just… an ass.”

Sammy found himself shaking his head.  “You weren’t—” he started, then trailed off.

Finley gave him a look.  “I know what ‘Jessica called, she needs our help’ means, Samantha.  And I am… fucking mortified I made you feel like you needed a rescue.”

“I didn’t—” he started, and then stopped himself from denying that he had in fact felt like he’d needed a rescue because he’d asked for it, hadn’t he?  “It was just… it was a lot.  And I didn’t know any other way out.”

Finley folded their hands over their valise, a gesture plainly chosen to keep their hands from reaching out to him.  “Yeah, and I should have given you ways out.  And I’m sorry I didn’t.  And I promise I’ll do better in the future.  Not just with you, but with everybody. Which isn’t to assume you even want to talk to me again.”

“Well, you are my TA,” Sammy pointed out with a slight smile.  “We’ll be seeing each other three times a week all summer.”

But their face crumpled again at the reminder.  “Is that a problem?  I should probably tell the prof…”

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” Sammy assured them in a rush, reaching out a little.  He snatched his hand back when he realized what he was doing, folding it up against his belly.  “And I like… talking with you, and I do want to talk to you again.”

“Yeah?” they asked with a shy little smile.

That smile was so delicate and tentative that Sammy suddenly wanted to leap forward and kiss all their nerves away.  He blinked.  Calm the fuck down, brain.

“Can I take you to dinner sometime as an apology?” Finley was asking.  “I’m sure you’re not sick of the dining commons yet, but… trust me, you’ll get there, and a little variety goes a long way.”

“I’d like that,” Sammy answered, and sublimated his impulse to lean forward into a much safer friendly smile.  “The next two months I’m going all-in on my classes for the program, but… I think I’m going to need some downtime, too.”

“Excellent.  I’ll—” Finley started, and then fumbled into their pocket.  “Can I get your number so we can text details?”

They handed over their phone; Sammy punched in his number and handed it back.

“Wait, hold on,” said Finley, brandishing their phone at him.  “Can I take a picture to add to your contact?”

“…sure?” he answered, and pasted on his taking-a-photo smile.

“Hrm,” Finley muttered from behind the phone.  “Hey do me a favour, just… don’t smile?”

What was wrong with his smile, thought Sammy, and relaxed his features.  He took a deep breath and tried not to make any face or look at anything in particular.  He figured he must look like he was spacing out.  Why would Finley want a picture of that?

“Hey Samantha?” Finley said, face still hidden.  When Sammy raised his eyebrows to show he was paying attention, the genderqueer simply said, “You’re beautiful.”  A moment later the phone’s camera shutter clicked.

“What the—” Sammy started to say.

“It’s this cool trick, you get great pictures the moment after you give a girl a compliment.”  Finley turned their phone around.  “There, you see?”

There he was on the screen: a backdrop of green leaves and red brick behind him, white cardigan over his shoulders and deep crimson cami stretched across his fake cleavage.  But on his face was this surprised little smile.  The smile had just sparked into his eyes as the pic had been taken, and his raised eyebrows looked like they were floating on top of the undisguised joy that lit up his face.

He looked… well.  He looked super cute.

“Kind of an underhanded trick,” he muttered, tamping down another smile, along with the impulse to ask Finley to send him the picture.  “Warn a girl next time, would you?”

“Can’t give you warning, then it doesn’t work,” they answered with a little self-satisfied smirk.  They tapped at their phone to save all the details.  “But I’ll let you go.  And text you later, yeah?”

“Go?” Sammy echoed vaguely.

“To your next class?”

“Fuck!” he shouted, and started running.

The program had six courses—Biology, Composition, History, Literature, Math, and Physics, helpfully abbreviated as BIO50, COMP50, HIS50, LIT50, MA50, PH50.  The six classes would theoretically prepare the Marginalized Scholars for the six sections of the final exam.  Sammy had stared at the course list, trying to figure out which one he should be most intimidated by, but could never quite decide.  They were all terrifying.

He dashed into the lecture hall for HIS50 with only a few minutes to spare and found the entire front row already filled by his rival overacheivers.

“Welcome to class, Samantha,” called a familiar voice from up under the screen in front.

Sammy turned and was surprised to find Uncle Gideon, in slacks and sweater vest, looking very collegial.  The boy in the skirt swallowed.  “Uh, hi.”

Gideon grinned as he stepped nearer.  “Sorry I didn’t say anything about teaching this course.  I meant to, when we visited you in your dorm room, but then you guys had to skip out to deal with your wardrobe emergency.”  His eyes flicked over Sammy’s outfit.  “I see the emergency has been resolved, though.  You look very put together.”

Sammy still didn’t know how to respond to compliments—aside from getting his picture taken, apparently—so he just smiled in response, cheeks hot.  What the—was he actually blushing?  He cleared his throat.  “Uh.  Sorry for being late.”

“You’re not late,” his uncle assured him, but he did shoo him towards the seats.  “And you’re in college now,” he added with a grin.  “Nobody’s going to call home and tell your parents you were tardy.”

As Sammy sat, Gideon clapped his hands together.  “Okay everybody, welcome to the History Crash Course!  The architects of this program want this class to cram your heads full of all the names and dates that they think is most important for a good, compliant, All-American student ready to bend over backwards and participate in the project of Empire, but unfortunately they hired me to teach it.”

Scattered chuckles trickled through the room, but most of the students seemed uncertain and a little bit scared at Gideon’s opening salvo.  Sammy counted himself among them.  He was here to prepare for the final exam; he needed all those names and dates.  And he was more than happy to participate in the project of Empire, whatever that was, if it meant he got to attend Columbia.

“My name is Gideon Masters-Roth, and it is my goal in this class to teach you to think historically,” the rebel professor went on, tapping his temple with two fingers.  “I promise you’ll get to cramming all those names and dates in July when I skip out of here for a couple weeks.”  He gestured to a young woman seated at a table to the side of the lecture hall.  “Speaking of which, this is Andi Górska, my longsuffering TA, who’ll be taking over for those two weeks.  Be nice to her, she is not paid enough to do this job.”

She gave the class a diffident wave.

Gideon directed the whole class to clump up in little groups of four to six so they could introduce each other and where they were from.  Sammy shortly found himself in a little circle of five.

“And so the first one is all, hi my name is Leon and I’m from Ukraine,” Sammy told his laptop screen.  “And then the next one gives their name and explains that they’re from Gaza.  And then the next one, she’s also from Ukraine, and says that her first choice school doesn’t exist anymore because it got bombed, and the other one from Ukraine and the guy from Gaza, they both nod and say ‘yeah me too.’  And then the last girl, she’s from Nicaragua and her family got run out of the country because her parents were journalists and pissed off the drug cartels, and her dad’s still fucking missing.”

“Jeeesus,” Rowan breathed, saucer-eyed, from the screen.

“That’s a lot,” Zoey agreed from the other panel of the vidchat.

“Yeah, and then they all turn to me,” Sammy continued on, “all expectant-like, and what the fuck am I supposed to say?  Hey, my name is Sammy and I’m a kid from Jersey?”

“What did you say?”

He shrug-flopped.  “Hey, my name is Sammy and I’m a kid from Jersey.”

“And their response?” Zoey wanted to know.

He deflated slightly where he sat on his dorm room bed.  “They wanted me to tell them where I shopped for clothes.”  Their reception of his personal background had seemed so petty Sammy hadn’t known how to respond—especially since he’d forgotten the names and locations of all the places to which Rowan had dragged him.

“Well yeah, you looked like that?” his cousin asked, eyebrow arched.  “You didn’t come home and change clothes?”

He looked down—cleavage yawned open under his gaze; at some point he’d get used to that, right?—and then back up at the screen.  “I mean.  Yeah?”

“It’s a nice ‘fit,” Rowan told him with a shrug.  “So if by their standards you’re a local, and a well-dressed one at that, asking for shopping tips is understandable.”

“Yeah but—” he sighed, struggling to articulate his discomfort.  “They’re all fleeing persecution and fucking warzones, and all I bring to the table is where to get a cute skirt?”

“Well they’re probably tired of being refugees all the time,” Zoey pointed out, “and hope that maybe you can help them feel a little normal for a change.”

He slumped against the wall and exhaled. “Makes sense, I guess.”

“Or they’re hitting on you,” Rowan put in with a smirk.

“Nobody is hitting on me,” Sammy insisted, even though he was pretty sure two guys in Pre-Calc and a girl in the Lit class had been feeling him out.  They’d asked him “get to know you” questions with an almost disquieting intensity.  He was here to study; he didn’t want distractions.

As if on cue, his phone buzzed.  He scooped it up to read a short text message from Finley asking if he liked seafood.

“Oooooh, who’s got you smiling like that?” teased Rowan.

“Wait, what happened?” asked Zoey, coming back into view from off-camera. “I missed it!”

“Nothing—”  He tried to say, wiping his face clear, but he could feel his cheeks burning.  He had absolutely been smiling at his phone like a goober.

“Somebody texted Sammy and her face lit up like a Christmas tree,” his treacherous cousin giggled.

“It’s not that, it’s just Finley,” he told them with a roll of his eyes.  “They’re the TA for Bio.”

“And they were texting you the syllabus?” Rowan asked, skeptical eyebrow raised.

“No, they’re just…” Sammy started, and then realized if he didn’t volunteer the whole story now, Rowan would pry it out of him, anyway.  “They came up to me after class to say sorry for moving too fast at that CQA event and then they asked me to dinner.”

“So as part of Finn’s apology for moving too fast, they asked you on a date?” his cousin attempted to summarize, now lifting both eyebrows.  “And you said yes.  Damn, they’ve got game!”

“It’s not a date,” he insisted. “It’s an apology.  They’re taking me to dinner as an apology.”

Both Rowan and Zoey just stared at him blankly, waiting.

He blinked first.  “Fuck, is it a date?”

“Well, that would make something else make sense,” Zoey said, and explained: “Earlier today Finn did kind of ask me if they could ethically date somebody in a class they were the TA for.”

“I mean, it is kind of sketchy,” Rowan conceded.

“Right, but in this case, the final class grade, the part that they might have undue influence over, doesn’t matter,” she pointed out.  “It’s just the exam score at the end that matters, and that’s impartial.”

“So what did you tell them?” Sammy wanted to know.

Zoey shrugged.  “I think they’re in the clear.  Ethically speaking.  So they can date… somebody in the class they TA for.  Which may or may not be you.”

“But it probably is,” said Rowan pragmatically.  “And you said yes?”

“Yes,” Sammy groaned, pressing himself against the cool brick wall.  It counteracted the full-body flush he had going on.  “I said yes.  But I didn’t think it was a date!”

“What else did they say?” Zoey asked, probing for clarification.  “They were sorry, they asked you out, what else?”

Rowan cut through all the extraneous details that Sammy was considering mentioning as a smoke screen: “Did they compliment you?”

“Um,” he mumbled, wondering if he could hedge.  “I mean, sort of?  When we started talking, they… said I looked fantastic.”

“Well, you do,” Zoey noted dispassionately.

“And?” his cousin demanded, eyeing him critically through the laptop.  “I can tell you’re holding out on us.”

Casting his eyes to his popcorn ceiling, Sammy sighed.  “And they called me beautiful.”

“Awww!”

“No, it wasn’t like that, it was a… a trick to get a good photo for…” Too late, he realized exactly where he was blundering.  “…for my number in their phone.”

“Samantha,” Zoey said flatly, and waited until he was paying attention before continuing.  “Find out if it’s a date… before the date happens.  Don’t put it off, okay?”

“What, like over text?” he sputtered.  “Or in class on Wednesday?”  Both of those options sounded like trainwrecks.

“Better than over dinner,” Rowan pointed out reasonably.  “Get on the same page before the date starts or else one of you is guaranteed to be disappointed.”

On Tuesdays and Thursdays he only had two classes, but they were both two hours long: Composition in the morning and Physics in the afternoon.

“This is not a class about writing,” the Comp professor had declared.  “This is a class about editing.  We will be writing a 500-word essay every week.  You will bring your first drafts in on Tuesday.  You will exchange them with other students for editing.  We will discuss in class.  Then you’ll take it home and bring a revised draft on Thursday.  Each Thursday we’ll have a handful of you read your essay aloud.”  She nodded as if this was at all reasonable.  “At the end of this eight-week course, you’ll have written 4,000 near-perfect words.  I’m letting you off light! By the time you get to the final exam, tossing off a solid 500 words will be child’s play.”

Physics, by contrast, was taught by a scattered, spare little man who didn’t look much older than his students.  He explained that they had an absurd amount of material to cover, especially since this “Physics” class was also supposed to cover basic chemistry, and then he immediately launched into a lecture on the four fundamental forces of nature.  “Oh,” he added at the end as they were picking up their textbooks, binders, and bags, “we’ll have a quick quiz at the end of class Thursday—or maybe the start of class on Tuesday—going over what we’ve covered that week.  Or the week prior.  You understand what I mean.”

Sammy never quite got around to texting Finley about their maybe-date before it was time to show up to Biology on Wednesday morning, but the genderqueer just smiled at him across the room, and only the once.  No further contact was made, and Sammy dashed out of the classroom before any could be made.  He had three more classes that day and didn’t need any more distractions.

“Our key task,” intoned the literature professor Dr Ngawa, “as readers and as human beings, is that of interpretation.  The interpretation not just of texts and of speech acts, but also of our phenomenological world.”  Ngawa liked to pace as he lectured, roving up and down the steps of the room’s sparsely-occupied stadium seating.  “That is to say: we are surrounded by signs and symbols, and we are thrust, every day, into interpretting what it all means.”

“Don’t have to tell me twice,” Sammy muttered under his breath, to the amusement of the dark-eyed girl sitting on his right.

“Grab a piece of paper,” directed the professor, “and write down a short description—just a sentence—of an encounter that you had with an ambigious sign.  Some situation where you could not tell what was meant.  You could not interpret.  Speech act or text or situation,” he elaborated while waving both hands around his head.  “Just.  Jot it down.”

Sammy opened his notebook to a blank page and tried to think of a time when he didn’t understand what was happening.  It seemed like a regular occurence for him, but nothing specific came to mind.  Nothing besides the obvious and immediate situation he was mired in, of course, and as time stretched on and everyone else started putting down their pens, he frantically scribbled out: Can’t tell if I was asked out on a date.

“Miss Masters,” came Ngawa’s baritone, sounding off right behind Sammy’s seat.  The professor had crept up while he’d dithered over what to write.  “What have you written?”

Sammy felt all the blood drain out of his face.  “Oh, I thought—” he stammered.  “I mean, I thought this was just for… I didn’t think we were sharing it.”

Ngawa gave him a significant look, and then broadcast that look across the whole room.  “Ah.  So your interpretation of the instructions you were given included some biases and assumptions of your own.”

Trying to laugh it off, Sammy nodded and prayed that that would appease the professor’s inquiry.  But Ngawa only watched him, eyebrows raised expectantly.  Sammy opened his mouth, closed it, and finally just gave up.  “I wrote down that I can’t tell if I got asked out on a date.”

A ripple of good-natured laughter pattered through the lecture hall, and Sammy took a little comfort from the response.  A high school classroom would have immediately overflowed with braying mockery.  This was different, like everybody sympathized.  He felt the corners of his lips lifting slightly.

“A common lament,” the professor intoned.  “A nice boy asked you out, but you’re not sure if he asked you out asked you out.  Even the language we use to describe—”

“Oh, uh,” Sammy half-objected impulsively, and Ngawa paused to lift his expectant eyebrows again.  Sammy explained: “Finley’s not a boy.”

“Oh ho!” the professor chortled.  “And here’s where my biases and assumptions get in the way of my interpretation.  My apologies to Miss Finley, she of the ambiguous scheduling practices.”

This time Sammy didn’t make a sound of correction, letting Ngawa move on to pry into some other student’s private life.

Is Friday night okay for dinner? Finley texted as class was breaking up, which only served to make Sammy apprehensive.

Friday night was a date night, right?  A casual dinner on a random Tuesday, that wasn’t likely to be a date.  Dinner on Friday night, though?  That was definitely date territory.

Sammy took a long, shaky breath.  Interpreting ambiguous speech acts, indeed.  Finley was almost certainly asking him out on a date.

I’m just thinking about how you said you wanted to go all-in on your classes, said the next text.  Friday night seems like the least impact on your studies?

Well fuck, now he didn’t know what to think.  Sammy groaned audibly and shoved his phone into his backpack.

“That your maybe-date?” asked the dark-eyed girl with a twinkle in her eye.  “Finley?”

Sammy heaved a sigh.  “Yeah.  Apparently we’re going out on Friday.  So I have two days to figure out if we’re actually going out or if we’re just… going out.”

The girl closed her notebook.  “I’d love to hear how it turns out for you,” she giggled.  “If it turns out to not be a date, there are always other options.”  She raked her eyes up and down his body, smirked, and stalked out of the classroom.

Sammy watched her go, bewilderment giving way to curiousity.  He pulled his phone back out, reversed the camera, and took as full-body a selfie as he could.  He sent the result to Rowan.

Hot, she responded immediately.

Sammy rolled his eyes and then examined the photo he’d just sent her.  The wispy blouse that he’d thought kind of conservative this morning had apparently started showing off an eyeful of cleavage while he wasn’t looking.  And the capris that had seemed like simple pants were hugging his hips and thighs and—he took a quick side-angle selfie to verify—yeah, they were doing something almost indecent to his ass.

How on earth did he have this much ass?

He texted his cousin: why are all of the clothes we got me either tight or revealing or otherwise slutty in some secret surprise way?

Why would you want clothes that aren’t? came the reply.  The point of clothes is to look hot.

Sammy didn’t even know how to respond, and he had Pre-Calc in fifteen minutes.

The next morning he went through his new wardrobe like a tornado, trying to put together an outfit that Rowan would not describe as ‘hot.’  It was difficult.

Which wasn’t exactly true.  He could throw together a bunch of mismatched garments, but then he just looked weird.  Like he couldn’t dress himself or couldn’t see how this top and that skirt didn’t go together, when they really obviously did not.

What he needed was not hot but also not incompetent.

For a half-second he considered his box of hoodies and sweats, but actually shuddered at the thought.  Heavy and scratchy and hot and… frumpy.

When the hell had ‘frumpy’ invaded his vocabulary?

He tried again, without trying so hard as to create a jarring mismatch.  This cami, that skirt that probably wasn’t quite right, and then that weird little jacket-thing from that weird little boutique, where’d it go?  He donned the questionable ensemble, smoothed down his lines, and turned to look in the mirror.

“Oh, huh,” he said aloud, scrutinizing himself.  “Hold on a minute…”

He doffed the jacket and swapped the cami for a ruffle-fronted blouse, then slipped the jacket back on and turned to look in the mirror.

“Okay,” he told his reflection, “this looks really…” His shoulders slumped.  “Hot.  Fuck!”  How easily he lost sight of what he was trying to accomplish and fell back into… whatever took over his brain in the morning and assembled almost-but-not-quite inappropriately hot outfits for class.

He considered changing again, but the outfit really did look good.  And he was going to be late if he dithered any more.  He shrugged at his reflection.  “Might as well just wear it for the day.”

By the end of class on Thursday, all six professors had made clear their expectations for how much reading the students would be doing, and most of the initial deadlines were next week.  It was… a lot.

Even Math had reading to do, which Sammy felt was vaguely unfair.  Math and reading were opposite poles on the academic globe; you shouldn’t ever have to read in order to math.

But all of this was why Thursday evening found Sammy sitting at a table in the back of the dining commons.  Textbooks were spread out all around him; a tray of dinner sat half-eaten and forgotten at the periphery.  He had so much reading to do.

The good news, though, was that he seemed to be getting his focus back.  With four days’ worth of a regular supply of pills in his system, the fog had cleared and he could read, he could discuss, he could think again.  How did other people do college without these pills?

“Did you read all those poems yet?” asked a voice, bringing Sammy out of his reverie.  He looked up to find the dark-eyed girl from Literature class.  “There were so many.”

“I think the idea was that they’re all short?” he hazarded.  “Kind of an easy way to get us started.  And then we’re supposed to read a whole novel by Monday, which… I hope it’s not boring.”

“Oh, it’s some white girl who thinks she’s poor because her family only has a maid and a cook taking care of their every need.  So to avoid a life of such unfathomable poverty… she must date.”  She threw the back of her hand up against her forehead dramatically and giggled. “Speaking of which, have you figured out your little dating problem?”

Sammy heaved a sigh.  “No.  I’ve been avoiding it by digging into the reading.”

“Can I ask you a question?” she asked with half a smile.  When he nodded, she asked, “Are you hoping it’s not a date, or that it is?”

“I mean—” he started, stalled, and then shrugged.  “I don’t even know.  I definitely don’t need any distractions right now.  This program is my one shot for… everything, and I’m not going to fuck it up.”  He paused, considering.  “But at the same time… it’d be nice if it was?  I, uh, I’ve never been asked before.”

The girl blinked, startled.  “I don’t believe that.”

Sammy shrugged again.  It was the simple truth.

“Maybe you’re just really bad at telling when somebody’s into you,” she suggested.  “Maybe you’ve been asked out tons and you’ve just never noticed.”  She considered him from under one arched eyebrow.

“Yeah, I don’t think so,” Sammy giggled, realized he’d just giggled, and blushed.

He wasn’t oblivious (not when he’d taken his pills), and this girl had already made her interest clear.  He just had trouble wrapping his head around the very concept that somebody was hitting on him.  All he had to do was slap on some fake tits and a little makeup and suddenly he was popular?  It seemed ludicrous.

“No, Samantha, you’re… really pretty,” she pressed.  She blushed as she said it.  “If the girls weren’t asking you out in high school, I guarantee they were pining for you across the room.”

“Yeah, I… didn’t always look like this,” he protested weakly.  There was something in this girl’s voice that was edging towards the desperate, and suddenly Sammy wanted nothing more than to just turn off whatever was happening.  The only problem was that he had no idea how to do that.  He gestured down at himself.  “All I wore through high school was hoodies and sweat pants.  The… fashion is all new, and entirely my cousin’s doing.”

“Well tell your cousin thank you for providing the class with eye candy,” she grinned, and leaned her rump up against the table beside him.  He realized a beat later that she was ideally positioned to look straight down his shirt.

What was he supposed to do?  Cover himself?  Stand up?  He realized he couldn’t even remember this girl’s name, and asking for it now might seem like he was expressing interest, when all he wanted to do was read.

Sudden inspiration struck, and he went with it before he could examine the impulse.  “No, when I say I didn’t look like this, I mean I didn’t look like a girl.  I’m transgender.”  There.  Maybe that would scare her off.

But she only nodded.  “I mean, I didn’t want to assume, but I did kind of figure.  You make a very pretty girl, Samantha.  Good choice on chasing that dream.”

She was, absolutely and unmistakably, looking down his shirt.

“Listen,” he finally grimaced.  “I’ve… got a lot of reading to do.”  He gestured to the array of books spread out before him.  “I don’t want to be rude.  I just… I can’t fall behind.  I’ll see you in class tomorrow?”

“Oh shit, sorry, yeah,” the girl stammered, immediately straightening and wiping her palms on her thighs.  “You even said and I… sorry.  Yeah, I’ll see you in class.”  She backpedaled a few steps, turned to go, and then turned back.  “I hope your dating situation works out the way you want it to, Samantha.”

He smiled and nodded.  “Thanks.”

Sammy turned back to his books, very intentionally not watching her go, except for the little peeks he took as she beelined for the door.  She turned left once outside and walked along a bank of windows, staying within easy view.  From the few glances he stole, she seemed to be talking to herself, and not kindly.

He groaned.  All he wanted was to avoid distractions and absolutely destroy the Marginalized Scholars’ final exam.  He’d worried that pretending to be trans, dressing up and doing his makeup every day, remembering his fake name and fake pronouns, would be one of those distractions.  He’d accepted that as the cost of entry.  But never had he even considered that dressing up and doing his makeup would bring him more distractions in the form of… amorous attention.

At the same time, complaining about it seemed spectacularly shitty.  Oh no, people wanted to talk with him, get to know him, even date him.  Walking across campus, people smiled at him for no discernible reason.  And just because he couldn’t understand it didn’t mean he didn’t like it.  It felt like people wanted him to be there, wanted him to be in their shared space.  Welcoming him.  It was a heady feeling, and if he was honest with himself, he didn’t want it to stop.

He just had to figure out how to get all this reading done, too.

Sammy’s Friday classes ended at 3:30.  Finley would pick him up in his dorm lobby at 6.  By the time he reached his dorm room, Sammy was down to two hours and fifteen minutes to clarify what was happening before it happened.

So he took a shower.

It was almost 4:30 when Sammy returned to his room, steaming and clean and frustrated that the distraction of hot, streaming water had been used up.

He had to get dressed.  He hadn’t had time to unpack all the clothes he’d bought with Rowan; the bags were all still piled up in the corner.

He poured it all out onto his bed and started folding.

By the time 5 o’clock rolled around he’d sorted all his new clothes into the appopriate drawers and hangers.  Then he pulled out the clothes he might wear that night.  He had three options out of what was still clean.

Could he do laundry?  No, he didn’t have enough time for laundry.  Finley would be there in less than an hour.

And before Finley got there, Sammy should text them to ask if they were going on a date, or if they were just going out to dinner as friends who were apologizing.  For things that happened four months ago.

But he had options for what to wear.  He couldn’t just go as he was right now, which was naked.

Fuck, he had to re-affix his tits.

Now it was 5:35 and his fake boobs wobbled on his chest as he contemplated his three outfits.  One set—a white skirt and an orange frilly blouse—was boring and basic but that might be an advantage.  The next was… well, it was club gear.  Shimmery top and a flippy skirt.  Classy club gear, but it was designed for dancing.  Would there be dancing?  At the restaurant?  Was that a thing?  And then the last was a skater dress, vibrant blue with black polka dots, which was very plainly date wear, and he was mildly frustrated that he didn’t have a necklace that went with it.

Finally he realized that he couldn’t decide what to wear if he didn’t know if he was going on a date or not.  He pulled out his phone and stared at it.  It was 5:45.  Finley was probably already on his way.

With a muttered curse, Sammy typed out a dozen different texts and deleted them, and finally settled for: Is this a date?  Simple.  Straightforward.  To the point.  There was no way Finley could misunderstand or mangle the query.  Sammy would get a straight answer.

His phone buzzed, and he looked at the answer: Do you want this to be a date?

Sammy screamed at his phone.

What the fuck kind of answer was that?  Surely when Finn had asked him, they’d either thought they were asking him on a date or they weren’t.  That was something you asked with intention.  You couldn’t do it accidentally, and if you were doing it on purpose, you sure as fuck knew what you were asking.

Sammy was about to shoot back something scathing but his phone displayed three little bouncing dots.  He watched them bounce until they quieted and disappeared.  His breath caught, but then they returned.  Bounce bounce bounce, wobble wobble wobble.

He stared, transfixed, until the dots turned into words.

Here’s the thing, said the text.  At the end of summer term, I’m leaving for med school in California.  So while I am very open to this being a date, I can’t do a relationship that doesn’t have an expiration date.  I’m also very open to this being a non-date dinner.  I think you’re cool and I’d like to share a meal, date or not.

Sammy read the text through three times, and then it was followed by: So?

He grabbed the skater dress.  “Date wear it is.”

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Without fail, when the work detail required digging, our supervising sweeties would appoint a poolie overseer and disappear.  So it was Teddy standing over my boys and I was we dug out the foundation of another cabin.  George had slipped across from where he was supposed to be digging to join our little band, mostly for conversation.

"It was weird," Caden said, using a sturdy branch to knock loose a buried rock.  After at least an hour of cajoling, Jackson, George, and I had got Caden talking about his afternoon with Zoe Cole.  "But also… kinda nice."

"Yeah, but what did she have you do?" Jackson pressed.  "Did she need somebody to do her laundry or something?"

"No," Caden answered, and fidgetted uncertainly with his tree branch. "It wasn't… work, it was… I mean.  Zoe called it a date."

Both Jackson and George shouted in good-natured surprise and congratulations.  I gave my boy an indulgent smile.  I might not be happy about the turn of events, but they were hardly Caden's fault.

"So what did you do with all that alone time, Caden?" George smirked.

"Oh, no, it was more than just me and her," my son hastened to explain.  "I hung out with the whole—"  Here he stumbled to a stop and looked warily at me.  "With everybody in her suite."

"Wait, what was that?" Jackson grinned from his place, hip-deep in a new loop shaft.  His brother feigned ignorance, but Jackson pressed on, undeterred.  "You were about to say one thing and then you wimped out."

"I know what you were going to say," George put in devilishly.  "And trust me, your mother's going to hear what they call their suite sooner or later, so she might as well hear it from you."

My youngest son went red to his ears and focused his attention on the ground.

I reached over to squeeze his arm.  "Honey, don't worry about it.  I'm sure it's just some silly adolescent humor."

But he steeled himself and blurted out, "Zoe calls it her man-harem."

George watched me for a reaction as Jackson actually guffawed.  I tried to catch my breath.  When Caden finally looked me in the eye, I stammered, "Is that so?"

He gestured limply.  "Well I mean, it's Zoe and CeeCee—she's the daughter of Ms. Clark, the Beaver Host?  They room together, and have since the beginning, I guess.  And so they—" and here he managed a slight smile with a tinge of pride.  "As Zoe says, they collect pretty boys."

I stilled my shovel.  "Collect them for what?" I asked warningly.

"Exactly what you think, Susan," George answered airily.  "Zoe and CeeCee are quite the junior lotharios."

I skewered Caden with an arch look, and he quickly waved his hands.  "Nothing happened.  It wasn't like that at all.  Mostly we just played video games."

Jackson's ears perked up at that.  "What do they got?"

Caden shrugged.  "Playstation, XBox, a really old Game Cube.  Bunch of games."

"Okay, so, before I wasn't jealous, little bro, but…" Jackson shouldered his shovel and mimed holding a controller in his hands.  "It's been a while."

"Air conditioning, too," Caden added, to his brother's flabbergasted admiration.

"Sounds nice," I agreed as mildly as I could manage.  "What else did you do?"

"Well first she wanted to take me to lunch—there's a sweeties lunch at the Mess, for everybody who's not out with a work crew," he answered, and glanced over his shoulder.  Teddy was orbiting closer to our corner of the work site, so Caden started worrying his buried stone as he talked.  "But before we went there, she let me use their shower."

As Jackson redoubled his protestations of envy, I settled my motherly suspicions.  I had not failed to notice that Caden had come back freshly showered, but apparently that had happened at the top of the afternoon, to make him presentable.  Not at the end, to clean up after a sweaty assignation.

Caden was describing Sweeties Lunch: "It's all the same food that they bring out to the work crews.  Nothing special.  Although I'm pretty sure one of the other tables had some… homemade wine or something."

"It would astound me if there wasn't someone somewhere in the refuge making hooch," George chuckled.

"But it was, um, real quiet," Caden went on.  "Like not even half the tables were full, and some of the sweeties were just sitting by themselves reading books, you know?  It was real… sedate."

The boy's description paused as he and Jackson traded shovel for tree branch, as Caden's rock was nearly dislodged and his brother had just found one.  Caden shoveled and talked at a steady pace.  "And Zoe and I, we just talked, you know?  For like an hour.  Where we grew up, schools, movies we liked—"

"That sounds really nice," I said, trying desperately to find some benefit of the doubt to apply to the situation.

He bobbed his head.  "It was.  And after that, we went back to the suite and met everybody else, and then video games happened, and a movie afterwards.  By then it was time for dinner."

"Which you joined us for," I said with no small surprise.  "Why not with them?"

"Well they eat at First Mess," Caden answered with a shrug, "and I wasn’t really hungry yet, and… I dunno.  As nice as it was, it was also weird.  Like I said.  Too many eyes on me.  Like… going to a new school, I guess?  Where everybody else already has their friends and stuff and they're trying to figure out where you'll fit in."

"That does make sense," I told him.  "Do you think you'll… see her again?" I asked, trying hard to make the question seem as normal and insignificant as it would have been if we were at home, digging in our own back yard.

He shrugged.  "I dunno.  I think it's up to her way more than me, you know?"

"Certain," Jackson answered from his hole.  Further conversation quieted as Teddy halted his patrol just a few feet away.  His back was turned to us and the rest of the work site, though, and it was a few moments before the cause appeared.

The priest from Sunday service came huffing up the hill, dressed in jeans and a hunter green jacket.  His dog collar peeked out at the top of his zipper.  Close up, he was younger than I had thought he was: forties instead of fifties.  He had a florid face, made blotchy by the exertion of hiking up the hill, and sweat beaded on his brow.  Light touches of not-quite-grey threaded through the dark hair his temples.

Teddy watched his approach with his shoulders set in tention.  What interruption, he must be wondering, was about to befall his work site?  And yet as the priest came to a stop before him, the big man was all solicitousness.  "Can I help you, father?"

"Yes, excuse me," the priest began after he had caught his breath.  "I need to speak with Susan Soza."

My head snapped up on hearing my name, but one thunderous look from Teddy and I bent back to work.  My shoveling might have been a little quieter, though, to eavesdrop.

"We're pretty busy, Father," Teddy told him.

The priest drew in a deep breath.  "It's church business."

The big man was quiet for a moment.  "All right.  Susan.  You're needed.  Make it quick."

I climbed out of the hole and handed my shovel to Teddy.  We were short tools, and I was sure he could find someone to use it.  The priest dipped his head to me and gestured away from the work site.  "Walk with me?"

The small, tight smile I gave him might have been interpreted as compliance, but all I could think about was how I was once again being pulled away from my family.  I wondered what trouble they had attached to me.  Had I left his church service with too much haste?  Had I not sung their terrible, lopsided hymns loud enough?  Whatever it was, it was bound to be immaterial nonsense.  I could be making progress building a place for my family to sleep, but first I'd have to deal with whatever insecurities they'd scapegoated on me.

Once we were out of earshot I glanced back at Teddy, who had dropped down into the ground and put the shovel to use himself.  "Claim 'church business' and you can steal poolies away from work, huh?  I didn't know you could do that."

"Neither did I," he admitted with a pale smile, although this disappeared quickly.  "Customs and manners are still plastic here, despite how it may seem at times."

We walked on through the trees, away from the ranks of walipinis.  "Still," I persisted.  "Not a bad gig.  No digging for you, just chatting with whoever you like all day."

His features grew grim.  "Not for lack of trying.  I put myself in the work rotation, but Jameson took me back off.  Told me that physical labor undermined my role in the community."

I snorted.  "Except I'd have a lot more respect for you if you worked alongside us.  I doubt I'm alone in that."

"You're not," he responded easily.  "I'd have a lot more respect for me, too."

We reached a promontory that allowed us to look down on the compound and across the valley behind it.  Ridge upon ridge of evergreen extended to the horizon.  The empty blue sky yawned above it all.  The tableau brought a smile to my lips.  I closed my eyes to listen to the wind comb through the trees.

"I've been led to believe that you've been telling people that you and your family are Unitarian Universalists," he said solemnly.

My stomach dropped out of me.  When I looked to him, he had folded his hands before himself and his face was unreadable.  "Church business," I observed, and he inclined his head minutely.  "Delores."

At this his lips twisted in distaste—not for the woman, but for the position he was in.  "Gossip is not going to help anyone right now, Mrs Soza."

"Miss Soza," I corrected without thinking.

"You see?  Gossip told me you were married," the priest sighed.  "In any case, who exactly is talking is immaterial."  He looked about to say something else, and then sealed his lips into a frustrated scowl.

I waited for a long moment, but when no further comment seemed forthcoming, I sighed.  "Yes.  My sons and I attended a UU church."

He nodded slowly.  "It pains me to suggest it, Miss Soza," he said, and by the way he dragged each word out of his mouth, it was plain that they came with difficulty.  "But you might want to keep that information to yourself."

I considered the priest, fire rising up into my gut.  "Excuse me?"  I spat.  "Keep it to myself?  Am I interfering with your Christian paradise, here?  Are you concerned that we'll—how did you put it—defile God's little time capsule?"

The priest put up his hands, expression suddenly panicked.  "No, Miss Soza, no.  You misunderstand."  When I lifted my eyebrows for clarification, he continued.  "I'm not asking for me, or even for the church.  My concern is entirely for your own safety."

Suddenly the mountain wind, which had seemed so pleasant a moment ago, cut through me like a knife.  The fire in my gut sputtered against the chill.  "My safety."

The priest nodded gravely.  "Right now, Miss Soza, this gossip is contained.  I have… counseled those who spoke with me, and convinced them that it's not worth circulating."

Curiosity got the better of me.  "How did you do that?"

He looked up at the sky and heaved a sky.  "I may have told them that Unitarian Universalism is just another denomination of Christianity.  Which is, technically speaking, true."

"We're the combination of two heresies that together dismantle most of your orthodox beliefs, but sure, a hundred years ago, we called ourselves Christians," I smirked, but my amusement was short-lived.  "And you did this for our safety?"

The priest turned to look out over the tableau.  "Please understand, Miss Soza, under Jameson' dictates, I am the Associate Minister of the church here.  Pastor Walter Park is the Senior Minister, and it's he who controls the message.  I just lead the singing and counsel our more… high church congregants.  I am an Episcopal priest, so the traditionalists are more comfortable with me."

I let him ramble until he came to a stop.  "And you think Park's message could be dangerous to us?"

Father Donovan frowned out at the mountains.  "There is little I can say explicitly.  But I fear that some congregants may… they may be primed to find a target to assuage their discontent."  He looked at me with pleading eyes.

I nodded once.  "I think I take your message.  You're working for a dangerous ideogogue who's whipping up his followers to tear apart anyone he identifies as an outsider.  Don't feel obliged to nod, Father."

The priest did his best to hide a smirk tugging at the corner of his lips.  Instead, he tipped his head side to side.  "Minister Park's theology is a little more… confrontational than mine."

"And apocalyptic?” I suggested.

"Oh that count, I can't really blame him," Donovan sighed, and gestured at our surroundings.  "It does seem to be the end of the world, after all."

"Seems that way," I murmured in agreement.  "Which makes it a poor time for abandoning our principles.  I don't think I can lie about being UU, father."

He slowly shook his head.  "I wouldn't ask you to.  Just… advise you not to advertise."

I crossed my arms.  If nothing else, I had to appreciate the priest's motive, and I could sympathize with his difficult position.  Suddenly it occurred to me that he might be putting himself in danger speaking to me like this.  "I'll take it under consideration, father.  Discretion is not beyond my abilities."

"I won't ask you to return to Sunday service," he said, turning his steps back towards the work site.  "I'm sure that would be a bridge too far."

I shook my head ruefully.  "That service is not for me, which was made abundantly clear the last time I attended."  I fell into step beside him.

"It's a pity," he sighed.  "I have a feeling I would like to have you in my congregation."

I gave him a short smile.  "You seem like my kind of minister, too," I told him.  "Struggling under stifling constraints and all."  We shared a companionable chuckle.  "If I may ask, though, I wouldn't imagine Episcopalian priests made the kind of salary required for a refuge subscription."

He shook his head.  "Family money.  Actually a family subscription, too.  My uncle passed and bequeathed it to me, and the automatic payments were already set up, so why change anything?"  A few steps later, he confessed, "I could have cancelled it, but things were already looking dire."

"I totally understand.  Coming here can feel like turning your back on the world.  But let me assure you, Father, the world is beset by problems so large that individuals can do nothing about it.  If you were out there, you'd just be another hungry mouth."

He grumbled without agreeing or disagreeing.  "Instead I'm playing second fiddle to a minister whose net worth totalled more than my diocese's budget.  Prosperity gospel my eye," he scoffed, then looked sidelong to me.  "Ahem.  Pardon me."

"I'll be discreet, Father," I grinned.  We walked on, and I realized I had a rare opportunity to gain insight into another lodge.  "What about Jameson?" I asked, with a sly enough smile to signal that I knew I was asking more than a mere poolie ought.  "What's it like working for him?  I got the impression the church services were his idea."

"He plucked Walter and I out of the labor pool and put us in the lodge so that we could perform the services," Donovan said uncomfortably.  "I tried to suggest we could share a suite, since they have two bedrooms, but Walter wouldn't hear of it."

"Are you sure it was Jameson who didn't want you working?" I mused.  "Maybe Park didn't like the precedent set."

He exhaled through his nose.  "The thought had occured to me.  But it could have been Jameson just as easily."

"What's he like?"

Donovan scowled ahead, where the build site was coming into view.  "I'll say this much.  His wife didn't make it up the mountain.  Too much exposure, caught something, ate something gone bad, I'm not sure.  She died in quarantine, before I arrived.  A month later, though, he told Walter and I that he was ready to marry again.  And he'd picked out three lucky girls from labor pool to be his new wives.  Because, as he pointed out, Solomon had many wives, so why shouldn't he?"

I stumbled to a stop.  "The three girls he sat with during service?  I thought they were his daughters."

"His daughters refuse to have anything to do with him or his church," the priest shrugged.  "Can't say I blame them."

"Were the girls… forced?" I asked dreadfully, and put my feet into motion.

"Forced, no; coerced, yes," Donovan sighed.  "It was their ticket out of labor pool.  For themselves and their families.  Their parents were put into suites.  Although Jameson decided that splitting a suite into two bedrooms was reasonable for his in-laws."

We were within earshot of the build site.  Teddy was already climbing out, my shovel still in his broad hand.  I stopped a few yards away and extended my hand to the priest.  "It was surprisingly nice to speak with you, Father."

He shook my hand with a smile.  "Likewise, Miss Soza.  But now I think you'd best get back to work."

Once the priest was gone, Teddy slapped the shovel into my hand.  "You've got work to make up, Susan.  Let's not make this incident worth reporting."

—

In her prior life before the refuge, Meliena Jones had been a trophy wife, and proud of it.  Born the sixth child to struggling immigrants, Meliena knew the score from an early age: it didn't matter how hard you worked, it didn't matter how smart you were.  If you had money, you got more money.  And money bought everything else.  No one worked harder than her father, who never had fewer than two jobs.  Her mother was brilliant–too brilliant for the corrupt kleptocracy that was her home country, from which she was a political refugee.  She'd been so brilliant–and outspoken–that they would kill her if she returned.

Her parents implored her to apply herself to her studies, to get into a good college, to find a good career.  Meliena had other plans.  She knew she did not have her mother's genius.  As much as she admired her father's endless work ethic, it intimidated and disgusted her, too.  But she was pretty, she knew that much, and pretty girls had their own avenues to success.  She got to work.

Meliena took three buses after school to get to the modeling agency and later the studios where their photo shoots took place.  She shared part of her modeling income with her parents to help make ends meet, but she never told them how much she really made, either.  She sequestered the rest away.  When she graduated high school (barely) she did go to college – but only because the on-campus dorms were cheaper than anything else downtown.

She vacillated for a few years between two plans: find a well-connected frat boy with a silver spoon in his mouth and ride him into a life of leisure, or seek out an older gentleman, already established and stable, who was in the market for a new, young wife.  She played both angles while she treaded water at school and slowly made a name for herself as a model.

Some weekends she would go from a raucous basement rave on Friday night to an elegant mixer filled with politicians and lobbyists on Saturday.  The first she had a standing invite to up and down fraternity row; the latter she was actually paid to attend, just to add her pretty face to someone's attempt to win the support of someone else.

It was at one of these well-heeled events where she met Jeremy Jones, and her lifelong plan came into focus.  He was in manufacturing and finance, increasingly the latter over the former, and the politicians and magnates alike flocked to him in droves.  He had three houses, a lemon yellow sports car, a yacht, and a small jet.  He was recently divorced.

He was twice her age.  She would be his third wife.  None of that mattered.  He was her ticket.

Meliena always imagined that she would string her quarry along for a while, drive him crazy by fanning and denying his desires, until he would confess he had to have her.  Things moved faster than that, and not only because she had to outrun and outmaneuver a number of other ambitious young women with the same plan as her.

She flirted with Jeremy at two functions and finagled an invite to a third event he'd told her he'd be attending.  He laughingly told her that they "had to stop meeting like this" and, to stop the streak, asked if she'd be his plus one at a wedding the next week.  She laughed at his stale joke and accepted.

The wedding turned out to be in Fiji, and while he nobly reserved two hotel rooms, they only made use of one.  She told him before they left for the airport that she had had an incredible time with him and hoped he wasn't about to dispose of her.  She made him promise that he'd see her again when they got home.  Two weeks later, he took her home after a night on the town.  Two weeks after that she took up semi-permanent residence in his house.

She kept up her modeling and her classes for appearance's sake, worried that dropping them and making Jeremy her full-time occupation would scare him off.  She did, however, direct her agent to aim for more chaste, classy, and refined jobs.  Meliena had nailed 'fun and exciting;' now she had to shift into 'respectable marrying material.'

To keep up with Jeremy's occasional shop talk, she registered for Business Essentials and Introduction to Mandarin the next semester.  When he spotted her carefully placed textbook, he asked if she would like to join him on his next trip to Beijing, just as she planned.  But he went further than that–he practiced pronunciation with her over dinner.  He made her flash cards.  He found her other textbook–not by her design–and offered to help her prepare for her midterm.

Meliena was taken aback by his recurring thoughtfulness.  She knew he was a kind man–she had made sure of that long before flirting with him–but somehow she had never considered that his kindness would be applied to her.  It had only ever entered into her calculations as a decreased chance that he would become demanding or violent (which he never did).  It was with some shock that she realized that he respected her, not just wanted her, and that he wanted to support her in the choices she was making.

And so when Jeremy asked her over breakfast what she intended to do with herself once she completed her degree, she froze.  Her planned answer–"I thought I'd look into charity work"–which would position her as both noble and in need of lifetime financial support, suddenly felt insufficient.  It felt like a lie.  And now Meliena realized that she respected Jeremy in return.

"You'll laugh," she warned him, and when he promised he wouldn't, she jumped in with both feet.  "I want to be the wife of a powerful man.  I want to make him look good when I'm on his arm.  I want to entertain his guests and charm his business partners, and every night I want to fuck him into the floor."

He proposed on the spot.

The wedding a year later could have been mistaken for a finance-and-government networking meeting (and Jeremy closed two deals at the reception and one more the day after), but Meliena would not have had it any other way.  Her side of the aisle may have been a little sparser (and less well dressed) than his, but her guests were everyone she wanted to share the special day with.

She stopped modeling.  She dropped out of school at the end of the semester.  She settled into a life of socializing, home decor (his houses were all in desperate need), her rigorous beauty and fitness regimen, and high-profile networking events.  She actually did get into charity work, as a natural extension of everything else.  She and her foundation worked hard to increase access to healthcare for marginalized and vulnerable new mothers (like her mother had once been).  And every night, she fucked Jeremy into the flor with practiced technique and genuine enthusiasm.

He brought her to the Tall Pines Refuge a handful of times for various seminars and to view the property.  I never crossed paths with the couple, but we must have dined at opposite ends of the Mess on more than one weekend.  She never really understood the appeal or believed in the necessity of the place, but she trusted him.  If he said it was a good idea, it must be.

Of course it turned out he was right, and the world started falling apart.  The two of them were at an after hours mixer attached to a agribusiness and finance convention when rioters burst in from the street with baseball bats and handguns.  The Joneses tried to run, tried to hide, but the mob was hunting the bankers they blamed for their lost jobs and hungry children.  The police eventually regained control, but not before they had cornered Jeremy, broken his legs, and beaten him so thoroughly his liver failed.

At the hospital, the doctors explained that he needed a liver transplant to live.  In all the mounting chaos, however, the federal organ donor network was in disarray.  What would have been routine a year before was now an impossibility.  He was going to die.

"And the worst part," Meliena told me, "is that just the week before I had realized: I had never fallen in love with Jeremy, but I had grown to love him.  I told him so on his… on his death bed."

And he told her two things, in turn.  First, that he had loved her and had since he asked her to that wedding on Fiji; she had made him feel alive and coming home to her had been the best part of his every day.

But secondly, he insisted that she must not wait for him to die, which was going to take days if not weeks.  He made her promise to go, as soon as possible, to the refuge.  It wasn't safe to stay, and the way up the mountain was growing more dangerous each day.

So she left, as promised, the next day.  They had made the trip enough times that she packed (for one), drove (without trading off shifts), and hiked (alone) from memory.  She never stopped, not even for gas (the car was electric), not even for police lights, which probably avoided most of the obstacles on the road.  She promised Jeremy that she'd come here, and only after she passed through the front gate did she fall to the ground and cry, sob, bawl.

Meliena hardly noticed the indignities thrust upon her through quarantine, barracks housing, and work detail.  Sure, it was not what they'd been promised, but without Jeremy, any lesser deprivation seemed irrelevant.  Her only difficulty was Sundays, when no one woke her up in the morning, no one told her where to go, no one told her what to do.  She couldn't even sit outside the rolling garage door of the barracks and stare off into the distant basin without someone trying to engage her in conversation.

By the time it was me disturbing her Sunday afternoon, Meliena had been drawn about halfway out of her shell.  She supposed she had friends; at least, there were a few women she seemed to eat and work with more often than not.  They would chatter around her, but she rarely contributed much to the conversation.  What was there to say?  She had been happy, and now she was not.  The very idea that she might be happy again did not seem to occur to her.

I did not know what to do with or for the poor woman once I had her story (she had not once asked me anything about mine).  In a better world, she might respond to therapy, if her loved ones could convince her to go.  But in the refuge, with neither therapists nor loved ones, her future seemed bleak.  Which scared me.

Meliena was an intelligent, capable, and above all very driven woman–her story made that eminently clear.  She might now have no focus, but that hardly meant that she had also lost that drive.  Eventually, something would bring her out of the morass of hopelessness that had claimed her.  She would rise like a phoenix reborn.

But what could rouse her from that black pit?  I could think of nothing good that might do the job.  The woman's natural beauty–obscured but not eradicated by poolie living and neglect–might draw the attention of someone with more desire than impulse control.  That would end poorly.

Or if someone heard enough of her story (which she was eager to share with me, once asked; she hated the thought that Jeremy might be forgotten), they could dangle the possibility of her husband's miraculous survival in front of her.  There was little that woman wouldn't do, I thought, for a reunion with her beloved.

I usually shared brief overviews of my one-on-ones with Maggie, and pointed her at potential prospects, encouraging her to get to know them as well.  But I refrained from telling Maggie anything about Meliena for more than a week.

When I finally did mention her, I gave as truncated an account as I could.  Meliena was just a trophy wife, I told Maggie, kicking myself for selling the woman so short.  I said she could use a friend or four, but I didn't think she'd be much use for our network.

I didn't say: this woman is a bomb waiting for just enough jostling to explode.  You could twist her head around to point her at any target you liked, Maggie, and you might just care about her little enough to do just that.

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