I walked into my room and tossed the car keys on the bed. With a loud sigh that half the house probably heard, I plopped down on mattress and began to go through my phone notifications. Most of it was stupid, some of it was straight from the GAT app. One of the messages pertained to Audrey apparently eating someone’s leftovers from the fridge which made me roll my eyes. Leina was right; she was imitating us but in my opinion she was taking it to an unnecessary extreme. It was time to have a conversation with her and it was going to be uncomfortable.

“At least the phone bank went well,” Tiffany said from across the desk. She was trying to cheer me up; in the past that would have been unusual for her but even I could tell that something was different. She was changing, we all were.

“We raised six thousand dollars,” I said, placing the school paper on the desk. “That’s like, what enough to pay rent for a month at Planned Parenthood? Maybe they could buy a box of bandaids. Has Audrey seen this?”

"The problem, Mrs. Parsons," Mr. Derringer said, walking to the other side of the conference table and resting his fingers against the sleek black surface. "Is that Miratran seeks to change people at their very core. A drug that forces them into a comatose state and pushes them to live out a fantasy of the user's choosing, forcing them to be someone that they're not with the expectation that when they wake up, they will simply BE that person.

“Pledges!” I shouted out in my most convincing drill sergeant voice as I paced the floor in front of the lineup. We hadn’t quite replenished our ranks yet, but Tiffany and I had managed to wrangle three new pledges for the house. I couldn’t remember their names. “Today we have a very special challenge for you, and those who successfully complete it, will remain as a GAT pledge and will also be well on their well to becoming a full sister. Those who fail will face the possibility of immediate expulsion, do I make myself clear?”

The first thing I remember was the cold. It wasn’t an unbearable cold, it wasn’t freezing, but it was uncomfortable. Through barely cracked eyelids I could see white walls, a flat-screen television, a plethora of ‘Get Well Soon’ cards taped to the walls. My body was heavy, I could move a bit but I was entirely too stiff to even raise myself into a sitting position.

“Hand me the mascara,” I said to Audrey, staring into her eyes and checking her eyeshadow. Beyond the door, I could hear the muttering of the audience and the shuffling of frantic feet behind the curtain. The show was almost on and in my opinion, Audrey was less than half ready. Audrey turned her head slightly and looked at the mascara bottle which was, by all rights, mere inches from both of us.

“Um, it’s right there,” She said. “Can’t you just-“

“Mason, open the door,” I cop-knocked against his dorm room door as hard as I could. “God dammit, Mason-“

Before I could finish my sentence, the door flew open and a rather annoyed looking Mason appeared in the entryway. He was dressed in a worn green bathrobe atop a white t-shirt, and his hair looked as if it had just gone through a blender.

“The fuck do you want?” He demanded.

“Mason,” I frowned. “Why are you asleep right now? It’s like seven-thirty in the evening.”

“Hamburger, soup, or what the fuck do you want?” I asked the next man in line, an older guy in a scally cap with a worn army jacket. He glared back at me.

“Young lady, you need to work on your attitude,” He lectured me.

“You need to work on your fashion choices,” I said, gesturing to his outfit ensemble. “Soup or burger?”

“I’ll take the fucking burger,” He growled. I reached into the pan on my left and slapped a hamburger onto a plate, handing it to him.

“Don’t you think you ought to wear gloves?” The man asked me, glaring at me intently.

“Why isn’t Shawn at the DEM house?” Aleah asked curiously as we pulled into his driveway. The trek down the long stretch of pavement was smooth and involved only a slight turn, leading us easily onto the parking space just in front of the house. Shawn’s house was big, really, really big. So big in fact that if he ever wanted to move out, all he’d have to do is move his stuff to the other side. To be perfectly honest no one was certain what Shawn’s dad did for a living; Mr. Derringer was as mysterious as he was dangerous I supposed.

“Okay,” Aleah sighed, pacing back and forth in front of the couch. Beside me I distinctly heard the sound of Kari flipping through her book, probably ignoring the world around her, as usual. “I hate to actually be productive today, but we need to find Audrey. We have…forty seven hours to get it done, so we need to think. What do we know about Audrey?”

“Oh, her favorite show is Power Rangers,” Leina interrupted. “She absolutely loves it. When we were kids playing pretend she would be the pink ranger.”

“And that didn’t raise any suspicion?” I stared at her.

“Who exactly are you?” I raised an eyebrow at the new girl. Leina, Leina, who the hell was Leina?

“Oh don’t worry,” She giggled as she stepped confidently around me, leaning in and speaking quickly into my ear; her hot breath resonated against my skin. “You’re going to get to know me REALLY well.”

“Jesus!” I stepped back quickly and glared at her. “Personal space, bitch!”

I paced back and forth, surveying the remaining members and pledges. This time we were in the meeting room, a podium up front, wooden folding chair spread uniformly across the rest of the floor. We hadn’t been using this space enough, but we had to look formal enough when our GAT representative walked through the door.

The walk back from the GAT house was nothing short of painful even if it wasn’t that far. Honestly it was like three blocks from the GAT house to the dorm, so I don’t know what I was complaining about. I walked to the elevator, remembered that it was broken and began my long trudge up the stairs. Finally clearing the 4th floor landing, I reached into my pocket to retrieve my dorm key and walked down the exposed balcony deep in thought.

I took a deep breath and pushed out through the door of my dorm, it was the day I’d been dreading for weeks, at least since I’d had time to think about life after the initial GAT house incident. My parents were in town, actually they were waiting for me in the quad. I checked my phone, it was 10:15 in the morning, I had seventy-five missed messages from the GAT chat, and one missed message from Sakiya. She really liked checking up on me.

I arrived at the GAT house maybe an hour later, laptop in hand, noticing immediately that there were a few extra cars parked on the curb. That was a little odd considering the house had parking in the back, were they having a party or something? I shrugged it off and pushed through the gate, making my way toward the porch. A quick trip the creaky steps ended in me standing before the white door which I’d seen so many times in the last month and a half. I knock lightly, as always, probably hoping somewhere deep inside that the door wouldn’t open. But it did, it always did.

In my dreams I’m a boy. Just a boy like any other. I want to be a girl, I want it so badly. I want to be Audrey, I want it with every fiber of my being, but it’s a reality that I can never hope to manifest. In my dreams I try to be a girl, I try to wear the clothes, do the makeup, change my voice, but the makeup melts, the body hair regrows in torrents, my voice deepens. I am living in a nightmare and it’s only gotten worse as of late. Even in the subconscious realm I cannot escape what society dictates I should be. In my dreams, the enemy wears my face.

“This mall is always so busy,” Mason complained as we pushed out way through the crowd. “You’d think there would be a Gamestop that ISN’T in a mall…somewhere at least.”