“You were scared of us?” Mom asked, looking heartbroken. I felt tears welling up, but I couldn’t honestly say no.

A lot of things happened Thursday. Ms. Novacek called, saying I’d done great on the placement tests and could finish up the year with the graduating seniors. I would start classes on Monday after they got my schedule worked out. And Dad called Mrs. Ramsey, saying he’d scheduled a room at the church for that same evening at seven. Mr. Ramsey made a run to the post office in the early afternoon, taking me by several places downtown afterward to apply for jobs. Then back to the house for supper, and off to the church at a few minutes till seven.

I was feeling jittery, fidgeting a lot and looking out the car window, unable to focus on the book I’d brought with me. Meredith had originally offered to come along for moral support whenever we met, but she was working tonight. I hadn’t expected Mom and Dad to get a meeting room this fast. I’d thought about changing clothes after looking for jobs, but decided to stay with the same blouse and skirt I’d worn earlier.

Within five minutes, we were pulling into the church parking lot. Only a handful of cars were in the lot. I recognized Dad’s Cadillac, which was parked near the main building; the rest of the cars in the lot were parked near the fellowship hall.

As we got out of the car and headed toward the side door that led to the Sunday School classrooms and the back entrance to the sanctuary, the door opened before us, and Dad stood there. My eyes met his and I stumbled. Mrs. Ramsey put a hand on my shoulder.

“[Deadname], it’s so good to see you again,” he said. “Even like this... Justin, Erin, I barely recognized you, either.”

“I-I’m going by Lauren now,” I stammered.

He didn’t answer that, but held the door open for us as we entered, and led the way down the hall to a classroom. As it would happen, the same room the youth group used to meet in — and still did, judging from the posters, the circular arrangement of chairs, and so forth. Mom and Dad seemed to have pulled five chairs aside into a smaller circle; Mom was sitting in one of them, and she stood up as we entered.

“[Deadname], is that you?” she asked, her voice trembling. She looked older. Dad must have been a year-plus older too; neither of them had gotten rejuvenated, but it showed a lot more on Mom. I suddenly felt guilty about how much I’d made them worry, not for the first time, but I still managed to say:

“I’m going by Lauren now, Mom. I’m glad to see you.”

“Why — what happened? Your letter said you were afraid we would torture you — how could you think such a thing?”

“Let’s sit down,” Mr. Ramsey said, and we did while I figured out what to say and how. I sat on the other side of the circle from Mom, smoothing out my skirt the way Meredith and Sophia had taught me; Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey sat down on either side of me, and Dad sat down beside Mom. Dad interrupted my thoughts, saying:

“I don’t understand where you could have gotten that idea, [deadname]. If you — if we could have just talked about this, instead of you sending that letter and then nothing for over a year...”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I couldn’t figure out how we could communicate without the police being able to find me and make me come home. And after I heard you talking about how Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey should have sent Meredith to conversion therapy, I looked it up. I couldn’t find any details about how they try to cure trans kids of being trans, but to supposedly cure gay boys, they make them look at pictures of naked men while giving them electric shocks on their private parts. I didn’t want to risk that.”

“That’s...” Dad gaped. “Maybe one or two places did that, but we would never send you to a barbaric place like that!”

“Maybe I should have trusted you more,” I said. “But after what I heard you saying, and what I read... I was just too scared. I felt like I couldn’t take a chance.”

“You were scared of us?” Mom asked, looking heartbroken. I felt tears welling up, but I couldn’t honestly say no.

“Scared of what you would let your fear make you do. Of what liars who promise you they can cure trans kids might trick you into letting them do.”

“Will you please give me a hug, baby?” Mom said. “Do you still care about me?”

“Of course, Mom,” I sobbed. “I still love you. Just please don’t try to make me be someone I’m not.” I got up and took a couple of steps closer, bending to awkwardly hug her. She clung to me, apparently too distraught to stand up and get in a better hugging posture.

When I finally sat back down, Mrs. Ramsey patted my free hand as I rubbed away the tears with the other.

“Let’s put the past behind us, son,” Dad said. “Tell us where you’re living, what you’re doing, what your plans are.”

“Okay,” I said, too exhausted to nitpick about the ‘son’ thing. “I’m staying with the Ramseys for now. I just took placement tests and enrolled at Eastern Mynatt High. I kept up with my studies, but I couldn’t go to school while I was — well. When I was trying to keep a low profile. But I studied a lot and I did well enough on the placement tests that I’ll graduate with the other people my age.

“And I’ve been looking for jobs. Nobody’s called me back yet, but I’ve barely started. I’m going to start on college applications next. I don’t know if I can go this fall — probably not, with not starting to apply until spring. And I probably want to work for a year and save up money for expenses.”

Dad looked at me pityingly. “You don’t have to put up with those kinds of conditions. You can have your old room back — we haven’t touched it. And you don’t have to work for a year or more to save up money for college, either; we can help.”

“Please come back,” Mom said in a wavering tone.

“Maybe?” I’d never considered it, but they weren’t being quite as bad about this as I’d sometimes feared. “I’d have to know you accept me for who I am. That you’re not going to keep trying to talk me out of being a girl, or calling me by my old name or ‘son’ or using ‘he’ pronouns. And let me go to a college that’s okay with trans people, and with students venning into different forms for the weekend.”

“Whatever you need,” Mom said, but Dad shook his head.

“We would be irresponsible parents if we let you persist in this terrible mistake. God made you our son, and if you’re having trouble with that, you need to try harder to understand it and accept it. Pray about it. Not run away from it.”

I rubbed my forehead in frustration. This was more like what I’d expected and feared. “I’m sorry. I’d rather venn into a body that doesn’t feel the cold and sleep on park benches than live with you constantly trying to convince me I’m a boy. I tried to convince myself for so long, and it didn’t work. I don’t want you to waste more years trying to do it, too.”

“Please,” Mom said, more to Dad than to me. “Let me have my baby. Even if she’s a girl, it’s better than losing him.”

Hearing Mom use “she” pronouns for me felt great, even if she switched back a moment later. It hurt to see her hurting like this. I’d seen Mom and Dad have disagreements before, but never like this, with raw emotion pouring out. Dad just shook his head again, saying, “No. If you make a rash promise to treat him as a girl, you’ll regret it. We have to be firm.”

Mom broke down in sobs, and I got up to go hug her again. “I love you, Mom. If you can talk Dad into seeing sense, or if you just want to see me by yourself, let’s meet again.”

“Nathan’s going to be home for Easter this weekend,” she pleaded. “Will you please come to dinner and see him?”

I shook my head. “I want to see him, but not at y’all’s house. Maybe at the Ramseys’ or at a restaurant. But if he’s going to be like Dad, I’ll only see him once. I want to see you again, though.”

Dad was turning red in the face, angry at losing control of the situation. He stood up and loomed over me and Mom. “[Deadname], we love you, but that doesn’t mean indulging you in everything you want. If you want our financial support for college, we need to see you at least trying to do the right thing.”

“And by that I suppose you mean pretending to be a man for the next four years, or longer?” I asked, ending the hug with Mom but squeezing her hand one last time as I stood up. “No, thanks. I’d rather never go to college than pretend for one day longer. And I’m pretty sure I can manage to go to college on my own, if not right after high school.”

“What’s this nonsense about ‘pretending’?”

“I think we’re done,” I said, turning to Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey.

“Please,” Mom said, and broke down crying again.

“Kathy, give me a call,” Mrs. Ramsey said. “Let me know when Nathan gets into town.” She took my hand and we left the room, Mr. Ramsey covering our rear in case Dad decided to object.

Once we were in the car, my barely held-together control fell apart and I started sobbing again. Mr. Ramsey hadn’t started the engine yet; I struggled with the seatbelt, having a hard time seeing it in the dark through my tears, and before I got it buckled, I felt Mrs. Ramsey slide into the back seat beside me and put an arm around me. Mr. Ramsey didn’t start the engine until she told him we both had our seatbelts on.

* * *

I was a wreck that night, telling the story over again to Sophia and then to Meredith when she got home from work, and then lying on the sofa bed awake for hours before I fell asleep. I was glad I didn’t have to start school until Monday. I was so distraught over Mom’s pleading sobs and Dad’s stern refusal to compromise that I didn’t think, until the next day, about the things I’d planned to discuss with them and hadn’t — about the rest of my savings I hadn’t been able to take with me because of the ATM withdrawal limit, or my stuff that was in my bedroom at their house — I didn’t care about the boy clothes, except as raw material I could venn into girl things, but some of the books were important to me, and not having to buy a new backpack, calculator, notebooks and so on for school would have been nice.

It took me a while to get going Friday, and Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey didn’t push me, but eventually I managed to fill out some of the job application forms I’d picked up and go out with Mr. Ramsey to drop them off when he made the post office run. We stopped at a couple of stores on the way back and I bought a few school supplies. Ms. Novacek had said she’d send me my class schedule and other things by email, so I borrowed Meredith’s computer that afternoon to check, and found she’d sent them. I went over my schedule with Meredith after she got home.

“Looks like we don’t share any classes except Civics,” Meredith said, frowning. “And we don’t have the same lunch period or free period, either.”

“It’s okay,” I said, feeling anticipatory anxiety about the crowds of strangers I’d be surrounded by in a couple of days. “We’ll see plenty of each other here.”

“Yeah, but... I think I can introduce you to some of my friends, and have them look out for you. If you don’t share a lunch period with me, you’ll share it with my friends Jada and Lily... oh, and Poppy, do you remember me talking about her?”

“The goth trans girl? Yeah.”

“Do you want me to send them a photo of you so they’ll recognize you? And I think I’ve got photos of Jada and Lily here on my phone somewhere...”

“I remember Jada and Lily from when they came over here to study. Assuming they haven’t venned too drastically since then.”

“Oh, good. Yeah, they’ve kept basically the same look for a while, although Jada does more adventurous venns on weekends.”

So she sent them a new photo of my current venned body and asked them to look for me at lunch. A little later, I helped her cook supper; she taught me how to make stir-fried rice.

Saturday afternoon, when Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey got home from their yard-saling, she told me that Nathan had called just a few minutes earlier. “He wants to meet you,” she said. “I told him the ground rules: he has to call you Lauren and not try to talk you out of being a girl, and he agreed. I said you’d call him back once I got home.” She handed me her phone.

I looked up Nathan’s cell number in the contacts on my phone (which no longer had an active service plan), then dialed the number on Mrs. Ramsey’s phone. He answered, “Hello?”

“Nathan? This is your sister Lauren.”

“Oh, wow, you sound really different. Duh, Mom told me you were a girl now, and I figured you must be, after that letter. It sounds like you’re persona non grata around here, but if you want to hang out somewhere else, we could? I think I might piss off Dad a lot less if I hang with you after I leave here tomorrow and before I head back to Mars Hill.”

“That would be good,” I said, wriggling with joy at the way Nathan seemed to just casually accept that I was a girl now. “What time?”

We talked about what time would fit his schedule best, and then talked about what restaurant we wanted to meet at, eventually settling on Metamorphoses, which I’d heard so much about from Sophia and seen as a necklace.

“Sweet. Okay, Metamorphoses at a little after seven. See you then, uh... little sis. — Is ‘sis’ okay, or do you want me to just use your name?”

“‘Sis’ is fine,” I said, feeling a little euphoric. I was his sister! And he came right out and said so!

I stood there holding Mrs. Ramsey’s phone for a few moments after Nathan hung up. Then she asked, “Do you want one of us to be there for moral support like we did with your parents?”

“Maybe at a nearby table, just in case things go bad? But it sounded like he was pretty okay with me being a girl.” I remembered the things he’d said about Meredith when she came out and flinched. How much of this was real? Could I trust him? Maybe he was working with Dad — they were going to snatch me coming out of the restaurant and force me into the Venn machine or something...

On the other hand, I remembered that he hadn’t been going to church when we’d visited him early in his freshman year at college. He might have changed.

“All right,” Mrs. Ramsey said. “I’m glad that’s going well.”

“I think it might be, yeah.”

Meredith and Sophia got home from work a few hours later; Sophia had venned into her usual human body, as tomorrow was one of the days when the Ramseys went all-out out with a fancy meal, like Thanksgiving and Christmas. At supper, Mr. Ramsey asked me, “Lauren, do you want to go to church with us tomorrow?”

“Yes, please. Can you tell me more about it? Meredith told me y’all started going to an Episcopal church after you left Crossroads, but I don’t know a lot about it, except that they’re cool with trans people. Like, is there something I need to know about the service to not embarrass myself?”

I’d listened to the Christmas Eve service from inside Sophia’s purse, but I didn’t expect the Easter Sunday service to necessarily be the same. And I’d only heard it, I hadn’t seen anything. They told me what to expect and reassured me that if I didn’t stand, sit and kneel when most other people did, it wasn’t a big deal. “Some churches are more sticklers for procedure, but at St. Dorcas there’s a lot of leeway,” Mrs. Ramsey said.

I have four pieces of short fiction available in epub and pdf formats on itch.io. Most of them are also part of ebook bundles where you can get a lot more trans stories for your money (look for the bit that says "Get this story and N more for $X -- View Bundle").

• "A Girl, a House and a Secret"
• “Smart House AI in Another World”
• "A Post-Scarcity Christmas"
• "Armored"