Author's note: there is a brief description of a sexual assault in this story. Take care when reading.

A College Outing

It was another beautiful fall day, and Tracy couldn’t be happier. Not just the weather was perfect, but so was everything else. She was starting college, making real friends for the first time, and being able to be herself, at last. It had been a long struggle to get to this point, but she was finally where she wanted to be, and who she had always been, inside.

She had the misfortune of being mistaken for a boy as a child, and all the way through high school; she had fought and struggled to finally be recognized as the young woman she was, but nobody ever really saw her that way at home. Finally, she had no choice to move away from her hometown, to make a fresh start as herself, without the history she desperately wanted to leave behind.

She took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and thought, “This is the first day of the rest of my life, and I plan to make it a good one.” She climbed out of her car and walked onto the campus.
The day simply flew by. She was busy, learning where her classes where, learning the layout of the campus, and meeting her classmates. At first, whenever she would meet someone new, she would flinch for a moment, waiting to see if they knew what she had been, but soon, she realized no one even blinked, but accepted her fully as a woman.

By the end of the day, she had made some new friends, and after chatting with them over pizza after classes, she finally went to the rooming house she shared with some other students near the campus. When she got home, she greeted her roommates as she made her way to her room and sat heavily on her bed.

She didn’t lay down to sleep right away. Instead, she pulled her diary out from it’s hiding place between her bed and the wall. She wrote about her new friends, especially Samantha. Samantha was the first one to approach Tracy without being told to do so by the professor.

The second student to do so was a young man named Todd. He was brilliant, but Tracy thought he was just a little creepy. He’d been assigned as her lab partner in her Chemistry class.

He told her he was impressed with her, and asked her if she had always been so smart, but she ignored his compliment and concentrated on the class. Now that she was in her room alone, she allowed herself to think “I guess I am. I never really noticed; I guess I spent too much of my time just trying to survive”

However, The biggest rush had just being treated as a woman. Every small moment, every time she got called Tracy, every time she even looked at her reflection was a victory. And now, in her room, she could finally celebrate them.

Finally she put her diary back in it’s hiding place, got undressed, crawled into the bed, and fell asleep.

The next morning she was woken by a knock on her bedroom door. “Tracy. I’m making pancakes if you want some breakfast.”

“Yes please, James. I’ll be out in a minute.”

Besides James, she had three other housemates. Mary, who was now a senior, Robert, a freshmen like her, and Alice, who was a second year freshmen. Alice was having to repeat her freshmen year due to poor grades, James had told her yesterday.

“Would have been kicked out, except for her Daddy made this huge donation or something,” he had said at the time.

The college had arranged her accommodations, and she wondered if they had a sense of humor. Two men, two women, and her, somewhere in between....

She climbed out of bed and got dressed. She chose a pair of jeans and a t-shirt that proclaimed “I’m not weird. I’m crazy.” on the front. And on the back, “Get over it.” She didn’t feel that she would need to wear a dress or a skirt that day. She’d worn one the day before to help her confidence, but she realized that she really didn’t need to. She looked and acted enough like a woman that she could wear boy’s clothes and probably still pass. Besides, she wanted to blend in, and very few of the other female students wore dresses, except on special occasions.

When she went out to join her housemates for breakfast, Mary gave her a piece of paper. “Some boy named Todd called last night after you went to bed. I promised I’d give you his message.”

The message was just a phone number and a request for her to call him. She didn’t know how he’d gotten the house’s number; she didn’t give it to him. Nor had she told him where she was living. Well, she would see him today, and maybe she could get to the bottom of this in class. It was probably nothing, and she didn’t really want to make waves on her second day of her new life.

Class was okay, but somehow, even with him right beside her, she couldn’t bring herself to mention it. He seemed awkward, like he had no idea how to behave around people, and she could sympathise with that feeling. After all, she had been through much the same herself.

But despite her sympathy, she found herself somewhat uncomfortable with his lack of respect for personal space. He was often too close, almost right on top of her when he spoke to her. He would touch her arm, her shoulder, or brush against her deliberately. Several times, she almost called him on it, but checked herself, thinking that maybe he just didn’t know any better. Instead, she would force a smile and ignored it as much as she could.

She was glad when the class was over. The professor told the students that there would be no homework because it was the first day of Trigonometry, but that they could expect homework the next class, and every class for the rest of the year.

She packed her books into her bag and followed the stream of her classmates out the door. She made her way to the university cafe to meet Samantha and Destiny, another girl she’d met the day before. She felt very comfortable with them, and soon the three of them were sharing stories like old friends. Despite her comfort, she shaded stories of her high school years to avoid any references to her struggle to be genuine. That caution became even harder for her to maintain, when she learned that Sam and Destiny were a couple.

They told her there was a small group of gay and lesbian students who met once a week to discuss how they were doing.

“I would ask if I could come, but I’m not lesbian” Tracy said.

“You don’t have to be gay to come, Tracy. Everyone is welcome.” Destiny said.

“I like these girls, and I wish I could. But I don’t want anybody questioning me. But... I do need friends.”

“Okay. If you are sure I would be welcome”

“You will be, you’ll see,” Sam assured her.

“The first meeting of the year is tonight, at seven. Room 114. Mr. Allan asked the dean if we could have permission to use that classroom.” Destiny added.

“Some of the students weren’t happy about it, but the Dean made it clear that anybody who messed with our club would be suspended.”

“Does that mean you face a lot of discrimination?” asked Tracy.

“Less than we used to. Most of the students are okay now, but there are always a few idiots” Sam said.

“I’ll be there. I’ll be a little late, though. I have English class that goes until 7:20.”

“That’s fine. The meeting officially goes until 10, but we have people going in and out all evening. Either because they have class or just because they want to go home,” Sam assured her. “10pm is a little late for people who have class at 8am in the morning.”

The rest of the day was uneventful, and she found herself watching the clock all through her English class. Once the class was over, she rushed to the meeting room, and slipped in to join the small group. Sam and Destiny smiled when they saw her and beckoned her over.

“Tracy, this is Jason and his ‘girlfriend’ Justin. That’s his term, not ours.”

“Nice to meet you both. I’m Tracy.”

“I know. Destiny’s been chattering about you for the last half hour.”

“Oh stop it, Justin. I haven’t been chattering about her for half an hour. I only mentioned her once or twice.”

She found that she was pretty comfortable in the club. She tried to stay in the corner with Sam and Destiny, but people kept coming up and talking to her and engaging her in conversation. One boy she liked in particular was David. He was a basketball player. He was straight, but he’d always been bullied in high school because everybody thought he was gay, so that’s why he attended the meetings. He had been a regular attendant since his freshman year; now he was a junior.

She stayed for most of the meeting. At 9:15, she decided it was time to go home. She had a 9am Creative Writing class and needed her sleep and time to write about her day in her diary. There was only one problem with the meeting: no one had even mentioned transgender at the meeting, not even once. She almost broke her cover long enough to ask about how they felt about trans people, but her need to keep hiding overwhelmed her curiosity.

The next week passed pretty much in a blur. She attended her classes, and did moderately well in them. She hung out with Sam and Destiny when they weren’t in class, and even Jason and Justin sometimes, but most of the time the boys went home when they weren’t in class.

Sometimes David even came over to say hi when he wasn’t working on his campaign. He was running for student body president, and was doing a pretty good job too. He was far in the lead according to the opinion poles that the university newspaper published daily on their website.

The only bad time she had was when Todd decided he wanted to follow her around. He was waiting by the door to her English class when she got out. She tried to shake him by ducking in and out of classrooms and hiding behind buildings, but he seemed to be everywhere she was, and it was frightening now, and not just annoying. Finally, just before she was got to the gay club meeting, she decided to duck into a girls washroom.

There were two other girls in the washroom. One girl was just coming out of the stall, the other was washing her hands and double checking her makeup. The girls were talking about one of their classes and complaining about how boring the teacher was. The girl washing her hands gave Tracy a quick wave. Tracy waited while the other girl washed her hand at the other sink.

When the girls turned to leave, she asked them to see if there was a boy waiting outside the door. The girls walked out, and a few seconds later, one of them poked her head back in and told Tracy that nobody was there. Tracy thanked the girls, checked her hair in the mirror, and made her way to the meeting.

The meeting was quite a bit smaller that week, with only 20 or so people all night. She had a nice time talking with David. He brought his laptop to show her his new poster designs. She even helped him redesign one of them.

She didn’t stay as late this time. Samantha and Destiny decided to go home early, and Justin and Jason were on a date, so they were not there, and David got a cellphone call from some of his basketball buddies, so he wandered off around 8:30. She said goodbye to the other members who were hanging out and started walking across campus to her car. Today it was parked in the far parking lot because the lot she normally parked in was closed for repaving.

Just before she was about to climb into her car, someone tapped her on the shoulder. She spun around, and found Todd smiling at her.

“You scared me!”

“Sorry. I just wanted to talk to you.”

“Sorry, been a bit jumpy.”

He put a hand on her arm, and as he often was, he was standing far too close for her liking.

“I know you like me,” he said. “Not too many people do, but i can tell you do.”

She felt trapped, with her car behind her, and him right in front, and her fear was growing with each second. Finally, she said. “I …. I have to go, I have class in the morning.”

He actually backed up, and she relaxed, and turned to open the door. Then suddenly she felt him press right against her back, and could feel his hands moving across her body. she struggled, but he had her pinned, and she could feel his hands slide under the skirt she chosen to wear that morning. Then it happened. One of his hands touched her private parts, and he suddenly recoiled.

“You...you’re a guy! You are a god-dammed guy!”

She tried to get her breath back, and prepared for him to attack her, but instead, he continued to back off, shouting “I will make you pay, pervert! Everybody is going to know your dirty little secret!” With that, he turned, and fled, and was soon out of sight.

Tracy climbed into her car and locked the doors. She sat in the driver’s seat shaking for a few minutes before she composed herself enough to drive home. When she got home, she went straight to her room rather than chatting with her roommates as she normally did.

Mary noticed immediately that something was wrong and followed Tracy in. She knocked on her door, but didn’t wait for an invitation before going in. “Tracy? Is everything ok?”

Tracy shook her head frantically and backed up against the wall on her bed. Mary sat down on the bed next to her. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Tracy shook her head again, tears streaming down her face. “Well, whatever it is, it will get better, I promise.”

The women sat there in silence for a few minutes. Mary gave Tracy a hug and suggested that she go to sleep. “Everything will be better in the morning.” Then, she left the room, closing the door behind her.

Once she was gone, Tracy found her voice enough to whisper to herself, “No. No it won’t.”

She lay down and closed her eyes, but she didn’t fall asleep for hours. Eventually, though, she was too tired to think, and slipped into unconsciousness.