Standing before me was a redheaded girl who looked extremely distressed. As soon as her brain registered my presence she very clumsily fixed her bathrobe before trying to escape by running next to me. I said trying, because not even a fraction of a second later she slipped and found herself on the ground. I didn’t laugh nor did I panic. I didn’t do either of those actions because what had just happened to her could have happened to me. As you can remember, I’m not the luckiest individual.

Anyway, I didn’t know why she was so stunned after seeing me. I mean, I was the person with male genitals who was in an all-girls school’s dorm shower room wearing a bathrobe. I might be a girl inside, but no member of the administration knew that. Whatever reason that girl had for running couldn’t be as bad as mine.

Before facing the girl, I tried to fasten my bathrobe as hard as I could in order to make sure that nothing highly incriminating slipped out and sent me to an early death. After that I action, I faced the panicked girl and trying to look the less nervous possible (action that was almost impossible considering the position I was in) I talked to her.

“You ok?” I said helping her stand up.

“Y…you d…d…didn’t see it did you?”

“See what?” I asked sincerely.

“See my…” She paused and then she looked at my face for a few seconds. She seemed to be searching for something in my eyes. I didn’t know why exactly, but after analyzing me the girl seemed to calm down. Did I again the power to calm people with my eyes or something?

I didn’t have time to explore that idea because the girl, who had seemed to have gain tremendous amounts of confidence in seconds, sighed and took a quite serious tone.

“Y…you k…know its p…p…past curfew, right? W…w…what are y…y…you doing here?” She said crossing her arms.

“From what I can tell, I came here to do exactly the same thing as you. And did you just gain huge amounts of confidence in a few seconds because you thought you could turn the situation on me?”

I don’t know about her, but I definitely did gain a large amount of confidence because of that situation. Think about it, she didn’t seem to be older than me and from her reaction when I first saw her I could gather that she maybe wasn’t really supposed to be here. Her words had to be bluff? Right? Right?

I seemed to be right because the girl blushed and spat something that seemed straight out of anime. Something that sounded like “Y…You are w…wrong, s…s…stupid!”

You know the kind of ridiculous, cliché, stupid and sometimes cute line certain anime characters spitted often. Normally, I would have cringed hard at the person who said those words, but this time I didn’t have the time for that. We seemed to have made too much noise and I was clearly hearing someone walking towards here.

Because the person clearly wanted to be heard I knew that this time for sure it wasn’t student. The other girl seemed to think the same exact thing, because she immediately shut up and started looking for a place to hide.

I closed the shower room door, took her by the hand and while trying take our clothes with me, I entered what I thought was the janitor’s closet.

The place being what it was, we had no choice but to be quite closed to each other and even in the dark I could clearly sense that my new “friend” was turning red of embarrassment. I wasn’t that comfortable either, I mean I had only acknowledged being a girl less than 24 hours ago, I had never been this close to a girl that wasn’t family.

The dorm supervisor entered the room, turned on the lights and searched for a while before finally quitting the room and while all of that was going on me and the mysterious redhead were having one of the most awkward moments ever.

Ten minutes after the adult left, we exited the room and awkwardly stared at each other.
“M…my c…clothes please!”

As she said those words, I threw her clothes at her.

“C…Can you go please? I need to c...change! ”

“I…I need to do the same thing! You go, you are at fault here!”

“A…at fault? Y…You are a…at fault! I have permission of the school nurse to use the shower at night, idiot! I didn’t need to b…be in that stinky room with y…you!”

Yeah, right!

We angrily stared each other for a while before I decided to enter the newly locked shower room to change.

I showered, changed and waited for the nuisance to go away before returning to my room.

“O.M.G Brooke, that story was so funny and cute!”

“Cute! That didn’t have anything of cute!”

“That was awkward! The most awkward situation ever!”

“I am sure that if you meet her again you are totally going to develop a crush on her!”

“On what basis!” I said blushing. “I don’t want to do anything with her Mackie!”

“Yeah, right! That what you say but your body is totally telling me the contrary.”

“With how much details about her you packed the story, you can’t be anything, but attracted to her!”

“You are crazy Mackie!”

“Yeah, crazy right.”

“Leave her alone, sis, if she say she isn’t attracted to her she isn’t, ok? Brooke hasn’t had the easiest of days yesterday, remember?” Said Allison who hadn’t said a word since I started talking about last night.

“But Brooke, do you have any idea? Who that girl might be? ”Said Allison again.

“No, why?”

“That girl wasn’t taking a shower in the middle of the night for no reason! Maybe she has the same reason as you.”

“What, being accidentally signed to up an all-girls boarding school.” I said mockingly.
“No, silly, being transgender. Think about it, Brooke, she said that she had permission of the school nurse to use the shower at night.”

“And?”

“Well, the nurse wouldn’t give that right to anyone! Brooke, you really don’t seem to be your normal self today.”

“How?”

“Even if you are only thinking about that girl, you aren’t panicking at the possibility that she might right you out.”

“Isn’t that what normal people do?”

“You aren’t normal Brooke.” Said Mackie smirking.

“As tactful as ever, Mackie. As tactful as ever.”

Allison pretended to cough.

“Going back to our topic, I think we should find the redheaded girl as fast as possible.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Could we please not do that? I don’t want to meet that girl ever again.”

“I don’t think you have much choice in that matter Brooke, she uses the shower at hours similar to yours.”

“I could always go later.”

“Maybe, but finding her and talking to her is still important, Brooke. She could talk about you to the school nurse or the school psychologist.”

As she said that an old friend of mine knocked at my door, her name: panic. As soon as she said those words I changed from my pajamas to my new clothes and texted my roommates to join me immediately. Adele and Beatricia were having breakfast so it took a while before they made it to the room.

“What’s the matter, Brooke, you look really worried.” Said Adele.

“She was in an incident last night and now she has to find the person she was with,” Said Mackie.

“Brooke, you are pregnant!” Said Beatricia jokingly.

“No time to be joking, Trish, our little Brooke’s adventure in female land might end if we don’t find a certain someone.”

“Who?”

“A very shy small redheaded girl, with a ton of freckles and green eyes.”

“Oh my god, Brooke, I know who that is! But you totally aren’t going to like this!”

“Why? Who it is?”

“Temperance Webster McArthur, her moms are the school psychologist and the school nurse.”

I might as well start packing my things right now. With such a team as parents there was no way that she wouldn’t talk them about me.

“Adele, are you sure?”

“Yes, she perfectly fits that description, especially the very shy part. Temperance doesn’t talk to anyone and prefers to eat lunch in the nurse’s office or the psychologist office. The only people she seems able to communicate normally with are her mothers.”

“Wait? But wouldn’t she live with them then! What would she be doing in the dorms?” Said Allie.

“I think that I overheard some teachers saying that they had problems with plumbing in the teacher’s cottages or something. Maybe she came here because of that, I am pretty sure her and her moms live in the cottage closest to the dorms. ”

“Then why at night?”

“She is shy, she might not like showing her body to anyone.”

“That fits what I saw last night. I don’t she might be trans like Allie was saying before you came here.”

“Why would you think that Allison?”

“I don’t know? Maybe being around Brooke has tainted my thought process. ”

“Tainted?” I said giving her an angry look.

“Sorry, that was me being tainted by Mackenzie.”

We all giggled and then got serious again.

“I think you should go see Temperance, Brooke. It’s early in the morning and she might have not talked yet. You might be able to convince her to not say anything about yesterday,” Said Allison.

“You want me to go to the house of the three people most dangerous to me right now?” I spat.

“No, Brooke. I want you to go the house of three potential allies. Even if you don’t acknowledge it, you are clearly attracted to Temperance. Maybe that attraction could turn into a crush in the future and perhaps eventually in love or maybe it could just be the start of a new friendship, either way that girl is sickly shy, Brooke, and you are apparently one of the only people in school who she can talk to, you should try to save her from loneliness, Brooke. As for her psychologist mother, Brooke, one day you will have to see a shrink about your scars, your gender identity and your whole relationship with your mom, why not prepare yourself by befriending a shrink, it might be easier that way. Also, it might a good idea to befriend her in case you get caught, having a psychologist acknowledge you as a girl might save you from the worst things that could happen. As for the nurse, think about shots and the papers you might give before receiving them, if you are friends with her daughter she might think the M on your different papers is a huge error. All advantages.”

“And if they discover I am not fully who I pretend to be?”

“Well, you are not pretending anything, you are just being yourself. If things turn bad, we will deal with it later. Now, go befriend Temperance and prevent her from talking to her moms.”

Ten minutes later, I was nervously standing in front of Temperance’s house. I think I perhaps spent 5 minutes just looking at doorbell before ringing it.

The door opened and I saw the girl from yesterday standing there blushing.

“W…What You doing h...here?”

“I… I… wanted to talk with you.”

“A…About w…what?”

“Yesterday.”

Temperance was turning tomato red.

“W…Why would y…you want to talk about that?”

“Can I enter? It’s going to be long to explain.”

Temperance seemed to hesitate for a second, but eventually let me enter.

“W…what’s your name?”

“Brooke. And from what my friends told me you are Temperance, right?”

She nodded and then she took me around the house until we arrived in front of what I thought was her room. She made a sign for me to wait and then she entered her room for a while. I think three or four minutes passed before she signalled for me to enter.