"Can I see him?"

"Yes, of course! I think you should go immediately afterwards though. In three or four hours they might notice that he is missing."

"Well, I better get home fast then."

A few seconds passed and I could hear my aunt sighing.

"I cannot believe it. Brook really did do it! I cannot believe that after everything I did to that boy he betrayed his god and his whole family in order to follow his perverted delusions."

If I hadn’t been gagged I would have been insulting my aunt.

"It’s the fault of modern society ma’am, they keep telling kids that they can be whatever they want but they forget to tell them that they still have to follow the rules of nature."

"You tell me. I spent the last 2 years of my life trying to raise this child the way my now dead sister would have wanted and this kid throws it all away the moment he moves away."

"Not even respecting his mother wishes, really the worst! I hope you punish him appropriately when you go back home."

"No worries about that, I will make sure he doesn’t this way anymore. Leon put him in between the front and back seats of my car. I would put him the trunk but, I want to have a discussion with Brook before we go home."

Leon was here, the bastard was here and he was helping his mother taking me away. What a spineless man! Saying he understands what I am going through, saying that he is on my side and that he always knew that I was different and yet helping his mother the moment he asks her something. I couldn’t believe this! I so wanted to believe that there were decent people on my mother’s side of the family but clearly this wasn’t the case.

I wasn’t outside for too long, Aunt Abigail and the security guard had clearly met somewhere outside of the school. It wasn’t the city, so it probably was somewhere around the woods that surrounded the school. I hoped to escape at some point and save Temperance before she was taken away, I would survive a few hours with my aunt, but I was afraid that my girlfriend’s grandparents would mess her up to the point where even years of therapy couldn’t help her anymore.

Sadly for me, one of the ways I could have escaped literary flew away a few minutes afterwards. My cellphone vibrated and one of my two abductors got rid of it.

"Leon? Get rid of the blindfold and place his head towards my seat I won’t be able to talk to him directly but at least this way he will be able to see the disappointment in my face."

I could feel Leon doing as he was told.

"Good, Leon take your seat and make sure that he doesn’t do anything that would put us in trouble. Now, Brook Woods, I cannot believe that you embarrassed your family in such a shameful way. I thought that with the education that I had given you your shameful habits would disappear but clearly it wasn’t the case. I should have flogged you harder that day, if only your naïve mother wouldn’t have come to stop me."

That sentence made me hate that woman a thousand times more but, it also helped me in so many ways. Since the day that my scars were seen, I had been afraid that the scars in my back had been the work of the mother that I so loved in the last few months of her life. My mother hadn’t been the most accepting of me acting in a feminine manner but, she wasn’t violent about it. I remembered stern talks from her, confiscation of some of my toys and the computer incident, but no beatings… From her at least, my stepfather did beat me a few times when mom wasn’t around for long periods of time. He would make sure to not leave any marks that thought I guess my mother wasn’t OK with it.

"Leon? Slap him for me will you, he clearly isn’t listening."

Leon did as he was told without saying even a word to me.

My face hit the backseat and my locket moved. For a few seconds, I saw something that caught my attention in the front of the locket. I looked at it and realized that the eyes of the falcon that was engraved in the heart shaped locket were red. It took me a few seconds to realize what was happening. I now realized, why I was allowed to always have my locket in me even in the classes that strictly prohibited any kind of jewellery… I smirked… It was my victory… Several cop cars were probably waiting for the right moment to get me out this car and to stop this stupid ride.

"Mom? He is smiling," said Leon in a panicked voice.

"You got rid of his cellphone, yes?"

I couldn’t hear an answer so I imagined that he nodded to that question.

"You also searched him for any kind of technological objects, yes?"

I assumed the same as last time.

"Keep an eye on him will you? See anything suspicious make sure to tell me."

"Yes, mom."

"Had I known that you would be so much trouble, I wouldn’t have bothered trying to hide your mother’s death to your father. I wanted you to grow up to be an acceptable member of society like your grandfather would have wanted yet…" She sighed and then started crying. "Why can’t you be normal Brook? I am trying to save you from an eternity in hell and yet you have to laugh at my face… Can’t you see that everything that I have done the last few years were for you! Father would have loved to see all of his grandchildren grow up to be good people… He always said that, always, always. He was even saying that when he was dying in my hands from that stupid heart attack… Do you understand how much effort I put in making sure that my father’s last wish was properly executed! How much it hurt to hit my children so that they would have acceptable comportments! How many hours studying with them, training them, watching over them, just to make sure that they would be people my dad would have loved… WHY BROOK! Why couldn’t you simply stay like god would have wanted! Why did you have to undermine all if my efforts…"

She started crying as intensely as I did when I tried to accept myself. I didn’t feel empathy, just pity… Some part of me could partially understand where she was coming from but that part was so miniscule it could as well not exist. That woman was vile and she had turned her sons and my other cousins in people who were as vile as her… I truly hated her.

Suddenly, I heard police sirens and I felt the car accelerate.

"How did you do it? How the hell did you do it, huh?! Leon, hit him good! Make him talk."

I waited for the hit to come, but something way more violent happened. I felt the car come suddenly to a complete stop and everything faded to black.

When I came back to myself, I could hear someone crying … someone that I hadn’t seen in months and that wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near here… I very carefully moved my arms that were hurting like hell and I got rid of the blindfold. I saw my dad standing near some EMTs or paramedics… I wasn’t that sure anyway… Seeing my dad there I was sure that I had been seriously knocked out. I blacked out again…

I opened my eyes to see that I was in a hospital room. Around me, I could see Alexandrine, Allison, Chanel, Colette and Mackenzie sleeping in a corner of the room. I could also see a male teen that looked a lot like my father (my best guess was that he was my brother John) and a woman that looked very similar to the twins sleeping in the other side of the room.

"Sorry Brooke."

I was startled and then I looked at my right side to see my dad sitting on a char teary eyed.

"I’m so sorry for everything that happened all of this is my fault."

I didn’t say anything… I wanted to know what he was going to say after that…

"I shouldn’t have gone with this stupid plan to get you to be your true self…"

I smiled… I smiled when I realised what he was about to tell me…I know I shouldn’t have seeing how I had almost died earlier (that day?) but, how the hell couldn’t I smile at hearing that my father wasn’t a total asshole… just a reckless one… a reckless asshole that with his reckless plan had probably made me transition years earlier that I would have without him… I had spent the last few weeks hating him, yet now I couldn’t seeing as it would have been hypocritical of me…

"Dad, you are forgiven…"

He was still sobbing. "But..."

"This wasn’t planned... was it?"

"No, of course not! How could I send one of my kids to the hospital?"

"Then everything is right…"

"Did you know?"

"I suspected something at the beginning but then I just started thinking of you as an asshole and I started to thinking that maybe all of this was a coincidence."

"The whole asshole thing was part of the plan. If you thought I was a total ass, you wouldn’t suspect this to have been planned."

"The girls were on it, right?"

"Yes, of course I told the two youngest to keep an eye on you and I then told the twins and Chanel to keep them in check. Were they good to you?"

"They are the best sisters a girl could have. The luggage disappearing on my first day was that Allison?"

"Yes, we also paid the bus driver to not tell you anything and Mackenzie was seeing your girlfriend psychologist mom to make sure that we weren't making a mistake with this whole thing."

"Question. How would you have put in a situation where I was forced to change clothes if it hadn’t rained?"

"Allison would have been drinking something and then would have slipped spilling the liquid on you."

I smiled again.

"You are quite clever dad."

"So, are you kiddo. The girls told me about all the plans that created in the last few weeks; I can see how we are related."
We both laughed.

"How did you know about me? I was far from having figured it out myself."

"Your mother sent me a letter a few months before her death saying that you were trans and that although she couldn’t bring herself to raise you as a girl she didn’t see anything wrong with me doing it. I waited for news about her but for some unknown reason I only learned that she died two years after the fact."

"Aunt Abigail said something about that..."

Dad got visibly angry.

"I wish I had pressed charges the moment you talked about it with the girls; I shouldn’t have asked my lawyers to wait before you were O.K with it."

"Where is she now?"

"Dead. Abigail and Leon weren’t wearing their seat belt so they were launched in the air when their car crashed. When I learned that they had crashed into a tree I was so afraid that you were dead too." He sobbed.

"Two last questions, dad I am getting tired… How the hell did you manage to put sign me up to an all girl’s school and how the hell did you manage to put a tracker in such a small locket?"

He smiled.

"Money and connections, Brooke, you are inheriting both, but for now go to sleep princess. Goodnight princess…" He said kissing me on my forehead.

"Goodnight dad."

I only ended up staying a few days in the hospital and when I went back to school I learned that I wasn’t going back to the dorms. I was afraid that dad had judged the school to be dangerous and decided to put in another school but Allison and Mackenzie ended up telling me that the Falconer mansion was actually in the woods near the school and that them staying at the dorms was just part of the plan. I was happy about that because I couldn’t imagine being far away from Adele, Beatricia and Maud. I also couldn’t imagine being far away from Temperance and her very entertaining moms.

Temperance? Well, Temperance ended up being O.K the man not having being able to find her grandparents because they had died the year before.

Brittany and Kendra? Well, they were promptly expelled after being brought back to the academy.

The security guard managed to escape but the police are tracking him and I am sure they are going to find him one day.

Me? Well, I started HRT and I am becoming more beautiful every passing day, same thing for my girlfriend. I am also enjoying having very good friends and a pretty cool family. I would have never imagined myself saying this on my first day at school but, this is quite an enjoyable (not so) accidental new life.