by:

MacKenzie Hodge has lived a life of secrets and lies. Chief among them is his, it, or her true gender? Now faced with an important decision, Mac has to decide what kind of future they want. Fortunately for Mac, there's a whole summer to decide.

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Author's Note:Ok so here's a new story. I know most of you are thinking but wait he didn't finish the last one and technically the first part of Burning Bright is over. There is a second bit but I'm developing it slowly. This story will take place in the same universe as Its Just a Skirt and Its Just a Twin Thing. Skirt is over on Kindle now for those of you who didn't have a chance to read it here. I'm not going to repost it here so please don't ask. There is nothing really big connecting these stories so don't feel like you need to read the others to know what's going on here. Its more like a shared world. With that out of the way, I need to point out something different with this story. The main character in this story has a gender. That gender will not change throughout the story. What will happen however is that person's need to present themselves the way they feel they need to be presented. There will be plenty of flip flopping back and worth. I'm having fun with this story. I'm currently writing Ch.4. My plan once again is to post one chapter a week. I hope everyone enjoys Mac's fun journey.

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1.

“Prove true imagination, o prove true...”

I knew the line pretty well. Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, spoken by Viola in Act three, scene four to be exact. I always loved the great Bard’s prose and not because I was a Drama major. No there was something about his words. When I read them I was taken to a different place and a different time. I became someone different too. That last bit was the most important thing for me. Being someone different. Not that I didn’t like being me, I loved myself but sometimes I wish I was someone else too. I think the Twelfth Night summed up my life pretty well, someone pretending to be someone they’re not.

“Very good, Miss Delaney, now let’s hear from...”

Mr. Cooper, our drama teacher, looked around the room. He was scanning our faces, probably looking for someone with a blank and clueless expression. He found it a moment later when he called upon Mark Biggs. Unlike myself, Mark definitely didn’t want to be here. Whereas this was my first choice for a Ninth period elective, someone like Mark was clearly put here. It didn’t help that this was the last day of school before summer break. No one was really into class today. Except perhaps Mr. Cooper. He wanted to end things on a high note. Clearly, that meant torturing everyone with Shakespeare.

Well everyone except me.

I loved it.

Mr. Cooper knew that too. After all, I was the only one paying attention.

Mark groaned. “Its the last class of the day, Mr. C...”

“Yes and no reason to slack off because of it,” said our overzealous educator. “Now please pick up the line where Elise left off.”

Mark groaned again. “It's a chick’s part.”

Mr. C. looked crossed. “There are no true “chick” parts in Shakespeare, Mark. I’ll have you know, every part was played by a man back in the day, including the women parts. Most were in fact played by boys around your age.”

There were several groans from the rest of the class.

We’d gone through this all before.

Most of the guys in class had the same argument that Mark had as well.

Mr. Cooper often said that there “were no male and female parts in theater, only actors and their chosen role to play”.

“I still don’t want to read a stinking girl’s part” grumbled Mark.

A basketball player, Mark probably thought reading a few lines outside of his gender somehow reflected poorly on his masculinity. It was stupid if you ask me. Reading some lines in a play wasn’t going to make you a girl or even gay. If anything it was going to make you more masculine, at least in my humble opinion. I mean these lines were written for females but read by men back in the day. Men not afraid to dress up like girls in order to get paid. It was an honor to read those lines.

Ok so maybe I was over thinking it but to complain about it was just plain stupid.

Unfortunately for my opinion, a lot of the other guys were murmuring their agreement to Mark’s statement. If this had been the beginning of the year, I’m sure Mr. Cooper would have made an example out of all of it. Being the last day of school though, the man didn’t have much of a leg to stand on. Looking at him now, I saw the look of defeat on his face. All year he’d been trying to educate these very same Neanderthals and had failed at every chance. I think at this point it was safe to say that one couldn’t teach idiots new tricks.

That didn’t stop me though.

I grabbed my book, stood up and recited the rest of the line.

“That I, dear brother, be taken for you”.

Mark of course glared.

Mr. Cooper smiled.

“Thank you, Ken.”

I smiled and sat back down. Mark continued to glare at me until the bell rang. As soon as it did, whatever hatred he had for me was forgotten in his mad rush to be the first out of the room. The first to freedom for the next three months. I took my time leaving. As excited as I was for summer vacation to finally be here, I knew running like a fool wasn’t going to get me there any faster. I slowly gathered my things, putting away my notebook and folder. The rest of the class , by the time I was done.

“Mackenzie, you have a moment.”

Mr. Cooper was gathering his things too.

I nodded and slowly walked over to the desk.

I was a bit surprised that he called me by my full name though.

Not too many people did.

To be fair though, I went out of my way to make sure it didn’t happen. Not that I hated my name or anything, I loved it. It's just at school, I’ve always been “Ken”. It made things easier for me. It helped me separate my life. Helped me pretend to be the person I was not. Which person was that? Well, the one I let everyone think I was. This person. The shy kid in the oversized hoodie and baggy clothes, who generally kept to himself and avoided confrontation whenever he could. It was a masquerade I’d been using since middle school when puberty hit and well my life changed forever.

“What’s up, Mr. C?”

Mr. Cooper shuffled his papers.

Standing in front of the desk, I couldn’t help but notice how drastically different the two of us truly were.

Mr. Cooper was short with a receding hairline and a full bushy beard. I was tall, thin and in desperate need of a tan. I blamed that last bit on my mother’s Nordic and French genes. To be fair, I could almost blame everything on my mother. She was tall and thin too, part of which made her such a successful model in her youth. More on that later though. Looking at Mr. Cooper, I could see he was a man in desperate need of a vacation. He looked overworked and underpaid. A man who spent far too many years watching things happen and not enough time doing them.

I wonder if he went to the gym?

“So” he huffed, wiping a sweaty brow. “Have you give any more thought to the summer internship?”

The Internship.

I was wondering when he was going to bring that up.

Mr. C. was a strong advocate for helping students achieve their full and true potential. He always went out of his way to do so too. Like with me. He tried as hard as he could to give me a lead in all the school plays and pushed me to do my very best no matter the role. That drive even made it out of school as well. Our local theater held productions all year around. Most of them were pretty low key affairs, nothing too fancy. Over the summer though they went all out. That included internships for high school seniors---like me. Well like I was going to be next year. It looked good on a resume and definitely looked good on a college application.

“I don’t really know if its right for me...”

His frown said it all.

“You have talent, Ken,” he said, switching back to my preferred name. “I hate to see students with talent waste it when they could be doing so much more.”

I’d heard that before.

From him in fact.

I loved being an actor. I loved being on the stage, performing. I’m just not sure it was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I knew what acting and showbiz did to a person. I’d heard it first hand from my mother. I also lived a bit of it myself. Being in the lime light was not all that it was cracked up to be and there were consequences too. Sometimes very bad ones. I’m not sure I was ready for that. Especially when I was the way that I was.

“My family has plans this summer too, sir.”

His frown disappeared but he nodded.

“Just please give it some thought.”

I promised I would before wishing him a “Happy Vacation” and left the classroom.

The hall was pretty much deserted which was fine by me.

Less people was always better.

I didn’t willingly draw attention to myself but sometimes it happened. I definitely wasn’t the tallest or the most popular kid in school. Not by a long shot in fact. I was, however, one of those guys that some people judged on looks alone. Because of my fair skin and soft features, some of my more idiotic peers seemed to think I was a “queer", “sissy”, or a“fag”. You know the delightful things morons said when they were trying to be cruel. The stupidest thing about it all is that these idiots thought that because someone looked a certain way it automatically defined who they were. Stereotypes and profiling were bull shit. Long hair on a man made him either a pervert or a freak, being overweight made you a slob, wearing too much makeup made you a tramp. The list could go on and on. It was shit that this culture defined people on how they looked and not on who they really were.

I was girly looking so I must be gay.

It was stupid.

Thankfully I had none of that to deal with right now.

There wasn’t a jock or idiot in sight as I made my way to my locker.

There was, however, someone waiting for me.

I can’t say I’m surprised either.

“Hey Tess,” I said on my approach.

It was hard not to find her at my locker, I mean hers was right next to it. We were Locker Neighbors. We’d been that way for three years now. However, it wasn’t until this year that we really started talking. It was purely by accident too. One day toward the beginning of the year, I noticed her putting a small poster of Tara McGee up on the inside of her locker door. I wasn’t a huge country music fan but you’d have to be living under a rock if you didn’t know who Tara was. I will openly admit that I did find a few of her songs to be catchy and she wasn’t half bad to look at either. I let slip that I liked one of her songs and things sorta moved on from there.

Every time we met at our lockers, we started talking music.

Tess had a varied taste.

Not just the country music pop stars either.

My taste in music was strangely much like hers.

Our weird friendship grew from there.

I say “weird” because we didn’t really socialize outside of the hall and only at our lockers. Tess and I didn’t run in the same social circles. She was popular, a cheerleader. She was also dating Brian Ross, a football jackass I really despised. Hanging out is something neither of us was ever going to do. That didn’t stop us from talking though. I was even one of her multitude of friends on Facebook. She was one of mine too I guess. I rarely visited social apps these days so I’m not sure it really mattered.

“Hey Kenny,” she said with a smile.

Tess was the only one who called me “Kenny”.

I was pretty certain she thought my name was Kenneth.

I didn’t correct her.

Like I said we weren’t really friends.

"So I got you something for you,” she said, almost giddy with excitement.

Before I could ask her what, she took my hand and placed a flash drive in it.

Color me confused.

"Its my music, silly” she said, still giddy. “We’ve been talking about it all year. You know, all the stuff I like. So I figured I’d do you a solid and just rip it for you. I put my favorites on there. Now you can take a listen and hear what I’ve been talking about.”

“Thanks,” I said, a little surprised and confused.

I mean we had a purely platonic relationship. Hell, I wouldn’t even go that far to describe it. Like I said, “Not even friends” and yet here she was giving me something. Something I don’t even think I warranted having. I smiled anyway. I also felt a little awkward because I had nothing to give to her. Well, nothing as solid as a mixed playlist that’s for sure.

“I don’t really have anything to give to you.”

She shrugged it off. “I don’t want anything in return. I just thought maybe you’d like to hear what I’d been talking about all year around. It's also my way of thanking you too.”

Thanking me?

“For what?”

She smiled. “For being a guy that didn’t automatically try to hit on me the moment we started talking. It was kind of refreshing to know that there was at least one guy out there who isn’t a total pig.”

I won’t lie.

Tess was very pretty.

She had silky black hair, eyes so green they could have been emeralds and milky white skin. She was the kind of girl one might see on the cover of a magazine. There was no doubt in my mind why Brian and many others found her so attractive. She was one of those girls though. Not exactly high maintenance but one you had to go out of your way to impress. Nice clothes, nice car, lots of money. She was also dating someone. The first few things weren’t that far off for me to achieve. After all, my family wasn’t exactly poor and I could have a nice car if I wanted but I didn’t see the need to drive in the city. Everything was within walking distance. Clothes always seemed superficial to me. Dressing to impress seemed like a ridiculous concept to me and dating someone because they wore expensive clothes just seemed downright silly.

Then, of course, there was the whole dating someone else thing.

I wasn’t a cheater.

Breaking up someone’s relationship was shallow and mean-spirited.

If the person I lusted for was with someone else then it was my loss.

Brian was also complicated.

He was a type too. Not just a jock either. He was rich. His father had the majority of our city bought and paid for. I’m not sure exactly what he did but his name was everywhere. I don’t think it was anything illegal but you never could tell. Brian liked to flaunt it too. He had the expensive clothes and the nice car. He walked around like he owned the place. He acted like he was God’s gift to the world and everyone should bow to him. People like that made my blood boil. Entitled little pricks who used their parent’s wealth to make them seem important. Little people with little minds.

Some might say Brian was tailor-made for Tess.

Some also liked to say the two of them were alike.

I disagreed with that last bit though.

Tess was a nice person.

She was a bit stupid in her choice of mates but we both knew it wasn’t going to last. Brian was arm candy. When she got to college, she’d dump him quick. She’d find someone more suited for her tastes. Still probably rich but probably not as dense or beastly. Brian probably thought she was a notch on his belt when in truth, it was the other way around. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Brian himself actually introduced her to her future husband. Someone more rich and successful than him. That’s where Tess was heading and though I didn’t agree with it, I was happy for her too.

Getting back to the now though.

“I’m not like that,” I said.

She smiled, touching my arm gently. “I know, that’s why you’re such a sweety.”

She probably thought I was gay.

Hell, maybe I was.

I didn’t really know what I wanted.

I thought she was pretty but I had no sexual attraction to her. In fact, I don’t think any girls in the school were all that appealing to me. Pretty yes but not my type. I tried not to think about the boys much. They were there but I tried not to look at any of them for a long period of time. In high school, it was blood in the water. It was also a complication. I didn’t need any of those, not right now. I could deal with it in college. Though if I was going, to be honest, Steve Wright was really…

Nope, not going there.

“So, Kenny, what are your summer plans?”

Since when did we talk about anything other than music?

I shrugged. “My family usually goes to the Caribbean.”

“That sounds nice”

I shrugged again. “I think I might skip it this year.”

“Really, why?”

I almost shrugged again.

In truth, I didn’t really have an answer. Not a solid one anyway. There were a number of reasons, chief among them was surprisingly boredom. We’d been going on elaborate summer vacations since I was about six. The cruises started when I was ten. I used to think they were fun. For the first couple of summers, I’d look for the Black Pearl at every port we stopped at. Jax and Mom always used to get a riot out of it. My enjoyment with the cruises started to dwindle when I was about thirteen or so. I still enjoyed them but they started to get tedious too.

They only started to get fun again in the last couple of years though because my little sister, Claudia, was finally getting old enough to appreciate them. Last year though, it got boring again. I don’t think it was any one factor but I remember sitting around the pool at one of the many resorts, wondering what the hell I was doing with my life and being disappointed that I didn’t have a solid answer. Now here I was three months shy of my eighteenth birthday and I still didn’t have any answers.

“I’m just not interested in cruises anymore.”

A lie but a good one.

Tess looked like someone just kicked her puppy.

“I would die for a cruise” she gushed “my family visits relatives down south every year, really boring.”

I don’t know, it sounded kind of nice actually.

I didn’t really have a lot of relatives left.

My grandfather died two years ago. He and my grandmother used to run a B&B in the town of Starlight Cove, the place where my mother grew up. After Gramps’ death, Grams sold the place to a family friend and moved into a retirement community in Vermont to be closer to her sister. I hadn’t actually seen her or my great aunt Maggie since Gramps’ funeral. Not that I really saw much of them before that. Mom and her folks didn’t really see eye to eye. Well not since the whole modeling thing. Mom got discovered in a mall when she was my age, ended up a contestant on one of those reality TV shows, Teen Model Inc. I think it was called. Anyway, she was first runner-up in the end. Though she didn’t win, she somehow found herself on the cover of Sports Illustrated that year.

Her career skyrocketed pretty quickly.

Caroline Russel became a household name after that for a while. She did print ads, commercials, some TV, even a series of teen slasher flicks. All of it came to end when she was twenty. She got pregnant with me, the pressure of being in the spotlight got too much for her to bear and she quit.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Well not really.

There was actually an incident with a stalker. Some crazed nut who thought he was my father. He kidnapped me, lead the police on a three-day wild goose chase before he ended up turning himself in. He was arrested, of course, is currently serving out his twenty-year sentence somewhere upstate. Mom’s agent freaked, hired a bodyguard for her but Mom had enough. She quit shortly thereafter. The bodyguard stayed around though. Jackson Hodge, who eventually became my stepfather about six years after that. Then my little sister Claudia arrived about three years later.

Mom’s parents didn’t really come around until Mom decided to go to school. She took her mother’s maiden name---DuBois---and disappeared into obscurity. She resurfaced after college but this time as Miss Caroline DuBois, kindergarten teacher. She’s never looked back. Now almost forty, she enjoys every day of her new life. At least that’s what she keeps telling me anyway. I think she missed it though. Every once in a while I catch her going through her old boxes, looking at her old modeling portfolios. She’d never admit it of course. She once told me it was all like a strange dream, a whirlwind roller coaster of a life that she’s not sure she ever really truly lived.

Jax had parents.

The Hodge’s were nice enough people. Claudia adored them and they adored her too. They even went out of their way to make me feel welcome too. They were my grandparents as far as marriage went I guess. I always felt like I was cheating though. Or I didn’t belong. Jax was a great father but he was still just my stepdad. Sure the man practically raised me and he was technically the only father I knew but it was different. I didn’t even call him Dad for instance. We were more like really good buddies. He loved Mom and I loved him too but I always felt like I was missing something too. Seeing him with Claudia made me a tiny bit jealous. They were blood, they fit together.

I once asked Mom about Dad.

My real father.

She didn’t have a lot to say. I accepted a long time ago that I was an accident. Mom tried to sugar coat it by calling it a “happy accident” but it was one nonetheless. She didn’t get into specifics but it was clear she was drunk. It was probably the reason she didn’t really know who my father was. At the time she just recently broke up with her current boyfriend and came home to Starlight Cove for a breather. She said she went out with BFFs, got a little drunk and woke up the next morning on her bed. She couldn’t even remember what happened. I’m not even sure if I was the product of a one night or what. She found out she was pregnant with me a little while later and quit it all. Well not right away of course but eventually.

A decision she claimed not to regret but I think she was secretly lying about.

I’m not calling myself a mistake but I think I surprised her.

The world on the other hand blamed me for it.

I know Mom’s agent did.

“I’d give you my ticket if I could” I joked.

We laughed.

“My parents would kill me.”

“I can only imagine what mine are going to say when I tell them I don’t want to go on the cruise.”

We shared another laugh.

A second later, Tess’s phone beeped. She took a moment to take a look at it then groaned.

“You would think that that boy could live one second without me at his side.”

I could sense the tension in her voice.

Perhaps things were already starting to crack between the school’s power couple.

A moment after that the phone actually rang. Really annoyed, she answered.

“Yes, babe, I’m coming” Then a second later. “What, his locker is next to mine, you know that? We were just talking.”

I looked around, wondering what was going on.

Then I saw.

Brian.

He was coming down the hall toward us, his cell pressed to his head.

Brian Ross struck an imposing figure as he sauntered down the hall. Six foot three, maybe two ten or so. Solid muscle definitely. His sandy blonde hair always slicked back in its signature doo, wearing his letter-men jacket and the usual sneer. Like a Draco Malfoy on steroids. We had our history, none of it good. Like I mentioned before, the Ross’s thought they owned the town. Back when Jax first opened his Gym, he actually outbid Charles Ross for the space. Ross senior had not been happy at all with the deal. He wanted to turn that location into another high-end boutique, in a neighborhood of people who couldn’t afford any of the clothes in it. Suffice to say, the city council sided with my stepfather. From that moment on, the Ross’s had it out for us Hodges.

My beef with Brian started back in elementary school, back when we were in intramural baseball together. I’m not really one for sports but I did it because Jax wanted me to at least try. “Try it once and if you don’t like it, you can stop.” He never said, “quit”. Quit was not a word in my stepfather’s vocabulary. Regardless, Brian and I ended up on the same team. Back then most of us were on an even playing field with one another. Well, Brian wanted to be on First Base but Coach decided I was better suited for it. Brian through a fit and his father flew in. He threw some money around and suddenly I was in the outfield. Which was fine by me, I didn’t really care where I was. Brian didn’t let it go though. He started to rub it in. During practice, he deliberately started sending balls my way too. He hit it as hard as he could whenever he could.

One of the balls caught me in the chin. Now I’m usually a pretty even tempered person. I’d been taking abuse from him for weeks up to that point. I’d had enough. I lost it and attacked Brian. He wasn’t as big as he was now. He also never saw it coming. When Jax started teaching me how to defend myself when I was five, the first rule was never to be the aggressor. That day on the field, I tossed the first rule out the window. I clocked Brian across the face with a left hook before he saw it coming. I followed it up with a kick to the gut, dropping the prick like a ton of bricks. Brian’s Dad wanted to sue, claiming I broke his son’s nose. I didn’t but that’s just how they were. The incident made it as far as a Review board. Thankfully there was a camera on the field and it caught the whole thing. The case was overturned, no one was at fault.

My intramural baseball career ended there though.

I also happily took the two months grounding for it.

Brian held a grudge for the rest of our lives though.

Looking at the giant swaggering toward us, I knew there was no way I could take him with a cheap punch like I did all those years ago. Not that I would ever engage him in an actual fight. I learned my lesson that day. Jax was right, I shouldn’t have been the aggressor. It led to a lot of unnecessary things. It also made me a lifelong enemy in Brian Ross.

“Hey babe,” he said when he finally reached us, putting his arm around her shoulder.

He sneered at me.

Tess visibly flinched under his touch.

So there were problems.

“What are you looking at, freak?”

I sized him up. “Not much.”

“Play nice, Bri, Kenny’s my friend. We were just talking that’s all. No harm, no foul.”

Brian glared daggers at me but he let it slide.

His arm moved to around her waist though.

“Have a great summer, Kenny” she said, looking like she wanted to give me a hug.

We both knew better.

“Yeah, you too.”

With that Brian turned her and led her away.

Wow, what a tool.

Author’s note: As I’m sure all of you know, comments are life blood to an author. I’m not begging or demanding, but I certainly would appreciate anything you have to say (or ask). It doesn’t have to be long and involved, just give me your reaction to the story. Thanks in advance...EOF