“At least the phone bank went well,” Tiffany said from across the desk. She was trying to cheer me up; in the past that would have been unusual for her but even I could tell that something was different. She was changing, we all were.

“We raised six thousand dollars,” I said, placing the school paper on the desk. “That’s like, what enough to pay rent for a month at Planned Parenthood? Maybe they could buy a box of bandaids. Has Audrey seen this?”

Tiffany tilted her head forward and brushed a strand of golden hair away from her face as she scanned the headline once again. She didn’t need to; she’d seen the paper already. The house beyond the door of my office was quiet; our members were at their respective classes, and Audrey? Who knew where Audrey was.

Theta Kappa to Challenge Gender Identity Statutes at Woodcrest

That’s what it said. Black ink, block letters, all the way across. The rest of the article was a sham, and maybe a few years ago I would have just ignored it, but Theta Kappa was larger than I’d expected. It had grown to one hundred members while we weren’t looking, and they even had multiple houses to support it. Why had no one noticed? Where had this come from, exactly?

“If she has eyes, probably,” Tiffany shrugged. “Does she comprehend it? Questionable.”

“I don’t like this at all,” I pushed the paper away, the brief rustling sound a brief interlude to the noise of cars, passing by on the street just outside the window. “Okay, so the gender identity thing is…one thing, it’s horrible but it’s just the start. Theta Kappa says that they want to ‘restore morals to Woodcrest’. How far are they going to go? What’s next, do I have to start wearing knee length skirts?”

“Red dresses, probably,” Tiffany nodded. “Under his fucking eye, I guess.”

“But can they get away with it?” I wondered. “Can they really make that much of a change here?”

“Well let’s do the math,” Tiffany said. I choked back a laugh, had she ever been good at math? “Garron bought his way into the board of directors here, so he has…some influence. He’s backing Theta Kappa, he bought them their houses. If he wants something he can just throw money it until it happens so I would say yeah, they can probably do it.”

“What do we do?” I was the president of GAT, and I usually had the answers, but the school board was always one monster that I couldn’t overcome. They had final say in everything, and now it looked like they were using Theta Kappa to bring Woodcrest back to the stone age.

“You know what I learned from watching The Handmaid’s Tale on Hulu?” Tiffany asked me.

“What the fuck is The Handmaid’s Tale?” I furrowed my brow. “Is that like…a video game?”

“Okay, so in the show,” Tiffany said, rambling as if I had a clue what she was talking about. “Canada is kind of a safe haven for women or whatever, but it’s not as good as you think. See, Canada does what’s best for Canada-“

“Why are we talking about Canada? We’re in North Carolina-“

“But, Canada cares about the women and people from the US because their PEOPLE care about it. If the people stopped caring, they would just…do whatever and protect their own people you know?”

“So…” I said, staring at her as if she had three eyes. “You mean we have to show Woodcrest that we care?”

“You know how many times you’ve run for student body president? You know how you never get it? That’s because no one turns up to vote. A lot of people like you, but if they don’t vote, nothing happens. If you want something to happen, people need someone to follow.”

“Um, who would they follow?” I stared at her again and glanced back down at the paper. What on earth was she even talking about? “You?”

“What?” Tiffany frowned and stared at me. “No, I mean…we have someone who is trans, looks…really, REALLY cute, and can kind of put a human face to all of it. Look, Aleah, we’re Gamma Alpha Tau, we might not be at the top of the Greek totem poll but we ARE on the council and we should have a say. We can stop this before it turns into an absolute disaster, right?”

“It already IS an absolute disaster,” I sighed. “So you want to use Audrey to launch some kind of campaign against Garron and-“

“I want people to sympathize with her, be a person they can get behind. I mean look at her, Aleah. She’s…amazing, ABSOLUTELY amazing, she’s beautiful, she has this soft voice that just…resonates with you and I love the little faces she makes when she’s eating and thinking at the same time-“

“Tiffany,” I cut her off and cocked my head. She stopped speaking and blinked. “What the hell?”

“I just mean we really need to get in front of this, so let’s do it,” Tiffany said quickly. I continued to stare, what the hell had just happened?

“Audrey’s motivation isn’t exactly…the best,” sighed. “We need Leina to give her a push, so how do we find Leina?”

“Leina’s at the eastern campus,” Tiffany said, standing up. She tugged the hem of her top and pulled it back down to meet the top of her jeans. It was a silky tank top; normal for her really. I’d gone pretty casual today, just a white t-shirt, skin tight as usual; something to show off my boobs. I rose from the desk, carefully picking up my purse and slinging it over my shoulder. “If we can find her, we can run the idea by her and-“

“Tiffany,” I said, cutting her off again. “What IS the idea? What exactly are we going to do? I mean, are we going to have her post a blog or something? Hand out flyers?”

“No,” Tiffany said, shaking her head as she turned toward the door. “We’re gonna have to go a lot bigger than that.”