“So what’s eating you?” Anette asked Tori from the other side of the table. Tori looked up at her, eyes heavy and body racked with exhaustion after the events of the day.

“Are we having dinner?” Tori asked quietly, ignoring Anette’s question.

“Pot roast,” Anette said simply. “What’s eating you?”

Tori ignored her mother for a moment, wrapping her hands around her tea mug and bringing it to her lips. The herbal remedy, great as it was, was no saving grace from Anette’s piercing stare from the other side of the oak table. She looked up over the rim of the mug; her mother was still staring, and she was still expecting some sort of answer. Tori leaned back in her chair for a moment, taking a deep breath in through her nose and then setting the mug down on the table with a light thud.

“Why does something have to be eating me?” Tori asked casually as she glanced around the dining room, then back to her mother.

“I’m your mother,” Anette explained for some reason. “I know what you look like when you’re worried.”

“What, uh…isn’t there to be worried about?” Tori pursed her lips and widened her eyes for a moment, deep in thought for a split second, and then snapped her attention back to the table. “We adopted a trans girl. I’m bound to be worried about something twenty-four seven.”

“Autistic trans girl with a history of severe PTSD,” Anette reminded her. “And you’re the one that spearheaded that effort. I told you to call social services.”

“Don’t give me that bullshit,” Tori rolled her eyes. “You were onboard from the moment you saw her.”

“Doesn’t mean either of us were right.”

“Mrs. Hetrick, the counselor at her school,” Tori quickly redirected the subject. “She’s worried about what Rylee’s going to do after high school. Does she get a job? Can she get a job? Is she going to be dependent on us for the rest of her life?”

“No, probably not,” Anette shrugged. “The world will eventually be kinder to people like her, so just keep pushing her to better herself. She’ll get there.”

“And what if it isn’t kinder?” Tori argued. “What if…she’s never able to take care of herself?”

“Tori, it’s what you signed up for,” Anette reminded her. “You don’t get to write her off just because it gets hard. She’ll be fine, though. She’s at school learning social skills, you’re helping her at home, she has more support now than she’s ever had in her life. I’m not worried.”

“Well,” Tori said, picking up the mug again. “I’m glad you can be that optimistic about it. I worry about her.”

“Don’t you have other things to worry about?” Anette took a sip of her own tea and gave her daughter a prodding look. “How’s the food truck going?”

“Christ,” Tori said, exhaling and gripping her mug hard. “I have the business plan ready. There are three locations that’ll let me sit in their parking lot, all high traffic, so long as I give them a cut, obviously. More to it than that, but once I get approval for the loan, we have to get the equipment installed. It’ll work, it's just a lot of work getting it off the ground.”

“Bit off more than you could chew?” Anette suggested. Tori shook her head.

“I have a good feeling about it. I’m more worried about Marcus. Chef Quinn is kind of treating him like shit.” Tori chewed the inside of her cheek for a moment and then continued. “Verbal abuse is par for the course in the kitchen, but he’s getting it at home too. Kid’s at his breaking point.”

“What are you going to do?”

“The food truck will be ready in a few weeks, I think, so that gets him out of Mitchell’s. That’s only part of the equation, because he still has his home life to deal with, but unlike Rylee, he happens to be an adult. He can take care of his own shit and it’s nowhere near as bad as what Rylee dealt with.”

“So you’re filing that under ‘not my problem.’.” Anette nodded.

“To an extent,” Tori confirmed. “I’ll get him out of Mitchell’s. That’s all I can do; I’ve got my hands full.”

“Fair enough.” Anette nodded. “You do what you can do, and you’re right, Rylee is a full- time job.”

“Full- time sister,” Tori reminded her. She sipped her tea and looked to the center of the table, noticing a green cylindrical object. “What is that?”

“Rylee’s cast,” Anette said, shrugging.

Tori sat there for a moment, trying to comprehend what her mother had just said. The object was light- green, definitely a cylinder, and she slowly but surely began to recognize the writing scrawled across its surface. Tori had signed it, so had Wendy, Addy, and Fiona. Everyone but Mom. She cocked her head, processing, and then, finally slammed both palms on the table, pushing herself out of her chair as Anette chuckled.

“Rylee Blackburn! You get your ass out here right now!”

---

Reality came crashing down as Ariel’s eyes flew open and the embrace of a turbulent dream was violently replaced by her tiny bedroom. She inhaled heavily, barely resisting the urge to shoot upright in bed. Instead, she concentrated on her breathing, making sure to calm herself as she took visual inventory of the room.

There wasn’t a lot to it; it was a small space with just enough room for a bed and a bit of walking space by the door. A writing desk had been shoved between the end of the bed and the wall; her laptop lay closed on top of it. Moonlight streamed through the window, past the slatted blinds and the unlit fairy lights stapled to the wooden frame. It was quiet here – that was one thing she really liked about this location. On the other side of the building the bustle of crowds on Cross Street might be heard until the wee hours of the morning, but her small room was tucked on the far side overlooking the old rail yard. It was a blessing, really; she’d grown up in a rural home, in silence, and this was as close as she was going to get to that without moving to the township.

She pushed the idle thoughts aside along with her sweat-covered blankets and forced herself into an upright position. Twisting her torso to the right, she peered over the side of the bed, taking in the space between the bed and the door. He was there, curled up on the floor, one of Ariel’s stuffed animals serving as a pillow. She waited barely a minute before sucking in another breath and clicking on the bedside lamp. The room filled with a dull yellow light from beneath the tan lampshade, and Ariel was almost immediately out of the bed, fighting sleep for what she knew she had to do.

“Wake up,” she said, giving Chris’s right foot a kick. He stirred, groaning as his body came to life and his eyes opened beneath a strand of matted hair, which he hastily pushed out of the way. “Chris, wake up, we need to talk.”

“What is it?” Chris’s voice was groggy, his eyes were barely open and he began to flail his arms as he tried to figure out the best way to extricate himself from the floor. “What time is it?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Ariel quipped, though she cast a glance at her bedside clock which displayed ‘4:33 AM’ in thin green numbers. “Get up, we need to talk.”

“Can it wait?” Chris sat up, rubbing his eyes and looking up helplessly at Ariel, who stood with folded arms, shaking her head.

“Nope, get up.”

Chris struggled to his feet and sat on the bed at Ariel’s direction. He looked up at her; she stood over him dressed in a pair of pink and white pajama pants and a fitted Hello Kitty t-shirt. He immediately looked away, causing Ariel to raise an eyebrow.

“I’ve seen that look before,” Ariel commented. “But we’ll get to that in a minute. I got you a spot at a shelter and you screwed it up. Did you even go to the temp agency?”

“No,” Chris said, hanging his head in shame. “I just…I probably wouldn’t like any of the jobs and I wouldn’t be any good at them.”

“You’re living on a sidewalk surviving on handouts,” Ariel said sharply. “You don’t get to choose your damn job. Go stack boxes at the salad factory or make boxes at the cardboard factory. How long have you been on hormones?”

“Um…about three months,” Chris muttered, his cheeks flushing. “I guess…I was just going to take them until I looked like a girl.”

“And then what?”

“I…I don’t know,” Chris admitted. “I guess I was thinking I could convince my dad it just…happened.”

“He definitely seemed like he’d be accommodating,” Ariel said quickly, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “That’s a piss-poor plan and you know it.”

“Do you have a better idea?”

“I don’t know, maybe get a support network in place? Have a friend you can talk to? Anything is better than transitioning under the nose of someone who's probably going to beat the shit out of you!” Ariel huffed.

“You know I saved your life, right?” Chris’s voice held a slight upward inflection that made Ariel roll her eyes.

“Yeah, and only because we were looking for you,” Ariel pointed out. “If you hadn’t been off being stupid…well, no point in arguing that now, I guess. My point still stands.”

“That I should have a support network?” Chris shook his head incredulously. “What do you want me to tell my friends? That I’m a freak? That I like to prance around in dresses? Fuck off, Ariel. You have no idea what it’s like.”

“I don’t have any idea, huh.” Ariel gritted her teeth and summoned all her strength to resist the urge to scream. Instead, she settled for pacing the small space, walking from her position in front of Chris, to the door, then back again. “I have more of an idea than you think. You need to--”

“I don’t need to sit here and let you interrogate me,” Chris said, standing up from the bed and moving toward the door. Ariel stood aside, prompting a look of surprise from Chris.

“I’m sorry,” Ariel said in a condescending voice as she let her arms fall to her side. “Are you expecting me to stop you? You want me to block the door and tell you there’s a better way? Is that what you’re waiting for?”

“Well--” Chris started, then stopped, his mouth opening, then closing. “I--”

“It’s not going to work that way,” Ariel informed him. “I have too much shit going on, ‘Chris’. I’m not going to make you take my help. You can walk out that door, go back to the streets, sleep in whatever ditch you want, but if you walk out, it’s over. You understand? Over. I don’t have time to chase you, Chris. I’m going on a trip soon to see my sister who I haven’t seen in over two years, and I have so much emotional baggage that I just can’t take yours on. You walk out, don’t come back here, don’t go to the Haven looking for me. Find someone else, because I don’t have time.”

Ariel’s statement carried a hint of finality to it; Chris backed up and sunk down, onto the bed, burying his head in his hands.

“What do you want me to do?” he asked, defeated.

“What do you mean, what do I want you to do?” she demanded. “Why don’t you start talking?”

“This isn’t how I pictured something like this going.” Chris shook his head and drove his forehead further into his palms. “Like…I don’t know, I thought that when a girl found out and got close to me, she’d be like ‘Hey, let’s play dress up!’ and we’d just…have a girl’s night I guess. I don’t know.”

“You’re saying you want me to dress you up?” Ariel’s eyes nearly rolled out of her head. “You been reading weird fiction online?”

“Um…” Chris’s face turned a shade of crimson that Ariel never thought possible.

“It’s not about clothes, Chris,” Ariel said angrily. “It’s about what’s in here.” Ariel pointed to her head. “And here,” placing a hand on her heart. “If this is a fetish for you, then I can’t help you.”

“It’s not a fetish!’ Chris protested.’

“It’s not?” Ariel raised an eyebrow. “Because what you just described sounds like a fetish. Look, I’m not stupid. I’ve read the shit online, the forced fem stories, I found all that when I was figuring out how to help my sister. Shit, I know more about this than she does. Someone I love is trans, Chris, and the whole subject is very near and dear to my heart, so if you’re just making a game out of it, if you’re just looking for someone to get your rocks off and shove you in a dress, you can get the fuck out. Go be homeless, do the world a favor and get hit by a train.”

“It’s not a fetish,” Chris said quietly, raising his head from his hands and looking Ariel in the eye. “It’s not.”

“Prove it.” The entire word from Ariel’s mouth sounded like punctuation. There was a moment of silence, and then, she repeated the phrase at the level of a shrill scream. “Prove it!”

“I can’t!” Chris shouted back. “How the fuck am I supposed to prove it?!”

“Then get out,” Ariel’s voice oscillated, an expression of hatred forming on her face. Chris began to object, but Ariel screamed again.

Chris climbed off the bed, the fear evident in his eyes as she shuffled past her; she followed closely behind, stalking through the apartment, past a startled Amber who had wandered from her room in nothing but a black bathrobe.

“You want me to prove it?” Chris shouted as Ariel shoved him out the door.

“Not really,” Ariel snapped. Chris reached for the sleeve of his shirt and quickly rolled it back, revealing several scars that ran along the length of his arm, from the top of his wrist, down. Ariel’s attention was more than captured as she realized that some of the marks were recent; still bright red or barely closed. She looked at Chris, her eyes wide, jaw slack.

“This isn’t my body, Ariel,” Chris said, his eyes filled with desperation as he held his wrist out to her. “I’m wearing it, but it’s not me and because it’s not me, I want to hurt it! I want to punish it, I want to hurt because whatever I am, I deserve to hurt!”

“Wait, Chris,” Ariel stammered. “I didn’t--”

“Fuck you, Ariel,” Chris said, his expression turning to stone. “Fuck you for thinking I just wanted…ugh!”

“Chris,” Amber said, stepping forward. “We should talk about this.”

“Nothing to talk about,” Chris said defiantly, taking a step backward, onto the porch.

“Chris, get back in here!” Amber said firmly, taking another step to stand beside Ariel. “I am not asking.”

“Amber!” Ariel hissed. “We can’t just make him--”

“Shut up, Ariel,” Amber said sternly, taking another step toward Chris. “Chris, back in the house, now.”

“Look,” Chris said, taking a step back. “I don’t think--”

“In,” Amber said insistently, grabbing his arm, and despite his nonsensical objections, he was yanked back into the living room and ushered toward the couch. At Amber’s instruction, he sat down, visibly shaking, and Amber glared at Ariel. “Ariel, what the hell?”

“He said some of that weird fetish bullshit,” Ariel explained. “Like…he just wants me to dress him up and stuff.”

“Chris?” Amber glanced to him; he shrugged, bowing his head and folding his hands on his lap. He looked incredibly small now; he was a bit lanky, and maybe an inch taller than Ariel, but now he seemed to be shrinking. “Alright, Chris, go to my room, it’s next to the bathroom. Wait for me there.”

“Are you sure?” he asked, suddenly timid. “I mean, I--”

“Go.” Amber pointed toward the back hallway. Chris looked at her nervously, then stood from the couch and disappeared down the hall.

“Amber, I really think I made a mistake with him,” Ariel said quickly. “I think he--”

“Ariel, you need to go help your sister,” Amber said in a flat tone. “You’re not helping with this situation.”

“What’s your plan, exactly?”

“Never mind what my plan is,” Amber snapped. “Go back to bed, and tomorrow, start packing. Your sister needs you.”

---

“Did Tori get mad at you?” Kelly asked as she poked at a slimy substance on her lunch try. Rylee sat across the table from her, trying to discern whether she was looking at mashed potatoes or cream corn. “For the cast, I mean.”

“Yeah,” Carrie Ann said. “What happened to your cast?”

“Forget the cast.” Rylee continued to stare at Kelly’s tray. “What is that?”

Kelly glanced at Rylee, then down to her tray; she began to idly swirl the yellow substance with her plastic fork and then simply shrugged.

“Wednesday,” she responded. Rylee frowned.

“We don’t know what it is,” Carrie Ann said helpfully. “We just know we get it on Wednesday. You have some too, look at your tray.”

Rylee looked down at her tray, staring at the grainy, sloppy substance that occupied a section of her tray. She looked back up at Carrie Ann and shook her head.

“Look, I’ve eaten some things, but I’m not eating that.”

“Suit yourself,” Carrie Ann shrugged. “It’s edible.”

“She pulled her cast off,” Kelly said, returning to the conversation point from earlier.

“Correction,” Richard said from the other side of the table. “She tricked me into pulling it off.”

“Tricked you?” Kelly said, failing to resist the urge to laugh. “How did she trick you?”

“She just did,” Richard stated. “I didn’t know what I was doing.”

Rylee couldn’t tell if Richard was speaking in jest or not, so she chose instead to turn her attention to the rest of the lunchroom. At the table to the far left, just in front of the bank of windows, Cathy, Sheila and a host of other conventionally attractive girls sat, speaking with exaggerated hand motions and laughing in tandem with Cathy, stopping when she did. Apart from that, she noticed Izzy there at the end of the table, sitting without a lunch tray, dressed in a ridiculously bright orange sundress that was at war with her skin tone. Rylee watched her intently as one of the girls said something to her and she immediately jumped from her seat, picking up something the girl had dropped. She then watched as the girl dropped it again, whatever it was, and directed Izzy to repeat the same action. Rylee sighed internally and returned her attention to her own table.

“You look really cute today,” Kelly remarked, gesturing to Rylee’s outfit. Rylee couldn’t help but crack a grin; the black corduroy jumper and turtleneck ensemble was quickly becoming her favorite. It was knee-length, easy enough to wear a pair of white or black hose underneath, and she had an assortment of lightweight turtlenecks that wouldn’t kill her in the summer heat.

“Thanks,” Rylee managed to squeak out. Kelly laughed.

“Well you do,” Kelly reinforced her statement. “Don’t you have that dress in tan too?”

“Yeah,” Rylee nodded, embarrassed at the attention.

“Do you ever like, wear regular clothes?” Carrie Ann interjected. “I only see you in dresses or skirts.”

“Maybe she likes them,” Kelly quickly interjected. “They look cute on her anyway.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Carrie Ann shrugged. “Gotta be uncomfortable, though, dressing up all the time.”

“I will re-iterate.” Kelly’s voice went up an octave; her expression conveyed her insistence. “She looks cute.”

“Do I, though?” Rylee cast a concerned glance from Kelly, back to Carrie Ann.

“Take the compliment and shut up,” Kelly told her. “What’s your next class?”

“Special ed,” Rylee said in defeat. “I can probably skip it.”

“If you skip class they write you up,” Kelly warned. “Then Tori will find out. Speaking of which, what did she say about your cast?”

“Uh…she yelled for a little bit.” Rylee shrugged, easily remembering that it was more than a ‘little bit’. She in fact vividly recalled Tori shouting something like ‘I’ve done too much for you to have you end up with a crooked arm!’

“I sprained my wrist once,” Kelly mused, her eyes wandering to the left, indicating memory recall. “It was at the fair.”

“Why does all the weird stuff happen at the fair?” Rylee mused, drawing a strange look from Kelly.

As Kelly was contemplating that question, Rylee noticed Ron Vanhook trudging across the cafeteria, making his way toward their table. He pushed awkwardly past a guy in a letter jacket and nearly stumbled over his own feet. He finally reached their table, looking around nervously, barely making eye contact with anyone.

“You uh…alright there, Ron?” Rylee looked at him with at least some concern.

“Yeah, yeah,” Ron said, looking around nervously as if he’d crossed into an area of the cafeteria that he wasn’t supposed to be in. “I just um…I upgraded.”

“Upgraded?” Rylee frowned, then turned to Kelly, who shrugged and turned her attention back to her food for the moment. Carrie Ann seemed distracted by something else.

“Here.” Ron dropped a black object in front of Rylee; it clattered to the table, and he quickly walked back to his own table where Beth and the others were waiting for him. Rylee leaned back and noticed Beth shooting her a small wave, which Rylee returned.

“You think he has a crush on you?” Kelly partially asked, and partially suggested. Rylee flushed.

“I hope not?” Rylee had to force the words out. “I’m not really…looking for anyone.”

What she didn’t add was that if she were looking for someone, it wouldn’t be in a high school where everyone was one to two years younger. She instead settled for stirring the mystery food on her tray and tried to zone out.

“He’s not bad looking,” Kelly remarked. “Just a little awkward. You should ask him to prom.”

“Prom’s tricky,” Rylee remarked as she picked up the object and looked it over. “I have to find someone that’s not going to kill me and dump my body in a water heater after. Anyway.”

“What is that?”

“Um…” Rylee turned it over in her hands and realized it was some kind of handheld device. She pulled back the screen cover and her eyes widened slightly. “It’s a Palm Pilot. For um…like…notes and stuff, and it has a calculator.”

“That’s neat,” Kelly nodded. “And he just gave you that?”

“I guess,” Rylee said absentmindedly as she looked it over. It was no wonder he’d upgraded; the plastic texture was rubbed nearly smooth in some places, but in others it was clear that the device had taken a beating. Scratches and dents marred the edges of the device and the clear plastic window on the cover bore a crack as if the device had been dropped. Rylee smirked, noting that the thing looked like how she felt half the time. She pressed the power button near the ‘M100’ logo and the device came to life; a green-backed monotone screen greeted her along with a number of applications. There was a calculator, a notepad, fax, e-mail, and a few random games. “I think Mom has one of these.”

“Oh! You were asking how I sprained my wrist!” Kelly suddenly recalled their conversation. “So um, it was at the fair.”

“Everything happens at the fair,” Rylee confirmed.

“I was like ten and I wanted to ride the carousel, but my mom said it was time to go home. But I’d been waiting all day. There was this one horse on there, he was white and gold, I really wanted to ride him.”

“How do you know it was a ‘he’?” Rylee smirked.

“So I ran off, climbed over the fence and tried to grab onto one of the poles while it was moving. It wasn’t going very fast, so I thought I could do it. Well, I couldn’t, and we spent the night at the emergency room.”

“So you’re saying it would have been faster if she’d just let you ride the carousel?” Rylee wondered aloud.

“I never thought about it that way, but yeah,” Kelly nodded. “We spent six hours waiting for them to put a splint on my arm.”

“That’s horrible,” Rylee frowned, trying to emulate empathy, though it was always hard for her. “When I broke my arm I just woke up in a cast.”

“I still don’t know how you broke your arm,” Kelly pointed out. “You have to tell me that story sometime.”

“Maybe,” Rylee nodded, trying to decide if it was really appropriate lunch table conversation. She opened her mouth to speak again, but they were distracted momentarily by the clatter of a tray against the lunchroom floor several tables away. Kelly, Rylee, and Carrie Ann turned their heads, looking over toward Cathy’s table; the entirety of the lunchroom had fallen silent as Izzy stood there in her orange dress, shaking.

“I said carry it to the trash, not drop it on the floor,” Sheila said sharply, standing up and glaring at Izzy. “Clean it up!”

“She knocked that out of his..er…her hand,” Carrie Ann observed, making a slight pronoun slip, which caused Rylee’s eye to twitch.

Another girl, dressed to the nines, stood up abruptly from the table and shoved a handful of napkins at Izzy.

“How long are we going to let that go on?” Kelly glanced to Rylee, who looked back with a blank expression.

“She can take care of herself,” Rylee said, returning her attention to the Palm Pilot.

“How do you know?” Kelly craned her neck to see past Rylee. Rylee turned her head again; Izzy was out of sight, presumably on hands and knees, trying to clean up a tile floor with paper napkins. “She doesn’t look okay.”

“Okay, look,” Rylee said with an exasperated huff. “Cathy and Sheila are like…I don’t know…Kelly. They don’t matter, like, they just don’t. If Izzy let herself get enslaved by those two idiots, then…I don’t know. Plus, if I stand up for her, people are going to wonder if I’m like her.”

“So you’ve said.” Kelly nibbled on her food. They both turned again, watching as another girl dumped her tray in front of Izzy and commanded her to clean.

“Shouldn’t a teacher step in?” Carrie Ann watched the exchange with concern as Izzy began to wipe up more and more food. Cathy stood over her with her arms crossed and a smirk on her face; the rest of the girls laughed hysterically.

“Um…probably not,” Rylee said, looking away.

“Doesn’t this bother you? Like, at all?” Kelly asked her insistently.

“Okay,” Rylee said finally, putting the Palm Pilot down. “Why do I have to be the one that does something?”

“Well, I mean…I’d think you’d want to,” Kelly said. “Because, you know…she’s like…”

“I’m not doing this.” Rylee snatched up her tray along with the Palm Pilot and began to head toward the four trash cans at the back of the cafeteria, intent on heading anywhere but there. She paused momentarily to try to stuff the Palm Pilot in a pocket, but then realized that she was, of course, wearing the skirt that had no pockets. She huffed and stormed toward the trash cans, coming to a halt when Izzy shot right in front of her. Rylee froze in her tracks, watching Izzy, who gave her a defeated look, and then grabbed the underside of Rylee’s tray and shoved it. Rylee barely flinched as her blouse was covered in creamy mashed potatoes and the mystery substance, though her table gasped behind her. Rylee followed Izzy’s gaze, turning her head toward the front of the lunch room where Cathy, Sheila, and the other popular girls were in hysterics over the incident. Rylee turned back to Izzy. “What do you get out of that?”

“I’ve never had friends before,” Izzy said, refusing to elaborate further. Rylee gave a slight eye roll and turned away, walking back to her table.

“You’re really just going to let that happen?” Richard asked from across the table. Rylee glared.

“Didn’t you?” she snapped. “I didn’t see you doing anything about it.”

“Yeah, but--”

“But what?” Rylee demanded. “Eat your goop and shut up, if you’re not going to help.”

Richard glared, but inevitably, went back to his goop.

---

Fiona hadn’t expected the phone call, and hadn’t really wanted to get one like this, especially not on her day off. Nevertheless, she’d gotten into her car and driven over to the house that Tori and Max had shared ten years ago. It was the same driveway with a slight upward incline, the same hedges, and the same oak tree casting shade over the home’s outcropping; a welcome haven on the hottest of days.

It was all the same, all of it. But it wasn’t.

He was sitting there on the porch. Not in a chair, and not on the glider, but on the concrete deck with his back against the red brick wall, head laid back, eyes closed. Fiona looked at him over the dashboard as she brought the car to a stop and took pause, the engine idling as she considered what to say. Nothing particularly useful came to mind, so she simply switched the car off, stepped out, and walked over to the porch. She placed her left foot up on the concrete step and leaned forward, resting her elbows on bent knee, hoping to draw Max’s attention. He stared off into the distance, seemingly at nothing, his gaze tearing through the horizon.

“Max,” Fiona said. “It’s been eight years. I hate to be the one to say this, but get over it.”

“Why?” Max broke his gaze with the nothingness and looked up at Fiona, a nonchalant look of defeat painting his expression. “It’s not like anyone actually cares about me, right?”

“That self-deprecating shit isn’t going to work on me,” Fiona informed him, shaking her head. “There’s someone who's way better at it than you, and ninety percent of the time, she doesn’t affect me.”

“I mean it, Fiona,” Max said in a tone that matched his defeated expression. “She’s out there, all happy and shit, while I’m stuck here in this shithole of a house waiting for something to happen!”

“She hasn’t been that happy,” Fiona reminded him. “And you can’t call me every time you have an existential crisis. I’m not your therapist. I can recommend one, though.”

“Funny, Fiona, funny.” Max pressed his palms against the side of the house, using the bricks to push his way up, into a standing position. “Look, I called you over here because I need help with something.”

“Just a minute.” Fiona took a deep breath and crossed her arms. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to say to you for a long time.”

“Well, this sounds bad.” Max sighed and leaned against the wall next to the heavy oak entry door. Fiona studied him carefully before continuing; he was just a year older than Tori, but unlike her, he wore that extra year poorly. Dark circles beneath his eyes and ragged hair, cut poorly along with all the other signs of neglected hygiene. To say he’d been having a bad time would not do justice to the situation. Still, it had been eight years.

“Your problem is you think you were the only one affected when Rylie died,” Fiona said bluntly. Max immediately frowned and shook his head.

“That’s not true,” he said, still shaking his head. “I know that--”

“Do you? Though?” Fiona frowned back. “Because to me it seems to me you’re not focusing on the big picture. It tore the entire family apart. Tori was so distant, her mom nearly had her committed when she found out about her addiction. Mom and Rebecca were fighting over the best course of action. Steven, well, he just kind of disassociated from the whole thing. Yeah, Tori pushed you away, I get that, but a marriage is like…I don’t know. A stew.”

“A stew,” Max repeated, staring at her intently.

“A stew,” Fiona repeated back, nodding. “You put everything you have into it. All the spices, all the seasonings, vegetables, maybe a few pieces of steak, and you stir it, and stir it, and stir it.
Then, no matter how good that stew tastes, it just can’t survive having a dead baby thrown into it.”

“Fiona, what the fuck?!”

“I’m just saying!” Fiona raised her hands, palms out as if it negated the effect of her words. “Everyone was hurt, the family was shattered. We all had problems. I had to watch my best friend get worse, and worse, and worse. There was nothing I could do about it. Anette paid for therapy, it didn’t help. Until a few months ago, she really was on her last legs.”

“And she’s doing better now?”

“Arguably,” Fiona nodded. “She’s found a reason to live.”

“That girl, Rylee?”

“Yeah,” Fiona confirmed. “I’m not going to sugar coat it, it’s a little creepy, and a little ‘on the nose’, but it’s working for her.”

“Look, I don’t doubt you,” Max said. “But you still have Tori. Anette has Tori. Tori has Anette. Rebecca has all of you. You all still have each other. Who do I have? Most of my friends were hers; I was just some lonely guy she picked up at school. She made me feel special, like I could do anything. I wasn’t anything before she came along, and now that she’s gone, I’m nothing again. You all went through a lot, but I was the only one who was left alone.”

“There are six billion people on the planet,” Fiona pointed out. “Find another Tori.”

Silence thickened the space between them; Max pushed away from the wall of the house and took five slow, deliberate steps toward the stairs where Fiona now stood, but walked past her, standing shoulder to shoulder as he leaned against the white railing to the right. His eyes were fixed steadily on the road beyond the concrete walkway, watching car after car slowly creep by.

Fiona turned, listening to birdsongs and rustling leaves punctuated with the sound of a handlebar-mounted bicycle bell attached to a pink huffy that rushed by, followed by three others. She took a moment to reach behind her head and straighten her ponytail, tightening the tie and pulling any flyaways through. Then she waited.

“I don’t have a ton of time,” she said, a hint of warning in her voice. “I do have stuff to do today.”

“Stuff with Tori?”

“You’re obsessed,” Fiona quipped.

“I just want my life back. Any life. Anything would be better than this.”

“Eight years, Max,” Fiona once again reminded him of the amount of time that had passed. “You been to a bar? Arcade? Done any online dating? Tried picking girls up at a homeless shelter? Any normal adult activities?”

“Okay, Fiona?” Max said. “Tori just replaced our dead daughter with some girl she found on the street. I don’t want to hear about my shitty coping skills.”

“Hey, it might have started that way, but Rylee’s not so bad,” Fiona pointed out, noting that Max winced at the use of Rylee’s name, similar as it was to his dead child’s. “She needs a lot of help, Tori needs a purpose. It works out.”

“Yeah, well, I’m pretty sure she doesn’t pay rent,” Max pointed out. “Otherwise Tori wouldn’t have been late every month.”

Fiona nodded; before she’d rented the Thackery house from Max, Tori had lived in it with Rylee.

“She can’t pay rent,” Fiona said softly, yet sternly, meeting Max’s gaze. “She’s not capable.”

“That broken, huh?” Max said, shaking his head, his voice devoid of sympathy. “She’s taking in strays.”

“Don’t do that, Max,” Fiona warned, her voice still and quiet. “You’re talking about someone Anette calls her daughter.”

“Daughter,” Max repeated, chewing over the word and trying to comprehend. “Why would she do that?”

“It’s none of your business,” Fiona said, simply. “So did you just call me here to whine?”

“No,” Max said after a long pause and a sigh. “I…I need help with something.”

“You called me for help?” Fiona raised an eyebrow. “That’s different.”

“Yeah, well, I couldn’t think of anyone else,” Max shrugged. As he spoke, his complexion paled and he set his jaw, motioning toward the front door. “Look I…I just need you to understand, things happen, especially when you get depressed, you know?”

“Max, what the hell is it?” Fiona placed her hands on her hips, doing her best to suppress a glare. Max sighed and pushed open the front door. Fiona stepped up to the threshold, peering into the darkness, allowing her eyes to adjust. “Max, what the f--”

---

The sound of Anette’s soap operas greeted Tori as she stepped into the house, home early from Mitchell’s again. She walked in a straight line from the foyer to the kitchen, dropping her purse on the island and then heading toward the hallway to grab her laptop.

“Tori,” Anette called out; Tori stopped in her tracks and turned her head toward the living room. Her mother was there, of course, watching General Hospital and sipping a glass of tea. “Home early?”

“No customers,” Tori shrugged, stepping away from the hallway and making her way toward the living room where Anette motioned for her to join her on the couch. Tori slipped out of her shoes and crossed the carpeted floor, sinking onto the far side of the couch and half-turning to face her mother who until moments ago had been engrossed in the day’s episode of General Hospital. “Everything okay?”

“Mostly,” Anette shrugged, turning away from the television. “Rylee asked to take photography classes.”

“Really?” Tori perked up, her full attention now focused on Anette. “Her pictures have been getting a lot better.”

Photography was one of Rylee’s few creative outlets; Tori had given her a fairly new camera, and as soon as Rylee had figured out how to use it, Tori had discovered that the camera’s WiFi connection would send copies of any photograph Rylee took to her e-mail. Predictably, the first pictures she took were blurry, sometimes too dark, oftentimes too bright, but over time, they had become far better and Tori had dutifully moved them to a special folder.

“I’m going to check with Clark State on Monday,” Anette told her. “They should have a class for undergraduates. That aside, we need to talk about Ariel.”

“Yeah, I guess we do,” Tori nodded and sighed. “It’s going to be a shit show.”

“If I were Ariel Skye,” Anette said, “and I just found out my sister was alive, my first thought would be to get her away from the crazies that scooped her up.”

“But how are we supposed to stop her?” Tori asked. “What if Rylee wants to go with her?”

“She can’t,” Anette said quickly, shaking her head.

“Look, I know you want to believe that, but she is her sister,” Tori argued.

“So are you,” Anette reminded her. “And I’m her mother. And Rylee can’t make that decision. I’m sorry, but she can’t. And her new therapist agrees.”

“What?” Tori raised an eyebrow. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Last month we started taking her to a new therapist,” Anette reminded her. “It was unethical for me to treat her, and honestly, after my heart attack, it wasn’t a good idea. The new therapist gave a statement that Rylee is incompetent and potentially a danger to herself. I have a similar letter from Lucille detailing her history of self-harm. We have her scars to prove it, and you’re her DPOA. If Ariel tries to take her away, you’ll petition the court for emergency guardianship, and you’ll win.”

“Holy shit,” Tori’s eyes went wide. “She really is stuck here.”

“Correct.”

Tori let out a long, slow breath before clapping her palms against her knees and rising from the couch. She stepped around the coffee table and began to pace the room. Muttering a few choice words to herself, she stopped at the foyer, placed her hands on her hips and then quickly walked back to the coffee table, standing before Anette.

“Why are we doing this?” It wasn’t a demand, just an honest, curious question. Anette regarded her softly.

“I know you probably have reservations, Tori,” Anette lectured quietly. “But let’s not forget that you put a gun to her head and told her that she was your sister now.”

“You know it wasn’t that simple.”

“Yeah, but that was the end result, wasn’t it?” Anette smirked; Tori couldn’t argue. “No matter how you feel about it, Tori, you gave her everything. She has a home, she has a family, a real family that doesn’t abuse her. She’s going to school, she has friends, a future, and hope. It’s our responsibility to make sure she keeps all of that. Don’t you agree?”

“I do, but--”

“Tori,” Anette continued her sharp lecture. “Rylee and Ariel are two scared little girls from abusive backgrounds. Ariel seems a little better off than Rylee, but they’re both trauma victims and they’re both still processing. Rylee’s not an inconvenience to us, hell, I enjoy taking care of her, but to someone like Ariel? She’s just not equipped for it. Rylee stays here, end of story.”

“And Ariel?”

“Wouldn’t mind roping her in either,” Anette confessed. “Which reminds me, I’ve cleared out Steven’s room, what was left in it. I threw a new sheet and comforter on the bed, and sometime today we need to go pick out some cheap furniture so she feels more at home.”

“You building a terrarium?” Tori raised an eyebrow. Anette looked back at her with a serious expression.

“More or less.”

“She has her own life up there,” Tori pointed out. Anette shrugged.

“I don’t care; come on, let’s look at the room.”

The room was like the other bedrooms in the house, but even though it stood empty, the connotations were clear. Tori crossed the threshold and allowed her eyes to scan the mostly-empty space, more than aware of her mother following silently behind. There was something about this room; it felt cold and empty now, even with golden afternoon sun shining through the windows and refracting off the glass to create an asymmetrical pattern of shadow and light on the carpet.

They moved slowly, methodically, even taking controlled breaths as if they might inadvertently disturb the air within the space. They hadn’t lived here for Tori’s entire childhood. They’d lived in Urbana for a time, but eventually Mom and Dad had brought them to Springfield with the promises of a better school, a safer environment, and lots and lots of corn. The very real downside of having lived here so long was the way she saw the room as they entered. Mom had cleaned it out completely; the blue sheets had been replaced with a pink and white duvet, and the worn-out end tables had been transposed for a pair of cheap particle board bedside tables, white to match the duvet. A pink alarm clock, classic in style, had been set below a coral-colored lamp; light colors made the space seem more open, the sunlight from the outside doubly so. But, in spite of all the changes, she saw the room as it was, not just a few years ago, but a few years before that, and before that, and before that.

The room had changed configurations so many times; he was ten when they moved in here, Tori had been fourteen. Or was it fifteen? He had this stupid racecar bed; not the kind that you buy from the store, but one Dad had made for him. Painted wheels, painted frame, a checkered flag for the headboard. He’d outgrown that, and many others, and as Tori turned her gaze toward the bedroom window, she could always see them, Steven, and Dad, tossing that ratty old ball around in the backyard. A different time in another life.

She could see the floor littered with Star Wars action figures, then with the DC and Marvel toys when he’d had a change of interest. The toys had given way to a rack of CDs and rock band posters, the names of which she was unable to remember. The posters had come down as his tastes had changed once again; as he entered college for his psychology degree he’d left the room startlingly bare. Empty walls, a wooden desk with a silver HP laptop, stacks of notepads on his desk, a bookshelf full of titles both fiction and non-fiction that had eventually been relegated to three cardboard boxes on the far wall of the sunroom. Massive changes over a short number of years; Steven was a fluid, changing person and then at the age of twenty-three, all of those changes came to a halt; a life punctuated by the sound of screeching brakes, and the wail of sirens against a stormy night. What she knew of him was what she knew, and it would never change. The boy frozen in time, and her, here, continuing on as if all was normal. Changing, evolving, becoming in a way he never could.

“I know it’s a lot,” Mom had said, standing on the opposite side of the bed and gesturing broadly toward the wall. “We could throw a dresser here and maybe repaint the closet later.”

“You should probably get the dresser before she gets here,” Tori suggested, her voice distant and distracted. “I…yeah sorry, I’m just thinking about…”

“The anniversary’s coming up,” Mom said, looking to Tori empathetically. “We could do what we usually do.”

“You mean light a candle, say a prayer to a god neither of us believe in, and then get drunk off our asses with cheap shots?” Tori raised an eyebrow.

“We could always get the better stuff,” Mom suggested. Tori snorted.

“I don’t want to do anything,” she said; Mom raised an eyebrow.

“Really?”

“Look at us,” Tori said, raising her hands in an exasperated gesture. “Remember how this house used to be? You, me, Dad, Steven, Rebecca? God, do you remember that? Dad got Steven that Domino Rally Explorer set. He was bouncing around in his pajamas pretending to be Captain Power or whatever. Or what about when Dad bought him that stupid nerf bow, the one with the yellow handle, and he just chased Rebecca around the house with it.”

“Rebecca with her Barbies,” Anette recalled fondly.

“She kept them in that old briefcase,” Tori nodded, a tear forming at the corner of her eye. “And then there was me…”

“That kitchen play set suited you when you were younger, and when you were old enough you graduated to the real kitchen.”

“You taught me how to cook eggs. It was the first thing I taught Rylee too,” Tori recalled, laughing a little. “That girl was…is such a mess.”

“Our mess,” Anette reminded her, smiling softly.

“I want this to be the last year,” Tori said, adamantly. “The last year we light a candle, the last time we get drunk off our asses over…ghosts. I don’t think we should forget Steven, or Dad, I just…don’t want Rylee and Ariel caught up in some ritual that means nothing to them, and I don’t want them to think they have to live up to someone that’s not here anymore.”

There was a long, drawn out silence from Anette, who folded her arms, unfolded them, and paced about the room, looking from corner to corner, back to the bed, to Tori, no, through Tori as if she were seeing her own ghosts from the past. Finally, she unfolded her arms for the last time and turned to Tori.

“One last time,” she said; Tori’s face showed a mixture of relief and anguish. “You’re right, Tori. You’re right. It’s a funny thing when a person dies. For the first few days, the pain is…unbearable. You think they’re going to walk right through the front door, scoop you up and tell you everything’s okay. After a few days the pain gets stronger, like the twisting of a knife, but eventually, it just kind of fades. We don’t forget them, but…they become a memory, a box of old photographs--”

“A sunroom full of crap.”

“--an empty space in your heart that you can’t fill. You did the impossible, Tori, you filled that space. In a weird, weird fucking way, but you filled it. You brought us Rylee, and now Ariel. You and Rylee…you were two very broken people who needed each other, desperately, and in your moment of greatest need…there you were. So let’s build our new family, Tori. Rebecca has her adorable nuclear family with the white picket fence, the dog, and the mortgage, but we…we have this, and I, for one, am beyond grateful.”

---

Her suitcase was small on her bed – just a carry-on, just enough to carry a few clothes, cosmetics, her phone charger and maybe a book for the plane. Ariel stared at the few clothes that she’d stuffed in there; just a few blouses, a few t-shirts, skirts, and a couple pairs of yoga pants. Nothing flashy, nothing that screamed ‘I’m staying’. She had to get in there, get Rylee, and get out.

That wasn’t going to happen, was it?

She sighed and threw another t-shirt into the mix along with her travel makeup bag. Closing the suitcase, she zipped it, and her eyes flicked to the plastic ‘foot’ at the end of the bag, noticing the old, dried blood on the rough plastic surface. A plethora of memories flooded in, and she turned her hand over, giving a passing glance to the tiny scar at the base of her thumb.

“Packing light?” Amber asked, having suddenly appeared at the doorway.

“Yeah,” Ariel nodded. “In and out, right?”

“I think your assessment of the situation kind of sucks.” Amber leaned against the doorway and folded her arms, hands tucked beneath the arms of her thin black cardigan. “She’s safe, they want her, they’re letting her talk to you. What’s the problem?”

Ariel gripped the handle of the battered suitcase and hoisted it easily off the bed, dropping it at the foot near her desk and then turning to Amber, who was watching her intently. Resisting the urge to roll her eyes and scoff, she did the best she could to empathize with Amber’s seemingly cavalier attitude about the entire situation.

“This wasn’t the plan,” Ariel said simply. “She…wasn’t supposed to be living with a bunch of random strangers. We were supposed to live together, we were supposed to have an apartment together. This whole…I mean…calling this ‘Tori’ her ‘sister’? No, it’s not right. She’s my sister.”

“She’s in school, she’s on hormone treatments, they like her…it seems like they really bent over backwards to help her, so again, I ask you, what’s the problem, exactly?”

Ariel looked away from Amber and took a long, lingering glance at her laptop, wondering if she should take it or not. Finally, she settled on packing it in the morning and instead stepped over to her vanity; grabbing a silvery-pink scrunchie, she grabbed her back-length hair and bundled it into a high ponytail, using her free hand to wrap the scrunchie around the base of it just before letting the tail fall. She turned her attention back to Amber and pressed her lips together, deep in thought as she formulated a response.

“Amber, I…” She paused, contemplating Amber’s question, and attempting to find a way to defy the logic that she presented. “Amber, you can’t just…grab random people off the street and keep them!”

Amber unfolded her arms and cocked her head, staring at Ariel for a moment before raising her hand, index finger extended in the ‘just a minute’ gesture. She spun on her heel, dropping her hand and walking briskly down the hallway; her footsteps echoed loudly, each footfall thudding hard against the floorboards, growing softer as she gained more distance from Ariel’s room. Moments later, she returned with her hand wrapped around the arm of a confused and terrified-looking Chris.

“What the hell is this?” Amber demanded, pointing a slim finger at Chris as she glared at Ariel.

“What are you talking about?” Ariel asked, confused. “That’s Chris.”

“And this whole thing,” Amber said. “About not grabbing random people off the street?”

“What’s going on?” Chris asked apprehensively. “I’m…a little sc--”

“Shut up, Chris,” Ariel and Amber said in tandem.

“It’s not the same,” Ariel said, shaking her head. “Chris is an adult, h-she…was in trouble. We’re just helping her.”

“Your sister is an adult. She was in trouble. They’re just helping her.”

“It’s not the same,” Ariel argued. “Rylee couldn’t have known what was going on, at least…not from how they described her.”

“Look, this is getting weird,” Chris said, looking from Amber, who still maintained a death grip on his arm, to Ariel who appeared to be collapsing in on herself, at least intellectually. “I should just…like, go. Thanks for helping me and all, but--”

“Shut up, Chris!” both Ariel and Amber shouted again.

“Okay, okay! At least let go of my arm!”

“Right, fine,” Amber said, releasing his arm. “Go take a shower, you reek.”

“Um, I don’t have any clothes…” Chris said, turning pale.

“How about some of that fetish fiction shit you read?” Ariel said, accusingly. “Isn’t this like, a scenario you fantasize about? ‘Oh, but I don’t have any clothes!’ and she says ‘That’s okay, you can wear mine!’ and then you just pretend to hate it, but secretly you’re getting a bon--”

“Shower, Chris,” Amber said, giving him a shove out of the room. “Get something out of my pajama drawer, they stretch.”

“See?” Ariel mocked. “Your fantasy is already coming true.”

Chris turned red as he bolted down the hallway and Ariel shook her head.

“If you’d treated Rylee like that, I would have thumped you,” Amber said, almost in disgust. “You’re the one who wanted to save Chris. Now look at you.”

“Yeah,” Ariel sighed. “Look at me. Just look at me. Okay, how do I explain it? Rylee is special. I could see the pain in her eyes, and I could see that she…was something different, you know? I just…if Chris is faking it, I’m offended, like really offended.”

“How do you know she’s faking it?” Amber folded her arms again and looked intently at Ariel.

“I don’t know,” Ariel admitted. “I just…the whole thing is special to me. Close to my heart, I guess.”

“Ariel,” Amber said, taking a step forward and laying a hand on Ariel’s shoulder as she looked into her eyes. “I say this lovingly, as lovingly as possible: you don’t know what you’re doing. You think that…because you helped Rylee, you can help anyone in a similar situation. You came up here, you took that job that you have no idea how to do, you’re not even being effective at it! You think you’re an expert because you helped your sister a few years ago and now you’ve made it even worse! You tried to replace your sister with Chris, and when Rylee resurfaces…you suddenly try to find a reason to get rid of Chris. Do you see how bad this is?”

“That’s not fair.” Ariel was beginning to stumble over her words. “You know that’s not fair--”

“How is it not fair?” Amber demanded. “Tell me exactly where I’m wrong.”

“I…” Ariel stood there, struggling with her words as Amber continued to stare her down. “I don’t know.”

“Okay, come on.” Amber switched positions, moving her hand from Ariel’s shoulder to her arm, pulling her down onto the bed. Ariel instinctively laid her head on Amber’s shoulder, closing her eyes and trying to calm herself. Amber leaned in, rubbing Ariel’s arm and giving her a squeeze. “You can’t save the world, Ariel, but you can help your sister. And by help her I don’t mean run in there and drag her out of a stable situation. If she’s being abused again, sure, by all means, but Jesus, Ariel, don’t do something stupid.”

“I don’t think protecting my sister is stupid,” Ariel said into Amber’s shoulder, though the conviction was slowly leaving her voice as she stared at the wall across from the bed, allowing her vision to blur as she watched a line of twinkling fairy lights suspended from the ceiling. “Amber, what am I supposed to do?”

“Alright, look,” Amber said, giving Ariel one last pat before straightening up, forcing Ariel to pull away and look at her. “Let me give you my assessment of this situation. You ready? Good. I think, Ariel, that you set up that e-mail account two years ago and you’ve been waiting for someone, anyone to send something to it. And I think this entire time, you’ve been ready for a fight, some dramatic rescue where you’d swoop in and save your sister. Problem is, it looks like the swooping’s been done already.”

“And I wasn’t there to do it,” Ariel said, dejected. “What kind of sister am I?”

“You’ve fought hard enough, Christ,” Amber reminded her. “Jeez, why not be glad someone else did all the hard work?”

“How the hell did we get here?” Ariel asked, suddenly. “Like, do you remember when Rylee was Ryan? Remember when she was just…a pain?”

“I remember you talking about it, yeah,” Amber smirked and nodded. “She always got you so riled up.”

“Understatement.” Ariel let out a low whistle and leaned back, supporting her weight with her palms against the mattress as she recalled. “Remember when I tried smoking?”

“I don’t think I can forget it,” Amber snorted. “Fake ID, Marlboro Lights because you liked the gold box better…”

“Okay, but how can you blame me?” Ariel laughed along with her. “Old men smoke the reds. Think like…greasy mechanics with a soft pack in their shirt pocket.”

“A cig’s a cig,” Amber pointed out.

“Whatever. Remember how Rylee found out and stole the whole pack because she thought she was…I don’t know, doing something?”

“Parents had her brainwashed with that church crap,” Amber reminded her. “Thoroughly, I might add. They wanted her to be just like them.”

“Yeah, it would have worked if…” Ariel stopped mid-sentence, contemplating the gravity of the situation. It was absurd, wasn’t it? Rylee being trans had saved her from their parent’s machinations, but at the same time it had thrust her into a whole other world of trouble. It was always a trade-off, one thing that was slightly less worse than the other.

“It’s going to be okay,” Amber assured her. “Just go there and be with her. It’s what you’ve been waiting for.”

---

“Okay, can anyone tell me what the next move should be?” Rylee gestured to the projector screen, on which a large chess board was being displayed across the wall. The overhead projector had been borrowed from the library, and with Kelly’s help, they’d managed to print out a basic representation of a chessboard onto clear laminate sheeting. For the pieces, Rylee had simply scribbled letters with a magic marker, where P stood for Pawn, Q for Queen, and so forth. She stood in the glow of the projector’s lens, the heat to her back as she studied her sloppy depiction of a chessboard on the wall. Finally, she turned, squinting past the harsh halogen light at the puzzling chess club members.

Nathan and Ron had taken up position at the table nearest the door; Ron was hunched over the table, fists supporting his chin as he stared hopelessly at the screen while Nathan tried to work the problem out on a small magnetic board in front of him. Meanwhile, Angela and Beth were at their own table trying to work it out in their heads. Rylee paused, taking a look at Beth. She was exactly one year younger than Rylee, mid-way through seventeen, and her face was pale white beneath stringy black hair that was slightly longer than Rylee’s. Her rounded ears poked out from beneath her hair, and Rylee’s eyes were immediately drawn to hers, large and brown, occasionally flicking from the board on the wall, to a book she’d laid open before her.

Rylee bit her lip as her upper body seemed to go numb; she jerked her head away from Beth, instead focusing on Ron, whose hand was shooting up above his head. He spoke before Rylee could think to call on him.

“I would capture the castle!” Ron said excitedly. “You can just shoot across and take it!”

“No.” Angela shook her head. “If you do that, then that other bishop can take the queen.”

“Oh, that’s dumb,” Ron frowned.

“Unless it’s another queen sacrifice,” Susie said unhelpfully from the back of the room.

“You know it’s not,” Rylee said pointedly. Susie unleashed some kind of demonic snort-giggle and returned to whatever book she was reading. “Okay, look, this is easy; if white uses the bishop to pin the knight--”

“Pin?” Richard frowned. “What’s pin?”

“It’s um…” Rylee glanced over to Beth, intent on asking her if this was the chess club she wanted to take to tournaments, but instead found her heart nearly beating out of her chest as she looked at her. “Eh…a pin is like…I mean…um…”

“When you threaten one piece with another,” Beth cut in helpfully, suddenly making eye contact with Rylee, who began to tremble. “So if you have like a queen on the other side of a rook, and your opponent attacks the rook with a bishop, you can’t move the rook, or you lose the queen on the next turn.”

“R-right,” Rylee stammered; Beth raised an eyebrow. “Um…this is actually really effective if you can pin the king because your, um…your…the…opponent can’t choose to sacrifice because um…the king…”

“The king can’t be captured, obviously.” Beth pushed her chair back and stepped forward to join Rylee in front of the projector. “What Rylee is trying to say is that if you pin the knight with the bishop, the player can choose to sacrifice, but it’s not a good idea because with the next move, bishop takes pawn, checks the king, the king has to move, and then loses a rook.”

“R-right,” Rylee stammered, managing to tear her gaze away from Beth. She stepped away, furiously wiping sweaty palms against her skirt and attempting to compose herself. “It’s um…okay…the thing about chess is that it’s…not a game of chance. The opening can be like…random, but when you get to the mid-game you have to, um…you don’t want to just make moves, you want to make moves that force your opponent to respond in one way or another, you know?”

“So it’s all about forcing people to--”

“Jesus Christ!” Rylee sputtered; the chess club members looked at her quizzically as she brought her hands to her face and tried to control her breathing. “Um…I forgot that um…I have a thing, with the guidance counselor…”

“You made printouts for us, right?” Beth took a step closer; Rylee nearly shrieked.

“Yeah, yeah, they’re over there,” Rylee blurted out, hoping to god that Tori wouldn’t somehow find out she’d used a computer. “It’s just…a few basic problems. I’ve gotta go.”

Turning on her heel and nearly stumbling in her clogs, she bolted toward the club room door, the whir of the overhead projector following her into the hallway until she managed to shut the door and throw her back against a nearby locker, heart pounding, sweat forming on her brow. She slapped the locker with the palm of her hand and let out a squeal so shrill she thought that she probably alerted every dog in the neighborhood.

What the hell? she thought to herself. Why was she just now noticing that Beth was attractive, and why did it matter so much to her?! She’d seen her like a million times before, so what was the difference now? Even more than that, Rylee had tons of attractive women in her life; she wasn’t attracted to all of them! She thought hard; she wasn’t attracted to Tori…no, that was more fear than anything else. She certainly wasn’t attracted to Fiona, or Addy, or anyone else. Why Beth?

“Jesus, no,” Rylee shook her head violently. “No, I’m not getting involved with anyone here!”

“Involved?” Beth said, from her new position in the doorway. Rylee looked at her, wide-eyed.

“I…I don’t know,” Rylee said quickly, her face flushed. “I was just talking to myself.”

“Right,” Beth said, shaking her head. “Look you’re not the first person to have a crush on Ron, but you can still help us, right?”

“Ron?”

“Well, he’s kind of cute,” Beth shrugged. “A little slow, though.”

“Look, I uh…have to go,” Rylee gestured down the empty hall. “To see the um…guidance counselor.”

“Right,” Beth laughed. “Well, have fun with that. Maybe dump a bucket of cold water on yourself before you go.”

Rylee gave her only a seconds-more glance before bolting down the hallway and taking a hard left towards the stairs, which she nearly tumbled down head over heels before managing to grab the side railing and steady herself. Cursing silently, she sailed down the steps as quickly as she could in a skirt and turned down the second flight, one foot after the other until she emerged into the first floor hallway. A left turn, past the entryway stairs, and then a right took her to the main office where Mrs. Hetrick’s office sat.

She bolted past a receptionist who voiced a brief objection and then quite literally burst into Mrs. Hetrick’s office, doubled over and nearly choking on her own breath. Mrs. Hetrick looked up from a stack of papers and cocked her head at Rylee, who now stood in the doorway panting, her blouse soaked with sweat.

“Rylee?” she asked curiously. Rylee looked up and nodded, her hair matted with sweat and each breath more of a wheeze than anything else. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Rylee said breathlessly, nodding and doing her best to stand upright. “Just…stuff.”

“Stuff,” Mrs. Hetrick repeated. “Okay, want to have a seat?”

Rylee nodded and made her way over to the padded chair opposite Mrs. Hetrick’s desk, still panting. She reached up with her right hand and wiped a bead of sweat from her eyes, then immediately straightened her back and straightened her skirt before resting both hands on her lap with practiced precision. Mrs. Hetrick watched her intently for a moment, and then spoke.

“You’re very proper, even when you’re out of breath and wheezing,” she observed. “You know this is a high school and not a job interview, right?”

“I just…it’s habit,” Rylee said, struggling to make eye contact. “I don’t know why.”

The truth however, was more or less that Rylee had trained herself to be feminine, but also unnoticeable. She had studied the way women walked, sat, moved, and even subtle hand movements during conversation. Her number one rule: never deviate.

“I see,” Mrs. Hetrick nodded. “Well, how have you been getting along?”

Rylee shrugged, immediately lowering her eyes.

“Has anyone figured out you’re…not actually a girl?” Mrs. Hetrick asked, causing Rylee’s heart to skip a deep; her eyes flicked upward toward the guidance counselor as a million and one thoughts tore through her mind.

Not actually a girl. That’s what she’d said. Not actually a girl. Though she resisted the urge to clench her fists or even flash an expression of disgust, she internally lamented the fact that others could so easily discard the identity she’d worked so hard to forge. Even more so that no matter how hard she worked, and no matter how she felt, a few words from a stranger could wipe it all away and leave her feeling crushed.

“No,” Rylee said quietly, doing her best to push down the feelings that she was experiencing. Now’s not the time, she thought to herself.

“Your math teacher, Mister Carol says….that you missed a homework assignment this week?”

“I…I did,” Rylee admitted, looking down again. “I just…forgot I guess.”

“And your special ed class, how are you doing with that?”

“Oh, yeah, um…Mister Crabill helps a lot. He sits in the back of some of the classes and helps us out with assignments,” Rylee nodded. “And um…I like the books in the special ed classroom.”

“Good, good,” Mrs. Hetrick nodded. “One thing I’m concerned about though, Rylee, before the school year started we discussed the staff bathroom; what happened with that?”

“Um,” Rylee gulped. “I have been…using it…”

“I heard you used the regular girl’s bathroom on the first day,” Mrs. Hetrick said, her statement delivered in an almost accusatory tone. Rylee squirmed.

“I…didn’t mean to,” she said, recalling vividly how Carrie Ann had dragged her in, and how she’d managed to pass out on the tile floor. “My friend, she just…went and I went along with her and…”

“Can you make sure it doesn’t happen again?” Mrs. Hetrick asked; her question didn’t leave much room for argument, and the implications were clear.

“I’ll…try,” Rylee said nervously. “I really didn’t mean to, I swear.”

“Okay, Rylee,” Mrs. Hetrick nodded. “I do need you to understand that your presence here is tolerated because you follow the rules, and you don’t make a big deal about your…situation. We’ve never had this happen before, and now we have two of you.”

“Yeah,” Rylee muttered, looking down again. “I don’t…really talk to her much.”

“Other than the altercation in the lunchroom?”

“I…I didn’t start that,” Rylee stammered. “She just…I don’t know, she just…did that…”

“You were still involved,” Mrs. Hetrick pointed out. “We want you to get an education, but we can’t have you disrupting the learning environment; it’s unfair to the other students, do you understand what I’m saying?”

“I…I’m sorry,” Rylee offered, her voice squeaky and tears forming in her eyes. Mrs. Hetrick seemed unmoved by the display, regardless of how genuine it was. “I really didn’t mean to--”

“Rylee,” Mrs. Hetrick said firmly. “Let me explain the situation to you. You’re eighteen, legally an adult. You don’t have a guardian, it’s just you. If you go too far, if you disrupt the learning environment, I’m not going to call Tori or Anette, I’ll just going to call you to the principal’s office, and at that point we’ll have to start discussing your other options. You could always go through a GED program.”

Rylee nodded numbly, thinking hard about the potential repercussions. Truth be told she would rather go through a GED program, but Tori wanted her in school, and for some reason, that made it important to Rylee; the last thing she wanted was to let Tori down. Not after all this. So she nodded, again, listening as Mrs. Hetrick outlined a few more issues, each one compounded against the threat of expulsion. Rylee left the office dejected and defeated, wondering what was coming next.

---

“Well, the axle’s repaired,” Tori said to Marcus, sitting across the table from him. “The biggest hurdle is the loan from the bank.”

“What’s holding it up?” Marcus asked. He chewed on the end of a pencil in his right hand; Tori snatched it and gave him a disdainful look.

“That’s bad for your teeth,” she lectured; Marcus stared.

“I’m not Rylee,” he reminded her. “You don’t have to mother me.”

“I sister Rylee,” Tori informed him. “Mom mothers her. I need to go to the bank and present our business plan; I have an appointment the week after next. Whole thing is outlined, I just have to sell it to them. That’s not why you’re here, though.”

“It’s not?” Marcus looked around the table, grabbing onto another pencil, which Tori immediately snatched out of his hand.

“No chewing on the pencils,” she lectured again. “They cost money. We have to wrap this up, Rylee’s going to be here in a few minutes and I need to talk to her. Okay, let me show you something…”

She sorted through a stack of papers, moved part of it to the side, and then grabbed a manila folder, which she set in front of Marcus and laid open.

“These are, uh…” Tori scratched her head, shaking it violently to rid herself of an itch before continuing. “It’s the initial menu items for the truck. Most of it’s pretty straightforward, you have your hot dogs, hamburgers, pasta salad. It gets complicated when you start moving into the club sandwiches and the roast beef. The sauces are my own recipe, so we have to make most of it from scratch. It’s nothing we can’t handle, but it does require prep. That’s an everyday thing. Same as at Mitchell’s, you make a batch, date it, three days and it’s bad. Everything, and I mean everything has to be dated. I’ve got a roll of green tape and a box of sharpies to start us out with that.”

“Isn’t three days a little steep?” Marcus frowned. “Give it like a week, maybe; you’ll eat through your budget.”

“Yeah, I don’t know about you, but I don’t want turkey sandwiches that taste like piss,” Tori said abruptly. “That brings me to prep. Um, there’s not a whole lot of space in the truck, so we’ll have to put a tiny-ass prep station in the back, probably near the fridge. Are you ServSafe certified?”

“Obviously,” Marcus said, thrusting his index finger into his hair, twirling it in lieu of having something to occupy his hands with.

“Okay, good, what I need you to do is read over the menu and the recipes, really, really get to know them.”

“Yeah, fine, sure,” Marcus took the folder, closed it, and folded his hands atop it. “I’ll take it home tonight. We’re launching in a few weeks?”

“Correct,” Tori confirmed. “I have deals with a few businesses, particularly the Bechtle shopping center to park in the lot. I’m working on the mall, but they’re being stingy. Your dad wants me to park in front of Mitchell’s, but I’m worried about what kind of cut he’ll take. Oh, on that subject, though…let’s talk about your dad.”

“Do we have to?” Marcus cringed. Tori studied him closely, trying to read his emotions.

“Is he just yelling a lot?”

“I mean, define ‘a lot’,” Marcus shrugged. “He’s always yelled. At home, in public, and now at work. I guess I’m just getting a lot more of it since I work for him. I didn’t go to college like he wanted, you know? I wanted to take a year off, he didn’t like that. He wants me to move out, but where? I don’t make enough money at Mitchell’s and I don’t know anyone that needs a roommate. I’m kind of screwed.”

“Uh, you should make enough at Mitchell’s to move out,” Tori pointed out. “Are you spending your money on video games or something?”

“My dad makes me pay rent,” Marcus explained. “How am I supposed to save for a new place if he’s making me pay rent and buy my own food?”

“Jesus.” Tori rubbed her eyes and glanced toward the clock; it was nearly 4 PM; Rylee would be home before she knew it. Time to wrap this up. “Okay, okay. Um, give me a few days, we’ll figure something out. In the meantime, work on memorizing those recipes.”

“Look, I just…” Marcus spoke, then paused as if trying to process something; the frown on his face and the forlorn expression in his eyes spoke volumes on their own. Tori waited patiently for him to speak while throwing occasional glances at the clock. “I’m supposed to be able to handle stuff like this.”

“Explain,” Tori said curtly, looking at him intently.

“I’m a dude.” Marcus shrugged, presenting his hands as if it was all the explanation needed. Tori continued to stare, unsatisfied with the so-called explanation. “I’m supposed to be able to handle this stuff. Yelling doesn’t hurt me, you know?”

“It looks to me like it’s hurting you,” Tori pointed out. “Being a ‘dude’ has nothing to do with it.”

“Yeah, but my dad doesn’t really mean anything by it. Guys just yell sometimes, it’s not like he hits me.”

“Okay, look,” Tori sighed. She folded her hands in front of her and studied Marcus closely. “I’ve got my hands full, Marcus. The food truck, Rylee going to school, Rylee’s family shit, stuff around here…it’s a lot. You understand, right?” Marcus nodded; Tori continued. “So I can’t help you unless you want my help. I’m looking at your situation from the outside; I can see it for what it is. I can help you, but you have to stop arguing, you have to let me do my thing.”

“Like you did with Rylee?” Marcus’s tone bordered on an accusation. “You kidnapped her, right? Now she can’t even scratch her ass without your permission.”

“Rylee was given a choice,” Tori snapped. “She chose to live that way. She could have just been a normal roommate.”

“Why the hell would anyone choose to live that way?” Marcus asked, incredulously. “I’ve seen her around you; you make her act like a child.”

“Marcus, focus,” Tori said, agitated. “Figure your shit out. If you want my help, let me know, if not, I’m going to back off, but study the recipes.”

---

Rylee strolled in around 4:30; Tori glanced at the clock as she entered, and Anette was already busy in the kitchen, dunking drumsticks in bags of Shake n’ Bake. Anette shouted something to her about her backpack; Rylee snatched it up off the floor and made her way to her room with it. Tori chuckled.

“How was your day?” Tori asked her as she returned from the room. Rylee slunk over to the table and took a seat at the end where Anette had left a small plate of cheddar cheese slices and olives.

“It was okay,” Rylee shrugged, stuffing one of the cheese slices into her mouth.

“What did you do in class?”

“Learned,” Rylee said, shrugging again.

“What did you learn?” Tori pressed further, ignoring a laugh that drifted over from the kitchen.

“Stuff,” Rylee said as she chewed on the piece of cheese. Tori shook her head.

“Are you excited about tomorrow?” Tori watched Rylee’s expression briefly change to one of panic before somehow managing to return to normal as she looked down at the plate of cheese. “Your sister’s flying in, remember?”

“Uh-huh,” Rylee nodded.

“Okay look, Rylee, we do have to talk about this,” Tori informed her. “What are you thinking? How are you feeling? Are you worried about anything?”

Rylee shrugged again; Tori reached over and slid the plate away just as Rylee was going for one of the green olives.

“Feelings, Rylee,” Tori said insistently, waiting semi-patiently until Rylee managed to raise her head to make eye contact. “Tell me how you feel about tomorrow.”

Rylee’s eyes were fixed at the spot on the table where the plate of cheese and olives had sat a moment ago; her fingers were interlaced and she was beginning to squeeze her hands together while flexing her joined wrists. Her body began to sway from left to right as her breathing intensified. Tori was aware of Anette watching Rylee over the counter intently as she somehow managed to continue with her dinner prep.

“Rylee,” Tori said quietly.

“Scared,” Rylee said finally. “I’m scared of what she’ll think.”

“She already forgave you for leaving her behind,” Tori reminded her. “You didn’t have a choice.

Rylee gave a hard shrug in response. Tori watched her for a moment more, observing her very telling body language before speaking.

“I’m worried that she’ll make me go with her.”

“She can’t,” Tori reassured her. “We already thought of that.”

“You did?” Rylee looked up, frowning.

“Of course we did,” Anette said from the kitchen.

Tori reached her hand toward Rylee, laying it on top of hers; Rylee slowly looked up to meet Tori’s eyes.

“You’re part of this family, Ry,” Tori reassured her. “You’re not going anywhere.”

“I…just don’t want things to change,” Rylee mumbled, looking down and away. “I like it here. I like my room…I like everything and…”

Tori sat back in her chair, taking a moment to study Rylee. Her hair was partially pulled back and held by a plastic clip; she’d been using the straightener, at least. Strands of her brown locks hung loosely at the sides of her temples, accenting her red, puffy eyes. Tori lamented the fact that no matter how much she tried to take the burden of stress away from Rylee, it somehow always found her, and she seldom talked about it without prodding. They were due a conversation tonight.

“Rylee?”

Rylee gave another shrug before looking back down at the table. Tori looked over to Anette, who beckoned her over; she gave Rylee a pat on the shoulder and went to join Anette behind the counter, as her little sister gingerly took the plate of cheese and olives and slid it back toward her.

“It’s too much,” Anette said quietly as Tori joined her behind the counter.

“Too much?” Tori put a pot of boiling water on for the macaroni, and then turned back to Anette.

“Was barely four months ago she broke into your house, you put a gun in her face and told her she was part of our family--”

“Mom--” Tori glared daggers at her – she hated to be reminded of how she’d handled that situation.

“Think about everything that happened before that,” Anette reminded her. “Abusive home life, and then, somehow unlucky enough to be trafficked. Her brain is used to assuming the worst. We gave her a family and a home, she’s in school, she’s living a normal life and she’s waiting for it to crash down around her. And that’s fair, Tori, that’s totally fair given her history.”

“But it’s not going to crash down!” Tori argued. “We’ve got this under control, we really do!”

“You’re gonna have to show her that,” Anette explained as the water came to a slow boil. Tori took a bag of elbow macaroni and cut it open with a pair of scissors from the mason jar near the toaster oven. “Use that cheese by the oven.”

“How am I supposed to show her?” Tori asked, exasperated as she dumped the elbow macaroni into the boiling water. “We gave her all this and she’s still paranoid?”

“Tori--”

Tori held her hand up and stepped away from the stove, walking around the counter and moving toward the entertainment center in the living room. Bending over, she grabbed a gray photo album and headed back to the table where Rylee was dissociating into a slice of cheddar.

“Rylee, did your parents have photo albums?”

“Uh…yeah,” Rylee said, looking surprised. “We had like five of them under the TV.”

“We have them too.” Tori pulled her chair out and scooted it closer to Rylee, sitting directly next to her; the photo album now on the table. Rylee looked at it intently as Tori pulled open the cover. “Ours goes back pretty far. Look here’s a picture of Mom back in 1964; she was--”

“Skip past that!” Anette called out from the kitchen.

“She was super into the whole hippie thing. She has pictures of herself at Woodstock in here somewhere.”

“Woodstock?” Rylee frowned. “What’s that?”

“Big musical festival,” Tori smirked, giving Rylee a quick, partial hug. “Lots of drugs.”

“Drugs?!” Rylee’s eyes went wide as she turned to look at Anette, whose expression of annoyance could not be properly described in words.

“No one’s a saint, Rylee,” Anette said flatly. “Tori, you want to get to the point?”

“We should talk about your senior prank,” Tori called out. Rylee began to giggle; her eyes lit up and she doubled over the table with laughter. Tori gave her another hug, laughing out loud and shooting a smirk over to Anette, who was now giving a death glare over a tray of coated drumsticks. “Okay, okay, Rylee, let’s look at some other things.”

“Yes, let’s,” Anette snapped; Rylee snickered and leaned over, burying her face in Tori’s shoulder.

Tori waited for her to finish laughing and then flipped a few pages, occasionally going ‘nope’ as she came across more pictures of Anette. Finally, she stopped on one page she found to be at least somewhat appropriate.

“This is…was my brother, Steven.” Tori tapped one of the photos. “We grew up together, he was…really something.”

“What was he like?” Rylee asked curiously as she stared at the picture and then looked over to Tori.

“He was a lot like you, actually,” Tori smiled. “He loved Star Wars, had all the action figures.”

“Even Boba Fett?”

“Uh…I guess?” Tori searched her fragmented and distant memory of the movies. “Is he the one with the laser sword?”

“The green guy.”

“Oh! The guy that Luke had in the backpack!” Tori smiled, proud of herself.

“That’s Yoda.”

“What the fuck is a Yoda? Okay, whatever, Rylee. He loved Star Wars--”

“What about Star Trek?”

“Wasn’t really a fan,” Tori shook her head. “He loved to read, though. He read some of the same books you did. Shit, we should bring his box of books in from the sunroom for you. Um, he was in Boy Scouts for a while too.”

“He made Eagle Scout,” Anette reminded her; the tray of chicken clattered against the rack as she slid it into the oven.

“Eagle Scout, yeah,” Tori remembered. “God, he was so proud of that. Okay, um, you know Rebecca, obviously. Hah, look at this, she played Mary in the church nativity scene.”

“You went to church?” Rylee’s eyes went wide.

“Don’t read too much into it, Ry.” Tori nudged her. “There wasn’t a lot to do in the 80s. I sang in the choir.”

“You sang?!”

“And smoked behind the church,” Tori snickered. “Don’t tell Mom.”

Rylee stole a glance at the kitchen where Anette had leaned against the counter and buried her face in her hands, shaking her head slowly.

“What’s this one?” Rylee pointed to a picture of a younger Tori dressed in a loose t-shirt and jean shorts alongside Rebecca and a few other girls.

“That’s when we went to King’s Island…one of the times, I mean,” Tori explained. “That’s Rebecca, obviously, oh, Heather and Sarah. I have a few of us at Six Flags and Cedar Point too. Fiona’s in some of the others, as we got older. Okay, now...” Tori grabbed the page, turning it and explaining a few more of the pictures until she reached the back of the album. Rylee gasped.

“That’s me?” Rylee frowned, reaching out and touching the edge of a photograph of herself alongside Fiona on the couch, laughing at something off-camera.

“Lots more in here too,” Tori commented, pointing to another photo of herself and Rylee in front of the house. “You took this one when you first got here, remember?”

“Oh my gosh, I remember that!” Rylee grinned widely. “With the camera you let me borrow!”

“Gave you,” Tori corrected. “I gave you that camera, and you’re really, really good with it. Look, Rylee, there are like four pages in here with you, me, Mom, Fiona, Rebecca. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you don’t belong here. Especially don’t tell yourself that you don’t belong here. Understand?”

“It’s…hard,” Rylee admitted, slowly. “I…I guess I never really felt like I belonged anywhere. When I was at home, I had my room, but it didn’t have a lot of stuff, and it was the only place I was, I don’t know if that means a lot or anything, I don’t know. And anywhere else I went I was just…there for a while.”

“You’re staying here, Rylee, for a long time. We have plans and you’re part of them, understand?” Tori smiled and gave her another partial hug. “Besides, for Christmas we’re going up to Akron to see Rebecca and you don’t want to miss that.”

Rylee giggled and leaned into Tori again as they continued to flip through the photo album, Rylee occasionally laughing lightly at pictures, and Tori providing commentary. Tomorrow was going to be a good day.