“Kelly?” Rylee said softly from the back seat of Elaine’s minivan. Both Kelly and Elaine nearly started; Rylee had barely spoken in the past on these routine trips to school, though they’d been doing it for weeks now. Maybe months. Rylee couldn’t keep track.

“What’s up, Rylee?” Kelly’s voice was slightly guarded; she did a half-turn, peering from the front passenger seat back toward Rylee who fidgeted in one of the back pilot seats. Rylee was well aware of Elaine, Kelly’s mother, watching her in the rear view mirror.

“I’m just…I’m sorry,” Rylee said quietly. Kelly turned slightly more in her seat, a frown forming on her face as she eyed Rylee, questioningly. “It’s just…you did all this stuff for me. You make sure I’m safe at school and…you guys bring here so I don’t have to ride the bus and…I’m not really…I guess I just don’t seem like I…I’m happy about it? I don’t know if that’s the right word?”

“Appreciate,” Elaine said. “The word is appreciate, and that’s…not true, Rylee.”

Rylee looked up, meeting Elaine’s eyes in the rear view rear mirror for a moment before looking over to Kelly, who turned away. Rylee’s stomach lurched and her heart fell as she looked pleadingly at Kelly, wishing for something.

“Kelly, I-”

“It’s fine,” Kelly said shortly. “Actually no, it’s not.”

“Kelly?” Elaine looked at Rylee, then frowned to Kelly.

“You haven’t tried to be my friend, or friends with anyone else that I’ve introduced you to. You just use us as Camoflauge. That other girl, Izzy? The one that’s like you? You didn’t do anything to help her until the last minute. You just watched her get bullied by those…witches-with-a-B. You just use people. That’s all you do.”

“Kelly, I couldn’t do anything for her, if I did-”

“Yeah yeah, whatever,” Kelly snapped. “You were afraid of people finding out about you. Sure. I get it. I’m bisexual, people know about that! Izzy’s transgender, people know about that! You pass for a girl so well that you can just pretend other people don’t have problems even when they’re right in front of you! God, you paint yourself like an innocent little victim but you’re not. You’re just using people and you think we can’t see it. Step up and do the right thing!”

“I did!” Rylee practically shouted; Elaine turned wide at the intersection, heading toward Kenton Ridge. “At the football practice thing!”

“After how long?” Kelly demanded, now glaring at Rylee from the front seat. “Would you step up for me if I were being bullied?”

“Well who stepped up for me?!” Rylee shrieked. “People don’t-”

“Tori fucking Blackburn! She stepped up for you!” Kelly slammed her fist into the console between the two pilot seats. “Maybe learn something from her!”

“Kelly!” Elaine hissed. “Language!”

“I’m sick of protecting her,” Kelly glared at Rylee again, then looked to her mother. “She’s not grateful and she’s not even trying to fit in!”

Rylee froze in her seat as Kelly turned away, glaring towards her mother, her words an incomprehensible whirlwind as Rylee automatically tuned her out in favor of the noise inside her own head. She became more and more distant as Kelly argued with her mother; Rylee’s body was frozen, it felt clammy, and her bones felt stiff. Was Kelly right? Rylee wondered what she could have done wrong but just as quickly as the thought entered her head, it morphed into the singular question of: ‘What had she done right?’

Nothing. She’d done nothing right, because she couldn’t. She couldn’t! Her mind drifted slowly from the current situation even as the minivan turned toward Kenton Ridge High School. How many times had she felt this, how many times had someone told her that she couldn’t do anything right? That she wasn’t smart enough? The minivan rolled to a stop in front of the high school; Rylee squinted momentarily as the vehicle passed through a sun shaft, nearly blinding her as the silver lettering of the ‘Kenton Ridge’ sign came into view.

You’re worthless, A voice said from somewhere inside her. You don’t listen. You don’t want to listen.

“I do,” Rylee muttered under her breath. She had to get out of here, out of this stuffy van. Away from Kelly, away from Kelly’s mom. She had to. She grabbed the door handle.

“Wait, Rylee,” Elaine, Kelly’s mom said, a hint of warning in her tone. Rylee ignored it, even as Elaine repeated the warning, and she pulled the door aside. Kelly was already tumbling out of the van as Rylee’s feet connected with the blacktop, as she began to run toward the front of the school. A crowd of students was already entering; maybe Rylee could lose Kelly in this mess. Maybe she could get to a quiet corner. Maybe she could disappear.

Go ahead and run. It’s what you do.

Yes, it was.

As Rylee neared the front of the school she was quickly able to discern that something was wrong; the crowd in front wasn’t a crowd of students, but adults. Adults that she didn’t know. Adults screaming, shouting, raging. Many of them held signs; to the left, near the secondary entrance to the parking lot, a blue, white and yellow ‘News Center 7’ was parked, antenna extended as a man and a woman unloaded equipment. She could read the signs as she got closer, almost within touching-distance of the crowd. One was a white posterboard that read ‘Keep boys out of girl’s bathrooms’. The rest of the signs were predictable; just more of the same with different variations, some indicating the the influence of God or whatever. Rylee paused, just momentarily as she clenched her jaw and looked at what she knew to be a familiar display.

“Rylee, come back to the van,” Kelly said loudly, her voice somehow resonating over the sound of the protestors who were chanting, screaming, and shouting. Rylee turned and looked at her, a dumb expression on her face. Finally, she shook her head.

“Izzy,” Rylee said, adding nothing else to her statement. Kelly shook her head in return.

“Get back to the van, now!” Kelly said urgently.

“No,” Rylee said softly. “I’m not worthless. I don’t just think about myself.”

“I’m sorry for what I said!” Kelly sounded as if she were on the verge of tears; her voice racked. “I was mad okay? I’ve been under a bunch of stress! I didn’t mean it!”

“Doesn’t matter,” Rylee said, barely loud enough for Kelly to hear. She then raised her voice slightly. “Come or go.”

“What?” Kelly asked frantically, looking to Rylee, wide-eyed, then back to the van.

“Come, or go,” Rylee said again. Kelly’s eyes widened even more. Rylee turned and walked slowly toward the group of protestors. The moment she reached the line, she was intercepted by two uniformed police officers who quickly ordered the crowd to clear a path and provided her an escort up the steps of Kenton Ridge.

“Protect our girls!” A woman shrieked to Rylee’s left.

“If it wants be a girl bring it out here, I’ll cut it’s dick off!” A huge man in a sleeveless shirt bellowed. The crowd cheered in response.

“Rylee!” Kelly shrieked out again from behind. Rylee glanced back to see that she was following. “What are you doing?!”

A protestor crossed in front of her, jostling Rylee and knocking her off her feet; she stumbled and dropped to the blacktop, her hands stinging with cuts. She screamed out in a mixture of frustration and fear as she quickly tried to regain her feet. The world around her made no sense; feet, hands, signs, voices, screams, shouts. A whirlwind of sensory information passed in front of her and it almost didn’t register when one of the police officers helped her to her feet.

You’re worthless, you can’t do anything.

“I’m not,” Rylee muttered back.

You don’t want to do anything.
“Shut up.”

“God made you a boy or a girl!” Another woman shouted. “You can’t just change!”

Rylee looked straight ahead, her jaw clenched as she watched the News Center Seven reporter push through the crowd, cameraman in tow. She stopped, turning to look at Kelly who shot a horrified look back.

“Go inside and get Izzy,” Rylee told her, standing close so she could hear. Kelly looked at her, confused. Rylee repeated her statement.

“Why?” Kelly demanded. “Let’s just go!”

“Go in,” Rylee repeated. “Get her, take her out the back. Get her into the van.”

“Rylee, I didn’t mean it!” Kelly shouted, her eyes wide now. “Whatever you’re going to do-”

“Go!” Rylee screamed with all her might, though her voice could barely be heard above the roar of the crowd. Kelly’s mouth was agape for a moment, and then she shut it, glaring at Rylee before turning on her heel and rushing away through the crowd. Rylee watched her until she she was no longer visible and then looked around at her surroundings. The crowd outside the school was thickening; a sea of angry people and cardboard signs affixed to wooden sticks, declaring their messages of opposition to…well…probably Izzy. The voices grew louder and Rylee winced as she was jostled by unfamiliar shoulders and deafened by angry shouts in her ears. She found herself pushed from left to right, her vision swimming and her limbs going numb as she tried to orient herself in an impossible situation.

The voices around her coalesced into one consistent hum that pounded at her eardrums and the world felt surreal as she did her best to push through the crowd. The panic began to rise inside her. What was she doing here? Why had she stayed? She knew what she wanted to do, but that sense of purpose was leaving her just as quickly as it had set in.

She found herself jostled and pushed toward the front of the building, and suddenly, she broke through the crowd only to find herself standing at the foot of the steps; to her left, the News Center 7 reporter stood with a microphone and to her right, up the stairs, she could see Cathy, Sheila, and their entourage standing near the front doors. Sheila looked around smugly with folded arms, and a second later, Cathy took notice of Rylee and drew Sheila’s attention. Rylee stood at the edge of the crowd, her gaze leveled at Sheila as the girl stared back, and then shot Rylee a smug grin. So whatever was happening here, Sheila had caused it. A rumor, word of mouth, a call to the news, that was all it would take. She couldn’t control Izzy anymore, so she was going take her out. It made sense, in a twisted sort of way.

Rylee’s head felt heavy as she twisted it in the direction of the reporter who was already making her way over.

“Excuse me, Miss?” The reporter called out as she neared. “Are you a student? Would you like to make a statement about the situation?”

“A statement?” Rylee said weakly, momentarily forgetting why she’d stayed behind. She instinctively looked away from the reporter and toward the front doors where Kelly had disappeared. Had she found Izzy? Were they on their way back to the van?

“Yeah!” A man shouted, stepping forward out of the crowd. “Tell them you don’t want boys in the girl’s bathroom, sweetie!”

“Oh god,” Rylee muttered under her breath, though apparently moved her mouth just enough to catch the attention of the man who suddenly demanded to know what she’d said. Just as he seemed ready to explode with anger, the news anchor pulled her away and began to ask her a series of questions. Who was she? Rylee. Did she go to school here? Yes. Did she know that boys were dressing up as girls and were going into the girl’s bathroom? Rylee closed her eyes and turned toward the mic.

“My…my name is…” Her voice cracked; she swallowed, blinked, and did her best to continue, even as Sheila smirked at her from the summit of the concrete stairs. “My name is Rylee Blackburn. I’m an eleventh grader at Kenton Ridge High school, and I…I…”

The newscaster watched her expectantly, and she could feel the crowd stilling behind her. She forced herself to say it.

“I am what you are afraid of.”

---

“You’re forgetting something,” Tori placed a latex-gloved hand on top of Melanie’s as she grabbed the ceramic plate and prepared to take it to the window. She looked over at Tori, questioningly. Behind them, the sounds of the kitchen continued as normal; a white-jacketed chef scooted behind she and Melanie, shouting ‘Behind!’ as he did so. The sounds of pots and pans against stainless steel rang out through the small space, and Melanie frowned, a tendril of her long blonde hair falling across her eye as she turned her head. “Asparagus,” Tori explained. “You plated the asparagus but you didn’t put any sauce on it.”

“Oh!” Melanie blushed and began looking around the shelves of the prep station. Her eyes darted nervously from item to item as she tried to figure out exactly what sauce she was missing. Tori waited patiently, perhaps a little more patiently than she would have with most new hires. Melanie reminded her of Rylee in many ways, though with bright blonde hair rather than Rylee’s dirty blonde. She seemed to have no problem keeping it tied up, either; today it was bound back in a gray scrunchie and covered in a black hair net. That was one way in which the two different; the second was that Tori could detect a hint of an Adam’s apple at the girl’s throat. She was a little older too, maybe twenty-one. Tori patted her hand again, commanding her attention; the girl looked up at her with wide, nearly frightened eyes.

“Hollandaise sauce,” Tori said, smiling encouragingly. “You don’t want to serve asparagus plain unless the customer asks for it. They asked for hollandaise sauce, even though they probably don’t know what it is.”

“I don’t even know what it is,” Melanie frowned. Tori chuckled and reached toward the shelf, grabbing the plastic squirt-bottle of light-brown sauce. She handed it to Melanie who began to apply it to the steaming asparagus.

“It’s an emulsion sauce,” Tori explained softly as Melanie worked with uncertain hands. “A butter emulsion, more like it. It’s like Mayonnaise, but it’s made with beaten egg yolks and clarified butter. Mayonnaise is an oil emulsion. Bearnaise is the same, sort of, but all three of them are emulsion sauces.”

“You’re like…so smart,” Melanie looked to Tori in absolute awe. “I…I don’t know if I can do this.”

“You can,” Tori said, pointing toward the shelf where Melanie took the plate, placing it under the hot light. “What’s your plan though, are you going to college?”

“Yeah,” Melanie nodded profusely. “I’m going into uh…multimedia, I want to be a game designer. I’m learning 3Ds Max!”

“You’d get along with my sister,” Tori smiled softly at her. “She’s into all that geeky stuff.”

“I…I don’t really go out,” Melanie said nervously. Her brief smile faded and her thin lips laying evenly between her cheeks as her eyes took on a thoughtful, yet fearful property.

“Neither does she,” Tori smiled and patted Melanie on the back. “But I think we could set something up.”

“Tori!” She turned her head to see Chef Quinn making his way toward her, nodding to the new hire and then motioning for Tori to join him near the office. She apologized to Melanie and and made her way over to Chef Quinn, following him to the office. “You get that food truck set up yet?”

“Yeah, mostly,” Tori nodded as they passed through the doorway, into the small office that sat at the back of the kitchen. It wasn’t the nicest office Tori had been in; a cheap desk was shoved up against the wall just inside the door, and a small television sat in the corner atop an aging stand. Papers were pinned to various bulletin boards affixed to the wall, complimenting the mess of paperwork that was scattered across the desk. Tori sat of the edge of the desk, wincing as it creaked. Chef Quinn took a seat in the metal rolling chair. “It’s being outfitted today. I got the bank loan. The stove, sink, water supply, getting everything up to code, you know?”

“Don’t I know it,” Chef Quinn shook his head. “It was a nightmare getting this place started up ten years ago. You’re taking on a lot.”

“I have a lot of help,” Tori shrugged. “Marcus is pretty amazing.”

“Heh,” Chef Quinn grunted. “What’s your menu looking like?”

“Americana,” Tori said. “Burgers, fries, chicken patties, hot dogs, all with my own twist, obviously. But if we’re going to have it parked out front we’ll have to do a steak day. It only makes sense.”

“Good advertisement for you,” Chef Quinn agreed. “Just don’t fall into the trap of adapting to every single restaurant you park in front of. Don’t offer lobster bisque just because you park near a Red Lobster, you feel me?”

“Didn’t plan on it,” Tori smirked. “I wanted to talk to you about Marcus, though.”

“The boy not pulling his weight?” Chef Quinn asked smugly, crossing his arms. Tori raised an eyebrow.

“Do you have to be such an asshole?” She demanded; the smug look faded from Chef Quin’s face. “Look, he’s doing the best he can, but you’re not helping.”

“And what are you accusing me of?” Chef Quinn demanded, turning toward Tori. “I hold my son to the same expectation that-”

“Yeah yeah yeah,” Tori waved her hands wildly, cutting Quinn off. “you use generational trauma as a parenting style, got it, but he’s not a kid anymore, and he’s trying. He has hopes and dreams just like any of us. Okay look, Chef, what I’m saying is I’m already dealing with one adult…no, two adults that have parental problems and childhood PTSD. Do you think you could tone it down a little?”

“I think you’re out of line,” Chef Quinn said sternly. “I think- hey, is that your girl?”

Tori shook her head. “My girl? What are you talking about?”

Tori hesitantly followed Chef Quinn’s outstretched finger, turning slowly toward the television, absolutely terrified of what she might see. Her apprehension was justified, as she quickly found out.

“What the-”

---

“Fiona, can you help me out in sixteen?” Wendy called out from down the hall; Fiona looked up from her clipboard to see Wendy sticking her head out of room 16.

“What’s up?” Fiona called down the hall. “He need another boost?”

“Nah,” Wendy disappeared into the room the moment she confirmed that Fiona was on her way down.

Fiona passed by three rooms and the nurse’s satellite station before she arrived at sixteen, Mister Drier’s room. He was an older gentlemen, as most in this wing of the hospital were, though he was surprisingly lucid. She took a left into the room and was immediately offput by the high-pitched screeching and beeping tones of IV’s, pumps, brains, and the telemetry monitor mounted to the wall above the bed. Mr. Drier was properly positioned in the bed, so no need for a boost, but Fiona nodded as she saw that Wendy had brought a cath tray with her. The chuck pads had been laid beneath him, but Wendy seemed to be having trouble with the catheter itself.

“Can’t get it?” Fiona asked the obvious before taking up a position on the other side of the bed and reaching for the tubing. “Here, it’s actually pretty easy.”

“Easy for you,” Wendy pointed out, immediately settling into her trademark ‘resting bitch face’ as Fiona grinned and turned the tubing over in her hand. “You just do everything right on the first try.”

“Not true,” Fiona disagreed. “I do plenty of things wrong.”

“Could you not do it while you’re holding my dick?” Mr. Drier suggested. “Just a request?”

“I’m going to do the best I can, Mr. Drier,” Fiona assured him. “you just lie there and…think about home.”

“My wife left me!” Mr. Drier protested. “The only thing waiting for me at home is a restraining order!”

“Uh…why a restraining order?” Fiona frowned. “What did you do?”

“I put her lover in the hospital! She said he was our accountant!,” Mr. Drier cracked through chapped and cracked lips. “We don’t even have no damn accountant! So I took good care of him, moment I came home and saw those two in bed together! Bumpin’ old wrinkly ugly uglies together like they’ve still got some life left in em’!”

“Well Mr. Drier, you barely weigh a hundred pounds, I doubt you put anyone in the hospital,” Wendy lectured, garnering a look of warning from Fiona; engaging the patients like this was never recommended.

“I hit the bastard with my car!” Mr. Drier proclaimed smugly. “Waited till he came out of the house, and then, bam! Took ‘im out by his legs! Boy he flipped like a rag doll-”

“Okay! Here we go,” Fiona said loudly, looking to Wendy as she began to insert the catheter. “Watch what I’m doing, see? It’s like spearing a prune.”

“Hey!” Mr. Drier protested. “I take offense to that!”

“You’re a good prune,” Fiona smiled, leaning forward to pat him on the cheek.

Moments later the pair exited Mr. Drier’s room and made their way down the hall toward the nursing station, and the adjacent break room.

“I hear the call lights in my sleep,” Fiona said with a defeated sigh as they walked into the break room. The lights were low in here; there were overhead fluorescent but they were normally switched off in favor of softer halogen lamps positioned around the room. Fiona took a moment to check her mailbox and then glanced at the television; it was showing some soap opera. “Is that General Hospital?”

“Think so,” Wendy walked past Fiona and took a seat at one of the tables. “You been hitting the books?”

“Yeah, it’s taking up like all my time,” Fiona admitted. “the NCLEX handbook is huge. I don’t have any trouble with the practice tests but it’s a lot. I don’t want to be a nurse aid forever, though.”

“Who does?” Wendy laughed. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life wiping butts!”

“I feel like I do that enough in my personal life,” Fiona sighed.

“How is Rylee?”

“Ya know,” Fiona sat on the edge of the table, drawing one foot up and holding her knee in front of her. “She operates surprisingly well without a gun in her face. I mean obviously the autism is still an issue, and the uh…other thing-”

“The trans thing,” Wendy filled in for her.

“-the trans thing,” Fiona agreed. “she’s fine with it, mostly. People can’t really tell. Hell, she goes to school and no one notices. But, you know as well as I do that it won’t last forever.”

“You don’t think?”

“She’s gotta start growing facial hair eventually, and her body will take on a more masculine shape. Everything she was deprived of, was what she had going for her. Malnourished, so she was thin. Delayed puberty…who the hell knows what caused that. Hormones will help but she’s got trouble ahead,” Fiona shrugged. “Or, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the hormones will do the trick and she’ll just stay like that. Maybe her voice will never drop, maybe she’ll never grow facial hair. Who knows?”

“You uh…like to pretend you don’t care,” Wendy pointed out. “But…”

“She’s just trying to live, Wendy, like the rest of us. She should be able to do that.”

“So you don’t care at all?” Wendy smirked, teasing Fiona who returned the smirk with an ice-cold glare.

“She’s part of our fucked up little family,” Fiona said, dryly. “Of course I care.”

“Aww that’s so sweet,” Wendy rested her cheek against her left hand and batted her eyelashes at Fiona who returned the gesture with a growl. Wendy laughed.

“Let’s get back out there,” Fiona motioned toward the door. “We need to check on Room Seven.”

“They’ve got a sitter,” Wendy reminded her. “Should be fine.”

“I had to wake that sitter up three times,” Fiona informed her. “And one of those times, the patient had literally taken a shit on her.”

“Taken a shit, on the sitter?”

“Girl didn’t even notice,” Fiona rolled her eyes.

“Okay god dammit, this place…” Wendy pressed her palms on the table and pushed herself into a standing position. “They keep everybody alive way longer than they should.”

“That’s kinda fucked up to say,” Fiona said in a non-committal tone.

“Is it, though?” Wendy rolled her eyes. “They bring them in here, they don’t have a DNR so they just sit here and shit on everything or they scream at nurses, hit nurses, and nurse aides. No one cares. Family doesn’t care as long as the patient is alive, patient doesn’t even know they’re alive. Christ, Fiona; they call it acute which is basically code for ‘should have been dead five years ago!’”

“Holy shit, Wendy,” Fiona’s eyes went wide as she turned toward the door; she glanced up toward the wall-mounted television, which had switched over to a news broadcast. Fiona squinted. “Holy shit!”

---

Ariel stretched out on the couch, watching the end of some soap opera before taking out her phone and flipping it open. The black and green screen greeted her, and she quickly opened up the address book to navigate to Amber’s number. Her finger hovered over the ‘send’ button, and then she found herself emitting a sigh as she dropped her head onto the arm of the couch. She had to tell Amber something, right? There were only so many ways she could word it, of course. ‘Hey Amber, you know that whole roommate thing we had going on? Psych!’. No, there was probably better way than that.

Pulling herself into a sitting position, she hopped off the couch and made her way through the kitchen, down the rear hallway, and toward her ‘room’. She paused in the doorway, peering into the room that was to be hers for the foreseeable future. Could she really stay here? It was clear, more than clear, that Rylee couldn’t be removed from her living situation here, but what about her?

Anette wanted to talk to her about college, Tori seemed to care far more than anyone she’d met in her life. Maybe, just maybe there was something to this. Ariel turned away from ‘her’ room and stepped down the hall, peering into Rylee’s. It was a strange place; there was some of Rylee in the organization and design, but much of this space had once belonged to Tori and it showed. Much of the room was outdated; clothes, music, the retro alarm clock on the bedside table. It had the mark of a girl who had grown up in a different era, but some of Rylee was beginning to slowly creep in. New clothes in the closet, a pair of running shoes under the bed, a few new CD’s, and of course Rylee’s newer books on the shelf near the window.

Ariel found herself walking slowly through the room, taking in the sight of the long pink and white dresser with the boom box and short CD rack, the book shelf, the open closet filled with dresses, skirts, and tops. The bookshelf, the sloppily made bed, and as she did so, she realized one very important fact: Tori was right. Ariel had given up her life to find Rylee, the long lost sister that had been the primary source of her guilt since finding out the truth and even more so when Rylee had disappeared. Rylee was safe, Tori and Anette had taken over; wasn’t it time for Ariel to live her own life?

After some heavy contemplation, she took her phone out again and navigated to Amber’s number in the directory. Her finger hovered over the ‘send’ button, and finally she found the will to press it. And then, somehow, she managed to stand there without hanging up as it began to ring.

She was going to tell her. She wasn’t sure how she was going to do it, but somehow she would tell Amber that she’d decided to stay here with Rylee. Her mind raced at the speed of light as the first ring sounded. How was she going to say it? She toyed with her phone as she looked over the titles on Rylee’s bookshelf; mostly young adult books ranging from Goosebumps to Animorphs, but she also had a healthy collection of ‘Babysitters Club’ and ‘Sweet Valley High’. Ariel smiled as she recalled a time when Rylee would discreetly borrow copies of ‘Sweet Valley High’ from her, to read away from the prying eyes of their parents and their weekly ‘room inspections’. To just have them, out in the open? That was practically revolutionary.

Biting her lower lip, she finally worked up the courage to press the green ‘call’ button and stared at the screen in silence as the word ‘Calling’ and three ellipses danced across the display. Finally, the call connected and Amber’s familiar voice came through the speaker.

“Sup girl,” Amber said in her usual punchy tone. “How’s Ohio?”

“It’s Ohio,” Ariel replied with the slightest undertone of sarcasm. She was relieved to hear her friend’s voice but the feeling of dread began to creep up on her. “You know…it’s kind…blah.”

“How’s Rylee?” Amber seemed distracted. “She good?”

“Yeah, yeah, she’s good,” Ariel said quickly. “She’s doing really…well down here.”

“Told you,” Amber quipped. “And how about that ‘Tori person’? She good?”

Ariel opened her mouth to speak, closed it again, and then dropped her arm to her side, letting the phone dangle by her thigh for a moment as she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Finally, she put the phone to her ear again.

“Amber they’re…all wonderful. There’s Tori, there’s her mom, there’s this other guy named Marcus…I think he’s homeless. Oh! And there’s Fiona, she’s in nursing school and…I…it’s weird. They just…they act like a big family, and Rylee is just…part of it.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?”

“I guess, it’s just hard to wrap my head around, like, um…why? They don’t seem to want anything! Everyone wants something, but not them! It doesn’t make sense!”

“It’s kinda the way you grew up, well, the way we grew up, in a way, I guess,” Amber’s shrug was audible through the phone. “The people we were around, I guess they taught us that nothing is free, there’s no such thing as ‘something for nothing’, but sometimes I guess there is. Sometimes…people just want to help. It looks like Rylee fell backward into one of those situations.”

“It wasn’t exactly backward,” Ariel suddenly felt a lump in her stomach. “She…went through a lot before she ended up here. I feel…I blame myself-”

“Ariel-”

“No, Amber, I do,” Ariel said adamantly, cutting Amber off before she could even form her sentence. “And why shouldn’t I? Think about it! I could have done better, I could have found a place to stash her until she turned eighteen. I-”

“You tried,” Amber reminded her. “Hayley was on vacation, there was nowhere else to put her. You gotta stop blaming yourself.”

“I don’t see how,” Ariel sighed. She wandered out of Rylee’s room and down the hall, toward the kitchen as she continued to speak. “She was lying to Lucille, the social worker, I knew she was lying. I could have gotten proof or-”

“And then you’d have been separated,” Amber reminded her.

“We were separated!” Ariel argued, stepping into the kitchen. She immediately began to open the cabinets above the counter, closing them systematically as she tried to find the snack cabinet. It had to be one of these. She continued, one after the other was she spoke hurriedly to Amber. “Amber you don’t understand, we…she ran off, she fell in with some…awful people and…things happened to her!”

“Things were going to happen to her either way,” Amber reminded her. “the foster care system is shit anyway. Maybe not as bad as whatever happened but…shit, I don’t know Ariel, just be glad she’s okay now, okay?”

Ariel listened as Amber continued, diving into a lecture about…something or other; Ariel moved onto the next cabinet and saw a bag of Fritos, but her eyes were drawn to an upper shelf where a gray plastic box with a black handle was labeled ‘Rylee Emergency Kit’. Ariel frowned and stood on her tip toes to grab the handle and managed to dislodge the box from the high shelf, nearly dropping it; it was far heavier than she thought it would be. The box thudded against the counter and Ariel frowned, half-listening to Amber as she opened two metal latches securing the lid. Inside she found a small first aid kit, three boxes of candy ‘Dots’, three cans of split pea soup, a flare gun, a green handheld foam roller, and a box cutter. She frowned, furrowing her eyebrows and mouthing ‘what the fuck?’ before realizing that Amber was still talking to her.

“…and Chris is doing okay, I made him…her apply to a bunch of jobs on here, she’ll hear back eventually-”

“Chris is still living with you?” Ariel said, forgetting the box for a moment. “And you’re making her get a job?”

“Uh, yeah, I figure if she’s going to be here she might as well help with the rent,” Amber verbally shrugged again, her voice giving an upward inflection. “Plus it’s like I have my own slightly-less-fucked-up Rylee.”

“Are you seriously calling my sister ‘fucked up’?”

“You’ve met her, right?”

“Okay whatever,” Ariel rolled her eyes. “So I called because…there's something I needed to tell you.”

“What, you’re staying?”

“H…how did you know?” Ariel asked apprehensively. “Are you mad?”

“Girl, you went to find your sister that you lost two years ago,” Amber’s voice had that ‘well duh’ tone to it that carried very, very well over the phone. “I’d be surprised if you weren’t staying. Besides, I’ll just make Christine pay half the rent when she gets her job.”

“Uh…” Ariel’s eyes went wide as she began to fidget. “She wants to be called Christine?”

“Well, yeah, but she doesn’t know that, yet,” Amber said, another shrug in her voice.

“You…you can’t just pick a name for someone!”

“She’s my trans, I can name her whatever I want,” Amber said firmly. “Besides, you named Rylee, didn’t you?”

“That’s…you…god, Amber!”

“Fair’s fair,” Amber quipped. “So don’t worry about it, I’ll get by.”

“You…you’ll come visit, right?”

“Duh,” Amber said. “And you have to come back here to get your car, remember?”

“Right, right,” Ariel said, breathing a sigh of relief. “Look, you’re sure you’re not mad at me, right?”

“Girl, I expected this,” Amber said insistently. “And if you found your sister and decided to leave her-”

“But the plan was to bring her back!”

“Yeah that was never going to work,” Amber pointed out. “I tried to tell you.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Ariel sighed, moving into the living room. Her eyes came to rest of the television which had switched from the soap opera to something a little more disturbing, something that her eyes could see, but her brain didn’t quite believe. She nearly dropped the phone. “Amber, I’ve gotta go.”

---

“I am what you are afraid of,” Rylee said quietly into a padded ‘Channel 7’ microphone that didn’t quite carry her voice, but it caused enough of the onlookers and protesters to stop and turn. She felt her stomach drop, and a sinking feeling forming in the depths of her chest. She bit her lip, resisting the urge to cower beneath the quickly hardening gaze of the protestors. She could walk away now, right now, and pretend she’d meant something else. She hadn’t said it yet; maybe they only suspected right now. No, it had to be said. For Izzy, and any other trans girl that might or might not be in that school. “I…I am a transgender girl…woman…whatever. You’re worried about my friend in there, but you’re not…you’re not worried about me because I look like what you expect a girl to look like. If you don’t know…it doesn’t bother you, so it shouldn’t bother you anyway.”

The crowd began to fall silent; the reporter, a woman in her mid-twenties wavered with the microphone, frowning as she looked at Rylee. Rylee’s eyes began to scan the crowd, looking for potential exits. To her left, a huge man in a sleeveless shirt, to her right, an angry looking older woman, gray hair braided into a pony tail behind her head. In front, the crowd was thick as ever; if she wanted to run, she’d have to go right through them. As if they’d let her.

All or nothing, now.

“I’m sorry,” The reporter frowned and shook her head. “Are you saying you’re…a boy?”

“What uh…what do you think?” Rylee’s voice shook as she addressed the question.

“I think if you’ve got a penis, you’re a boy,” The sleeveless man said accusingly. “And if you’re a boy you oughta stop peepin’ on girls in the bathroom!”

The crowd of protestors roared in agreement, drowning out anything Rylee might have said; she stood there in stunned silence as the crowd began to chant, shout, and scream, pushing her from side to side. Rylee raised her arms, trying to shield herself as the sleeveless man grabbed her arms and flung her into the waiting arms of another protestor. A scream escaped her lips unheard as she was flung to the ground, her arms scraping, and her forehead connecting hard with the blacktop. Her world spun, and her arms shot out in front of her as she tried to regain her balance and stand. A foot connected with her ribcage and she sprawled again, her shoe gaining some purchase on the blacktop, even as she sobbed in pain. Around her, feet, legs, shoes, blue jeans, occasional glimpses of light.

“Do you think you deserve to be hurt, or are you just trying to get people to feel sorry for you?” There was a hint of amusement to Ryan’s disembodied voice as Rylee was jostled around again, kicked about, shoved, stepped on despite the shouts and orders of the police escorts that had quickly lost control of the situation. Rylee groaned and rolled over onto her stomach, pushing her palms against the blacktop in an attempt to regain her feet.

“Maybe you like to get hit because you’re used to it,” Ryan’s voice suggested. Rylee resisted the urge to roll her eyes. The kicking stopped, but it was followed by more shouts and suddenly, hands around her forearms pulling her to her feet.

“I’ve got her!” A familiar voice shouted. Fiona, pulling her away from the crowd, the police escort in tow, doing their best to hold back the crowd. “Come on, come on!”

Tori was waiting for them at the edge of the assembly, looking frazzled with her hair disheveled and one shoulder hanging out of a black cardigan. She grabbed one of Rylee’s arms and assisted Fiona in moving her across the parking lot.

“I’ll drive her,” Fiona said curtly. “Just get home.”

“You sure?” Tori asked hurriedly. “I can-”

“Go,” Fiona growled. “Her and I need to have a talk.”

“Elaine has that other girl, and someone else, black haired girl,” Tori said quickly. “We’re all heading back to-”

“Tori go,” Fiona insisted. “I’m handling this.”

“Okay,” Tori said with obvious uncertainty as she met Rylee’s eyes and have her a quick side-hug. “I’ll see you soon, Ry-”

“Go!” Fiona said again, pulling Rylee toward her car. She deposited Rylee in the front seat and then slammed the door, taking the driver’s seat and speeding away from the parking lot. Rylee sat in silence in the passenger seat, cradling a bruised arm and staring straight ahead as Fiona hurtled down the road. A few turns later and they sat in an empty parking lot set off to the side of the road. Fiona threw the car into park and flung her door open, walking around front toward Rylee’s side of the car. “Get out,” she snapped as she held the door open for Rylee. Rylee looked at her questioningly for a moment but pulled herself out of the passenger seat as Fiona glared insistently at her.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Fiona demanded after a long moment of silence. Rylee looked at her, dumbfounded. “Okay let me try this, what were you thinking? I think we’ve talked about this shit, Rylee! I told you not to put yourself in danger, I fucking told you! Do you not remember? Did you zone out during that conversation?”

“Izzy needed help,” Rylee said quietly. “I was tired of seeing people pick on her and-”

“There are ways to help her that don’t put you in danger, Rylee!” Fiona practically screamed; her heightened voice scared a nearby flock of birds out of the trees; their wings flapped overhead. “Who the hell put the god damn idea into your head-”

“You did!” Rylee suddenly shrieked, causing Fiona to recoil in surprise. There was a long silence; they watched eachother, and Rylee stood there, trying to formulate the words in her head as Fiona watched her expectantly. “You…” Rylee said, her voice cracking. “You and Tori helped me, back then, I mean. You didn’t and you didn’t have to. You showed me that people can be nice for no reason and that…that people could care. Then you made me read all kinds of books about how people help eachother and how we should care about eachother. I did that for Izzy because you would have done it for me! I…I want to be like you, because I want the world to have more people like you, and Tori, and mom in it! That Ghandi guy said to ‘be the change you want to see in the world’! I want to be the change, okay? I want to do good because good was done to me.”

Fiona’s lips parted as if she were preparing to speak, but fell silent, her eyes meeting Rylee’s as she pursed her lips. She turned away and walked to the other side of the small parking lot, staring off into the trees as she folded and unfolded her arms. Finally, she walked back to Rylee who was now staring at the ground, tears streaming down her cheeks as she hugged her body with both arms.

“I’m sorry,” Rylee said, sniffling. “I…I’m sorry, please don’t hate me. I know I shouldn’t have…I…I knew it deep down but I-”

“‘We need not wait to see what others do,” Fiona said quietly. Rylee looked up at her in surprise. “That’s the actual quote. Ghandi didn’t say ‘Be the change’, he said ‘We need not wait to see what others do’. The other one is paraphrased.”

“I…” Rylee frowned and shook her head.

“I get it, Rylee. I was mad before, but I get it now. We’ve been filling your head with ideas and they went straight to your heart, didn’t they? God, sometimes we’re so stupid. Rylee, look, I know what you’re trying to do, but you have to weigh the consequences. It’s okay to help other people if it doesn’t harm you, but if it does? You have to do more thinking about it and decide if what you’re about to do is worth it. I’m not saying that girl isn’t worth it, but there were other ways, ways that wouldn’t have put you in physical danger, okay?”

“Like what?”

“Like letting the police handle it. Like walking straight inside, getting that girl, and leaving with Elaine. You had options and you took the one that would hurt you and put the people you love in danger. Someday, Rylee, that might be an actual decision that you have to make. Someday, you might have no other options but today you did have options. That’s part of what we’re trying to teach you, Rylee. We want you to understand consequences, we want you to be able to make informed decisions and stay safe doing it. You have so much to learn, okay?”

“Okay,” Rylee nodded vigorously. “I…I get it, I’m too stupid to-”

“No!” Fiona snapped angrily. “You are not stupid! Get that out of your head right now. You’re just…uneducated. You were educated in the wrong things. There’s a difference between being ignorant and stupid, Rylee. Okay? You’re not stupid, say it.”

“I…I’m not stupid,” Rylee said, sniffling.

“Good. We need to get home. Oh, and Rylee? I’m proud of you.”

“What?” Rylee frowned, wiping her eyes. “Proud of…what do you mean?”

“Four months ago, a scared little girl broke into my best friend’s house. Four months ago she sat across a table from me and wouldn’t even make eye contact. She trembled when I touched her, she was scared of her own shadow. Today you stood up in front of news cameras and tried to protect someone more vulnerable than you. That little girl, the one I met four months ago? She would never. You’ve grown Rylee, you still need help, but you’ve grown. Proud of you.”

“I…um…” Rylee stammered, failing to resist the urge to burst into tears; Fiona stepped forward and wrapped her arms around her, pulling her close as she continued to sob, apologizing profusely. Fiona squeezed her gently and then pulled away, placing a hand on each side of her head, and giving her a warm smile.

“I know I’m hard on you, and I’m not going to apologize for that. You made a huge mistake today, but that doesn’t mean you were wrong. You made a decision, and now we have to go deal with the worst part of that.”

“What’s…what’s the worst part?” Rylee asked apprehensively. Fiona smiled gently.

“The consequences.”