Being Samantha Masters

an homage-prequel to Being Christina Chase

Spring Fever

Andrei was waiting at the bus depot with the big truck.  His hulking uncle was plainly visible from where Sammy slumped in the back seat of the bus, and plainly trying to spot his nephew, but Sammy didn’t try to get his attention. First he watched as Sydney disembarked and walked away with her suitcase and sleeping bag, not tied together.  Only then did he come down the steps, wave at his uncle, and collect his bag with the sleeping bag strapped to the frame.  Andrei wrapped him in a bear hug, asked him how the weekend went, and immediately took his luggage from him.

They drove up the mountain roads in relative silence.  Andrei asked the kind of leading questions that adults thought would naturally blossom into a broader conversation, but Sammy stonewalled him with monosyllables (“did you use the crosswalks?” “yes, sir.”).  At one point he pretended to nap.  He knew what Andrei wanted to say, and he hoped he could avoid it entirely.  He made it until Andrei turned onto Sammy’s street.

“I’m glad you got to see the Big City,” his uncle said.  “It’s very big and very noisy, and it’s exciting at first.  But that wears off.”  He pulled up to Sammy’s curb.  “Just to say.  My offer still stands: the workshop, the apartment, all of it.  You could have a good life here.”

Sammy nodded and kept nodding as he stepped out of the cab, then turned back to his uncle, door held open.  “Uncle Andrei, I appreciate the offer.  I really do.  But I’m going to go to Columbia.” He swung the door shut before the man could answer and collected his bags from the truck bed.

His parents were still out West, so Sammy let himself into the house and hauled his bag upstairs.  He stopped at the open door to his bedroom, grimacing.  It was a mess.  It was the same mess it always was, but he was coming at it fresh from Rowan and Zoey’s dorm room, which they kept moderately tidy.  His room looked like a tornado had hit it.

With a sigh, he started scooping clothes off the floor.

He got a load of laundry going, filled two trash bags with garbage scattered through his room (a volume of trash which he found just a little disturbing, honestly), and fetched the vacuum from the hall closet.  When he got hungry, he went downstairs to raid the fridge only to find that Mom had pre-empted him with leftovers.  Each single-serving tupperware was labelled with a sticky note, annotated with how long he should microwave it.  The sun was setting when he opened his rollerbag and poured his hoodies and sweatpants into a second load of laundry.

He pulled out Roar-ee and planted the stuffed lion on top of his desk.  Then he sat down at his computer, loaded up the Columbia website, and starting printing application forms.

School on Monday was weird.  To everybody else, it was just the start of another week, indistinguishable from the last; they went about their lives like nothing had changed.  Nothing had, for them.  They hadn’t gone anywhere over the weekend, they hadn’t experienced real life for very first time in their existence.  School was the same old daycare-slash-holding-cell it had always been.  But to Sammy it was an eggshell about to shatter around him.  This was temporary.  There was a better world out there.

Everyone in class seemed half asleep, which Sammy knew was normal but suddenly found strange and awkward.  He raised his hand and answered the teachers’ questions, just to fill the silence.  In Biology they talked about the nervous system and he relayed to the class what his cousin and uncle had told him about eyeballs.

Between classes he went to the office and got his transcripts.  The school secretary printed up a copy for him there and then, for reference; official copies she’d send to his school of choice directly.  She only raised her eyebrows slightly when he gave her the address for Columbia and no others.

When school was done, he walked home and settled in to preparing his application, which had spawned children like rabbits: there were government financial aid forms and recommended scholarships, too.  Each one had its own application form asking for the same basic details over and over again, and an essay prompt that was never the same.  He’d have to write so many essays.

He wrote first drafts but didn’t like them so at lunch the next day he knocked on the door of his favourite English teacher, from sophomore year.  She’d always been kind and attentive, and she assigned more interesting books than any other teacher he’d ever had.  He stumblingly asked her for help with his essay drafts, and the smile she hit him with could have lit up the whole town.

His parents got home late on Friday.  The both of them were exhausted from a full day of travel and they’d already texted him about the weekend—getting about as many details out of Sammy as Andrei had—so there wasn’t much conversation.  They plodded towards their bedrooms.  His mom ran a bath.

The next morning his mother found him awake in a tidy bedroom, hard at work at his desk.  She offered to make him breakfast with a bemused expression on her face.  “What’s all this?”

“Applications,” he answered quickly, focused on the draft on his screen.  “There’s… a lot.  I’ve been filling out forms since I got home.”

“…for Columbia?” his mother verified, her voice carefully scraped clear of expression.  Neutral.

He nodded, then finally pulled his eyes off his comptuer.  “Oh, um.  There’s an application fee?”

She laid a hand on his shoulder.  “We’ve got you, honey.  You don’t worry about that.”  She waited a beat and squeezed him softly.  “Pancakes or waffles?”

Half an hour later, Sammy munched on his waffles at his desk while Mom delivered a breakfast tray with two plates to her own bedroom.  He could hear his father’s voice as he woke up, paired with the lighter tinkle of his mother.

He was pretty sure they had no idea how clearly the house’s heating vents conducted sound between their bedrooms.  Sammy, though, was well aware, just as he was well aware that Thursday nights he should keep watching television when his parents claimed they were “tired” and skipped off to their bedroom.

Their sleepy, flirty banter wafted through the vents like white noise right up until his father very clear said, “What?!”  His mother responded, too low to hear, and he retorted, “But he just doesn’t have the grades.”

Their voices dropped back down into indistinct noise, although there was no mistaking the tenor of their quiet argument: his father was disdainful, almost angry.  His mother’s voice alternated between soothing rebuffs and gentle ribbing.

Perhaps she walked closer to the vent in their room, because he clearly heard her say, “…doesn’t get accepted, it’s nice to see him with something he actually cares about…”  His mother was always eager for him to have “interests.”  So this was just more of the same for her.

Neither of them thought he’d get in.

Sammy plugged in his headphones, cranked up his music, and turned back to revising his essay.

Somewhere in the next week, Sammy was sitting at the kitchen island re-reading what he hoped were the final drafts of his essays.  He’d come out here for a snack but only ate half the apple he’d grabbed before he was absorbed in the application again.  The essays seemed solid, but he still wasn’t done.  He flipped back though the presentation binder he kept it all in and scowled at the checklist printed down the front page of the guidelines.

His mom came bustling through with a laundry basket.  She pulled the kitchen towels off the handles where they hung, then considered him for a long moment.  “Why the long face, hon?”

He set down the application guidelines and gestured at the checklist, frustrated and helpless.  “I need a letter of recommendation from somebody in the community.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“I don’t know anybody in the community.”

She snorted.  “This is Oak Grove.  You know everybody in the community.”

“Yeah, but not…” he pointed at the line on the application.  “It has to be somebody who has been a mentor or employer, or otherwise has an extensive understanding of my character and work ethic.”

His mother bustled over, laundry basket on her hip, to look down at the line on the paper.  After a moment, she said, “Oh, ask Uncle Oliver.  He was your scoutmaster for years.”

“I already have Uncle Henry writing one letter,” he pointed out, “and the admissions advisor said I should only have one letter from a family member.”

“Well, Uncle Oliver isn’t really your uncle, sweetheart,” she told him, brushing a lock of hair out of his face.  Then she got a funny smirk on her face.  “In fact, none of your uncles in Oak Grove are actually your uncles.  Not by blood.  Only Henry holds that distinction.”

“…wait.  Uncle Alexei?”

“Third cousin once removed,” she supplied with a shrug.  “And Aunt Nina, too.  But Oliver and Lisa are family friends who’ve just been sort of scooped up by the Levchenko horde.  Like I was.”

“Okay,” Sammy considered, but then screwed up his face. “But scouts was like… years ago.”

“It was two years ago,” she corrected with a roll of her eyes.  “For some of us, that’s an eyeblink.”  She rubbed his shoulder encouragingly.  “I assure you, it will be okay, and Oliver will write you a fantastic letter.  You guys did so much stuff together, he’s got loads of fodder for a recommendation.”

“Mm… maybe,” he allowed, although he was already pulling out his phone to text Oliver.

Mom smiled and headed for the laundry room.  “Technically,” she mused, “I think you’re still registered with the old troop.”

But Sammy was watching the three dots bounce on his phone.  It only took a moment for Oliver to respond: I’d be honoured! 

When do you need it by?  

Anything in particular you want me to include?  

Do I send it to you or directly to the school?

There was a big, gaping hole in Sammy’s application, and that was extracurriculars.  Sure, he could claim he’d been a scout, and Oliver had reminded him that as a scout he’d helped run the community fireworks shows on  July 4^th and helped set up and operate Oak Grove’s mini golf course at the county fair… right up until the COVID lockdowns killed both of those events and the troop, too.  So he had community involvement, but it all sounded one-note and not particularly recent.

Which brought him to the Band Room during lunch time on a Wednesday.  Not to join the school’s anemic marching band, but to look in on a student club that met there and then.  He’d only seen it advertised on flyers plastered onto school doors with entirely too much packing tape… and the torn-down flyers kicked into the corners of the hallways.

He poked his head inside.  A wide circle of twelve chairs sat in the middle of the large room, but only three of them were occupied.  And Sammy was late; he’d dithered about showing up at all, so he had to the be the last one to show up.  Since it didn’t look like much of a meeting, so he slowly faded back into the hall.

He didn’t fade fast enough.

“Hey there!” called out a smiling girl, craning her neck to make and maintain eye contact with him.  She waved enthusiastically.  “Are you here for GSA?  Come on in!”

“Uh, yeah maybe?  Sort of?” he answered, stepping inside despite his impulse to flee.  “I mean, I… I’m not really sure what the club is for?”

“It’s the Gay-Straight Alliance,” the girl beamed at him.  “We’re here to support gay people at the school.”

“I’m telling you,” one of the other kids retorted wearily, “it should be the Gender and Sexualities Alliance.  Gay-Straight Alliance is, like, 2010.”

“I like Gay-Straight Alliance,” the smiling girl insisted.

“Yeah, cause you’re straight,” the second kid groaned, and gestured to her and the girl who hadn’t spoken yet.  “Both of you are straight.  Why did you even start this club?”

“Because we’re allies,” she admonished, and then looked back up to smile at Sammy.  “What about you?  No wait.  Sorry.  I’m Pam and I use she and her pronouns.  What about you?”

Sammy opened his mouth and closed it, mildly annoyed that his stupid brain almost answered “Samantha, she/her.”  It was the only answer he’d ever used for that question, after all.  No wonder it was on the tip of his tongue.  “I’m Sammy.  He and him.”

The outspoken kid introduced himself as Derrick, he/him, while the third member all but whispered “Dawn, she/her, thank you.”  Sammy knew them all by sight from around town—it was Oak Grove, after all—but wasn’t sure if he’d really met them before.  They all seemed small and young, and he’d never had a class with them; they were probably sophomores or even freshmen.

Sammy found himself stepping deeper into the room.  He nodded towards Derrick.  “So I take it you’re not a straight ally?”

“No, I like dick,” the boy answered with a hard edge to his voice.  Then he sighed.  “Theoretically speaking, at least, since I’m apparently the only gay kid at this school.”

Pam kept smiling at Sammy, watching hopefully as he laid hands on the back of the nearest chair in the circle.  “Good to meet you, Sammy.  What brings you to GSA today?  Is there anything that you’d like to see our little club do for, uh, the queer community here?”

He gave up and sat down.  “Look, I’ll be honest. I’m filling out my college application, and I’ve never joined a school club in my life, and I thought maybe—”

Derrick snorted.  “Oh great.  You thought you could join the GSA to ‘support the queer community,’”—here he employed air quotes to underscore his disdain—“which is, you know, just me.  I’m the queer community at this school.  But then you can put it in your college application cause you’re such a good ally.”

“Well, no,” Sammy answered a little feebly, and mentally kicked himself.  Why was he letting underclassmen intimidate him?  He squared his shoulders.  “I’m queer.  I just haven’t, you know, joined the club before.”

“Well we’ve only been meeting for a couple months,” the girl beamed at him.  Like really beamed at him, with disturbing intensity.  “And our flyers keep getting torn down, so it’s perfectly understandable that you hadn’t found your way to us yet.  But I’m so happy to have you here, Sammy.  I really, really am.”

By contrast, Derrick all but scowled at him.  “I would have heard if there was another gay boy in the school.”

Sammy shrugged.  “I haven’t been out.  Of the closet.  I mean.”  He squinted up at the windows, considering.  “I guess I just came out right now.”

A high, keening sound erupted from the other side of the circle.  Sammy looked towards the source with wide-eyed trepidation.  But it was only Pam, positively squealing and holding onto the bottom curve of her chair as if it was an ejector seat.  Finally she gasped out, “Congratulations, Sammy!  That’s so awesome!”

“Um, thanks,” he said, and shrugged.

“It’s a big step,” said Derrick, giving Sammy what might have actually been a genuine smile.  But then it turned wan.  “But let me tell you: you didn’t just come out of the closet.  You just started coming out of the closet.  It’s a process.  And it never ends.”

But Oak Grove was there to make the process quicker, it appeared.  By the end of the school day, Sammy could feel eyes on his back.  People whispered in his presence.  The next day that behavior had spread beyond the school, and people on the street watched him pass by with wary intensity.

As he walked into school on Friday, a pack of football players called out to him in the hall.  Knowing that wasn’t going to result in anything good, Sammy made sure he was standing outside an open classroom door with a teacher inside before turning and lifting his eyebrows.

“Hey,” said the lead football player, lopsided smile plastered across his face.  “I heard a rumor about you.  That you’re gay.”

Sammy decided to bite the bullet.  “I mean, I prefer ‘queer,’ but yeah, sure.”  He shrugged.  What were they going to do, ostracize him more than he already was?

But the kid in the letterman jacket just nodded.  “That’s cool,” he told Sammy.  “I’ve got an aunt who’s a lesbo.”

Charming.  But Sammy bobbed his head.  “That’s great, man.”

Letterman jacket shot finger guns at him.  “You have a great day, bruh.”  And then he and his entourage ambled down the hall.

That night, his parents’ voices came through the heating vents.  “What do we do,” Dad blustered incredulously, “ask him if there’s anything he wants to tell us?” 

His mother demurred.  “He’ll tell us when he’s ready to tell us, dear.  Be patient.”

His father then complained about how he hated waiting, and his mother offered to distract him, and Sammy put on his headphones.

That Saturday morning, Sammy went over his applications one last time.  He had all his details filled out, his unofficial transcripts enclosed with a receipt that official copies were en route, and a short stack of money orders that his mother had driven all the way to Dover for.  His list of community and school involvement activities seemed very close to fraudulent to him—Pam had told him that since he’d joined GSA in its first year, he should put himself down as a founding member—but reading it over for the eleventy billionth time, it was all at least rooted in truth.

It was actually kind of impressive.  Not the information in the application itself, not really; Sammy wasn’t about to think that he’d put together a convincing application.  But the sheer breadth of the application, the gathering of details, the essays long and short, the examination of his life in Oak Grove from new angles to best present himself… it might have been the biggest project he’d ever tackled.  And he’d finished it.

He’d done his best on the application, just like he’d promised Sydney.  He wasn’t sure if he’d ever done his best on anything, really, not since, like, grade school.  Flipping through the fat stack of paper, he really wasn’t sure what had come over him.

His phone buzzed, reminding Sammy to pluck Roar-ee off his desk, turn the stuffie over, and tuck his morning pill under his tongue.

Nodding to himself, Sammy jogged the stack of papers into an orderly rectangle, pieced the pages out into their respective application piles, and placed the money orders on top.  Then each stack was slid into its own pre-addressed, appropriately-stamped envelope.  He licked and sealed each one and stacked them up.  Finished.

He video chatted with Rowan every few days, and sometimes Zoey would hop on, too.  They mostly talked about nothing, and often just ended up studying with the screen open in front of them, making idle chit-chat as they went.

He asked Zoey if she or Agatha had got any contact information for Sydney.  This immediately got him waggled eyebrows and gentle ribbing, but he insisted his interest was entirely platonic.  He just wanted to hear if she’d submitted her application, and maybe commisserate a little on how much work it had been.  But they hadn’t thought to ask the girl for a number or social media ID before she went home, so he was out of luck.

He wanted to tell Sydney that he’d done his best on his application, like he’d promised.  But he couldn’t tell her, and since he probably wasn’t getting in, he’d never be able to tell her.

He often ended up forcing himself not to think about how many people he wasn’t ever going to see again, how many experiences he’d got to taste but would never get to enjoy in full.  He also forced himself not to think about what awaited him here in Oak Grove—making chairs all day and sleeping alone in a tiny apartment above a hair salon.

There was one silver lining to not getting into Columbia, and that was that he had no deadline on telling his relations in the City that he was detransitioning.  He couldn’t ever figure how to bring it up naturally, but if he wasn’t going there any time soon, he didn’t have to tell them any time soon, either.

Every time he started up a video call, he reminded himself to tell Rowan that he was detransitioning, or that it was all just too damn hard as a prelude to telling her that he was detransitioning.  He never quite got around to it.  There’d be something funny to laugh about, or gossip to share, and then it felt weird to be a downer with his fake news.  He’d tell her next time.

With the applications sent off, Sammy expected to deflate into interminable waiting, but his usual lassitude never quite seemed to manifest.  He woke up every morning before his alarm clock, showered, and prepared to face the day.

He found his classes interesting—apparently they saved all the good stuff for the very end of senior year—and he became an active participant in the discussions.

Every week he attended GSA, not really to accomplish anything but just sort of complain and swap recommendations for streaming shows with queer characters in them.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays he walked across town to his grandparents’ grocery store to work his shifts at the till and shuffle deliveries into the back room inventory.  His grandfather “worked” there every day, which mostly meant sitting on a stool behind the counter and talking with older Oak Grove residents as they stopped in.  His many children and grandchildren—blood-related or no—did all the actual work.  It used to be a boring if easy source of spending money for Sammy, but he found himself chatting with customers and Uncle Oliver and actually enjoying himself.

Hefting the big bags of rice up onto the shelves always left him a sweaty mess, and at first he thought he’d somehow got into better shape and the task hadn’t fazed him.  But then he realized he was still sweaty as hell, he just didn’t stink as much.  Which was weird.  Maybe it was a side effect of eating better.

Because he was eating better, almost accidentally.  His mother had always made sure there were healthy snacks in the kitchen and only reluctantly stocked bags of chips and boxes of cookies for Sammy and his father.  It’s not like Sammy completely eschewed the junk food, but when he felt like chips, he just… didn’t eat as many.  Instead of inhaling a whole bag he’d eat a couple handfuls and lose interest.  Or he’d help himself to his mom’s celery sticks and hummus, or half an apple.

Sammy tried not to think about his shifting diet, but even he noticed that it had had an effect.  His tummy shrank and his face got lean, cheekbones rising to new prominence.  A few unconscious changes in diet did this much?  All his skin blemishes cleared up, too, which Sammy was actually very happy with.  If the cost of not having zits was just eating fewer chips, that seemed like a reasonable bargain.

The only problem was that he was slipping right out of his sweatpants, no matter how tight he cinched and tied the waistbands.  Compounded with the weather warming up and his hoodies and sweats getting too hot, and the fact that they all seemed to be rough and coarse against his skin no matter how much fabric softener he used… he was seriously considering ditching them.  But then what would he wear, tee shirts and shorts?

He only had a few of those, and he tried a couple on and scowled at his reflection.  This kid was not who he was used to seeing in the mirror.  He in fact looked a little too much like Samantha had when Rowan had gone at him with makeup.  But he’d liked how he’d look then—not how he looked for himself; it wasn’t a look he really wanted to have—he just liked how he looked in a detached, aesthetic sort of way.  But if he looked just a little more like that, it wouldn’t be the end of the world, right?

And maybe he looked kind of nice.  Nicer.  Like a slightly less unpleasant little brown gremlin.

He banished that thought whenever it came up.  Nonsense.

But he forced himself to go to school in shorts and tee shirt and nobody seemed to notice, and also he didn’t overheat in the middle of class and was just in general more comfortable, so he guessed he’d do it again.

The third day he came to school without a hoodie, one of his teachers took him aside after class.  With an uncertain smile, she told him that she wasn’t sure what had changed in his life, but she really liked this new Sammy who participated in class, had insights into the reading, and who seemed eager to apply himself.

Sammy thanked her and stumbled out into lunch period, burdened with a sudden impulse for introspection.  He had been telling himself that he was anxiously waiting for the inevitable rejection of his college application, that he was distracting himself from worrying over it by doing other stuff.  Class discussions, GSA, chatting with grocery customers.  But if he was being honest with himself, he hadn’t really done any of that intentionally.  It all just sort of happened.

It was like he came home from Preview Days and woke up.  He’d been sleepwalking through life before, but now… but now he had a goal, right, and a purpose.  Maybe that made all the difference.  Even if his dream to get into Columbia was doomed for the start, it was still a dream worth working towards, worth thinking about.

All of it—his good mood, his effortless drive, his incomprehensible impulse to just smile at people now—would come crashing down around his ears, no doubt, when they responded to his application.

It was early May when Sammy came home from school to find his mother fidgeting in the kitchen.  She nodded at the far corner of the kitchen island.  “You got something in the mail today.”

Sitting there was a fat envelope, and Sammy’s first thought was that it had to be something else, some Army recruiter propaganda, a care package from distant family, a marketing scheme that had got his mailing address from somebody at school who didn’t like him very much.  Because it was a packet, not a slim letter envelope, and rejections came in the little envelopes, didn’t they, and acceptance letters in the big envelopes.

But the return address was Columbia University, with its New York address and its blue crown crest.

He looked up at his mother fearfully; she nodded at him with a gentle smile.  He worked the envelope open, not wanting to tear whatever was inside, and pulled out the stack of papers.  He read the first line of the cover letter.

It was not an acceptance letter.

Or at least, not quite.  He scowled and read further, trying to understand what had went sideways.  His mother asked if everything was all right, but he didn’t answer at first, parsing out the letter.

Finally he explained, “Um.  It’s welcoming me to something called the Marginalized Scholars Summer Program?”

Mom came around the kitchen island and read over his shoulder.  A moment later she shouted happily and pointed at the second-to-last paragraph.  “Look, there!  Participation in the program confers provisional acceptance to the university.”

Sammy nodded slowly.  “If I complete the program.”  He flipped the page over and found a glossy pamphlet underneath it.  There were smiling students of many different skin tones and ethnic clothes, sitting in Columbia classrooms and raising their hands enthusiastically.  He skimmed a little and swore.

“Language,” his mother chided automatically, and then apparently read what he’d read, and repeated his swear.

“Eight weeks of intensive remedial study capped by a final examination in six parts,” he summarized, and sat down heavily into one of the stools that lined the kitchen island.

His mother took the pamphlet from his numb fingers and flipped through it.  “This looks like…” she started, and scowled at it.  “Okay, reading between the lines?  This is some diversity program where they bring in students from abroad and then sort of… catch them up to the kind of educational background that domestic students have.”

“Yeah, but I’m not from another country,” he pointed out needlessly.  “I’m a bus ride away.”

She shrugged and then huffed out a sigh.  “Maybe they think Oak Grove High School is, uh…”

“…comparable to a third-world education?” he finished for her with distaste.  “I’m not a huge fan of my school, but that seems kind of rude.”

“But still,” she moderated, and waved at the cover letter.  “If you complete this program, you get into Columbia.”

“If I pass the final exam,” he corrected her, “in six parts.”

She fixed him with a look, motherly love tempered with frank consideration.  “Do you think you can do it?”

Sammy cringed.  “Do you think I can do it?”

His mother shrugged.  “I think you can do anything you put your mind to, honey.  I always have.”  She grinned and smacked him playfully with the pamphlet. “What do you think?  That’s what matters.”

He gave her a pale, self-deprecating smile in response, but then her words seemed to pry themselves into his brain.  He’d been doing really well recently, hadn’t he?  Compiling that massive application, but also in class and just around town and everything.  He’d acquired this new intense focus, the result of having a goal he actually cared about and a reason to engage with the world around him.  His head started nodding softly.

He was surprised as anyone when he answered his mother: “You know… I think I can.  I can do it.”

They shared a short, tight hug and his mother cupped the side of his face.  “I am so proud of you, honey.  I—”  Whatever she was about to say was interrupted by the recognizable growl of his father’s car pulling up the drive.  She grinned at Sammy, stacked up the papers, and pushed them all into his hands.  “You’ve got good news to share.”

His father came in with his usual bluster, tossing his coat and briefcase onto the entryway chair he’d pick them off of in the morning, kicking off his shoes with visceral satisfaction.  Then he came across the living room, head cocked at the strange vibe between his wife and child.  “What’s up, fam?”

“I got some mail from Columbia,” Sammy told him with no small measure of sudden trepidation.

His father didn’t smile in response; instead he pasted on a look of sympathy and reached forward to wrap him in a hug.  “Ah, I’m sorry, son.”

“Richard!” his wife hissed with enough vehemence that he froze, arms extended, halfway across the room.  “He got in.”

“Provisionally,” Sammy leapt to clarify.  “Provisional acceptance.”

His father straightened and put a hand on his shoulder, looking more than a little confused.  “Have they not received your test scores or something?”

Sammy handed him the pamphlet.  “No, I’m going into something called the Marginalized Scholars Summer Program.  And then if I—when I pass the final exam, then I get into Columbia for the fall semester.”

Dad took the pamphlet and flipped back and forth through it, then took the cover letter and read that too, with the sort of intensity that he usually reserved for legal briefs.  Then he flipped through the pamphlet again, and when he came to the last page he muttered, “This is bullshit.”

“Richard!” Mom all but shouted.

“No, I mean—” his father stammered, and then set his hand on Sammy’s shoulder again.  “Sorry, that came out wrong.  I just meant.”  He took a moment to formulate what he meant, or at least what he wanted to say he’d meant.  “I just worry that this might be some sort of bureaucratic error, and I don’t want you to get there only to find out that you shouldn’t be in this program at all.”

“This program gets me into Columbia,” Sammy told his father, voice carefully even.  “It’s my way forward.”

“But Sammy, you’re not—” his father said with a half-chuckle.  That genial voice he thought made him sound reasonable.  “You’re not marginalized; you’re a rich white kid.”

Sammy took a step backward, large enough that his father’s hand fell off his shoulder.  “I’m not white, Dad, what the fuck!” He could not keep the incredulity out of his tone.

“Language,” his father warned, then shook his head as if to clear it.  “No, sorry.”

“You realize I get pulled over when I drive, right?” Sammy hissed.  “All the time.  For nothing.”

“Suzie pulled you over?” his mother sputtered angrily.  Officer Suzie Parker was the sole member of the Oak Grove police department.

“Not Suzie, but state troopers,” Sammy clarified.  “They don’t know me.  They see my face, they think I’ve stolen dad’s Lexus.  It’s why I don’t like driving very much.”

His mother sighed.  “Honey, you never said—”

He squared his shoulders at his father.  “Point is, I’m not white, people think I’m inherently suspicious and greedy and that I take stuff that I don’t deserve.  So yeah, Oak Grove High School maybe didn’t give me the same education that they’ll be happy to give my cousins.  And Columbia’s dedication to diversity means that they want to give me a chance to make up the difference.  Cause it’s a good school, and you should be proud that you went there, and you should be proud that I’m going, too.”

His father sighed.  “Samuel, I am proud of you—”

“I don’t think you are,” he snapped back.  “I don’t know why, but you’ve been nothing but pissed every time I bring this up.  You haven’t given me a single word of encouragement.  I don’t know what I’m supposed to think except that you just don’t want me there.”  He spun on his heel and stormed towards the stairs.  “I’ll be in my room.”

His father was wise enough not to follow him (or more likely his mother wisely counseled him not to) and instead apologized the next morning over breakfast.  He was proud of Sammy, he knew Sammy would smash the six-part final exam, he was happy that his son would be attending his alma mater.  “I just got all up in my lawyer head,” was his limp excuse for how he’d acted the day before.

Sammy knew that wasn’t the whole story, but his father was making the effort to apologize, so he forgave him.  They hugged.  Dad offered to tell him about all the best “watering holes” around campus and asked if he was considering a pre-law degree.  Sammy told him that he just wanted to focus on completing and passing the summer program.

He made video calls to Rowan and Zoey and then Uncles Henry and Gideon, who were all ecstatic for him.  Rowan declared she “always knew you’d get in, boo,” and he confessed to her that he had never really believed he would.  He wished again that he could call Sydney to share his good news.

Life went back to normal, or as normal as it had been recently, with school and grocery store shifts taking up his time, but all of it feeling ephemeral and temporary.  Oak Grove was where he lived, sure, but not for long.  He was going to have a life!

A week later he turned Roar-ee over, unzipped his bum, and dug a finger in to extract a pill.  When it proved harder than usual, he pulled the ziploc baggie out entirely.  There were only ten or so pills left.

He tucked one under his tongue and immediately texted Rowan: Hey I just noticed that my three-month supply is about to run out.

Oh fuck, she reponded an hour later.  Sorry, I was in class.

He smirked down at his phone and tapped out, You wanna come visit Oak Grove?

Instead of a text reply he got a request for a video call.  He wheeled himself across his room to shut his door and then accepted the call.  Rowan’s head and upper body jumped around the screen as she walked across campus.  Sammy couldn’t help smiling.  “Hey.”

“Hey boo,” his cousin responded with a tight smile.  “Listen.  It’s… ugh.  I’m in the middle of finals crunch right now.”

Sammy settled back into his chair.  “I bet that’s a lot,” he offered, sympathetically.

“It’s kind of insane, actually,” she said, managing to nod and roll her eyes at the same time, without falling over or careening into another student passing by.  “But you’re here in, like, three weeks, right?”

He blinked and looked over at the wall calender next to his desk.  Was it really that soon?  “Three weeks and a few days,” he confirmed.  “Wow, I didn’t realize.”

Rowan nodded her head.  “Okay.  So.  You’ve got like a week of supply left, right?”

Oh.  Sammy’s stomach sank.  “I mean.  A little less.”

“I’m so sorry, Sammy, but I have, like, zero time available to me right now.”  His cousin gave him a long apologetic look which at least looked sincere.  “I don’t think I can source anything and figure out how to get it to you this week.  And I’m running pretty low myself, because I haven’t had the time to re-up my supply, and even if I wasn’t, you can’t exactly send that shit though the mail.”

He put on a brave face.  “And you can’t rent a car and come visit Oak Grove during finals.”

She giggled.  “I can’t even drive, Sammy.  I’d have to get somebody to come with, and Zoey’s got her own finals to worry about.”

“It’s okay,” he heard himself say.  “I wouldn’t wish Oak Grove on anybody, let alone poor, unsuspecting Zoey.”

“Okay, but don’t try to ration yourself, all right?” she insisted.  “It’ll fuck you up.  Better to proceed as usual for the week and then go cold turkey.”  She gave him a pained look.  “It’s just two weeks.”  Her characteristic grin flickered back to life.  “And then you’ll be here!”

Sammy smiled back.  “Can’t wait.”

“I’m really sorry, Sammy,” she groaned.  “Any other time of year and I’d move mountains for you, but—”

“Don’t worry about it,” he told her.  “I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

He was not fine.

Sammy ran out of pills later that week, and the lack hit him like a semi truck almost immediately.  He woke up to his bleating alarm clock each morning, had to force himself to shower, and staggered to school.

He let himself sink into the comforting cocoon of sitting through his classes half-asleep, not that there was much happening in the last two weeks of school.  Lots of boring assemblies, students presenting their boring final projects, and high school’s version of final exams, which weren’t important so he hardly put in any effort.

He coasted through his shifts at the grocery store on auto-pilot, head muzzy and attention nowhere at all.  He snapped at one of his cousins, just old enough to start helping out at the grocery, and instead of apologizing just muttered and went into the back room.  Uncle Oliver asked him if he was okay more than once.  He said he was just tired.

He scowled at people on the street.  He wished he had, and then dug out of the closet, some of his hoodies, just so he could hide his face and ignore the rest of the world.

It was only when both his history and his biology teachers took him aside that he really realized how far he’d fallen.  Both teachers gently suggested that he avail himself of the make-up finals day to retake the finals for their classes.  He’d apparently bombed both of them.

Where had all his focus gone?  Why did he suddenly feel shitty?  Even through the haze in his head, the answer was obvious: it was the pills.

Sammy hadn’t been “applying himself” for the past three months.  All his new focus and drive wasn’t him, it was the drugs.

He came home from school after the double intervention and stared at the pamphlet for the summer program on his desk.  A month ago he was sure he could storm through that program and destroy the final exam.  A month ago he’d been riding on on MDMA, apparently.

He sunk down into his desk chair.  He couldn’t do it on his own.  But once he was back at Columbia for the program, Rowan would resupply him, right?  He’d be back on top of his game, thanks to the pills.

Oh fuck.

Back at Columbia.

If he was going back to Columbia, he had to tell his family there that he’d detransitioned.  Rowan was going to be upset.  Sure, she’d still be friendly and supportive, but Sammy wouldn’t be queer and trans and a girl like she was.  He’d just be a queer cis boy.  He used to hope that one out of three would still be enough to maintain their easy, sisterly connection. That seemed absolutely delusional, now.

If he lost that tight connection with Rowan, he doubted she’d still supply him with the pills.  If he lost access to the pills that made his brain work better, he couldn’t weather an intensive eight-week remedial course, let alone the six-part final exam at the end.  If he bombed out of the summer program, his provisional acceptance to Columbia would evaporate into thin air.

And then he’d have to come back to Oak Grove, into the well-meaning but smothering embrace of Andrei, teaching him to make fucking chairs.

His brain felt like it was churning through molasses, but the inevitable conclusion was absolutely, startlingly clear: Sammy couldn’t detransition.

Thanks for Reading!

If you’d like to see more like this, please consider subscribing to my patreon at http://patreon.com/miriamrobern 

• I post all chapters a month early for subscribers, so you can read ahead.
• I also post epub and pdf versions of the book for everybody.

Thanks for your support, whether it’s becoming a subscriber or posting comments online.  It’s people like you who let people like me make stuff like this!