Joann reaches from under her blankets as the alarm on her cell phone starts playing Walking On Sunshine by Katrina & The Waves. She presses the snooze button on her cell phone and retracts her hand back under the blankets. She really didn’t want to get out of bed.

Lately, there has been complaints about her being on the girls track team. Other high schools in the area have refused to compete against her. They were calling it unfair because she wasn’t born a female according to the new rules coming out of Washington D.C. and from her State Government.

She doesn’t know why she still gets up every morning to run. When Joann hears her cell phone start playing Walking On Sunshine again. She turns it off and gets out of bed. She takes her night clothes off and brushes her long dirty blonde hair. She puts it into a high ponytail and puts on her jogging clothes.

She grabs her earbuds and put them in her ears. She selects her favorite music list to listen to while she is jogging. She stuffs her credit card into her cell phone holder and leaves the house. She shivers from the cool morning air as she begins her thirty-mile run. She normally alternates how far she runs each morning.

Joann listens to the music and tries to get the conversation that she had with her coach out of her head. She either had a choice of running for the boy’s team or give up the sport. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do.

She knew she could beat several boys from the other high schools with her eyes closed. They weren’t a match for her. She bets that if she did run and beat them. They would complain about it or come after her like they did when she first started coming out while attending junior high.

The first few weeks of school had been name calling and some light bulling. Later on, a group of guys she knew since elementary school, started picking on her. They broke into her locker and tossed everything, then when they had gym class, her male gym teacher refused her to change with the girls. So, he made her change in the boy’s locker room, but away from everyone.

While they were out on the floor doing their exercises and goofing off. One of the guys came back and sprayed her clothes with lighter fluid. He didn’t set them on fire, but she couldn’t wear them because of the fumes coming off them.

Her parents ended coming up to the school and all hell broke out. Her parents weren’t going to put up with her being bullied. After that incident, she overheard her gym teacher telling another teacher that she brought it upon herself.

She found out later from placing bugs in all her classes, that some of her teachers felt the same way as her gym teacher. They felt that if you were born a boy, you were a boy. If you were born a girl, you were a girl. It didn’t matter how you felt or how your sexual organs were. You would never be the opposite gender in their eyes.

One teacher even said as much. No matter how many surgeries you have, a boy will never be a girl and vice-verse. You were either a boy or a girl, period.

Members of the local city government and the new school board members elected felt the same way. Her parents wish they could move to let her be free of these backwaters’ ideas, but there wasn’t anything they could do. They were still paying on their mortgage and her father had his construction business, that was doing really well.

So, the only thing she could do was just put up with the new rules and regulations. She concentrates on her running and by the time she is done running. Talia stops at the local convenience store and purchases an apple fritter and a cold bottle of milk.

There was a park nearby and it had benches where you could seat down and enjoy the scenery. Talia walks over to the benches and sits down to eat her pastry and drink her milk. While she is sitting there watching the cars go by.

By the time Talia is done eating her pastry and drinking her milk. She tosses her trash away in a nearby trashcan and brushes her hands off. She takes a wet napkin out of her pocket and clean her hands from the stickiness from the apple fritter. She tosses the napkin into the trash can and jogs back to her house.

When Talia arrives back home, she heads upstairs to her bedroom and strip out of her running clothes. She walks across the hall from her bedroom and into the bathroom in her birthday suit. Her parents were at work and her two older brothers were at work. One was a tow truck driver for a local garage, while the other one was a welder for her father’s construction company.

Her mother worked for a local plumbing store as their book keeper. She also did the books for their father’s construction company. Sometimes she would help out on the construction site. She learned how to use a hammer and operate some of the bulldozers and backhoes.

She takes a shower and wash her long dirty blonde hair. She still couldn’t get over how useless her testicles were. The last time she had a physical in order to stay on the team. Her testosterone levels were extremely low, but her estrogen levels were a little high.

The doctor she had wasn’t sure why her levels were so unusual. He also didn’t understand why she didn’t have erections like the other boys in her school. When she goes to wash her chest, she notices her chest felt weird. There was a slight bump under her nipple. She’ll have to ask her mother about it later.

When Talia gets out of the shower, she blows dries her long hair. She didn’t like letting it air dry, because it caused to many tangles. Even with the conditioner she used on it, it still caused her hair to tangle.

Since Talia had the day to herself. She goes downstairs to the garage wearing a pair of faded denim coveralls with paint stains on it to silk screen some more t-shirts. Some of the kids at school liked her silk screening and placed orders with her.

She goes to work, doing the screen images they want. Sure, they could order them online and maybe get a cheaper price. However, they could get them from her within a day or so. Also, there were restrictions on what the companies online would print on the shirts, hoodies, and other items they want order.

She works until she gets all the orders that came in done. Once they were done and drying. She packages all the orders and set them inside a cardboard box to take to school next week. Since school was out for Spring Break. She still had time to decide what she was going to do.

Talia washes her hands and put everything away. She was happy her father expanded the garage to give her a space to setup all her silk-screening equipment. She heads into the house and heat up some barbecue her father made. It was her father’s favorite past time.

She heats up some tatter tots to go with the barbecue. She could have had the left over potato salad her mother made, but she wanted something different. She does heat up some of the seasoned green beans.

Talia turns on the television set in the kitchen and watches the news. She had to do a report for her government class about current political policies going on this week. So, far she had five pages written for her report. The thing is, she only had to write a five-thousand-word report.

She always did more than she was suppose to do. Her government teacher sometimes hated when she did more. She wishes the high school she attended had better teachers. Not all of them were bad, but the majority of them were.

After lunch, Talia puts her dirty dishes away and grab her laptop to work on her paper for her government class. She wanted to work on it, while the information was still fresh in her head. She plays her favorite music while she adds to her report. She makes sure she cites where she got the information, so her teacher doesn’t deduce points off her grade.

After Talia is done working on her report. She submits it to her teachers email account like the class was instructed to do. She makes sure everything was correct before pressing send.