Being Samantha Masters

an homage-prequel to Being Christina Chase

Girls Night In

Sydney—tall, dark, and fucking gorgeous—grinned down at Sammy, and it was like the people around the two of them had just faded away.  Here he was, wearing her flannel (and her tank underneath, and her lingerie…) and she was making a joke out of it.

She used to have a flannel just like that one?

Yeah, until Sammy stole it right out of Agatha’s room.

He couldn’t quite make his mouth produce words.  What was she going to do to him?  What would his cousin say?  Where would he even sleep tonight, once everyone he knew in the City found out he was a liar and a thief?

The tall girl tipped her head to the side.  “It’s just cool, because you don’t have to wear a pin or anything, right?”

Finally Sammy’s brain rediscovered language, and he said: “What?”

“Cause the colours in the plaid are the colours of the lesbian pride flag,” Rowan butted in.  “So it’s its own statement.  You… did know that when you put it on today, right, Sammy?”

He looked uncertainly from Sydney to Rowan and back.  Apparently the girl wasn’t going to accuse him of stealing her clothes?  The relief was so great he smiled and said the first thing that came to mind: “…lesbian pride flag?”

“Oh, Country Mouse,” his cousin sighed in rueful amusement.

“To be fair, we have entirely too many of them,” Sydney said with a shrug.  “I’m still not sure why we stopped using the labrys, that one’s badass.”

“Cause it was created by a dude,” Agatha supplied, and then shrugged.  “But it’s still way more badass than the stripey ones.  Cause, you know.  Motherfucking axe.”

While the lesbians debated their heraldry, Rowan had pulled out her phone, performed a web search, and showed Sammy the results.  The webpage had a long list of rectangular flags, most of them made up of colourful stacked stripes.  “Pride flags,” she explained.  “All the queers have one.  Or more than one.  Typically more, really.  Feels like some of us just collect them, like pokémon.”

Sammy paged through them all, nodding as if any of the labels made sense.  There were a bunch of flags labelled as some variation of “Lesbian,” and one of them was indeed the same pink-orange-and-white that crisscrossed the flannel he wore.  And oh look, that other one had an axe.  Badass.

When he found the transgender flag, with its baby blue and pink and white stripes, he stopped and almost said in wonder, “Oh, you’ve got this one in your room!”  But instead he bit back his own words, realizing only then what had happened two days ago.  He’d been looking out the window and Rowan had thought he’d been looking at the flags, and then he said, “I’m like you.”

His cousin grinned.  “Yep, there’s ours!”

“Yeah, well I’m… still figuring out what I am,” he muttered, a little defensively.  He was going to detransition tomorrow, after all, once he was home.

But apparently Sydney heard his quiet prevarication and chuckled.  “Aren’t we all.  But still, it’s nice to wear a pin or a shirt that says, ‘I like to smooch girls,’ you know?”

“Uh, yeah,” Sammy nodded, and handed Rowan her phone.

But Sydney wasn’t taking that for an answer.  She tipped her head to the side, catching Sammy’s attention, and when he look up at her, she bounced her eyebrows.  “Do you like to smooch girls, Sammy?”

Suddenly Rowan, Agatha, and Zoey were looking anywhere other than Sydney and Sammy… while also stealing glances at the two of them to watch what was happening.

He struggled to string words together and eventually came up with, “I mean, who doesn’t?”

Sydney guffawed at that, and the rest of their little circle chimed in with their own laughter, too.  He laughed, more than a little self-consciously, just to fit in.  In short order they were setting each other off by repeating, “Well who doesn’t like smooching girls?” at each other.

“Straight women and gay men,” came a snide voice behind Sammy, and he turned, still giggling, to see who the wet blanket was.

It was a thin white man with a not particularly well-kept goatee.  He had bright green eyes that might have been attractive if they hadn’t been squinted half-shut as part of the scowl he wore.  Beneath his half-beard draped a tee shirt with one of those pride flags on it, under which were the words “Bisexual Visibility!”  Jeans and birkenstocks completed his outfit, such as it was.

“Ah, Stewart,” Rowan greeted him in mock welcome.  “It’s good to see that the Fun Police are still on the job.  Were we enjoying ourselves a bit too much?”

“I’d like to remind you that CQA is intended as a safe space for all queers,” he said by way of answer, and crossed his arms in front of him.  “Including straight women and gay men.”

Sammy frowned softly.  “Why would the queer club be concerned about straight women?”

“Because straight trans girls exist?” the thin man snarled.

“Also, it just so happens that Stewart’s girlfriend Mona is a straight girl,” Rowan explained to Sammy, “and Stewart is a gay man.  So really, we were excluding the both of them.”

Sammy boggled.  “How does that work?”

“It worked just fine until she came out as a trans girl a few months ago,” his cousin answered laconically.  “Doesn’t work so well now.”

Stewart, meanwhile, looked like he was about to have an aneurysm.  Finally he gestured at his own shirt and ended up slapping his chest.  “I am bisexual!”

Rowan tipped her head towards Sammy and continued to explain as if the angry man wasn’t even there.  “Stewart discovered he was bisexual when his blowjob provider turned out to be a girl.”  Then his cousin looked directly to the newly-minted bisexual.  “Have you even felt her up yet, Stew?  She was complaining to me last week that you won’t touch her tits.”

Stewart sputtered and then abruptly changed tack.  “And there it is, the crass public exhibition,” he spat, waving his arms and looking around at the crowd as if they were a rapt audience.  A few were in fact watching and listening in; most were studiously ignoring him.  “That’s your go-to, right, Rowan?  Easiest way to get all the attention you ever wanted.  Talk about tits or somebody sucking your cock.”

“Oh, this is about last night,” Zoey observed to Agatha, who sniggered.  Sydney looked askance and the other two girls waved their hands in a “tell you later” gesture.

“I heard about your little performance at the frat,” Stewart was growling.  “Really went out of your way to prove yourself a stellar representative of our community.”

Rowan only rolled her eyes.  “You don’t even know what really happened, Stewart.”

“I know you regaled a bunch of frat boys with a story of your sexcapades, with a punchline of you outing yourself for comedic effect.”  He made his face look surprised and he spread his hands wide.  “You think trans girls aren’t already hypersexualized enough? Or you just had to strengthen their unjustified association with duplicity?”

Rowan set her fists onto her hips.  “You don’t get to police how I present myself, Stewart.”

“There are more trans girls on campus than just you!” he spat.  “Your actions reflect on them.”

“Okay first of all, no, my actions reflect on me and me alone,” she hissed, volume rising as she went.  “If anybody thinks one trans girl’s behaviour is indicative of any other trans girl, that’s on them, not me.  Secondly, if any of the other trans girls on campus want to talk to me about our collective image, I’d welcome that conversation—a conversation about my peers, with my peers.  But I don’t see them, Stewart.  I certainly don’t see your girl Mona.”

Stewart sputtered but his attempt to retort did nothing to stop Rowan’s momentum.

She was shouting now: “Because Mona didn’t come with you to the CQA mixer because she’s trying to figure out how to dump your ass!”

A collective gasp rippled through the surrounding crowd who definitely hadn’t been watching or listening in to the argument.  Lena came rushing through the crowd, hands extended.  “Okay, I think that’s enough—”

“Our relationship is rock-solid,” Stewart spat at Rowan.  “We’re fine.  Or we would be if you weren’t dragging him through the mud behind you.”

Zoey coughed.  “Dragging her through the mud, I think you meant, Stewart.”

The man’s eyes flickered over to Zoey for only a moment, and then snapped back to Rowan as if drawn by a magnet.  He stabbed a finger at her.  “Fuck you,” he growled, and then spun on his heel to stalk out the door.

“Wow, even the vicious infighting in this queer club has an elevated quality to it,” Sydney observed with a smirk.  “I’m gonna like this place.”

Lena watched Stewart stomp away until he was through the doors and then turned to face Rowan.  “You okay, Ro?” she asked, a picture of concern.

Rowan waved off his memory.  “I’m fine.  Sorry about the scene.  I shouldn’t have escalated.”

“Pretty sure he came looking for a fight,” Lena sighed.  “I’m really looking forward to the two of them finally breaking up.”

“No shit,” Zoey agreed.  “Meanwhile, I need another soda.”  And the mixer event open house thing lurched back into the wash of stilted conversations and awkward flirting that had typified its first two hours.

“Okay, I’m exhausted,” Rowan admitted moments after Lena had stood on a chair one last time and told everybody that the event was over.  Anyone who did not vacate the lounge would be dragooned into helping clean up.

Rowan, Sammy, and Zoey were sliding leftover pizza into two catch-all boxes and stacking the empties to one side.  It was slow, brainless work, which suited Sammy’s current capabilities just fine.

“Big day today, late night last night,” Zoey nodded, fighting back a yawn.  “Late night the night before, too.”

Rowan leaned over to hug her cousin but ended up draping herself on top of him.  “Sammy, I want to be a good hostess and take you out and show you the sights but I think I’d fall asleep on the subway.”

“That’s okay,” he assured her.  “I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night, either.  I’d prolly fall asleep on top of you, and then we’d wake up… uh.  Wherever the subway ends up.”

“The Bronx,” supplied Zoey neutrally.

Rowan giggled and disagreed: “Brooklyn!”

“Queens,” offered Agatha from a few steps away, looking vaguely ill at the thought.

“Yeah, let’s not go to any of those places,” Sammy agreed, not having any idea where they were or how they related to the City.

“You know what we should do?” Zoey asked with a half smile, and answered her own question: “Go back to the room, get into our jammies, put on a movie, and fall asleep before the third act even starts.”

“A slumber party?” Rowan gasped, placing a hand on her clavicle as if she were scandalized at the very proposition.

“Well, like…” Zoey moderated, squinting into the middle distance as if estimating some complex math. “Prolly half an hour of slumber party before we’re all passed out.”

“Can we order ice cream delivery?” Rowan asked like a small, truculent child.

Sammy blinked.  “You can get ice cream delivery here?  This place is magical.”

Rowan laughed.  “I mean, it’s not exactly exciting, outside of you get ice cream at the end.”

Sammy folded a stack of eight boxes onto itself and then shoved it into the trash bin with finality.  “Well that all sounds awesome.  I like that plan for my last night here.”

“Then let’s do it!” Rowan grinned, and then called out: “Hey Aggie, Sydney.  Pajamas, ice cream, and some mindless movie at ours tonight.  Bring your sleeping bag, Syd, we’ll make it a sleepover.”

“Yeah, the more the merr—” Sammy started happily, and then trailed off.  Sydney coming back to the room?  That’s where her bag was.  That’s where all her clothes were, spilling out of her bag in all directions across the sitting room floor.

“You okay there, sport?” Rowan laughed.  “You kinda ran out of steam halfway though your aphorism.”

Sammy gave her a wan smile.  “Just tired.  Here, let’s finish this and head out.  I wanna tidy up my, uh, stuff, before Aggie and Sydney get there.  I made kind of a mess.”

The dorm room was just upstairs, which was good.  Sammy was pretty sure if they’d had to cross campus he’d have jogged ahead of the girls and they’d have asked questions about why he was in such a rush.  As it was, he just tapped his hand against his thigh as he watched the elevator climb floors.  He made sure to follow Rowan and Zoey, not lead the way, on the short walk down the hall to their door.

But once the door was open, Sammy swept inside and started scooping discarded clothing into his arms.  “You see?  I’m a mess.”  He stuffed it all into the bag, which didn’t work very well, and he had to stop, fold, and stack to make it all fit.  His heart was trying to hammer through his ribcage the whole time.

Finally zipped up, he extended the handle and rolled it halfway into the bedroom.  “Um, why don’t I stash this in your closet, Rowan, so it’s out of the way?”

She nodded distractedly from the reading chair, tapping on her phone.  “Yeah, that’s a good idea.  Oh, but don’t forget to pull out your pajamas first.”

Sammy laughed, just a touch manically, as he darted into the bedroom.  “Oh right, I forgot about pajamas,” he said, while thinking furiously: he couldn’t wear Sydney’s pajamas in front of her.  Both of them happening to own the same flannel was one thing; the flannel and PJs would be too ridiculous for credulity to bear.  Especially with her suitcase being “missing.”

He positioned the rollerbag in Rowan’s closet and unzipped it open.  There on the top were Sydney’s pajamas.  “Um.  I don’t see my pajamas in here,” he stammered.  “Did I maybe leave them in your room at the townhouse?”

“What did you sleep in last night?” his cousin asked, half-laughing, from the other room.

“Her frat party fit, just like you did,” Zoey retorted.  “At least I got her to wash her face off, unlike your trashy ass.”

His cousin laughed along with her roommate’s tease, and then she and her laugh were stepping into the bedroom.  He slapped the bag closed and rezipped it, then tucked it behind some long dresses for good measure.  His cousin smiled down at him blandly.  “You can borrow some of mine.”

“All you have is peek-a-boo nighties and not-really-for-sleeping lingerie,” Zoey pointed out, following Rowan into the bedroom.

“Oh, that’s true, and it’s not like you’ll want to sleep in a bra and falsies, Sammy.”  As she talked, she opened her pill box, popped one, and pressed another into Sammy’s palm.  He tucked it under his tongue without comment.

Of course he wasn’t going to sleep in a bra and falsies, but the thought of Sydney seeing him without a bustline suddenly crashed his mood into the wall.  “I guess it’d be… uncomfortable,” he agreed morosely.

“Without adhesive, yeah.  Awkward,” Rowan sighed.  “Sorry I don’t have any handy.”

“Here,” Zoey said, and threw a pile of silky material at Sammy.  He managed to untangle it as she explained: “That’s long and shapeless, just ask Rowan what she thinks of my sleepwear.”

“But I like that one,” his cousin tried to argue, not that anyone was paying her much attention.

The nightgown was indeed long, made out of a pale yellow material patterned with miniscule white flowers.  The neckline had the tiniest little bow that Sammy had ever seen.  He’d look like he was cosplaying Gramma.  He peeled off flannel, tank, and bra and then pulled the nightgown overtop.  Then he could pull off his jeans under cover of the nightgown.

Rowan and Zoey, by contrast, just stripped in the middle of the room and pulled on their own pajamas.  Sammy studied the wall.

“Hey hey,” came Agatha’s voice from the sitting room. 

“Oh, you put both beds into the second room,” said Sydney, with an audible smile.  “That’s so cool.”

Rowan went to meet them.  “We call this the sitting room,” she said, putting on the silly stuffy accent again, and then giggled.  “It makes it feel like there’s more space.”

Zoey and Sammy followed Rowan out, and having five bodies in the room made it clear that there wasn’t that much space after all.  But with some careful arrangement of sleeping bags, copious blankets, and bean bag chairs, they made it work.

Sammy kept scanning the room to make sure he hadn’t missed anything in his frantic clean up.  One recognizable shirt could sink him irrevocably.  Then he’d steal glances at Sydney to see if she had noticed or was having a reaction to his sudden lack of boobs.  She either hadn’t noticed or was playing it cool.  So then he’d go back to scanning the room.

Rowan set up her laptop on a convenient table where all could see, and opened up a streaming service.  She glanced back at the room with a raised eyebrow.  “Given the audience, I’m thinking Bound would be a good pick?”

The three girls responded with enthusiasm, and Sammy smiled as if he had any idea what Bound was.  A movie, presumably.  Rowan hit play and bounced across the room to settle into the reading chair with a fluffy fleece blanket over her knees.

They let the movie play, cheering and sighing appreciatively when the two leads came onto the screen.  When the leads flirted in the elevator, the room went silent.  But otherwise, everyone chatted sleepily as the tale of mob money, apartment renovation, and steamy lesbian romance unfolded on the little screen.

At some point Rowan’s phone lit up.  She darted out of the room and came back a few minutes later with ice cream sundaes, all in little plastic bowls.  No matter what anybody else said, the sudden appearance of ice cream seemed like magic to Sammy.  They distributed the frozen treats, tucked in, and returned half their attention to the screen.

“I love this movie,” Sydney murmured happily.  “I haven’t seen it in forever, since I showed it to Harper.”

“Who’s Harper?” Zoey asked from the beanbag chair she shared with Agatha, a touch of tease to her voice.

“My ex,” was the melancholy answer.  “The only other lesbian in my tiny-ass little hometown.  Lemme tell you how great it is being black and queer in the middle of nowhere, New  Jersey.”

“Eugh,” Sammy sympathized.  “I’m guessing it’s roughly similar to being brown and queer in the middle of nowhere, New Jersey.”  Sleepily, the back of his brain wondered if he’d ever actually told anyone he was queer… aside from all the times he accidentally told people he was trans, of course.

Sydney turned her head to face him across the floor.  “Where exactly?  I’m in Lafayette.”

“Oak Grove?”

But she shook her head.  “Never heard of it.”

“It’s super tiny,” he said with a shrug.  “I think we once delivered a big dresser chest of drawers thing to Lafayette.  There’s, like, a toy store?”

“And fuck-all else,” Sydney sighed, and turned back to the screen.

Sammy waited a calculated beat and asked, “How long is your drive back tomorrow?”

Sydney snorted.  “I’m taking the bus.  Which helpfully departs at 11, and there’s no stop for lunch.”

Which was Sammy’s departure time, too.  They’d both arrive with their identical blue rollerbags, and she’d spot him across the way and come closer to say hi, and then she’d see his bag, and… he sighed to himself.  He’d need to be careful tomorrow.  Did Rowan know when his bus was leaving?  Had he mentioned it?  He hoped against hope that she wouldn’t say anything.

But Rowan was offering advice in a half-asleep voice: “This is what you do.  At breakfast tomorrow, you make yourself a bacon sandwich with… like, way too much bacon.  Use waffles for bread.  I mean, there’s bread there, but you can use waffles, so why wouldn’t you?  And then you just wrap it up in napkins and tuck it into your backpack.  Voilà.  Lunch for the bus.”

The girl on the floor next to Sammy giggled.  “That sounds kind of awesome, actually.”

“The dining plan exists to be exploited,” Rowan intoned as if sharing ancient wisdom.  “Ooo, sex scene.”

As the two leads went at it up on the screen, the room quieted once again… as long as you ignored the quickened breath escalating to muffled moans emanating from the bean bag chairs.  Sammy focused on mastering his own arousal; he hardly wanted to pitch a tent in the middle of the room.  Finally he just placed one hand over his dick and very studiously moved neither hand nor dick.

“Jennifer Fucking Tilly,” Sydney cooed dreamily.

“Right?” drawled Rowan.

Sammy smiled softly in the darkness and found himself saying, “Yeah, but counterpoint: uh.  The other one.  I’m bad with actress names.”

“Gina Gershon,” Agatha supplied, voice huskier than he’d ever heard it.  “But it’s not a competition.”

“The beauty of cinema,” Rowan opined, “is that the medium invites you to imagine yourself in between both of them.”

And for the next few minutes that was all that Sammy could think of.

When the scene was over, Agatha and Zoey got up from the bean bag chair as quietly as they could, which wasn’t very, and whispered, “We’re going to fall asleep.”

“Suuure you are,” Rowan murmured.  When the two girls had closed the bedroom door behind them, she muttered, with no small measure of fond appreciation, “Fucking horn dogs.  Guys, I’m gonna give them fifteen minutes or so and then crawl into my own bed, too.  This chair is not good for sleeping.”

“Thanks for hosting,” Sydney whispered.  “I think Sammy’s already asleep.”

He wasn’t; his eyes were closed, and he was close to sleep, but he did hear their exchange, and thought about responding, but that seemed like a lot of effort.

He woke with a start when a bottle of scotch hit the ground and shattered, up on the screen.  Rowan was gone from her chair.  Sydney was still watching the movie, eyes reflecting the light from the screen.  She turned when he stirred and smiled gently.  “Just the movie.”

Sammy said something intelligent like “Mmph,” and watched the screen a little more, intending to drift off.  There was a lot of shouting and gun-waving and women getting tied up.  He supposed the movie had to earn its title some way, after all.

“This is nice,” the girl beside him said when the violence on the screen dipped down to a low ebb.  “Your cousin and Zoey are… also nice.  Sorry, I don’t have good words this late.”

“They are,” he nodded.  “Nice.”

“I think I like this place,” she whispered to the screen, but her voice carried the careful, hushed tone of a confessional.  “The school, I mean.  This weekend might have made it my number one choice.”

“I love this place,” he murmured.  “This has been the best weekend of my life.”

She glanced over at him to share a smile but then did a double take.  “Then why are you crying, honey?”

He reached up to touch his face; his finger came away wet.  What was his deal recently?  He wiped the tear trail off his cheek.  “It’s nothing,” he responded automatically, but then he looked over at her, saw her open face watching him with nothing but sympathy, and confided, “I don’t think I’m going to get in.”

“You never know—” she started.

“I know,” he interrupted morosely.  “I’m not really Columbia material.  Or college material in general.”

Her eyes narrowed.  “Girl, that is not your decision to make.  You know that, right?”

He didn’t have any idea what she was talking about.  “What?”

“You don’t decide if you get accepted,” she explained, voice insistent on this rather obvious truth.  “All you decide is if you do your best putting together your application.  Saying no is their job, don’t do it for them.”

He couldn’t help but chuckle at that.  “Don’t want to threaten their job security?”

She rolled her eyes.  “You know what I mean.”  Suddenly she shifted, hand darting out of her sleeping bag to find Sammy’s in his.  She squeezed his hand.  “I want you to promise me that you’ll do the best you can on your application, okay?”

“It’s not—”

“Promise me,” she insisted, fingers around his like a vice grip, eyes locked on his, her perfect face lit by the shifting colours of the screen.

“I promise,” he breathed, and then said it one more time, a little louder: “I promise.”

Sydney smiled at him and his stomach flip-flopped.  “Good.  Cause I want to see you here in September.”

He gave her a hesitant smile.  “Me, too.”  They watched through to the end of the movie, but Sammy didn’t make it through the credits.

“If you need anything,” said Uncle Henry as they came up out of the subway station and into the Port Authority bus terminal, “I want you to call us, okay?  Call me.”

Sammy nodded, the kind of exagerrated nod he’d learned you had to use with adults when you were wearing a hoodie.  Because he was back in his own clothes, the clothes that he’d worn on the bus trip here… was it really just three days ago?

He’d been wearing them since the slumber party had tumbled out of the dorm room and went hunting for breakfast.  Rowan had given him a sad-eyed look, but he’d shrugged and explained he really didn’t want to dress girly for breakfast and then change clothes to go home.  He didn’t mention that he also really didn’t want to go to breakfast with Sydney dressed in the girl’s own clothes.

His hoodie and sweats were familiar and warm, even if they were far scratchier than he remembered.  He told himself it was because he’d worn this set already, and ignored the fact that at home he’d “recycled” clothes off his floor for days if not weeks.  He adamantly did not think about how all of Sydney’s girl clothes were lighter, softer, and just plain felt nicer on the skin.

“Listen, Sammy, I don’t think you understand what I’m saying,” his uncle said, and gently took him by the elbow and steered the both of them towards the wall, out of the stream of foot traffic.

Uncle Gideon and Rowan followed after, making a little semi-circle around Sammy.

Henry looked at him gravely and made hard eye contact before continuing.  “If Oak Grove gets unliveable, if your parents get upset with you, if you just want a change of scenery for a bit, you call me and we will come get you, okay?”

Sammy couldn’t help but smile at the offer even as he shook his head. “I can’t just—”

“Sammy, we’d be happy to have you come live with us,” put in Uncle Gideon.  “However long you need.  Even if it’s indefinitely.”

“Oh,” he managed to say.  The offer, so quickly and easily made, staggered him.  He believed they were sincere, too.  Had anyone in Sammy’s life ever—well, sure, Andrei had offered him the apartment, but in Oak Grove, and it was sort of a family hand-me-down—but nobody had offered to straight-up rescue him.  He smiled and blinked so he wouldn’t cry.  “Thank you.”

Rowan reached forward and pulled him into a hug.  “We know a little bit about growing up trans and with families that don’t understand.”

They were intended as kind words, but Sammy’s swelling gratitude immediately crumpled.  His uncles and cousin weren’t accepting and welcoming of Sammy; they were eager to help out a poor trans girl.  He forced a plausibly grateful smile.  At least he didn’t have to stop up his own tears, now.

He looked down the corridor towards the bus depot.  “Um.  Would it be rude if I asked to say our goodbyes here?” he asked, and at the looks on the faces of his family he realized it would be.  He looked down, hands knotted in the kangaroo pocket of his hoodie.  Suddenly inspiration struck.  “It’s just.  I spent all weekend dressed like a girl, and now I’m… back where I was before, you know?  And I’m not sure I want you to remember me like this.”

You want to help out a trans girl, he thought, then let her go dodge the cute lesbian from Lafayette, also waiting at the bus depot, without getting in the poor trans girl’s way.  You can tell yourself you were being sensitive about her feelings.

Gideon reached forward and squeezed his shoulder.  “Of course, honey.  Whatever you need.  But can I get in a hug before we go?”

“Yeah, of course,” he said, and they cycled through a round of hugs.  He let himself believe that this, at least, was genuine.  He hoped that one day, after he had “detransitioned” and they got used to the real Sammy, they’d hug him like this again.

“I got you a present,” said Rowan, and brandished the Columbia University Bookstore bag that she’d been carrying since she’d ducked out halfway through breakfast.

He dug into the bag and came out with… a stuffed animal.  A lion?  Wearing a blue Columbia shirt.  Its butt was weighted with plastic beans or something so that it wouldn’t tip over when you sat it down.  It was dumb, but he grinned at it.

“That’s Roar-ee the Lion,” she informed him proudly.  “I still think we should have adopted Mathilda the Harlem Goat as school mascot, but that decision was made before my time.”

“Thanks, I’ll put it on my desk,” he said, and stuffed the lion in the plastic bag and stuffed the bag into his backpack.  “For inspiration when I fill out my application.”

Uncle Henry touched his elbow again.  “Speaking of which, Samantha, I’d be happy to write you a letter of recommendation.”

Gideon stage-whispered, “He’s kind of a big deal.”

“Thanks,” Sammy said, and glanced down the corridor again.  “And I mean it, thank you so much, all of you.”

“Okay, one more hug,” said Gideon, squeezing him fiercely, “and then you get the fuck out of here.”

He’d fibbed and told his uncles that his bus was leaving at 10:30 so he could be at the bus station early.  He asked at the information window where his bus would be and sat two bays away, where he could still see his bus stop.

Sydney came rolling in at 10:35 and strode confidently to their bay.  She had her headphones in and was tipping her head to the beat, lips occasionally mouthing lyrics.  She still wore the Columbia sweater and comfortable blue jeans.

Sammy watched without staring, because he’d learned his lesson.  No inadvertant eye contact this time.  He kept her in the corner of his eye as passengers came and went.

Their bus pulled up to the stop shortly thereafter; its load of passengers disembarked and pulled their luggage out of the cargo bays along the bottom of the bus.  Sammy watched as Sydney queued to reverse the procedure, chucking his bag into the bus with an understandable distaste.  He watched her board.

Pulling his hood tight, Sammy rose and walked across the two bus bays.  Most of the passengers had stowed their stuff and boarded, and he waited for the last one to climb up the stairs.  Then he rolled Sydney’s bag into the cargo bay and climbed in after it.

He had to shuffle a bunch of luggage that was already in there, pulling his sleeping bag along with him.  When he finally got to his bag, tucked towards the back, he telescoped out the rollerbag’s handle, swung his sleeping bag forward, and strapped it securely to the extended bars.

He then crab-walked backwards, grabbing Sydney’s bag where he’d set it down, and carefully positioned it so that it would be front and center when the cargo bay doors were opened back up in Dover.  He set Sydney’s sleeping bag, pulled up from the back of the cargo hold, next to it.

Would it work?  Who knew.  But he’d like to get Sydney her stuff back if at all possible.  He felt guilty for “borrowing” it for so long.

Finally he slunk up the stairs, backpack held before him so that he could hold it up in front of his face if need be.  But Sydney was seated in a window seat, looking out at the not particularly scenic bus depot, singing along to her music.  He hefted his bag in front of his face anyway, to make sure she couldn’t even spot his reflection in the window.

Sammy settled into the last row of seats, hunkering down a little to hide his face behind the next row’s headrests.  No one would have any cause to turn their attention to his hiding spot.

His phone chimed and buzzed.

Cursing quietly, he dug it out of his backpack and flicked it onto silent mode.

Rowan had texted: Have you found the zipper yet?

Sammy couldn’t help smirking.  The question made no sense.  Had she meant to text that to somebody who knew what she was talking about?  He texted back a single question mark.

On Roar-ee, came the reply.

Sammy dug the slick plastic bag out of his backpack and pulled out the plush lion.  Sure enough, there was a zipper along its butt, sewn in with an inexpert hand.  He carefully tugged it open.

A hundred little blue pills, all wrapped up in a ziploc baggie, stared up at him.  Holy shit.

He texted back: Holy shit!

You said you didn’t have that sort of thing at home, she replied quickly.

He zipped up the plush before anybody could see he was trafficking ecstasy.  He tapped out: Zoey these had to cost so much!

Not that much, she replied, and then: Besides, you’re worth it.

Not knowing what else to say, he texted: This is amazing.

The three dots bobbed for a while, finally producing: one in the morning, one at night, every day.  That should supply you for three months, okay?  Do not ration when you get low.  I’ll find some way to get you more.  Even if I have to rent a car and drive up to Bumfuck myself.

OMG thank you, he texted back.  And then he smirked and typed out: I promise to take my meds every day like a good girl.

She hearted it.

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