A rolling boil...

CAUTION - This chapter contains flashback to a traumatic event. There is no graphic description of the event but it is referenced by a character's words while they are having a flashback and reliving it. This is the most traumatic section of this story, and as it is my first I might be being overly cautious in flagging it.

Chapter 7

Mark stumbled across the landing, after closing what had been her bedroom door behind him. Frozen into inaction he just stalled in the mid landing on his planned trip back to his new room thinking on what he had just learned. How his sister, and she was most definitely his sister, had escaped from the prior cocoon of being his slightly effeminate, totally useless, pathetically weak brother that he hated, into a confident sure girl. One that obviously was happy and had fully embraced being female.

It broke into Breanne's cycle of hatred for all things Douglas, and pushed her into truly accepting what would be coming soon. Her immanent gender swap which she now realized Mark hadn’t thought through to the final goal properly before. She had wanted to be male because females were weak, females could be hurt, and she hadn’t been in control when she was a girl. If she couldn’t rely on males to protect her then by god she will be male, and protect herself. Further, her useless brother should be a girl, he was a failure as a boy. Well Douglas now was the girl Bree, and soon Breanne would be a young man, so that meant Mark needed to protect Bree. Or he would be a hypocrite in how she thought of her failure of a brother, Douglas.

Now that Douglas was gone, and actually understanding what being Mark would entail, namely being there to protect his sister, meant her disgust of Douglas didn’t have a target. Breaking the cycle made her realize that the standard she’d held Douglas to three years ago was ludicrous. Before her bitter anger, and warped justice, and means to ensure she was never in a situation of not being in control, not being strong, How she easily found ways to blame everyone but herself on what happened, and how she held Douglas most at fault. Had held Douglas more at fault than even frigging Jeremy, the fifteen year old heartthrob she couldn’t believe was interested in her. What the fuck did she expect an eleven year old boy to do?

Of course Douglas had been distracted at the party, with the video game set up. The party that was in the main house for Ansley, Jeremy’s just turned thirteen-year-old little sister, which they were actually invited to be at. She’d left quietly, not wanting Douglas to notice her leaving. Yet she then blamed him for not noticing she’d snuck out of the common area when she knew full well his attention was elsewhere. She’d followed Jeremy’s plan of heading out the back door when his parents were busy in the front of the house, where she was supposed to be. Instead she’d crossed the wooden deck, and went down the steps to the backyard, and saw the door under the deck, as he had told her she would find. She’d knocked, and was happy when he let her in to his bedroom apartment and the private party he had promised her. She was so bloody stupid!

The laundry list of people her eleven-year-old-self, had held responsible for her screwed up life had started with her grandma. The one that showed her pictures of her mum and then ones of herself at the same age, showing how they looked like identical twin sisters. As a four to five year old, or younger child she literally took grandma’s statement that, ‘if her daughter was alive today she would have eventually looked like me’ to make her think her mum was the same age as her grandma. As grandma was identical to mum in her mind she thought of her as her mum. Even if she demanded to only be called grandma.

When she was six and her dad started dating Ellin an eighteen year old where their nineteen year old part-time nanny was still in high school, she took the fact Ellin was a college drop out to mean she was a high school dropout. Looking back now she is fourteen she wonders if their grandma deliberately didn’t fix or encouraged that fallacy to be believed. She does know that her grandma referenced repeatedly that Ellin was a college dropout, a drug using groupie, and that she was a year younger than their nineteen year old nanny, Clair, whom was still in high school, and set to do something useful with her life.

In her mind her dad was trading in mum for a girl two generations younger than his first wife. Having Ellin in the house started a war. Clair was on grandma’s side as she was going to be out of a job. Grandma was also not around as much and the kids were in the trenches of a war they couldn’t understand. Of course her eleven year old self thus added her dad and Ellin onto the laundry list of those at fault for what happened. If her dad thinks he can date a woman half his age she should date Jeremy. She is three fourths his age. She would have never done it if he hadn’t first, she’d used to shift the blame.

At eight years old her dad died in a traffic accident. She was sure it was punishment because he had in his mid thirties married a teenager, basically a girl half his age. Yes, dad was smote because he replaced mum with a high-school-dropout-drug-using-groupie. She hadn’t known then what a drug-using-groupie was, but she knew it was a really bad thing, based on how grandma had said it. What at eight she couldn’t work out was why he was punished while driving with grandma also in the car? Was grandma supposed to be punished for something? Or was the fact she lived proof the punishment wasn’t also for her.

At eleven she had riled wondering when Jeremy was going to be punished. Sure she didn’t tell Douglas what had happened, but he wimped out when she said that next day at school he had to beat Jeremy up for her. He had to, or she wasn’t safe from other boys, and he refused. He let her get hurt, and just had fun playing video games. He needed to be added to the list five times as he was most at fault, and obviously useless.

How had she not seen the ridiculous standard she held her brother to? She had just got so caught up on her hatred for him. Looking for fault in everything Douglas did, as proof she was right to hate him. Looking for ways to lash out and hurt him because he hadn’t protected her. It took Douglas being removed from the playing field for her to see how far she had warped logic into justifying how she must punish Douglas.

Though grandma, unlike dad, survived the car accident, she did so with a broken hip that led while in hospital to an infection and other complications. The upshot of the injuries meant she was physically unable to take care of the twins. So Ellin is added a second time to the list because when she won the custody battle she brought them now they were nine years old to Sydney. If they had stayed in the U.S. then they wouldn’t have been invited to Ansley’s birthday party.

But no, they were uprooted to Sydney, where Leah’s mum, a friend from Ellin’s Northern Territory Jilkminggan school days had relocated. Mary had a job for their step-mum, working as a hair dresser in her salon. So they arrived in Carlingford and got enrolled in Murry Farm School, specifically mister Black’s form 4B class. Unlike the United States, everything in Australia was a competition. Their Sherwood court neighbor Sarah made sure to let Breanne know that mister Black’s class was only ranked second. Her class with misses Swanson, 4S was for the smartest students their age. Of course Breanne knuckled down and ensured Douglas did too so they will get into the top fifth form, and shut up miss smarty pants.

Leah refused to listen to her. She said she was happy in Miss Edmunds class 4E, the youngest and newest fourth form teacher at Murry Farm. Leah stated that as long as her fifth form teacher was just as nice she wouldn’t care if she ended up in the bottom fifth form class. Breanne had a devil of a time to get Douglas back on track studying after that. He was easily manipulated by a pretty face so another couple of reason’s to add him to the list. He probably was listening to Ansley too, when she needed him to protect her.

She recalls the dread, worry and anxiety to see if they made the class list for mister Michaels, whom teaches 5M, which is the top fifth form class. Initially Sarah was gloating as she is on that class list, but the twins are not on any list. Sarah said that they probably have been held back to repeat fourth form. However, Sarah gets worried when she notices that several of the kids she was sure would get in 5M were also on none of the school lists.

Then the twins had a meeting with the headmaster who discusses the goals of their new class 5/6 D which combined the top fifth formers with the bottom sixth formers as there are not enough students for a whole new class in both years, and they want to see if the brightest fifth formers can raise to the challenge, and push the sixth formers as half the class is a year younger than the other half.

The end result was the following year going into high school at North Rocks a year early, while still only eleven years old. It led to them being a year younger than their class mates, and mixing with the older kids of high school like Jeremy. Breanne accepts now that placing Sarah onto the list of people responsible for her getting hurt shows she was scarred to accuse Jeremy. For aside a stupid decision that she made, he was the only one that should have been blamed. However, in her fear of blaming the one at fault she found a convoluted method to blame nearly half a dozen that were not. From out of this incorrect list of who was at fault, her feud with Douglas had been spawned.

Breanne’s epiphany was interrupted when she noticed through the landing window Sophia’s red Hyundai i30N. Well she assumed it was Sophia’s, as she had told him that was what she drove, and she was picking him this evening, and that was the style car that had pulled into their driveway. Running to Douglas’s bedroom she grabbed his tennis racket and the prepared bag and ran for the stairs. Unknowing of her panda blotched eyes, she yelled bye toward the kitchen and the wrinkles, while opening the front door.

Ellin, woried she was about to miss her son leaving, began running from the kitchen, called out to him. “Mark I want you back by nine as it…

“See you about nine thirty,” Breanne quickly cut in, and closed the front door before Ellin arrived. In order to get the return time she needed. Mark had turned his phone off earlier so they could say they hadn’t noticed it wasn’t on later.

“Hi Sophia, nice car,” Breanne exclaimed throwing Douglas’s racket and bag over the front passenger seat into the backseat foot well. Then noticing the gear stick as she quickly sat in the bolstered leather looking bucket seat that wrapped her safely up, and closing the door, she asked. “It’s a manual?”

“Yep, six speed manual; my baby flies, and Speedy is just six weeks old.” Sophia grinned, popping the clutch and shifting into reverse so she could back out of Mark’s driveway. “Is everything good with you and your parents Mark?”

“My steps,” Breanne absently corrected while bristling at the wrong name. “I’m good ‘till nine thirty.”

Sophia held back on joking about keeping Mark out later so he would be bad for her. “North Rocks courts, yes?” she confirmed. Looking at Mark’s panda splotched patches around his eyes and the way he was sitting that just screamed deeply upset girl, that had just been crying.

Breanne nodded and tried to relax into the seat. This was one really nice car. She really did need to force the conversation she needed to place all the cards on the table. Breanne just couldn’t remove her guilt that she knew even if she did that she would still get most of the things she wanted, at the expense of using Sophia. She was still raw from reliving a chapter of her life she thought she had chained closed from herself. Why had Mark let it reopen, she hadn’t wanted that.

Having awoken to how she had used Douglas she questioned if she should be allowed to know she could bare all, and still come up smelling like roses. Sadly there was no way to remove her guilt as her power didn’t hide the overall plot. True it hid some fairly large items like Leah being completely lesbian, and the spring formal she needed to get a tux for and take Sophia to, a week next Friday. They were a few minutes away from the courts, and if she wanted to do this the conversation had to start soon or it would be too late.

Did she have the right to do this, was it fair her using Sophia. From the time in the rose garden Mark had known her personality was beautiful, and saying you must do this or the Center gets me and my twin…

“Do you want to talk about what is bothering you?” Sophia asked deciding to not say his name as he appeared to react badly to it last time. The question intruded on Breanne’s guilt laden wool gathering.

“Sorry I was enjoying your playlist, Cranberries, then Lithium, and now Chvches.” Breanne quickly covered for obviously being too silent. Hoping to get Sophia talking about the music she likes, while still startled by the use of being addressed as Mark earlier.

“You left your house like a scalded cat. I know men like to always appear macho but as you accepted me as your partner. I really would like to know if something is hurting you. You never know I might be able to help you. I can’t if you shut me out though.” Sophia used the word ‘men’ instead of ‘boys’ to stroke Mark’s ego, or as it showed let her know there was something seriously bothering her passenger. How she wished she could have used ‘girlfriend’ instead of the word ‘partner’ though. She sighed how could she get Mark to open up to her? If he saw she could help him, and finally stop hiding that he was transgender from her then perhaps he could become her boyfriend.

“That’s part of the problem. I know you, and only you can help me. I know I can bare all to you, and that makes me guilty knowing that you will help me.”

“Well I like that you think there is something only I can help you with. I could waste my time saying that, what you said is flattering, but I find it highly unlikely to be true.” Sophia slightly uncomfortably stated. “However, I won’t. I am going to use your statement that as I am the only person that can help you, why are you not asking for my help already instead?”

“Because I will be using you,” Breanne admitted, deciding to go with the best option that included her being open with Sophia. At least she felt better that in this version though using Sophia, the girl would know she was being used. Well Breanne figured, she could always chicken out and join the versions that would send both twins to the Center. Then Bree wouldn’t get a relationship with Leah. They both would leave Australia. He could get Bree a girlfriend or there were three boyfriends she could have. She would punish Ellin, but she no longer wanted to punish her…

“Mark!” At Sophia’s yell of that name Breanne found that they were parked in the strip mall a couple of blocks prior to the tennis courts. Sophia had parked the car and turned it off while Breanne was debating what to do. “Thank you for finally actually paying me some attention. I can tell you right now that if this is how you plan to continue spending time with me then to hell with the spring formal.” She took a breath to calm herself. “Now apparently not only am I the only person that can help you, but also you a using me. You are going to start talking, and if you ignore me again and don’t start talking…

Sophia huffed in air while trying to think of what she wanted to say. Finally deciding on saying, “Then when I restart this car it will be because I’m driving you home as we are finished. Are you clear on this?”

“Yes, sorry Sophia. Look there’s no easy way to start this so I’m just going to start. My twin and I, both have powers.” When it looked like Sophia was going to start the car she quickly rushed on. “No, I know this sounds crazy, but I’ve been debating whether or not I had the right to share this with you when I knew how you would act if I told you. It was my guilt of using you that caused me to be distracted, and I apologize that I wasn’t paying attention to you.”

“Okay I am going to suspend my disbelief. What do you mean by you, and your twin having powers?” Sophia asked.

“Well they’re both linked to time. I am not really sure what my twin’s is, but in general terms hers is some kind of control over the present time, while I have a kind of control of future time.”

“Hmm you know it sounds initially quite mysterious, but then it is so vague it could come across as something that couldn’t be proven.” Sophia dubiously stated.

“Oh, I know I can prove both my sister’s and my power before ten this evening. My control of the future lets me know that something critical will happen at nine forty-seven this evening. I must have you with me as otherwise I can’t interrupt my sister’s first ever sleepover with her new girlfriend Leah.”

“Is this the same Leah you mentioned as your first crush?” After Mark’s nod she continued. “Are you planning on using me to break up your first crush, and your sister?”

“No actually this will ensure they’re not broken up…

“You do know that if you are lying to me on this I will never forgive you.”

“I’m not lying on this…

“And yet I hear a ‘but’ in your voice, what are you lying about?” Sophia demanded.

Breanne took a breath then quietly said. “Leah wasn’t my first crush.”

“You actually have already lied to me, when we agreed to answer some questions truthfully to get to know each other.” Sophia clarified. “We said we could refuse to answer, but if we answered we would do so truthfully. Yet you chose to lie.”

“I didn’t lie, Mark was there then, and Leah was Mark’s first crush, and my second crush.”

Sophia zeroed in on the person sat next to her who had just admitted they might not be Mark all the time. How should she handle this? Was their therapist aware of this? How should she talk to them? Was she helping or exacerbating the problem if she called them Mark? Unfortunately Mark was the only name she had to use for them. She was fairly certain though that she was currently in the car with a girl. Mark was a male name.

“Do you want to talk about your first crush?”

“No!”

“Fine then let’s go back to why you want to interrupt your sister, and Leah’s first ever sleepover, and why you need me to do so.” Sophia quickly backtracked from that minefield of the other conversation. She could accept it as they didn’t lie to her, and also avoided a question that they were majorly uncomfortable talking about for now and not that they had lied. However, Sophia felt she needed to return to that probably if their friendship was to develop.

“I must have my sister use her power while I change. If I go home alone I will not be allowed to interrupt them. If you are with me when we get home about nine-thirty, then Ellin will allow us to talk to them for fifteen to twenty minutes.”

Sophia noted internally the things in that statement she needed to get more details on but decided first to stay on her initial line of query. “How do you know your mum will only let you interrupt their sleepover if I’m with you?”

“My power lets me see how doing a specific thing will prevent certain unwanted futures, and enable versions that are beneficial.”

Sophia carefully thought about what they had told her, so far. “Have you used it on me?”

“Well sort of indirectly, yes. That’s why I was quiet in the car. There were still options where I benefit, one of them this one is where I tell you the truth about my power, the other I felt like I would be manipulating you as you would not know about what I have started to tell you, but I knew either of them would still work. Now of course only this option is available to me.”

“So you were debating if you should use me?”

“No, in both options I am using you. I was debating not choosing either and letting something bad happen to myself, and not quite as bad happening to my twin and not use you at all, verses telling you about our powers that would lead to me using you.”

Sophia was trying to work out how she could be used if the person confessed ahead of time to doing so. If she knew everything including the intended using, she couldn’t be used. “You are saying if I knew everything you believe you will still be using me?”

“That is what my power shows me, yes.”

“What is the bad event you see happening if I am not there to allow you to interrupt your sister’s sleepover.

“I need my sister to use her power while I change. That way the precogs of the Center are unaware I changed.”

“Other precogs like you?” getting a nod, Sophia was now more interested in the second mention of a change than the Center, and boy did she ever hear the capital letter on that word, another thing to circle back to. “This change occurs at nine-forty-seven tonight?” When they nodded to her correct guess, Sophia barreled on. “Are you going to tell me how you change?”

“That will be one of the ways of proving we have powers, so yes I will tell you.”

“Will you swear to never lie to me?”

“As long as I can choose to avoid a question…

“Like how you didn’t want to talk about your first crush?” Sophia pushed.

“It wasn’t Mark's first crush, and after nine-forty-seven I will be Mark so it’s not really relevant.”

Sophia was increasingly thinking she needed to delve into the first crush. “And if I think it is relevant?”

“I hope you don’t.” They almost begged.

“What if I say it is a condition to me coming and interrupting the sleepover?” The tears falling down their cheeks and how they folded in on themselves made Sophia feel evil. What was so bad about hiding their first crush? It might be humiliating, but how could it cause this strong a negative emotional response.

“Please don’t.”

“I promise I will not mention about your first crush to anyone. I also promise I will go with you to your house at nine-thirty and try to help interrupt your sister’s sleepover after you truthfully state that it is not your intent to hurt anyone by doing so. However, I’m sorry, but I think I need to know all about your first crush, if you want my help.” Sophia didn’t know their existed an expression that upon witnessing it, made you feel you should swallow your prior words, but she regretted what she had uttered almost as soon as the words’ meaning had been realized by the person that heard her.

With their knees drawn in against their chest their head resting on them and arms tightly hugging their legs to their body the softest emotionally dead whisper began while they stared into the car’s passenger foot well unseeing. Shakes rippling through the tightly held bundled body, and tears now free flowing. “I was eleven, and he was fifteen. Douglas and I were in 5/6D, in primary school. So we had skipped into high school seventh grade a year early. Ansley…

The emotional conflict was too much for them. They continued rocking. Sophia leaped over the gear shift and center console and hugged them to her. She could feel their breast buds even if there was both a binding and normal vest beneath their tennis T-shirt. She had been right they were born a girl, or they had gynecomastia she accepted another choice that would mean she wasn’t correct. Sophia uttered soothing noises while holding them. She was so glad when they relaxed from hugging themselves enough to cling to her instead. Sophia couldn’t help thinking that Ansley was normally a girl’s name. She tried to get their attention that they could stop. She didn’t need to know, but they weren’t hearing her.

They had used ‘he’ not a female pronoun, was Ansley a boy? What was the deal with the oddness of them discussing Douglas as if he was someone else. They were Douglas, before deciding on the second male name Mark weren’t they? She was worried as their eyes were vacant. Figuring she would just hug her while she tried to work out what was going on. Surely their therapist would have resolved this.

Sophia was startled when they started whispering once more in the same voice. The one that eerily sounded dead. “He had told me he could get Ansley to invite both of us to her thirteenth birthday party. We were having a hard time in high school. The other girl from 5/6D who was supposed to be in our class moved… He promised we would make friends and fit in, but I needed to… If I promised him to sneak out of the party to him then he would get his sister to invite us to her party, and we could fit in… He was so good looking… A fifteen tear old boy and he was interested in me!”

Sophia tried to calm them down. She kept telling them it wasn’t important. She didn’t need to know, but it was too late, they were deaf to hearing Sophia, they weren’t in her car any longer. They were back in wherever they were during Ansley’s thirteenth birthday party, and Sophia was along for the ride until they escaped what she had realized was an actual hell.

“He wouldn’t stop… The pain never stopped… His hands were everywhere... The pain… It tore through me… I tried to stop him. I swear I did Sophia… I did try… He said that I didn’t… I’m not a slut… I’m not bad… I’m sorry… I hated Douglas… I was going to use you… He said I was filthy and wanted it… I didn’t… I didn’t… If I say anything then everyone would know… all the high school boys would be told… They would do it too… Don’t say anything Breanne… He would know… He would punish me… He could always do this again… I couldn’t… not again… I won’t tell… I hated Douglas… He was there… I blamed him… But I tricked him… I snuck out… I’m bad… It’s my fault… I have to protect my sister Bree… Not her… This… No… Please…

The stream of words interspersed with sobbing collapsed into mumblings and nonsensical sounds. It was clear that they had multiple names for themselves. They talked of Douglas as if they were a brother instead of it being actually an old name they had used for themselves. They called themselves Breanne, a name that Sophia knew was their sister’s. Now admittedly Psychology was the course she planned to study in university next year, and she knew that just having an interest didn’t make her a psychologist, but it clearly appeared that their therapist hadn’t unearthed this when they diagnosed them transgender. Sophia seriously thought gender dysphoria an incorrect diagnosis. This needed to be resolved before anything like that could be decided, and this was so not resolved.

Sophia allowed them to cling to her while gently rubbing their back and trying to sooth them. They were mewling, with the occasional hiccup. Their body shutting down as they ran out of energy, finally they fell into a restless tormented sleep. Sophia kept saying soothing words, that they were safe. Letting them know they were safe with Sophia, while stroking the sides of their shoulders. Hoping they would fall into a dreamless sleep to escape the hell they were trapped reliving.

Sophia was so far out of her depth on this. Their parents needed to be told. Sophia was sure the Parsons’ didn’t know. She was going to kill the boy, once she got his name. He would be the same age as her now. Most probably he was a senior at North Rocks High School.