Synopsis: Insert a bunch of words here that relate to the text that you’re about to read.

“Allison! Allison wake up!” Brianna said cheerily as she tore back the curtains and bathed my face in the morning light. “Look at that, the sun has been up for HOURS. My god were you going to sleep all day?”

“I was trying,” I said, yawning.

“Well too bad, lazybones,” She said with a slight grin on her face. “We have to take you to get waxed and you have your first laser hair removal appointment today. Are you ready?”

“Wait,” I said. “What are you talking about? I didn’t schedule that.”

“Yeah, but I did,” She said smugly. “Come on, get up, get showered, I’ll make breakfast, you’re going to have a great day.”

“I’m not sure how I can have a great day,” I muttered. “I mean with all this…”

“Come on, sis,” She said, suddenly she was tossing my covers aside and pulling me out of bed. I groaned as my feet hit the carpet and she helped me up as if I were a rag doll. Why was she so much stronger than me? Seriously? How much did this bitch work out? “Go, go, go! I already picked out an outfit for you!”

I walked into the bathroom and got washed up. On the back of the door I could see the outfit she’d picked for me; just white blouse and a black shirt; nice. I dressed and brushed my hair with a wide-tooth comb; I couldn’t do any better than that without pulling at my stitches but fortunately my hair was pretty smooth. I paused for a moment and wondered whether or not I should do my makeup; no, probably not if I was going for laser hair removal, right? I shrugged and walked out of the bathroom, only to find Brianna standing in the hall. She pointed at the bathroom door.

“Makeup,” She said simply. I turned and walked back into the bathroom. “I know it’s a hassle but you’re going to feel better with it on.”

I kind of sighed and did as she said, happy that I was at least getting better at it. Maybe all of this unnecessary practice was actually paying off. Who knew, right.

“Okay, come on, come on,” She hurried me as I walked out of the bathroom “We’ve got a full day ahead of us!”

“What,” I said. “You mean the laser thing?”

“Yeah, that and other things,” She said, directing me downstairs and toward the garage. I never had time to do anything on my own anymore, I swear. Was I complaining? Well no, probably not. I thought for a moment that maybe she was trying to keep my mind off of things by keeping my schedule clear and then I wondered how exactly she had taken so much time off of work. Did she take a vacation? No, that wasn’t any of my business. I took the passenger seat and sat there silently as she listened to public radio. At least it wasn’t raining today.

We finished with the waxing pretty quickly and then moved on to the laser hair removal which was less of an ordeal than I thought it would be. It turns out that the first session is just a sample spot examined by a doctor who would determine if you had an adverse reaction. She said I got a good result and then scheduled my next session. It didn’t bother me much but you know, that laser hurt a bit so I had to wonder what it would feel like when they were running it over my entire face. Maybe that was something I didn’t really want to think about.

“So where to next?” I asked Brianna as I walked out of the back and we headed out to her car once again.

“I booked us a spa day,” She said. “We’re going to get a massage, facials, the whole nine yards.”

“We are?” I said. “I…don’t I have to get naked for that?”

“You just got naked at the salon,” She said. “It’s not that much different.”

“Well yeah but…I’ve been there before. They knew what to expect.”

“You’re going to be fine, sis,” She said. “Look; I want you to enjoy today. I really do, because the days ahead are going to be difficult for you. I think you’re going to overcome and pull through, and I’ll be there EVERY step of the way but this is going to be a lot for you; do you understand?”

“Yeah, I do, I mean I think I do,” I said. She nodded slowly as she pulled out of the parking lot and took the exit ramp onto the freeway.

“Allie,” She said. “You…when I drove you to your dorm a little over a month ago you were a kid. Seriously, you had no idea what the world was like and if we’re being honest I didn’t really care if you found out or not. I though you were so rude and I couldn’t wait for you to grow up a little. Well guess what…you grew up. I’m kind of sad to think about how much more growing you’re about to do. Things are…going to change. I want to know you and love you as you are for a little while, if you can understand.”

“I think so,” I said. “I feel different…than I did before I came here and did all of this.”

“You are, and I’m sorry you had to experience so much so quickly, but there’s no going back now. Let’s just enjoy today, okay?”

“Okay.”

The spa visit was about what I had expected but I’d never experience anything like that firsthand. By the time we were done my body felt absolutely amazing. I was light as a feather and I think I practically skipped to the car. It was 4:40 PM by the time we were done with everything and Brianna called ahead to order pizza as we sped back toward her house.

“You still like banana peppers, right?” She asked me as she spoke to the pizza shop. I nodded and she continued with the order.

“Okay yeah,” She said. “I’d like…five…no make that six, six is good.”

“Jesus, Brianna,” I said. “We’re not feeding an army.”
“I like left overs,” She shrugged and then went back to her order, detailing every single pizza. I kind of rolled my eyes and stared out the window, as the scenery went by. “You going to get that?”

“Huh?” I looked at her quizzically and then noticed that my phone was ringing. I had no idea how long it had been doing that. “Oh…yeah…”

Without even bothering to check the caller ID I slid the green answer button to the right and said hello.

“Hello,” A voice on the other end said. “Is this Allison Parsons?”

“Yes, may I ask whose calling?” I said as politely as I could. Somehow my sister and all of AG had politeness into me over the last month and taught me to answer all questions in kind of a non-committal, upbeat tone. I thought it was stupid at first but after a while I realized that it really did sound more feminine.

“This is Malcom Hendrick, Dean of Students at Bellcrest, how are you doing today? I needed to talk to you about the incident that occurred…a few days ago. You know, just to get some of the facts from you, you’re not in trouble, we just need to make sure everything’s cleared up, can you stop by tomorrow?”

“Uh…yeah, I can do that,” I said kind of quietly. I’d seen the dean around but the fact that he was speaking to me? That was different. Why did he need to talk to me specifically? What was going on?

“Thank you Ms. Parsons,” He said. “I’ll see you tomorrow at three PM, if that’s alright?”

“Yes, that sounds fine,” I said, hanging up the phone.

“Who was that?” Brianna asked curiously, pulling into her driveway and opening the garage door.

“It was…the Dean…he wants to talk to me tomorrow about the…incident.”

“That’s not surprising,” Brianna said. “It made the news.”

“Wait, what?”

“Yeah,” She said, as she threw the car in park and we climbed out into the garage. “It was posted on the University’s webpage so like five different new agencies got ahold of it. Stephanie gave them your old name so people have been asking around about you. I…didn’t tell you because you’ve had enough on your plate, but the whole thing went nationwide. It started a huge debate. It’s not really a new thing because there are a lot of sororities allowing trans girls in now, but it was a big deal because it was Alpha Gamma. AG has been kind of a stickler about tradition, so people are wondering exactly how this happened. I’ve been fielding phone calls for the past few days, people want to interview you.”

“Oh my god,” I whispered. “What…the…hell?”

“It’s not something you need to worry about today,” She said. “But, when you go in to talk to the dean tomorrow I’m going with you. I don’t want you to get swarmed.”

“I can’t believe…how did I not know this?” I was so confused.

“Did you check the news at all?” She asked. “Haven’t you noticed how busy I’ve kept you?”

“I…guess…” I probably should have been mad at her but I couldn’t be. I kind of felt like she was right.

“Let’s just get inside, watch a movie and have some pizza. You can worry about the world tomorrow, okay? I want you to just…enjoy tonight. Like I said, the days ahead are going to be rough.”

I let it go for the moment and walked into the house.

“Hey, what movie are we going to watch?” I called out to Remy. She had so many, and we had Netflix. How were we supposed to choose?

“I’m thinking like maybe ‘The Babysitter’, it’s a really good Netflix Original, or maybe we could go with a chick flick?” She called from the other room. As she was shouting out to me, the doorbell rang. “Hey that’s the pizza, can you go get that?”

“Yeah,” I called back and made my way from the living room to the front door. I unlocked the deadbolt and pulled the door open; it wasn’t the pizza. “Remy? Laura? Cassandra? Um…all of AG? What are you guys doing there?”

“It’s movie night, bitch,” Remy said as she gave me a hug and pushed past me followed by pretty much all of the AG girl who gave me a hug as they passed by. What the hell was going on?

“Heyyyy!” Brianna said as she met them by the stairs. “Thank you SO much for coming!”

“Are you kidding me?” Laura laughed. “We’ve been wanting to come since it happened.”

“Allison,” Michelle said, turning to me. “You’re our sister, even if you were just a pledge. We’re not going to leave you behind, okay?”

“I…I….thank you,” I said. “I was starting to feel lost without you guys…”

“Don’t worry,” Laura smiled to me. “You have your appeal coming up and you’re going to nail it, okay? In the meantime let’s just watch some movies and pretend everything’s fine, it’ll be great.”

“Well…what are we going to watch?” I asked. “I mean we have so many things to choose from.”

“Oh, we could watch Greek!” A random girls suggested. Everyone turned to look at her as if she was insane.

“Okay,” Remy said. “Why don’t we stay a little bit further from real life?”

Everyone laughed. I laughed. For tonight, for just this one night, everything was going to feel normal again. Maybe for right now I didn’t have to concentrate on the feeling of impending doom that was creeping over me. But the storm was coming.