Major warning for talks of sexual assault here

Outed
A Short Story
By Maryanne Peters

Ned’s big mouth is sometimes useful, and sometimes cringeworthy.

For instance, it was he who was able to talk the conductor into shifting us up the train to one of those special cabins when the soccer team in our carriage started to get rowdy. We had chosen the train over a flight because it was city center to city center and we needed cellphone coverage throughout, but it would get us there late, so the contract signing would need to be short.

Eighteen-year-old Nicholas Hammerstein is at the cusp of finishing high school in his hometown of Los Alamos, NM. He has a seemingly ideal life and is blessed with loving parents, a cute baby sister, and great friends. Nicholas is a gifted student and martial artist who has dreams of leaving for college at the end of his senior year. But, living in a world of Emergent humans, he will soon find his life turned upside down as his life and the fate of a kingdom hang in the balance. His future and theirs will be determined by how he navigates the drastic changes in his body and the magical and superpowered Mergent population he joins.

Britt and I went on a couple of dates that month, taking Desiree with us and snuggling with her. On one of those dates, we went to the mall in Catesville, venned into little girls, and played on the playground until closing time. We didn’t run into Melinda and Melanie that time, but we played tag with a couple of little girls and then chatted with them after we got tired of chasing each other around the playground, up the stairs and through the tunnels and down the slides.