I don’t know if it was loyalty or stubbornness that had motivated me to still go with it. Loyalty or stubbornness that made me continue my quest to adopt a child.

John always used to say that he didn’t trust charities. “Money laundering, that’s what they bloody do, money laundering and nothing more,” He always used to say that whenever commercials about donations would come on TV. There wasn’t any malice in his unwillingness to donate to humanitarian causes, he just thought that all organizations were corrupt in some way and eventually he decided to stop donating his hard-earned money to what he considered useless organizations. The fact that he also didn’t believe in just slightly improving the living conditions of a few people also played in choice. Despite his decision, he actually cared a lot about those kind of causes, way too much even, I would always see him with tears in his eyes whenever commercials about hungry children would play on TV.

When we learned that he couldn’t father any children two years ago, it didn’t surprise me when he started talking about adoption. To be honest, I was cold to the idea. I was only 25 and I considered myself way too young to take care of a human being. Yes, I was and still am in the perfect age to have children but being able to do it didn’t mean I wanted to do it. After a few months of deliberating, I had to finally acquiesce seeing how much the lack of children was affecting him. We started the process and our quest began. We looked at different countries and orphanages, spent countless hours talking at the phone with many agencies and then spent the same amount of hours filling paperwork. It was tiring, but our quest had made us much closer than we were before. A month ago, I got a call saying that we could book a plane because the paperwork was done and we could come pick up our child. I was about to call John to announce him the great news, but before I could I got a call telling me that my 34 year old husband had just died from a brain aneurysm.

Common sense would have told me to stop the adoption process, yet I didn’t. Here I was, standing in front of an orphanage under the blazing sun about to pick up our kid. The kid we had spent an innumerable number of hours trying to get to. A kid that John would never meet in person, a kid that I was picking up because I needed a new reason to keep living. John had been my life and he passing away had tainted my existence grey, or perhaps even black. Saving a kid from a life of hardships was my way to cope, I knew that it probably wasn’t the smartest way to cope, but it was too late now I already rang the doorbell to the orphanage and I was hearing someone coming for me.
The orphanage gate opened and rather large middle-aged woman came out of it. She took a good look at me and came closer to me.

“Are you Mrs. Mirabelle Flannagan?” Asked the lady.

“Yes.”

“Welcome then, I am Alicia. I have heard about your husband and I am sorry for your loss. I found it quite amazing that you decided to continue with the process, it’s unusual for us to let a single woman adopt a child, but seeing the amount of money you inherited from your late husband we believe that you would have no trouble taking care of your new child. Hopefully, if your embassy gives you the right papers in time you will be out of here by next week. ”

I nodded at Alicia’s sentence. I was hoping that I could be out of this country as soon as possible because my mother called me to tell that there was talk last night in the news of a possible war brewing in the region. She wanted me out of this place for the precedent reason and because she still had many apprehensions about calling family a youngster that wouldn’t look like her .

Alicia opened the door to the dilapidated building and as I entered I bumped into a kid and we both fell to the ground. I didn’t have time to say anything, because the very thin child who bumped into was gone mere nanosecond after the incident.

Alicia frowned. “That kid really needs to learn how to deal with people!”

“Is he problematic?” I asked while getting up.

“Nameless? Yes, but it’s not his fault. He has had a hard life and he has trouble communicating with others. They found him near the northern border with a rifle in his hand and a bullet wound near his right kidney about a year ago. ”

I was shocked by what she had just said. How could anyone shoot such a frail looking child and how could anyone let him fight? I heard of child soldiers but I never expected they would use kids as young as him. I mean he looked barely ten!

Alicia saw my confusion and continued talking. “He probably was a child soldier that got hurt in battle. They surely thought he was done for so they just let him to die. ”

“How did he get here?”

“A few government officials found him, saved him and then took him here after his remission. That was about two years ago, but he still hasn’t found his place in the orphanage. The other children have has much trouble dealing with him and that he has dealing with them. He has been trying to solve everything with violence which hasn’t made him any friends. I am afraid that he might run away one day if we don’t do something,” She pronounced her last sentence looking directly in my eyes.

Was she insinuating something? Was she trying to get rid of that poor child by giving him too me? If she did the answer would be no. I hardly knew if I could handle a child that had no serious problems, how could I handle a kid with a history of violence? A child soldier named Nameless in my house… mom would laugh at me and probably try to have me declared insane. What kind of name was Nameless anyway? Was it really his name or was it a nickname? I wanted to know, no parent would ever call their kids like that would they?

“Is he really called Nameless?”

“That what we call him. Officially he doesn’t exist. He has no papers. We only know what he want to tell us. ”

I felt bad, that kid probably didn’t have any family and would have difficulty finding one if he didn’t have any legal documents. If I could do something I would but I really didn’t think that I could do anything for him. I guess I could hope that war doesn’t break out again in his infancy, but wishful thinking won’t change anything… I guess I could make a donation directly to the orphanage hoping they would be alright. It might not be much, but I was already going to be keeping a child out of the horrors to come. Elizabeth, god, I forgot about her! It’s for her that I am here, not for Nameless.

“Where is Elizabeth, my daughter-to-be?”

Alicia looked at the ground and started talking. “I don’t know how to say this, but you can’t adopt her... ”

I gave her a puzzled look.

“What?”

“It’s not allowed,” She said looking me in the eyes this time.

“What do you mean it’s not allowed? John and I were sent pictures, we signed paperwork and we spent thousands of dollars! You can’t tell we did all of this and now I can’t adopt!”

Alicia looked at me with guilt in her eyes. “You can adopt a child, but it isn’t called Elizabeth, it doesn’t have a name.”

I gave her a second puzzled look. “Nameless? You want me to adopt him? ”

She nodded.

“How? You told me he didn’t have any papers? ”

“The agency, the orphanage and the local government have been talking with your embassy since the moment we found out about your husband’s death in order to produce a few papers for him.”

“Why?” I asked very confused by all of this.

“Like I told you, we don’t let single people adopt children, not because we don’t want to, but because there are international adoption conventions and they don’t allow us to do it. We can let you adopt because Nameless is a special case, if he isn’t adopted soon we don’t know what’s going to happen with him. He only has enemies around here, the villagers don’t trust him. There was an incident a few years ago where a child soldier posed as an orphan and then proceeded to poison the water supply, the villagers think that Nameless might have been planted here to do the same. The kids in the orphanage don’t like his attitude and the local government thinks the same way as the villagers. I know that Nameless isn’t bad, but the others don’t trust him. There is been attempts on his life since his first day here and a month ago the villagers gave me a time limit to get rid of him. There is no way a local might adopt him and even less chances that a foreigner will. You on the other hand, wanted to adopt a child, but suddenly you didn’t have the qualifications anymore, so we had hoped that you would be desperate enough for a child that you might want to adopt Nameless. Some officials of your government and some of mine discussed it with me and decided that if you wanted it, we would quietly break the convention and let you have him. I had to lie to you to get you here and for that I’m sorry, but please save him! ”

I was flabbergasted by everything she told me. “Can’t you send him to another orphanage?” I asked.

Alicia started crying. “He wouldn’t make it there. The villagers want him either adopted out of the country or dead. If they see him leave to go to another orphanage, they might try to grab him and lynch him. ”

“Can’t you do something else?” I asked anxiously.

“No,” She said with a river of tears dripping out of her face. “He is either leaving with you tonight or leaving in a body bag tomorrow. I have reached the maximum time allowed by the village elders to get rid of him.”

I was overwhelmed. I essentially had the power of life and death over a child I barely knew. Could I do that, leave an unwanted child to die? Could I become an accessory to child murder? I doubted it, but adopting a child with a history of violence wasn’t really something I wanted to do. John would have said yes without any hesitation, but I wasn’t as impulsive as him.

“May I talk to him before making my decision?”

“Of course you can,” She said cleaning the little bit of make-up she had on and then taking a stairway. I heard her scream and then heard the sound of dozens of kids taking off. I wanted to go upstairs but Alicia came back a few seconds afterwards with the orphan. Nameless looked quite bruised and tired.

Alicia cleaned the boy clothes and started talking with him “This is Mrs. Mirabelle Flannagan she wants to talk with you,” The child nodded and Alicia took us to her office were she made us sit. “If there is anything call for me,” She said presumably talking to the both of us while blowing her nose and leaving the room.
Nameless was looking at me, waiting for me to talk. I had to gather my thoughts, so I didn’t say anything for perhaps 30 seconds, while I was thinking the youth kept staring at me.

“Is this as awkward for you as it is for me?” I asked.

“Awkward?”

“Uncomfortable. Is this situation uncomfortable for you?”

The child looked at me curiously and then started talking. “No, you look don’t look like a mean lady and I like silence. Silence means calm and I like calm. ”
The way he responded surprised me, I wasn’t expecting that.

“Alicia tells me you get in trouble all the time for fighting, if you like tranquility why do you fight?”

“The others attack and insult me, so I fight back,” He paused and then restarted talking “Thomas…” He shed a few tears. “Thomas told me to always fight back if I was insulted or attacked,” He sniffed as he finished his sentence.

“Who is Thomas?”

“Thomas was my best friend, my big brother, he discovered me and raised me. Thomas taught me how to survive, and how to read and talk French, Spanish and English,”
I was surprised by the amount of knowledge held by that Thomas, but I decided to not comment on it.

“He discovered you? Where? ”

“Thomas told me that he found me on a battlefield, he told me that when he saw me he thought of a great warrior he read about who was found in his dead mother’s womb just like I was.”

“You were found in your dead mother’s womb?” I asked in disbelief.

“That was what Thomas told me.”

“And you believe him?”

“Yes, Thomas would never lie to me. Thomas told me that lying was bad even if it was necessary sometimes.”

I gave him a look.

“And fighting isn’t bad?”

“Fighting is essential to survive. If Thomas and I didn’t fight we wouldn’t have been fed.”

Fighting to survive at such a young age, really?

“Why? Why would you need to fight to survive?” I asked, getting upset.

“The General told us that if we wanted to be fed we had to be useful.”

I wanted to ask if fighting was the only way his general considered his child followers to be useful, but I realized in a matter of a few nanoseconds the possible implications of a negative answer. I didn’t want to know that, I really didn’t, I didn’t want him to relive the trauma if it was there and I just decided to keep that possible part of his past out of my head. Or at least I intended too, but curiosity got the best of me.

I got up, told nameless to wait here for a while and I went to see Alicia.

She was in the kitchen preparing food. She saw the look in my face and asked somebody else to take care of it.

“Did he ever tell you if he was …” Alicia interrupted me.

“Sexually abused? He wasn’t, but from what he told me about his personal hero, Thomas, I could assume he was and that he died from it. Nameless told me that Thomas went to see the leaders at night for the both of them to have extra food.”

“How did he die from it?”

“I don’t know, probably AIDS.”

I understood the sadness in the lad’s eyes now…“Do you know anything about that Thomas?”

“Nameless doesn’t like talking about him, but I heard him say that Thomas was 11 years old when he discovered him.”
An eleven year old kid raising another child while they were both fighting for a militia… this story only kept getting more and more miserable and I started to see what I had to do. I had to take nameless me didn’t I? I had to… It was the moral thing to do, the right thing to do. It perhaps was burden too big for me but it probably was a bigger one in his prepubescent little shoulders.

I got up and went back to Alicia’s office where Nameless hadn’t moved a centimeter since I was gone. I sat in the chair next to him and I asked a few more questions to confirm my choice.

“If I asked you to stop fighting would you?”

“Would people beat me or insult me?”

“No.”

“Would I get food?”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to take me home with you?”

“Yes.”

He made a faint smile, looked at me and said “Then I wouldn’t have a reason to fight anymore.”

I hugged him.

That was the right answer and he seemed truthful. I guess now I didn’t have any excuses to not adopt him. If I were to leave him here to die I would probably end up killing myself because of the guilt. I was going to have to call my mom to tell her that she was getting a new grandson instead of a new granddaughter. She might slightly freak out when she hears about his past, but judging the way Nameless spoke and judging by the way he answered my questions, he simply seemed to be a kid who grew up in a bad situation. I am sure that mom would get that, or at least I hope she did. Because I would need her help to raise him after all. I guess now I have to announce to Alicia the good news. I hoped the authorities would get me the right papers in time because a kid’s life was in danger or should I say my child’s life was in danger.

I invited Nameless to take my hand and we both went to see Alicia to tell her the good news. Alicia seemed to tense up as she saw me coming, but then relaxed when she saw that I was holding my protégé’s hand.

“I’m bringing him home with me.” I affirmed.

“Thank you so much Mrs. Flannagan, thank you so much...” She said in tears “I am going to search for the birth certificate given to me by the Canadian embassy.”

“Birth certificate?”

“Yes, seeing how we can’t legally let him being adopted by you, the Canadian embassy and my government decided to play it off has if you were his naturally born mother. He would be a Canadian citizen and you would only have to say that you lost his passport.”

I agreed with the plan, if my government was OK with it then so was I, but really? Making me pass as Nameless birth mother? We contrasted so much no one would believe it, his milk chocolate skin was the opposite of my ghostly one, my straight blond hair couldn’t in any way shape or form look genetically related to his extra-curly jet black hair and my pale grey eyes didn’t seem to have any relation either with his obsidian ones.

I commented my observation to Alicia who laughed it off, saying: “Maybe you have weak genes.”

I laughed at the absurdity of her comment while we went back to Alicia’s office. She gave me a pen and the Québec birth certificate and I started filling it out.

“I don’t think it would be a good idea to call you Nameless, is there a name you want?”

My son hesitated for a while and then he squeaked “Céleste.”

“Oh, beautiful name, but it sounds quite feminine to me. Why would you want that? ”

“It was the name of the French doctor who saved me and that allowed to meet you Mrs. Flannagan.” He said sounding quite embarrassed.

“Hum... Call me Mira for now, Mrs. Flannagan is a way too formal way to address your new mother. Now about your name, I can understand the reasons of why you chose it, but it might get you in trouble, it’s quite a feminine sounding name after all. ”

My son’s spirit seemed to drop.

“But I guess a boy can still bear it, it’s not one hundred percent feminine.”

The child smiled and so Céleste became my child.

I gave him Montreal as birth place and then asked him when he thought he was born.

“I don’t know.”

“Ok, let’s say you are ten or at least your age should be near ten years old, that give us 2000 as your year of birth. Hum… today we are the 20th May and we should be home by next week so let’s say that Céleste Flanagan was born on the 27th May 2000. Meaning that you will be getting gifts as soon as we reach home because it would be your tenth birthday. ”

Céleste smiled.

“Good,” I said.

Alicia who had been observing us started talking. “Now, I will fax this to the embassy and ask for someone to escort you. I wouldn’t want you to get in trouble with the villagers before Céleste got a chance to truly live,” The corpulent woman got out of her office.

“Céleste, do you have anything personal you want to take with you?” I asked him.

He took a collar with a tooth out of his pocket and showed it to me.

“This is a lion tooth collar that Thomas made for me, it is the only thing from Nameless that will survive me becoming Céleste.”

“Are you sure? Alicia doesn’t want us to come back here ever again meaning that you will be losing forever whatever stays here.”

“Yes, I am sure of it, today Nameless died and Céleste was born.”

It was harsh, but I guess it was true. Nameless would cease to exist in the last place where they would know about him. Knowing my new son’s past I couldn’t help but agree with his decision to forget the past and accept the future with all that it entails.

Alicia came back with two letters. “Little Céleste, it was an honour knowing you, I hope you fare well, in your new house. Even though I don’t want you to ever try to come, back here for your own sake, I want you to know that I will always be thinking about you.”

Alicia then addressed me, “Mrs. Flannagan, I want to thank you very much for what you are doing. Saving and adopting a child you barely know isn’t something that most people would do, furthermore, doing it after being deceived like you were, shows that you are an absolutely respectable person. I’m sorry for all of this Mrs. Flannagan, I would never be able to repay what you have just done.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I just nodded. Alicia hugged the both of us and then waited with us for our embassy escort to come pick us up. When the bell rang we hugged again and she gave us the two letters, one for Céleste and one for me and told us to wait until we were in our hotel room to open it and we decided to oblige.
The embassy’s men surrounded me and Céleste and told us to advance. I understood there was need for precaution, but wasn’t this a little bit too much. “We are going to have to be careful, I think that half the village is here,” Said one of the men.

What? How? He was lying, right? How could anyone know that I was exiting the orphanage? Had a child managed to skip the information outside? Did the villagers get tipped off, by the arrival of our transport? I didn’t matter, because we had to advance.

As soon as we exited the gates of the orphanage, I realised that he wasn’t exaggerating, there was a sea of people between us and the embassy’s vehicles. They were chanting for Céleste blood and I was scared, very scared. I felt like I was about to get hit by a Maglev train or mauled by a bear. Worse actually, those were accidents or acts of nature, there wasn’t any hatred in those events. Here, hate was as common in the air as nitrogen.

Thump-thump…

My heartbeat started ringing in my ear.

Thump-thump…

I held Céleste has close to me as possible.

Thump-thump…

I started advancing as fast as possible.

Thump-thump… thump-thump… thump-thump…

A hand grabs me and I am dragged away towards the vicious crowd.

My heart skipped several beats.

I get more and more scratches and while looking for a way out I see two of my bodyguards, probably dead, trampled on the ground.

Thump-thump… thump-thump… thump-thump…

I am about to accept my fate…

Thump-thump… thump-thump… thump-thump… thump-thump…

Somebody tries to take Céleste out of my hands and as the adrenaline circuits through my body I am brought back to reality.

I lifted my child and carried him in my hands as I ran towards the cars. I opened the door clumsily while still holding him and then shoved him in the vehicle. I enter the vehicle and I then I try to close it as people try to get in. I try to kick a man out of the car but he grabs my leg and, with a machete, he proceeds to cut clean my limb under the knee. I kick him with the other leg and then my thoughts went blank, the adrenaline, which had kicked in a few minutes before, had attenuated my pain until now, but the shock of losing a limb was getting to me. Céleste, noticing my state of shock, jumped on my side of the car and closed the door before anyone else could get in.
I ushered Céleste to lie down in order for him to avoid any weapon’s fire that the villagers could direct toward us. But…

Too late… six shots were fired through the window. The bullets avoided me and my son, but the glass that flew everywhere highly damaged him. I pulled Céleste near me to avoid him getting pulled through the window and kicked the front seat. Where the driver had been in stupor since we entered the car. The chauffer regained his senses and accelerated. But the driver had not even made 20 meters that a bullet went through his window and killed him instantaneously. The shards this time managed to lodge themselves into my left arm. I wanted to check the damage on Céleste but, he was already in front of the car trying to avoid a fatal crash. I went through the front and put him aside.

“I’m going to drive Céleste, you don’t know how. Cut the man’s shirt and make bandages or we might bleed out to death! ”
While I was driving and fighting pain like a berserker, Céleste had managed to stop the bleeding of my stump leg, as well as the bleeding of both of our arms. I had lost quite a bit of blood, but I was still functional unlike my new son who was getting slower and sleepier by the minute I didn’t understand until I saw his bloody pants and realized that the lower half bleeding profusely the result of the glass shards.

“Céleste, please stay with me, don’t fall asleep, not now! You are too young to die!”

Céleste opened his eyes and then closed them again.

I felt weak, I went off-road, stopped the car and my world went black.

I would open my eyes every few hours to realize that even if I was too tired to move, I was still alive… and I didn’t know how I felt about that. John was dead and I assumed that it was the same for Céleste. I had probably lost a limb, possibly two, and that would make a few things harder for me… Life had really been kind to me.

I had lost all notion of time and I just slept, slept and …

One day, I opened my eyes after a dream I had where I saw myself hiking with Céleste and John. I wanted to cry because I thought that those events would never happen.

“She is awake!” Screamed a woman in an accent I knew very well.

“She is? How? It’s not even been 3 days! ”

“She is strong and so is her daughter, Céleste, who woke up yesterday, must run in the family.”

I felt my strength surging back… Céleste was alive! But what was that about him being my daughter? Last time I checked, Céleste was a boy… I then remembered the damage to his crotch … Oh, god! They didn’t do what I just think they did, right? Don’t tell me that seeing his name they thought that he felt like a she…Somebody is getting sued!

Please comment, I really appreciate it.

“What have you done?!” I screamed at the people who had put me in my distraught state.

They were both startled and then the doctor looked at me confused and he started talking. “Well… huh… we disinfected your bruises and installed your newly arrived prostheses into your leg and your arm.”

What they were talking about? Prostheses? I didn’t have one of those did I? I looked at my arm that had been damaged and I was startled by the almost futuristic sight. How didn’t I noticed that when I woke up? They had said I had one of those in my legs didn’t they? I tried to move muscles of my leg who had gone missing during the incident and by doing so I moved my sheets letting me see my new metallic appendage.

“How did you...” I was interrupted by the nurse.

“Get it here? Well as soon as we phoned your mother and told her about your incident, she ordered us to get some measures done because she was going to get one of her friends to produce you prosthetic limbs as soon as possible. You got quite lucky ma’am, it entered the country in the last commercial flight this country will get for a while. With the war there doesn’t risk to have many commercial flights coming here. ”

I was confused “War?”

“The incident you were in was the spark in the powder keg that lead to a civil war ma’am. The villagers spread the word that the government was helping enemy foreign fighters through the West and things degenerated from there. There is a civil war going on right now and as soon as we deem you fit enough e we will be sending you and your daughter back to your country.”

Here again that word daughter, I had been sidetracked and I had forgotten to ask about Céleste. What the hell had happened in the last week?

“You keep saying that Céleste is my daughter, but he is or at least was male.” I said trying to understand if my suspicions were true.

The doctor answered that question. “We took care of that problem, ma’am. When trying to identify your daughter we called your mother called who told us that she had a granddaughter named Elizabeth. We called the embassy to make sure of that and they told us that they had her as boy named Céleste. We were confused by all of this, but your mother was very insistent about the fact that she was a girl named Elizabeth, so much in fact that she got the embassy to change her records to Elizabeth Céleste Flannagan, female. She also said that she got them to send the papers to your country right away in case they screwed up again. She asked us why were so confused about the sex of a little girl and when we told her that her grandchild had both sets of genitals and that she had damaged the male ones, she told us to get rid of them because she had only heard of her as a girl.”

My head was hurting… If I had well understood my mother had confused Céleste with the girl I was supposed to adopt and thinking that she identified as a girl she proceeded to ask the embassy to change Céleste papers. Afterwards seeing that she was intersex the surgeons thought it would be a good idea to just get rid of the damaged male parts. Alicia didn’t tell me about this part of the Nameless problem. Did she even know about it? Was Céleste ok with essentially being a girl now? I had to ask the nurse and the physician.

“How did Céleste react to the removal of her… you know…” I asked blushing.

“She was surprised about it but she didn’t seem to be displeased. I would have expected her to be more excited to be a normal little girl now. But I guess she already saw herself as a normal girl just with extra-bits. ”

How was Céleste really feeling inside? Was his reaction genuine or was he simply too confused to act angry or sad? I hadn’t really had the time to talk to him and the only interaction that we had that showed him to be even a little bit feminine was when he or she told me about his or her name. Did the name mean that Céleste was a girl? That would be convenient as I had a room ready for the Little Elizabeth. I would have to change it for the boy version of Céleste because I didn’t know of many little boys who liked pink. Or would I? Perhaps the boy version of Céleste would be Ok with having a pink room? I didn’t know much about intersex kids? Would they be more Ok with androgyny? God this was confusing! I will have to have a discussion with him.

When Dr. Okiro told me that I was now a girl without the extra parts I was confused. I wasn’t supposed to be a girl. Thomas told me that me that being a girl was dangerous and that because of that I had to be a boy and fight anyone who said the contrary. Why? I don’t know, Thomas told me that I would understand one day and that I would be thankful for his sage words. I still don’t understand why he said that… and anyway being a girl didn’t feel bad. Or at least it didn’t feel that bad inside because on the outside… OUCH! Walking was hard and I honestly would prefer to just stay in my bed and try to learn how to use my arm. I have this fancy new metal arm now and it makes me feel powerful. I am not very good at using it, so I can’t do precise stuff but Mrs. Cyr-Lavallée, the nurse from my new country, told me that I would eventually learn to when I went to a ki…ki… I forgot the word, anyway, to someone who teaches you how to use your new metallic parts. Anyway, my new grandmother had sent the metal arm for me and Mrs. Cyr-Lavallée told me that I will have the chance to meet her soon because we would be flying soon after Mrs. Flannagan wakes. Flying… I have never done that before… How can those huge metallic birdy thingies do that? I really want to learn how they do that. Where was I? … Oh, yes the nurse told me that this country wasn’t safe for me or my mother and that we would be going home. Home… It was strange thinking about home… How did a home feel? I never really had a home until now… I would just follow Thomas around, because he was my family, and he would just follow whoever would give us food or a place to sleep. We never really stayed at the same place for long. In a way I felt at home wherever I was with Thomas… I miss Thomas…I really miss him… I would love to have my big brother coming home with me…
I started crying and I lied down in the hospital bed closing my eyes.

Home was going to be with Mrs. Flannagan, would she like me being a girl? Would she be afraid? Would she say that I was an abomination like in the first orphanage where I went? Would she let me here? I didn’t know what she would do, but I would have to accept it because I couldn’t really run away in the state I was in.

I didn’t really know how to feel about what my mother had done. On one hand: she had good intentions, it sounded like she had accepted Céleste, and she didn’t know any better. On another hand: she might have caused a lifetime of emotional damage to Céleste. I needed to call her to arrange some kind of help around my house because even If I had these fancy new prostheses I would still be tired for weeks and I would need re-education to deal with my new limbs. Céleste wouldn’t be able to help me in any way or form and I would need to take good care of … her? I decided to just roll with the female pronouns as it would be less confusing with dealing with my mom, who I wouldn’t talk about her mistake until I had conclusive proof that Céleste felt like a boy.

I asked the nurse if she had a phone I could use to call my mother and she brought me one. I then proceeded to phone my mother’s cellphone as she was probably overseas. I rang about three times and I was about to abandon when she answered back.

“Hello?”

“Hi, mom?”

“Oh, Mira, how are you and my new granddaughter doing?”

“Fine…” I went silent for a few seconds and then I restarted talking “Mom… I will need help at home I am not really in a state to do anything right now.”

“And whose fault is that?” She said in a slightly accusing tone.

“Huh…Mine I guess? But I still would do it, by coming here I saved a life. A child’ life. So it was worth it.”

Or at least I hoped so… This whole prosthetics things would mean that people would treat me differently than otherwise…

Mom talked back. “You still don’t know if it was worth it, you didn’t even spend half a day with your child yet, you have been in bed for the last 5 days.”

“Mom, it doesn’t matter how Celeste might act in the future, I took hi…her in and she’s hopefully going to stay with me until she is at least 18.”

“And if she’s turns out to be a terrible person what would you do then?”

Her question, as rightful as it was, made me angry, so I uttered my next sentence full of wrath.

“Céleste is not terrible, mom! If you dare imply that again, you are not invited to ever meet her.”

My mom’s side of the line went silent for a minute.

“I am sorry Mira. What I just said was out of line,” her tone implied guilt, so I just let it go.

“Anyway, mom, I need a favour.”

“You need a hand?” She said trying to lighten the mood. Her pun was slightly funny I admit it but this wasn’t a good time to joke around.

“Mom, I’m going to need someone at home to take care of the house, Céleste and I guess… me.” Saying that last part made me feel so weak and useless… I had always been independent and self-sufficient. I started working as soon as possible because I didn’t want to depend on my mother to buy me stuff. I would always try to do everything by myself because I could and still can handle anything. And even though John made enough dough for me to not need to work, I still couldn’t resist the need to make my own money. I took some loans made some clever investments and then lived lavishly from my funds and not his… I tried to do everything myself, this adoption being proof of that, and now I needed someone to take care of my household and me… Ah…Look how far I’ve fallen.

Mom answered me in an avoiding tone. “You know that your sister, your dad and I are overseas, right?”

I knew about my twin, Marie-Ève, and my dad being in India, but mom?

“Yes, I do know about Marie-Ève and dad, mom. But you? Aren’t you supposed to be at home?”

“I am in Florida for a business trip. Looking at few facilities a friend of mine as bought.”

“Ok, mom but I just need you to post a job offer online and hire someone as soon as possible. Céleste and I are getting discharged as soon as they judge us ready and we would need someone to be at the house for us.”

“Can’t you do it yourself?” She asked again trying to avoid any responsibility at all.

“Mom, I don’t have a computer nearby and even if I did I am not in the right state of mind to conduct an interview.”

My mom seemed to go silent for a while. But I could her whisper to someone.

“I have already sent a prostheses couldn’t you take care of the house with that, you usually always try to do every by yourself,” She said in a very suspicious way.

She normally hated the fact I was independent it drove her nuts normally… What was happening? I didn’t want to cause a scene, so I ignored it.

“I need re-education before using the prostheses, mom. They can do a lot but they are not fully comparable to real limbs and they don’t exactly feel the same way. Anyway, I am really tired, I bled a lot last week.”
Mom went silent again.

“Can’t you call your sister?”

She was getting on my nerves what’s so hard about what I’m asking her? I answered mom: “She is doing an excavation in India, mom. She doesn’t really have time for little old me. Dad can’t either they don’t have computers in the village where is doing is anthropological study. Anyway, what are you doing of so important that you can’t afford a few hours to lend me a hand?” I used the last bit of my sentence to remind her of the state I was in.

Before she answered I heard a man’s voice talking to her in Spanish.

The voice was deep and from the little I knew about Spanish accents, I could pin the man as Spaniard. I heard him say “Cariño, déjala, vallamos a la cama. Es grande se puede ocupar de ella misma.”
I understood cariño and cama, bed and dear. Was my mom having an affair behind my father’s back? I mean, yes, he had been gone for 6 months now but still, merde! It wasn’t a good reason.

“Who was that, mom?”

“A server, I am eating at a restaurant.”

Liar…

“Anyway, mom can you do what I asked for?”

She gave up in her avoidance. “Yes, now I have to go bye!” She closed her phone as she uttered the last word.

What was that about? Would my family split as it got a new member? I really didn’t need this. John’s death and Céleste’s were sufficient sources of sorrow and stress. Talking about Céleste I really didn’t know how I was going to discuss with … her. If the doctors were wrong and that Céleste was really a boy on the inside would he forgive me for letting this happen to him?

Mrs. Flannagan woke up two days ago and she still hasn’t come see me. Does she dislike me now that she has lost so much, now that she knows what I was? Will she be going home without me? I don’t want her to leave without me… I am dead if I stay here. Where would I go? What would I eat? There was nothing I could do…

I cried again… Like I had been going regularly since I woke up from the incident. When I dream I see them trying to kill me, so I can’t keep calm. I am scared of what is going to happen to me.

Louise, the nurse keeps telling me that everything is Ok and that Mrs. Flannagan doesn’t hate me, but I am no too sure about that. Everybody has reasons to hate me, I am pretty sure that I only hurt those who take care of me. Mrs. Flannagan got hurt, Thomas got sick and many of the people that were there to keep me safe while going back to Mrs. Flannagan hotel are dead.

Why wouldn’t everyone hate me?

I woke up two days ago and I still haven’t talked to Céleste. I am probably the lamest of mothers (mine excluded). Today, it’s the day we are going back home as well as Céleste’s birthday. I have been terrible to her, how terrible does it have to feel when the person who is supposed to be taking care of you has been purposely avoiding you?

Louise Cyr-Lavallée, our nurse, has given me a teddy bear that she had bought in NYC a few years before. She hopes that by giving it to her we might start to discuss about what had just happened. I thought it was a great idea… a really great idea… But I didn’t know if I would be able to go through it.

Louise will be our live-in nurse for a while, she wasn’t expecting to have to go home so soon and she didn’t really have anywhere to live so I asked her move in with us. She used to do physical therapy before doing nursing so that was convenient.

I haven’t really talked to her that much, but she seems trustworthy enough. Not everyone is ready to go work in a poor country for almost nothing.

Louise put me into a wheelchair. She and Mrs. Flannagan were going home and it looked like I was going with them too.

We made it out of the hospital and Louise loaded me into the car. A while later, Mrs. Flannagan is loaded in with the help of a male nurse.

She had a large box with her and she was avoiding looking at me.

I cried and she put her arms around me.

“I’m sorry, Céleste, so, so, sorry for the last two days. Louise has told me about the way you have been feeling and I want to say that I don’t hate you sweetie. I would still repeat what I did last week for you if only to make sure that you are safe. I want you to stay with me as my child and I still would want to do it even if I had to fight hordes of demons every night. I have just been so ashamed with what happened to your maleness,” Tears started going down her face.

I decided to say to truth and just live with the consequences.

“Mrs. Flannagan, its ok, I want to be a girl.”

She looked at me with tears in her eyes.

“Are you sure?”

I nodded.

“Really, really sure?”

I nodded again.

“Then I guess it is appropriate to give you this.” She gave me a box and I opened it.

There was a stuffed black and white animal in it and as well as a note that said: Sorry and Happy birthday, Céleste! From your mommy who wishes to be forgiven.

I…I…I didn’t know what to say or do. So I just uttered the first words that came into my mind “Thanks, mommy.”

She held me close to her until I fell asleep.

Please comment, there is nothing that I appreciate more than feedback.

After being away from home for more than a week, I flew to Canada and finally arrived home.

As we arrived at the Flannagan Mansion, I showed Louise the room where she would be staying. It was one of the numerous guestrooms, John and I had renovated before his death. We were planning on perhaps turning the mansion in some kind of inn because he was starting to have enough of his company and the stress it brought to him. I on the other hand needed to do something more than just playing with stocks all day seeing as it wasn’t as fulfilling as I thought it would be.
Louise’s room was large, with royal purple walls and with a king size for sleeping accommodations. It was richly decorated with some Indian pieces my husband had bought on the recommendation of the family anthropologists.

“Are you sure about this? “Asked Louise.

“Quite, there’s only three other rooms done and one is for Céleste and the others are as lavish as this one.”

“Very different from where I lived overseas.”

“I can imagine,” I answered back

I let her place her things on her room and then asked her to help me get Céleste in her room.

It was girly, extremely girly in fact, but I was expecting a very stereotypical little girl, not one that had repressed her true self for years. Céleste was clearly uncomfortable with her room.

“Do you want to stay in another room?” I asked her.

She signed no with her head.

“It’s going to be alright Mira.” She said smiling.

I was slightly sad that she wasn’t calling me mommy like before we took the plane. But hey she wasn’t calling me Mrs. Flannagan like before so at least it was progress…

We should have unpacked our things but we were all very tired, so we called it a day. I showed the bath to both girls and then presented a new pyjama set to Céleste. It was very pink but she didn’t say anything this time either.

I brushed my teeth and with Louise’s help I prepped myself to go to sleep, I hadn’t slept at all during the flight and neither did my flight companions. We hadn’t talked much, we all just sat there, monologuing to ourselves, thinking about our lives. Personally, everything between taking the plane and arriving home was a blur, I was too preoccupied by the turn my life had taken in the last few months. I was now handicapped, a widow and if my intuition was right the daughter of divorced parents. On the positive side I was now a mother but I didn’t know if I would be able to handle everything the future would throw at me.

I tried to sleep, but I couldn’t … I sat on my bed and I decided to check my emails.

I had received a message from my mom telling me that she had found a maid from me and that hopefully I could interview her myself tomorrow afternoon. I sent an email back thanking her and then just browsed the Internet until I fell asleep.

I woke up at about 5:30 am, I had managed to sleep about 5 hours which wasn’t that bad. I took my crutches and with difficulty I took the stairs to go to the ground floor where the kitchen was in order to have breakfast. As arrived to the kitchen, I met Louise with her long black hair down sipping on coffee.

“Early riser?” I asked.

“Jet lagged, I have been on the same time zone for ten years so you can imagine how hard it is.”

I was shocked by what she had just said… How old was Louise? We didn’t talk much right but from her looks she seemed to be in her mid-twenties. She acted mature but I didn’t think anything about it.

Louise probably saw the surprise in my face, so she questioned me. “Are you surprised by the amount of time I spent overseas?”

“Yes, you don’t seem to be old enough for that to be possible.”

She pouted and then we both laughed. “I am in my early thirties so you shouldn’t be that surprised by it.”

“Well, you don’t look nowhere near that age.”

“Thanks for the compliment,” She said smiling.

She helped me take whatever was edible in my pantry and I then she helped me sit on my couch in the living room where I turned on the T.V.

“How long do you think that Céleste and I would need your help?” I asked while she went back to the kitchen.

“You already want to get rid of me?” Louise asked jokingly as she sat at the dining table.

“No, not really but I want to know how long before I get some of my autonomy me back,” I said honestly. Louise had been a good friend to me a complete stranger even willing to separate herself from what seemed to be an object with emotional value.

She seemed to think. “First, I should be done with my nursing duties in two weeks, hopefully. Second, I am not a doctor… I never managed to finish med school … So I can’t really tell when you are going to be completely healed… but from my experience as physiotherapist I can tell you that if we started restarted re-education tomorrow you and your daughter should be able to use your new limbs at full potential by the start of August.”

“We are what? May 29? So about two months?” I asked

“Yes and I hope that I can find a place to stay by then.”

“Don’t worry about that, you have done enough in the last few days to guarantee a long stay in my little home.”

She gave me a look. “There’s about twenty rooms in here I wouldn’t call it small.”

I giggled. “Ok, then my not so small little home.”

Louise chuckled.

“Say, Louise, do you have any experience with intersex kids? I don’t really know how I’m going to handle Céleste’s case. ”

“Well, I don’t have experience dealing with intersex kids, but transgender kids kind of…”

“Kind of?”

“I didn’t take care of the kid, the kid was me…”

I was surprised I didn’t expect that… I mean there wasn’t anything mannish about her she was thin slightly curvy and she a very round face. Nothing that presumed that she was born anything but a woman. I didn’t believe her.

“You are…” I couldn’t finish my sentence because she stopped me before I was done.

“Transgender? Yes, but I don’t really let that define me… I couldn’t have survived the last ten years were if I defined myself by my status anyway. As kind as people were overseas they still have this very bigoted opinion about LGBT rights. Are you bothered by my status? ”

“Surprised, but no that bothered by it. You are a real woman by my books seeing how you handle my situation with Céleste. ”

“Thanks … I don’t want to break any boundaries, but can I hug you? What you just said really touched me.” Said Louise.

I think that we both deserved it, so I accepted her proposition. She stood up, sat beside me on the couch and hugged me.

“I don’t want to ask too many personal questions, but is your status why you decided to move to another continent and is it the reason why no one wants to take you-in?”

She nodded.

“Some people really are awful.”

She nodded again.

“Do you have anyone to take care of the house while you are in this state?” Asked Louise.

“Well, I am supposed to interview a maid later today.” I said.

“Well, if you don’t find her appropriate I might as well do the job, seeing as you want to overpay me.”

“Overpay? I think that your salary is well deserved for an in-house nurse and a physiotherapist.”

“You want to pay me the double of the normal rate and you are letting me live in one of the guest rooms of your mansion like it was my home, you are overpaying me.”

“Hum... Perhaps but if you keep counselling me and Céleste like you did before you are totally going to deserve your salary. ”

Afterwards we just sat there chitchatting and watching the morning news until sleep finally came back to us.

Flying yesterday was weird, but this place is weirder. Everything here is so different. The roads are way smoother and cleaner than back home, the people dress so nicely and the houses are so nice. Talking about houses my new house is gigantic it’s probably as big as the orphanage but with more floors. This house as three floors and a lot of rooms. They are not all decorated but the ones that are look amazing. Is Mira rich? I don’t know if it’s the case, but honestly I don’t care she already wants to be mommy so I couldn’t care less about anything else.

Going back to the house, my room is really something else… Pink everywhere, filled with dolls and a closet filled with dresses and skirts. Sure there are pants and less feminine things in the room, but this is weird. I remember Mira saying that she was originally expecting to take another girl home but that Mrs. Alicia asked her to take me instead. That made me a little bit for the girl that was supposed to go here in my place but it’s done and nothing can be done about it.

I slept quite well yesterday, my new bed is the most comfortable bed I ever slept in and I couldn’t help but to dream about how wonderful my new life would be. Morning came too fast way too fast actually, I would have wanted to stay more in bed. I tried to go back to sleep, but it didn’t really work.

I took my crutches and even if it hurt so much to move I decided to go downstairs to eat something. I made it to the stairs before realizing that trying going downstairs with my crutches was like a zebra walking in front of lions and not expecting to be eaten, it was a bad idea, a really bad bad idea. I thought that but seconds afterwards I was rolling down the stairs because I took a wrong step trying to move from the stairs.

“Ouch!” I screamed.

Mira screamed back. “Are you O.K sweetie?”

I didn’t have time to answer because Mrs. Louise came to see me seconds after my new mother’s question.

She cleaned me up and made me stand with my crutches and then started scolding me.

“Young lady! You took a very great risk trying to go downstairs in your condition, you should be more careful in the future, me and your mother would be very sad if anything were to happen to you. ”

I was going to say it was an accident, but I thought that she might think I was lying so I decided to not say it. I didn’t want Mrs. Louise or Mira to think I was liar and then give me away, not after seeing how Mira lived anyways.

“Sorry, Mrs. Louise…”

“Just call me Louise and just be careful next time. Sit on the stairs, I’m going to search your wheel chair”

She disappeared for two minutes and then came back a few minutes later with my wheelchair.

“Let’s go eat breakfast.”

We moved to the kitchen, that was a very a large room filled with things that were either white, metallic or that looked like they were made of wood. At the back of the room there was a glass wall that in which you could see a very big table were maybe about 20 people could see. Advancing in the room, I saw that on the left there was a room that had a television that took all the wall. Mira was seated on a chair watching the television.

“I heard your fall, be careful next time please.”

She took her crutches with difficulty, came near me and hugged me before indicating me to sit in a stool near her.

“So what do you want to eat for breakfast, there is not a lot of things because I haven’t been here in a while, but Louise bought a few things in the convenience store a few minutes ago.”

I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what kind of fancy things North Americans ate for Breakfast.

Mira saw my confusion and just decided to make Louise give me cereals and milk.

It was good stuff and Louise and Mira didn’t stop talking with me. They said that we would have someone coming later today to help with cleaning the house, the cooking and other stuff that didn’t have to do with nursing and Louise’s other job. They also said that this morning me and Louise and would be taking a walk while Mira would see about getting me a place in school in September, Louise would drive us around and then Mommy Mira would be dropped at my new school on her wheelchair were she would sign a few stuff. Apparently, the only thing that she had to there was changing their records, because she had made arrangements for Elizabeth to go there.

After eating Louise took me to take a bath and coming out of there I had to have a second taste of womanhood: I had to dress myself. There were only girly stuff in my closet and having only been a girl for a few days and having spent most of those days in a hospital gown I didn’t yet fell comfortable with dressing like a girl. I finally decided to with some shorts and purple shirt that had an animal on it, some kind of horse with a horn and a horn, cartoon style.

After dressing up, Mommy came and took care of my hair, she made two pigtails out of my long curly hair and then put a hairband on my head.

“O.K, all set up! Louise after taking us downstairs could you please take one of the cars and wait us in the front of the please?” Asked mommy.

“Sure, Mirabelle.” Louise answered back.

Louise didn’t take long a few minutes afterwards she was helping us enter the car. She was smiling a lot and she looked like she was about to tease my mother which is what she did a few seconds afterwards.

“You sure have a lot of cars for someone with a little house,” She giggled and mom pouted for a few seconds before joining in her giggle, I don’t why, but I joined the laughter a few moments later and it kind of got out of control, we would have probably looked like a bunch of crazy girls if the house front of the house wasn’t separated from the street by a crazy long road.

After our laughing fit, Louise took the road and we were on our way.

It’s weird, but this morning I am seeing a lot of new things that I didn’t see yesterday when we arrived home by taxi. Before going to the city that Mommy calls Montreal you have to take a blue metal bridge that is really big. The numbers of cars on that bridge was incredibly and it made me ask myself how could it take such a large amount of cars and not be destroyed. Anyway along the way, I saw an island filled with weird metallic trains and filled with people. I decided to ask mom what that was.

“What are those train-like things Mira?” Calling her mommy was really, really embarrassing even if I felt that she deserved that title. I don’t why but since calling her mommy before taking the plane I couldn’t call her that.

Mommy pointed at the stuff I was talking about. “Those are roller-coasters, things that move quite fast and that go quite high, not much a fan of them, but I might take you to one of them if you feel like it later this summer.”

She winked in direction of Louise. Who saw it on the rear-view mirror.

“Not happening, Mira. I hate those things.”

“Oh, well at least I tried.” Mommy said smiling

Montreal is a strange place, it’s filled with churches, yet Mommy tells me that very few people actually go to them, something about the Church giving the jimmies to a lot of people. It looks rich to me, yet there’s people sleeping on the streets who don’t look as clean as I was when I used to wander the lands with my brother Thomas. All of this is strange, very strange. Shouldn’t those people have houses if they lived in a rich country? Why weren’t people helping them? Weird stuff really.

Louise Brought Mommy to a building that looked very old compared to the glass towers that I had seen on this city, there was a large park in front of it and a sign that read: Académie Nouvelle- France, école de filles. Like my brother would have said, crap! I would be going to a girl’s school!

I panicked, I started having trouble breathing and had cold sweats. Mommy and Louise both saw that I wasn’t feeling that great so they parked the car.

Mommy held me embraced me, like she had done so many times already since becoming my mother and I started to calm down.

“I am sorry, Céleste. I didn’t think about asking you if you wanted to go to this school, Elizabeth was supposed to go here, so I just thought that since you were now a girl, I could take you to the school where she was supposed to go. If you don’t want to go here, I am sure I can find another place.”

She held me for close to five minutes before I stopped panicking, I thought about all the trouble I would be causing to mommy if I decided to go to another school and I simply decided that I didn’t want cause that much already to the woman who had already saved my life.

I took a deep breath and prepared myself to tell a lie which I hoped sounded true. “I want to try to go there Mommy *Exhale* I don’t want to cause you any trouble.”
My mommy frowned. “Don’t lie, please Céleste, just be honest with me.”

Honestly? I didn’t know… I didn’t know why I didn’t want to go to that school? What were my reasons to not wanting to go to that school? Was is the fear of being different? The school looked rich and I although I was now rich through Mira, that didn’t mean anything when you realized that I was street kid, an educated street kid but still kid. How could I communicate with those girls that had been rich all their lives? Not only was I different because I came from a poor place, I had only become a girl about a week ago people would notice that right? And my arm? People would notice that too right? I told how I felt to the adults.

Louise talked first. “Céleste, don’t worry about the girl thing or the cultural stuff. Girls can act in all kind of ways,so even if you had a few masculine mannerisms, pun intended, I am sure no one would question your feminity. Also Quebecers, even the rich ones, are very acceptant of difference, you will fit right in.”

Mom said something under breath, something about Anglophones, and Louise looked a little bit embarrassed. I didn’t want to ask what that was about, because it was not about my problem.

“Céleste, Louise is mostly right, I don’t think that you will have problems going to this school I went here when I was younger and no one was bullied when I went there.”

I thought about what Louise and mommy had said and I decided to give a chance to the girl’s school.

“I will go to the school Mira.”

“Sure?

“Yes, sure.”

“Good, because I am about ten minutes late.”

I felt bad about that.

“Sorry, mommy.”

“Don’t, it’s my fault for not talking about it with you, now go have fun with Louise while I deal with the boring stuff.”

Louise and I went to a place that she called the Vieux-Port. You could see the water there and there were multiple tens and a road that had a rail-road nearby. Louise and I started was walking, while I was rolling on the waterfront when a ball landed on me. A girl with yellow hair that was arranged in a high ponytail and that seemed to be my age came to search the ball. She was dressed in what looked like a football kit (proper football, not that American stuff).

“I’m so sorry, I hope I didn’t hurt you.” Said the girl with guilt in her eyes

Louise looked like she was ready to explode on the girl, so I decided to talk before she did.

“It’s Ok it didn’t hurt.” I said trying to make the girl feel less guilty. I gave the girl her ball back but she didn’t run off immediately. The girl looked curious, she was looking at my arm.

“Did you have an accident or something?” Asked the blonde girl.

Once again Louise looked angry. But I didn’t mind talking to someone new. I tried to communicate that message to Louise with my eyes like mommy did and she seemed to understand. I told the girl that my story was a long one and I could tell here if she was curious and she told me that why not she just had to tell her friends.
She went away for a minute or two and then she came back with two other girls, one with orange hair and the other with brown hair.
“This is the girl with the cool arm, her name is ...Uh... What is your name?” Asked the blonde.

“Céleste, my name is Céleste.” I answered back.

The girl looked happy at my response.

“Céleste, eh, what a coincidence my name is Océane! You are the sky and I am the sea. We should so totally become friends! Which is school do you go to? ”

“I will go to Académie Nouvelle-France next year.” I said with hopeful eyes.

Océane expression seemed to drop and I was sad until her orange haired friend gave her a nudge.

“Océ, don’t troll the poor girl! Céleste, my name is Magalie and the quiet one with brown hair and glasses is Dominique. The three of us go to your new school, so don’t worry about befriending us.”

Dominique, the official quiet girl whispered something that Océane proceeded to say at loud.

“Can you tell us what put you in that state?”

I wanted to tell them the true, or at least a cleaner version of the truth I didn’t want them to know about my past that much.

“My mom and I got in an accident the day she adopted me. Louise the woman who was just here before is my nurse.”

The girls looked shocked and then their shocked expression went to a sad one, Océane talked this time. “Is your mother Ok?”

I knew why they were worried now.

“Mommy is alright, she actually in the school right now making sure I will still be able to go in September.”

The girls relaxed. “Cool then. Hey, we have a flying disc we can throw around a little and that probably shouldn’t be that hard to launch even if you are missing an arm, want to try it?”

“I have to call my nurse first, but if she O.Ks it, then sure,” I said smiling at my newest friends.

Louise ended up Okaying it and she even decided to join us in our little game. It was quite fun, really fun, the most fun I ever had. When Thomas was alive we used to play like this, but It was always only the both of us and no one else. Here I was with multiple friends playing and not having to worry of how we would find food or were we would sleep. I wished that our moment together lasted forever but sadly it came to an end.

The girls ended up giving me their phone numbers and their email addresses and told me we could probably chat either on the phone or the computer. I didn’t know how to do either of those but I’m sure Louise or mommy could show me how to do that.

I can’t wait to tell mommy about what had just happened.

Céleste looked really happy as we were making our way to the house. I asked her about it and she had just made some new friends that just happened to go to the school were she would be going in September that was nice. Very nice indeed, friends are the easiest way to integrate in a new place and in her case a new role. Louise might be an awesome friend but she a little bit too old to be best friends with Céleste. My daughter already doesn’t act her age and Louise and I being Céleste’s only friends wouldn’t help Céleste adapt at all.

Anyways, the changes to the school records were made so Céleste could indeed start in November so everything was going well nice.
Along our journey home I made Louise stop for us in front of my favourite Spanish restaurant for lunch. There me, Louise and Céleste talked more about her new friends specially Océane who seemed to be the leader of the group. I made a joke about how Céleste and Océane were meant to be friends seeing as they were the sky and the sea, but apparently that joke was already done.

“Great, I can’t even tell an original joke!” After saying that, I pouted and simulated a fit.

Louise and Céleste both started laughing.

“I look like I am twenty five even if I am seven years older than that, you on the other hand look like your age but act way younger.” Said Louise, laughing.
“How much younger?” I asked to Louise.

“About twenty years!”

Another laughing burst.

We arrived home a little bit later than we were supposed to. Luckily our interviewee hadn’t arrived yet, so Louise and I, in a minor way, cleared my office and prepared ourselves for the interview. Yes, I said ourselves because seeing the way Louise and I had acted all the day we were more like friends than boss and employee, not a bad relationship change seeing how Céleste liked being Louise. It would have been hard to keep boundaries anyways, I like to befriend people. Anyway the door rang so Louise helped me go to the door to meet our potential new maid.

Louise opened the door and who I saw shocked me, not because of who she was, I had never met her before, but because of the state she was in.

She was a Hispanic girl, who didn’t look a day older than 14 and that looked like she was in the early stages of her pregnancy.

I was flabbergasted by that sight. Was she in the wrong place? I hoped so…

The girl started speaking in broken English interceded with a few Spanish words. “Is this the casa of señorita Mirabelle Flannagan?”

Did my mom even bother to look at the interviewees profiles?

I was sitting on a park bench, late at night, with no phone, no cash, and no wallet and without a clear plan in my head. Could I go home? Not really, unless I wanted to meet the famous chicken that had crossed the road.

What had happened? Well, I had been victim of a prank and sadly the mischievous trick had really put me into a dire situation. See, due to the practical joke, I couldn't really go back where I lived. Why? Well, because it could have tempted my father to finally forget that he was partly responsible for my existence and he would have gotten a use for his hunting shotgun and my grandfather's pig farm. The thing was that the man hated me and he made sure that I never had the thought of not reciprocating the way he felt. My mother had died in childbirth, so imagine the way he felt when the person he loved the most was unexpectedly replaced by little old me. Emphasis on the word little because it was partly the reason he wanted to see if his plan for the perfect murder was realistic. I was a failure in his eyes: nearsighted to the point where it would probably be useful to carry a telescope around, clumsier than a highly intoxicated one winged penguin with mobility problems, and like I said way too small for a boy my age. You get the point? I wasn't the poster boy for what a man, according to my father, should be like.

The only thing that I had going for me, was that despite being highly effective bully-bait, I wasn't that bad at defending myself. Sadly, each passing day my relative strength towards the others kept getting atrophied. In a few months, I will probably get beaten so hard they will have to pick me with a spatula. Why? Well, the others only become stronger and stronger being fed by puberty. If the hormonal bomb that resided in me ever came to explode, maybe I would have a minor chance at keeping myself alive for a while longer but honestly I doubted it would really help me in the long run.

Do you want a proof of my weakening strength? Just a few hours ago my uniform had been swapped from the male one to the female one while I was in the shower. Before this summer, that would have never happened as they would have been afraid of the nuclear tantrum I would have thrown, but now ...Ouch. I don't even want to know what crap they will put me throughout the school year, I will probably end up hating my life by the end of it.

Anyway, because of the practical joke that was put on me I had to stay at school until it closed at 8pm. Being seen in girl clothes wasn't the kind of humiliation I wanted to go through. Most of the students already put me in the same rank as rats and honestly as cool it would be to be as free as some insects I didn't want to be put in the same rank as them.

Going back to my situation, it wasn't the switch directly that had brought me to my sad state, no, it was what came afterwards. While I was thinking of a clever way of coming home unnoticed I made my first mistake of the night, I fell at sleep and had the get out of the bus in a part of town I didn't know. My second mistake came shortly afterwards, despite of my instincts, I decided to ask for directions to a group of suspicious looking girls. Was there a third mistake? Yes, of course there was, I followed them into a dark alley and then literally, strike! I was knocked out cold for a few hours.

Which bring us to about now. I have just made my way to this bench and while I should probably call for help or at least move somewhere safer. I am just going to nap for a while … Ah... I feel so tired..

I woke up to a brush vandalizing my face, at first I thought it was just my imagination. But as I opened my eyes. Standing right next to me was a tall girl with the looks of a model, she had a round face with freckles and long auburn hair. I looked at her for a moment and then pinched myself. Why? Well, because I thought I was becoming crazy she had, exception of her height, the same features as poor old me but unlike me, she was striking! Perhaps, if I had been born a girl I wouldn't have had such a hard life.

“I at least wanted to finish applying it before you woke up.” Said the young lady standing next to me, in the most serene voice.

“What?”

“Make up, I was applying it. It looks like you took quite a beating last night and I didn't want you to look too bad in case you wanted to make a statement to the police.”

She pulled a mirror and made me look at my face. I had a black eye, but it she had partially concealed it with foundation. I was about to comment on the lip gloss when she restarted talking.

“Look, I didn’t call the police because I didn’t want to meddle into things that weren’t my business but if your boyfriend did that. You should probably denounce him.”

“Boyfriend?”

“Well, I just assumed it was domestic abuse...wait, don't tell me it was rape! If it is, I'm taking you to the hospital. No concessions. I wouldn't want your aggressor to get free...” I interrupted her sentence.

“I was mugged.”

She looked quite appalled by the phrase I had just uttered and stated fuming. “Wait! You are seriously telling me that some people would mug a cute young lady such as you? Man, the world is way crueller that I ever thought.”

I gave her a look, me cute, no way! And what was with calling me a young girl. I barely looked like one I was sure of that. I mean I was a bespectacled manlet no way the C word or the G world applied to me. At that moment, I just then realized that I had lost my glasses and that my long hair usually kept in a quite low ponytail was down. Did I look feminine? I didn’t want to know the answer to that question.

“Well, I am hardly a lady.” Or a man for that matter, I thought while looking down.

She frowned. “What’s that about not being a lady? I don't know who put those ideas into your head but you have everything of a lady. You are just a late bloomer, I am sure your assets will grow in time. Just love yourself while waiting for it to happen, girl!” She said while she took me closer and hugged me. “Can you give me your number, your parents must be worried sick about you if you didn't come home last night. I know I would if I had daughter such as you.”

Although, what she said was wrong in so many levels and she had pretty much murdered the little of virility I had left, I couldn't help but smile at such kind words. She was just so sweet.

“I don't really think my dad, is that worried about me right, he hates me. He probably is happy I didn't come back home.” Why did I start talking private matters? I don't know, maybe it was the hits to my head who had me put down my defences or something.

She gave me a puzzled look. “Look, I don't know about your situation, but aren't you exaggerating things like all preteens. If you had a dispute with your father I'm pretty sure that what happened will make him forget it.”

“Ugh, I am not a preteen, I'm fifteen and I am absolutely sure he hates seeing the way he treats me.”

“Fifteen?” She didn't believe me, for sure, it was obvious. It was as easy to see as to see as a clown in a funeral.

“Yes.”

“Really?”

I said with an unwavering stare. “Yes.”

“Wow... I would have given you 13 tops. You are surprisingly as old as me. Umm...” She looked at me for a while and then restarted talking: “Look, I have never done this before but, do you want to go home with me, change, take a shower, perhaps go shopping and maybe have a sleepover tonight? You could probably solve your parental problem tomorrow and it really looks like you could have some fun! My aunt is out of town for a few weeks and she has given me a few thousand bucks. But, honestly until I met you, I didn't know what to do. I had planned to do some volunteer work in the park but honestly I don't really feel like it if, there is a chance I might get mugged.”

I was going to say something, but before I did she restarted speaking. “Oh, by the way my name is Alexis Tremblay. Happy to meet you.”

I looked at her confused for a minute.

“What?”

“Well, there is another Alexis Tremblay, here too.”

She looked at me confused for a second or two and then smiled at me with probably the biggest grin in the world.

“Well, Lady Alex, lady Lexi, here present, would like answer to her sleepover proposal?” She said smiling.

I wanted to say no, because it wouldn’t be appropriate. Little old me, having a sleepover with a girl, crazy and if it was the kind of sleepover I was thinking of I might just as well take my virility behind the barn and shoot it. I should say no, common sense is telling me to say no but, I really didn’t want to disappoint someone so nice. I had just really met for less than twenty minutes but she had already be kinder to me than most people I had met in the last ten years of my life. Why had things to be so hard?

I started crying and she held me closer to her, crap, I am supposed to be a man darn it! This isn't supposed to happen. She held me for nearly five minutes and then I just started muttering.

“Yes, I would love to have a sleepover, but *sob* but there is something I need to tell you first.”

“What?”

“I am a...” Before I could finish my sentence colour drained out of my life.

I woke up on an unfamiliar bed, in a room I had never been in before. The room was posh and richly decorated, looking like an aristocrat's room decorated with the help of antiques catalogue. Perhaps, Lexi was rich? If it ever were to be case I should probably run away from here as fast possible, because there was no way I could ever be suitable company for her. I was already like a cockroach to most people, how I could interact with her who was like a well groomed poodle. Things had really taken a weird turn.

As I was standing up to leave I realized that the uniform was on dresser right in front of the bed, I pinched myself, double checked and then looked down and saw that I wearing some pink pyjamas ...I pinched myself again and when I realized that I wasn't dreaming my heart skipped so many beats that I probably went on cardiac arrest. Crap! She knows, the young lady now knows that I not what I (accidentally) pretended to be. Upon that realization, I cried again probably a virility cop somewhere to arrest me and take away my man card forever.

“Alex, are you OK.”

Lexi entered the room wearing a cooking apron over a sundress. “I heard, you cry and it worries me a little. Are you fine? The doctor said that you passed out due to fatigue and that I should probably not worry that much. But honestly I am not that sure about that."

I was too worked up to say anything and I just pointed to my uniform.

“Oh, sweetie don't worry about that. I don't care about some extra bits you are still a girl to me.” Lexi hugged me for a second time today and just cried harder. I wanted to punch myself for letting a girl my age mother me. God, I felt weak. The beating, the uniform and her kindness to me had obliterated the fortress that had kept me safe and grounded all this years and now that I was naked and vulnerable I just couldn't stop crying due to years of parental abuse and bullying,

“Alex, look I know I just met you and that you are the same age as me and I should probably mother you as much as I did today, but I would like you to stay the night if it were to be possible. You told me your dad won't take care of you and I suspect your condition may had have some to with it. So look, tomorrow we are going to see him and if he really doesn't want you back I am going ask my aunt to let you stay here for as long as you want. I don't want you to end up on the streets if you are just going to end up mugged or killed. The streets of Montreal don't need more homeless LGBT youth.”

I was going to say that I wasn't trans, just a bullied effeminate boy but as I thought about it I questioned the veracity of that statement. I mean sometimes I did wish that I had been born a girl but that wasn't enough wasn't it? Until yesterday I had never wore girl clothes before and I was actually quite proud of the little bit of manliness I had exhibited the years before. I was confused. Hella confused in fact. But my confusion didn't last very long, because as soon as I calmed down the smoke detectors went off.

“Crap, the food!” Lexi started running to the kitchen but she slid up and fell on her on face. She stood up immediately and she acted like nothing had happened.

I couldn't help but laugh.

Due to my identity crisis, Lexi's had burnt the French fries and burgers shed had been preparing, Due to a lack of ingredients and due our limited cooking skills we decided to eat out. I had wanted to go while wearing my uniform but Lexi made me take a bath. While I was soaking and relaxing in the bath, Lexi had gone to measure my clothes and find myself something decent to wear out.

When I finished relaxing, I stumbled back to the room where I was temporally staying in to found a cardigan, a blouse, a floral long skirt and , surprise, my good old round glasses. It looked like Lexi had gone back to the park to found them. The most surprising thing about them was that the lenses had been replaced. Lexi had done so much in so little time, I could hardly believe that someone such as her existed.

Ten minutes afterwards, I was ready, having found an undershirt and some panties under my new clothes. I was about to open the door to get outside the apartment when Lexi, who was wearing a suit with a pencil skirt, stopped me and made me put some make up while she arranged my long hair in a French braid. Before we got out, I looked at my reflection in the mirror and I was stunned by my appearance. I am normally a very humble person misery oblige, but damn if I didn't look like a cute librarian. I couldn't help but blush at my reflection. Was I really a boy? I couldn't stop doubting it.

Lexi had brought me to a classy French restaurant and quite honestly I was intimidated. I never ate out and when I say never I meant it. My father used to tell me that even fast food was wasted on a person such as me so I never thought of having a go at it.

Lexi could probably see me tense up, because she ordered for me with me approving my choices.

I felt bad, here was someone who had helped me all day and I couldn't do anything but cause her trouble. Girl me had until now only been a useless pack of hormones and honestly I hated that. It made me feel like I just had euthanized thousands of puppies.

“I am sorry.” I muttered

“For what?”

“Everything, I force myself into your house, I burn your food, I occupy your bed, I make you pay for clothes and I can't even order by myself. I should probably just go after this meal and give back everything you have given me. I am useless and you barely know me,” I said putting emphasis on every service she had given me.

“Don't you dare do that!” She said raising her tone a little. “Look, I chose to help you and I will continue to help you even if you have some annoying compartments. I still want you to have to stay with me if possible because it would hurt me to know that someone I could have helped is in trouble,” She sipped her glass of water and restarted “I know what it is to struggle to stay afloat. Four months ago, I lived in the streets and had to get all my meals from homeless centres.”
I gave her a puzzled look “How? I thought you were rich.”

“I' m not my aunt is. Before my aunt Éleonora came into my life I had been in foster care. The house was terrible so around a year ago I ran away and I had to live in the streets until my rich aunt who had I never met before found me and adopted me.”

“What about your parents?” I asked hoping not to strike anything delicate.

“I don't know anything about my biological parents, but my adopted parents are both dead...” She said with sorrow in her eyes.

“Sorry, I didn't want to upset you.”

“Don't worry, it's been a long time and I have gotten used to them being missing. What about your parents? You told me about your dad, but how is your mom? ”

“Dead at childbirth.”

“Sorry...”

I looked at her and I told her not to worry. Shortly afterwards our meal arrived and we discussed of everything and nothing.

We went back home knowing way more about each other. As soon as she opened the door to her aunt's mansion we both took turn in her room changing on our pyjamas. We hooked up her laptop to the TV and just started watching some movies.

Half an hour in her cell phone rang and she answered it, it was her aunt asking about the credit card activity at the restaurant. After consulting me, Lexi decided to disclose me and my situation. Her aunt didn't really like the idea of a possibly homeless trans youth staying at her house. So she ordered me to stay there until the morning when she would take her jet back here to assess who her precious niece was staying with. Lexi got a few words with her but she wouldn't budge.So we just decided to have fun until the early morning.

We woke up at one pm to the sound of the main door opening. Éleonora entered and the first thing she did was call Lexi. “Alexis, I know how you feel about street kids but you can't take one in. Not with the news I have for you anyways. You know how you always wanted a sibling? Well, I just discovered were my idiot brother-in-law has been hiding all this years and I happen to know that he as a son as old as you.”

“I have a twin?”

“Yes, a twin with a name that is going to amaze you. He is also going to come to live here with us as soon as I can make your idiot father sit down and talk to me.Sadly tho, your street kid will have to find somewhere else because there's no way I'm going to have three kids in this house.”

“Auntie!”

“Sorry, it's true, me and Robin don't want to have to take care of more than two kids, life is unfair deal with it, anyway were is your new trans friend so I can search her in case she took something.”

I stood up and went to see the aunt who would seal my fate by separating from a girl who had almost become like me sister.

I walked in her line of sight and the moment she saw me she stood, there, paralyzed.

“Are you...No way! … What are YOU doing here?”

Éleonora calmed down and after a while she started speaking more clearly.

“Is your birth name Alexis Tremblay like my niece over there?” She said pointing at Lexi and looking at me with very hopeful eyes.

The hamster in my brain started spinning. Lexi was my sister, my twin sister! How lucky of an encounter that had been! I looked at her with tears in my eyes and I answered her question. “Yes, auntie.”

She hugged me. “Good, this mean that I won’t have to worry about you being with your father anymore. A few days after you were born, he ran away with the two of you. My parents called the police but they told us that he looked sane enough to take care of you, he ended up putting your sister for adoption and keeping you. But since I had found him questionable since the day I met him so I couldn’t help but worry about you all those years you were gone from my life. Sorry, about those comments from before I have been stressing hard since I found out that after all these years you were still with him and not with a more suitable family.”

“It's alright, I get it.”

“No, it's not alright I could have scared you to the point of running away and then I might have lost you to the streets. I have been way too stressed out these past few days, I'm sorry.”

“It's alright auntie.”

“No, it's not alright Alexis. I have been searching for you and your sister for the last five years and I could have lost you last night for a very stupid reason. ”

“Not as stupid as calling both of your twins Alexis!” Said my sister trying to lighten up the mood.

“Your father did that because after the death of your mother he wasn’t very lucid. You both ended up with the same name because he forgot that he had already dealt with one of your birth certificates and ended writing the same exact thing in the other certificate. Mom and dad should have probably questioned his state of mind and had him checked but by the time they realized that he had lost is mind Alexis the biological girl had been adopted and the Alexis the biological boy was gone with his dad. He probably thought he could cope better if he only raised a son and not a son and a daughter. Mom and dad, your maternal grandparents, lost contact with him and they spent the last years of their lives searching for the both of you and hoping you were both OK. Anyway, it’s really awkward to call you both by the same name so how do you want to be called Alexis number 2?”

“Lexi, here present,” I said pointing at my new twin sister “has been calling me Alex.”

“OK, Alex do you want to talk about your father over brunch? Your sister didn’t tell me everything when I called her last night. She told me that you were abused so I need to know all the facts if I want you to be retired from his care.”

“Sure, auntie.”

Both I and Lexi went to change in our room.

“Who is Robin?” I asked Lexi as we started changing.

“Auntie’s wife, she’s spends most of her time in France. Why do you ask?”

“Auntie said that she and Robin didn’t want to have to care for more than two kids and I got curious about who that Robin person was. Have you met her? Is she nice?”

“She is and I love her very much, but she and aunt Éleonora spend most of their time between here, France, Japan and New York City so I haven’t seen her very often.”

“Why?” I asked finishing changing and applying some lip gloss afterwards.

“She and auntie are antiques dealers, they buy things in Europe and Asia and then sell them to collectors in the Americas. The only reasons they come here is to take care of me, and pretty soon they will be coming to take of you too.”

“Wouldn’t it have been more convenient for them to just move you to France or NYC?”

“I asked aunt Éleonora about it once but she told me she was searching for something in Montreal and that she couldn't quit this city before finding it. Now that I know that she was searching for you I am quite happy we didn’t move out,” She said pulling me out in a hug that made me blushed. “If we had moved I couldn’t have met you. Aunt Robin always says that if you have faith fate might give you a hand and while I didn’t believe her before, now I do.”

Aunt Éleonora opened the door right then and made a fuss at us for not finishing dressing up quicker.

We went to a quite small restaurant for brunch and not even seconds after starting to eat my aunt started her interrogation.

“Alex, can you please tell me how did your father abuse you?”

I was a little hesitant about this, but I started talking.

“Most of what he has done for the last three years or so has been verbal abuse and privation of food. He didn’t like my appearance or my attitude because he thought I looked and acted too much like a girl so one day he just told me that until I was ready to man up I would only eat at lunch and that even then I would only eat enough to avoid undernourishment. I wasn’t allowed any snacks or pocket money and if he ever found out that I had eaten, the weekend he would force me to stay in the basement where he would cut the water and force me to stay there without any source of entertainment or food.”

Éleonora got angry. “What, a pathetic excuse for a man! Really! Not allowing you to eat food because you didn’t look tough what kind of moron doesn’t realize the stupidity in those actions. Did he had a bad reaction when he learned you were trans is that why you were outside late at night?”

“No, he doesn’t know about my gender issues, I mean he knows that I’m not a man’s man but he doesn’t know that (for now at least) I identify as a girl. Friday, my male clothes were swapped for females ones so I couldn’t go back home that is why I was out late.”

“Wait, you don’t attend school as a girl?” Asked both my sister and my aunt at the same time.

“No, not for now (and I never had the thought of doing it).”

“Alex, when did you first started dressing up as a girl?”

I blushed. “Since my clothes were swapped on Friday.”

They both looked at each other and then Auntie started talking. “You are kidding us, right? You look so natural as a girl, we thought you had to have been doing this for a while. In fact, I thought I would have to have a discussion with you about any pills that might have been taking because I thought you were taking clandestine puberty blockers. Alex, did you ever have your body checked out for any anomalies? ”

“Dad, made me go to see a doctor two months ago, in July, to see if I wasn’t secretly intersex and they didn’t find anything. I’m just a late bloomer.”

“Well, as soon as we have dealt with your father I’m going to find you a psychiatrist to start your transition I wouldn’t want you to wake up one day and realize that you had turned into a giant lumberjack like your scandalous father.”

We were home at 3 pm and Auntie Éleonora decided that tomorrow both I and Lexi would be skipping school to go meet our father. I would be doing it dressed up as a girl because Auntie thought that my father wouldn’t try to keep me if he realized that my gender wasn’t the one he wanted to implant in me.

At one point, Aunt Robin, Éleonora’s wife, called enquiring about auntie’s day. When Éleonora told her about me she was very surprised, she hadn’t expected her wife’s five year long search to finish so abruptly. We talked for a while and I thought she sounded very nice I couldn’t wait to meet her l next Sunday.

After the call, the three of us watched some movies and played some cards until midnight came and then both Lexi and I went to sleep on the couches in the lounge room.

At 7 am, auntie called dad to make sure he would be home. She told him that I had spent the weekend with her and that we thought about perhaps making this a permanent thing. He seemed to disagree for a second, but then said that we could come right now to discuss about it as he had the day off.

30 minutes later, we were standing of the very poorly maintained lawn of my old house. My twin and I had decided together that we would be wearing matching floral dresses so we did.

Auntie walked to the porch and we followed her a few centimetres behind. Due to my attire I was getting a little bit anxious, but I wasn’t the only one, Lexi was stressing because she was going to face the had gave her away 15 years ago for being a girl.

Éleonora knocked on the door and we waited for a while hearing signs of movement behind the door. After five minutes, dad opened the door and seemed to be shocked at the sight of two girls who were identical on all points but their height. He took a good look at me and closed the door.

“What do we do now? Auntie,” Said Lexi with tears in her eyes it was clear that her being rejected by dad had bothered her a lot.

Our aunt held her closer. “You, nothing sweetie, I on the other side will be making a call to my attorney. We might have a legal battle for your new sister.”

We turned away and then the door opened again, we were about to turn again when we heard a loud noise and our aunt collapsed to the ground bleeding. I looked at the door and I saw my father aiming his shotgun at me.

“Alexis, is this how you repay me? I take care of you for fifteen years, fifteen, I send you to private school, keep a roof over you and try to make a man out of you for your own sake and then you repay me by dressing up as a girl and saying you want to live with your fucking aunt. You are such a fucking disappointment kid! I shouldn’t have kept you, I should have just put you on adoption like your sister. I should have known that you kids were only trouble, after all, YOU killed your mother! ”

Tears started running down his face.

“I should kill you, I should fucking kill you, just like I’m about to kill that bitch Éleonora right now. You overstepped your bounds, girl, you corrupted my son and then you brought back the torturous memory that is his sister. God, I fucking hate you, if I had known you would do this to me I would have killed when your sister first introduced us 20 years ago.”

Éleonora stated talking with difficulty “You would have killed me when I was six? What kind of sick freak are you!” After saying those words she coughed blood and restarted “I should have told Jeanne that you looked suspicious. I should have sabotaged your relationship. God, I have been foolish, really foolish, I should have known the moment Alex talked about abuse that it wouldn’t have be a good idea to meet you with the kids present,” She started gasping for air and then passed out.

Lexi unfroze and started doing CPR on our aunt while panicking. “Auntie! Stay with us please don’t give up! ” She stated crying “Please, not now! Not after only four months of being with you. Not now that we had everything to make a functional family.” Lexi eyes were a like a broken dam and my dam broke shortly afterwards. I opened my mouth and went at it.

“Why did you do this, dad, why? She just wanted us to be happy! I would have been out of your life after this. Why do you have to ruin everything for me? You said we killed mom but, fuck, dad, we were only babies. Auntie is right you are sick freak! I should have known better than to let you abuse me. Why? Why do you hate me so much? Why do you hate us so much? ”

He didn’t have time to respond because moments later we could hear the police arrive. He kicked me, ran to his pickup truck and sped away.

Auntie was in critical condition for hours. The doctors said that there was significant damage to her spine and lungs and that although she might heal, she would probably never walk again.

Lexi and I were totally out of it having just experienced one of the most traumatic experiences in our young lives so we didn’t comment on the dire future of my newly discovered aunt. I barely knew anything about her, but she had been ready to fight my dad with me, an act that made her a heroine in my eyes, but that had as a cost her ability to walk. I felt guilty, really guilty because none of this would have happened if she hadn't met me.

Lexi could perhaps see my guilt because she held me close to her and just told me that it wasn’t my fault, auntie would have gone to see him as soon as she would have found me. I wanted to argue but she stopped me.

“Alex, it isn’t your fault, alright! It's our father’s fault! He is the one who pulled the trigger not you can’t spend blame yourself for everything it’s annoying.”

“Not as annoying as you fucking treating me like a kid all the time!” I said raising my tone.

“I treat you like a kid because you act like kid. You are so egocentric thinking that everything happens because of your actions,” She said in angry voice.

“Girls, calm down!” Said a young dark haired woman with runny makeup and a Parisian accent. I recognized the voice but I couldn’t tell where from. Before I could figure it out the woman restarted talking “I know that Nora being in the hospital is stressing you but don’t you dare start fighting right now. You have just met each other, don’t sabotage your relationship so soon.”

I was going to ask who she was but Lexi answered for me.

“Sorry Aunt Robin, sorry Alex. I just didn’t want you to do something foolish because of your guilt. Even if we have just met each other, I care about you a lot. I have done so since I saw you, a girl with similar features as me, lying on a bench.”

“I am sorry too, Lexi, I just have been taught that when something goes wrong it's my fault. It's hard to forget one's education”

Lexi and I hugged

“Good,” Tearfully said Aunt Robin “At least I will have something less to worry about tonight. Your stupid aunt should have consulted me before doing something so impulsive.” Her tears started streaming. “Such a fool, I leave her alone a minute and then she gets shot.” She sobbed for a minute and we took her to see auntie who was peacefully sleeping. “Girls, promise me that if anything like this ever happens you will tell me. Nora might be 26 but she still acts like a teenager sometimes, she thinks she is mighty, invincible. Yet clearly, *sob* she is not.”

We slept in the waiting room while Aunt Robin made some call and enquiries. I don’t know if she slept that night because when she took us eat at a restaurant the next morning, she was still wearing the same clothes as yesterday.

We sat, we started eating and she started talking “Girls, they still haven’t found him. He is still at large and the police haven’t got a clue to where he could have gone. ”

“Isn’t that dangerous for us?” Asked Lexi, worried.

“Yes, which is why I got my father to pull a few political strings. You will be able to stay in France for an unlimited amount of time. Nora and I had planned to sell the house here and buy a house over there anyway so it’s not a bother to us. We can’t move your aunt yet, so until we buy the house and your aunt is ready to travel we will send you to a boarding school near the Alps. ”

“Boarding school?” We both enquired.

“Yes a boarding school, a girl’s school actually. Sorry, Alex. I know it’s not been that long since you have taken the role of a girl and I also know that you are slightly confused about your gender but they were the only ones that could take the both of you at such a short notice. ”

“I will have to go to school as girl?” I asked.

“Yes, at least until Christmas, afterwards if you feel like going back to being a boy we will transfer you to the boy's school just in front of it.”

“Do they know about my status?”

“Yes and because they already have some transgender students. The only thing is that you will have to share a room with your sister and another trans girl. Which I hope is not going to make uncomfortable Lexi.”

“Why would being with another girl and my sister bother me?” Said Lexi while grinning.

“Good, some girls get uncomfortable sharing with trans girls so I wanted to be sure you were OK with it. Oh and Alex for all your stay at the school you will be on blockers, is that fine by you? ”

“Yes.”

“Good, because you are flying as soon as we go back at the house and pick your stuff up. I know it's quick but there’s no way I’m letting you stay one more night in this city with your psycho father running around.” She paused and then restarted “Oh and I almost forgot, if its fine by you, I would like to start the process of adopting the both of you. Éleonora and I discussed doing this before she got shot but because the both of you barely know us I want to know if it’s OK with you. ”

“OK by me, I love the both of you very much.” Said Lexi hugging her.

I said: “I just want a functional family,” and joined the hug.

I got a passport made last summer when the school took us on a biking trip south to Vermont. Now I had use for it again.

I never flew before and neither did my newly discovered sister. We were flying in first class and we were right beside each other. She slept most of the flight but I didn’t catch any sleep, I was worried. Two weeks ago I was a lonely boy who had never wore any girl clothes and who did his best to try to be a boy and now I was forced to be a girl for what 2 months? I am pretty sure the girls there will smell the rat and start bullying me. Lexi also worried me. She had been lovely until now but what if she took a dislike at me, we barely knew each other. What if we discovered things about each other that we would totally hate and that would break our fragile relationship? Could I cope with a sister who didn’t like me? Not only that, there was also the case of my aunts, who would eventually be our moms, would they be safe with my dad running around the city with a loaded weapon? There was so much stuff to worry about, my life had become very complicated in the space of four days and I didn't know how I would cope with it.

We arrived in France, at the Lyon–Saint-Exupéry Airport, early on Wednesday morning, there, we were to meet a school representative that would take us to our final destination. I said we were because the representative came late, we probably had been waiting for 2 hours when she finally came. Her name was Marie-Lune Pissard and she told us she had been late due to a strike that had prevented her from taking the train.

After loading our things in her expensive looking car we were on our way.

“We don’t often get transfers at our school and even then it’s unheard of anyone transferring so soon after the start of the school year did, something happen?” Asked us Ms. Pissard.

Lexi answered for us. “Our parents thought it would be best if we changed school, our old one being inadequate.”

“And they sent you across the pond?” She said not really believing us.

“Well, they thought a change might be welcomed,” I answered this time.

“Look, I can tell when people are lying to me so there is no point in it. If you don’t want to talk about it, say so. Honesty is a primordial value.”

“Sorry, Madame,” We said at the same time.

A few awkward minutes passed.

“So, have you heard of your school before?”

I wanted to go for the polite answer but remembering what she had said minutes before I decided to go for the honest answer. “Not really.”

“Oh, were you invited then? Is that why you didn’t want to talk about the transfer. Did you get your invitation late? ”

“Invited?”

While we couldn’t see her face, we clearly knew that that what we had just said bothered her, like if what we had just said had been completely unbelievable.

“You are Alex Tremblay and Lexi Tremblay right, nieces of Robin Valois and Éleonora Lafronde. I haven’t mistaken your identity, right? ”

“Yes, why?” we both said at the same time.

“Why, well what you just said sounds hard to believe, normally students either hear about the school and their parents are rich enough to pay their way into it or either you get your tuition paid by the school and are invited join . What you just said doesn’t fit.”

A rich girl’s school, great, I am going to be the odd one out in more ways than one. Not only that, the only people that could come from the same socioeconomic background as me probably all great athletes our geniuses. My school year is going to be great.

“Well our aunts are quite opulent,” Said Lexi.

“And you aren’t?”

“We pretty much are orphans and they are adopting us.”

“And they are sending you to the dorms?”

“Only until Christmas, our aunt Éleonora isn’t feeling well enough to travel.”

“Oh, booger, I hope then you find your stay at our little village agreeable.”

“Village?” My twin and I inquired both at the same time.

Madame Pissard laughed. “It’s what we call the space occupied by the Louise Larivière School for girls, the St Simmons School for boys, our coed sister institution La Nova Academia and the University were all our students go: The university of Château Perdu. Together we form a community of about 100 000 souls’, parents and staff included. Most of our students come from rich families and/or powerful families who can't go to other institutions due to security problems or fear of not being able to live a normal life. Our school only being know by few we don’t have to deal with the Paparazzi or noisy journalists. We also of course have greatly talented individuals invited on scholarships . A particularity of schools thought, is that a third of our students are randomly invited individuals from different backgrounds and all of them have greatly variant degrees of academic skill, we invite them for them to form a network, to avoid elitism in our school and for them to obtain quite valuable diplomas. ”

“How can your diplomas be valuable if nobody ever hears about your schools?” Asked Lexi.

“People in academia tend to know about us and so do the people at most enterprises our alumni end up at.”

“You sound like the kind of institutions that would secretly serve as training ground for spies or that would be in cahoots with some kind of secret organization,” I said with hopeful eyes.

“You read too much fiction sweetie, this isn’t that kind of story,” She said while laughing.

“Well, you can never be too hopeful.”

“No, you can’t,” She said while laughing again.

Lexi and I started talking about everything and nothing and eventually just started sleeping.

We woke up to a quite large lake surrounded by trees and overlooked by a building on a hill who seemed to be the university. All around the lake you could see houses who looked like they belonged on the other side of the border in Switzerland. On the waterfront stood a quite majestic building who looked like quite Parisian.

“Welcome to the community of Sainte Marine des Lacs, as you can see having rich benefactors has helped up us maintain quite lavish looking facilities. Your school, which is the building you just saw has a community pool, a theatre and multiple multimedia rooms. Physical activity is done in the communal centre which is just out of view. There you can practice any sport you want. At the back of our school there is a farm where all our meals are prepared. If you want to get out there are special cabs that can take you to Annecy or Geneva. As minors you can only take them on weekends, mind you. ”

We didn’t hear most of what she said afterwards because we were dazzled by the amazing sights that composed our school and the community.

Madam Pissard drove us to the dorms a three story old Swiss home and she showed our rooms.

“Welcome to my dorm, sweeties. It’s 3pm now and while school is finished most students are doing club activities which for your school, is mandatory. ”

“You said our school, aren’t you associated with them?” I asked.

“No, the dorms are only separated by gender not by institution. We have girls from Louise Larivière and La Nova Academia. The girls outnumber to boys 2 to 1 in this community so we unlike the boys have to share. ”

“What were the buildings on the lakefront? They didn’t seem to be big enough to be dorms,” I asked.

“Staff, parents and alumni houses, some people really love it around here.”

“I can understand why,” Said Lexi.

“Your room is the 207, you can take your time to organize your things as your roommates will take quite some time before coming back here. Your uniforms will be on your beds.”

“What do you think?” Asked Lexi while we were going up the stairs.

“Of what?”

“What do you think of the dorms, the school, the community, everything we have seen until now, what do you think of it?”
I answered honestly: “Until I’ve met the people I don’t want to say anything. The people make or break an institution for me.”

We opened the door to our room. There were four beds on each side of the room and a bike window at the end of it. I was a little bit worried didn’t Aunt Robin say that we were only be three in our room? On the left side beds there were a few red blazers, some blouses, a few black bow-ties and some plaited red skirts.

We put our things in the closet that was on our side and then started charging our new cellphones, given to us by Aunt Robin before boarding our plane. It was 4pm, so I decided to call her.

“Hi, Aunt Robin?”

“Alex, how is it going?”

“For now, well. Did you know about the true nature of the institution you sent us to?”

“Well, seeing as my wifie and I are both graduates from the university of Château Perdu I have to say that yes.”

“And you didn’t say anything?”

“We aren’t legally allowed to speak about the community in public places.”

“Isn’t that what you doing right now?”

“No, I’m at home right now. I couldn’t stay much longer without taking a shower.”

“Are we all going to live near here, when you adopt us?”

“We were planning to live in Annecy, but now that you mention it wouldn’t be that of an idea. There is a hospital and a heliport in the community so it would be quite safe for your auntie to be moved here when the time comes. I will discuss it with your auntie when she feels better, Bye sweetie. ”

“Bye, Auntie Robin,” Said Lexi joining in on our call at the last minute.

We both decided to take a nap, as we were still tired from our trip across the Atlantic.

Our door opened and there stood two girls, one was wearing the red uniform of our new school and the other was wearing a blue variation of it with a blue tartan skirt. The girl with the red uniform seemed quite frightened at my sight and for some reason she seemed to remind me of someone. Blue uniform girl had her hair strawberry blond hair braided in a bun and red uniform girl had her black long hair in a high ponytail. She had some very intense blue eyes, they reminded me of a bully I had two years prior, a Russian lad who was quite overweight, not like the fit girl who stood in front of me. Misha, the Russian bully disappeared two summers ago and no one ever heard from him again. Maybe the girl standing in front of me was his sister? I mean, it’s a small world it wouldn’t be that unlikely.

The girl with the blue uniform, who I could already tell was quite bubbly, started talking. “Hi! The tall one must be Lexi and the short one Alex. Happy to meet you I am Aishling McFlann, from Ireland, one of your new roommates. I have never heard of anyone transferring in early October so I might ask you some questions about it later. The girl beside me, is my Russian-Canadian stepsister. ”

The black-haired girl couldn’t stop looking at me like she wanted to say something. Could she be?
Aishling restarted talking before I had time to clarify my thoughts.

“What’s up Misha, you aren’t that shy usually. Are you intimidated by the number of redheads in the room?” She said while laughing.

Misha started talking: “I’m sorry, so, so sorry, for everything I have done to you Alexis,” She was on the verge of tears.

To be honest, I didn’t know how to react. In front of me stood one of many bullies that I had in my lifetime. A person who used to beat me for being feminine, was standing, there, in front of me crying while wearing a skirt. Was she projecting on me the frustrations that she accumulated throughout the years? Was she in a bad period of her life when she met me? I didn’t have much time to think about that because her Irish stepsister started talking.

“You know Alex, Misha?”

“I used to bully her.”

“What! You, bully someone, that’s kind of weird. I mean you are so kind, I could hardly see you do that. ”

“It was the old me. A version of me you never met because it was before your father met my mother. Sit please, there is quite a long time before supper and I’m going to tell you what happened even if I know that it will not justify my actions. ”

We all sat on our beds and Misha started talking

“I had always known I was different. I wasn’t like the boys I had befriended throughout the years. For one, I liked boys and two, I felt like a girl on the inside. I can imagine, Alexis or Alex like they call you these days that you understand what I felt inside? ”

I wanted to say, that no, that I had just started questioning my gender identity and that I wasn’t sure about my sexual orientation but I thought it would break the mood so I just nodded.

“Well those thoughts, weren’t welcome in my house. My father, an old-school Russian man who had come to Canada to escape communism hated those ideas and would have killed me if I had ever thought of uttering them in my house.”

Same situation as me then. Apology instantly accepted. Even if I am still mad about the time Misha pushed me in a soiled toilet. I didn’t want to interrupt her story so I just said a few words.

“I get that, Misha, our father trying to kill me is how me and my newly discovered sister got here.”

Misha looked horrified at my comment and so did her sister. “Your father tried to kill you?”
Commented Aishling.

“Yes, and he almost managed to do it but we were saved by the police just in time,” I answered.

“Our aunt, who is adopting us, isn’t that lucky though, she will never walk again,” Added Lexi.

“Damn, your life has been hard since I last met you Alex. Anyway, like I was saying my father would have killed me if he had known that since I was about six I had known that I was girl inside, so I decided to hide it and by hiding it I meant trying to act as manly possible. I would cause trouble, get into fights and bully other kids, in particular Alex, here present, who was an easy target due to her small size. ”

“What allowed you to become to person you are right now?” I asked her.

“My father died from a heart attack and I was set free. A few days after he died, I started buying girl clothes and stashing them in my room. I didn’t have to eat my emotions anymore so I started losing some weight too. Every day of that spring, I would run home to my room, change into my comfortable new clothes and practice makeup. One day while trying them on, my mother discovered me and pretty much kick-started my transition and my weight loss, a few months afterwards my mom got hired at the Louise Larivière School for girls and months later she met the father of Ash while hiking around the community. Pretty much a lucky streak. ”

So my bully was getting happier and happier as my life got sadder and sadder, fun stuff. If I didn’t genuinely believe that she was a changed person I might have been mad but I am not a vengeful person, so I just decided to let it go.

“Quite the happy tale,” I said.

“Yes, quite the happy tale,” Repeated Misha.

Misha looked at the clock and realizing that it was almost time for supper she entered our en-suite bathroom and changed out of her uniform her sister on the other side, just changed in front us, or more like my sister as I was looking at the wall, one week ago I still was a guy and some girl things made me quite uncomfortable.

A few minutes afterwards, we went to the dining room with Misha and her sister. There were about 40 girls in there. We sat with Misha and Aishling in a table who could sit 6 people. We asked the pair of girls if they had other friends that were coming. Our question was quickly answered when an Afro-Asian girl and a blonde girl walked towards us and sat at our table.

“Hello, Misha. Hello, Ash. Who are those new faces?” Asked the tall blonde.

“I am Alex and my twin is Lexi, happy to meet you.”

“Your names sound like the name Alexis, any relative with that name? “Asked the other girl.

Lexi and I each gave the other a look. We pointed at each other and said: “Yes, her!”

All the other people at our table were confused, including Misha.

“I know your full name Alex, but your sister as the same name as you? “Asked Misha.

“Yep, which is why our aunt Robin enrolled us with our nicknames,” I said

“You were enrolled? Don't you mean invited? No offence but last time I saw you, you were starving daily even if you were going to private school. I could hardly see your family being able to pay this school.”

“Our aunts are rich, they are adopting us after the incident with our father.”

“Incident?” Said both girls whose names I still didn’t know.

Before we could answer Aishling started talking: “It’s a long story, if the twins are alright with it I might talk you about it later.”

I wanted to ask the girls for their name but Lexi cut me short. The blonde one was Brynhildr Baash and her mixed friend was Esmeralda Mori Villanueva. Esme’s dad was an Afro-Colombian rapper and her mother a Japanese Idol both met on an American concert in which they were scheduled to perform one after the other. Bryn’s father was an incredibly rich banker who didn’t have time for her. We talked about a lot of things during dinner. Esme had noticed that Misha and I knew each other and they wanted to know more about our relationship. Misha didn’t want to say to her best friends the kinds of torture she had put me through and I didn’t want to relieve them so Ash who could read her stepsister like an open book closed the subject by saying that we went to the same school and that was that. Esme and Bryn got curious but sensing the distress in Misha, their best friend, they decided to shut up.

I changed the subject. “So Bryn, Esme do you go to the girl’s school or academy whatever…”

Esme answered. “We go to the girl’s school. Alex and Lexi, where do you go? ”

“The girl’s school too,” I said.

“You should both join the cheer-leading club then, clubs being mandatory it would be better if you were in one with people you at least know.”

I had a thought in my mind, something about cheer-leading usually being were trans-girls ended up at in the few transgender fiction stories I read on the plane to France. It reminded me of what Mme Pissard said earlier about this not being that kind of story. I had a chuckle. My life these past few days hinted to what kind of story?

This week has been weird, really weird in fact. Aunt Éleonora has been shot and she might never walk again, I met the despicable man that is my father, I crossed the ocean and of course I met the catalyst for all of this: my sister Alex. It was strange meeting her the way I did. Walking in the park in the early morning, thinking about perhaps going to help at the homeless centre where I spent a few months before meeting my aunties and then stumbling upon someone who looked like me in miniature! I couldn’t help but wanting to protect her since the moment I met her, she reminded me of Rose my adopted little sister who died with my adopted parents last year.

Rose was two years younger than me and she was so full of life, always active, always talking and always trying to make me do new things. She was lovely but back then I used to think she was annoying. *sob* I didn’t really appreciate her. She was the best little sister in the world and I didn’t give her the love she deserved. I also didn’t give enough love to my papa and my maman, I guess than knowing that you are adopted can stop you from giving love to others… I miss them... Auntie Nora and Auntie Robin are great but I don’t have with them the 14 years of love I shared with my old family… I can’t help but hate the man who decided to just ram into their car while I was away in summer camp. That man ruined the happiness that I had, the happiness that I had started being comfortable with since being told that I was adopted.

The six months in foster care that followed their deaths really shook me up and really changed me. I was beaten every day by the girls there, they were so jealous of me that they couldn’t help but wanting to ruin me. My foster parents didn’t care about my physical abuse, so I just ran out one day and I didn’t come back. I lived in homeless centres all winter and all spring, in summer I was saved by Auntie Nora but I had already changed. I lost about 15 pounds and I didn’t want to trust people anymore. Nora and Robin got to me, but it was hard, really hard, for them, not for me I was numb back then, numb to everything, numb to everyone.

The summer of therapy that I had this year, helped, but this past week has put such a toll on me... I would have probably fallen back into my depression if there wasn’t someone that I wanted to protect. Alex needs me, or at least I want her to need me. Even though Nora told me that she’s technically my older twin sister ,being born a few minutes before me, I can’t help but wanting to protect her. I don’t want to lose her, I don’t want to lose Auntie Nora, I don’t want to lose my family again, not after just having met them.

Alex his fragile, very fragile, she has been acting cynical these last two days and she has not been crying like the days before, but she’s upset, really upset the nightmares she has been having each time she has gone to sleep have been proof of that. I don’t want to upset her by being too close to her, but I might want to try to do the same activities as her, I will act as a bodyguard if any bullies show up.

I checked my cellphone 2 am. God it’s late, I have to wake up in four hours and I haven’t been able to stop thinking since our meeting with the cheerleaders at dinner. I hope its jet lag and not insomnia again. I will need sleep to deal with whatever life decides to throw at me.

Yesterday was something else entirely, I didn’t expect to find out that Misha was a girl. Nor did I expect to have so much fun with her at our welcoming party after dinner. She might have been a terrible person as a boy, but damn if she wasn’t a nice girl. Girl, am I one of those? I mean I have spent the last 5 days living as one and honestly I think I am quite comfortable as one. That’s a good thing, because I wouldn’t want to move to another accommodation, without my sister, in December, if Auntie Nora and Auntie Robin aren’t able to move here before the end of the year.

I really appreciate the attention given by Lexi even if she really mothers me. I guess than being as small as I am, I remind her of her lost little sister. She talked about her old family in the hospital but she didn’t want to give me much details. A year isn’t that long, so she must still be suffering … I guess I’m not the only broken person in my new family…

Morning was brutal to say the least. At seven everyone was to be out of the dorms and in direction to school but Lexi and I really had problems with jet lag so we arrived quite late at school. Now we are waiting for the principal in his office and I really hope he isn’t going to be upset, because I wouldn’t want the first impression he as of us to be negative.

The door opened and a man in his early fifty’s came in, he looked similar to aunt robin but he had blond hair unlike her dark black hair.

The man looked at us and smiling started talking at us. “Hi, soon to be granddaughters, is everything well? Have you had trouble sleeping? ”

Well that explained how Aunt Robin got us in such a prestigious school at such a fast speed, her father was the principal of our school! Talk about a surprise!

Lexi talked for me. “Granddaughters?”

“Yes, granddaughters. Didn’t Robbie tell you, you were going to my school? ”

I answered. “She just told us that you were the only one that could take us at such short notice. I didn’t expect the reason to be that we are becoming family. ”

“Girls, we already are family. Your existence has allowed me talk to Robin for the first time in years! That is enough for me to consider you family. I upset her a few years ago when I said that she was an egoist for not wanting to marry a man to continue our family. Dumb comment I know, but I was dumb back then and I hadn’t really accepted her liking girls. What I said upset her so much that she ran away with your aunt as soon as they both got their doctorates. I didn’t see her for three years… and time made me realize that my daughter could still continue our family line even if she married a woman and that her liking girls really wasn't something I should meddle in. I wanted to talk to her but she never answered my calls. When Robbie called me to tell about your situation, I was upset about what happened to you and yet relieved that she wasn’t going to ignore me all her life. ”

Well, that was an interesting story. I wasn’t the only one who had a bad coming out story in my new family. Aunt Nora being shot at least had positive impacts for someone…

I started talking “ Mr. the principal…” I was interrupted.

“Grandpa, call me like that, we are family after all. I have been lacking a family for the last three years so I don’t really give a damn if anyone says that the way you address me or the way I address you is too informal. ”

“Well, grandpa we have talked with Aunt Robin about moving here… ” I was interrupted again.

“You have? How wonderful! What did she say? ”

Our grandpa didn’t really act his age or like his post required to…

I restarted talking before I lost myself into my thoughts “We might move here if Aunt Nora wants to… but we will have to wait until Aunt Nora is ready to be moved.”

“Have they found a house?”

“Not yet, we just started talking about this yesterday… ”

“Well next time Robbie calls, convince her to talk to me I might have an idea about where she might want to live… Oh and dear granddaughters have you thought about which club you might want to join? Due to your late arrival we had to impose you a schedule but you have the chance to join any club in our community, our clubs being communal you might make friends in other schools.”

I talked. “Is there a writing club or a literature club?”

Grandpa was surprised by my question and his expression changed from his goofy one to a more serious one. “Yes, there is a club that corresponds to what you search, but I wouldn’t recommend it…There's been some very serious rumours about them.”

I looked at him curiously “What kind of rumours?”

“The kind of rumours that would make me extremely worried if you were to join that club.”

“Grandpa, can you stop talking in riddles, please? What really happens in that club?” Asked Lexi.

“They are innocent until proven guilty so I shouldn’t spread any rumours about them until their investigation is over.”

I gave him a look. Investigation, innocent… something messed up is happening there … I will have to make an investigation of my own. Maybe Misha and the rest of the girls will know something about the rumours.

Grandpa expression changed from the serious one of his latest interventions to what seemed to be his usual one. He then restarted talking. “Anyway, are you girls ready for the dance on Saturday?”

“Dance?” Lexi and I said at the same time.

“Every first Monday of the month, all the schools in our community organize together to make a dance were everybody dresses up like if we were in a high society party at the start of 20th century. Didn’t Robbie told you that? It’s in one of those parties she met Éleonora. ”

Aunt Robin kept a lot of details out of our conversations, a lot of them…
“She didn’t tell us a lot of things …”

“Ah … so she is as forgetful as always.... Do you have any friends to go shopping around for the dance?”

I thought about Misha, Ash, Brynhildr and Esmeralda. Would they be up for going shopping Friday afternoon? I answered grandpa: “Perhaps…”

“Well if you don’t find anyone, I am sure that Juliette, your grandma, would love to take you out shopping. By the way here’s your schedules.” Grandpa handed Lexi and I some papers and restarted talking “We have given you math, French, English, Spanish, physics, chemistry and history of the western civilization. You share all those classes, so I hope you like each other. The only class you don’t share is tennis. Because of Alex condition she is going to use that period to see our school therapist.”

So he did know about my status, weird, I would have thought he would have made it more obvious that he knew about my status, I mean hearing about what he did to Aunt Robin.

“Go to class now girls, your teacher might be annoyed if I keep you around any longer.”

We headed in direction to French class.

Lexi and I started talking.

“Alex, do you still want to check the literary club after school?”

Honestly, yes but if I only said that mama bear Lexi wouldn’t let me. I had to include her that was for sure. “Only, if you come with me.”

“We will check it out then, I am also curious about it... Do you think the girls in our dorm will be down to go shopping with us for ball gowns?”

“I don’t know, but I hope that yes.”

We made it to French class and knocked on the door.

A tall black man opened the door. “Oh, you must be the cannadienes. I am monsieur Jean Maka, Professeur de Français .Entrez, entrez, we were waiting for you.”

French class was nice we didn’t have time to make new friends, but Mr.Maka was nice and had a very nice smile. We were to read “Le Dernier jour d’un condamné” by Victor Hugo by next Thursday but the book was only 80 pages long and multiple copies of it were available at the library of our neighboring University.

We had English next and we were in the same class as Misha. We didn’t really have much time to so we just decided to wait until lunch.

Lunch came and Lexi and I had the first look at where Lunch happened in this school. Misha, Bryn and Esme appeared and led us to a restaurant at the top of the school, it had a view on the lake and the surrounding places of learning. We all sat in a table and ordered our food.

Lexi started the discussion. “I have been wondering… How much does it cost to go to this school normally? All of this is lavish, way too lavish for it to be a few thousand bucks.”

Esmeralda answered “You don’t know? It’s about 150k a year.”

“In what, American Dollars?”

“No, In euros!”

I choked on my drink. “That much! Well I will have to thank grandpa and aunt robin then, because we would have never been able to go in this institution if it wasn't for them.”

“Grandpa?” Commented Misha.

Lexi answered “Our soon-to-be grandpa is the principal.”

It was the other girls turn to suffocate on their drinks. Brynhildr talked this time. “Monsieur Alphonse Lafronde is going to be your grandpa? Lucky you! He is so goofy and kind-hearted.”

Not towards his daughter… I thought.

I changed subjects “Grandpa told us that suspicious thing happened in the literary club, do you know anything about that?”

All girls looked confused “The literature club? “Said Misha.

“Yes.” Lexi answered

“I haven’t heard anything about them… they are mostly comprised of people who aren’t in our school, so we don’t really hear about them. I mean, I have had glances at them in the community center where all the club activities are done but they didn’t look that bad. I will even say they look quite good, really good even…”

“Misha! Stop dreaming about Magnus!” Said Esme.

“Magnus? Who is Magnus?” My sister and I said at the same time.

Brynhildr answered. “He is the most handsome guy at the boys school the other side of the Lake. He has a twin sister named Kristina who goes to La Nova Academia and they both live with their parents on the lakefront. His dad owns a bank or something. ”

“He is so dreamy…” Misha said.

“Yes and so mysterious… ”Said Esmeralda “He has been going to this academy since he was six yet nobody knows that much about him… If the both of you ever befriend him while going to his school could you present us to him?”

“Yes, of course” Said my twin.

“By the way,” She added “We have just learned about the dance Saturday. Tomorrow, being Friday do you want to go shopping with us?”

The other girls gave each other a Look and answered at the same time “Yes, of course!”

“Is Ash invited too?” Asked Misha.

Lexi and I gave each other a look similar to the one the girls gave each other and we answered at the same time. “Yes, of course!”

We all started laughing at the same time. We laughed so much in fact it was as if a troop of hyenas had been dropped off in the middle of the restaurant.

“How was your first morning at school? “Asked me Misha as our laughter quieted down.

“Fine, but there was this blond girl who didn’t stop giving me nasty looks in English.”

“Did she have green eyes and long bangs?”

“Yes, why?”

“That was Simone don’t worry about her, she simply doesn’t like it when people take the attention out of her.”

“Has she ever you know…Bullied anyone?”

“Simone, mmm … I wouldn’t call it bullying but her gang likes to gossip and badmouth people. Don’t worry about her though, she is not going to say anything about you, she is in my cheerleading club and my eldest step-sister, Siobhan, is the coach.So if she tries anything with you and she is going to be out immediately. Her little brain wouldn’t be able to stand not been in the cheerleading squad so she is just going to let you go. ”

We finished our meals and went back to our classes.

The afternoon was really a pain in the butt, we had one hour and a half of physics and another of math. I hated those subjects even though I could handle both of them quite well. Maybe I was so annoyed because I was excited about discovering what the hell was wrong with the literary club.

Today was kind of nice. All the classes were really interesting and the fact that there were only fifteen students for each teacher would probably mean that I would get more attention from the teachers. Although I hadn’t really spoken to anyone I hadn’t met yesterday, I had quite a good impression of most of my new classmates.

Now, I had to deal with my reckless sister and her probably dangerous quest for the truth. As soon as the bell rang the end of the day we entered the communal centre were club activities were held. We asked the receptionist for the room we were searching and a few minutes afterwards we were standing in front of the club’s door.

We knocked on the door and it opened.

I was awe struck. Both twins were like the girls had just said, as the door opened it was as if I had caught sight of two angels.We were greeted at the door by 2 blond twins, a boy and girl, both slightly taller than Lexi at approximately 1,9 meters. They were both extremely attractive to the point were my knees were weakening just from their sight. The guy who I assumed was Magnus looked like a rugged lumberjack with a 5’o clock shadow and his short curly hair. The girl had everything of a Nordic beauty with her beautiful long braided her. Damn… These people had done something wrong? I could hardly believe it and so did my sister who had stupid smile on her face.

Two pairs of blue eyes stared at me, the girl started talking. “Well, hello ladies. May I ask what are you doing here?”

She had a voice that went with her appearance, it was soothing, really soothing I could hardly pronounce the words that came next. “W…w…we are new at our school and clubs being obligatory we thought about joining y…y…yours.”

“New? At this time of the year?” Said the boy with a voice that oozed testosterone.

Damn, last week I would have thought of him as a threat but right now I couldn’t help but be under his charm and his sister’s too.

Lexi answered for the both of us. “Our Grandpa is the principal of Louise Larivière and our aunt not feeling very well we were moved here.”

At the mention of our grandpa being a principal they both crisped a little but I didn’t think a lot it. I mean everyone would have had the same reaction, right? I hoped that yes, because honestly right now unless what they had done was murder or rape I couldn’t care less about whatever the investigation was about.

I don’t curse often but, damn, Magnus was attractive! I think that our investigation might have been postponed to oblivion because Alex seemed to be thinking the same thing as I and I was thinking that if he had a skeleton in closet I didn’t want to find it.

Kristina made us sit in a couch near a coffee table while Magnus slammed shut the door to a cupboard and locked it with a key.

I started talking with female twin. “Is it only you in this club?”

“No, we have other members, but they are all boys and they are probably down the hall watching a TV show or something… They always do on Tuesday afternoon.”

Magnus sat right beside of me. I was flustered and I could see myself become as red as Alex who by now looked like she was about to pass out any minute now. My little (secretly older) sister seemed thrilled to be near Kristina.

“So if I heard well, you want to join our club?”

“Yes!” We both said nervously.

“I’m going to need you to do something then…hum…”

“I am Lexi and she is Alex.” I said while pointing to my sister who really looked like she was about to pass out.

“Well then, Lexi, I would like you to go to the dance with me while my sister goes with your sister. Would that be fine? ”

Was that even a question?

“Yes, of course!” I said with Alex joining me mid-sentence.

We continued chitchatting with the twins until supper time came. Not only were they good looking but they were also very interesting and very smart. Our infatuation, or at least my infatuation had calmed a little and I started realising that if they had something to hide they wouldn’t have any problem doing it, because not only people wouldn’t doubt anything they said, they might also be able to charm their way out of most situations. They were also rich, which didn’t mean much in this school, but that might have helped them in other situations. Magnus and Kristina were scary, very scary actually. I talked about them with Lexi as we were walking back to the dorms.

“Stupid hormones! I couldn’t interrogate any of them because they were so… just so… ” I said.

“Attractive.” Offered Lexi.

“Yes, attractive, way too attractive, it shouldn’t be legal to be as dreamy as them.”

Lexi and I started laughing.

“Seriously tough, they are scary, I think that they might get away with a ton of things. Did you see how they didn’t essentially distracted us from investigation? If they did that to other students they might be able to reduce to silence witnesses of their possible crimes. That or bribe them with money of their parents,” I said in a very serious tone.

“The day after tomorrow we will be able to investigate them, we just have to be less hormonal on Saturday.”

“Talking about hormones, tomorrow I have to see the school nurse about blockers.”

”Oh, I completely forgot about that.”

“So did I. (Or at least I could hope to truly forget about it one day) ”

We entered the dorm and I promptly went straight to the bathroom were I decided to take the longest and comfiest bubble bath in my life. I had never really had any kind of comfort so being in a rich kids school was kind of the perfect moment to enjoy life. Now, because I don’t like being a bother I Okayed it with Ash, Misha and Lexi first of course.

After my bath, the other girls took some quick showers and we proceeded downstairs for supper.

As we all sat Lexi and I started telling my friends about what had happened with the twins.

“We have dates for the dance!” Screamed Lexi.
“Really, who?” Asked Esmeralda.

“The twins,” I answered. “I’m going with Kristina and Lexi is going with Magnus”

The girls’ eyes popped so much it looked like they were going to go out of their orbits.

Aishling was the first to get out of the stupor and ask us about it. “You scored the Af Eldur twins! Girls you are incredible. No one has managed to have date with any of them and then you newcomers come and snatch both of them. Can you show me your tricks mistresses?” Aishling faked going on one knee on the last sentence and we all laughed.

“What! The Alexis are incredible, you have to admit,” Aishling responded to our collective answer.

“Yes, they are.” Said Misha probably happy that I had forgiven her.

“Can we stop praising the twins and talk about the shopping we are going to do tomorrow instead,” Said Bryn in a serious tone.

All of our expressions dropped.

“They are not going to have more dates with the Af Eldur’s if we don’t find appropriate dresses and accessories for them,” Bryn continued in a more happy tone.

We all giggled making Misha choke on her juice. She turned out alright be we just giggled more and more.

We discussed about other school related stuff and then my roommates and I went back to my room.

“Auntie Robin why you didn’t tell us that we were going to your father’s school,” I scolded her as soon as she answered her cellphone.

“Sorry about that sweetie, but I don’t really like talking about my dad. He is lovable sure, but man if he can’t be a dick sometimes. He says serious stuff in such an immature tone that you can’t help but be angry.”

I understood part of that seeing how he acted first hand.

“Auntie you didn’t only forget about that you forgot to tell us about the dance to.”

“Dance? Oh you mean the monthly dance. Oh my god, how could I forget that I met Nora in one of those. ”

“So we have been told.”

“You talked with dad?”
“He called me and Lexi in his office this morning to talk,” I answered back.

“Please tell me he wasn’t annoying.”

“Not really, but he did say something that kind of lead us to have dates for the dance.”

I didn’t really want to talk about the investigation because unless something really important happened she didn’t have to know about it, I mean her wife was in the hospital we didn’t have to make her worry about us too, that clearly wouldn’t be right.

“You have dates! How are they called?”

“Kristina and Magnus Af Eldur.”

“You mean THE Af Eldurs, their father owns want of the richest bank in all of Scandinavia. Both good catches, right?.”

“Yes they are Auntie Robbie, they are both so cute, especially Kristina.”

“Good, I am happy that you are enjoying yourselves, I have good news on my side of the Ocean too. Nora has woken up. She still isn’t ready to talk, but the doctors says that she might in the following days. ”

I was so happy I couldn’t help but to tell that to Lexi. “Aunt Éleonora has woken up, Lexi.”

“She has! Oh my god, that is so wonderful, can I please talk to auntie please.”

“Oh sure you can, I already told her about everything we had to tell her though.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Said Lexi.

I gave her the phone and she started talking with auntie.

Everything from my night to Friday’s school day was royally boring so I’ m going to spare you details. The important thing was that I and five of my friends were going to go shopping and that because we all had authorizations we were all going to spend the night in a hotel in Geneva. We decided to go there even if Switzerland is crazy expensive because Bryn knows a place with the most gorgeous dresses.

As soon as we arrived in Geneva the first thing we did was check in. At lunch Brynhildr had managed to book us room because of her father’s name. We had 2 rooms, one for Misha, Ash, Lexi and I and the other for Bryn and Esme. As soon as we unpacked our stuff we all changed from our uniforms and readied ourselves to go on an extremely expensive shopping spree. Now, Auntie Robin had put money for us in our accounts so we decided to go to the bank to take some money out.

After the trip to the bank we went to the shop that Bryn talked so much about. We walked and walked in the Swiss streets and we couldn’t find the shop. Or at least that was until we saw a column of fire and firefighters running around and finally an Italian looking man mopping on the sidewalk looking directly at Bryn’s eyes with a very sad look in his eyes.