“Mommy, what’s morning sickness feel like?” Asked Mia, her innocent question so telling of the curiosity—and the boldness to express that curiosity—that I so fondly smiled every single time she looked to me for answers.
“Like snakes slithering up your throat and out your mouth!” Giselle cackled, shaking the shipshod kitchen table—for theatrical effect—as she made a ghoulish face at her gullible twin sister.
Sipping from my morning tea, I placed the ‘World’s Best Mother’ mug down on the table and waited for the liquid to slide down my throat, “Don’t tease your sister, Gigi—it’s like someone installed a flamethrower in your stomach and is shooting it up your throat and out your mouth.”
Mia blanched worse at my description, a lock of her dark hair unceremoniously dropping across her face and partially into her mouth. The poor thing managed to spit it out without even changing facial expressions.
God, it was tough waking up pregnant at thirty-nine. I had aches in places I didn’t even know existed when I was still twenty-nine, let alone now that I was approaching the threshold of forty. The clanking of a wooden ladle and pan over a hot stove bore into my ears from behind as Michael slaved away at making khagineh in just the way he liked to say that it should be made. Turning around in the plush pink robe the girls had so wisely told their daddy to buy me for my birthday exactly three hundred and sixty-five days prior, I indulged in a gaze at the former jock’s hulking form and more importantly, his graying hair. The tide of time had only endeared me more to my husband’s physical features, so much so that it was a trial from the gods to not want to sneak up behind him, press my heavy breasts against his broad back and lead him back to the bedroom, but unfortunately, the kids needed to eat.
All three of them.
“I can’t wait to see the new fox exhibit at the zoo. I hear they brought in a second winter fox!”
“I wanna see them playing! I hope they aren’t just holed up in that cave all day.”
“It’s summer, they might be. Well, if the fox-eating wolf doesn’t get to them first!”
“Fox-eating wolf?”
“Yeah, it eats foxes and then dances around, drenched in their blood. You know, the wolf exhibit really isn’t that well-guarded—”
“—Gigi, stop torturing your sister.”
Gigi’s little snicker complimented Mia’s drained—shriveled, even—face beautifully. Unfortunately, mothers couldn’t pick one child over the other, even if one of them was an exceptional shitposter.
***
August 23, 2023:
It was wild how the first week of school was already just a week away. The Back to School section in both of the brick-and-mortar stores in town were picked clean. Browsing the second of the two was proving depressing, what with the high ceilings, hard, gray concrete floors, and awful lighting. It was an international chain store and stood in fierce competition to the local, Woods family-owned store on the other side of town. People—namely, my uncle Allistair—had protested its opening twenty years earlier, but it had nevertheless opened and mucked up the local economy, just as feared, thanks to being at the very edge of town, where it could serve the bustling crossroads of five different growing cities, all five of which saw a boom as a result of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq bringing troops and their families up to the local military base. It was Hell.
Making it out of the seasonal section with but a few packs of wide-ruled paper and some spiral notebooks that had seen better days, I aimlessly circled the cesspool of retail Hell for a little exercise—I needed to burn off dinner from last night.
The sweltering summer heat had even driven me to dress down to a simple tank top and flowy pink skirt. My sandals were a cute pink, too, of course.
I checked my phone to make sure that I wasn’t going to be late to get home to Michael for dinner and was reminded yet again of the date: It was my cousin’s son’s birthday. Richie and I had been so close growing up and now he was eighteen, just two days before I was turning twenty-nine.
God, time moved quickly.
Richie—and his likely boyfriend, Jae—were going to be seniors this year. Being that I was one of the three teachers at the school that taught English 7 and English 8, the hapless duo were yet again students of mine. It was nice being able to keep a close eye on the poor boy, even if I could never allow myself to be his family member again. I could almost imagine that the melancholy of not bridging this gap between us by outing myself to him and Cousin Penny was a lot like what it felt like to be a big sister estranged from her younger sibling.
I had abandoned so very much to become Candace Queen, even if it had been the right thing to do at the time. Even now, it remained the wiser option to simply let the sleeping dog lie.
Long ago, a formerly dear friend of mine had worked for another location in this chain, and stepping inside of one again—even if just to pick up some supplies for the early school year—was not so easy.
I often wondered what had become of the free-spirited Ashley Delgado. What did a nomadic soul like hers do, now that she was thirty? I hadn’t contacted her since ending our friendship, nor had I asked Michael if he was still close to her. It was difficult to put into words the shame I felt for my behavior and the way I had driven all those women out of my life, just to self-harm—just to feel like I had some semblance of control and power.
I stopped my cart in front of the toy section, which was to the right of the electronics section when faced from the front of the store, and stared aimlessly. The image of Ashley stocking or zoning aisles similar to these ten years ago came back to my eyes as if no time had passed at all.
It was depressing.
With a soft shake of my head—my golden ponytail swinging side-to-side—I pushed my cart forward, before immediately crashing into something in front of me, “What the hell?” Peering around, I found a large, child-size car suited for seating two. It was blue and even had the branding of a real motor company on it, which seemed insidious, suffice it to say.
“Oh, sorry about that!”
A cheery young mother-to-be waddled over to the sight of the collision. Clad in an employee vest, the woman—hair gold, but frazzled and tied back in a messy bun—attempted to push the beast of a battery-powered toy truck aside with her leg, “Sorry about that, my co-worker was supposed to come over and move this thing out of the aisle!”
“Oh, no problem,” I was not unaware of the weakness and hollowness in my voice, “You shouldn’t be pushing that thing, either!”
The woman rubbed her tummy and smiled back with a haggard look to her, “I’m supposed to be in the fitting room until I get back from maternity leave, but you know how it is.”
So many cis women assumed that I was one of them—even at six-feet-three-inches tall—that I’d long since taken to naturally replying, “Oh, for sure.”
My laugh was pitiable.
“You know, I could probably get them to knock a few bucks off of this thing,” she tapped the wheel with her foot, “Given all the hassle. You got kids, right?”
I wanted to vomit right then and there, “Oh, uh—” my eyes shifted wildly all over, before settling down at the blue trunk.
So, I lied: “My son should be old enough for one of these, now that I think about it.”
“Oh?” The woman whose nametag read ‘Bree’ replied, “I have one, too! I know how much he wishes he had one of these, but over three hundred bucks is just too rich for my blood, you know?”
LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE—
I ignored the turn of phrase and just nodded, evenly, “Aaron’s fifth birthday is gonna be coming up soon, so this might actually be a nice present.”
LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE—
“Lemme go track down my dumbass co-worker and have him load this thing up on a L-cart for ya then, yeah?”
LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE—
“Yeah, sure thing!”
The haggard woman unceremoniously waddled off toward electronics, giving me the perfect opportunity to abandon my cart full of school supplies, speed walk to the garden section, and then exit to the parking lot from there.
I sobbed myself into several near-miss accidents on the drive home.
***
August 23, 2023:
“How was shopping earlier?” Michael asked as he jiggled his joystick all over.
“Boring,” I fibbed, jiggling my joystick while mashing my buttons.
With a single leap up, I managed to blast Michael’s character in the face and be christened the winner by the glowing screen of the arcade cabinet before us.
“Damn! How do you do it?”
“Years of being a shut-in.”
Michael and I disengaged from the cabinet and began wandering around the dimly lit arcade, looking for something else to preoccupy our time. Eventually, I let my body stop in front of a Skee-Ball machine, fed it some coins, and began skee-ing some balls. My underhanded tosses were so awkward now, with a chest my size.
I managed to hit the center hole on the first try.
“Not bad!” Michael said in that faux-unimpressed tone meant to trick me into thinking he was above even successful feats.
“Oh hush, you!” I had to play along. I had to keep Michael from hurting. Such a kind man did not deserve to be stuck with me.
It was easy to just let the bright lights and gawd awful loud machines distract me from the embarrassing display I had made that morning. I wasn’t going to be able to show my face at that store for years, if ever.
Aww, well, they say it was better for the economy to shop at local stores, anyway.
Too bad the local department store was owned by the Woods family.
With my usual wit and charm, I led Michael over to the crane machines to prove his manhood and win me a prize figure of some anime girl with giant bazongas.
***
“Mommy, why are we taking the back way to the zoo?”
“Because if we don’t, we’ll get caught up in an accident on the highway and burn to death. You ever want to know what it’s like to be melted alive at five thousand degrees celsius?”
“Giselle, what did I tell you about teasing your sister?”
“Not to do it around you and Daddy?”
“It’s too early in the morning to put up with your smart mouth, young lady!”
“It’s already nine twenty-three, Mommy!”
“You know, they say a smart girl gets her brains from her mother—”
Turning to Michael—eyes glued to the road like his life depended on it—I groaned, “You want to take this one?”
“Girls, please understand that your mother is just trying to make sure nobody’s feelings get hurt,” Mom would have called that a ‘limp wristed response’, but I had hardly married Michael because I had thought him to be a ‘man’s man’.
The massive muscles he sported were definitely a plus, that being said.
“Wait, what did I do wrong? Gigi’s the one being a smart a—”
“—Alec—”
“—Alec!”
“Just please don’t argue with one another, Mommy’s got a headache.”
“Were you up drinking again last night?”
I turned to Michael, exasperation painting my face not too differently than he had the time I had explained to him how much I spent on makeup when visiting New York with Beth.
“Hey, she isn’t getting it from me!”
Gigi had nothing but giggles to send up to the front seats at her father’s line of defense.
“Daddy, did you know that elephants flap their ears when they’re happy?”
“That’s so interesting, Mia!”
It took all of my power to stop myself from not saying something inappropriate about what Michael flapped when he was happy.
It was tough, being a mother.
***
August 25, 2023:
The fact that the ceiling of the bedroom of my apartment needed cleaning was the first thought that entered my mind after I emptied the contents of my stomach into my bathroom toilet was indicative of the kind of life I lived now. Flushing the toilet, I rinsed out my mouth at the sink and then spat, before catching sight of myself in the mirror once again: Today was my twenty-ninth birthday. My hair was a mess and my face looked like I had just suddenly woken up and ran to my bathroom to vomit.
Because I had.
My damned right hand moved down to my belly again, empty of food and baby.
I had dreamed one of those dreams, again. Mischievous and gullible—well, innocent—twin daughters. A son growing within me. Michael, always there by my side, supporting me, even when I would never deserve the gaze of his kind eyes—especially that I would never deserve the gaze of his kind eyes.
I felt for our son again, despite myself.
He was not where he was supposed to be—the place I had grown to expect him to be, once or twice a week, for the past two years.
It was always some scene, like a memory from some other Candace, in some other world. Some other life.
Living the mundane life of a mother of three—knowing her life so vividly and intimately: When Candace Summers was not playing stay-at-home-mom, she was casting herself as the head of the PTA at the girls’ school. I could remember countless meetings. Countless field trips. Countless compliments from the other parents and school staff. Well-wishes for the baby.
I envied her and I loathed myself for failing to match up to her.
This was my curse for being such a terrible freak to those I loved: I was my own idol—
“—Happy Birthday, your majesty!!” The oh-so-familiar voice, again. Michael chose not to even spare me a moment to react before scooping me up and lifting me straight up, vertically.
“Michael!” I screamed between giggles, “S-stop!!”
Michael slowly backed us out of the lavatory and slowly penguin-walked like a kaiju back to the bedroom, then dropped me above our queen-sized bed.
I squealed like a little girl.
“Gotcha, Candi!” Swooping down, Michael swept my golden locks out of the way and began kissing the back of my neck, in that loving way all girls dream of their boyfriends doing.
“S-stahp, Mikey!” The running giggle track playing from my mouth did not convince Michael of my seriousness.
Oh, well.
Slipping a naughty hand up my pink nightie, Michael pinched at my right nipple, cautiously at first—then without abandon after I moaned so squeakily.
I needed the distraction, anyway.
“F-fuck, Mikey!”
“I'm pretty sure,” a peck here, a peck there, “I'm the one who does the fuckin’ in this relationship.”
“B-brat,” I huffed, turning around and nipping my lover on his bottom lip.
The sight of him licking up his own blood only made me wetter.
“Gawd, I can't wait to feel you in my pussy!”
“I can’t wait to feel me in your pussy!”
A light slap on his pec, “You meathead!” It jiggled.
Michael's shit-eating grin only made him more irresistible, “What can I say, I enjoy some young, blonde tail!”
“Omigawd, you geezer, stop talking like an old man!”
“I happen to know an asshole that tightens when I talk like an old man! So how about you report to my office after class for a little reprimand, Miss Queen?”
Patience became foreign to me. With a single swift swing of my right arm, my panties we off and slamming onto the wall on the other side of the bed, “Hurry up and fuck my ass, Coach Dunderhead!”
As he fumbled with a condom, “Now who's talking like an old person?”
“I'm twenty-nine now, I'm practically an old crone!”
“Oh, brother. You still get carded, Candi!” Stretched and snapped on!
“They’re just trying to memorize my name and address. With tits like these, there's no way I look like a teenager.”
Docking in the shuttle bay, “Okay, I know the teacher-student roleplay is hot and all, but I really don't want to think of you as a teenager right now.”
“Right, right—hurry up and pound my ass, cherry boy.”
“Ugh, you bitch!”
It was moments like this where I could forget about the real ways that I harmed Michael and lose myself to all the things I knew would turn him on.
***
“Mommy, why is Daddy waiting in line?”
“The website is down, so Daddy wasn’t able to renew our season pass to the zoo before we decided to come today.”
“Oh, that’s unfortunate.”
There was a certain novelty to listening to your nine year old daughter not only be capable of using the word ‘unfortunate’ like an adult would, but also be able to enunciate it clearly. I had started both Mia and her sister on reading as soon as I could and it was in little moments like this—where we were forced to wait for the world around us to catch up—that I got to enjoy the fruits of my labor.
Perhaps it was vain of me, but how many other mothers had nine year old daughters already reading at a ninth grade level, huh?
Looks like that teaching degree paid off after all, didn't it, Mother?!
Question sufficiently answered, Mia ran off to join her sister in practicing walking on her hands, leaving me and my little passenger to scroll my phone on the cold iron of the bench outside the entrance of the zoo.
Checking Insta, I scrolled past photos from Beth of her and Megumi enjoying their vacation in Hawaii. The benefits of careers in law and tech clearly meant Sex on the Beach—and implied sex on a Hawaiian beach, too.
Further scrolling brought me to a new post from Hinata: she and Alyssa were experimenting with new looks for their makeup before their move to college. I hadn’t seen those girls in what felt like forever, but I was glad to see Hinata coming out of her shell more. It was amazing how much just four years of that hormone replacement therapy stuff had reinvented that shy kid into such an expressive girl.
Oops, maybe scroll past that photo of them kissing as fast as possible, though.
Michael eventually returned, in his tight pink polo and—gawd, what was it with men and cargo shorts? “Alright ladies, we’re officially members of the joint Zoo-Trek group! Again!!”
“Yay,” I deadpanned, already planning to get Michael to watch the kids while I went to the lady’s room to wipe off some boob sweat.
The tiny terrors immediately dropped back to their feet, ran towards their daddy, and began pulling him back to the entrance so that they could run amuck.
Michael’s weak wave and look of surrender as he turned back to me—while his left arm was being dragged by the girls—was like sliding into a comfortably cool bed after a hard day.
Struggling to my feet—while hiding the struggle as much as I could—I grinned at Michael with all the amusement for his predicament that filled my heart, picked my purse off of the bench, and waddled slowly behind them until I reached the restrooms just past the entrance.
God, you always made me need to pee, you little bugger.
***
August 30, 2023:
Another one of those fucking dreams. These days, most times I had one, I was no longer snapping awake and leaping out of bed, like in the early days. The entire saga had become one of just waking up in bed, my belly flat, and no twin daughters jumping on our bed while Michael and I tried foolishly to sleep in.
As much as I loved Michael, our bed somehow felt emptier now than it had when we had broken—when I had broken up with him.
Michael slept on his side, having turned in his sleep sometime during the night. I could hear how gentle his breathing was.
Lady Luck had blessed us with an affordable enough apartment that was close to work. It meant more time to sleep in the morning.
More time to watch him resting peacefully.
Slipping out of bed as quietly as possible, I walked to the cramped kitchen of our cramped apartment and stared into the void: our refrigerator that looked like it remembered the Presidential election of 1992.
There were more healthy foods than you could throw at a gym nut, but there was no bringing myself to making breakfast. Waking up from and leaving behind last night's dream was a prospect that did not engender excitement for the day.
It was a shit way to start the first day of school.
Closing the fridge, I sighed and decided to get a head start on my shower.
I had to pee, anyway.
***
August 30, 2023:
It was always a little awkward traversing the busy halls of Gravelly Lake High before the first period of the day—especially on the first day of school. Returning students—most of them, anyway—recognized me right away and still looked at me like they were in disbelief that I existed.
Similarly, seeing how some of them had changed over the summer was always surreal. I often wondered if my teachers had felt the same surreal disconnect seeing me again after three months away?
Less boyish and more mannish.
Hard to believe some of them were now my colleagues and were lost for a clue that we were once ‘teacher and student’.
Slipping past a group of cheerleaders as they complimented each other’s looks, I finally made it back to my classroom door from my brief run to the faculty room and spotted a familiar mane of golden hair passing by. My carefully trained body reached to crack the door to my classroom open a little further so that I could slip around it and onto that particular battlefield, but my mouth had other ideas: “Oh, hi there, Richie! And Jae!!’
The tall, lanky boy—golden Woods family locks now reaching down to the bottom of his back—turned like a meerkat at the sound of my familiar voice. Glitter-accented eyes suddenly lifting even higher, the boy broke into his signature goofy smile—accented by an almost obvious layer of lip balm—and waved back, “Oh, hiya Miss Queen!”
Richard had worn makeup and feminine accessories and clothing to school before, but there was something strikingly different this year that I could not quite put my finger on. What exactly had changed about the lively young man since I had last seen him mid-June?
Was it just the clearer skin?
Was it that the pristinely-kept pink hoodie and the black jeans he was wearing were so clearly freshly purchased from the woman’s section? Was it that his walk was less of a shuffle and more of a strut?
“Rich, we gotta get to class,” Jae interjected, pulling my once cousin’s son away by the wrist, “Sorry Miss Queen, we’ll see you tomorrow!”
“No problem Jae, I’ll see you boys first thing in the morning!”
Watching the young couple’s apparent, striking camaraderie was a terrible way to avoid fondly fantasizing about a world where I could have openly had a boyfriend in high school. I wondered if those goobers were finally out yet? Those two were always getting bullied for appearances, anyway, so if they were dating they might as well just make it official.
Not that I could really say anything that would keep them from getting into brawls at school, anyway. Richie was a world—a life—unrelated to mine, now. There was nothing appropriate about my interest in their happiness. For me to be invested in it beyond what my position as a teacher allowed was straddling a fine line. Here I was, acting like a damned fag hag over two of my students, one with which I shared blood. It was shameful.
Even if keeping an eye on Richie and Jae was one of the few things keeping me sane.
As the final bell rang to start the first class of the day, I walked with my practiced grace into my classroom, sat my tumbler full of green tea on my desk, then addressed the class: “Good morning everyone, my name is Candace Queen, and I’ll be your English teacher this year.”
***
Exiting the restroom, I smoothed down my pink dress—specifically chosen to show off my big bump—and stopped to gain my bearings. By the time my excursion to the lady’s room had finished—gawd, the floor was always a wet mess in there—I finally caught up with Michael and the girls just as they were making their—excited—transition from the elephant exhibit—with its awkwardly angled looks at the zoo’s two elephants—to the tiger exhibit. The poor thing was separated from the world not merely by tall and all-encompacing glass, but behind a moat and several tall boulders, too. It was fascinating to peer across at the aging beast and realize that he was in his twilight now. He moved a little slower—a little stiffer—than I recalled he had twenty years ago.
I had been nineteen back then. At thirty-nine, it was arguable that as a woman, I too, was in something of a ‘twilight years’.
Funny how much women had in common with animals in this society of ours.
The tiger seemed unperturbed by the presence of at least two dozen excited children and adults gazing at him—and even trying to attract his attention from afar! I wondered what life was like for the tiger, long having slain his own mate and now cursed to live out his life in captivity with naught but his ever shifting rotation of caretakers and onlookers.
It must have been a lonely life—to be surrounded by all the humans you could ever want, yet never know any true companionship.
Mikey was damned lucky to have such a hot wife!
“Wow, he’s so beautiful!”
“He looks like Grandma Desiree when she isn’t smoking!”
“What do you mean, Gigi?”
“He looks like he’s irritated as f—”
“Giselle!”
“Sorry, Mommy!”
I rolled my eyes as Michael turned back briefly to shoot me the most bemused smile—the sort you wait until your kids aren’t looking to make.
Saddling up next to Michael as the girls ran around the crowd of other zoo-goers trying to get a better look at the tiger, I wrapped my arms around Michael’s right arm and rested on his unshakable form. Loud gasps broke through the murmurs as the tiger sauntered over to the beach and decided to go for a swim.
“Wow, he’s swimming!”
“I didn’t think cats liked getting wet!”
Michael turned to me and gave me the most deplorable shit-eating grin ever, the dirty perv. I refused to reward his dirty mind, but my lips had other plans right on that sunny late-August morning and elected to crack a grin.
My other lips would probably have other plans later at night, too.
“You know, tigers eat up to eighty-eight pounds of meat a day. You better not fall into his den, Mia!”
“What?! Is that true, Gigi?”
“Would I lie to you?”
Mia’s face discovered the same shade of white as a ghost at her older twin’s angel-faced counter.
With a sigh, “Gigi, don’t tease your sister like that.”
Gigi’s giggles and Mia’s pout were worth their weight in tiger food.
***
September 04, 2023:
Nurse May August fidgeted with the mint green top that she wore beneath her pristine white lab coat. Because she was a school nurse, I was never quite sure if my work bestie actually needed to wear a lab coat of all things, but it matched the look she was going for and offered her far more prestige than her position would typically be thought to have.
She also just looked really sexy in it. It boggled my mind how she had such terrible luck with men. Those losers she dated were way out of their league!
“You doin’ okay there, dear?” I asked as I refilled my tumbler with coffee.
“Yeah, I just got a date tonight, that's all. You?”
“On a school night? Wow, girl!” Ignoring her question seemed prudent when I had no way to properly explain why I looked like I was barely sleeping lately.
“We kept having to delay because his kid was sick.”
“Dating a DILF, are we?”
“I mean, kinda. Not sure he qualifies? Yeah, I guess, er—he’s got a ten year old and his ex-wife is out of town for work, too.”
“How old is this guy?”
“Thirty.”
“Going for the ol’ age gap relationship, I see?”
“He’s only seven years older than me, Candi.”
“True, I guess, yeah—just make sure he’s back at The Home in time for his Monday night Bingo game!”
“Pfft, this coming from the lady who just turned twenty-nine the other week?”
“Hey, the best thing about being a twenty-nine year old woman is that you turn twenty-nine every birthday for the rest of your life!”
“Now look who’s sounding like she lives in a home, Ms. Drescher!”
May and I shared a laugh as other teachers filtered into the faculty room for their brief respite before the beginning of the school day.
“God, I don’t think any of the kids here would even get that reference.”
“Is that what I am now? An old woman who references sitcom actresses from the 1990s?”
“I mean, I’m not as old as you and I get the reference. Kinda.”
“I guess, yeah. Were they still rerunning that show when you were a kid?”
“Sorta, yeah? I watched a lot of old television, which I guess is weird for a Gen Z girly, but it was all I really had to work with, for the most part.”
“Damn. I guess I hadn’t asked this before, but did you—?”
“Did I grow up poor? Basically. It was weird. I learned how to be resourceful, though. Of course, nothing can account for watching reruns of old sitcoms all day when you’re home sick from school, either.”
“True, true.”
“What about you? What did you grow up on—besides anime, I mean?”
“A mix of things, I guess. Even if I wasn’t watching anime, I was playing video games.”
Or reading and writing gender transformation stories where ‘boys’ turned into girls who got boyfriends.
“What, no cheerleading?”
“Aaah, well, you know how it is, sometimes girls don’t blossom until after high school.”
“Oh, I can imagine,” the sneaky slut mused, eyes wandering toward my chest for the briefest of moments, “I guess college was when you started looking like…well, uh, a model?”
Exactly what kind of model did you mean, dear Nurse August?
“In a manner of speaking,” I replied, saving myself with technicalities, “It’s when I started getting work done, if that’s what you mean. And realized I was, you know, bisexual.”
“Ooh, kiss any hot girls?” May asked as she transformed—right before my eyes—into a cheeky gremlin looking for some hot gossip.
“In a manner of speaking, a woman—” I slipped into a hushed down “—touched somewhere I’m not going to name outloud.”
May’s eyes shot wide open, but she reserved any vocal reactions for a later time.
“Anyway,” I smirked softly, “I ought to be getting back to my class before the kids filter in. I want to get a head start on one of the big projects the district wants us to cover for the seniors this year.”
“Good luck with that, Candi!” May giggled, amused by the endless grind of working in a high school.
Exiting the faculty room, I could not help but feel the confines of the closet more than ever. Everyday I lied to one of—well, my only—close friend—keeping the amazing woman eternally at arm’s distance—all because if she knew that I was trans, it would beckon more and more and more and more questions about me—
—and the horrible monster that I really was.
***
September 04, 2023:
It was always annoying having to type off an email to a ‘concerned’ parent first thing in the morning, but it was an unavoidable part of being a teacher.
Then again, if Marcie gave a fuck about her son, she would take some fucking time out of her day to come see me in person, like I kept suggesting that she do.
As students filed into the room—just seconds before the bell was set to go off—I furiously finished the email I was writing and sent it so that I could have a moment to compose myself before addressing the class.
The two fidgety, pale teenagers who stepped before my desk seemed unlikely to let that happen, though.
Looking away from my monitor, I stopped still in my tracks so as to not jolt and knock over the stacks of papers and folders rising high around my desk.
It was ill-advised to hit a deer caught in your headlights, after all.
“Why, hello there, Richie,” I smiled, hoping not to light whatever dynamite I was now faced with on fire. Richie and Jae—hand in hand—stood before me. Richie’s makeup—and fashion—had somehow found a way to reach a new level of femininity.
Then, I noticed his just barely visible breasts beneath his baggy graphic tee shirt.
Oh, fuck.
My cousin’s child had a death grip on their boyfriend’s hand: “Um, like, hi, I’m trans! Please call me Rachel and use she-slash-her pronouns, thanks? Bye!”
Before I could even register what had just happened, the hurricane of a girl twisted around and nearly sent Jae Jeong to the emergency room with a missing arm. Pulled forward from an awkward angle to follow Rachel’s lead, Jae made a quick mid-motion nod at me—which I was barely able to process—and then turned to face Rachel, only to find her stun locked in place.
Cousin Penelope’s kid was trans? Cousin Penelope’s daughter was trans?! I was not the lone trans woman in the family?!
The family that I was no longer a part of?! A ringing overlaid by a chorus of children’s laughter pierce through my brain like an assassin’s blade, pinning me against the whiteboard to my rear. As I laid limply against the whiteboard, I could only wonder what kind of cruel twist of fate was assigned to me? To deny me the opportunity to share this bond with Rachel was surely a cruelty for only the worst of sinners?
All thirty pairs of eyes in the class were on Rachel and Jae, and yet somehow, it felt like they were peering past them, at me—boring into my very soul.
The silence permeating throughout the room sent a chill up my spine for the briefest of moments. I was not outed! I was not the object of their judgement! I was just a cis woman to them, it was fine, it was okay! Everything was normal! I was normal! No student, nor no faculty would know that I was—
—Rachel’s panicked, desperate eyes met mine, begging for a lifeline.
I was a grown woman! I was a teacher! I was someone these kids relied on, especially when they had no other adult they could trust!!
I was not a helpless child anymore, I was more powerful than—
With all of my speed and the strength of legs honed in the gym, I stood from my desk, walked around my mess of a desk and passed Jae to tightly hug the girl I once spent endless hours playing video games with, babysitting when necessary, and bonding with. Taking the poor, scared Goth girl into my embrace, I remembered my suspicion of the girl being autistic too late to stop myself. I was met with no struggle from the girl who had once shirked any and all physical touch when we were growing up. This girl who had refused to look me in the eyes stood there for some desperate, strange woman to fulfill her need to mother a child, and in my heart of hearts, I loathed myself for my selfishness.
I needed to say it, as much for Rachel as for me, “I’m so proud of you, hon.” It was a whisper that made me feel as selfish and freakish as it made me feel healed.
Remembering that Rachel was still awkwardly holding onto her boyfriend, I broke my embrace with the girl and turned to face the class with unfailing confidence: “Class, you probably recognize your classmate whose last name is Penn—” the usual suspects already looked like they were thinking up ways to torture Rachel when I wasn’t looking, while the other openly queer students brimmed with excitement “—She would like to now be called Rachel, rather than the name you were all using for her the last couple of days, and I expect you all to respect her wishes and her identity. Have I made myself clear?”
The reaction from the class seemed generally like a collective shrug, thankfully. I raised my senses to their maximum, keeping an eye out for any troublemakers.
Nothing.
A timid voice from behind me spoke up: “Rachel and I—Rachel is—just, please try to get her name right.” The poor lad sounded like he was drowning, “Umm…thank you…”
Nevertheless, I understood better than anyone how hard it was to find a boyfriend—surely they were boyfriend-girlfriend, right?—who was willing to publicly support a transgender girlfriend. Jae had always been an inoffensive kid—even if he had gotten into fist fights with other students—but to see him put his neck out for a trans girl—let alone someone who was an artifact from a life that had eluded me—raised his profile in my book considerably.
Rachel and her boyfriend traded looks with one another and the expectant class, the form of her panic changing to suit the new paradigm, before finally sticking her hands in the back pockets of her jeans, then switching them to her hips, and then once and for all settling on crossing them under her chest, “Oh, um…yes! Hi! I’m Rachel! The girl! Me!”
Everything about this ball of energy of a young woman made so much more sense now! Rachel’s peculiarities, her love for the feminine, her awkwardness around others: it all added up to spell out a woman whose entire existence had to be filtered through the expectations of others, rather than her own perception of the world. It was a surreal stirring in my gut, seeing my younger self so much more clearly in her now.
Nevertheless, it was best to try to get the focus off of them: “Okay then, dear.” My eyes spoke as clearly as words.
Rachel and Jae took their usual seats in the back right hand corner of the classroom—Rachel in the row closest to the window—where I would routinely catch her staring off and out the window—and Jae in the row to her right. It was the perfect place for both of them to avoid the incessant stares of the rest of the classroom, after all.
And yet, the looks and the whispers from the rest of the class seemed to happen, anyway.
***
September 04, 2023:
Candace: OMG ur not goin to believe it, you-know-who came out as trans!
Mikey: listen, this can apply to a LOT of people, Candi
Candace: Well, her name is RACHEL now, so you do the math
Mikey: OH SHIT
Mikey: Good news?
Candace: yeah, she seems happier, even if she looks like a bunny rabbit about to about to DIE of a heart attack during my class
Mikey: I’ll keep an eye on her when she’s in my gym class, don’t worry
Candace: ofc
Mikey: Did her parents tell you?
Candace: Nothing from them, yet. They might not know?
Mikey: She's 18 now, right? Probably hasn’t told them yet
Candace: Yeah
Candace: Fuck, I hope they’re supportive.
Mikey: Might be a good time to, you know, come out?
Candace: I can’t just tell Penelope that I’m her COUSIN, MICHAEL.
Candace: Fuck, this is complicated.
Mikey: Well, whatever you decide to do, I’ve got your back.
Mikey: And Hers
Candace: I know you do, Mikey ♥
Putting my phone down, I groaned and tried to rub my eyes without ruining my makeup. The fear I felt was not merely for Rachel, but for—ashamedly—me. What if I was forced to come out? How was I going to face that girl? Or her parents? What if the school found out? What if I had to explain to people that I had once been—?
Before I knew it, my students were already filing into the classroom for sixth period, the desks nearly all occupied. As caught up in my own bullshit as I was, it was the sight of these young people before me that served as a reminder to the truth: they were all off living in their own worlds with their own troubles. The only eyes on me were looking to me for anything but my transness.
I had no reason to worry about them—I was not the source of the great problems in their lives at all.
At least, I hoped with all of my soul that I was not.
***
September 04, 2023:
Sandra ‘Sandy’ Sanderson had made principal relatively young—a primed twenty-nine years old and a full year before the typical minimum of eight years of education and experience—and for it had been punished with one battle after another: first assuming the role after her predecessor had passed away via a dangerous encounter with a bullet, and second when a news article from the local paper had named her when criticizing the large number of students from Gravelly Lake High that enlisted in the military at the turn of the century and post-9/11.
Born in 1971, Sandy came from a blue collar family. The only educated member of her family—a mother, a father who saw his factory co-workers more than his own children, and the youngest of a half dozen children—Sandy had opined to me on several occasions that she prided herself on her ability to persevere. Now, her once blazing red hair—as I had remembered it when I had been a student under her care—was a faded fire with little ash gray streaks unceremoniously highlighting it.
I wondered if I would someday be in her shoes, principal of the very high school I had once attended, as if that college education I had fought so hard for had little more power than to simply land me right back where I had started, anyway.
“You wanted to talk to me, Sandy?” I asked, poking my head into the bespectacled woman’s office not ten minutes after the school day’s end.
Sandy looked up from whatever email she was drafting on her laptop—a school-issued doodad that she had no doubt arm-twisted her way into getting brand-spanking-new as a little treat to herself—and smiled with her eyes through those thick, black-framed glasses of hers: “Oh, come on in, Candace!”
I shimmied in and took a seat in a—supposedly—cushioned chair before her desk and grimaced through the creaking of the chair’s weary wooden framing. “You said in your email this morning that you had something important to tell me?”
“Aah, yes, yes, sorry for the drama of it all, I just figured this was something I should communicate to you in person.”
“A parent complained about my breasts again, I imagine?”
“Believe it or not, I usually ignore those emails and phone calls now,” I appreciated her wry grin, herself in on the joke, given our shared familiarity with that kind of complaint, “No, no, it’s about tomorrow, actually.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Well, technically, for the day after. Tomorrow, you’ll notice a new student joining your fifth period class roster for Wednesday.”
“Oh! Good thing they’re joining so close to the beginning of the school year, then.”
“That’s what I thought, but there’s something else.”
“Something else?”
“You’re aware of Gen. Eric Wyatt-Mann, I presume?”
“The United States’ top general?” I took a beat, just to let the name settle, “Yes? Why?”
“His daughter is joining your fifth period English 7.”
“Wait, what? Why would—we’re just a rinky-dink small town public high school?!”
“We’re also the closest public high school to the military base the good general was just reassigned to. Hell if I know why he isn’t in the other Washington.”
“What the hell, though? Like, wouldn’t he want to send his daughter to a private school? A tutor?”
“It was her idea, apparently. I don’t know, she went to Gravelly Lake Middle School with a lot of the students we teach here, so I imagine she wanted to be close to her friends.”
“I suppose that makes sense, yeah,” still, the thought of being responsible for the daughter of the top general of the United States was the sort of thought that had me squirming something nervous in my seat, “So, she starts tomorrow?”
“That she does. She came in with her mother this morning to file her paperwork. The poor thing looks straight out of a Stepford movie.”
“Oh, yikes—that bad?”
“I mean, it’d be cute if she didn’t just feel off. Aah, well, I shouldn’t be speaking that way about a student.”
“Sandy, not to overstep my bounds as someone who reports to you—”
“—by all means—”
“—but you hardly seem the type to be that concerned about a snarky comment or two in private.”
Principal Sanderson merely sported a wry grin in reply, “Well, these private conversations between faculty need to have some levity,” the older woman enjoyed a sip from her silver tumbler before continuing, “She’ll probably get bullied—if not for Captain von Trap, then for being June Cleaver—so keep an eye out.”
“Aye-aye, Captain!” I sassed with a limp salute, “Good grief, the last thing I need is a bunch of soldiers coming to interrogate me.”
“I’m sure nothing will necessitate that, but it’s best to keep an eye available, you know?”
“No, no, yeah,” feeling a lull in the conversation, I stood from my chair, “Thanks for letting me know, Principal Sanderson.”
“No problem, Miss Queen,” Sandy’s bemused little smile at our formalities was terribly precocious, but I loved that about her, “By the way, Candace?”
“Yeah?” I replied, stopping mid-turn towards the door.
“You have your Master’s, right?”
“I do, yeah. Why?”
“Have you ever given any thought to school administration?”
My gut wondered if this was how a firefighter’s lungs felt, “Uh…sorry?”
“Hinkley’s retiring pretty soon. I could use a good head like yours.”
‘Good head’? Yeah, if you asked my boyfriend, “I mean, I’m not that experienced yet.”
“Pish-posh, you’re an excellent teacher and the kids love you. In this line of work, you’d make a hell of a vice-principal. Maybe even succeed me, someday?”
“Oh jeez, Sandy, I—”
“Now, don’t get ahead of yourself, Candi. I still have a good decade-plus left in me, I just figured you might enjoy the opportunity.”
“But, my kids—”
“—will eventually leave the nest. They always do, Candace. And perhaps before they do, they’ll appreciate a vice-principal they can trust should they still need her.”
My voice was fried: “When?”
“When do you need to give me an answer?”
“When is Harold retiring?”
“At the end of next year. Said he wants to spend some time with his kids before they’ve left the nest,” I almost loathed the twinkle in her eye at her own tie-back, “His wife’s a successful principal down in Olympia, so they’ve got the wiggle room for one of them to stop working—or knowing him, switch to part-time substitute teaching."
“Damn,” I paused in place, letting the weight of the situation settle. Was I really going to consider this? Harold Hinkley was a nice enough guy—maybe a bit stodgy for my tastes—so to think that he was leaving the school and his place needed to filled was—
—life just didn’t ever stop, did it? One day, I was going to be a childless woman, filling the void in her heart with other people’s children, yet doing so from the claustrophobic confines of a principal's office, rather than the frontlines of the classroom.
“I’ll think about it, Sandy.”
Sandy Sanderson had only a smile for her reply.
Nodding, I turned around and exited the office, ignored the secretary’s friendly smile, and sped walked back to my car to stare endlessly out the window as I drove home.
***
September 04, 2023:
Perhaps it was perverted of me to say, but I loved the taste of Michael’s cock in my mouth after a hard day at work. He would—of course—protest my immediate suckling right after we got home from the school, but on days such as today—when my stress ran at an all-time high—I enjoyed the additional layer of perversion of just sucking him straight off, without a shower to clean himself.
It was animalistic. Raw.
Gawd, I wanted it raw.
“Coming!”
And there was my signal—as if I hadn’t learned to tell when Michael was about to ejaculate without a confirmation from Cum Traffic Control years ago. Grabbing Michael by the base of his pulsating cock, I tightened my grip just a little and began jacking it even quicker than I could bob up-and-down while taking care to not scratch his massive dong with my acrylics.
Within mere moments, a fresh coat of frosted icing joined my day-old makeup and caked my face.
“Fuck, you’re good with your hands!”
“And you’re good with your cock,” I replied dryly while wiping away a drop of cum coming dangerously close to greeting my left eyeball.
“Stressful day?”
“That’s putting it lightly.”
“Yeah, I definitely get how you feel,” wobbly as he was post-cum, Michael leaned up off of the bed and began brushing my cum-stained bangs out of my eyes, “So, your cousin’s kid is…”
I took a beat to let Michael’s voice trail off, rather than immediately finish his sentence, deciding instead to savor the taste of his cum on my fingers: salty, “Yeah. I’m kind of shocked, but also not, you know?”
“I’ve known her for two years now, so I can’t say I’m too surprised. I mean, she’s basically just you, in a lot of ways.”
“Me if I was autistic, you mean?”
“I really don’t think it’s my place to make that kind of comment, Candace.”
“Such a gentleman, you.”
Michael’s reply was a mere rolling of his eyes, before getting off of the bed and walking to our bathroom to take a piss.
I accompanied the weary math scholar on his grand adventure, giving thanks to the universe for the sight of his ass while he tossed a golden rope down to his comrades in the great white bowl below, “I hope she gets the help she needs. I think she’s already on hormone replacement therapy?”
“It would explain how good her skin has been this year,” came Michael’s rumbling bass of a voice echoing from behind his backside, “So, her parents know, I imagine?”
“Yeah, they gotta, right? I mean, unless she’s ordering pills off the internet, I guess.”
“That’s a thing?”
“Yeah, some girls gotta do it depending on where they live. I never needed to, up here, but if she’s living off of her parents’ insurance, it would make sense that she would want to side-step that, you know? If she wasn’t ready to tell—Jesus, are you still pissing?”
“Big boy, big bladder!”
“Big boy indeed!”
“Did you just purr a dick joke?”
“I’m getting ready for when I’ve got a pussy to wrap around you, Mikey!”
“Jesus, I’m not even looking and I can hear the cheeky look on your face!”
“Babe?”
Michael immediately turned around, accidentally pissing a little on the floor and the side of the cabinet, “Shit! Fuck!!” Before turning back to me, “Candi?”
I couldn’t hide the pressure of the day anymore, worry painted my face, “I’m scared. For her.”
Michael shook himself off and immediately turned and stepped towards me and wrapped his muscled-carved arms around me, “It’s okay, Candi. I got you.”
I didn’t deserve him, and I never would.
***
“Mommy, Mommy! Can I ride on the camel’s back?”
“Oh gosh, I don’t really think that’s safe, Mia.”
“Yeah, camels are known to turn little girls into extra humps on their back, didn’t you know?”
“Giselle, please don’t torture your sister.”
“You know, Daddy, camels live between four and five decades—”
“—are you ignoring me?—”
“—which is, like, how old you are, right?”
“—Can I, Mommy?”
“—I’m not even forty yet, Giselle—”
“—Mia, I don’t really feel comfortable letting my daughter ride a camel at the age of nine.”
“—Yeah, but your birthday is tomorrow, Daddy.”
“—But I’m old enough to take horse-riding lessons!”
“—Then we’ll get you horse-riding lessons instead, but no camel!”
“—Wait, what did you just say, Candi?”
“—Wow, really?!”
“I don’t suppose those come in a package deal, do they, Mommy dearest?”
“Yes!”
“Wait, yes to me or yes to Daddy?”
“Hey, horse-riding is my thing!”
Overwhelmed by the chorus of voices layered over each other like too many tracks of walla in a film, I turned around and waddled over to a bench to sit down and rest while Michael rushed over to sit beside me.
“Are you okay, Candi?”
“Yeah, yeah, just tired.”
“Do you think you’re—”
“—going into labor at the zoo? No, Michael, this is real life, not a movie.”
“Okay, okay, good. I just—just wanted to make sure, you know?”
Out of the corner of my right eye, I could see the girls watching other zoo goers riding on the two camels in a special exhibit set up just past the jungle wildlife exhibits. The idea of either of them falling off of a camel—or a horse—and breaking their necks was far too vivid an image in my mind. I would have to find a way to distract Mia from the prospect until she forgot about my faux pas promise.
The little one inside of me seemed done with the whole thing, too.
***
September 05, 2023:
These lousy classrooms were much better when they had a third of the normal amount of students in them.
The Gender & Sexualities Alliance was a club that I had been the adviser of since I had first begun teaching. The role of ‘adviser’ was a nebulous thing, because it rarely ever required more than me sitting in on meetings, quietly grading papers, while the kids did all the heavy-lifting themselves. In my high school years, I had watched the few openly gay kids from afar, never making myself available to them. Now, fourteen years later, I was still doing the same thing of never opening up—only this time, I was a teacher. It was surreal living through history repeating itself.
The kids were saving hot-button issues for later, instead listening as respectfully as a group of teenagers could while Izzy gave yet another patented makeshift presentation on Stonewall.
Texts from Michael buzzed on my desk, so I dropped my grading pen in search of the sweet release of words from a friendly face:
Mikey: How’s it going?
Candace: Weh
Mikey: That bad, huh?
Candace: Sorry, just tired and stressed out
Mikey: Real
Candace: You busy?
Mikey: Almost finished inputting grades. I can be up to your room in, like, ten minutes?
Candace: 💜
Candace: GSA is still going, but after I was thinking that we could maybe get a bite to eat?
The sight of Claire walking past my desk and sticking his head out the door caught my eye, but the flashing of my screen as a new message from Michael appeared quickly recaptured my attention:
Mikey: Sounds good. Anything in particular?
Candace: Fuck it, let’s hit up that Italian place just off I-5.
Mikey: Ooh, adventurous today, are we?
Candace: Something-something, you only live once.
Candace: Also, don’t say that like we’re OLD!!!
Mikey: 😔
Candace: 🙄
Mikey: 😝
Candace: 😣
Mikey: I love you
Candace: Goddamn it, that’s not fair!!!111oneoneeleven
Mikey: 🥷
Candace: 🖕
Claire returned from their trip to the classroom door and whispered to Andrea, “Sorry, just had to tell Jae to come with Rachel to the next meeting!”
I had hoped that those two would come to today’s meeting, but unfortunately there had been no luck on that front. How long had either of them been aware that they were queer, I wondered? Did they just not feel comfortable in group settings, or was everything still new and fresh for them? Having gone so long without a community of my own, I hated the idea of Rachel and Jae doing without—especially if Rachel has been facing any pushback at home for being trans.
The temptation was always there, of course: the temptation to just throw stealth to the wind and reintroduce myself to Cousin Penelope and try to have family with her, her husband and Rachel. It was the sensible thing to do, after all.
But then, what if it backfired? What if I got outed and fired from the school for teaching a relative? For making Rachel trans, somehow? Then I would have nothing.
My shoulders howled. The stress was permeating across my muscles throughout my entire fucking body at this point. I needed a break from all this thinking—all this worrying!
Standing from my desk and walking around to join the circle of desks formed by the queer club, I took my lifeline: “Hey Izzy, remind me of how bad the Stonewall movie is again?”
***
September 05, 2023:
Mildly tipsy, I allowed Michael to escort me back into our apartment. Held firm in his big, strong hands, I allowed the sweet smiles of our children to show behind my eyelids. With each blink, a reminder of Giselle, Mia, and Aaron. Each blink, a new black-and-white snapshot at a life that existed only in my dreams.
Bumping into an end table, I giggled a little.
“Are you sure it was a good idea to drink tonight, Candace?”
“Pfft, it wash only one bottle of wine, Mikey-Mike-Mike! Beshides, we shared it!”
“You drank most of it, Candace—”
So much for, what, five years of sobriety?
“—don’t beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee shuch a shourpush, Mikey!” I giggled, calculating each step towards our restroom, “God, I have to peeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!”
Once inside, I closed the door, lifted the lid of the toilet, sat down and did my business. Once done, I stood and looked in the mirror: no pregnant belly. No signs of ever having had a pregnancy. Stupid tranny hips that were too fucking narrow and stupid tranny face that was too fucking mannish!!
Stupid fucking pussy taking too fucking long to get a fucking costectomy already!!!
And to top this stupid fucking night off, I had fuckin’ eaten carbs tonight!!
Turning the shower and sink on, I got down on my knees, pulled my hair back, and stuck a finger into my mouth.
The toilet bowl was soon filled with everything I had eaten not even an hour ago. I just needed to wait another eighteen months and then I could get a costectomy. And another boob job. And another nose job.
Stupid fucking broke ass tranny.
***
Each night a slumber, each slumber a dream, and for each dream a nightmare. Some nights, a sweet little dream of the Family Summers at the park, at the zoo, at the grocery store, at the parent-teacher conferences.
Some nights, I would simply fashion dreams where I was not even present.
Gigi’s getting her first boyfriend.
Mia organizing fundraisers for the community.
Gigi meeting her future wife.
Mia winning tennis doubles with a Great Dane that she taught to play.
Gigi on trial for manslaughter.
Mia discovering a new dimension inside of a wardrobe.
Aaron—
***
September 06, 2023:
Cramming a dozen adults into a small principal’s office was a bad idea and it did not take a college degree—or someone without a nasty hangover—to come to that conclusion. Unfortunately, the lot of us apparently decided to ignore that as we all crammed into Sandy’s office, nearly an hour before fifth period was to begin, anyway.
“What do you think this is about?” Michael asked Omar as he leaned closer to me to give the others in the room more personal space. If he was going to take up anyone’s personal space, it made sense to take up mine, I supposed.
Omar Zaher—about my height—when I was doing without my beloved heels—and built like he could keep up with Michael in the gym—shrugged with little interest, “Dunno? I wasn’t expecting to be called in half an hour earlier than usual, though.”
“Doesn’t this usually only happen when there’s an emergency? But why are there only—” Michael stopped for a quick head count, “—eight of us?”
“Eight teachers, Sandra, and her vices, you mean?” I interjected, fiddling with the top button of the pink blouse I was wearing as I watched Sandra and the two vice-principals conversing in hushed tones. An odd chill ran up my spine, like an army of spiders carved of ice had come alive and managed to make their way up and down the length of my body.
“You don’t think—?”
“—I think I do think, Michael.”
From the corner of my eye, I could see Omar—arms crossed—rolling his eyes at my easy camaraderie with Michael, as if he expected us to not have any after ten years of fuckin’ one another.
Irate—and hungover like a bitch—I finally broke the stalemate and called out over the various conversations murmuring throughout the cramped, stuffy office space: “Hey, so, what exactly is going on here, Sandy?”
The room suddenly got quiet, which did little to keep me from becoming self-conscious.
Grimace painted on her face none-too-differently from her makeup, Sandy took a moment before finally speaking: “I called you all here today because you all have a student in common, and that student has gone missing.”
If the silence before was deafening, now it felt death-ening.
“What do you mean?” I asked, apparently the elected representative of the gathered teachers.
“Chase Avery Mann has been reported missing by her parents, Candace.”
“Wait, that new girl?” Omar interjected, “She’s only been at school for a single day.”
Hell, she had yet to even be in half of our classes yet.
“Well, when your father is the top United States general, they tend to take sudden disappearances after school extremely seriously, Omar,” Sandra sounded utterly exhausted. I wondered at what point over the night she had been alerted to this news, because judging by the drag in her voice and the redness in her eyes, she had already been awake for quite some hours.
If she had even slept at all, that is.
“So, she disappeared right after school?” Michael asked, all eyes on him before gliding right back to Sandra in time for her response.
“Yes. According to her mother, Chase was supposed to return home after school. Immediately. She did not, obviously, so I’ve been up all night with more alphabet government agencies than I can count crawling up my ass trying to get answers. I imagine they’ll be questioning those of you who are her teachers, even the ones who hadn’t had her in class yet, just to cover their bases, so I figured it prudent to inform you all of the spider’s nest you’re all about to enter.”
The fear of a potential background search was irrational, but nevertheless lingered in my mind. I turned to Michael, who bore an expression that was seemingly not immediately worried, and let my left shoulder press against his arm with a little more weight.
Who cared about professionalism? We were in private—albeit, surrounded by colleagues.
“Are there any leads?” Another voice asked.
“If there are, they aren’t telling us,” Principal Sanderson confirmed.
The room was musty in that way that school rooms often got when there was no ventilation. The awkward, stunned silence of it all was of no help, either.
It took little time for us all to file out of the office and back to our classrooms.
Michael walked me back to my classroom in the English hall. It was an unceremonious trip, given the lack of students in the building, but it helped me from thinking too much about how awful Chase’s parents must feel, having a child go missing.
Had she been kidnapped as part of a political thing? Surely that sort of thing only happened in movies? Right? ‘The General’s Daughter’—shit, that sounded like the title of a thriller from the 1990s! Another Harrison Ford summer blockbuster, for old time’s sake!
Once in my seat behind my desk, I stopped to let all the air out of my tightening chest with a deep sigh.
“You okay?” Michael asked, hands in his denim jacket as he lumbered over me.
It escaped me if we had been holding hands at any point during the meeting, so I drew Michael’s hand out of his pocket and held it tightly, “Yeah, yeah—just a little second-hand empathy, I guess.” I could still remember how red his eyes were last night when I had got out of the bathroom. No doubt, Michael had probably overheard me and cried about it. Fucking asshole.
“Yeah, I would go crazy if one of my kids went missing.”
A stab in the heart.
“Yeah, definitely,” I was damned if I would let the fucking bastard know how much that hurt. There was no being sure that my voice did not give away the goose, though.
“I’m sure she just got caught up playing hooky or something, though,” Michael’s deep, warm voice tried to sound as reassuring as possible, but the gravitas of the situation was not lost on either of us: missing or dead teenagers were not a rarity in our line of work.
“With luck, yeah,” suddenly feeling the drain of the heightened emotions my body had been surging with all week long, I turned my chair to face my workload as it piled high on my desk. The work of a teacher was never finished, it felt.
God, I needed a drink.
***
September 06, 2023:
Chase Avery Mann was not the only absent student today. Rachel and Jae were both missing, too.
It was hardly surprising, in hindsight. What I had heard of the torture that Rachel was suffering through the grapevine had been heartbreaking. Perhaps more so that there was nothing I could do for her.
I crossed out Rachel’s deadname on the print out roster and then marked both her and Jae Jeong as absent for the day.
Gloria Rembrant sat surrounded by her posse of sycophants who helped her regularly torture Rachel and Jae. As much as I had tried to mitigate over the years, it was difficult to do so given that Gloria’s father was a high-roller in a small town, and I never had concrete enough proof to nail the little brat to the wall. Then there was the fact that if I was too overt in defending Rachel and Jae it would only make the bullying worse.
It was one of the few parts of my job I loathed.
It was moments like this that made me wish I had the balls to quit teaching and get into sex work. Unfortunately, nobody wanted to jerk it to a tranny without a cock and balls and I just did not have the balls for sex work—literally!
Gathering my strength, I finished marking my roster and sat the clipboard on my desk, “Good morning, class!”
***
“Mommy, why do the penguins stand next to one another like that?”
“It helps them keep warm, baby.”
“But aren’t they from the ardic?”
“The Arctic? Yeah, they are…okay, I don’t really get why they’re doing it here, during the summer, but uh…huh…”
“Mommy?”
“Yes, baby?”
“Why are Gigi and Mia always too busy to play with me?”
“Well, they’re…older, now. They want to do big girl things with their friends. They start high school tomorrow, after all.”
“...”
“What’s the matter, baby? I can’t hear you?”
“...”
“Sweetie, speak up.”
“...”
“Aaron, are you—your lips are moving, but—Aaron?!”
Aaron’s face was gone. A blank sheet of flesh topped by smooth black hair. His body language panicked.
“MICHAEL?”
Feeling Michael’s presence behind me, I turned, only to find my husband a faceless giant.
I shrieked.
Giselle and Mia had no faces, either.
Nobody in the zoo had faces.
I leapt over the railing into the penguin exhibit to peer into the poor, catching sight of my reflection.
An ugly, fat, hairy, middled-aged bald man stared back.
To shatter the reflection, I shoved my head into the water.
And kept it there…
…until I was—
***
September 08, 2023:
Gasping for air, I struggled out of bed and crashed onto the shittily carpeted floor of our apartment, “AARON?! MIA?! GIGI?!”
“—Candace?! What the—are you okay?”
Michael was around and leaning over my side of the bed before I even had a chance to process what I had been doing and saying. His strong grip around shoulders tethered me back to the ground, “F-fuck, sorry, baby, just—just ignore me!”
“Candace, you just woke up screaming names of people I don’t know, so don’t pretend that you’re—”
“—I said just fuckin’—shut the fuck up, would you?” I shrieked, a stabbing pain in my abdomen, “Shut the fuck up! Leave me the fuck alone, would you? Jesus Christ!! You’re always like this—fucking asshole!!”
Michael backed off curtly, withdrawing his touch and immediately getting dressed and leaving the bedroom. A moment later, I heard the door to our apartment open and shut with a half-slam. He was no doubt headed for a run.
“Stupid fucking asshole!!”
***
September 08, 2023:
A half dozen columns of desks remained unfilled as I sat—emotionally wrecked—at my desk, waiting for the day to start while I checked my work email. I had shown up to the school a good half-hour earlier than I typically did, just to get some space after the mess I had made of my relationship in the middle of the night.
The morning had been Hell. Michael and I had exchanged not a single word when he got back from his run. I was too ashamed to even apologize, because I knew he would forgive me and I knew that I would never deserve his forgiveness. Michael deserved better than me—I was just going to keep treating him like shit, no matter what I did. It was the curse of being the heir of Arthur Woods, surely.
The blipping of a new email appearing on my monitor rescued me from my own self-destruction briefly: it was from Principal Sanderson and addressed to all of the teachers who had attended the meeting two days earlier.
“Fuck!!”
Grabbing my phone off my desk, I immediately sped walked—thank fuck I was wearing tennis shoes today—to the principal’s office and was given the immediate look from the secretaries to just enter Sandy’s office.
Fuck, fuck!
Omar and two of the others slipped in just after me. Michael was the last of us to arrive, thanks to the gym being the furthest from the front of the school.
I cut right to the chase: “What’s the emergency?”
Sandy was pale—paler than usual. Her hair didn't look washed, but the remaining red certainly did.
“Sandy?” I asked again.
“Miss Mann’s body was found this morning. I’m sorry, everyone.”
A vortex of despair filled the pit of my gut: I had never even had the opportunity to meet the young woman, and now she was dead? Dead and buried before her life had even had a chance to begin?
A life given an ending, but deprived of a beginning? It was too cruel!!
I dug my sparkly pink acrylics into my palms, trying to draw blood.
Sandy made due with the pithy strength in her voice, “You’ll be getting the standard emails with the usual instructions—sorry, sorry, that sounds crass, but you’ve all been trained for moments like this. I’m sorry. Additional counselors are being made available to us from the district, at any rate.”
Sandy kept talking, but my brain tuned her out as my eyes desperately searched for Michael. They eventually found him on the other side of the cramped office—fuck, I could barely breathe—in the back corner to my left, surrounded by our colleagues.
Catching my gaze, Michael shifted his gaze to mine. At first, his look was cold—withdrawn—but slowly that pained look of his gave way to one of realization.
For what reason did one Michael Scott Summers have to wear a look of realization when casting his gaze upon me?
Caught up in my own world, I barely registered his lips moving through a blurry filter cast over my eyes, silently mouthing two words: “You’re crying!”
“Am I?” I mouthed back, raising my right hand as casually as I could to dab for tears. Shit, I was fucking crying! Fuck!!
As lightly as possible, I used the sleeve of my pink hoody—newly minted for the school year—to do some light dabbing. I would have to stop by the restroom on the way back to class to double check my makeup, ugh.
Well, it was probably better than being a dead teenager, I imagined.
***
September 08, 2023:
Just in time to catch the ringing of the bell to signal the start of class, I slid into my classroom to find a group of students—the usual kids from the Genders & Sexualities club—huddled around a desk—Rachel’s desk. Upon my entrance, they all quickly filed back to their desks without a word.
It was going to be that kind of day and even they knew it.
Dropping my printouts onto my already unwieldy desk, I steeled myself with an audible inhale and addressed my students: “I imagine you've all heard the news, so I won't repeat it.”
“The school is calling in additional counselors for anyone who might need the additional support—” my eyes betrayed my professionalism and drifted to linger on Rachel and Jae, “—which I imagine some of you might.”
My bleary eyes found the one available desk left in the classroom: the center column of the front row. I wondered what Miss Mann looked like? Was she prim-and-proper, because she was a general’s daughter? Or was she a rebel, always striking out against his orders because she wanted nothing to do with his strict military style of parenting?
Or perhaps the dear old general was a softy at heart, for his daughter? Perhaps the cold exterior of a war criminal gave way just a little in the privacy of his own home, for his beloved daughter? Every girl deserved as much from their father, did they not?
I liked to think so.
The children all looked up to me as I stood at the front of the class, waiting for me to have something to say—something to make the unease and confusion of the death of one of their own make sense, even if they were among the few that had never known her.
Those poor kids…
To lose a classmate like that—one who they had known since middle school—must have been devastating.
To lose a child at that age must have been—
—to even finish the thought was too much—
—because I already understood it.
I understood in my very bones what the Mann family must have been going through, especially Chase’s mother.
One moment, you can feel their cheeks in your hand—
—and the next, they were just…gone.
The grief was a sickness that only death could cure.
***
September 08, 2023:
A chorus of chatter and steps slowly built up outside of my classroom door as I plugged away at putting grades into my work computer. Perplexed, I stood from my desk, made sure my doffed hoodie wasn’t going to fall off of the back of my chair, and sped walked my way to the door to poke my head out.
A stream of lively teenagers rushed through the hallway towards the quad. A student of mine—Zoey—jogged past my door, “Zoey, hey! Where's the rush?”
“Oh, Miss Queen!” The poor thing had a wide-eyed look anytime she looked at me, and this time was no different. It reminded me of the way I used to look at other women, when I envied them. Brushing her damp bangs out of her eyes, “There’s a fight in the quad!”
“Shoot!!” Quickly padding my jeans’ back pocket to double-check that I had my phone with me, I followed Zoey through the hallway connecting the English department to the quad and instantly spotted the swelling of students on the opposite side, just outside the hallway that led to the math department, which itself connected to the science department. Blessing my regular gym work and the luck of it being my casual Friday, I dashed over to the pile of students, only to have two figures—brusied, bloodied and wheezing—dash straight past me.
Was that Rachel? And Jae? Their faces looked—
—Michael and other teachers arrived on the scene before I could parse the storylines going on around me. Sifting through the gaggle of students, my colleagues—and from behind the mob, me—found five teens splayed on out of a bloodied floor decorated by tattered bits of clothes, and what looked like the hoodie Rachel had worn in my class that morning. Joining the others, I pulled back the students cheering and jeering to make my way through to the group on the floor.
“Kids, move!” My voice barely reached any of their ears as their roars echoed throughout the quad. Finally managing to break through, I joined Michael and Omar and other faculty members in joining the kids by their sides.
“Gloria, are you okay?” I was already reaching for my phone by the time I noticed Vice-Principal Harold Hinkley already on his phone, hastily and anxiously talking to a 911 dispatcher.
“Uh, I got f-five st-students—Jesus Christ lady, they're kids, st-stop making me repeat myself!”
The young woman groaned, hardly conscious. Something close to “Fucking tranny” stumbled out of Gloria's jittering mouth, which looked swollen, cut and bloodied from whatever had happened. Unfortunately, it only confirmed my worst fears.
All week long there had been one seismic event with Rachel after another. Unfortunately, this time it looked like she was directly at the center of it.
***
September 08, 2023:
Principal Sanderson had crammed a bunch of us all into her office, again. It was becoming the worst kind of recurring set usage, I was afraid.
“Summers, Zaher, Queen: you three were the first responders. What in the fuck happened out there? I’ve got five of our students—who, if I might remind you, are children of the wealthiest businessmen in this town—being driven to the emergency room, for Christ’s sake!”
Omar spoke up first, “By the time I got there the crowd was too big for me to get through it, but I could see Jae Jeong and—uh—the Penn kid? Yeah, them—those two were fighting Rembrant, Dallas, and their friends.”
“Christ, those two haven’t been in a fight since, what, February? I was hoping they’d put that shit behind them.”
It was surely ill advised of me, but I spoke up, “I mean, Gloria and Carson and their little leeches usually bully them. I can’t exactly prove it beyond my own testimony of overhearing some unsavory remarks, but it’s not like anything has really changed. They’ve always been bullied because of homophobia. Of course it was going to get worse now that Rachel is out!”
“And now Penn is, what, a transsexual?” Principal Hinkley asked, befuddled by the newfangled-ness of it all.
“Transgender girl,” Michael shot back quickly, before I could, “She and Jae are dating now, I think. Like, publicly, I mean, so you take those two things and combine them and voila, more bullying than usual. I submitted a report on Gloria and her cro—her friends’ behavior towards Rachel and Jae when they were in my class on Monday, in case you didn’t notice it in your inbox yet.”
That last part felt like there was some venom on it.
“Right, right,” Harold turned to Sandy, seated in her chair, looking like she could audition to play a zombie, “Heather’s handling the police outside, but I’m pretty sure they’re going to want to speak to you, too, Sandy,” the William H. Macy-looking motherfucker turned back to us, “And you three, I imagine.”
A gnawing sensation burned like acid on the inside of my stomach. Everything had a slight red tint to it, no matter how hard I tried to calm myself.
I was going to lose Rachel, just like I had lost my k—
—God, I needed a drink.
“Christ,” Sandy sighed with a chunk of grit, picking her office landline off of the receiver, “Let me call your union reps.”
***
September 08, 2023:
Every student is thankful for a Friday, but few adults have the luxury of a Friday meaning release from the week. When I was waiting tables as a flat-chested faggy twink girl—thing—my ‘Friday’ rarely ever came, because I was rarely afforded the financial stability to take two consecutive days off from working. There was a dark irony to needing to ‘return to school’ to finally learn the drought-ending shower of a proper weekend again.
Life truly was like a circle from Hell, constantly leading poor dumb bitches like me right back where we started.
As I parked my car in my reserved spot at the apartment, I looked at my stereo’s digital read out of the time: 8:08PM.
Fishing through the bag on the passenger side seat, I pulled out a heavy half gallon of strawberry-flavored vodka and began drinking straight out of the bottle. I deserved it, surely. The familiar burn of the clear liquor tore at the insides of my throat as it washed down it, purifying me of any infection I carried.
Or it would have, if I was myself not the infection.
Michael was surely fucking not going to be happy about this, but I needed it. I needed to be free from all the stress and anxiety and all the fucking thoughts for once.
Entering the apartment, I did not bother to call out a “Hello?” Michael’s car had been in his spot, so I knew that he was likely home, but the apartment remained quiet. Shuffling over to the kitchen, I got down a glass—just in case we had company over—and poured it full of vodka, just to empty it in seconds and pour myself another glass.
Michael appeared in the archway to the kitchen with expert stealth, “Candace, do you really think that’s a good idea right now?”
“Yup,” I replied back, shamelessly. Shame was too good for trannies like me, afterall.
“Babe, please—”
I stood in front of Michael, looking up into his big, dark, puppy dog eyes, “I’d like to head to the couch now, Michael.”
Michael stepped aside, silently.
Once on the couch, and flipped the television on to the news.
I immediately heard Dies Irae.
All I could hear was Dies Irae, all consuming, all wrapping over every sight my eyes saw and every sound my ears heard.
Rachel was on the news.
“What the fuck?”
I should die!
“This is what I was trying to tell you,” Michael said, sitting in the arm chair instead of next to me, “You didn’t know? I texted—”
I should stop being alive!
“Know what?” I asked, clenching the glass in my hand.
Die die die fucking freak die!!!
“They’re saying Rachel murdered Chase.”
I gotta quit, gotta stop gotta die gotta no more!!!!
“WHAT THE FUCK?!”
Don't want to be alive just die just stop your car in the middle of a four-way and die be free stop
“Candi, calm down, it’s—I know it sounds bad, but—”
Fuck you faggot
“SHE’S A TRANNY, MICHAEL! THEY’RE GOING TO PUT HER IN A PRISON WITH MEN, YOU FUCKING FAGGOT!”
Kill yourself die fucking faggot failure freak faggot tranny die fuck Mikey I wanna die please please just kill me
“Rachel hasn’t been arrested yet, Candace, I don’t think—”
Die fuck you I hate you fucking piece of shit faggot freak die I don't wanna be alive anymore Mikey please
I threw the half-empty glass in my hand at the TV, shattering it, “FUCK YOU!!! THEY'RE GOING TO RAPE AND KILL HER!!!”
I hate you I fucking HATE you fuck you Michael die die die I'm sorry, I'm sorry, oh god, the kids are going to hate me
“Candace, what the fuck is—”
God, why are you always like this I hate you I don't deserve you fuck you piece of shit you don't get it goddamn bastard die kill me please
“—YOU DON’T FUCKING GET IT, SO FUCK OFF, FUCK YOU, GET THE FUCK OUT!!!”
Don't look at me like that fuck you die kill me i should just kill us both right now fuck you fuck you
“Candace—”
I don't want to BE this anymore I just want my babies back please just let me see them again fuck drink more don't think I should kill myself do it do it burn in Hell fuck maybe if I die I can see my babies again fuck I should just kill myself
“—DON’T YOU FUCKING DARE ACT LIKE YOU GET IT!!! GET OUT!!! GET OUT!!! GET OUT!!! GET OUT!!! GET—”
Please just save yourself, baby
Michael was gone, and I was alone.
Just how I wanted.
***
September 09, 2023:
Six minutes past midnight, according to my phone as I plugged it in to be charged.
Laying on the bed I typically shared with Michael, it was empty—just like the half gallon of vodka I had drunk. Or my stomach, after throwing it all up.
It was funny how I did not notice Michael's facial expressions or the tone of his voice in the heat of the moment. Laying on the bed, in the dark, stripped down to nothing but my panties, I saw it all so clearly now, in hindsight.
I really was my father’s son: an abuser.
Why could I not simply let him go free?
Why could I not simply end it all?
Digging my face into my pillow, I sobbed. My mind felt so quiet, but my mouth was so, so loud: “I'm so sorry, Michael—I'm so—fuck, I just wanna see my babies again—”
***
“Happy fordy-force birthday, Mommy!”
Aaron's enunciation could still use some work, but I never grew tired of seeing how good he was becoming at handing me things. It was the small things in life, like when a five year old was handing you the birthday card you saw them drawing for you not fifteen minutes ago.
The crayon work was peak five year old craftsmanship—I loved it.
“Is this Mommy and you?” I asked Aaron, his proud smile unwavering.
“Uh-huh!” His dark locks ran a little lighter than his sisters’, but that was okay—he was a mommy's boy, anyway, “The pink one is you a-and the other pink one is me, too!”
At least we were teaching the kid that boys could like pink, too. Check one off for Woke 4!
Brushing Aaron's bangs from his eyes, I soaked in the tiny thing's sunshine smile before watching him return back to his place on the crayon and paper-covered floor to draw new conquests.
I wasn’t far behind.
“Mommy, do you wanna draw, too?”
“Of course, baby!” I replied, making sure to sound happy.
“Yay!!”
Aaron pushed a sheet of paper across the hardwood floor of the living room so that I could join him in drawing.
Taking a set of crayons from the battered crayon box that had seen combat through a set of twins and now a kindergartener, I began drawing a picture of me and Aaron, perhaps slightly too much better than his drawing. Once finished, I presented the illustration to my son: “You know Aaron, it’s your birthday, too.”
Aaron’s beaming toothy grin make the joint pain of sitting on the fucking floor all worth it, “Oh, right!” I lived for that smile of his, “Wow Mommy, you’re so good!”
It was a perk of three kids across two pregnancies, “Wow, really? I’m so happy you think so, baby!”
I loved these little moments—I missed them with the girls. Mia barely ever wanted to hang out with her lame old mom now that she and her sister were fourteen. God knows Gigi was even harder to get a hold of. If it wasn’t, “Mom, can you drive me and my friends to the mall?” It was, “Mom, I need some more money to go see this movie with my friends!”
Did teenagers even go to the theater to see movies anymore?! Ugh!!
“Mommy?”
“Yes, Aaron?
“When I grow up, can I be a Mommy, too?”
The world fell out from me. Everything was an empty studio set. The world was a black void. The air was an inferno in my lungs.
My beautiful baby boy was gone, taken from me by the Woke Mind Virus, eating away at his flesh like a bacterial virus, peeling back the layers until only a beautiful, perfect third daughter remained—it was horrifying.
My hands were massive, hairy, ugly things that stretched out before me as I reach for my poor baby boy as his transgender counterpart approached him slowly with a horrific needle and all I could scream out was—
***
September 09, 2023:
“—AARON, NO!!!”
I jolted straight up on my bed, covered in sweat both hot and cold—sheets and comforter kicked to the ground in my restless sleep.
Aaron was gone, once again. He was always gone, in the mornings. No Aaron to explain the plot of a children’s television series to me, no Mia to explain the importance of recycling to me, and no Gigi to explain that she didn’t mean to light the science lab on fire, she just thought it would be really funny if she combined—
—my phone alarm blared to life. It was a Saturday, so I did not normally have an alarm set, but I had set one a few days earlier to hit the gym with Michael.
There would be no gym with Michael today, I feared.
Lifting myself out of bed, I trudged to the living room: no Michael. He was probably at a motel or something.
The poor fucker really did deserve to be free of me.
***
September 09, 2023:
So very funny, it was, how some memories stuck with you over the years. When I was younger, I would bike over to Cousin Penelope’s house to watch her kid, just to have an excuse to get out of the oppressive Cassadine Castle and to have someone to play video games with. Memories of playing Smash Bros with a certain little squirt all day the weekend before I left for college bubbled to the surface, caked in cobwebs as they were.
I could barely remember the street names in the neighborhood that Penny lived in, but I could still remember the turns and stops all the way there—to say nothing of remembering the smile on Rachel's face when she had someone to play with when Jae was not available.
I had to be there for her, again. It did not matter if I was fired for omitting a potential conflict of interest: what Rachel needed now was a trans woman in her family who understood what she was going through. That was the responsible thing to do, right?
Or was I simply being selfish for wanting to cast myself as some young girl's savior? Who was I, even? A teacher, yes. But what more? I had ruined my relationship with my boyfriend yet again, driving him from our apartment. No sister, no parents, no cousins, no Megumi—all of my own doing. I had built a castle of my own and now I had to live in it by my lonesome, surely!
But no, here I was, weakly—pathetically—reaching out for that which I had shirked all those years ago.
And if I was lucky, it would only cost me my career. My students.
I knew that some teachers did teach their own children in public schools, so teaching a cousin once removed should have surely been no issue for me, but the idea of it all always felt so revealing to me—like being stripped naked before a crowd that would see me for the affront that I truly was. Nobody left in my life knew that I was transgender except for Michael and his family! Nobody could ever see me as a boy again! And yet, some days, it felt like I had never truly escaped my past—it certainly felt that way whenever I saw or felt my penis.
I needed to do this, though. I had made that pledge, to trade my pathetic existence as a bargaining chip to better the lives of those who came after me. Being Rachel's—whatever I was—was something she needed more than just being her teacher.
Taking the nostalgic turn onto their street, the sight of a dozen police vehicles lined up-and-down the street in front of the Penn family house splashed my eyes and stained my brain.
My existence was a bringer of tragedy and death, a fitting role for a freak incapable of keeping selfishness at bay.
I was too late.
Always, always too late.
***
September 09, 2023:
When I was depressed and in need of a good cry, I usually liked to scroll through videos of babies laughing. Unfortunately, one had no way of gracefully doing that at a diner—even in a small town—at fifteen ‘til nine in the morning on a Saturday. People would think you were some kind of weirdo, after all!
Although, it could be argued that the quality of the flesh was the one great excuser in many regards.
“What can I get you, sweetie?” A waitress somewhere in her twenties asked, having taken care not to loom over me too long after stepping over to my booth. Her uniform was a too-tight white tanktop—the cleanest, brightest white I had ever seen—stretched over breasts that looked like they would call my breasts their little sister. Riding high on her tiny waist and torso, the breasts provided the ‘hello’ while the bimbo’s clearly—even from my angle—sizable ass offered a ‘farewell’ few would forget.
A cute, cheap little plastic nametag pinned to her pink bloomers read ‘BRANDI’.
“Scrambled eggs?” I replied, doing my best to sound pleasant. Even though my brain screamed at me that I was but a freak in her presence, it was impossible to deny the interest that filled the eyes of the beaming blonde. Unfortunately, I felt more dried out than the ugly old people wallpaper you found in houses built in the 1950s, and could do little to accept what this Brandi character so forthrightly offered.
“Oh honey, you gotta eat more than that!” The bimbo cooed, like a girl trying to tell her bestie to suck her boyfriend’s cock a little harder. “You should try the sausage, it’s got, like, protein! And they’re SO YUMMY!”
“Sure, then,” I conceded, expecting her to bring links rather than patties. The bimbo stuck her tongue out to the side of her mouth as she placed the order on her little handheld device, like it required extra concentration. It gave me a moment to appreciate how well-kept her wavy back-length golden locks were.
Her cutely little fingers—unlike my grotesque, bony things—were capped off with adorably pink acrylics that had little white bunnies drawn on them. A jaunty little drum piece played as the girl tapped away on her device.
“Okie-dokie, be back in a bit, honey!” The diner bunny bounced away with an unforgettable view of her ass that left me desiring a future Brazilian Butt Lift more than ever before.
With my order given, I returned to my doomscrolling: preliminary statements from the authorities claimed that Rachel—deadnamed, of course—and Jae Jeong had murdered Cousin Penelope and her husband, as well as Jae’s mother, and were now on the run. It was pure insanity.
School yard scraps aside, those kids were not murderers. Even if they had killed Chase, killing those parents—two of which were lawyers who would have helped them with their legal troubles—made absolutely zero sense.
Then there was the case of this Chase Avery Mann girl, who I had never even had a chance to properly meet. The daughter of the top United States general, being murdered by a classmate she has known since middle school? The day after said former classmate had come out as transgender? The likelihood of Chase having known anything of Rachel being trans prior to coming out seemed unlikely, as far as I could determine. The two had not even been in the same state for close to three years, and Rachel did not seem the type to keep regular contact like that.
Besides, she and Jae had always been joined at the hip. I could never see the plucky girl trusting anyone else with such a secret.
Christ, the government was going to question me about this, would they not? What the fuck if they dug into me, personally? Would they find out that I was—
—Brandi the Waitress returned, scrambled and sausage in hand, “Here ya go, hon!” The careful placing of the plate before me showed a practice wrist work that I recognized from my own days of waitressing. With a wink towards a link, Brandi left me to tend to her other tables and I perversely appreciated her farewell.
There really had been no denying my own bisexuality these past two years. In my strongest moments, I indulged in the intoxicating rush of simply appreciating the form of my fellow women, but in my weakest, I understood myself for the freak that I was.
What was ‘strength’ and what was ‘weakness’, though? As I played with the greasy plate of food before me, struggling to simply indulge—without guilt—yet again, I hated myself more than ever before. It would be so easy, would it not, to act how I wanted?
But what was it that I wanted? To eat the food that so tempted me with its caramelized scent? The crisp little bark chipping from the packaged encasing keeping all of that delicious pork inside it?
Or was it Michael? To apologize to this man I claimed to love and simply allow myself to be happy? To allow myself to be the wife I had little more reference for than fictional romances? The marriage I had spent my entire life watching from the next room or from an emotionally starved dinner table was always the first example that sprung to mind. Even the dinner dates with Michael’s parents—so lovely that they were—only ever felt like a simulation to me. Like I had turned on the television to catch the middle of a repeat of a wholesome family sitcom from the 1970s.
There was a rot at the core of my very being, one that would never be able to feed Michael’s soul so much as starve it of the love and support that any other soul needed. The only way to ever give Michael that which he deserved was to leave. Run far, far away to a land that a soul like Michael could never follow: Hell.
Death was that freedom. If I truly loved Michael as I claimed, the best way to prove that was my own death. Anything else was but a lie—a selfish clinging on and ruining of a man I knew would never benefit from a relationship from me.
I needed to die. I needed to die soon. Get it all over with, there was no other way to—
—the links appeared in my mouth. My teeth gnashed through them, desperate to fill the void where our children should be. Even the very fat and grease squeezing out of each bite was like water in an oasis. God, that incredibly cute woman had been right—the sausage really was to die for—
—what the fuck was I eating? Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck—
—out of the booth, quick, before anymore noticed how disgusting you are—
—through the bathroom door, into the stall, on your knees, hair pulled back, finger in the mouth, and—
—I flushed away the proof of my sin. Tears streamed out of my eyes, surely ruining the painting I had meticulously crafted just hours before.
“Stupid fucking ugly man,” I whispered, just in case any other women were in the stall next to me.
Picking myself up off the floor, I fixed my makeup, then returned to finish my eggs. That was good enough—just enough to not pass out while driving.
Even if doing so would be a benefit to the world.
***
September 11, 2023:
Being interviewed by two G-Men in suspiciously well-pressed black suits was a hell of a weird way to start the twenty-second anniversary of 9/11.
“Miss Qu—I mean, Candi,” the tall one asked, “Would you say that you’re a good teacher?”
The short G-Man stood mid-pace behind his partner like a man who was too cool to sit down—or perhaps too much of a fucking asshole, who the hell knew. Looking at me through his pitch-black sunglasses, I could tell that the short agent was trying to read me as I responded to his partner’s question.
“I like to think so, sir,” simple and to the point, with just enough Bimbo Voice to sound incapable of being a serious threat.
“I see, I see,” the tall one mumbled, flipping through his yellow legal pad while sitting behind Principal Sanderson’s desk, “Tell me, it says here that you are Richard Jeong and Jae Jeong’s fifth period English teacher…looks like you’ve taught them in English for the past three years, am I correct?”
“Yes, sir,” these deadnaming assholes didn’t need any more from me than necessary.
“Any violent outbursts from the two? In your class, I mean.”
It was hard not to show them my complete disgust, despite how bored the tall special agent sounded as he asked his stupid questions, “None that I can, like, ‘member an’ stuff, sir. Rachel and Jae were always very sweet kids!”
“You mean, besides the impressive list of fights they’d gotten themselves into throughout their middle school and high school careers?”
The big bastard was only going to get a polite smile out of me for that one.
Returning to his notes—why was the asshole wearing sunglasses inside a school office with no fucking windows and while reading from a yellow legal pad?—the special agent looked up with a wry smile and played innocent: “Have you ever had to stop one of Mr. Jeong and Mr. Jeong’s brawls before? I mean, besides arriving too late on Friday to stop the one they had started with five other students?”
The way the asshole was deadnaming Rachel was making it really hard to process the fact that she had apparently married Jae, “A few times, yes,” I nodded fastidiously, hoping to distract the men with the jiggle of my big, fat titties, “You’ll see those dates in their files, I’m sure.” It was getting hard to hide my detestment of the slick-back haired government goon. The ‘G’ in ‘G-Man’ must have stood for ‘goon’!
“I see, I see,” the tall goon kept flipping back and forth through his notes like a shithead while his shorter, scowling partner remained at a three-quarter angle behind him, eyes locked on me. “How long have you been a teacher at Gravelly Lake High School, Miss Queen?”
“Since, like, the 2019-2020 school year, sir?”
“Must have been hard, joining right when COVID-19 hit.”
“I'm, like, a big girl, y'know?”
“I imagine so, I suppose. Now, out of curiosity, Candi, did you have any indication that Mister and Mister Jeong were going to commit murder?”
A beat. The news was still sinking in for me, “Murder?”
“Were you unaware that Mister Jeong and his husband were wanted for the murder of their mothers and Mister Richard Jeong's father?”
“Oh, right, yes, sorry—I, like, y'know, thought we were talking about the fight that had, like, happened on Friday?”
Saying everything like a question was the fastest way to make a man not take you seriously, which was precisely what I needed to get out of this situation.
“Ma'am, you are aware that we are here with the Federal Bureau of Investigations, yes?”
“Oh! That would, like, explain the handsome suits! Tee-hee!!”
The bimbo act was blissfully working. Cantaloupe-sized knockers and an airhead voice saved the day yet again.
Oh gawd, it was beginning to dawn on me that the sunglasses were to keep me from noticing that the two agents were clearly eyeing my undone cleavage from behind them.
I had won, but at what cost?
“So then, Miss Qu—Candi, did you have any prior knowledge that your stu—that Richard and Jae Jeong had access to firearms?”
“Umm…like…no?”
The big one turned back to eye his colleague. I had no idea how they were supposed to be communicating behind those dark glasses, though.
Turning back to me, “Have either of the boys tried contacting you since fleeing the school on Friday?”
“Nopies!”
The big one scribbled on his legal note pad for a moment. He was probably stifling a boner right now.
“Can I, like, go back to my class now? Mr. Hinkley is probably gettin’ all my curricu-cum for the day wrongies, you know?”
Both of the goons shifted at that little ‘mispronunciation’: “Uhh…we'll be in touch, Candi.”
“Yaaay!! Thank you, boys!!”
Exiting the office with haste, I left the assholes with blown kisses, rather than cocks.
Something tells me they came anyway.
***
September 11, 2023:
An emergency meeting of the Genders & Sexualities Club was called for after school by Izzy. Even if I had not been trying to avoid Michael—assuming he would even stop by the apartment after school hours—I knew how important it was for these kids to find a time and space to find some semblance of balance. It was a cruel thing to see a fellow queer person demonized. Even if I was myself damaged goods, I could still be a doorstopper to keep some light in their life.
“Miss Queen,” Zoey asked, the room having lulled into an oppressive silence, “Have you heard anything about what's going on?”
“I'm afraid not, kids,” I replied grimly. Poor Zoey, other than Isaac, there were not any other trans girls in the school. It had been an isolating two years for her, I had seen it with my own eyes. After transferring to Gravelly Lake High, Zoey had remained stealth and the only ones other than Izzy to know her secret were the administrative team, her teachers, and the school nurse, May. Izzy was the only real confidant among her peers, but she was also the one that Zoey was dating.
We were similar, in that way.
The mood was morose, and I could assign no blame to the pack of kids. If the lived experience of being queer had not taught them the difficulty of being queer, they had certainly heard enough presentations from Izzy on the subject to learn it.
As much as I often envied the kids, I could not blame them for feeling hopeless about it all. Two of their classmates—two vulnerable kids with next to no life experience—were being hunted down like animals by the full force of the United States’ intelligence and police network. How the hell were they supposed to make sense of THAT?
Looking down at the pile of ungraded sheets before me, I dropped my pen, got up from my seat, and walked around my desk to sit on the front edge: “Hey, like, so,” be a teacher, be a teacher, be a teacher, “I know that things look bleak right now, but if there’s anything I know about Rach and Jae, it’s that they’re tough as nails. I know I shouldn’t say it like this, but, like, y’all know exactly how tough they are,” and with a giggle, “You’ve seen them kick ass before!”
Nostalgic smiles spreading the faces of a bunch of high schoolers almost seemed like an oxymoron, but it was without a doubt a far better sight than before.
Each one of them had a Rachel or Jae memory and as they shared them, I realized just how much I had forgotten the simple truth of it all: a world existed outside of my own head, and I had a place in it.
***
September 11, 2023:
“I'm sorry about Friday,” right to the chase, I decided, as Michael walked into our apartment. I had arrived home from work just half an hour before him.
Michael hung his denim jacket on his usual hook on the rack, saying little as his shoulders both rising and falling did all of the speaking for his state of mind.
“I’m sorry, too, Candace,” no ‘Candi’—perhaps it was too jovial a thing to use a nickname in times like this.
“Did you spend the weekend with your parents?”
“I stayed at Omar’s, actually. Didn’t want to worry Mom and Dad.”
“Oh,” I hugged myself, wrinkling the pink dress shirt that I was so fond of. Doing so propped my tits up and out, making it look like I was trying to seduce Michael.
It wasn’t like I wasn’t, of course, but at the same time—Christ, I wanted him to hate me. Just hate me and hate me and kill me and—
“—Candace?” Solemn, not hopeful.
“Yes?”
“Why don’t you get help?”
“You mean, a therapist?”
“Yeah.”
I squirmed, “What if they knew I was trans?”
“Don’t tell them, then. Hell, it’d probably help if you did, though.”
“Christ, I’m a teacher—I don’t want to lose my job!”
“Are you really going to be of any use to the kids if you’re just always breaking down like this, though?”
‘The kids’, the most haunting choice of words, “I’ve got it under control at work.”
“Yeah, but for how long?”
Stepping across the floor, I walked away from Michael and into the kitchen for a bottle of water. Unfortunately, Michael followed me.
“Candace, please don’t—you need to stop running away from this.”
“Fucking hell,” the words tumbled out of my mouth like a geek tripping over himself in the school hallway, “I’m fine, Michael—I promise to quit drinking again. I’m sorry about how I treated you the other day—I swear that I’m good now.”
The poor bastard just stood there, his emotions further from my understanding than a thousand galaxies, “Please just think about it, Candace. I—I love you, I don’t want to lose you.”
“All I do is abuse you, Michael!” The tears welled up and out of me beyond my control, “It’s all—goddamn it, Michael, I’m so f-fucking s-sorry!”
Michael wrapped his big arms around me, embracing me in the warmth I had missed so much over the three nights without him in our bed. I wanted to die so badly, but each squeeze and each rock of my body in his embrace was irresistible. How was I to hate myself in his embrace? How was I to burn the world down, when all I wanted was to build it up for him? How was I to forget how much I loved life?
I could only imagine those children I could not give him feeling the same way in his arms.
I needed to die.
It was the right thing to do.
***
September 30, 2023:
It was getting chillier, now. Enough space between summer and enough ground into autumn had passed. Looking out at the gray, slowly moving waters of the Puget Sound—or maybe it was the Hood Canal, I sure as shit could not be fucking bothered to doublecheck—I gripped the guard rail as tightly as I could as I sat on it.
I was out on the peninsula, usually about an hour-plus drive from home, while Michael was out playing basketball with Omar and the boys. The drive had been an extra twenty minutes more than usual, thanks to an accident on WA-16 W. I remembered inching slowly past a Mercury Topaz that had looked like it was beat up even before it found itself belly-up. A tall woman in all black walked away from the crash without a scratch on her, the unlucky bitch. Her all-consuming dark black hair danced triumphant in the highway gale force, although judging by her face, she was in abject shock.
Our life had been a quiet one, as of late. I kept my emotions in check, I made sure that Michael had no reason to suspect that I was going to snap on him and destroy our apartment again. I did everything in my power to keep him smiling and that meant smiling a lot, myself. I had gotten good at faking it.
I had simply needed a little more time to plan things out.
It would be some time before someone found my body, hopefully. I loved this location dearly. It looked beautiful, just three miles from the nearest town—a remote little thing home mostly to streets that not even Google Maps recognized.
The gray clouds were moving closer inland. I wish I had waited for sunset, just to see it one last time. It would be a beautiful final sight.
I liked to come out here during the summer and just look out at the Cascades, which were at their clearest then. The beating summer sun and the blue skies made sure of that. The tide would be out and a hidden beach revealed beneath me. Today, I would have to settle for my corpse being bashed into by the wild waves as it laid atop any rocks still exposed.
A light drizzle began to sprinkle me.
Who knows, maybe I would get lucky and the current would carry me out to Victoria, British Columbia? Imagine that, becoming an international death case? I wondered, who would find my corpse? Some mild-mannered Canadian fisher? What kind of detective would be assigned to investigate my death? How soon would they discover that I was from the United States? How would they go about determining who I was, if my body had no identification on it? Would they check my breast implants’ serial numbers?
Standing from the rail, I took a step forward, closer to the edge than I had ever been before.
That had to be it, surely. They would identify me because I had giant, fucking porn tits that had done because I couldn’t stand the sight of my chest and wanted to be nothing more than a vessel for lust and perversion. My god, all of the long-running copaganda television shows on network television would rip my story straight from the headlines, wouldn’t they? ‘GIANT FAKE-BREASTED BLONDE WASHES UP ON SHORE WITH A LITTLE SOMETHING EXTRA BETWEEN HER LEGS’. They would reduce my breast size for television, though. Hollywood never showed off titties as big as mine. God, they would give the job to some clocky trans girl who never gets to have speaking roles in television or film, wouldn’t they? Poor bitch.
The cops would contact my emergency contact—Michael—but since we weren’t married, I suspected that he wouldn’t be allowed to bury me.
The gusts were becoming terrible.
They would contact my parents next, would they not? They would contact Arthur Woods and Darcy Woods up at Cassadine Castle and then they were deliver my fucking corpse to them and they would cut my hair and bury me in a suit under the wrong name and—oh, god—
—Turning from the cliff, I reached back for the guard rail again, only to slip and fall off of the cliff, barely hanging on by bony fingers now scraped and bleeding.
I screamed for what felt like an eternity.
“FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!! MICHAEL, I’M SO, SO, SORRY—”
I don’t know how I did it, but the next thing I remembered, I was on my knees, right arm clenched for dear life around the guard rail again. It was pouring down rain, which only made me fear any movement that much more.
Soaked in the tears of my own foolishness, I took a half hour to finally crawl over the guard rail and back to my nearby car, parked on the side of the road.
Once inside, I sobbed for another hour before finally driving myself home.
***
They say that you only turn fifty years old once. It was a funny number, ‘one’. On this half-century birthday, my son turned eleven, too. That was two ones! Watching him play video games with his dad while they sat on the living room couch, glass of wine in my hand, I could not help but lean against the archway leading to the kitchen and scan the little changes in Aaron’s facial expressions as he mashed away on the controller. His daddy was beating him again in some fighting game that I could never get into. The game itself really did not even matter in the least: I just loved watching the gears in his mind turn behind Aaron’s eyes. He had a funny little habit of rocking back-and-forth—as if he was building momentum to launch himself forward—every time he was doing something. It kind of reminded me of Rachel, now that I thought about it.
“Aaah, shoot!” Aaron dropped his controller and hid his face behind his little palms as Michael won their match. “That’s not fair, Dad!”
“Them’s the break, kiddo!”
“Dinner’s ready, you two,” I interjected, just above a whisper, still watching Aaron’s look of frustration. I loved it, even when he was whining. That was my boy right there, coming to life, even just over something as silly as a video game.
“Aaron, baby, take a break and get something to eat before you try beating your father again, okay?”
“Okay, Mom,” he pouted, standing up and trudging past me into the kitchen.
There was no helping the frown that formed on my face.
“Everything okay, Candi?” Michael asked as he wrapped his arm around my back and pulled me into his embrace.
“He called me ‘Mom’,” I mumbled, lowering my face into my husband’s chest.
“I mean, you are his mother.”
“But, I’m—I’m ‘Mommy’...”
“Oh.”
“It happened with the twins, it was going to happen with Aaron eventually, too, but—I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to get all pouty.”
“No, no, you’re fine—I get it. I mean, they still call me ‘Daddy’, but that’s—”
“—acceptable for girls, not for boys?”
“Yeah.”
“Why do they have to grow up so fast? At all?”
“Sometimes, I wish I knew, Candi. Unfortunately, things eventually come to an end, y’know?”
“Yeah…”
***
December 06, 2023:
The nice thing about letting a finger drift through the lines of a man’s muscles was that you got to feel the softness of his bulk rub against both sides of your finger. Michael’s arms were perfect for this, enrichened by his workout routine and perfectly, well, Michael. I started doing this shortly after Michael and I began sleeping together regularly and it always helped me remain at ease.
The alarms on our phones crept ever closer to going off, but as I laid in bed next to my sleeping prince, I wished that they never had to.
I had made up my mind last night: break things off with Michael, move out of town, take a teaching job down in California, and get a tan. The gears were already in motion, I just needed to talk to Sandra and then that would be it. No longer could I continue doing these horrible, abusive things to Michael—he deserved better than that.
“Hey there,” he stirred, his smile wide and his eyes still too cozy being shut to open up, “Good morning.”
“Good morning, Mikey,” I whispered back, cupping his scruffy face in my right hand, “Sleep well?”
“Who wouldn’t, laying in bed next to you all night?” His enunciation was terrible, thanks to still being half asleep, but I gave in and smiled just like my heart told me to. This would be the last time things were good between us. My last bit of selfishness, before finally setting the poor man free.
Our phone alarms began blaring, but neither one of us wanted to turn over to our nightstands to turn them off, let alone get out of bed..
It was home.
***
December 06, 2023:
Papers were graded and the halls were nearly deserted. The school day was finally over, with only faculty and students remaining for clubs or extra curriculum courses remaining. I had nothing left to delay the inevitable: it was time to make my way down to the gym to watch the girls volleyball team practice, as I always did after finishing grading.
I would, of course, have to see Mikey, in his element, doing the thing that made him come alive: teaching and helping kids. It was like a piranha, eating my guts from the inside out.
Grabbing my bag, double-checking my makeup, and flattening out my dress, I turned off the lights of the classroom on my way out and took one last look before closing the door: empty classrooms had become a sad thing to me in my five years of teaching. Today, the classroom looked even sadder than it usually did when I left for the day.
Making my way through the nearly deserted halls, I took in the melancholy of the school, even as light from the dwindling winter sunlight helped light the halls.
Co-workers and faculty stopped me to say ‘hello’ on my way down to the gym. It was nice.
Finally, arriving in the gym, I walked through the foyer, stepped into the single-stall restroom one more time to double check my hair and my makeup, and then entered the gym.
Nothing was out of the ordinary: a half dozen nets set up throughout the gym while the girls practiced their serves and receiving. Michael—clipboard in hand and whistle in mouth—studied his girls’ form. Finally, my presence spotted, Michael waved me over. As I took a single step forward, smiled wide—this was going to be one of our last happy moments together, after all—I heard the familiar voice of one of my students—Zoey—carry on a loud shout: “Miss Queen, watch out!!”
Reacting on instinct, I turned to my right to see an oncoming, transgender-powered volleyball flying towards me like a cannonball, and silently prayed that my death was finally at han—!!!
TO BE CONTINUED…
Chapter #11 is currently only 16,253 words long, so it shall be a while longer before it is finished. The plan is to wrap the series up in it, although if I decide to split the chapter into two for whatever reason, I'll still hold off until I can drop them both. I don't really see why I would need to, at this point. So far, Chapter #2 remains the longest chapter and I kind of want to try to surpass it lol.
Also: I can make her more mentally ill
I'm sad that next chapter will be the last, but also happy that I'll finally be free of this torment
Jokes aside, I just hope Candace finally gets some help and starts to improve. I'm too invested lol
You are such a good writer, please please give us more
@Mephistofeline i'm working on it~
Everything Candace does to herself has a vibe somewhere between stepping on a rake and pressing your thumb into a bruise. She has enough going on in her life without adding this perpetial self-aggrandicizing torment, I think.
But this at least closes the loop on her.
It's like when Pre-Crisis Superman and Lois Lane merged with New 52 Superman and Lois Lane...
@JulieYBM exactly my thought yeah
I just need this woman’s friends and family to strap her to a chair and force her to have an intervention.
Muwahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahaha
PLEASE
@Mephistofeline 😈
And now we reach where we started. Fun to see the events from TOPEGG from a different PoV.
It was so fun writing those events from Candace's POV. Her perspective is SO different and a completely different genre, even.
Oh this is so heartbreaking
Thank yooou!!! I really wanted to convey the sort of things that we girls with reproductive dysphoria go through but nobody else wants to tell stories about. Reproductive dysphoria and the lingering effects of childhood trauma in your 30s is crazy awful, so I wanted to capture what it's like.
@JulieYBM yeah you did an excellent job. definitely made me cry multiple times
“Why did you have to pick now of all times to revert back to being a f*cking teenager?”
Little did Michael know, it was pretty much the best time for that to happen
Further scrolling brought me to a new post from Hinata: she and Alyssa were experimenting with new looks for their makeup before their move to college.
I love that even in her dreams from the past, she had figured out Hinata was a girl lol and was dating a girl name Alyssa. Does this mean Candi has psychic abilities? Well she didn’t accurately predict darcy getting murdered lol.
I took my lifeline: “Hey Izzy, remind me of how bad the Stonewall movie is again?”
Its sooooo bad!!! They made the story center around a gay dude and made him out to be the white savior, oh dont get me started…
This was a wonderful chapter, perfectly full circle, it makes me want to go back and reread from chapter one. Theres still so much happening! Gosh I definitely need to go read Top Egg. Gaaah I need to know what happens next lol, Ive been spoiled by you posting a chapter a day for these three. Thank you for sharing!!!
Only saw one error I think
I remembered my suspension of the girl being autistic too late to stop myself.
suspicion
Yeah, it can't be helped lol. If I was more patient, I would have waited to finish TOP EGG Chapter 5 and then Chapter 11 of this for five consecutive days of fun, but alas.