I let her take my hand again when we got back in the truck and I immediately took the glamulet off and dropped it on the dash. 

We sat in silence for a good minute before I couldn't take it any longer. 

"What?"

"You're coming to terms with a big change and I wanna be here to help."

I reached out with my free hand and pinched my leg, earning a giggle from Laura. 

"Yeah." I sighed. "I don't know where to start."

"Mmmmm, start with what you expected to happen."

I considered making her promise not to laugh, but to some degree I didn't feel like I deserved the consideration. 

"I expected to turn back into a guy. I was pretty thoroughly convinced I was one, you know? Like can you believe how weird it is to say that in past tense? I was a guy? I certainly can't be a guy anymore."

"Yeah, you could. Do you want to?"

"I don't wanna do another KT if that's what you're asking."

"No, I'm asking if you want to be a guy." 

The answer felt obvious but I did some soul searching anyways. The more I thought about it and tried to make certain of anything, the more nebulous and subjective the ideas of boys and girls seemed to get. In the end I had nothing to fall back on for my effort except my knee-jerk response. 

"No."

"Okay. You don't have to be one, either. It's your choice."

I snorted my disbelief and she squeezed my hand reassuringly. 

"You know trans people exist right?" She seemed oddly worried as she asked. 

"Yeah, of course. I just think I'd know if I was one ya know? Trans people know, you know? I don't." 

Laura sighed heavily and rubbed her thumb on the back of my hand. She didn't say anything, so I barreled on. 

"What I mean is trans people know they were born the wrong gender and they do something about it. I guess they could do a KT or whatever transitioning entails but I didn't -- I mean I did do a KT but I--" I lost track of my argument as I tried to find what set me apart from a trans woman. 

I wanted to say "I'm just different, okay?" But that felt lazy. There had to be more to it than that. 

"I just wanted to be a girl. Trans women actually are girls." I felt a perverse sense of pride for getting down to the bottom of it, but my victory was spoiled by Laura's laughter. 

"Okay, okay. So trans women are women despite how they are born right?" 

I nodded. It seemed obvious. 

"How do you think a trans woman knows they're a woman?" 

I tried to put myself in the frame of mind of a trans woman, but I couldn't. It felt wrong to pretend I was trans. 

No doubt sensing my road block, Laura continued. "What do you think a trans woman thinks when they're stuck in a body they don't like?"

"Oh. They would probably wish they had a different body."

Laura nodded slowly as if there should be some aha moment, but I felt fried by all the soul searching and empathizing. It felt like I had all the pieces of a big confusing puzzle, but they were scattered everywhere and I was too tired to put them together. 

Laura groaned and released my hand to rub at her eyes. She started the truck and buckled her seat belt.

"You need rest. Let's get you home." She put the truck in drive and started on her way out of the parking lot. I stared out the window, thinking of my puzzle pieces. 

Laura seemed convinced that I was trans. And I had to admit it seemed simple given the facts. I was a guy, I wasn't any more. Therefore trans. But it didn't feel right. I didn't ask for the KT to make me this way, it did so by reading my subconscious. If I'd gotten the KT and been like "Oh, and another thing, I want to be a girl," then it would be cut and dry. 

I bumped my head into the window and unexpectedly made eye contact with a child in the car next to us. She pointed and mouthed the word "Kitty!" and I realized my mistake. I hurried to put on the glamulet and avoided eye contact, hoping I hadn't gotten myself in trouble already. I slumped in my seat as Laura took familiar roads to my apartment. 

Wait. 

I sat up. "You're taking me home?"

"That's what I said I would do." She glanced at me, confused.

"I thought you meant your home! I don't wanna go home."

"You'll have to eventually."

I held my ears down as I panicked. I hadn't even spoken to my roommate Richard since telling them I was going to stay with Laura for the month. They wouldn't even know I was unraveled. 

I shot a quick text to my roommate. "Hey I unraveled."

My phone buzzed almost immediately. "Congrats!" But I didn't feel remotely comforted. What was I supposed to say? What would I do? How did I explain this?

Laura seemed to realize my distress and pulled into a parking lot a block away from the apartment. I was hyperventilating.

"What do you look like?" 

I stared at the phone screen. How the fuck did I respond to that? "Different." I hit send and looked pleadingly at Laura but she just shrugged. 

I managed a selfie and sent it before I could talk myself out of it. Laura read over my shoulder as I waited for a response. 

"Seriously?" 

I typed back a quick "yeah" and slumped further in my seat. 

His response made me want to puke.

Laura grabbed my phone from my slack hand. She dialed Richard and shushed me as I tried to object, so I focused on not getting sick. 

"No, this is her friend, Laura." Her voice was ice. I was glad I wasn't on the receiving end. 

"Shut up. We're coming by to pick up some things and then we'll be out of your hair… I don't care, You have five minutes." She hung up and handed me my phone. 

The only sound in the truck was passing traffic for a minute while I stared numbly at my phone. 

"I didn't know your roommate was a dickwad," she grumbled. I did my best to sit up and she started driving us the remaining block to the apartment.

"Neither did I."

She nodded. Her face was set in hard lines. 

"What do you need from your apartment for the next week?"

"I guess I don't need my old clothes… The furniture and stuff is all his, so just my -- my computer." 

"Let's go get your computer, then, and then I'll take you home." 

Richard wasn't there when we arrived. I guess given the option to meet Laura or make himself scarce, he took the latter. It only took a minute for me to clear my desk into a suitcase and unplug the tower to bring it along, and just like that, the already spartan room had nothing of me left in it. 

I let Laura tie everything down in the bed of the truck while I just stared at it all numbly. I couldn't really go back. I wanted to curse the KT for ruining my life this way, but even now I couldn't bring myself to truly regret it. 

Maybe I deserved to suffer. 

Laura brought me out of my thoughts by gently pushing me to actually get into the truck. I guess I had been staring at my stuff in her truck bed for too long. 

When we got back to Laura's house I went to the guest bedroom on autopilot. The covers offered a small comfort and before long I was fast asleep.