Sarah. She found them. HELP.

When I got Sadie’s panicked text messages, I abandoned my AP English class halfway through, jogged to my Impreza, and tore through town so fast I practically wore my tires down to rubber dust. After an excruciating thirty-three minutes I finally arrived at my parents house and found Marianne sitting on the sofa with a bemused expression.

“Where is…” I began.

My mother snorted. “Locked himself in our room, the big baby. He texted you, I take it?”

I nodded wordlessly. In response, my mom held up the two pill bottles, one spiro and the other estrogen, and motioned for me to sit down next to her. “Sarah, dear, let’s talk.”

I gulped audibly. “Yeah, let’s… uh…”

I reluctantly took the seat, avoiding her eyes all the while. “So,” she said in a serious tone, “why don’t we start by coming clean. That Starbucks story was 100% fake, wasn’t it?”

“Er… yeah…” I muttered. “You knew?”

She chuckled humorlessly. “C’mon, Sarah. Of course I knew. You think I can’t smell bullshit a hundred yards away, especially where my daughter is concerned?”

“B-But Dad…” I began.

“Is a very lovely… person,” Marianne interrupted. “Kindhearted, goofy, and also dumb as a bag of hammers. We both know that, Sarah; that’s why your little deception worked on him. I, on the other hand, simply played along for his peace of mind. What I can’t figure out is why you’d go to such great lengths to deceive us in the first place?”

Here it was, the moment Dani had long warned me about; my whole tangled web of lies was coming unraveled. I didn’t even entertain the thought of trying to spin another, of entangling myself further. No more.

I knew what I had to do. Let’s open this can of worms, bitch.

“Sadie should be here for this conversation,” I said resolutely, rising to my feet.

Marianne quirked an eyebrow. “Who’s Sadie?”

My eyes darted to the locked bedroom door, and hers followed.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

She sighed and rose to her feet as well. “Fine, fine. I’ll pour us all some shots of vodka; it seems like this conversation is going to require loose lips and soothed nerves. You go coax… Sadie… out of our room.”

******

It took 45 minutes, two bags of licorice and a couple of C-clamps, but I finally managed to get Sadie out into the living room, where she sat squirming and staring at her lap. When Marianne handed her a shot of vodka, she downed it in one gulp, but it didn’t seem to ease her nerves at all.

“Okay,” I said, rising to my feet and turning to face them both. “Moms, I have something I need to confess to you.”

They both stared at me, Marianne expectant and Sadie confused. The latter expression was more hurtful… would she ever forgive me for leading her on? Would this revelation ruin her one and only chance to transition? Had my lie destroyed our family forever?

I took a deep breath, then another.

Then another.

Then another.

Then an… look, you get the point. I was extremely nervous, okay?

Two dozen deep breaths later, I finally worked up the courage to start.

“So, uh… I lied about the Starbucks thing.”

Sadie’s eyes grew shock-wide. “WHAT?!”

There was no easy way to break this news, so I kept going with blunt honesty. “Sadie, there’s no such thing as the ‘Gay Agenda.’ Starbucks might give you cavities, but it won’t forcibly feminize you. And 5G waves are just a specific modulation of radio waves that imparts high bandwidth onto mobile devices. They don’t have any mind control properties whatsoever.”

The look of betrayal, hurt and confusion on Sadie’s face shattered my heart. “B-But… but you said… but I… the bimbofication…”

I kept going because if I stopped now I’d never get my nerve back. “In truth, Sadie, I bimbofied myself… er, feminized myself. I did this with good old-fashioned hormone replacement therapy because I wanted to, not because anyone tricked me into it. I did this because… because I’m trans.”

Sadie gawped. “Like, really ACTUALLY trans? Not 5G trans?”

“Yes, Sadie. Really actually trans.”

Sadie’s eyes grew distant and she began mumbling to herself, somewhat incomprehensibly. “No 5G… but I thought it was the key to all this… the invisible feminization rays… John Titor’s warnings… was the Philadelphia experiment a lie too? Is EVERYTHING I’ve ever known a lie?”

Meanwhile, Marianne shook her head sadly. “Why wouldn’t you just tell us the truth, Sarah? Why all these deceptions?”

“Yeah!” Sadie added, rejoining reality. “We’re your parents! You can tell us anything! Why didn’t you trust us with the truth?”

Maybe it was the heightened emotions of the moment, or the shot of vodka loosening my inhibitions, but the courage I had felt a moment ago twisted into a torrent of long-repressed anger. “Why? After all this, you’re seriously going to sit there and ask me WHY?!”

“I don’t…” Marianne began.

I ground my teeth together. “Okay, fine. Let me tell you why. Every goddamned week you dragged me to a church that preached hate against gay folk! Remember all the sermons on ‘Sodom and Gomorrah?’ Remember Deuteronomy 22:5? Leviticus 20:13? AGAIN AND AGAIN, it was pounded into my young impressionable brain that the things I felt inside were WRONG! I had to BURY those things because you all thought they were SINFUL AND EVIL! DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MUCH THAT FUCKED ME UP?”

“W-We never…”

“I’d be a HELL of a lot happier today if I hadn’t had to grow pretending to be a man! I was DISGUSTED BY MY OWN BODY! Every FIBER of my being longed for puberty blockers, for understanding and acceptance, but I was absolutely MORTIFIED of ever saying anything to you because of how steeped you were in conservative evangelical BULLSHIT! Hell, for all I know, you would have sent me to god-damned CONVERSION THERAPY!”

“Sarah, please don’t…” Sadie began weakly.

“Don’t YOU start now! You spent your every waking hour listening to hateful bigots like Rush Limbaugh and Alex Jones! Those assholes said AWFUL things about queer people on a DAILY BASIS and yet you were lapping up their bullshit like a kitten laps milk from a teat! You REPEATED the horrible things they said! You fucking TEXTED ME QANON MEMES! Why the HELL do you think I’d ever feel safe coming out to YOU?!”

Both my parents were silent now, staring at me with bleary eyes. I sighed and wound down my rant.

“So yeah, that’s why I lied. That’s why I made up a stupid fucking story about transgender Starbucks. I figured if I framed this as… as something that was done to me against my will, something I had no agency in, you wouldn’t hate me.”

Marianne rose to her feet and padded over to me, wrapping me in one of her famous bear hugs. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, her voice wavering.

“You’re…”

“Sorry,” she said again. “It was never my intention to make you feel uncomfortable or hated, but clearly I failed at being a good mother. I’m so sorry you never felt you could tell me this before now.”

Sadie joined the hug from the other side. “And I’m sorry too. You never should have had to go to such ridiculous lengths to win our approval.”

“I’ll say,” I managed, and then sank to my knees sobbing.

******

The thing about a good cry is it destroys your sense of time. By the time I’d finished heaving like a rusty steam engine, the sun had already dipped below the horizon. As I stared hollowly at the wall, drained of emotions and tears, Sadie poked my arm.

“Hey Sarah. You want some pizza?”

I snapped out of it and noticed the smell of oily cheese wafting through the room, emanating from a stack of three pizza boxes on the coffee table. “When did you have time to…?” I half-asked, still reassembling myself mentally.

Sadie held up her smartphone, grinning triumphantly. “Through the app. These days, you can order pizza even while hugging your crying daughter. Now that’s the TRUE power of 5G!”

“We got your favorite,” Marianne added. “Stuffed crust, buffalo sauce, with anchovies, pineapple and jalapeno peppers.”

“A veritable crime against common sense and tastebuds both, just as our little girl likes!” Sadie added, handing me a paper plate with three piping hot slices.

I stared at the pizza, then at both my moms, and broke into a huge grin. “You two are such huge fucking dorks.”

Marianne looked at Sadie. “Sounds good to me. Dear?”

Sadie grinned. “I can live with that.”

******

Twenty minutes and four slices of pizza later, I looked over to Marianne. “By the way, are you fine with Sadie being trans too?”

Marianne licked some grease off her fingertips and tilted her head to the side. “Huh? After all this, why wouldn’t I be?”

I shrugged. “Sometimes spouses can be… I dunno, weird about this stuff? Broken marriage kinda shit, you know. Like, if you’re not attracted to women, you might find yourself growing apart from her as she furthers her transition, right?”

“EEP!” Sadie shrieked, her eyes becoming limpid like those of a lost kitten. “You wouldn’t leave me if I become a girl, right dear?”

Marianne chuckled. “Of course not, Sadie. I know I still have a lot of growing to do myself, starting with re-examining my choice of pastor and church, but rest assured I love you and am committed to supporting you as you go through this important change in your life. Everything I said to Sarah applies to you as well.”

Sadie breathed a huge sigh of relief. “Oh, thank God…”

“Besides…” Marianne said, tapping her chin thoughtfully, “I think you’d look quite cute as a girl.”

Sadie, ever the blusher, erupted bright red. “Wh-Wh-What?”

Marianne grinned slyly. “Oh, just dreaming up some outfit ideas. I might still have a lot to learn, but I know one thing for sure… I’m an unabashed Sadie-sexual, and I always will be.”

“Aww, honey!” Sadie exclaimed, pulling Marianne in for a kiss.

Normally this is the point at which I would have exclaimed “EWW GROSS” and told them to get a room, because who wants to watch parent PDA, right? Yet even I couldn’t find it in myself to break up such a touching display of true love.

******

The next six months were a whirlwind, to put it mildly.

Sadie, for her part, had a lot of deprogramming to go through; it wasn’t like coming out as trans magically purged her of past toxicity. She’d spent so long steeped in far-right culture that she had a lot of biases to unlearn, conscious and unconscious alike. That lead to some difficult conversations… but they were always worthwhile, because Sadie was willing to listen and learn.

Marianne, on the other hand, slipped easily into more open-minded viewpoints; she’d always been a reasonable skeptic anyway, the brains to Sadie’s bimbo, and thus had an easier time of it than her wife. She was skeptical of attending my church at first, but after a few weeks of warm welcomes from the congregation and pastor, she made the switch official.

As for me, I smoked lots and lots of weed. Hey, a girl’s gotta be true to herself, right?

And so it came to pass, during winter break, that me and Dani invited Sadie and Marianne over for a Christmas Eve dinner. As they stepped over the threshold into our small apartment, arm in arm, Dani and I stared, mouths agape.

They made a stunning couple, to put it mildly. Sadie was the more femme of the two, dressed in a frilly blouse and ankle-length skirt accented by one of those little mini-jackets that looks cute and provides no thermal insulation whatsoever. Meanwhile Marianne was rocking her usual butch style, with an unbuttoned flannel shirt over a black T-shirt, ripped jeans and work boots.

I looked down at my own outfit, a faded red tee with Captain Janeway’s face printed on and some booty shorts, and sighed. “Now I feel underdressed.”

Dani, who was in a bathrobe, scowled. “YOU feel underdressed?!”

Marianne let out a hearty belly laugh. “Oh settle down, you two. You’re both college students, so some amount of slovenliness is to be expected.”

“Dani, I think we’ve just been insulted,” I huffed.

“You’re quite right, Sarah. And in our own home too!” she agreed grumpily.

There was a long silence, then all four of us broke into laughter and merged into a big group hug.

“Just promise me you won’t spend the whole visit cleaning our place!” I teased Sadie as we pulled out of the hug.

“I refuse to promise anything,” Sadie responded, blepping her tongue out at me and giving a stack of dirty dishes the side-eye. “How’s dinner coming along?”

Dani motioned to the oven. “The ham’s got about two hours left, and everything else is prepped and ready to go. So, what would you like to do in the meantime?”

“Video games?” Marianne suggested.

“House cleaning!” Sadie offered with far too much enthusiasm.

“Maybe we could see what’s on TV?” Dani said, trying to find a middle ground.

“OR!” I exclaimed, planting both my hands on my hips as all eyes gravitated towards me. “Why don’t we all smoke some weed on the balcony?”

A year ago, I never would have offered… but my newly-gay parents were learning to be open to a lot of new things. They looked at each other and smiled.

“I haven’t smoked since I was in college,” Marianne said, wistful with memory.

“And I’ve never tried it! So go easy on me, okay?” Sadie added.

Me and Dani shot each other a mischievous look, then spoke in unison.

““No promises.””

******

“You know,” I said as I stared at the rising full moon just above the city skyline, “I’m so happy we can share these kinds of experiences now.”

Marianne took a hit, then looked quizzically at me as she exhaled. “How so?”

“I feel like since I came out and Sadie started transitioning, we’re all way more open with each other,” I explained, taking a puff out of my own bowl. “It’s like we were wearing masks our whole life, and we had to discard them before truly becoming a family. You feel me?”

Marianne nodded. “Definitely. I mean, here we are smoking weed together on a balcony, staring at the moonrise. If this is what true family means, I’m all for it.”

Sadie burst into a fit of giggles, which lasted about thirty seconds longer than they should have. “The family that Starbucks together, stays together!”

I looked at her confused. “That doesn’t even make any sense.” Her only response was to dissolve into another fit of giggles.

“I swear. First-timers…” Marianne muttered under her breath.

“I’m surprised you’d bring up the Starbucks thing again,” Dani said nonchalantly. “I thought, after everything that happened, you were done with conspiracy theories?”

Dani’s eyes grew wide as she saw me and Marianne silently pleading, waving our hands in the air and shaking our heads vigorously. Don’t encourage her! we desperately implored.

But it was too late.

“Oh, I’ve ditched all those mean, hurtful conservative conspiracy theories,” Sadie explained, growing excited. “But that’s given me time to research some new ones!”

“Oh, is that so…” Dani said weakly, realizing the magnitude of her mistake. This was Sadie’s first time smoking weed, which meant the effects were hitting her harder than anyone else, and she’d just been given an excuse to ramble.

“Yeah!” Sadie enthused, practically bouncing up and down in her chair. “I’ve been binging Art Bell radio shows lately, classic Coast to Coast! Did you know the moon landings were actually faked? Stanley Kubrick shot them on a soundstage at the US military’s secret base on Mars! If you look at the shadows in the photos…”

The look of despair shared between Marianne, Dani and myself spoke volumes. As Sadie enthusiastically yammered away, a single thought dominated all three of our minds.

Uh-oh.