I’d love to say that the rest of the day was more relaxed. It was not. Have you ever tried making it through a day in an average high school with cat ears and a cat tail that are clearly not part of a costume? No? Of course you haven’t. 

By the time I made it to lunch, I was absolutely frazzled. I hit the bench next to my new friends(?) and slumped a bit.

“Wow… So the rumors are true,” Andi said, eyes wide.

“Oh my god, so cute…” Belle gasps. “Can I touch your tail!?”

I wince. It’s okay, Kat… these are Cassie’s friends… your friends. It’s okay. “Uh… If… If you guys want to… you can.”

In turn, Cassie, Andi, Belle, and even Bryce take turns petting my tail or ears. Bryce certainly seems a bit more awkward about it than the others.

I’m just about to pull my tail back to continue petting it to relax when something else catches it.

“Got your tail!” Pete laughs.

OW! His grip on my tail hurts! I whirl around instinctively, hissing loudly at him. He immediately releases my tail, which begins swishing agitatedly back and forth, the short fur all frizzed up.

“Hey, sorry, I’m sorry!” Pete says quickly, raising his hands defensively.

“Woah…” a few of the people at the table say in unison. I feel my face go red. Oh god. I hissed at him. Like actually hissed. What the heck, me?

“Sorry Pete, why don’t you hang out at another table for lunch today,” Cassie says, looping an arm around my shoulders to try and comfort me.

“Wait, what? Just because I grabbed her tail? Seriously?!”

“No, Pete, because - ” Cassie shot me a look, asking for permission I didn’t want to give.

I shook my head no.

“We’ll… talk about it later, ok? She’s just not comfortable around you right now,” Cassie said with a slight frown.

“Oh… uh, okay? Sorry, I guess.” He shrugged and took his tray off to find somewhere else to sit.

“Thanks Cassie,” I mumbled, poking anxiously at my food. Somehow, I wasn’t quite hungry anymore. I caught my tail and brushed it to help calm myself down, waiting for the chaos of lunchtime to be over.

==========

“Wait, Kat - er, Katarina, right?” 

I turn towards the sound of my new name, letting go of my tail. I’d been petting it to stay calm while waiting for Jen. Oh, it’s... Ben. right? Yeah, Ben. “...Yeah.” I nod.

“Whew. I was worried you might have left already… Look, I wanted to know if we could talk?”

Talk, here, with him? What could he possibly want to talk to me about? I still don’t see Jen outside, so there’s time. I nod. “Yeah… sure. I’m just waiting for my mo-- guardian - to come get me.”

“Okay, cool. This uh, won’t take too long, I hope. Mind if we grab a seat?”

I shook my head. “As long as we stay out in the open.”

He raised a brow, but agreed, leading the way to a small bench meant for students waiting to get into the school before the doors opened.

I took a seat at the opposite end of the bench, remembering to smooth my skirt down before I sat. Yes, Nailed it! I’ve got this girl thing down pat.

“So, uh, what’d you wanna talk about?” I ask, moving past my major victory over girling properly. “This isn’t a set up to like, ask me out, is it?”

“Definitely not,” Ben laughed, “I’m gay. I just wanted to talk to you about uh… what you’ve been going through.”

Wait. What? If he’s gay… he likes guys? But then he might like me? No… I’m a girl. Definitely a girl. So he doesn’t like me. Whew… but wait, why does that make me kind of sad? The weird little skips my heart was doing earlier when he complimented me in home room are back as I look into his eyes. Crap. Do I have a crush on this guy?

I guess it doesn’t matter if I do or not. He’s definitely not interested. I’m not a guy, after all.

But what if he’s lying about being gay to get me to lower my guard? He is a guy, after all. My track record with them isn’t the best.

“Are you… okay? I’m sorry if I said too much. I just didn’t want you to think I was trying to hit on you or anything…” He was blushing.

I realized I hadn’t actually said anything since he clarified on being gay. Oops. “Huh? Oh! I’m fine, sorry, I uh… I just didn’t expect…”

“No, I get it, sorry, uh. I just… yeah,” he scratched the back of his head, looking awkwardly away for a moment. “I uh. I wanted to tell you that um… I understand some of what you’re going through, I guess, and I want you to know I’m here if you wanna talk.”

“Huh? You understand?” I tilt my head slightly, and my ears flick in his direction.

“Well, uh, yeah… I um…” He sighs, tapping on the bench with his knuckles softly. “I’m a regen too.”

For the second time in a few minutes I’m left wondering: Wait. What? My expression must show it, because he continues.

“My um, my name used to be Brittany, up until 8th grade.”

Why is that name familiar? Oh god. “...You’re Cassie’s friend…” I mumbled. His face went pale.

“Sh-she told you?” He looks hurt. Betrayed.

“Huh? No! Well, uh, not directly! She just told me she had a friend named Brittany who became a regen in 8th grade. She didn’t say which way or who they were now!”

He relaxed a little bit at that. “Oh… I guess that’s okay, then. Well… you know either way, now.” 

Crap. Did I mess up? He looked upset. Stupid Kat, you idiot, you shouldn’t talk to people, all you ever do is hurt pe-- NO. I cut that thought off. I’m… I’m not just someone that hurts people. Jen doesn’t think so… so I’m… I’m going to believe her.

“Anyway, I uh, I just wanted to tell you… you know, so that you don’t feel so alone. Although I don’t know much about the whole… cat… thing.” He shrugged.

“Oh. Right. I guess most people wouldn’t…” I fidget with my tail. “So um… You turned into a boy?”

Duh. Obviously. He said he’s a regen, and he’s a boy now. 

“Yeah.” He blushed a little. “I always wanted to be one, and um… one day it just kinda happened.” He shrugged. 

“Oh. Uh. Cool?” Wait. Does that mean…? Did I always want to be…?

He seems to follow my journey-of-many-facial-expressions as I explore that idea, and chuckles softly. “I can’t tell you that,” he replies to the unspoken questions I was thinking.

“O-oh, of course not. Um.” Find another topic, Kat… quickly… throw the spotlight back on him! “W-were you um… were you gay before the regendering?”

He shrugged. “Well, I liked boys before… and I still like them now. So, yeah. What about you?”

“Me?”

“Yeah, do you have a preference? Has the regendering messed with it at all?”

“I… don’t really know.” Cassie had definitely gotten something in me all kind of worked up, and I felt those weird flutters in my stomach around Ben earlier… not to mention all my feelings about Pete back when I had been a boy, before I had known the real Pete...

Ben just nodded and didn’t push the issue. “Cool. Well, everyone figures it out eventually. There’s a whole spectrum out there.”

“Spectrum?”

“Yeah, I mean… LGBTQ+ has a whooooole bunch of stuff under its umbrella. I mean, there’s all kinds of people at my support group. In our group of like, 20, we have all kinds of shades of Enby, Trans, Queer, whatever you wanna call it all. We even have this really great system that comes once in a while, and...” He just keeps going.

Oh. Huh… Okay, well. I don’t really understand most of what he’s talking about as he rambles on. Crap. Do I look ignorant now? Is it okay to be ignorant because you are uninformed? I don’t know! I should know. Maybe I should ask—

“You should come some time! I know there’s a girl who would absolutely love you. She’s a therian cat.”

“Uhm. You keep using words I don’t understand…” I blushed, my ears folding down.

“Oh, right. Well that’s ok, I mean, I’m still learning and screwing up too. It’s a big world out there! The best we can do is respect what people want to be called and how they want to be treated, right?”

I nod. That seems simple enough. “Right.”

“So, uh, on that topic… I know how the Bureau is, and while I was cool with it, I don’t know if you are? So… How would you rather be addressed?”

Oh. Uh. How would I…? “Well… um… just Kat is fine. Katarina sounds… weird.” I shrug.

“Okay, cool. Kat it is… Do you have any pronoun preference? She/her? He/Him? They/them? Something else? There’s all kinds.”

“Ummm….Sh-she/her, I guess?” Admitting that to someone else felt weird. Freeing, but weird. I wanted to be seen as a girl. I’d come to that realization before, but letting others in on it… somehow made it real. 

“Cool. Maybe we could trade numbers, you know, so if you want, I can text you the info for the group… Maybe I could take you next week to introduce you, if you um, are still like this?”

“S-sure, that sounds great.” I smile. I mean it. I want to meet other people like me.

“Cool. I’ll tell them to put out an extra chair for a cute new girl.” He winks.

Hahaaaa….. That makes me feel funny. I squirm a little in my seat. I really can’t handle compliments apparently.

“Th-thanks, Ben. You um… you’re nice.” Lame, Kat… really lame. “I mean, uh, nicer… than other guys I’ve talked to. Maybe because you used to be a girl?”

He frowned at that. “Well, I was… never really a girl. I mean, I guess I was born AFAB but like… I was trans even before I was a regen.”

“Trans?”

“Yeah, you know, like, uh… the ‘you’ part of you not matching up to the ‘body’ part. So like, I always knew I was a boy… even when my body was a girl. Get it?”

I shook my head. “Not really, but... “

“Hey, no problem… it’s a lot to take in at once, you know?”

I nodded. This whole week had been a lot to take in at once.

“Hey, is that your ride?” he asked, nodding towards the pickup lane.

Jen was sitting there, patiently waiting. “Oh, shoot, yeah, uh, that is. I gotta go.”

“Sure thing-- wait, your number!” He hastily pulled out his phone.

I pulled out mine and swiped around frantically looking for my number. We exchanged contact info, as quickly as we could. I didn’t want to keep her waiting longer.

“Catch you around, Kat,” Ben smiled, waving.

“Y-yeah, later, Ben.” I quickly hurried over to Jen’s car and swung inside. 

“He’s cute,” Jen said, winking as she pulled away. “I saw you got his number… or he got yours? Anything I need to know?”

“N-no! He’s just uh… in my home room class. He invited me to an LGB-group-thing and needed my number to text me the information!”

“Ah, too bad… I was hoping I’d get to give my girl ‘the talk’ about dating boys.”

I felt my face go bright red as my ears pinned back, also heating with a blush. “Nnngh… Jeeeennnnnn!!”

She giggled at my embarrassment, and continued to gently tease me the whole way back to the condo.

==========

As it so happened, a text came through later, but it wasn’t from Ben.

[Cassie: Hey girl, I was thinking… maybe u should sit down and talk w/ Pete? I know he can b a jerk, but he’s my friend & I wanna hope he’ll apologize for his mistake. Bsides, it’s not healthy to go on hurting & not talk about it 2 him.]

It took a minute to read over the message, but I could at least understand these weird text shortenings. Meeting up with Pete… I didn’t want to. Not really. I was still hurt from what he had said before.

Still, if Cassie wanted to make peace… well, I didn’t want to hurt Cassie too.

[Kat: Hey Cassie… I’ll try. He is a jerk though.]

[Cassie: I know. Thanks 4 trying, girl. C u l8r]