“I’m home!” I announced loudly as I walked through the door.

“Welcome back,” Katie said from the couch, without turning around; Mel just nodded – they were engrossed in a Mario Kart race, and they were mumbling to themselves and swearing under their breath as they battled with each other and the AI for first place. I smiled as I stepped out of my shoes – the heels Nora had bought me in Syracuse – and shrugged off my jacket.

It felt good to be home.

Nearly two months after my name change hearing I was still staying at Vicky’s place, sharing a room with her, and I would be for the foreseeable future. Until the end of the school year, at least. I’d tried to go back to the dorm room I’d shared with Joe, since he was apparently gone for good, but it had been a harrowing experience: when I found myself standing in front of the door, the memories came flooding back, and I almost had a panic attack right then and there. Thankfully Nora and my friends were there, and their presence (especially Nora’s) managed to calm me down enough to get control of my breathing back, but the thought of sleeping in that dorm was simply unbearable. So I’d asked Vicky if I could stay with her, and she’d readily agreed. Not for free, of course: even though I knew she didn’t really need the money, I’d firmly insisted on paying my share of the rent, and luckily I was able to, since Elanor had managed to talk the school’s administration into giving me back what I’d spent on the dorm room. (I’d asked them how they’d done it, but they’d just smiled in response, put a finger to their lips, and winked.)

I’d only gone back to the dorm one time since then, to pick up a few things Anna and Nora had accidentally left behind while packing, and I felt extremely nervous the whole time I’d been there: I all but fled the premises as soon as I found what I was looking for. Sometimes I still woke up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night, the faint memory of a nightmare fading in the back of my mind, leaving me trying and failing to fall asleep again; it had happened often in the first couple of weeks after the assault, but the bad dreams had been getting fewer and farther in-between since then. Still, I hated Joe with all my heart for making me feel like that.

“I’m going to get changed, then I’ll get dinner started,” I said. “You gals want something in particular?”

“Nah, whatever is fine,” Mel said; Katie swore loudly as a blue shell crashed into her kart, sending it flying.

“Alright, I’ll check the fridge then,” I laughed as I climbed up the stairs.

“Okay!” Mel called.

I reached the top of the stairs, walked the few steps along the corridor to the room I shared with Vicky, and knocked. “Yes, come in!” came her voice from inside; I opened the door and walked in.

And immediately turned around in embarrassment: Vicky was in the middle of changing clothes, and at the moment she was wearing nothing but a pair of panties and a bra.

“Vicks, how many times do I have to tell you?” I asked. “You should be a little more modest.”

“What’s the big deal?” she replied. “We’re room-mates, and we’re both girls besides.”

We’re not, actually, I thought; I wondered what she would say if she found out I was not a girl, but rather a cis man pretending to be a girl.

“Still,” I said.

“Oh, you’re such a prude,” Vicky said. “You can turn around now.”

I turned back around: Vicky had slipped on a simple blue dress, which flowed nicely around her and hugged her curves nicely. I idly wondered how she managed to hide that kind of body when she had to go home for the holidays, since I knew she wasn’t out to anyone outside of Bradford McKinley: hoodies, maybe? But still, to be unable to see Vicky for who she is… Cis people can really be oblivious.

“How was your day?” she asked.

I shrugged. “Oh, you know. Same old, same old. The professor is still pestering me, asking for a final title for my dissertation.”

“Just make one up, you can always change it later,” Vicky replied. “Oh, by the way, you’ve got mail. Looks official,” she added, pointing to my bed: a large envelope was sitting on the pillow.

“Huh. What’s this?” I mused, picking it up and turning it over: it was addressed to ‘Miss Lily O’Connor,’ and emblazoned with the seal of New York state. I stared at it for a moment. Hold on, was that…?

I gingerly opened the envelope, being careful not to damage whatever was inside, and pulled out… two sheets of paper, stapled together. That was it? I took in a deep breath, and held it as I read, flipping to the second page when I reached the end of the first one.

Like I suspected, it was a court order: my name change.

I was officially Lily O’Connor.

I exhaled sharply; Vicky heard it, and looked up from her cell phone to me. “What is it? Is everything okay?”

I wordlessly handed her the court order, and her eyes widened as she looked over it. “Lily, this is great!” she exclaimed; she stepped forward and wrapped me in a hug. “We have to celebrate!”

I smiled at her as we separated: it was probably an unsteady smile – I wasn’t entirely sure how to feel about having changed my legal name, especially since I would have to change it back soon – but she didn’t seem to notice. “That we do,” I said. “Let me text the others.”

I grabbed my purse, and pulled out my cell phone; I snapped a picture of my court order and sent it to our group chat, writing So guess what I just got in the mail… to go along with it.

It took only a few seconds for the replies to start flooding in.

What! Anna wrote. What what what! Amazing!

Yeah!! It’s great! Elanor added.

Nora, for her part, just sent a smiley face with starry eyes.

Vicky said we should celebrate, I wrote. Are y’all free tomorrow night? We can go for coffee in the afternoon, and then there’s a concert on campus.

Yeah, of course, Vicky replied in the group chat. Let’s partyyyyyyy!

I looked up at her, and she winked at me over her cell phone.

Elanor and I are free, Anna wrote.

As am I, Nora added.

Great! I’ll ask Mel and Katie too. See you tomorrow!

I shut down my cell phone and put it in my purse again; I turned around just in time for Vicky to give me yet another hug.

“Oh, I’m so happy for you, girl,” she said. “And a bit jealous. I can’t change my name officially yet, because of my parents. So I’ll just be content with vicarious joy.”

I briefly thought how my parents would take me changing my name: not that I would ever find out – I fully intended to change it back before they could even notice.

I tightened my embrace. “Don’t worry,” I whispered. “Even if it’s not your legal name, you’ll always be Victoria to me.”

Vicky reciprocated the hug, squeezing tight. “Thank you, Lily.” Then, after a moment, we separated. “So, shall we get to dinner then?”

I nodded. “Yeah, just let me get changed, and I’ll be right down.”

-----

“…and I told him, well, even a stopped clock tells the correct time twice a day!” Anna concluded her story, making our group burst into laughter. “You should’ve seen the look on his face!”

It was the next day, and we’d met up for coffee before the concert, at our usual café; Mel and Katie didn’t join us, since they had already been planning to go out on a date, but they told us to have fun before we left.

“Speaking of time, the concert will be starting soon,” Nora said. “Are you ready to go?”

“Yeah, almost,” I said, standing up from my chair. “I just have to visit the ladies’ first.” I drained my cup of coffee and gave my girlfriend a peck on the cheek. “Wait for me.”

She beamed a dazzling smile my way. “You know I will.”

I smiled back, and made my way to the bathroom. It was surprisingly busy: a few other girls were lining up for the three stalls, and as I joined the queue a couple more stepped up behind me. Despite this, things moved quickly. Soon I was in a stall: I sat down – idly musing about how I no longer stood to pee any more, the last time must have been at least three months earlier – and relieved myself before pulling my underwear up (being careful to tuck) and leaving the small room.

It was weird, though. Only a few months earlier, on Valentine’s Day, I was quite a bit nervous at the thought of going into the girls’ bathroom, and yet it now came naturally, I hardly even thought about it.

As I washed my hands at the sink, another girl slipped in place beside me, and started mimicking me. I glanced upwards at her in the mirror, and almost did a double take.

It was Jillian. Jillian, Nora’s ex-girlfriend. Jillian, the transphobe. Jillian, who absolutely hated my guts.

I hadn’t seen her since that time, back in January, at the clothing store. What were the chances we would meet again like this, by sheer coincidence? Pretty good, apparently.

Jillian saw I was staring at her, and she looked up in turn: her eyes narrowed for a moment, then lit up in recognition.

“Oh, it’s you,” she said, surprisingly casually. “Lily, right? How are you doing?”

I looked at her in surprise. She was being… friendly, actually? How come?

“Fine,” I said, not trusting my two-months-of-voice-training voice with anything further: there were a handful of other girls in the room, after all. How do you do, fellow cis? Nothing to see here. Don’t look at me, please.

“Good,” Jillian nodded. “You know, I almost didn’t recognise you. You’ve really changed since last time. You can really see you are making an effort.”

“…Thanks.”

“Of course, that doesn’t matter,” she continued, still in her casual, almost-bored tone of voice. “After all, you and I both know you’re not a real woman.”

Her words shouldn’t have bothered me. At all.

After all, I wasn’t a real woman. I was just a man who was pretending.

But after her voice had died down, I felt as if I’d been stabbed. My vision started narrowing; my stomach dropped down, way below the bottom of my feet – probably somewhere near the centre of the Earth – and my head felt light, ears buzzing. My breathing started getting laboured.

What’s worse, at Jillian’s words, several pairs of eyes swivelled around, and landed on me. Looking at me. Staring at me. Piercing me. Studying me.

Judging me.

Suddenly, I had to be somewhere else.

Where exactly, it didn’t matter.

Anywhere but there.

Without me telling them to, my legs started moving. I crashed through the bathroom’s door, and made a beeline for the café’s front doors, leading outside.

As I ran, I was faintly aware of some noises. Voices. My friends’ voices.

“Lily? What’s wrong?” Nora said.

Then, a roar, coming from Vicky: “You! What the fuck did you do to her?!”

“Vicky, no! Stop!” (That was Anna.)

“Lily!” Nora said again, but I barely heard her: I was already at the double doors. I crashed through them, too, and I was outside. I stumbled, fell, bruised and scraped myself on the asphalt. Lost a shoe. Got up, tried to run – shook off my other shoe and started running again.

Crossed the road – barely hearing, from a great distance, the screeching of tires and honking of horns – and I was on the grass, still running, until I fell again, and I laid there, screaming, without any strength to lift myself back up, just crying my heart out, for an eternity.

“–ly!”

I felt a hand touching my shoulder. I shrugged it off.

“Lily!”

A pair of hands now, grabbing both my shoulders. Holding them still, no matter how much I twisted and thrashed.

“Lily! Look at me.”

I opened my eyes, and looked deep into Nora’s.

“I–”

“Tell me five things you can see.”

I hiccoughed. “W–what?”

“Tell me five things you can see, Lily,” my girlfriend repeated firmly.

My eyes automatically looked around, searching for things to name. “Sky. Grass. Tree. Street. Cars.”

Nora nodded. “Tell me four things you can hear.”

I strained my ears. “Birds. Cars. Bicycles. People.”

“Good,” she said. “Tell me three things you can touch.”

“Ground,” I said, suddenly aware of the weight of the world below me. “Leg. Arm,” I continued, touching my leg and arm.

“Now tell me two things you can smell,” Nora continued.

I took a deep breath in, through my nose. “Grass.” Then I wrinkled my nose in disgust. “Car’s exhaust.”

“And now tell me one thing you can taste.”

I unconsciously licked my lips. “Coffee,” I said.

“Very good,” Nora said, looking deeply into my eyes. She held my stare for a few moments, and then exhaled. “Welcome back, Lily. You went away for a bit there.”

I hesitated. I looked down at myself: I was a mess. My shoes were missing – I had barely noticed losing them – and my hands and knees and elbows were badly scraped; my tights were destroyed, and even though I didn’t have a mirror handy, I was sure I looked terrible – I didn’t even want to think what my make-up was like at that moment.

“Sorry,” I said. “I just–”

“Shh,” Nora said, putting a finger to my lips. “It’s okay, you don’t need to apologise: I’ve only seen you like that once before, so clearly something happened.”

I knew what she was referring to. When she’d seen me like that before.

“…Yeah, you could say so.”

My girlfriend smiled warmly at me, and grabbed my hand with hers, gripping it firmly but gently. “Wanna tell me?”

I gulped, and nodded. “You see, when I went to the toilet… Jillian was there.”

“Oh,” Nora said.

“Yeah. She didn’t recognise me at first, but when she did, she…” I paused, and took a deep breath. “She outed me. To everyone who was in there.”

Nora’s eyes narrowed. “Did she now,” she asked, a dangerous edge in her voice.

I nodded. “‘You’re not a real woman,’ she said. And then… then everyone just turned, and looked at me, and they had that look in their eyes, and–”

“Hey,” Nora said, putting a hand on my arm. “Stop, Lily. Don’t go panicking on me again. You’re safe now. You’re safe. I’m here with you, and I won’t let anyone hurt you. Jillian can’t do anything to you now.” She paused. “Though I may have to kick her ass when I see her again. No one misgenders my girlfriend on my watch.”

There. A pang of guilt. It had been a while since I’d felt one of those, I’d almost forgotten what it was like.

“Please don’t,” I said. “I don’t want you to get into trouble, Nora. Let’s just leave her alone.”

Nora just looked at me.

“Please? I really just want to forget about all this,” I added.

My girlfriend held my gaze for a few moments, and then sighed. “Alright. Your call, Lily.”

I smiled at her. “Thank you,” I said. “Shall we get back? Our friends are probably worried about us.”

Nora nodded; she got up from the grass, offered me her hand, and pulled me up, too. Walking slowly, picking up my discarded heels along the way, we made our way back to the café.

Anna was waiting outside the door when we arrived. “There you are,” she said, walking forward to meet us. “We have a problem.”

“A problem?” I queried.

“Yeah,” she nodded. “You see, when you ran out of the bathroom and ran away, we spotted Jillian coming out of the bathroom, too. And…” she paused, and took a deep breath. “And Vicky just ran towards her and punched her in the face.”

“Good,” Nora said.

“No, not good. Absolutely not good, Nora,” Anna said. “Someone, I don’t know who, saw the whole scene, and called the cops on us. Campus police showed up a few minutes ago, they’re talking with Jillian and Vicky right now. Elanor is inside, they’re supporting Vicky, they thought they could help since they’re in pre-law.”

I felt my stomach churn; I felt terrible. Tears started welling up in my eyes again.

Vicky, my dear friend Vicky, was in trouble… and it was all my fault.

“Let’s go in,” I said. “I wanna talk to them. Vicky and Jillian.”

Without waiting for an answer I strode forward and through the doors, back into the café; the place had apparently been cleared out – all customers had been shuffled off to a corner of the venue, and Vicky and Jillian were sitting in two chairs, several metres apart from each other, being talked to by two cops. Well, glorified rent-a-cops, really. Security guards. That’s what campus police was, actually. Jillian was holding an ice pack to her cheek, and despite the situation I found myself smiling mildly. Fucking serves you right.

When she saw me walk into the café, Vicky started to get up: Elanor, standing beside her, put a hand on her shoulder and pushed her gently back down into the chair. I approached them, but Elanor gestured for me to stay back; I could still hear what the cop was saying, though.

“So you realise what you did was a bad thing, right? Do you, miss McPearson?” he asked sternly.

“…Yes,” Vicky answered. “Yes, I do.”

“Good,” the cop nodded. “Alright. I’m going to leave you with a fine for now, but you still need to answer for your actions.”

“How, exactly?” Elanor asked.

“You’ll be contacted by the school’s administrative office, and they’ll set up a disciplinary hearing,” the cop said. “At the meeting they’ll look at all the evidence, and decide what, if any, measures to take. You got all that?”

Vicky nodded, a bit hesitantly. “Yes, I understand.”

“Then we’re done here,” he said; he turned around, and walked away.

Apparently Jillian was done too, because she stood up from her chair and walked towards Vicky. “So, a disciplinary hearing,” she said, looking my friend directly in the eyes.

Vicky just nodded in response.

“Good. I’ll be there too, to testify about what you’ve done,” Jillian continued. “And I’ll see to it that you’re expelled. This is a promise.”

Without waiting for a reply she turned around and strode out of the café, still holding the ice pack to her cheek.

“She can’t do that, can she?” Anna asked from behind me. “She can’t get Vicky expelled, I hope.”

I gulped, and thought back to what had happened with Joe: even though he’d left Bradford McKinley for parts unknown before the disciplinary hearing could take place, and thus didn’t defend himself, the punishment he’d suffered for attacking me had been… expulsion.

“I think she could, actually,” I whispered.

Vicky whimpered. I turned to her: she was staring at the floor, and as I looked at her, her shoulders started shaking, and she began to sob.

“I…” she said, and sobbed again. “I can’t. I can’t get expelled.”

Anna crouched next to Vicky’s chair, and put a hand on her shoulder. “Come on now, Vicks. It won’t–”

“I can’t!” Vicky shouted; she looked up from the floor and around at us, and I saw deep, utter despair painted on her face. “I just can’t! I…”

She took a deep breath, hiccoughed. Tears were streaming down her cheeks. “My parents don’t know about me. They can’t know about me. When I’m here at college, it’s the only time I can be me. When I go back home, for the holidays, I have to be him. And… and it’s crushing.” Another sob escaped her. “I can only stand it because I know I’ll be able to be me again when I come back here. If I get expelled, I… I’ll have to be him for good. With no way out.”

She locked eyes with me. “I can’t be him. I refuse. If I have to be him, I… I’d rather die.”

I looked at her in horror. Did she just say…?

“No,” Elanor said. “Absolutely not. You stop with that talk right now, Vicks. We won’t stand for it.”

Nora nodded in agreement. “You haven’t been expelled.”

“Yet,” Vicky replied, smiling bitterly.

“You haven’t been expelled,” Nora repeated, more firmly. “There’s still the hearing. We’ll think of something.”

“Yeah, we will,” Anna agreed, and gave Vicky’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze.

Meanwhile, I looked at Vicky. My friend. One of my best friends, actually. The person I was closest to, probably, besides Nora.

She was in trouble.

And it was all my fault.