Waking up was difficult, or rather, being awake was difficult. I'd had a fairly nonsensical dream about Rora and I walking through the nearby park together and my body had kept switching back and forth between my Terry one and my Tami one. She hadn't seemed to notice. It was odd and left me feeling uneasy and apprehensive for the day.

Regardless, when I woke up and found myself very much in my male body again… well I cried. Big, ugly crying with fat tears rolling down my cheeks. To make matters worse, my sleep appeared to have done nothing for my tired mind and body. It felt like I hadn't slept at all. My body ached, feeling like I had been hit by a train or something.

I showered in the dark again and got dressed in the same clothes as yesterday. I didn’t have the willpower to bother changing my outfit. Why did it matter? I hated how I looked anyway, so putting in effort seemed like a waste of time. Breakfast was likewise unappetising, but I at least had the mental fortitude to shovel some cereal down my throat.

When I made it to college, I walked through the halls like a phantom. I avoided eye contact with everyone, keeping my gaze firmly planted on the floor. The place was packed, as per usual, and even the sweeping graceful architecture and greenery everywhere wasn’t enough to lighten my mood. I had almost made to class when I was found by someone I really didn’t want to see.

“Terry!” Dawn growled, stalking towards me down the hall.

She looked pissed, but there was an odd gentleness lurking in her eyes too. What the hell was she going to do? What had I done? Also damn that eye makeup was… striking.

We were in a relatively quiet section of the building now, only a few people passing us by in the hallway. I did my best to hunch over and keep moving, but she swerved into my path, forcing me to step to the side. I tried to move past her again, but her hand shot out, pinning me between her and the wall with a slap.

I blinked at her in surprise, trying to figure out what was going on here. Was she really going to start shit with me? Her dark eyes bore into mine with an unsettling degree of intensity, and I was forced to look away. It was hard, looking into those eyes, not just because we had once been friends, but because… well she was hot. She’d definitely come into her own over the years. Something else about her eyes and the way she was looking at me set off a sense of deja vu, which wasn’t surprising in and of itself. We’d known each other a long time and had a lot of arguments, but this felt different.

“Hi Dawn,” I said in an exhausted monotone.

“Why do you keep ignoring me?” she asked, using that same low growl as before, causing me to gulp reflexively.

“Because I don’t want to talk to you Dawn. I know I should never have said yes to Krissy, but I can’t just forget the way you treated me either,” I said sadly, not having the motivation to even get angry at this intrusion.

“Alright. Fair enough,” Dawn said, her eyes flashing with guilt for a moment before they turned almost pleading. “I can’t forget the good times before that though. Doesn’t mean I want to be friends or anything again, but… you look like shit. Something is wrong and you need help.”

I looked down at my masculine hands and laughed bitterly. Oh, she was only seeing the tip of the iceberg. She was speaking to a… to a person who had no future. I had nothing to live for, so of course there was something wrong.

“See? Listen to that? That’s not the laugh of a happy person,” she said, dipping her head to get a look into my eyes again.

“Yeah… okay so you’re right. And what?” I grimaced. Why did she care so much? Good times in the past was such a shit excuse.

“So let me help you, you dumbass! I know I’m not the best person to talk to, but for some strange reason I still seem to give a shit about you. I don’t see anyone else around who wants to help, so here I am,” she told me, almost shouting the first sentence before her tone gentled.

“I’m not going to tell you what’s wrong Dawn. It’s too… personal. Plus… I don’t… I don’t know why I’m upset,” I said, choking up as I tried once again to understand why I was feeling this way.

I understood more or less what I was feeling. I wanted to be a girl, I hated being a boy, but the why of it? I had no idea. Why did I feel like I wasn’t even fully human? Why did I feel like perhaps I should feed the coral in the sea under the city? I had no explanation for the source of all of this.

Dawn squinted at me for a moment, her eyes softening noticeably as she inspected me like I’d just done something unexpected.

“Someone else said something similar to me pretty recently. She didn’t want to tell me either, but she seemed to cheer up when we found some distractions,” she murmured, her eyes soft and caring. “If you won’t let me help you with your problem, then let’s go to class and hang out. I’ll be a distraction.”

Opening my mouth to reject her offer out of hand, I paused before I’d formed the words and really took a look at her. She was a woman now, far more mature than I was. I wasn’t willing to let go of the past hurt and drama between us, but here she was offering me an olive branch because she saw someone hurting.

“Fine… Alright,” I sighed, and then surprisingly, I felt a little better. I felt a weight come off my chest as I realised that someone actually gave a shit, even remotely right now. Sure, my family would all care, but they would also pry, and they wouldn’t stop prying until they found out. I wasn’t ready to face them with that.

Dawn gave me a big genuine smile and released me from where I was trapped, and impulsively I almost asked her to come back. Why the hell did I want that? Sure she had great hair and a lot of leg and I wanted to… hold on. Hold on. Was I attracted to her right now? What the fuck brain? Now is not horny time! Oh jeez why were our eyes locked like this? Why was the scary punk chick making me get all weird.

I pushed myself off the wall that I’d ended up leaning on and shook myself slightly, then commented, “You look good these days.”

She gave a snort and continued towards our class. “Thanks. I do look pretty great don’t I?”

I was quiet for a minute as we walked into class and sat down at the back while I tried to figure out yet more tumultuous emotions. I tried to push everything down like an over eager vacationer trying to stuff all their purchases into the single bag they had brought with them.

“Krissy messaged me yesterday,” I blurted quietly to keep our classmates from hearing.

“What did she say?” Dawn asked neutrally.

“Take a look for yourself,” I said, packaging both the messages and the call logs into a file and flicking them over to her phone.

She began to scroll through the messages, her frown deepening as she read through it all.

“Do you mind if I listen to these call logs?” she asked, her face seeming carefully devoid of emotion.

“Um, sure,” I said apprehensively. What was she thinking right now? Had I made a mistake in sending everything to her?

She didn’t waste time, queuing the first recording and putting her phone to her ear to listen. Her eyes roamed over my face idly as she did so, and I couldn’t help but stare at them again. What the hell was my hang up about her eyes?

Once she’d listened to all of it, she put her phone down with a sigh and said, “Shit.”

“Um… shit what?” I asked tentatively.

“I don’t know, this past like, maybe one week or so, I’ve been feeling differently about Krissy. Maybe the wool is finally being pulled away from my eyes or something, but have you noticed how… awful she’s become?” Dawn asked, looking incredibly uncomfortable as the words came out of her mouth. “The other day, she legit used the phrase Coral Scrapers to describe some people who looked like they came from Old City.”

“Wow… Uh… yeah I had noticed though,” I said, my tone a mixture of sadness and amusement. 

Of course I’d noticed! She’d spent the last few months of our relationship being a hot and cold bitch. As my feelings of unease with my life had progressed, which I now recognised as the feelings I was dealing with now, she had become less and less tolerant of my emotional weakness. I was a man to her through and through, and that meant I needed to act like one, at least according to how she saw men, which was emotionless drones made of muscle, penis and economic potential.

“Right… of course you have,” she winced. “I’m trying to pinpoint when it even happened, but it’s so hard. When did the sweet little girl who was our childhood friend become… that? Shit, she used to cry when I refused to wear those flower crowns she’d make for fucks sake!”

“Yeah I remember,” I nodded, not mentioning that I had wanted to wear those flower crowns. “I think it was middle school. When she joined the cheerleaders. Those girls were nasty from the start.”

“Yeah one or two used to try and bully me. It stopped when I knocked one out,” she remarked.

“Remember how we used to square up against those assholes who tried to talk shit about how you were better than them at whatever sport was cool at the time?” I laughed.

“Yeah that was great! At least until puberty made them all twice as strong as me,” she grumbled, tapping her phone on her desk lightly.

“They got distracted by how pretty girls were at the same time though,” I remarked, knowing exactly how hypocritical that was. “Plus, guys have a big weak point.”

“Uh huuuuh,” Dawn chuckled. “I seem to remember the same of you about the girls thing.”

“Girls are pretty,” I said defensively.

“Yeah, they definitely are,” Dawn said wistfully.

Wait what? I stared at her for several moments, leaning forward so she could see me doing so.

When she finally realised what she’d said, her eyes went wide and her face flushed. “Oh shit! I said that out loud!”

I couldn’t help giving a little chuckle as I said, “Well that explains a hell of a lot, including the hair. No judgment here, don’t worry.”

“What do you mean the hair?” she said suspiciously.

“It’s green and purple Dawn, you look gay as hell,” I grinned.

“Hell is pretty gay. That’s apparently where I’ll be going, according to your ex,” she said with a weary roll of her eyes.

“Yeah. I kinda took some shots at her over that when we broke up,” I agreed. “Her parents are definitely rubbing off on her.”

“Yeah… it’s been getting harder to hide it from her too,” Dawn said, running her hand through her incredible hair. How was it so thick? I wanted to run my hand through it too… Damn it! Stop! She’s Dawn! Plus she’s not into guys...

“Well you don’t have to hide it from me,” I said, tapping her on the shoulder.

“Thanks,” she said, giving me a big genuine smile.

I opened my mouth, about to thank her right back for being willing to try and be my friend again, but I was interrupted by the professor beginning the class. I don’t think the thanks was needed anyway, she probably saw it in my own returning smile.

****

Classes that day were a considerable improvement over yesterday’s awful experience, and I had actually been able to get some small amount of work done. It was all because Dawn had been there to distract me every time my mood dropped. It wasn’t a proper fix by any means, and several times she said things that inadvertently hurt me. It wasn’t her fault, she didn’t know just how much and why I was broken right now.

As we exited our last class for the day, I turned to her. “Thank you so much for being a distraction today. You were pretty good at it.”

“No problem, but I do have one favour to ask in return…” she said with a cheeky smirk that put me on edge.

“What’s that?” I asked cautiously.

“Be my friend again?” she asked, her cheeky smile faltering to show a vulnerability behind it that tugged at my heartstrings.

I felt a little flutter in my stomach as she looked at me like that, and I couldn’t help but nod. “Definitely.”

“Thanks… it’s been really nice talking again… I’m so sorry it took this long…” she said sincerely, her big spiked leather boot tapping nervously on the floor.

I shrugged in response. “We had our reasons. They weren’t the best reasons, but things happened, and now new things are happening.”

“New things sounds good,” she smiled then started walking backwards in the direction she needed to go. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Yup!” I smiled, giving her a little wave before turning and heading in the opposite direction.

I walked back towards the train terminal I needed to get home, idly staring out the window and down to the water below. UN city was pretty crazy if you thought about it. An entire city built on a bedrock of coral genetically engineered to be as tough as steel, all the buildings rising out of the waves like some triumphant monument to human kind’s mastery of technology and nature. I smiled as I watched a dolphin leap out of the water and crash back down. We might have gotten the human part of our society a little wrong, but at least the animals seemed happy now that we’d stopped killing the planet.

I was almost to the terminal when I saw someone step into view, trying to block me like Dawn had earlier today, except this girl was considerably less welcome than even Dawn had been at the time. Kristina was stalking towards me like I was about to be thrown off the edge. I felt my stomach drop out and I began to backpedal. Shit I didn’t want to see her. She reminded me of everything I didn’t want to be.

“Terry don’t you fucking run from me!” she said angrily, trying her best to move faster in the ridiculous heels she was wearing.

“I don’t want to talk to you!” I said, my voice shaking slightly as my sadness over being called that name began to well up again, all the work Dawn had done today being undone.

“Well too bad! We need to talk, and hanging up on me last night was just rude!” she said, an odd half pleading, half sneering expression on her face. What the fuck was wrong with her? She was the one who broke up with me after all.

I shook my head, my eyes going wide with fear. I couldn’t lay a hand on her. I was a guy for one, but her parents would take me to court in a heartbeat. “I do not want to talk to you Kristina! Leave me alone! Please!”

“Why should I leave you alone? We’re dating, you need to marry me after college! I’m allowed to talk to my boyfriend!” she scoffed, almost on me now.

What the hell was going on? Why was she acting like this?

“You broke up with me! What the hell are you talking about?” I asked, taking several steps backwards to get out of her reach.

“You were meant to man up and try and win me back you fucking moron!” she said raising her hand as though she would slap me, her footfalls gaining an odd heavy echo as she continued trying to rush me. “Instead you just accepted it like a fucking loser!”

I ran out of space to back up, the backs of my legs hitting the raised edge of a planter full of flowers behind me. Her hand swung, I could see she was putting all her strength into it, and I braced for impact, cringing and scrunching my eyes shut. The blow never landed though as the heavy echo I had heard earlier resolved into the clomp of huge boots.

“What the fuck Krissy?” Dawn growled, and I opened my eyes to find her standing over me with Kristina’s arm held firmly in her much stronger grasp.

“Why are you here?” Kristina asked, her eyes wide with surprise.

“Because you’re being a crazy bitch who’s trying to beat up her ex, that’s why I’m here!” Dawn spat. “I knew you were just a bit awful sometimes, but this is next level! You’re being a stalker!”

“I am not! I can’t stalk the man I’m with. Relationships don’t work like that, which you’d know if you had ever had one,” Kristina sneered.

Kristina’s words seemed to strike Dawn like a physical blow, and she dropped her arm like she’d been burned.

“That’s not… you don’t know shit about me Krissy,” Dawn said with a false dismissal that did little to hide the hurt behind it.

I frowned, and straightened myself up. I might look like a guy right now, but inside… inside I was Tami, and Tami didn’t back down from assholes and bullies. Especially not pathetic, weak ones like Kristina.

“Kristina!” I exclaimed, anger seething through the word. “If you didn’t already understand, here it is. We are not together. I am not in a relationship with you, and I never should have been. It was all a fucking mistake, and you need to back off and leave me, and Dawn, the hell alone. Go hang out with those preppy as fuck friends of yours or something. I’m sure they can find some empty headed moron for you to date and parade around that church you love so fucking much.”

Kristina backed away as I threw each word at her, her expression clouding over with suspicion. 

Her eyes landed on Dawn, who was moving to my side, “No… no way…”

I glanced briefly over at my recently regained friend as well, finding her standing angry and resolute next to me.

“You stole him from me!” Kristina said in disbelief. “I thought… I thought you might be one of those lesbians or something… but I guess not huh?”

To both Kristina and my own surprise, Dawn let out a guffawing laugh, “Yeah, alright. You’ve clearly gone off the deep end now.”

“No I can see it! Look at the way you’re standing! The way Terry looked at you! Oh my gosh I am so dumb…” Kristina said, backing further away. “You never hated him, you were upset because it was me who got to date him, not you!”

My head was spinning trying to keep up with her wild theories. What on earth was she on about? It sounded like she was constructing the plot for a particularly terrible soap opera in her head right now rather than anything grounded in reality.

“Are you going to keep standing there making up ridiculous theories all day, or are you going to leave?” Dawn asked, biting each word off like it was distasteful mouldy old bread.

Kristina opened her mouth to spit a retort back at us, then closed it and spun on her heel, stalking away across the square in front of the station like she owned everything around her. Which might have been true if we weren’t standing on a center of learning, the antithesis of everything she and her family stood for. The world still remembered what that church and their allies had done, it had only been forty or so years since the city's defences had been allowed to power down.

We watched her walk back towards an expensive air-car that had parked in one of the berths nearby for a moment, before Dawn let out an explosive breath next to me.

She sat down heavily on the planter, not caring that she had just crushed several flowers beneath her amazing ass. “Damn. I saw her car flying overhead and started running straight away. After those texts you showed me I knew she’d try something. But... Fuck… seriously, what the hell though? I was not expecting that level of weirdness.”

“Thanks,” I said warily. “I doubt this is over too. Just what I needed in my life right now. Bad enough I’m wishing I was… well yeah. This shit is too much.”

She looked up at me sadly for a moment as she contemplated something I couldn’t discern, then groaned, “Yeah. Fuck, I can’t believe I carried a torch for her all these years.”

“Wait... what?” I blinked.

“Aaaahhhh, I did it again. I spend too much time on my own talking to myself… god fucking damn it. Yeah. I was in love with her… basically up until like a week ago,” she said, her cheeks colouring bright red.

“Wooooow… no wonder you were so pissed at me! Holy shit everything makes sense now!” I said, my mind exploding as I made all the connections. “Faaaark, I’m so sorry! Wow! That… that must have been hard.”

My friend nodded, kicking the planter with the heel of her boot and avoiding my eyes. “It’s over now, thankfully. I might even have found someone else this week… I don’t know. It’s super complicated. Anyway, are you okay?”

I wanted to ask more about everything, but she seemed reluctant to talk about it, so I didn’t push her.

“No,” I replied with a pained smile. “But it’s not because of this. I’ve had a big week myself and I don’t think I’m going to be okay for a long time, if ever.”

“That’s not reassuring to hear,” she said, placing a hand on my shoulder. “But I’m here if you need me I guess. It’s nice to be friends again.”

“You too. Thank you for turning up. She’d probably have rolled me right over if you hadn’t turned up,” I said sincerely.

“You were always a bit of a puppy when it came to her,” Dawn agreed, then lifted herself up out of the planter and dusted herself off. “Alright, I’m sorry but I actually really need to go… text me if you need anything, do you still have my account?”

“Um… I think I actually blocked you… let me fix that,” I said sheepishly, pulling my phone out and navigating through the menus.

“Ouch,” she said with a laugh.

“I’m sorry…” I grinned as I unblocked her. “Alright, I’ll add you again and we should be fine…?”

“Yup…” she said hesitating for a moment before she leaned forward and pulled me into a hug.

I relaxed into it almost immediately, unable to stop myself from enjoying it in a way I didn’t think she intended. She was just soft, and she smelled nice. Perfectly normal for me to feel that way about a girl hugging me.

When she pulled back, she waved and began walking away. “See you tomorrow! For real this time!”

“Yup,” I waved back, then turned towards my train, which was just leaving as I laid eyes on it.

Damn it.