Off the Beaten Trail - by PunchlinePress

The sun warmed him and the gravel crunched beneath his boots as he walked along, taking in the scenic beauty of the Golden Valley Campground’s only ‘Moderate’ difficulty trail. He’d wanted to go on one of the harder trails but they wouldn’t let him without adult supervision. Lame.

It wasn’t all bad though, he had a great view of the lake from here, and the campsite where his family’s RV was parked. Looking down with his binoculars he could see Dad struggling to get the outdoor furniture unpacked and set up while Mom supervised.

He chuckled and lowered the binoculars, just in time to catch another RV rolling up to the site next to theirs - though ‘next to’ was relative. There was probably half a football field between the two RV hookups. Plenty of space for the kids to run wild, which is why mom and dad liked it so much. Evie was already running amok with some sort of streamer on a stick, causing their big black lab, Hershey, to flounce after her woofing and nipping at the streamer in a playful attempt to catch it. 

To any onlooker they were the average suburban American family. Average looks, two kids, dog, fancy RV. Just enough money to enjoy it but not enough to be rich. An ideal that most would never actually live up to thanks to the economy.

He turned his attention back to the trail and continued his hike, setting aside any thoughts of his new camp neighbors for later. 

Well, mostly aside. He couldn’t help but hope they had a daughter about his age. He was so, so desperate for a girlfriend - or even just a girl to notice him. His friends already had girls they went out with - however briefly - and he was tired of being the odd man out.

One more look couldn’t hurt, right? He raised the binoculars to his eyes and watched the family beside them disembark their RV. Older guy, older woman, and-

“Whatcha lookin’ at?” A decidedly female voice asked from very nearby behind him.

“Holy shit!” He exclaimed eloquently, maintaining a peerless calm.

“Sounds interesting, can I see the divine excrement too?”

He quickly recovered and turned to face the girl.

‘Woah,’ he thought, ‘she’s hot as hell!’

Long, wavy brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, rich brown eyes, perfectly clear skin the color of milk chocolate with a smattering of adorable freckles.

And her chest, of course. She was slightly taller than him, so he had a perfect view of her cleavage without too much effort.

“Take a picture, it’ll last longer,” she chided him, folding her arms beneath her bust and flashing him a cocksure grin. 

‘Shit,’ he thought, ‘busted.’

“I’m Iris, and you are?” the girl - Iris, apparently - asked. 

“Uh… I’m…” he stared. “Um…”

Iris rolled her eyes, hard. “Wow, okay, you don’t talk to a lot of girls, huh?”

He shook his head slowly. “Uh… nope. Not really. I, um. Just my little sister. And my mom.”

“Well they are girls so, yeah, they count,” she laughed.

God, he’d give anything to hear her laugh more. It was such a pretty sound.

“Logan,” he said, finally finding his name somewhere through the haze of dumb boy hormones flooding his brain.

“Hey look at that, the boy who would be named,”  she teased.

Logan felt his face go warm, and it had nothing to do with the hike or the sun pounding down on them. “Wh-where’s your family staying?” he asked, searching his brain for a reasonable question.

“Down there,” she pointed in the opposite direction of the newcomers he had watched setting up. He could barely see the RV in the clearing she pointed at.

“Wow, really out in the woods, huh?”

“Yeah,” she shrugged, “Dad didn’t want to be too close to anyone else. Said it doesn’t feel like camping that way.”

“But it does in a huge RV, huh?” Logan asked. 

She shrugged again. “I guess. As long as I get to go hiking and swimming and not be stuck in the city all summer, I’m fine with that.”

“That’s fair, I hate being stuck around the boring-ass suburbs back home all summer. We come here every other year, and the off years are awful,” he lamented.

“Guess it’s a good thing you’re here then. Unless you think it’s awful here, too.”

“Huh? No! No way! It’s great here! Especially with you here! Uh- I mean- with someone here to talk to! You! You’re here to talk to!” 

Iris snort-laughed, holding her sides. “Wow, you’re really smooth, you know that?” she snarked. 

Logan felt his face go red as he turned away from her. 

“It’s kinda cute watching you struggle. I could really take a liking to teasing you~”

‘Has anyone ever died from blushing?’ Logan wondered. ‘Am I going to be the first? Will my head just explode in a pressurized blood fountain visible for miles around this scenic mountain?’

“Well, I’d better start heading back. My Dads want to go kayaking today but I had to get my morning hike in.”

“O-Oh, yeah, sure, me too. Hiking. Not kayaking. My dad’s afraid of water. I mean, uh, not that you care, I just. I like to hike,” he said, ascending to another plane of smoothness. 

“Well, maybe we can hike together tomorrow? Buddy system and all that.” 

He nodded so quickly he thought he might suffer whiplash. “Yeah! That’d be great! See you at, like, 6:30 at the trailhead?” 

“Sure,” she laughed, starting to walk away down the trail. “See you then. Subbyboysayswhat.” 

“What?” he asked, confused by the quickfire string of words.

She just laughed and kept walking, her laughter fading away. 

Logan waited until she was no longer audible to verbally kick himself. “You idiot! A girl finally talks to you and you stammer and make a fool of yourself!” He groaned and trudged along the trail, trying to distance himself from the scene of his humiliation.

But she had said she wanted to hike with him again tomorrow.

Wait. They’d set a time and place to meet.

Was this a date?

He felt his face heat up again. 

“Holy shit, I have a date with a girl!”

The joy and terror that thought sparked in equal parts sent him running back down the trail towards his camp. There was still plenty of daylight left today to do things, but how could he be expected to get any serious hiking or fishing or anything else done when there was so much exciterrified celepanicking to do?

“Whatcha doin’, Logan?” Evie asked as she poked him with some horrible Barbie-brand twirling baton covered in enough glitter to ensure anyone in its vicinity would sparkle for the next eon at least.

“Nothing. Sleeping. Go away,” he mumbled into his pillow.

“You’re not sleeping or you wouldn’t be talking!” she sassed, jabbing him again with the baton.

“Ow!” He cried out overdramatically as it caught him between two ribs. “Go away, Evie! I’m busy!”

“Are not! I wanna go to the lake and fish and Mom said you have to come with me!”

“What?” He groaned, climbing out of his bunk and dropping down into the main living area of the RV.

“Uh-huh! So get the fishing stuff and let’s go!”

He dug the fishing gear out of the storage compartment with much groaning and griping, especially when he had to disentangle his sister’s rod from his own because they’d gotten hooked together during transit.

The fishing docks at the campsite were pretty nice, at least. Each site had its own well-kept trail leading to one of the many docks around the lake, so it was a nice easy walk down a paved road to the crystal blue waters.

“Cmoooon, you’re takin’ too long!” Evie bounced ahead several paces, her braided pigtails flopping in time with the flashing of her light-up kiddie sneakers.

“Slow down Evie, you’re not supposed to run on the docks, you could slip.”

“Nuh uh! I’m not-” Evie slipped and fell hard on the docks, smacking her head against the wooden planks.

The suddenness of it robbed Logan of his wits for a moment until he realized she wasn’t crying or moving at all. He threw the fishing gear to the dock and hurried over to his sister, dropping to his knees beside her. “Evie?!” He placed a hand on her shoulder, gently shaking her.

She didn’t react.

“Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck,” he rapidly muttered to himself, turning her over. Her chest was still rising and falling in a slow rhythm, so at least he knew she was breathing. No signs of blood on her forehead so she hadn’t cracked anything open. He pulled out his phone and quickly tapped the contact for his parents, trying to explain what had happened.

Mom immediately went into a panic over the phone at the words ‘Evie fell on the docks’ and didn’t hear a word he said after that. She was still a mess when she rolled up to the docks in the golf cart from their site.

“My baby!” she cried, running over to where Evie was sitting with Logan.

By now, Evie had come to and answered all the basic first aid questions Logan had asked her.

“She’s fine, mom, just knocked herself-”

“She’s not fine! Look, her head is already bruising! We need to get her to the hospital! Ryan! Ryan, let’s go!”

“Mom I’m fi-” Evie started before being smooshed into her mom’s shoulder as she was scooped up. 

Their dad sighed and started walking back towards the golf cart. “Okay, okay, we’ll take her to the camp medical station. We’ll probably be back soon, but in case we’re not, make sure you lock up the RV before you go to bed, champ.” 

Logan was left standing in the aftermath of Hurricane Mom as they zoomed away in the golf cart.

He looked to the fishing gear with a heavy sigh and began walking back to camp with it.

‘They always overreact when it comes to Evie,’ he thought, trudging along. ‘They coddle her so much just because she’s their precious little girl. If I got hurt like that they’d probably just tell me to walk it off or something because guys are tougher.’

Mom and Dad weren’t gone long. Evie was fine, just a bump that would become a pretty nasty bruise.

After the commotion, dinner was a subdued affair with mom fussing over Evie continually as if her head might just fall off or something. It got annoying fast, and Logan decided to drag the tent out of the storage compartment and pitch it outside of the RV just to get away from them.

This was how he preferred to camp anyway - especially with a nice view of the stars through the mesh canopy of the tent.

He let his thoughts drift as he counted stars, and let sleep take him.

Chapter 2

He awoke from an incredibly erotic dream about Iris, groaning at the mess that dream had made.

‘Seriously? I just met the girl and I’m having wet dreams about her already? How freaking desperate am I?’ He unzipped the sleeping bag to let it air out - it would need washing for sure, so he made a mental note to take it to the camp laundromat first thing.

His brain registered a complaint with that course of action, and it took him a moment to remember why.

His morning hike.

Cursing himself he shot out of the tent, barely remembering to pull his pants back on first to hide his shame as he hustled inside to grab a change of clothes and a shower.

By the time he made it to the trailhead to meet with her, he was already feeling exhausted again from running around to get ready and get out of the RV before anyone could question him on where he was going. He didn’t have time for a hundred questions!

“About time you showed up,” Iris stood up from the bench she’d been sitting on and stretched out.

His eyes followed the curves of her body in her athleticwear. 

‘Dammit, hormones… stop it. Holy shit her legs look great in those leggings.’

He shook his head to prevent all the blood from rushing to his other head. “Sorry, late start. You uh, ready to go?”

“Was ready 20 minutes ago. Let’s get those pasty legs moving!” she teased as she turned to start walking down the trail.

He glanced down at his legs defensively, as if to reassure himself that they were in fact not pasty. They weren’t. He got plenty of sun, after all.

“Hey, I’m not pasty!”

“You’re pasty compared to me,” she joked.

“Oh, ha-ha,” he rolled his eyes, walking after her.

“So, you go to school around here? Or are you from out of state?” Iris asked.

“Out of state. We used to live around here but we moved when I was little. You?”

“Local! Well, sorta. We live in the ‘burbs about two hours north of here.” She shrugged. “I prefer it out here though.”

“Same,” he agreed, kicking a larger rock out of the gravel path so nobody would stumble on it.

“What grade’re you goin’ into?” she asked, glancing over her shoulder.

“Freshman in high school. Real crappy little place that cares way more about its sports teams than its scholastics. Whatever, though. Makes it easier to pass classes.”

“Ouch. My old school was like that,” Iris said, turning back around to watch where she was going.

“Old school? You transferring this year?”

“Last year, actually. I started my freshman year at a whole new school. No friends or anything. It really sucked.” 

“Sounds like it. You make any friends during the school year?”

“Yeah, plenty. Everyone there is super nice! Modern campus with all kinds of cool amenities in the dorms and stuff.”

“Dang, that does sound nice. Wish I could go somewhere like that.”

“Careful what you wish for,” Iris giggled.

“That’s not weird at all,” Logan laughed. “Is this an ‘I could tell you but I’d have to kill you’ kind of secret?”

“Maybe,” Iris taunted.

“Oooo… Let’s see… you go to a top secret spy training school run by the CIA.”

“No,” she snorted. “Not even close.”

“Okay… hmmm, You’re a witch and you go to whatever the American Hogwarts is called.”

“Mmm, closer but no. And not nearly as transphobic.”

“So it’s not spies or witches…”

“I never said there weren’t witches. Just that it wasn’t a school for witches.”

His eyes widened a bit. “Wait, are you being serious?” 

The moment he asked it he felt like an idiot. He’d known this girl for like… less than a day, of course she was screwing with him.

She shot him the most serious of looks for a moment… before cracking a grin. “No, of course not. Dork.”

“Yeah, realllllly funny, pulling one over on the stranger at camp. Got any others you wanna try?”

“Sure,” she said. “Before my freshman year I was a boy.” She stopped, turning to face him full on as they arrived at a wider section of the trail.

He stopped and looked her over head to toe again. The way she cocked her hip and pushed out her chest did little to prove any sort of claims about being a boy just a school year ago.

“No way,” he said.

“Yes way. Though I guess the way you’re talking to my chest means you’re not gonna believe me.” 

“Nope,” he looked up to meet her eyes. “You fooled me with the school thing but nobody would ever believe someone like you was a boy.”

“Ouch,” she said, feigning hurt. “I was, though. Taller than you! Stronger, too. I was gonna play football in high school.”

“I repeat: nope, no way. I’ve seen trans people online and they never look that good.”

“Wow, first off, rude. Secondly, it doesn’t matter if you believe me, because it’s true.”

He frowned, not realizing how his comment had come off. “Sorry, I didn’t mean– I don’t have anything against trans people! I just meant… I… I guess I don’t know what I meant. Sorry.”

“Uh huh. Just make sure you think about that before you go hurting any other trans girl’s feelings. All people are beautiful in their own way. Got that?”

“Got it,” he nodded.

“Good, now– Ow!” She winced. “Got a rock in my shoe, one sec.” She hobble-walked over to a large rock beside the trail and sat down, pulling off her hiking boot to get rid of the offending stone.

Logan looked off into the woods bordering the trail. The last thing he needed after that was to be accused of being creepy for checking out whatever kind of socks she was wearing, or something. He was definitely not going to get a reputation with this girl as one of those feet fetish people. To each their own, but it definitely wasn’t his thing.

Something sparkled in the woods, catching his eye. At first he thought he imagined it, or that it was a trick of the light, but it seemed to flash a steady rhythm. 

“Do you see that?” he asked, pointing towards it.

“Huh?” Iris looked up from retying her shoe, following his arm. “...Nope, I don’t see anything but trees?”

“Hold up, I wanna check it out. Wait here.” He stepped off the trail into the woods, heading for the strange light.

“Wait here, he says,” she rolled her eyes, following him. “As if.”

“Whatever floats your boat,” he pushed through the foliage, advancing ever further into the woods.

He walked for what felt like forever, the forest seeming to grow thicker and thicker around him, with strange trees and plants he’d never seen on the trails before. Then, just as he was starting to notice that peculiarity, he emerged into a clearing where a small creek ran in an unnaturally perfect circle around a small stone dais. 

“Woah,” Logan said, coming to a stop.

“Woah,” Iris agreed. “What is this place?”

“Like I would know?” Logan muttered, looking around. Atop the stone dais he saw another, smaller stone. Blue, and engraved with weird lines. 

“Maybe it was an old campsite or something. Must be with the way they have that water feature set up. Why just around that stone though?”

“Dunno. Maybe it’s modern art or something.” 

“Out in the woods?”

“Yeah. I mean, people do weird stuff. Like those chrome columns out in the desert or whatever.”

“Fair point…” She looked around once more. “This place kinda gives me a hinky vibe though. We should go.”

“Hold on, I wanna check this out,” he said, walking towards the dais and the strange stone.

“Check what out? Hey, maybe you shouldn’t touch that,” Iris said, taking a step closer.

Too little, too late. Logan reached out and gingerly grabbed the stone from the dais to inspect it more closely.

There was a bright flash of blue-white light that filled his vision, and then he was laying on his back in the soft grass, staring up at the strange canopy above, and Iris’ concerned expression looking down at him.

Chapter 3

“Are you okay?!” Iris asked, kneeling at his side and leaning over him.

He felt like he’d been hit by a speeding train made of lightning. His whole body ached and tingled, numbing him to any external sensations beyond the buzzing.

“Ow…” he managed to rasp out. His voice sounded weird though. Slightly higher pitched than usual; like it had a year or so ago before it started to crack and deepen.

“Stay still, I called my parents, they’re on their way. I would’ve called yours too but your phone got totally fried by whatever that was.”

Not moving wasn’t an issue for him at the moment. He let his eyes close again to block out the world, and faded away again.

He felt like he’d only slept a moment or two when he heard new voices.

“Iris?” a deep, bassy male voice called out.

“Dad? Over here!” She stood up and waved her arms to increase her visibility. 

“Hang on baby, we’ll be right there!” A warmer, yet still masculine voice called back.

The sound of snapping twigs and shifting undergrowth grew closer as they approached.

“Heavens above,” the deeper voice exclaimed.

“What happened to her?” the warmer one asked.

‘Her?’ Logan thought. ‘Did something happen to Iris when he got whammied by whatever that was?’

He opened his eyes, finding two new faces looking down at him. Both dark skinned like Iris, though the more muscular of the two was far darker - nearly pitch black against the greens and browns of the forest.

“They’re a boy, daddy. I… don’t know what happened but I think they’re like me now.”

Of course he was a boy, how could anyone think differently?

“Oh,” the warmer voiced man said, looking slightly embarrassed. “Alright. Looks like he’s awake… How’re you feeling, young man?” 

“Bad,” Logan groaned. His voice still sounded weird, but at least the numb tingliness was starting to fade.

“OK, I’m no paramedic but I do have some first-aid training. Is it alright if I check you for any breaks or other injuries?”

“Y-yeah,” he said, trying to nod. He wasn’t sure if it worked or not.

“Alright. I’m going to start with your legs then,” the voice said. Moments later he felt dull touches through the waking sensation in his legs. Turning each leg this way and that, feeling for any broken bones and checking for obvious cuts.

By the time his hands made their way up to his hips, most of the feeling had returned, and his body was sending all kinds of crazy, illogical signals. For example: The hands on his hips, checking his pelvis for breaks or damage seemed way too far apart.

“Lower body seems alright. Nothing broken… no cuts or holes punched in ya,” the man said. “Going to check your arms and ribs next if that’s okay?”

“Yeah,” Logan nodded. “But I feel really weird…”

“Might have taken a hit to the head?” The deeper voiced man suggested. 

“Or he feels weird cause he just turned into a girl…” Iris muttered.

“Huh?” Logan tried to parse what she’d just said. Turned into a girl? Him? No way. He looked down at himself - and was met by a noticeable bulge in his shirt where there shouldn’t be. 

“What the hell?!” he cried out, even more aware of his voice now. He sat bolt upright, nearly taking out the man who’d been checking him for injuries. The shifting of weight on his chest told him that those were real, and attached to him!

“Wh-Why do I have boobs?! I can’t be a girl! I- I’m a boy!” 

“Hey, hey, hey, it’s gonna be okay, there’s people who can figure this out, who can help you,” Iris said, taking hold of his shoulders.

“O-Okay,” he stammered, still reeling from the realization that he was a girl now. “What about my parents? What am I gonna tell them?”

“We’ll come with you, talk to them. We’ve got experience with it after all.”

Logan turned to face Iris at their words. “You weren’t kidding when you said you used to be a boy?”

“Nope. I wasn’t.”

Logan felt his eyes begin to sting at the realization that this was something that happened to people, apparently. And worse, that other people would just see him as a girl, like he’d seen Iris as.

She seemed like she liked being a girl, based on how she acted and dressed… would that happen to him too? Would he be forced to act like a girl? Would he like it? Tears began to flow down his cheeks.

“I don’t wanna be a girl,” he bawled. 

Iris pulled him into a hug, and he loosely returned the gesture, crying into her shoulder.

He’d never grown up with the toxic belief that boys shouldn’t cry, but his friends would make fun of him for it if they saw him now.

Or they’d think he was hot and hit on him.

The idea of other boys finding him attractive only hit harder, reinforcing the surge of emotions behind his tears. 

When he finally cried himself out, he agreed to let Iris help him up. The shifting of weight in unexpected places would have brought more tears, had he any left at that moment. Instead he numbly trudged out of the forest, back along the trail, and into the relative civilization of the campgrounds with Iris and her two dads: Peter and Jerret.

He gave them directions back to his campsite, relying on the anchoring steadiness of Iris’ hand holding his. At some point during the walk back, he noticed that he had intricate swirling blue lines along the back of his hand and up his arm, like some kind of free magic tattoo. It would be cool if it didn’t remind him of the stone that had done this to him.

That morning he’d have been thrilled beyond belief to hold such a hot girl’s hand. Now he wondered if people would look at the two of them and debate which was hotter.

 

“Hello there,” Logan heard his dad say as they approached. “Something we can help you folks with?”

“Hi,” the larger, darker man, Jerret, said. “We came by to walk your child home. He was out with our daughter today and… something unusual happened.”

Logan could see his dad’s already somewhat pale face lose any semblance of color. “Oh, God, he wasn’t getting intimate was he?!”

Both of Iris’ parents laughed.

“No, thankfully,” Peter said. 

By that time, Mom had come out to see what was going on. Iris’ parents exchanged introductions for themselves and Logan’s parents, then for their daughter, and finally…

“H-Hi, Dad… Mom…” He shuffled forward from the lineup. 

His parents exchanged a look between each other, then back at him. 

“What?” they asked in unison.

“Mr. and Mrs. Flynn, this is your son. Perhaps we should have a little chat.”

Chapter 4

“So you’re telling us that magic, among other things, is real, and that it’s why our fourteen year old son is now a girl?” Dad asked.

“I know it’s hard to believe, but yeah,” Jerret said.

“Not always magic that causes things like this either,” Peter added, “Iris was the victim of an experimental chemical spill when a tanker truck crashed and burst open near her on the walk to school.”

His mom and dad exchanged the hundredth set of looks since this had all started. Logan was left sitting in the RV, listening to the conversation through an open window while Evie delightedly braided his hair.

 

“It’s not all bad, you know? Being a girl can be really fun,” Iris said, propped up in a chair across the RV from him.

“I never wanted to be a girl… it’s different for you.”

“Assumptions much? I never thought I wanted to be a girl either, until I was one. Then I just felt so much better about myself. After the initial freakout. My first two months at school were awful.”

“How’d you even manage to go back to school after… turning into a girl?” Logan asked.

“Well, we knew I couldn’t stay at my current school. Not after the attention in the local news the incident had caught. So my parents were looking for a new school for me to go to when they were approached by a teacher from Puellae Aurora Academy.”

“Sounds like a made up place. Like Hogwarts, or Rhode Island.”

Iris rolled her eyes. “It’s real, it’s just not exactly public knowledge. It’s a school for TG’d students.”

“TG’d”?” he asked, making air quotes.

“Short for transgendered, but it’s kind of a misnomer. Not every student there is trans, but they have all been transformed or had their physical sex changed in some non-standard way.”

“So you’re telling me there’s a school out there for guys that turn into girls?”

“Yeah, but also for girls who turn into guys. It’s not exactly just kids either. Some students used to be like, middle aged or older when they got whatever they got and turned back into teenage boys and girls. Oh, and there’s nonbinary students too. Some are like, nonbinary identity, but some are also like physically nonbinary. Some are intersex, some have neither characteristics, it’s kinda cool to meet so many different people.”

Outside, the snippets he could catch made it sound like his parents were getting a similar speech. Maybe Jarret and Peter were alumni of the school too, and trying to recruit him to their alma mater.

“You should consider transferring,” Iris said, pulling his attention back.

“Yeah, right. Why would I wanna do that?” 

Iris flinched. “...Sorry. I just thought… maybe it’d be nice to have another friend there. And for you to have a place you didn’t have to worry about being judged for how you look now, or… anything you did - or didn’t - want to try out.”

Logan shuddered. “There’s no way I’d ever want to try anything out! I just wanna go back to being a boy!” He felt angry tears threatening, and rubbed at his eyes to force them away.

“Sorry,” Iris mumbled, standing up to leave.

“...Me too,” Logan mumbled back, slumping over on the dinette table. 

 

The next few days passed in what felt like a nightmare for Logan. His parents were trying to decide what they’d do with him, and though Iris had come back and given him her number before they left camp, he hadn’t bothered texting or calling her.

Instead he just sulked in his bedroom, staring out the window at a world he couldn’t go out and do anything in because “she” didn’t technically exist.

It’d been over a week since they came back from the campgrounds after that fateful day, and he had barely left his room. The first couple days his mom brought him meals, comforted him… but since then they’d urged him to get up, get a shower, and get out of his room. He’d put up a fight about that until yesterday when his mom had told him he stank and dragged him into the bathroom to give him a bath. 

Seeing his new body naked for the first time was horrifying, and having his mother outside the shower stall coaching him through washing that body was… humiliating.

He knew he was cute - maybe even ‘hot’ - but he couldn’t begin to process that. How was he supposed to live the rest of his life as this girl?

Sure, there were expensive surgeries and methods of transitioning that trans guys used, but there was no way he could afford that or ask his parents to spend that kind of money.

A soft knock came at his bedroom door, shaking him from his self pity.

“Logan?” Mom asked through the door.

“Come in,” he called back half-heartedly from his blanket cocoon.

His mom opened the door and stepped inside - with his dad.

“Hey, kiddo…” Dad offered lamely. 

“Your father and I were talking lately with the Stones, and we’ve been thinking… everything considered, it might be for the best if we try a different school this year. You’ll be starting high school and… you might not want to be in school with people you knew from middle school…”

“So we’re thinking about sending you to the school their daughter goes to. That Pulella Academy place.”

“Puellae Aurora, dear,” Mom corrected Dad.

“What?!” Logan threw his covers off, revealing the oversized shirt he’d taken to living in since the shower. “But that’s the school for TG’d kids!”

His parents exchanged a look.

“That’s what you are now, dear,” Mom said soothingly, taking a seat beside him on his bed and patting his shoulder.

“Yeah, your mom and I’ve been talking. We want you to know we love you just the same as our son or daughter… but we think this school is a good fit for you.”

His parents were sending him away to the TG school. They were giving up on fixing him. This was the end. Melodramatic? Maybe, but he couldn’t help feeling that way.

“Fine,” he relented. “Pack me up and send me off to girl school.”

“Logan, don’t think of it that way… there’s people there that can help you! Maybe even help you change back!”

“Sure. Thanks, Mom. Thanks, Dad.” He stared at his knees, not wanting to make eye contact.

“You’ll love it there, Logan. Promise. The pamphlets the Stones have shown us look amazing.”

“Uh huh… thanks,” he repeated. “So what are you going to tell them to call me? Logan isn’t exactly a girl's name.”

Another exchanged look. 

“We thought we’d let you pick your own name after you started there, if you felt like it,” Dad explained.

“Great. So I get to throw away the last scrap of my identity as a boy by choice.” He groaned, sinking further into his bed and pulling the covers around him again.

"Give it a chance, Logan.” Mom gave his side another reassuring pat. “You’ve still got a few weeks of summer to enjoy before you go to school, so it’s not like we’re shoving you on a bus tomorrow.”

She had a point. He had a little over two weeks to stew on his last days as a boy before he got sent off to girl school.

His parents left some time later with more attempted placations. Once they were gone, he grabbed his phone and texted the only person that might be able to help.

Iris.

 

[Hey, Iris. It’s Logan. My parents are sending me to your school. I’m gonna need a friend.]

 

~The End

---

PunchlinePress is the author of ‘Finding Alex’ and a handful of other stories. Find her work on Amazon, Scribblehub, DeviantArt, and TG Storytime.