You Don’t Know About Me, But I’ll Bet You Want To

2023 August 5
Saturday

Beatrice Quinn:
Good afternoon, Stephanie! I regret having to disturb you during the weekend, but something has come up. Have you finished the 2023 Transgender Intake Candidates Report?

basement dweller:
sorry, aunt bea
i’ll get it done once i’ve heard from aunt ashley
but it’ll be miss sutton
we’ve found ways to help the other candidates
and maria wants that lever

Beatrice Quinn:
It’s quite alright, my dear—take your time! Unfortunately, I have news that may force us to change those plans. I need you to find a way to help this girl:
https://val.dorleyhall.almsworth.ac.uk/dorleybase/people/7833.html

basement dweller:
autn bea, i dont understand
ive triaged this girl
shes stable
she’ll survive til next year
sutton wont
im sure of it

Beatrice Quinn:
This order came directly from Elle, and she’s very insistent. She told me, “You MUST help her this year, no matter what.”
But she didn’t say we have to add her to the intake.

basement dweller:
got it

Beatrice Quinn:
That’s my girl.

 

2023 August 6
Sunday

For a brief moment, her assailant’s sword plunged towards her breast. But with a quick, subtle movement, Persephone parried his blade with her own. She twirled her weapon in a tiny circle to force his aside, then lunged forward into the opening. With a quick step back, he retreated to avoid her thrust.

“Oui, Chase,” Phillipe said to her. “A perfect contre-sixte; I can see you’ve been practicing this week.”

“Thanks,” Persephone Chase replied with a smile that was hidden by her mask.

“Now get started on your conditioning while I see to Lord Cainewood.” Phillipe turned towards a taller, broader white-suited figure than her own.

Persephone walked towards the treadmill, laid down her weapon, and slid off her silvery mask, sighing in relief as her dark red ponytail tumbled down her back. She adjusted her black-rimmed glasses, then hopped onto the treadmill and started jogging.

Lord Cainewood. Honestly.

The other fencer Philippe was training—Persephone’s uncle, Albert Chase—was the Marquess of Cainewood, and he wanted everyone to know it. His diction was perfect, his suits were immaculate, his cars were ostentatious. Even his hobbies screamed status—hobbies like fencing, which the powerfully built man still practiced at sixty. And of course, he demanded everyone below his station afford him the “proper respect” of using his title.

(Persephone adjusted her footing, sliding her left leg back and setting it perpendicular to the right, and suddenly she wasn’t jogging—she was advancing in the well-balanced shuffle Philippe would praise as good form.)

But it was Uncle Albert’s prerogative to be a tasteless snob. The problem was, he wanted her to be that way, too. Ever since he’d taken custody of her at thirteen, he’d tried to shape her into the perfect little carbon-copy heir. He sent her to the posh boarding school and the posh university. He let her adopt only the posh hobbies and study only the posh subjects. And while she’d found a few things she enjoyed within those restrictions—she certainly liked fencing far more than fox hunting—she wasn’t the person he wanted her to be, and she never could be.

After all, Uncle Albert wanted a nephew, not a niece.

(She lunged forward, then recovered back into her usual footing and smoothly switched back to a normal jog.)

Not that he knew about that, of course. His opinions about queer people were as distasteful as everything else about him. If he knew Persephone was trans, she’d be out on the street at best. And other than her hair (which had provoked several arguments she’d won only by pointing to a painting of a three-hundred-odd-year-old “Jason Chase” whose black hair reached a similar length), she certainly didn’t look the part of a woman. Because Uncle Albert controlled her whole life.

(She turned around, jogging backwards on the treadmill, then lowered herself into the same fencing stance, but jogging in reverse—practicing a retreat.)

If only things had gone differently. If she’d figured out she was a girl during uni, when she had queer friends and lived on her own, she might have been able to get her hands on hormones. At boarding school things would’ve been tougher, but at least he wasn’t there the whole time. And when her parents had still been alive? That would’ve been perfect. Her mum would’ve referred her to the endo himself.

She could have been the luckiest trans girl in Britain. But no, her stupid egg had refused to crack until after uni. Until she was finally forced, day in and day out, to confront her future as the Marquess of Cainewood, and realized how horribly wrong that felt to her.

(She fluidly switched back to a normal jog.)

But like it or not, that was her future. The bloody Lords had made sure of it: Nothing, not even a Gender Recognition Certificate, could alter a peer’s inheritance of their title. Even if she managed to transition, she would still, one day, inherit a title indelibly stained with manhood. She’d never been that keen on the aristocracy—what a ridiculous institution to keep limping into the twenty-first century!—but she could perhaps have borne the feminine “marchioness” with some combination of sarcasm and embarrassment. When she imagined “marquess” next to her name, though, something inside her wanted to curl up and die. As far as she was concerned, all the peers (well, almost all the peers) could go hang themselves.

And that was assuming she could transition. Fat chance of that with Uncle Albert looming over her shoulder. Sure, eventually he would die, but he didn’t look like a man who would kick the bucket any time soon; at the moment, she could see him energetically throwing himself at Philippe with the reckless gusto of a saberist. (Nothing like the patient, defensive style of her beloved épée.) And transitioning in her thirties or forties would certainly be better than not transitioning at all, but after a year in the closet, she could already feel herself dying inside; she wasn’t sure she could stand a decade or two.

Sometimes she wished she could just disappear. Leave this whole identity behind and become someone new—someone who’d always been a woman, who’d never inherit anything of note. But at the moment, even becoming Persephone Chase seemed an impossible dream; becoming Persephone Somethingelse was pure fantasy.

She stumbled on the treadmill. Spiraling again, Persephone? Maybe some music would keep her mind from dwelling on her situation.

She stepped off the treadmill, grabbed earbuds and phone from a bench, and went to choose an album, but as soon as her phone was unlocked, a notification popped up. It was from Consensus—a chat app she’d banned from her lock screen so nobody would see her using it. It was her only outlet to communicate with other queer people.

She glanced at her uncle, confirming that he was still busy trying to slash Philippe with an electrified sword, and then opened it up. Someone she hadn’t spoken to in a couple of weeks had resumed their previous conversation.

basement dweller:
persephone, it took me five minutes to find your account bc your name is so weird
what’s up with that, anyway?

γλυκύπικρος:
It’s Ancient Greek—“glukupikron”
It means “bittersweet”, or rather “sweetly bitter”.
A word coined by Sappho to describe love followed by heartbreak.

basement dweller:
of course it is
you’re nothing if not one-track

γλυκύπικρος:
I’ll have you know that I am a woman of many hidden talents.

basement dweller:
hopefully one of them is being punctual
I found a friend of a friend in Edinburgh who can keep hrt meds for you
are you free tonight?

Persephone nearly dropped her phone in surprise. They’d talked weeks ago about how her living situation—carefully edited to leave out the minor, inconsequential detail that her uncle was a high-ranking peer—prevented her from keeping hormones around even if she could get some, but she had only expected sympathy from the anonymous trans girl she was talking to; she hadn’t dared hope for a solution.

γλυκύπικρος:
Absolutely!
When? Where?

basement dweller:
I’ll let you know as soon as I hear from her

“Chase!” Philippe chided from across the room.

“Sorry,” she shouted back. She dashed off Thanks, back later as a reply, finally picked an album to jog to, and hopped back on the treadmill with new energy.

Hormone therapy! Finally! Starting it was daunting—how long could she hide the changes?—but it was better than standing still. Much better. She’d seen what it could do firsthand. Why, maybe someday she’d need a sports bra to jog like this!

Twenty minutes later, she stepped off the treadmill, wiped her face with a towel, gulped down some water, and unlocked her phone again.

basement dweller:
you know, you’ll have to give her your consensus name tonight
and she won’t be able to type it

> γλυκύπικρος has changed her name to sweetly bitter.

sweetly bitter:
Is that better?

basement dweller:
much

 

* * *

 

When she arrived at the top of her stairs at the end of her jog, Summer was surprised to find a bulging FedEx envelope leaning against her front door. Strange; she hadn’t asked for overnight shipping on the new gloves. She picked it up after she unlocked the door, ripped it open with her left hand, and dumped onto the kitchen table...a Goserelin implant kit? And equipment for a blood draw? And a return envelope?

“What the fuck?” she asked the empty flat.

She checked the envelope, found the address, saw the words she was hoping she wouldn’t see:

Stephanie Riley
Room 303
Dorley Hall
Royal College of Saint Almsworth
Almsworth, England

“What the actual fuck?” she asked again. She’d not only resigned, but fled all the way to bloody Scotland to get away from that place, and they’d respected her choice. Until now.

She wasn’t expecting an answer to her question, but started as her earbuds supplied one anyway:

“It seems like one of those nights
“We ditch the whole scene
“And end up dreamin’
“Instead of sleepin’…”

She didn’t have to look at the screen to know who was calling. Ten years ago, when it seemed that no boy or girl could ever come between her and her best friend—the woman who’d made her—it’d been the perfect ringtone. Now it was bittersweet, but she couldn’t bring herself to change it.

She steadied her breath, squeezed the stem of an earbud with thumb and middle finger, and pushed down those feelings. This was still her best friend; they might not live in the same building anymore, but they still talked all the time. “Hey, Tabs. It’s Sunday morning—shouldn’t Levi be pounding you into the mattress ‘round now?”

Her favorite belly laugh sounded in her ears, and despite the situation, she couldn’t help but relax a bit. “Jesus, Summer. It’s too early to go for my throat like that!”

“I am what my sister made me,” she replied with a giggle.

Tabby matched it. “Anyway, these bitches”—Summer tensed, her giggles dying in her throat, because ‘these bitches’ meant ‘Sisters’—“dragged my arse out of bed to ask you a favor.”

“A favor for the Hall?” she asked guardedly. “Does this have something to do with the package I just opened?”

“Fuck,” Tabby said, “I was hoping I’d reach you before it did. It’s for the Hall, but I think it’s something you’ll want to do. It’s about keeping someone out of the basement, not putting them in.”

Summer sighed, flattening her hands against the table. Thinking about that place always brought back the ache in her finger. “I’m listening.”

“Did you ever hear about Stephanie? Pippa’s girl from the 2019 intake?”

Summer winced at the mention of Pippa. “Only from the return address. Tabby, you know I haven’t touched that shit with a ten-foot pole in five years.”

“Yeah,” Tabby said, “I know. It’s just so weird that I thought you might’ve heard some gossip. Long story short—do you remember Melissa’s Stef?”

“That little boy she wouldn’t shut up about?” That’s when the name registered. “Wait—you put Melissa’s surrogate brother in the fucking basement?”

“Surrogate sister, actually. The bitches finally did it: they kidnapped a closeted trans girl by accident. And once she learned what the program was, she refused to leave.”

Summer pulled out a chair and sat down heavily. “You’re fucking with me,” she said, but even though she couldn’t decide which part of this story was more shocking, she could tell from Tabby’s tone that it was all true.

“I know! She said the program was better than the waiting list for the gender clinic.”

Summer blinked, thought about some of the stories her trans clients had told her. “I could see that, actually.”

“Right? The thing is, she actually made the program way more effective—she brought her little boyfriend to the Christmas party—“

“They let a boy out of the basement?!” Summer interrupted.

“I fucking know! But Maria was right to do it, because he gave up his fucking name by the end of the night!”

“Cooperative and self-actualizing? Before January?”

“Yes!”

“I—“ wish I could’ve seen it! she almost said, but then she caught herself. No, she didn’t; not really. “That’s the biggest improvement in half a decade,” she said instead, in a much less excited tone. “You can’t have left it alone.”

“Of course not. Once she was topside, Steph got a bunch of us together and we bitched at Bea until she let us start helping trans girls. So now that’s part of the program: Every year, we find one trans girl who’s totally fucked, make sure she’s really desperate enough to spend a year eating Weetabix, and add her to the intake.”

“I…I see.”

Inside Summer, there were two wolves; one was happy that Dorley was finally helping trans girls, while the other was horrified by the form of that ‘help’. They wouldn’t have a great time, she figured, but it probably wasn’t as bad as it was for the boys. They wouldn’t wash out an actual trans girl…right?

She shook her head to clear that thought away. “So what does that have to do with me?”

“When I say ‘totally fucked’,” Tabby said, “I mean it. If there’s anything we can do to keep a girl out of an intake, we do it. And that’s why I’m calling you at fuck o’clock in the morning.

“There’s a girl in Edinburgh who needs HRT, but she lives with ‘phobic family and can’t keep anything at home. There’s nobody who’d hold pills for her, and you know we’re basically the only ones with injectables in this shithole country. So we’d like you to meet with her once a week. Give her a valerate jab and a new Goserelin implant when she needs one. Maybe be a friend, if she wants.”

“You mean a sponsor,” Summer said flatly. “You want me to sponsor a free-range trans girl. Tabs, you know how my last sponsorship went.”

There was a hitch in Tabby’s breath; Summer could picture the wince that caused it. “You know I wouldn’t ask you to do that, girlie. This is different. She doesn’t just need it—she wants it. And frankly, we’re out of options. It’s you or the basement.”

“Fuck.”

“Very fuck,” Tabby agreed.

She returned to the table, picked up the Goserelin kit, turned it over in her hands. She’d wanted to leave this behind forever. But she wanted that girl to end up in Dorley Hall’s next intake even less.

“Fine. I’ll do it.”

“Thank fuck,” Tabby said. “I’ll send you the file on her.”

“No,” Summer said, “it’d be weird if I knew all that; I’m not trying to intimidate some toxic shitheel in Cell 3. Just give me enough to meet up with her.”

“Steph can give her a message for you. And she says she’s free tonight. How about you?”

“Yeah,” Summer said. Depressingly, her social calendar had never really recovered after the lockdowns. “We should probably meet in a public place the first time…”

Tabby “hmm”ed a concurrence; Summer could picture the little ‘go on’ gesture that would accompany it. God, she wished Tabby was sitting at this kitchen table instead of the one at the Hall.

“Tell her to meet me at eight o’clock,” she said slowly, thinking it through. “I’ll be wearing a red dress and a pride necklace, standing by the bar at The World’s End.”