Jada was the only one of our group of lunch friends who was going to college in the fall. I was working for a year to save money and establish residency, Britt was going to take online trade school classes while learning more from her dad about working on cars, and Poppy and Lisette were just going to start working full-time.

The envelope was hand-addressed in my dad’s handwriting, which got my hopes up even though he deadnamed me, but inside there was no handwritten or even printed letter.

Eighteen-year-old Nicholas Hammerstein is at the cusp of finishing high school in his hometown of Los Alamos, NM. He has a seemingly ideal life and is blessed with loving parents, a cute baby sister, and great friends. Nicholas is a gifted student and martial artist who has dreams of leaving for college at the end of his senior year. But, living in a world of Emergent humans, he will soon find his life turned upside down as his life and the fate of a kingdom hang in the balance. His future and theirs will be determined by how he navigates the drastic changes in his body and the magical and superpowered Mergent population he joins.

“Yes!” I said, and babbled on before I could lose the momentary burst of confidence, “I’m interested in —”

“With the way Dad is being, I can’t move back in any time soon. Would it be okay if I came over sometime after you get off work and before Dad comes home, and get a few things out of my room? Or could I ask you to pack up a few things and bring them to the Ramseys’ house, or bring them to work and let me come by to get them when Meredith or Sophia are giving me a ride home from school?”

“So what’s your story?” Poppy asked. “Trans, lesbian, or both?”

 

I gaped at her. “How did you know?”

Happy New Year!
Or should I say, Happy New Congress. I see the news and wonder at the avarice of some people who are supposed to be responsible adults. If the Rabid Right get what they are demanding, the following story might be even truer than my old brain had considered.
Happy Days!
Marianne

29 and Beyond!

“Wake up! It’s Christmas morning! You just missed Santa Claus!” Mrs. Ramsey called out from the hallway.

I thought about what Sophia and Savannah had talked about last night, about their fathers and their long estrangement and how they were trying to be friends again now. Would it be like that between me and Nathan when I made contact again after I turned eighteen?

From the fact that this isn’t their first time, I’m guessing they’re both realizing — or at least suspecting — they’re not as purely cis as they thought.”

“I have a feeling I might see more of... let’s say the Hooters side of that place, if I drop in as a single guy.”

 

“Or if we’re a couple of single guys.” I could hear a smile in her voice.

There were more people in line than I expected for a town that size, more than we usually saw at the Brocksboro library on a weekday. Most were doing boring rejuvenations and improvements in each other’s appearance, as usual, but one couple venned each other into giant matte-black insectoids.

“I said they should venn into amphibious forms and swim out to see the Outer Banks, but Mom just smiled and said maybe.”

“Okay,” Carmen conceded, “if multiple bodies is a core part of your identity, it’s probably fine to take them all to the protest. But venning into multiple bodies for the protest just to inflate the numbers —”

After doing some research and talking with trans men on the forum Avery had recommended, he’d reluctantly decided that binding her breasts wouldn’t be right, given possible health risks for Dakota if he wound up staying in her body for months.

One of the trans guys at the meeting announced that he’d finally figured out his permanent name (he’d been trying out different ones, like me). That reminded me again that I needed to think more about my name. Amanda was nice, but it wasn’t quite right, any more than Natalie, Amber, Isabella or any of the others I’d tried on for a few hours.

The shower took about ten minutes longer than it would have, and thirty minutes longer than his normal showering routine, because he broke down halfway through and huddled in the floor of the shower, unable to look at Dakota’s body or touch it, turning the temperature and pressure up as high as he could stand it as though it would wash off this soft feminine shell and leave the real him.