LAUREL – Chapter 12

Trigger Warning:

Spoiler

conversion therapy, mentions of sexual assault, gaslighting, suicide attempt, I'd say parental abuse but that's the whole book.Full novel: LAUREL — read the rest free on N​o⁠v​e⁠l​C⁠o​d⁠e​x⁠.​o⁠r​g⁠

[collapse]

Hey y'all June here, this is probably the darkest chapter in the book, please skip the flashback scene, they'll be a small summary after it if you'd prefer to not read the whole scene. No judgement here. Though it is most of the chapter this time.

LAUREL Chapter 12

Laurel Melody Parker, Laurel, Montana, October 21st 2018

Derrick wasn't home by the time Laurel got home the night of the competition. It was probably as good as yesterday could have possibly gone. Light was creeping in through the curtains of Laurel's bedroom on the second floor, the freezing rain had been over by the time Laurel High returned, leaving only the frozen remnants of ice on roads and hanging from homes.

The victory of the previous night was a fragile thing. In Spokane, under the glow of stadium lights, surrounded by the fierce, unconditional acceptance of her fellow members of the color guard, she had been Laurel. She had worn the silver-and-gold bodysuit, her body a conduit for music and motion, every spin of the flag was a testament to how far she's come. On the bus ride home, curled against Jess’s shoulder, the exhaustion had taken over, the sleep deep and dreamless. For a few precious hours, Laurel had been kind of okay.

But now it was Sunday morning, and the bubble had popped.

Derrick hadn't been home when the bus dropped her off just after midnight. The house had been dark and silent, a mercy she had accepted without question, immediately barricading herself in her room. Now, weak sunlight, filtered through the curtains and into the room, Laurel just reached over with her foot and hit the button on the space heater. Jack Frost had etched onto her windowpane, crept into the room.

She sat up in bed, hunching over in front of the tiny space heater. She wore an oversized hoodie that she’d thrown on last night, it smelled of bus exhaust and the cheap perfume most of the girls on the team used. The silence of the house was no longer a mercy, it felt like a warning. It was the silence of a held breath, the quiet before the storm of Derrick’s inevitable return.

Laurel swung her legs over the side of the bed, her bare feet recoiling from the cold wooden floor. She caught her reflection in the full-length mirror propped against the wall. The girl from Spokane was gone. In her place was a tired-looking boy with dark circles under his eyes, the faint shadow of stubble already returning to his jawline, his shoulders looking impossibly broad in the morning light.

A wave of nausea and vertigo washed over her. The whiplash was physical, a violent lurch in her gut. Yesterday, she was Laurel. Today, she was a costume again. The dissonance was a physical pain, a high-frequency scream just beneath the surface of her skin. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t survive another 75 days of this pendulum swing between euphoria and agony. Her eighteenth birthday, January 4th, felt as distant as a star. Waiting for legal adulthood, for the right to walk into a doctor’s office and ask for the care she needed, was a passive act. And passivity was killing her.

Her grandfather’s voice echoed in her memory, cold and clinical as he’d been in his San Francisco condo. “Your mother was not in her right mind… We are discontinuing this course of treatment.” He had taken her life from her with a phone call to a pharmacy, framing his cruelty as concern. And Derrick could never know, would never know. She'd be killed and he'd frame his bigotry as fatherly protection. Would Montana Payton even survive this? The first time she'd be forcibly detransitioned she'd barely made it out alive. She kept telling herself it was only until she turned eighteen.

No more.

The thought was not a shout, but a quiet, cold certainty that settled deep in her. If they wouldn't give her life back to her, she would have to take it back by force.

She grabbed her phone from the nightstand, her fingers trembling slightly. She ignored the notifications—a string of good-morning texts from the guard group chat, a meme from Ashton, a simple heart emoji from Jess. She opened a private browsing window, the screen’s stark white a blank slate for her rebellion.

Her thumbs hovered over the keyboard. What did she even search for? The memory of hushed conversations in online forums from years ago surfaced, fragments of a language she had learned in secret.

Her fingers began to type.

>DIY HRT guide

…The total, with shipping, came to just over two hundred dollars. It might as well have been two million. She had the twenty dollars Drake had given her and a few crumpled bills in her wallet. And a trust, of April's life insurance payment, that she was definitely not touching until she was eighteen. Not even close to enough.

And then there was the address. She couldn’t have a package of unlabeled vials and pills from a South Pacific island delivered to Derrick Payton’s front door. The idea was so absurd it was almost funny. She needed a safe harbor. She needed money.

She needed Jess's help.

Her hands were shaking again as she closed the browser and opened her messages. She stared at the heart emoji Jess had sent her an hour ago. It felt like a lifeline. She couldn't put the whole terrifying plan into a text message. What if Derrick took her phone again?

LaurelLore: Can you talk?

The three dots appeared almost instantly.

CaptainJessSparrow: Always. What’s up? You okay?

LaurelLore: Not really. I need your help. It’s… big. And maybe stupid.

CaptainJessSparrow: My favorite things. Where are you?

LaurelLore: Home. Derrick’s not back yet.

CaptainJessSparrow: Thank god for small miracles. Want me to come get you? We can go to my place. Mom’s making waffles.

The mention of waffles, of Gina, of the chaotic warmth of Jess’s apartment, made Laurel’s throat tighten. It was everything this house wasn’t.

LaurelLore: Yes. Please. ASAP.

CaptainJessSparrow: On my way.

Relief washed over her, so potent it left her dizzy. She wasn't alone in this. She stood up, her joints cracking, and began to pace the small confines of her room. The plan was terrifying, but it was a plan. It was action. It was a weapon against the suffocating passivity of her life as Montana. She had to do this before she lost her will.

Just as she was pulling on a pair of jeans, she heard it. The low rumble of a truck engine, followed by the slam of a door. Her blood ran cold.

Derrick was home.

She froze, listening. The front door opened and slammed shut with enough force to rattle the frame. Heavy footsteps stomped through the living room below. A string of curses, low and guttural. He was in a bad mood. He was always in a bad mood on Sunday mornings.

Laurel moved silently, pushing the dresser back in front of her door, the wood scraping softly against the floor. It was a childish defense, she knew, but the illusion of security was better than nothing. She sat on her bed, her heart hammering against her ribs, and waited. She had to get out of this house.

Her phone buzzed. It was Jess.

CaptainJessSparrow: Here. Out front.

Laurel’s breath hitched. She crept to the window and peered through the curtains. Jess’s beat-up sedan was parked across the street.

She typed back, her fingers fumbling.

LaurelLore: He just got home, bad mood. We'll have to have a plan.

CaptainJessSparrow: Shit. Okay. Stay put. I’m deploying the nuclear option.

LaurelLore: What does that mean?

But Jess didn’t reply. Laurel waited, her anxiety mounting with every passing second. She could hear Derrick rummaging in the kitchen, the clank of a bottle, the hiss of a beer can opening.

Then, the doorbell rang.

The sound was so unexpected it made her jump. Downstairs, everything went quiet. She heard Derrick grumble, then the sound of his heavy footsteps moving toward the front door. Laurel held her breath, her ear pressed against her own door.

She heard the front door open.

"Can I help you?" Derrick's voice was rough, laced with suspicion.

And then, Jess’s voice, impossibly bright and cheerful. "Hi, Mr. Payton! It’s Jessica Perot, from color guard. Is Montana home? We were supposed to work on a research project for English today at the library."

A lie. A beautiful, perfect, audacious lie.

There was a long pause. Laurel could picture the scene perfectly: Jess on the porch, radiating weaponized politeness, and Derrick in the doorway, scowling, thrown completely off balance by this sudden intrusion of normalcy into his Sunday morning hangover.

"He's here," Derrick finally grunted. "He's been locked in his room all morning. Moody probably.”

"Oh, teenagers!" Jess laughed, a sound like bells. "I brought coffee. Figured we could use the caffeine boost before we hit the books. I even got you one, Mr. Payton. Black, right? Montana mentioned it once."

Another lie. A masterstroke. Laurel’s jaw dropped. Jess came prepared.

The shift in Derrick's tone was immediate. The suspicion melted away, replaced by a grudging, flattered warmth. "Well, hell. That's… thoughtful of you, Jessica. Come on in."

Laurel scrambled away from the door as she heard her father bellow up the stairs. "Montana! Your friend Jessica is here! Get your ass down here! You're going to the library!"

Her hands were shaking as she moved the dresser. She grabbed her bag, shoved her phone in her pocket, and took one last look in the mirror. The fear was still there, but now, beneath it, was a flicker of something else. A dangerous, thrilling hope.

She was taking her life back. And she had an army at her back.

Jessica Perot, Laurel, Montana, October 21st, 2018

Jess sat at the small, cluttered kitchen table, a half-eaten waffle cooling on her plate. The air in the apartment was thick with the comforting smells of maple syrup, bacon, and her mom’s favorite lavender-scented cleaning spray. Gina Perot was a whirlwind of maternal energy, wiping down counters and humming along to an old Fleetwood Mac song playing softly from a small radio. The scene was the epitome of Sunday morning domesticity, a stark contrast to the storm raging in Jess’s mind.

She’d been replaying Evelyn’s words from the bus ride over and over. “Did you hear about Ana Yankowski? Brett Cole’s party? My cousin said she got caught hooking up with some girl in a car.”

The news had hit Jess harder than she wanted. Her first, ugly reaction had been a surge of pure, unadulterated schadenfreude. Good, a vicious little voice in her head had hissed. Let her see what it feels like. Let the queen bee of Laurel High, the girl who had built her throne on the ashes of Jess’s reputation, feel the sting of being gossip, of being a target. Let her know the terror of having her most private self turned into a weapon against her.

But the satisfaction had curdled almost immediately, leaving a bitter, familiar taste in her mouth. Because she knew exactly what it felt like. She remembered the snickers in the hallway, the word "dyke" branding her since then, the way friends had suddenly become strangers. Ana had been the reason for all that pain, but the pain itself was a universal language among kids like them in a town like this. And now Ana was being forced to endure it.

“You’ve been staring at that waffle for ten minutes…” Gina said, sliding into the chair opposite Jess. She nudged a plate of bacon closer. “Eat. You look like you’re a million miles away.”

Gina’s eyes, the same dark, perceptive brown as Jess’s, missed nothing. She always could read Jess like a book.

Jess sighed, pushing a piece of waffle around her plate. “Just thinking.”

“About Laurel?” Gina asked. “I’m so glad she had such a good time in Spokane. She came back looking… lighter. Even if it was just for a minute.”

“Yeah, it was good,” Jess agreed, her voice quiet. “She was amazing, Mom. You should have seen her. She was… herself.”

The unspoken second half of that sentence hung in the air: And now she’s back here.

“It’s not about Laurel,” Jess admitted after a moment. “Well, not directly. Do you remember Ana Yankowski?”

Gina’s expression tightened almost imperceptibly. “The girl from freshman year? The one who…?” She didn’t need to finish the sentence. Gina had been the one to hold her while Jess cried, to call the school and raise hell until the principal had finally, reluctantly, done the bare minimum about the bullying.

“Yeah. That one,” Jess said. “There’s a rumor going around. That she was caught with a girl at a party on Friday night.”

Gina absorbed the information, her gaze steady. She didn’t celebrate or condemn. She just waited.

“And how does that make you feel?” she asked, her voice gentle.

“I don’t know!” Jess burst out, the frustration finally bubbling over. “At first, I was happy. I was ecstatic. I wanted to print out flyers and post them all over town. I wanted her to hurt the way she made me hurt.” She dropped her fork, the clatter loud in the quiet kitchen. “But then I just felt… sick. Because I know what’s coming for her. This town… it’s a meat grinder, Mom. And she just threw herself into the gears. And the worst part is, she’s going to try and save herself by being even meaner, by doubling down on being perfect and popular and cruel, and she’s going to hurt someone else to do it.”

Gina reached across the table and placed her warm, capable hand over Jess’s. “It’s okay to feel both things, honey. It’s okay to be glad that karma is finally showing up for its shift. And it’s okay to feel sad for the girl you used to be, and for the girl she is now, because you know the price she’s about to pay.”

Gina squeezed her hand. “You’re not the same angry, scared kid you were freshman year, Jess. You’ve got a good heart. A big, fierce, protective heart. That’s why it hurts. You see her walking into the same fire that burned you, and even though she’s the one who lit the match, your first instinct is still to worry about her getting burned.”

Tears pricked at the corners of Jess’s eyes. Her mom always knew how to cut right to the center of things, to name the feelings Jess couldn’t untangle on her own.

“I’m not going to tell Laurel,” Jess said, the decision solidifying as she spoke it aloud. “She’s got enough to deal with. She doesn’t need this… this drama. Especially since… since the girl Ana was with is Dani.”

She had been up late at night with Evelyn, digging into the rumor that it was a girl from out of town, with long black hair. They found out from Evelyn's one friend from Varsity Basketball who attended the party.

Gina’s eyebrows shot up. “The girl from California? Oh, honey. That is a mess.”

“Exactly. Laurel’s just starting to remember who she is. She’s fighting for her life every single day in that house with that monster. This Ana thing is just… it’s noise. It’s static. She needs to focus on her own signal right now.”

“You’re right,” Gina said firmly. “Her safety is the only thing that matters. You’re a good friend, Jessica.”

Just then, Jess’s phone buzzed on the table. She glanced at the screen. A message from Laurel.

LaurelLore: Can you talk?

Jess’s entire posture shifted. The internal debate over Ana vanished, replaced by a laser-focused concern. She typed back instantly, her mom watching her with a knowing look.

She stood up so fast her chair scraped against the linoleum. “I have to go.”

“What’s wrong?” Gina asked, already rising.

“It’s Laurel. She wants to talk, I have to make sure she hasn't found out about Dani… or things will only get worse.”

“Okay,” Gina said, after a weary sigh. She was already grabbing her keys from the hook by the door. “Let’s go.”

“No, you stay,” Jess said, grabbing her jacket and looking at the clock, Derrick was likely just getting back to the Payton house. “I have an idea. A really stupid one. It’s better if I go alone.” She grabbed the three coffee cups from the counter—the ones she’d poured for herself, her mom, and Laurel. One was black, the way her own dad usually takes it. A long shot, but worth a try. “It’s a covert operation. I need to be stealthy.”

Gina looked at her, a mix of worry and pride in her eyes. “Be careful, Jess.”

“Always, I'll text you.” Jess said, flashing a grin that didn’t quite reach her eyes. She called it the "nuclear option" because it involved facing Derrick Payton head-on, armed with nothing but caffeine and a smile. It was about creating a blast of suburban politeness so disarming it would level his defenses.

As she ran down the stairs and out to her car, her heart pounded a frantic rhythm against her ribs. This was for Laurel. Everything was for Laurel. The noise about Ana, the ghosts of freshman year, the cruelty of this town—it could all wait. Right now, her friend was trapped in that shitty house with Derrick Payton and she was going to get her out.

Laurel Melody Parker, Laurel Montana, October 21st 2018

.

The stairs creaked under Laurel’s feet, a sound that usually heralded doom, but today sounded like a drumroll. She had pulled on her jeans and the closest clean shirt she could find—a grey flannel that hid her shape—and scrubbed her face with cold water to hide the redness of her eyes.

She descended into the living room, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs. The tableau before her was surreal. Derrick was leaning against the doorframe, a mug of coffee in his hand, looking almost… pleasant. And there was Jess, standing on the porch in her oversized denim jacket, smiling that bright, disarming smile that could sell ice to a dad from Montana.

"There he is," Derrick said, his voice lacking its usual Sunday morning venom. He took a sip of the coffee. "Your friend here says you've got a project due."

Laurel forced herself to look at him, to make eye contact without flinching. "Yeah. English. The… uh… Great Gatsby." It was a clumsy lie, but Derrick wouldn't know Gatsby from Garfield.

"Right," Derrick grunted. He gestured with the mug. "Don't be all day. And check your attitude at the door, Montana. Jess went out of her way."

"I will," Laurel murmured. She grabbed her backpack from the bottom of the stairs, the weight of it reassuring. Inside was her laptop, her notebook, and the twenty dollars Drake had given her. It felt like a go-bag.

"Ready to go, partner?" Jess chirped, jingling her keys.

"Yeah. Ready."

Laurel stepped out onto the porch, the cold October air hitting her face like a slap. She walked past her father, smelling the stale beer on his breath mixed with the fresh coffee, and stepped into the sunlight. She didn't look back. She got into the passenger seat of Jess’s sedan, the familiar scent of vanilla air freshener and old fabric enveloping her.

Jess waited until they were around the corner, out of sight of the Payton house, before she let out a long, shuddering breath.

"Jesus H. Christ," Jess exhaled, her grip on the steering wheel white-knuckled. "I thought he was going to bite my head off when I rang that doorbell."

Laurel slumped in the seat, the adrenaline crash leaving her trembling. "You are insane. You are actually insane."

"I prefer 'tactical genius,'" Jess said, glancing over with a shaky grin. "Did you see his face when I handed him the coffee? It was like I handed him a live grenade and he didn't know whether to throw it or drink it."

"Thank you," Laurel whispered, the reality of the escape sinking in. "I was… I was going to explode in there, Jess. I couldn't breathe."

Jess reached over and squeezed Laurel’s knee. "I know. But we’re out. We’ve got the whole day. Library?"

"Library," Laurel confirmed. "I have to show you something. I have a plan."

The Laurel Public Library was quiet on Sundays, a sanctuary of dust motes and hushed whispers. They found a table in the back corner, hidden behind the stacks of non-fiction biographies. Laurel opened her laptop, the screen glowing blue in the dim light.

"Okay," Laurel said, her voice low. "You know how I can't go to a doctor about my transition, because my dad would find out through my insurance. Derrick would kill me. Literally."

"Yeah," Jess said, pulling her chair closer. "So what’s the move?"

"I can't wait seventy-five days, Jess. I can't wait until January 4th. Every day feels like… like my body is on fire again. It’s poison." Laurel’s fingers flew across the keyboard, bringing up the spreadsheet she had compiled that morning. "So I’m doing it myself."

Jess stared at the screen, reading the list of chemical names and prices. "Estradiol. Laurel, is this… is this safe? Buying drugs from…" She squinted at the URL. "Vanuatu?"

"It’s grey market," Laurel explained, her voice urgent. "It’s not illegal to possess, just… technically you need a prescription. But thousands of girls do it. I spent all morning on the forums. I know the dosages. I know what blood tests I need to get eventually. But I need to start now."

Jess looked from the screen to Laurel’s face. She saw the desperation there, but also the steel. This wasn't a whim. This was a survival strategy.

"Okay," Jess said slowly. "Okay. If you’re sure."

"I’ve never been more sure of anything."

"Then let’s do it. What do you need?"

"Two things," Laurel said, holding up two fingers. "First, money. I have like… twenty bucks. The order is two hundred and ten with shipping. I can pay you back, I swear, I’ll get a job, or I’ll sell some of my old stuff, or—"

"Stop," Jess cut her off. She reached into her purse and pulled out a debit card. "Mom gave me emergency money for 'senior year expenses.' I’m pretty sure keeping my best friend alive counts as a senior year expense."

Laurel felt tears prick her eyes. "Jess…"

"Don't cry or I'll cry, and we're in a library, we'll get shushed. What’s the second thing?"

Laurel took a deep breath. "An address. I can't have a package of hormones showing up at Derrick’s house. He opens my mail sometimes. If he finds this…"

"He won't," Jess said firmly. "Send it to my house. Mom won't care. I'll tell her I ordered some… I don't know, specialized art supplies from overseas. She never checks my packages."

Laurel nodded, her hands shaking as she navigated to the checkout page. It felt illicit, dangerous, and incredibly holy all at once. She entered the information. Laurel Parker (she refused to use Montana for this).

"Wait," Jess said, pointing at the payment options. "They don't take cards directly. It says… Bitcoin?”

"Bitcoin is safer," Laurel said. "It’s harder to trace. We have to buy the Bitcoin first, then send it to their wallet address."

It was tedious, nerve-wracking work, but when the final "Payment Accepted" screen flashed green, Laurel felt a weight lift off her chest so massive she almost floated out of the chair.

"It’s done," she whispered. "It’s coming."

"One to two weeks," Jess read the shipping estimate. "We can do that… We can do that."

Laurel closed the laptop. She looked at Jess, really looked at her. "You just saved my life… Again."

Jess looked away. Clearly something weighing on her mind and it made Laurel feel like she'd overstepped and become too much of a burden, one that was fiscally draining but mentally draining as well. Jess looked back to her and grabbed her hands.

"Don't mention it," Jess said, leaning in close. "But hey, since we’re plotting crimes and misdemeanors…” Jess said sarcastically. “There's something I need to tell you. About Dani..."

Laurel Parker, November 2017, Newport, Washington.

The plane ride was awkward, crammed next to the man that made her blood boil. God even looking at him made her so furious. She dreamt of hurting him. Of making him feel the pain that he's been inflicting onto her from the moment they found out about April's death.

The flight to Spokane, Washington had been an eternity compressed into three hours of recycled air and Richard's cologne. Laurel—though she was being called "Montana" again, the name, a collar tightening around her throat—sat rigid in the window seat, her forehead pressed against the cold plastic of the oval window. Below, the landscape shifted from the golden sprawl of California to the dense, evergreen patchwork of the Pacific Northwest. It looked like a place designed to hide things.

Richard Parker sat beside her in the aisle seat, his posture perfect, his grey suit impeccable, a leather attaché case tucked beneath the seat in front of him. He hadn't spoken since takeoff, content to read through a stack of legal documents with the same clinical detachment he applied to everything, including his grandchild's existence. Every few minutes, Laurel felt his gaze flick toward her, assessing, cataloguing. She kept her eyes on the clouds.

She knew where they were going. She wasn't stupid.

The moment Richard had mentioned Dr. Loretta Reeves and "a specialized facility in Newport that comes highly recommended for adolescents dealing with identity confusion," Laurel had felt the trap snap shut. She had googled the place that night on her phone, hands trembling as she scrolled through the carefully worded website. Wholeness Ministries Youth Wellness Center. The stock photos showed smiling teenagers hiking through pine forests and sitting in circles, their faces radiating manufactured contentment. The language was all "healing" and "wholeness" and "returning to one's authentic design." It never used the words "conversion therapy," but it didn't have to. Laurel could read between the lines. She had been reading between the lines her entire life.

She had tried to run. Twice.

The first time, three days after Richard cancelled her prescriptions, she had packed a bag in the middle of the night and slipped out the back door of the San Francisco condo. She made it six blocks before Richard's black sedan pulled up beside her, his driver holding the door open like a chauffeur for a prisoner. Richard hadn't yelled. He never yelled. He had simply said, "Get in the car, Montana. This accomplishes nothing." His calm was worse than any rage.

The second time, she had tried to buy a bus ticket to Marisol Heights, desperate to find Dani and Sam, to find anyone who still saw her as Laurel. But her bank account had been frozen. Richard had thought of everything. He was a lawyer, after all. He built airtight cases for a living. Laurel was just another case to be managed, another problem to be solved with the right application of money and control.

And so here she was, hurtling toward a place designed to unmake her, sitting next to the architect of her destruction.

"We'll be landing shortly," Richard said, not looking up from his documents. His voice was measured, devoid of warmth. "Dr. Reeves is expecting us at two o'clock. She's cleared her afternoon specifically for your intake."

Laurel said nothing. She had stopped speaking to Richard three weeks ago, after he had sat her down in the pristine living room and explained, in his reasonable, lawyerly way, that her "confusion" was a symptom of grief, that her mother had made "well-intentioned but ultimately harmful decisions," and that it was his responsibility now to "correct the course." She had screamed at him then, the first and only time, calling him a monster, telling him he was killing her. He had waited for her to finish, then said, "I'm saving you, Montana. One day you'll understand."

She didn't speak to him after that. There was nothing left to say to someone who had decided your soul was a clerical error.

The rental car Richard had arranged was waiting at the Spokane airport, a sleek black sedan that smelled of new leather and Pine-Sol. The drive to Newport took just over an hour, the landscape shifting from suburban sprawl to dense forest as they crossed into eastern Washington. Laurel watched the trees blur past, their branches heavy with late autumn rain. The sky was the color of wet cement.

Mom, I'm so sorry, she thought, the words a silent prayer to a ghost. I tried. I really tried.

She thought about Dani, about the last time she had seen her, just days before Richard had swooped in like a vulture. Dani had been wearing that ridiculous leather jacket, the one with the Ramones patch on the back, her dark hair falling across her face as she laughed at something Sam said. They had been sitting on the fire escape outside Laurel's apartment, eating popsicles and pretending the world wasn't ending. Dani had held her hand, their fingers sticky with grape juice, and said, "We're gonna be okay, babe. I promise."

Laurel hadn't been able to say goodbye. Richard had arrived with a court order and a tight smile, and within hours, she was in his custody, her possessions packed and slowly dwindled of anything feminine as the weeks went on. He had taken her clothes. Her makeup. Her dignity. All that remained were the memories, and even those were starting to feel like photographs of someone else's life.

Dani, I'm so sorry. I didn't want to leave. I didn't have a choice.

The car slowed, and Laurel looked up. They were turning onto a long gravel driveway flanked by towering pine trees. A wooden sign, rustic and wholesome, proclaimed: Wholeness Ministries Youth Wellness Center: Where Healing Begins.

Laurel's stomach clenched.

The main building was a sprawling log structure that looked like it had been designed to evoke summer camp nostalgia—all exposed beams and wide porches and windows overlooking a pristine lake. Teenagers in matching khaki pants and navy polo shirts moved across the grounds in supervised groups, their expressions carefully neutral. Laurel noticed immediately that none of them were really talking to each other.

Richard parked the car and turned off the engine. For a moment, neither of them moved.

"This is for your own good," Richard said quietly, still not looking at her. "I know you can't see that now. But your mother..." He paused, his jaw tightening. "Your mother loved you, in her way. But love isn't always enough to make the right decisions. She was too close to the situation. Too emotional. I have the clarity she lacked."

Laurel turned to look at him, really look at him, for the first time in weeks. His profile was sharp, patrician, the profile of a man who had never doubted himself a day in his life. He believed what he was saying. That was the worst part. He genuinely believed he was helping.

"You're a monster," she said, her voice hoarse from disuse. "And one day, you'll have to live with what you did to me."

Richard's expression didn't change. He simply opened his door and stepped out of the car. "Let's not keep Dr. Reeves waiting."

The intake office was located in a smaller building adjacent to the main lodge, a structure that had been designed to feel clinical despite its rustic exterior. The waiting room was decorated with nature photographs and inspirational posters—"The truth will set you free" and "You are fearfully and wonderfully made"—each one a knife slipped between Laurel's ribs.

A receptionist with a fixed smile directed them to sit. Laurel chose a chair as far from Richard as the small room allowed, pressing herself into the corner like a cornered animal. She studied the other people in the waiting room: a mother with tear-stained cheeks clutching a Bible to her chest, a father in a business suit checking his phone with performative disinterest, and in the corner, a boy about her age who sat with his hands clenched in his lap, staring at nothing.

Their eyes met for a moment. The boy's gaze was hollow, the look of someone who had already been broken and was just waiting to be told what shape to reassemble himself into. Laurel looked away quickly, her heart hammering. That's going to be me, she thought. That's what they want to do to me.

"Montana Parker?"

Laurel didn't move at first. The name felt like a slap. Richard was so vain that he'd decided to keep Parker as her last name. None of it was really her choice anymore.

"Montana?" The receptionist's smile faltered slightly.

Richard stood, placing a hand on Laurel's shoulder. "He's just nervous. Come along."

Laurel shrugged off his hand and stood on her own, refusing to give him the satisfaction of leading her. She walked toward the door the receptionist indicated, her spine straight, her chin lifted. If they were going to try to destroy her, she would at least face them standing.

Dr. Loretta Reeves's office was designed to disarm. Soft lighting. Comfortable armchairs in muted earth tones. A small fountain burbling in the corner, its sound meant to soothe. Bookshelves lined one wall, filled with titles that made Laurel's skin crawl: Healing Sexual Brokenness, Reclaiming Manhood, The Transgender Delusion: A Parent's Guide. On the desk, a small silver cross caught the light.

Dr. Reeves herself was a woman in her late fifties, with carefully styled blonde hair going silver at the temples and kind eyes that didn't quite reach her smile. She wore a cashmere cardigan over a modest blouse, pearls at her throat, the picture of respectable, grandmotherly concern. She rose as Laurel entered, extending her hand.

"You must be Montana," she said, her voice warm and measured. "I'm Dr. Reeves. It's wonderful to finally meet you."

Laurel didn't take her hand. She stood just inside the doorway, her arms crossed tightly over her chest, her eyes fixed on a point just past Dr. Reeves's left ear.

Dr. Reeves lowered her hand gracefully, as if the rejection was expected and therefore meaningless. "Please, have a seat. Both of you."

Richard took one of the armchairs, crossing his legs and resting his hands on his knee with practiced ease. He looked comfortable here, in his element. Laurel remained standing.

"I'd prefer not to," she said flatly.

Dr. Reeves's smile didn't waver. "I understand. This is a lot to take in. Why don't you just stand wherever you're comfortable, and we can talk?"

"I'm not comfortable anywhere in this building."

"That's perfectly understandable." Dr. Reeves sat back down in her own chair, angling it slightly to face Laurel more directly. "This is a safe space, Montana. I know that might be hard to believe right now, but my only goal here is to help you."

Laurel let out a sound that was half-laugh, half-sob. "Help me? You people think I'm broken. You think who I am is a disease. How is that helping?"

Richard shifted in his chair. "Montana, please—"

"My name isn't Montana," Laurel said, her voice rising. "My name is Laurel. Laurel Melody Parker. My mother gave me that name, and I'm not going to let you or anyone else take it away from me."

The silence that followed was heavy, charged. Dr. Reeves's expression remained neutral, but something flickered behind her eyes—not anger, exactly, but a kind of clinical calculation. She glanced briefly at Richard, who gave a small, tight nod.

"I see," Dr. Reeves said calmly. "Laurel. That's a beautiful name. It was your mother's choice?"

Laurel hesitated, thrown by the shift in tone. "Yes."

"And your mother... she supported your belief that you're female?"

"It's not a belief," Laurel snapped. "I am female. I was on hormones. I was living my life. I was happy until—" She stopped, unable to finish the sentence. Until Mom died. Until Richard destroyed everything.

"Until your mother passed away," Dr. Reeves finished gently. "I'm very sorry for your loss, Laurel. Grief is an incredibly powerful force. It can make us cling to things that feel safe, even when those things might not be in our best interest."

"Being myself isn't 'clinging to something,'" Laurel said, her hands balling into fists. "It's who I am."

"I understand that's how it feels," Dr. Reeves said. "And I want you to know that I'm not here to tell you that your feelings are wrong. Feelings are never wrong—they're simply feelings. But feelings can sometimes mislead us, especially during times of trauma and upheaval. What I want to do is help you explore those feelings in a safe environment, without the pressure of labels or expectations."

Laurel stared at her. The words were smooth, reasonable, almost compassionate. That was what made them so dangerous. This wasn't a fire-and-brimstone preacher screaming about sin. This was something far more insidious.

"You want to cure me," Laurel said quietly.

"I want to help you find peace," Dr. Reeves corrected. "Real peace, not the temporary relief that comes from external changes. Your body is not your enemy, Laurel. It's a gift. And I believe that with time and patience, you can learn to see it that way."

Laurel felt the walls closing in. The soft lighting, the burbling fountain, the gentle voice—it was all designed to lull her into submission, to make her question her own reality. She thought about the hollow-eyed boy in the waiting room and wondered how many weeks or months it had taken to carve the life out of his eyes.

"How long?" she asked, her voice small.

"How long what, dear?"

"How long until you let me leave?"

Dr. Reeves exchanged another glance with Richard. "The duration of your stay here depends entirely on your progress. Most of our young people stay with us for three to six months, though some find such deep healing that they choose to stay longer, or return for follow-up sessions. We're not a prison, Laurel. We're a sanctuary."

A sanctuary, Laurel thought bitterly. A cage dressed up as one maybe.

"I'm going to have your grandfather step out now," Dr. Reeves continued, "so that you and I can have a private conversation. Just the two of us. Is that all right?"

Laurel didn't answer. She wasn't sure it mattered what she said. Richard stood, squeezing her shoulder once—a gesture of ownership, not affection—before leaving the room. The door clicked shut behind him.

Dr. Reeves's demeanor shifted subtly. The performative warmth remained, but there was a sharpness to her attention now, a predator's focus.

"I know this is frightening," she said. "And I know you feel like you're being attacked. But I want you to understand something, Laurel—may I call you that, since it's the name you prefer?"

Laurel nodded warily.

"I've worked with many young people like you. Intelligent, sensitive, creative individuals who've come to believe that their unhappiness stems from being born in the 'wrong body.'" She made air quotes around the phrase. "And do you know what I've found, in twenty years of practice? That the body is almost never the real problem. The real problem is pain—deep, often childhood pain—that has been misdirected onto the body. You're not trying to become a girl, Laurel. You're trying to escape something unbearable."

Laurel felt tears prick at her eyes despite herself. There was something almost seductive about the argument, something that appealed to the exhausted, grieving part of her that just wanted the fight to be over. What if Dr. Reeves was right? What if this was all just grief, all just trauma, all just a confused child's attempt to make sense of a mother's suicide?

But then she thought about California. She thought about the moment she first saw herself in a mirror wearing a sundress, her face lit up with recognition, not construction. She thought about Dani's hand in hers, about April's proud smile, about the simple, profound peace of existing in her own skin.

That wasn't escape. That was arrival.

"You're wrong," Laurel said, and her voice was steadier now. "I know you think you're helping. I know you've probably convinced yourself that what you do here is good. But you're wrong. I'm not broken. I'm not confused. I'm a girl. I've always been a girl. And nothing you do to me is going to change that."

Dr. Reeves's expression didn't change, but something in her eyes cooled. The mask of compassion remained firmly in place, but Laurel could see the steel beneath.

"I appreciate your honesty," Dr. Reeves said. "That's actually a very healthy sign. You're advocating for yourself, which tells me you have a strong sense of identity—even if that identity has been somewhat... misdirected. What I'd like to do over the coming weeks is simply explore these feelings together. No pressure. No judgment. Just honest conversation."

She stood, smoothing her cardigan. "One of our counselors will show you to your room. You'll have a roommate—a lovely young man named Tyler who's been with us for about two months now. I think you'll find him very supportive. Dinner is at six, and we have a group session at eight. I encourage you to participate, but for tonight, you can just observe if that feels more comfortable."

Laurel remained frozen in place. This was happening. This was actually happening. In a few minutes, someone would lead her to a room where she would sleep on a narrow bed, surrounded by strangers who had been brought here to be fixed just like her. She would eat meals at designated times, attend sessions designed to dismantle her identity, participate in activities meant to reinforce a lie.

And there was no one coming to save her.

Dani didn't know where she was. Sam didn't know. Even if they figured it out, what could they do? They were teenagers. Richard had lawyers, had money, had custody. The legal system was on his side. The world was on his side.

"One more thing," Dr. Reeves said, moving toward the door. "We'll be holding your phone and any other electronic devices for the duration of your stay. We find that disconnecting from social media and outside influences helps our young people focus on their inner work. You'll be able to earn supervised phone privileges after your first two weeks, assuming you're engaging positively with the program."

"You're cutting me off," Laurel said. "So no one can find me."

"We're creating a space for healing," Dr. Reeves said smoothly. "Free from distractions. I promise you, Laurel, this is going to be the beginning of a wonderful new chapter in your life."

She opened the door, revealing a young man in khakis and a polo shirt—another counselor, or perhaps a graduate of the program, recruited to help shepherd new arrivals. He had the same neutral expression as the boy in the waiting room, the same careful blankness.

"Calvin will take you to your cabin now," Dr. Reeves said. "I'll see you at group tonight."

Laurel looked at the counselor, at the hallway beyond him, at the world that was about to swallow her whole. She thought about running. She thought about screaming. But where would she run? Who would hear her scream?

She walked forward, step by step, into the belly of the beast.

The cabin was small and spartan, two twin beds on either side of a single window that looked out onto the lake. The walls were bare except for a cross and another inspirational poster—"Be transformed by the renewing of your mind" Romans 12:2—and the furniture consisted of two desks, two dressers, and nothing else. There were no mirrors, Laurel noticed. Not even in the small attached bathroom.

Her roommate, Tyler, was sitting on one of the beds when she arrived. He was maybe seventeen, with sandy hair and freckles and the same hollow look as the boy in the waiting room. He looked soft, kinda like he'd been like her. He looked up when Laurel entered, offered a thin smile that didn't reach his eyes, and said, "You must be the new guy. I'm Tyler."

Laurel didn't correct him. She didn't have the energy.

"Dinner's in an hour," Tyler continued, as if reading from a script. "You should change into the uniform—they put it in your dresser. They get… weird about the clothes."

"I noticed," Laurel said flatly.

Tyler's smile flickered, a crack in the facade. For just a moment, Laurel saw something warm behind his eyes—not blankness, but cautious affection.

"It gets easier," Tyler said quietly. "If you let it."

"Easier to pretend?"

Tyler looked away. "Easier to survive."

Laurel sat down on the empty bed, her hands gripping the edge of the thin mattress. The springs creaked beneath her weight. She stared at the wall, at the cross, at the words promising transformation. She thought about her mother's letter, the one she had never received, the one that might have said everything she needed to hear. She thought about Dani's scarf, probably still hanging in Richard's closet, confiscated along with everything else that made her Laurel.

She had two choices. She could break, the way they wanted her to, the way Tyler clearly had. She could nod along in sessions, parrot the words they wanted to hear, learn to hate herself until she became something acceptable, something manageable, something that fit into Richard Parker's orderly world.

Or she could survive.

Easier to survive, Tyler had said. But what he meant was easier to die slowly.

Laurel closed her eyes. She pictured Dani's face, Sam's sarcastic grin. She pictured her mother, wrapping a scarf around her neck on a cold California morning, whispering, "You're going to be okay, sweetheart. I've got you."

I'm not going to let them win, Mom. I don't know how yet, but I'm not going to let them win.

She opened her eyes. Tyler was still looking at her, waiting.

"How long have you been here?" Laurel asked.

"Two months."

"And do you believe it? The stuff they teach you?"

Tyler was quiet for a long moment. His hands were shaking slightly, Laurel noticed—a tremor he was trying to hide by pressing them into his thighs.

"I believe it when I'm in session," he said finally, his voice barely above a whisper. "Because that's the only way to get through session. And then at night, I lie here in the dark, and I..."

He stopped. Shook his head. The mask slid back into place.

"Just follow the rules," he said. "That's my advice. Follow the rules, say the words, and one day they'll let you leave. What you do after that... that's up to you."

Laurel nodded slowly. It wasn't hope, exactly. But it was something. A strategy for endurance. A way to make it through.

She reached for the dresser, pulled out the navy polo shirt and khaki pants that would become her uniform, her disguise. She had worn costumes before. She had pretended to be Montana for years. She could pretend to be whatever they wanted her to be, as long as she remembered the truth underneath.

My name is Laurel Melody Parker. I am a girl. I am loved. And one day, I'm going to get out of here.

The weeks that followed blurred into a haze of sessions and silence.

Dr. Reeves led most of the individual therapy, her gentle voice probing for weakness, for trauma, for anything she could use to construct her narrative of "misdirected pain." She asked about Laurel's childhood, about Derrick's abuse, about the bullying in Montana. She asked about April, framing every question to suggest that Laurel's identity was somehow a reaction to trauma rather than an intrinsic truth.

Laurel learned to play the game. She cried when crying seemed expected. She nodded thoughtfully when Dr. Reeves made a point. She started sentences with "I'm beginning to understand" and "Maybe you're right" even as her stomach churned with rage. She became an actress, her performance so convincing that even she sometimes lost track of where the lie ended and the truth began.

Group sessions were worse. They sat in a circle, a dozen teenagers who had been brought here to be fixed, and shared their "struggles" and "breakthroughs." Some of the kids—the ones who had been here longest—spoke with frightening conviction about their "former confusion" and their gratitude for Dr. Reeves's guidance. Others, newer arrivals like Laurel, sat in mute terror, their eyes darting around the circle like trapped animals.

There was a boy named Mathias who had been there for four months. He testified, in a flat, rehearsed voice, about how he had "overcome his same-sex attraction" and now felt "free." After the session, Laurel caught him in the hallway, his hands pressed against the wall, his shoulders shaking with silent sobs. Their eyes met. Neither of them said a word.

There was a girl named Cassie—though the staff called her "David"—who had been there since July. She had stopped speaking entirely three weeks in, communicating only in nods and shakes of her head. The counselors called it "resistance" and scheduled extra sessions for her. Laurel saw her sometimes, sitting by the lake, her eyes fixed on the water, her lips moving soundlessly. They had maybe a handful of conversations, but she seemed to be one of the kids hit hardest by what was happening, at least, she showed it more often.

And then, one night in mid-December, Cassie wasn't at dinner. The counselors said she had been "transferred to another facility." No one believed them. The next morning, Laurel found Tyler in the bathroom, staring at his reflection in the window glass—there were still no mirrors, but the windows worked if you got the angle right—and something in his expression had shifted. He looked terrified, yes, but also resolved.

"We have to get out of here," he whispered. "Before we end up like her."

Laurel nodded. "I know."

They started planning that night.

The escape, when it came, was almost anticlimactic.

They waited for a night when the counselors were distracted by a new arrival—a fourteen-year-old who had been dragged screaming by his parents and was now locked in for processing. Laurel and Tyler slipped out through a side door during the commotion, running through the dark forest toward the main road.

They hitchhiked to Spokane, catching a ride with a truck driver who stared at Laurel a little too much. Tyler had a cousin there, a college student named Felix who had cut ties with his family years ago over religious differences. Felix took them in, no questions asked, and let Laurel use his computer.

She couldn't remember Dani's number. She couldn't remember Sam's number either. She was stuck in Washington. She could hardly remember her emails and passwords for her social media. But it didn't matter…

She was free from the facility. And she had survived. And she was going to find her way back to Marisol Heights.

Two days later, Richard's lawyers found her, she didn't know how he did it. They came with police officers and a court order, and no amount of pleading made any difference. Both Tyler and Laurel were sent back to Newport.

"That was very foolish," Richard said, on the drive back. "You could have been hurt. You could have been killed. Running away like that, with a strange boy, in the middle of the night—do you have any idea what could have happened to you?"

Laurel said nothing. She stared out the window at the clouds.

"Dr. Reeves says you were making progress before this... incident," Richard continued. "She's willing to take you back.”

Laurel pressed her forehead against the cold glass. The trees blurred past, an endless procession of green and grey. She thought about Tyler, who had been separated from her the moment the police arrived. She didn't know where they had taken him, though they'd just as likely send him back to Newport as well, or whether his cousin had faced any consequences for harboring them. She didn't know anything except that she was going back to that place, back to that office with the burbling fountain and the books about brokenness, back to Dr. Reeves and her cruelty.

"You have nothing to say?" Richard asked.

She had everything to say. She had years of words dammed up behind her teeth, a flood of rage and grief and desperate, howling truth. But what was the point? Richard didn't hear her. He heard only what confirmed his worldview, filtered everything else through the lens of pathology and confusion. Speaking to him was like screaming into a void.

So she said nothing. She watched the trees, and she thought about survival.

The intake process was different this time. Shorter. More clinical. Dr. Reeves didn't bother with the warm welcome or the gentle introduction. Laurel was processed like a returning prisoner, her belongings searched more thoroughly than before, her movements tracked more closely. The staff looked at her differently now—not with the manufactured compassion of before, but with a wariness that bordered on hostility. She had tried to escape. She had broken the rules. She was a problem to be solved.

Tyler was moved to a different room. His bed in their shared cabin had been stripped bare, a clear message that she would not be getting another roommate. Isolation was part of the punishment now. Isolation and something else, something she sensed in the way the counselors whispered when she passed, in the way Dr. Reeves's smile had grown sharper, more predatory.

The first individual session after her return was scheduled for the following morning.

Laurel spent the night staring at the ceiling, listening to the wind howl through the pine trees outside her window. She thought about Dani. She thought about Sam, wherever she was, doing whatever normal high school juniors did on a December night. She thought about her mother, and for the first time in months, she allowed herself to cry—not the performative tears she produced for Dr. Reeves, but real ones, hot and silent, soaking into her thin pillow.

I'm still here, Mom. I'm still fighting. But I don't know how much longer I can hold on.

Dr. Reeves's office looked exactly the same. The same soft lighting. The same earth-toned armchairs. The same fountain burbling its false serenity. The same bookshelves lined with texts designed to unmake people like Laurel. But something in the atmosphere had shifted. The pretense of warmth was gone, replaced by something colder, more clinical.

"Please, sit down," Dr. Reeves said, gesturing to the chair across from her desk. She was seated behind it today, not in the armchair—a deliberate choice, Laurel realized. A power move. The desk was a barrier now, a symbol of authority.

Laurel sat. She folded her hands in her lap and fixed her gaze on a point just past Dr. Reeves's left ear, the same trick she had used in their first meeting. It felt like a lifetime ago.

"I'm going to be direct with you," Dr. Reeves said, opening a manila folder on her desk. "Your escape attempt was a significant setback. Not just for your treatment here, but for your grandfather's trust in this program. He was... deeply concerned. As was I."

Laurel said nothing.

"However," Dr. Reeves continued, "setbacks are not failures. They're opportunities for deeper work. And I think your escape—as misguided as it was—actually revealed something important. Something we hadn't fully explored in our previous sessions."

She pulled a pair of reading glasses from a case on her desk and perched them on her nose, looking down at the papers in the folder. The gesture was theatrical, Laurel realized. Everything Dr. Reeves did was theatrical.

"I've been reviewing your file more thoroughly," Dr. Reeves said. "Your grandfather provided some additional documentation after your... adventure. Medical records. Police reports. Some very illuminating information about your childhood in Montana."

Laurel's stomach dropped. She didn't know what was in that folder, but she knew it couldn't be good.

"Tell me about the attack," Dr. Reeves said, looking up from the papers. Her eyes were sharp behind the glasses, predatory. "The one in Davidson Park. October 10th, 2013. You were thirteen years old."

Laurel's hands clenched in her lap. The memory was a locked door she never opened, a room in her mind she had boarded up and abandoned years ago. She could feel it rattling now, something dark and terrible pressing against the wood.

"I don't want to talk about that," she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

"I understand it's painful," Dr. Reeves said, her tone shifting to something approximating sympathy. "But I think it's essential. According to the police report, you were attacked by three boys from your school. Joshua McDowell, Erick Stevens, and Matt Silverson, the names provided to me by your grandfather Richard Parker after the police didn't pursue justice. They used baseball bats. You suffered a severe concussion, a bruised rib, a broken wrist, and significant soft tissue damage. You were found unconscious in the snow by… your mother, April Parker, who took you to the hospital herself instead of calling an ambulance.

Laurel closed her eyes. She could hear it now, the echo of laughter and the sick crack of wood against bone. She could feel the cold of the snow seeping through her clothes, the taste of blood in her mouth. She could hear April's voice, high and panicked, talking to a figure she couldn't make out.

"That attack," Dr. Reeves continued, "occurred approximately two months before your mother took you to California. Two months before you began your... transition. And according to your grandparents, the night you told your mother about your…”

Laurel's eyes snapped open. "That's not—"

"Let me finish," Dr. Reeves said, holding up a hand. "I'm not suggesting a direct causal link. The human psyche is far too complex for such simple equations. But I do think there's a connection worth exploring. You were attacked by boys. By masculine aggression in its most brutal form. And immediately after, you began to reject your own masculinity. You began to see maleness itself as something threatening, something to escape from."

"That's not what happened," Laurel said, her voice rising. "I knew who I was long before that… I wrote it down in my journal, my mom she… She knew—"

"Your mother," Dr. Reeves interrupted gently, "was not an objective observer. She was a grieving, isolated woman in a difficult marriage, desperate to protect her child. It's entirely possible that she interpreted your... childhood confusion... through the lens of her own needs and desires. She wanted a daughter. And so she saw a daughter, even when the evidence suggested something more complicated."

"That's a lie," Laurel said, but her voice was shaking now. "She didn't make me anything. She saw who I really was."

Dr. Reeves leaned back in her chair, steepling her fingers. "Tell me about Dani."

The shift was so abrupt that Laurel blinked, momentarily thrown. "What?"

"Daniela Rivera. Your... girlfriend, I believe? In California." Dr. Reeves glanced down at the folder again. "According to your grandfather's notes, she was homeless when you met her. Her mother had thrown her out of the house, and your mother took her in. She lived with you for almost two years."

"What does Dani have to do with anything?"

"I'm curious about the timing," Dr. Reeves said. "You started dating her shortly before your fifteenth birthday, correct? And she was, by all accounts, very supportive of your... identity. Very affirming."

"She loved me," Laurel said. "She still loves me."

"I'm sure she believes she does." Dr. Reeves's voice was soft, almost pitying. "But consider this from a different angle. You were a traumatized child who had been violently attacked by boys. You began to reject masculinity—your own and others'. And then you found a relationship with a girl. A girl who validated your belief that you were female. A girl who, by affirming your transition, was essentially affirming your rejection of the masculinity that had hurt you."

Laurel shook her head, but the words were worming their way into her brain despite herself. "That's not—you're twisting everything—"

"I'm simply looking at the pattern," Dr. Reeves said. "Trauma leads to rejection. Rejection leads to a new identity. A new identity finds validation in a romantic relationship that reinforces the rejection. It's actually quite common. We see it often with young women who've experienced male violence. They sometimes develop what we might call a 'flight response' to masculinity itself."

"I'm not fleeing from anything," Laurel said. "I'm moving toward who I actually am."

"But who are you, really?" Dr. Reeves asked. "Before the attack? Before California? Before Dani? Who were you when you were just a child in Montana, before all of this... complexity?"

"I was a girl," Laurel said. "I was always a girl."

Dr. Reeves shook her head slowly, almost sadly. "You were a sensitive, creative boy who didn't fit the narrow definition of masculinity that your town—and your father—tried to impose on you. And that's okay. Many men don't fit that mold. But the solution isn't to reject your sex entirely. The solution is to expand your understanding of what it means to be male."

Laurel felt the tears coming again, but this time she didn't let them fall. She blinked them back, her jaw clenched so tight her teeth ached. She would not give Dr. Reeves the satisfaction.

"You don't know anything about me," she said quietly.

"I know more than you think," Dr. Reeves replied. "I've been doing this work for twenty years. I've seen dozens of young people just like you—traumatized, confused, desperate for an identity that makes sense of their pain. And I've seen what happens when they're given the space to heal, to reconnect with their true selves. It's beautiful, really. Liberating."

She closed the folder and removed her glasses, setting them on the desk with a soft click.

"I think we should focus our work on the attack," she said. "On processing that trauma properly. I believe that once you understand how deeply it affected you—how it shaped your perception of masculinity, of yourself—you'll begin to see your 'transition' in a different light. Not as a discovery of your true self, but as a coping mechanism. A very understandable, very human coping mechanism, but one that you no longer need."

Laurel sat frozen in her chair. The argument was so neat, so logical, so completely wrong. But she could see how someone might believe it. She could see how Richard believed it, how Dr. Reeves had probably convinced dozens of parents that their children's identities were symptoms rather than truths. It was a story that made sense to people who had never felt the dissonance, who had never known the bone-deep wrongness of living in a body that didn't match.

"What if you're wrong?" Laurel asked.

Dr. Reeves smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. "I'm not."

"But what if you are? What if I go through all of this—the sessions, the therapy, whatever you're planning—and I still know I'm a girl at the end of it? What happens then?"

"Then we'll have more work to do," Dr. Reeves said simply. "But I have faith in the process. And I have faith in you. You're intelligent. You're resilient. You survived a terrible attack and an unstable home environment. That kind of strength can be channeled in positive directions, once you understand what's really driving you."

She stood, signaling that the session was over.

"We'll meet every day from now on," she said. "Individual sessions in the morning, group in the evening. I'm also going to recommend a course of anti-anxiety medication to help you... stabilize... during this phase of your treatment. Your grandfather has already approved it."

"What kind of medication?" Laurel asked, a new fear crawling up her spine.

"Nothing to worry about. Just something to make sure your anxiety and depressive episodes aren't going to be a thing we'll have to worry about. Help you focus on the work rather than getting lost in emotional reactions." Dr. Reeves moved toward the door, holding it open. "I'll see you tomorrow morning, Montana. Try to get some rest tonight."

Laurel walked out of the office on numb legs. She made it halfway back to her cabin before she had to stop, leaning against a tree, her breath coming in ragged gasps. The attack. They were going to use the attack against her. They were going to take the worst moment of her life and twist it into a weapon, use it to explain away everything she was, everything she had fought so hard to become.

And they were going to drug her.

She thought about running again, but where would she go? She was in the middle of nowhere, no phone, no money, no allies. She couldn't talk to Tyler. Cassie was gone. She was alone.

But she wasn't broken. Not yet.

She straightened up, wiped her face with the back of her hand, and walked the rest of the way to her cabin. She had survived the attack. She had survived Richard. She would survive this too.

She just had to hold on long enough to figure out how.

The days blurred together after that, each one a new assault on her sense of self.

The medication—a small white pill she was required to take every morning under supervision—made everything fuzzy around the edges. Her thoughts moved slower, like they were swimming through honey. Her emotions flattened, the peaks and valleys of fear and hope smoothed into a monotonous plain. She knew, distantly, that this was the point. They didn't want her feeling strongly. They wanted her docile.

Dr. Reeves's sessions became increasingly focused on the attack. She made Laurel describe it in excruciating detail—the sounds, the smells, the pain—and then asked leading questions designed to connect it to her "gender confusion." She showed Laurel photographs of herself as a child, a round-faced boy in a peewee football uniform, a kid blowing out birthday candles, and asked her to describe what she felt when she looked at them.

"That's not me," Laurel said, every time. "That was never me."

"It is you," Dr. Reeves would reply. "That's the boy you were born as. The boy you're running from. The boy we're going to help you reconnect with."

The group sessions were worse. Dr. Reeves had Laurel share her "story" with the other teenagers—a carefully curated version that emphasized the attack and minimized everything else. The others were encouraged to ask questions, to probe, to find the places where Laurel's narrative "didn't quite add up." It was like being cross-examined by a hostile jury.

"So you were attacked by boys," one kid said, a girl named Rachel who had been there for six months and spoke with the flat conviction of someone who had fully bought into the program. "And then you decided you didn't want to be a boy anymore. Doesn't that seem…”

"I didn't decide anything," Laurel said. "I realized. There's a difference."

"But you didn't 'realize' until after the trauma," Rachel pressed. "Before that, you were just a normal kid. A boy who liked writing and art. That's not the same as being trans."

Laurel opened her mouth to argue, but by the time she formulated a response, the conversation had moved on, other kids sharing their own "breakthroughs," praising the program for helping them see through their "delusions."

At night, she tried praying to her mom. I miss you. I miss being Laurel. I'm scared I'm forgetting how.

The session that broke something in her came three weeks after her return.

Dr. Reeves had a new tactic. She had brought in a guest—a man in his thirties with a gentle smile and a soft voice, introduced as Daniel, a "graduate" of a similar program who now worked as a counselor himself.

"Daniel successfully reconciled with his biological sex after years of living as a woman," Dr. Reeves explained. "He's here to share his story and to answer any questions you might have."

Daniel sat across from Laurel in the familiar armchair, his posture open and non-threatening. He was handsome in a bland, carefully groomed way, wearing a button-down shirt and khakis. He looked like a youth pastor, which, Laurel suspected, was probably not far from the truth.

"I know what you're going through," Daniel said, his voice warm with manufactured empathy. "I was where you are. I thought I was a woman. I took hormones. I lived as female for almost five years. And the whole time, I was convinced I was being my authentic self."

"What changed?" Dr. Reeves prompted.

"I started to understand where the feelings came from," Daniel said. "I was sexually abused as a child. By my father. I never dealt with that trauma properly, so I internalized it in a really destructive way. I started to hate my own body. Hate my own masculinity. Becoming a woman was a way to escape that—to become something my abuser couldn't touch. Once I left home.”

He leaned forward, his eyes meeting Laurel's. "I'm not saying your story is the same as mine. But Dr. Reeves told me about the attack. About what those boys did to you. And I think there might be some parallels worth exploring."

Laurel felt something cold crawl down her spine. "They didn't... it wasn't like that."

"Sexual violence takes many forms," Dr. Reeves interjected smoothly. "And victims often minimize or suppress the full extent of what was done to them. It's a protective mechanism."

"I wasn't sexually assaulted," Laurel said, her voice rising. "They beat me with bats. It was violent, yes, but it wasn't—"

"Are you certain?" Dr. Reeves asked. "The police report mentions that your clothing was in disarray when you were at the hospital. That you were semi-conscious and disoriented. That you had no clear memory of portions of the attack."

Laurel's breath caught in her throat. The memory was fractured, she knew that. She remembered the first blow, the pain, the cold. She remembered April's voice, far away. But there were gaps. Dark spaces where time seemed to skip.

"I would have known," she said, but her voice was shaking. "I would have... there would have been evidence... the hospital..."

"Not necessarily," Daniel said gently. "When I first started therapy, I had no conscious memory of my abuse either. It took years of work to recover those memories. The mind has ways of protecting us from what we're not ready to face."

Laurel shook her head, but the words were burrowing into her brain, laying eggs of doubt. Had something else happened that night? Was there something she had blocked out, something worse than the beating she remembered?

No. No, this was what they did. They planted seeds. They made you question your own reality until you couldn't trust anything, especially yourself.

"You're lying," she said. "You're trying to make me doubt myself."

"I understand why you'd feel that way," Daniel said, his smile unwavering. "I felt the same way at first. But the truth has a way of surfacing, even when we try to bury it. And once you accept the truth, the healing can begin."

The session continued for another hour, Daniel sharing more details of his own "journey" and Dr. Reeves drawing pointed connections to Laurel's situation. By the end, Laurel was exhausted, her thoughts scattered, her sense of self fraying at the edges.

They were trying to make her believe she had been raped. They were trying to use an imagined trauma to explain away her identity. It was so sick, so twisted, that she almost admired the audacity of it.

Almost.

The weeks wore on. Laurel perfected her performance, giving them just enough "progress" to keep them satisfied while holding the core of herself locked away where they couldn't touch it. She learned to cry on cue when they showed her pictures of her younger self. She learned to nod thoughtfully when Daniel told his story for the fourth, fifth, sixth time. She learned to say "I'm beginning to understand" without choking on the words.

Dr. Reeves was pleased. She noted Laurel's "growing self-awareness" and "willingness to engage with difficult material." She increased the medication dosage slightly, "just to help maintain stability during this crucial phase." Laurel noticed the world getting fuzzier, her thoughts slower, her emotions more distant.

She started to worry that she was disappearing.

And then, on December 23rd—two days before Christmas—Richard came to visit.

Laurel was summoned to Dr. Reeves's office, where she found her grandfather seated in one of the armchairs, looking as polished and self-satisfied as ever. He rose when she entered, his expression something between paternal concern and triumph.

"Montana," he said. "You look well. Rested."

She felt neither well nor rested. She felt like a ghost haunting her own body. But she had learned not to say things like that. "Thank you for coming."

"I've been in regular contact with Dr. Reeves," Richard said, resuming his seat. "She tells me you've made remarkable progress. That you're beginning to understand the true origins of your... confusion."

"Yes," Laurel said flatly. "The attack."

"A terrible thing." Richard shook his head. "Those boys should have been prosecuted more severely. What they did to you..." He trailed off, his jaw tightening. "Well. It's no wonder you struggled afterward. But you're getting the help you need now. That's what matters."

Dr. Reeves leaned forward slightly. "I wanted you to hear directly from your grandfather how proud he is of the work you've been doing here. And to discuss the next steps."

"Next steps?" Laurel asked.

"Your grandfather and I agree that you've reached a point where continued inpatient treatment may not be necessary," Dr. Reeves said. "You've shown a genuine willingness to engage with the material. You've started to question the assumptions that led you down this path. That's enormous progress."

Laurel felt something flutter in her chest. Hope? Fear? She couldn't tell anymore. "Does that mean I'm leaving?"

"Eventually," Richard said. "Dr. Reeves recommends a few more weeks of intensive work, and then a gradual transition back to the outside world. You'll continue therapy, of course—weekly sessions, either here or with an affiliated provider closer to home."

"Home," Laurel repeated. The word felt foreign. "Where is home?"

Richard gave a harsh look. “Don't be ridiculous, your home is with us in San Francisco. And you'll be allowed home for Christmas.”

Montana Lee Payton, San Francisco, California, December 24th, 2017

The condo smelled like pine needles and cinnamon, a carefully curated holiday fragrance that Eleanor Parker had probably ordered from some catalog. A massive Christmas tree dominated one corner of the living room, its lights twinkling on a timer, its ornaments perfectly spaced and color-coordinated in silver and white. It looked like something from a magazine spread. It looked like nothing Montana had ever associated with Christmas.

Christmas had been peppermint bark cookies with Mom, eaten on the fire escape while watching the fog roll in over the bay. It had been Dani falling asleep on the couch in the middle of It's a Wonderful Life, her head on Montana's shoulder, snoring softly. It had been Sam showing up at their door with a bag of orange chicken from the place down the street, claiming it was "culturally significant" of what, he wasn't certain.

This wasn't Christmas. This was a performance. Like everything else in this house.

Montana stood in the doorway of the guest room—his room now, apparently, though it felt about as personal as a hotel—and stared at the wrapped presents arranged at the foot of the bed. Eleanor had been shopping. There were clothes in those boxes, Montana knew. Clothes from the men's section. Button-down shirts and khakis and maybe a tie, the uniform of the well-adjusted young man Richard wanted to create from the wreckage of his grandchild.

The medication they had sent him home with sat on the nightstand. A different pill now, something for "mood stabilization," Dr. Reeves had said during the discharge meeting. Something to help him "maintain the progress" he had made at Newport. Montana hadn't taken it since he'd arrived at the condo. She had learned to palm the pills at the facility, to pretend to swallow while tucking them into her cheek, to spit them out later, when he could slip away. If he could slip away.

Without the medication, the fog was lifting. And what he found beneath it was worse.

He moved to the window, looking out at the city lights. San Francisco sparkled below, strung with holiday decorations, full of people celebrating with families who loved them. Somewhere out there, Dani was spending Christmas with Sam's family, probably. Or maybe alone without Montana.

Montana pressed his forehead against the cold glass and closed his eyes.

He had made it out of Newport. That was supposed to be the victory, wasn't it? He had played their game, said their words, performed their healing until they believed him enough to let him go, at least temporarily, he should feel triumphant. She should feel free.

Instead, he felt like a prisoner who had traded one cell for another.

Richard's conditions for his release had been explicit. Regular check-ins with him and Eleanor. Strict boundaries around contact with "unhealthy influences," which meant Dani, Sam, anyone who had known Laurel. And the unspoken threat that hung over everything: any sign of "regression," any indication that he was "returning to old patterns," and he would be going back to Newport.

For as long as it takes.

Dr. Reeves's words echoed in his memory. "The first stint is always the hardest, Montana. But the second time, you'll understand what you're working toward. And the third time—well, most of our young people don't need a third time. By then, they've found true peace."

True peace. As if peace could be manufactured through coercion. As if the absence of resistance was the same as acceptance.

Montana opened his eyes and looked at her reflection in the dark glass. The face that stared back at him was gaunt, hollow-eyed, the stubble he wasn't allowed to shave casting shadows across his jaw. He looked like a stranger. He looked like the ghost of the boy he had never actually been.

Three days home, and he was already slipping.

Yesterday, Eleanor had found him crying in the bathroom. Montana had been staring at himself in the mirror—the guest bathroom had a mirror, of course, no one here understood why that might be a problem—and the tears had come without warning, a flood he couldn't stop. Eleanor had knocked, then entered without waiting for a response, and her face had cycled through confusion, concern, and finally a kind of weary resignation.

"I'll call Dr. Morrison," she had said, referring to the local therapist. "You can see her tomorrow instead of waiting until the new year. We'll get you sorted out, Montana. Just... try to hold on until then."

Hold on. As if Montana's fingers weren't already slipping.

Richard's reaction had been worse. He had come home from his office—he worked on Christmas Eve, of course he did, work was the altar at which Richard Parker worshipped—and Eleanor had pulled him aside for a whispered conversation. Montana had watched from the hallway, invisible as always, as Richard's expression darkened.

"We just got him out of that facility," Richard had said, his voice low but not low enough. "If he's already breaking down—"

"He's grieving, Richard. It's his first Christmas without April."

"Then he should be grieving like a normal person. Not... whatever that was. I'm calling Reeves."

Montana had retreated to the guest room before he could hear the rest of the conversation. But he knew what was coming. He knew how this worked now. Every tear was evidence of instability. Every moment of dysphoria was a "symptom" to be catalogued and cured. There was no space for grief that didn't fit Richard's narrative. There was no space for her at all.

She had been performing since she was old enough to understand what was expected of her. Performing for Derrick, pretending to be the son he wanted. Performing for Newport, pretending to be the "healed" patient they demanded. And now performing for Richard, pretending to be... what? The resilient young man who had overcome his "confusion"? The grateful grandchild who appreciated all the money being spent to "fix" him?

He was so tired of performing.

The pills sat on the nightstand, catching the light from the Christmas tree. Thirty days worth, unclaimed. The bottle was still mostly full, refillable at any pharmacy, she'd been told.

Montana stared at it for a long moment.

You could just disappear.

The thought came unbidden, a whisper from somewhere dark and quiet in his mind. Not the violent, urgent desperation he had felt after the attack years ago, when the pain had been fresh and immediate. This was softer. Colder. A kind of exhausted surrender. His heart started racing as the thoughts crept in.

You've been fighting for so long. And what has it gotten you?

Mom was dead. Dani was gone. The life he had built in California had been dismantled piece by piece. First by Richard's lawyers, then by Newport's therapists, now by the sheer impossibility of existing in a world that refused to see her.

They're never going to let you be Laurel. Not Richard. Not Derrick. Not the courts or the doctors or anyone else. They'll keep sending you back until you break or until you pretend to break so convincingly that even you forget who you really are.

Montana thought about Tyler, the hollow-eyed boy who had helped him escape Newport the first time. He had no idea where he was now, still in the facility, probably, being "treated" for his second or third attempt at freedom. He thought about Cassie, who had stopped speaking, who had been "transferred" in the middle of the night. He thought about all the kids he had met in that place, their identities being erased one session at a time.

How many of them made it out? How many of them were still fighting?

And how long could she keep fighting alone?

Not much longer.

The answer rose up from somewhere deep in his chest, a certainty that felt almost peaceful. He had given everything. He had survived Derrick's fists and Hunter's baseball bats and Dr. Reeves's velvet cruelty. He had held onto Laurel through years of denial and months since Mom’s death and the following active assault on her identity. He had done everything right. been strong, been resilient, been the survivor everyone told him he needed to be.

And it hadn't mattered. It hadn't been enough. The world was bigger than her, crueler than her, more determined to erase her than she was to exist.

Maybe it's time to stop fighting.

Montana picked up the pill bottle. It was surprisingly heavy in his hand, or maybe that was just his imagination. She read the label: SEROQUEL (quetiapine fumarate), 400mg. Take one half tablet by mouth twice a day as directed. Warning: May cause drowsiness. Do not operate heavy machinery.

He almost laughed. Don't operate heavy machinery. As if his biggest problem right now was driving a forklift.

He didn't make a conscious decision. That was the strange thing about it, there was no moment of resolution, no dramatic turning point. One second he was holding the bottle, and the next he was twisting off the cap and pouring the pills into his palm. They were oval shaped and white, innocent-looking, Twenty-nine of them.

Mom, I'm sorry. I tried. I really tried.

She thought about leaving a note, but what would he say? Who would he address it to? Richard, who saw her death as inconvenient but probably not unwelcome? Eleanor, who meant well but couldn't see past her own gentle blindness? Derrick, who would probably use it as proof that his son had been "mentally ill" all along?

Dani & Sam.

Their faces flashed through her mind—Dani's fierce eyes, Sam's sarcastic grin. People who had seen her. People who had loved her. People she would never see again.

I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. But I can't do this anymore.

He went to the bathroom. Filled a glass with water. Stared at his reflection one more time—the stranger's face, the wrong body, the costume she could never escape.

"Goodbye, Laurel," he whispered to the mirror. "I hope you find peace wherever you're going."

And he swallowed the pills.

The first thing Montana became aware of was the beeping.

Steady. Rhythmic. Annoying. It pierced through the fog like a needle through cotton, insistent and impossible to ignore. She tried to will it away, to sink back into the comfortable darkness that had swallowed her, but the beeping wouldn't stop.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Then came the smell—antiseptic and too much hand sanitizer and something else, something organic and unpleasant. The smell of sickness. The smell of hospitals.

No.

The word formed in her mind before she could stop it, followed by a cascade of others: No, no, no, I was supposed to be done, I was supposed to be free, why am I still here—

He tried to open his eyes. The effort was monumental, his eyelids weighted with what felt like lead. When he finally managed to crack them open, the light was blinding, searing into his skull like a physical assault. He shut them again immediately, gasping.

"He's waking up." A woman's voice, unfamiliar, professional. "Page Dr. Goldstein. And someone should notify the family."

Family. The word was bitter. Montana didn't have family. She had captors who shared her DNA.

He tried to move and discovered he couldn't. His arms were heavy, his limbs uncooperative, his entire body feeling like it belonged to someone else. There was something in her nose—a tube, she realized distantly, feeding her oxygen or something else. Her throat burned, raw and scraped.

They pumped my stomach.

The realization hit him with a fresh wave of despair. He had failed. Again. He couldn't even do this right. Couldn't transition without being stopped. Couldn't run away without being caught. Couldn't die without being dragged back.

The universe didn't want her to be Laurel, and it apparently didn't want her to stop existing either. It just wanted her to suffer.

Time passed in fragments. He drifted in and out of consciousness, unable to distinguish between sleep and waking. There were voices sometimes—doctors discussing her "condition," nurses adjusting his IV, someone she didn't recognize asking questions she couldn't answer. At some point, the tube in his nose was removed, which was both a relief and not because it meant they expected him to keep breathing on his own.

When he finally woke properly—fully, painfully, with no escape back into the dark—he was alone in the room.

It was a private room, she noted. No roommate. Richard's money at work, probably. The walls were a muted blue, decorated with generic art prints of flowers and landscapes. A television mounted in the corner was playing something with the sound off, friends huh? Through the window, he could see that it was daylight—afternoon, maybe, judging by the angle of the sun.

What day is it?

He didn't know. He didn't know how long he had been here or what had happened in the time since he had swallowed those pills. All he knew was that he had woken up, and waking up meant facing consequences.

The door opened.

Montana expected a nurse, or maybe a doctor. Instead, Richard Parker strode into the room, his face a mask of controlled fury. He was wearing a different suit than the one she remembered from Christmas Eve, all black as if for a funeral, that was funny, which meant at least a day had passed. Maybe more.

He stopped at the foot of his bed, his hands clasped behind his back, his posture rigid. He didn't ask how he was feeling. He didn't express relief that he was alive. He just stood there, looking at him with cold, calculating eyes.

"Do you have any idea what you've done?"

Montana opened his mouth to respond, but his throat was still raw, the words catching. He reached for the cup of water on the bedside table, but Richard made no move to help him.

"Your little stunt," he continued, his voice low and venomous, "has created a catastrophic situation. Do you understand that? Do you have any concept of the consequences?"

He managed to take a sip of water, wincing at the pain. "I wasn't—" Her voice was a croak. "I wasn't trying…” his voice caught, it still hurt to even speak.

"No, I'm sure you weren't thinking at all. That seems to be a pattern with you." Richard began to pace, his footsteps sharp on the linoleum. "Do you know who I had to call this morning? Do you know who the hospital was legally obligated to notify as your other legal guardian?"

Montana's heart stopped.

"Derrick," Montana whispered.

"Yes. Derrick." Richard spat the name like it was poison. "Your father. The man your mother fled from with you five years ago. He now knows exactly where you are and what has happened. He knows you've been in my custody for the past three months, though he knows nothing about your… special circumstances. And he is furious."

Montana felt the room spinning. Derrick. Derrick knew. The man who had beaten her mother, who had made his childhood a living hell, who had sent him out into that blizzard and not cared if he came back—he knew his son was in a hospital bed in San Francisco, alive and vulnerable.

"I've been on the phone with lawyers all morning," Richard continued. "Derrick is claiming that your 'mental health crisis' is proof of my failure as a guardian. He's threatening to petition for full custody."

"He can't—" Montana struggled to sit up, his head swimming. "He's the reason I left. He's abusive. Mom knew—"

"Your mother," Richard said, his voice cutting like a blade, "never filed a police report. She never documented the alleged abuse. She never pursued a restraining order. When I asked her why, she said she was 'trying to protect you from a custody battle. And to avoid outing you to Derrick.'" He laughed, a bitter, humorless sound. "Well, congratulations. Thanks to your theatrics, we're in a custody battle now. And we're going in with nothing. No evidence. No paper trail. Just the word of a suicidal idiot teenager against a respected former athlete and small business owner."

Montana's breath came in shallow gasps. This couldn't be happening. He had wanted to escape—escape Richard, escape Newport, escape the endless fight—and instead he had handed himself to Derrick on a silver platter.

"Why do you even care?" he heard himself ask. "You don't want me here. You think I'm broken. You were going to send me back to Newport anyway."

Richard stopped pacing. For a moment, something flickered across his face—not concern, not love, but something more complicated. Pride, maybe. Or the fear of losing.

"I care," he said slowly, "because your mother was my daughter. Because she asked me to take care of you. And because I will not be made to look like a fool by a washed-up football player from Montana who couldn't keep his hands to himself."

"So this is about winning."

"Everything is about winning, Montana. The sooner you learn that, the better equipped you'll be for the world." Richard straightened his jacket, composing himself. "The psychiatrist will be in to evaluate you shortly. You'll be placed on a seventy-two-hour hold for observation—standard procedure for suicide attempts. After that, depending on the evaluation, we'll discuss next steps."

"Next steps meaning Newport."

Richard met her eyes. "Possibly. Though that decision may be taken out of my hands entirely if Derrick's petition succeeds."

He moved toward the door, pausing with his hand on the handle.

"For what it's worth," he said, not looking at him, "I do want you to get better. I want you to have a normal life. A happy life, even. But you have to meet me halfway, Montana. You have to want it too."

And then he was gone, leaving Montana alone with the beeping machines and the weight of everything he had just done.

The seventy-two hours stretched into five days.

Montana's case was "complicated," according to the social worker who visited on day two. There were concerns about the safety of both potential placements—Richard's home, given the history of sending him to Newport, and Derrick's home, given the allegations of abuse. Child Protective Services had been notified. Lawyers were involved. Everyone was talking about Montana, but no one was talking to Montana.

He spent most of his time in his hospital room, staring at the wall or the television or the ceiling. The nurses were kind, for the most part. Dr. Foster came by twice a day for check-ins, asking about his mood, his thoughts, whether he was having any urges to hurt herself. Montana answered honestly, which was a novel experience.

"I don't want to die," he said on the third day. "I didn't really want to die that night, either. I just wanted to stop hurting. I wanted to stop fighting."

Dr. Foster nodded. "There's a difference between wanting to end your life and wanting to end your suffering."

"Is there? It felt the same in the moment."

"It often does. That's why it's so important to find other ways to end the suffering—ways that don't involve ending your life."

"Like what?" Montana asked bitterly. "Going back to Newport? Living with Derrick? Every option ends with me not getting to be myself."

"Those aren't the only options. They may feel like the only options right now, because you're in the middle of a crisis and you're sixteen and the adults in your life have failed you." Dr. Foster's voice was firm but compassionate. "But in a little more than a year, you'll be eighteen. A legal adult. Free to make your own medical decisions, your own living arrangements, your own life."

"A year is a long time.”

"It is. But it's not forever. And there are things we can do to make it more survivable."

"What happens when I leave here?" Montana asked, not ready to think about anything long term right about now.

"That's still being determined. There's going to be a hearing, a custody review. The court will hear from the social workers, from me, from the lawyers representing both your grandfather and your father. You'll have a chance to speak, if you want.

"Will it matter?"

"It might. Courts in California do consider the preferences of minors, especially older teenagers. It's not a guarantee, but your voice is part of the equation."

Montana nodded slowly. The idea of speaking in court, of looking Richard and possibly Derrick in the eye and telling a judge what he wanted—it was terrifying. He honestly wanted nothing to do with it. Wanted nothing to do with fighting.

(PLACING A SMALL SUMMARY HERE FOR THOSE WHO SKIPPED THE FLASHBACK, CLICK HERE)

Spoiler

Flashback Summary (November 2017 – December 2017)

The flashback details Laurel’s time after being taken from San Francisco by her grandfather, Richard. He places her in a conversion therapy facility in Washington called "Wholeness Ministries," run by a Dr. Loretta Reeves. He blames Laurel and Dani for April's suicide.

Inside the facility, Laurel is forced to present as male, stripped of her identity, and subjected to psychological manipulation. Dr. Reeves and the staff gaslight her, attempting to convince her that her trans identity is merely a trauma response to the childhood physical assault she suffered at Davidson Park in Laurel at 12 years old, they go so far as to imply suppressed sexual abuse to suggest a repulsion to masculinity.

Laurel attempts to escape with another resident, Tyler, but they are caught and returned, leading to stricter isolation. To survive, Laurel learns to "perform" the role of a healed, cisgender boy. She is also medicated on Seroquel. Convinced enough by her progress, Loretta and Richard allow her to return to his San Francisco condo for Christmas.

However, the weight of the hopelessness of her situation become too much. On Christmas Eve, feeling she has no way to ever be herself again, Laurel attempts suicide by overdosing on her medication. She survives and wakes up in the hospital to find Richard furious—not out of concern, but because the hospitalization alerted her father, Derrick, to the situation. Derrick uses the suicide attempt as leverage to claim Richard is an unfit guardian, initiating the custody battle that ultimately will force Laurel to move to Montana to live with Derrick.

[collapse]

Laurel Melody Parker, Laurel, Montana, October 21st, 2018

Jess's voice cut through the memory like a knife through fog.

"Laurel? Hey. You still with me?"

Laurel blinked. She was sitting at the table in the library, her laptop open in front of her, the confirmation screen for her order still glowing on the display. Jess was watching her with worried eyes.

"Sorry," Laurel said, shaking her head. "I just... I was remembering something."

"Something bad?"

"Everything from back then was bad." Laurel closed the laptop, suddenly unable to look at the screen anymore. "But it's over now. I made it out. And I'm never going back."

Jess reached across the table and squeezed her hand. "No, you're not. You've got me now. And Ashton. And a whole team of people who see you, the real you. Whatever happened back then... it doesn't define you."

Laurel looked at their joined hands, at Jess's chipped nail polish and the thin silver rings she always wore. It was such a simple thing, being touched without fear. Being seen without judgment.

"You said there was something about Dani," Laurel said quietly.

Jess's expression flickered—guilt, hesitation, something else Laurel couldn't quite read. "It can wait."

"No. Tell me. Whatever it is, I can handle it."

Jess took a deep breath, her grip on Laurel's hand tightening slightly. "Okay. So. At the game in Bozeman a few weeks ago, I met someone. A girl. I spilled soda on her when I went to go to the concession stand, and we talked for like two seconds before she had to leave."

"Okay?" Laurel wasn't sure where this was going.

"She was... really hot, actually. Leather jacket. Lip ring. Gave off major gay vibes." Jess paused. "And then the PA system called for Laurel Parker, and she said that was her cue and left."

Laurel's heart stuttered. "That wasn't—"

"I know. I figured it out later. It wasn't you they were calling. It was... it was about the booth or something, I don't know. But the girl's name was Dani."

Laurel looked at her confused. “Jess I know all this, get to the point.”

"There's more," Jess said, and now her expression was pained. "Something happened at Brett Cole's party Friday night. The one after the game. There's a rumor going around that someone caught Ana Yankowski hooking up with a girl in a car."

Laurel felt the ground shifting beneath her feet. "A girl."

"Yeah." Jess swallowed hard. "I think... I think it might have been Dani."

The silence stretched between them, heavy and charged. Laurel tried to process what Jess was telling her. Dani, her Dani, had hooked up with Ana Yankowski. The girl who had tormented Jess. The girl who represented everything toxic about this town.

It didn't make sense. And yet, in a terrible way, it did. Dani was alone in a strange town, searching for a girl who had vanished without a trace. She was hurting. She was lonely. And Ana was... Ana was very good at finding people's weak spots.

"I didn't want to tell you," Jess said. "You've got so much on your plate already. But you deserved to know. And I thought... I thought if you're going to see Dani again, you should know what you're walking into."

Laurel was quiet for a long moment. When she finally spoke, her voice was steady.

"It doesn't matter."

Jess blinked. "What?"

"What Dani did at some party. It doesn't matter." Laurel met Jess's eyes. "I've been gone for over a year. I disappeared without a word. She had no way of knowing if I was alive or dead. And she came looking for me anyway. She's been in this godforsaken town for... how long?"

"A couple weeks, I think."

"A couple weeks. Living in a motel, probably. Spending money she doesn't have. Because she refused to give up on me." Laurel shook her head. "If she found some comfort with someone, even someone terrible, that's not for me to judge. I left her. I'm the one who owes her an explanation, not the other way around."

Jess stared at her for a moment, “Are you sure?”

"I'm really not." Laurel looked down at the closed laptop, at her own hands. "I'm just... I'm tired of running. I'm tired of hiding. I'm tired of being afraid of everyone who might actually love me."

She thought about the order she had just placed, the tiny vials of estrogen that would arrive in a week or two, the rebellion that was already in motion. She thought about Spokane, about the silver-and-gold bodysuit, about the way it had felt to be herself in front of people who accepted her. She thought about her mother's letter, still folded in her pocket, a talisman against the dark.

"I want to see her," Laurel said. "Dani. And Sam. I want to see them."

Jess's face lit up. "Really? Are you sure?"

"No," Laurel admitted. "But I'm doing it anyway. Can you... can you set it up? Somewhere neutral. Somewhere safe. Not here."

"Absolutely." Jess was already reaching for her phone. "I'll text them right now. How about tomorrow? After school?"

Tomorrow. Twenty-four hours from now, she would be face to face with her past. With the people she had loved and lost. With the life that had been stolen from her.

"Tomorrow," Laurel agreed.

Jess nodded slowly. "You sure you're ready for that?"

"No," Laurel said again. “But I'm gonna do it anyway.”

She stood up from the table, her legs steadier than she expected. The library was still quiet around them, hushed and peaceful, a sanctuary from the chaos of the world outside. But Laurel didn't want sanctuary anymore. She wanted to live. Really live. As herself. In the light.

"Let's go," she said. "I've got a lot of conversations to have.”