The original characters and plot of this story are the property of the author. No infringement of pre-existing copyright is intended. This story is copyright (c) 2010 Amy Komori. All rights reserved.

 
Chapter One:
I Love You, Pumpkin                           
 
No more skating, no more stealing, no more smoking.  That was the deal Mrs. Komori and I struck on the way home from the police station.  Giving up skating hurt the most, but Mrs. Komori was adamant about keeping an eye on me and we agreed I needed a tight leash and “just being” mostly where she could supervise me was the way for me to go.  She would see I got out and did some healthy activities, and if Emily had time—which she seldom did—she could take me places, too.  The main thing was to slow me down and ease back into it at a pace where maybe my brain would function in a way less scary for me and those around me. 
 
“It” being life.
 
“I’m still concerned because I really think being home stewing in your own juices was so much was part of your problem,” Mrs. Komori said.  “But I’m also worried about how fragile you seem to be when you take social knocks, so hanging out with those kids?  I just don’t know about that.  For now, anyways.”
 
“Yeah.  I just really like skating, though.  I-I don’t wanna give that up.”
 
“It’s just until you settle down, build up your emotional strength.  Get into a routine at school, we’ll see how your grades are and you’ll be knocking your brains out on the—the rampy thing before you know it.  And maybe, just maybe, to sort of sweeten the deal or bribe you a little, I’ll help you out with a better pair of skates.”
 
“Really?  Because that would be so sweet!”
 
“Sure.”
 
“Lemme have a look at Honey Bunny,” Emily said when we came walked in the door.  “Hey, could you get Pumpkin to give me back my wallet?”
 
“Which one is it?” I asked, knowing exactly where this was heading, hoping Emily would take it all the way despite her mother’s presence in the room.
 
“It’s the one that says ‘Bad Motherfu—‘“
 
“Emily!” Mrs. Komori snapped, shutting Emily up but not wiping the sardonic grin off her face.  Mrs. Komori liked that movie, too.
 
“Fuckin’ Honey Bunny,” Emily said with a snicker after we were alone.  “I’m gonna call you that from now on.”
 
“And I’m gonna call you Butch, but I’ll say it like, ‘Bootch.’  What ees your name?  Bootch.  What does eet mean?”
 
“I’m American, honey.  Our names don’t mean shit,” Emily said.  Then she started singing the second verse from Jane’s A’s “Been Caught Stealing:”  “My girl, she’s one too.  She’ll go and get her a shirt, stick it under her skirt,” and doing a little shoulder-shaking dance, her hand clenched near her mouth as if she were holding a mic.
 
I squinted at her, my head tilted as I waited for her to finish entertaining herself.
 
Emily stopped singing and beeped my nose like a button.  “You're a little hardcore JD, dude.  You’re like the only person I know who’s been arrested.  What was it like?”
 
While I could scarcely believe that little tidbit of info, I told her all about my arrest and booking while she poured us both some Dr. Pepper in a couple of jelly glasses.  I made it out like it was some kind of comedic adventure for her benefit, but inside I was deeply ashamed.  Partially for what it said about me, a little bit simply because I got caught and the rest for having put Mrs. Komori through all that public humiliation.
 
When I finished, Emily shook her head.  “I feel like it’s kinda my fault.”
 
“Why’s that?  You didn’t do anything.  I’m the dumbass who thought it was a great idea to steal a porn magazine.”

“I-I slapped you.  I am really sorry about that, Honey Bunny.  Seriously.  I mean, I know I just called you Honey Bunny, and I swear I’m going to keep doing it, but I know I suck for slapping you that time.”  

“Well, you do suck, but it’s casual.”  

“It sent you off the deep end, didn’t it?”  

“I was already coming apart.”  

“Well, I really regret it more than I can even say.  No one should lay a hand on anyone else.  At least unless the other person does it first.”

“Oh yeah, then it’s total retaliatory effort.”
 
“To the maximum, yeah.  Dude, that’s our family motto.  If you’re going to be a true Komori, you need to learn it.  Know it.  Live it.”
 
“She’s the full hot orator. Oh yeah…”
 
“What?”
 
“If you’re so set on calling me Honey Bunny, could you at least change it to Yolanda and call me that instead?”
 
Emily smiled, pretended to think it over and said, “No.”
 
Mrs. Komori had changed into sweats, and about the time Emily and I were finished making up, she came into the kitchen, told me to get my ass in gear and marched me back to my bedroom.  She followed me with a big, dark green garbage bag and made me turn everything out until I uncovered all my contraband, consisting mostly of a big-ass pile of Playboys, Penthouses and whatnot, plus my cigarettes.

"Good lord, Amy," Mrs. Komori said when she saw the extent of my special magazine collection.

"I know," I replied. Taken individually, each magazine wasn’t such a horror.  But now that I realized just how many I had, they made me kind of sick.  Fake lips, fake boobs, fake people.  The disenchantment became complete.

Mrs. Komori held the bag, and I loaded it up, razor-edged magazines cutting right through the plastic; we had to double-bag everything and it became almost too heavy for either of us to carry. You’d be surprised how heavy magazines can be.  They seem so flimsy and light, but the ounces become pounds pretty quickly, and the pounds add up.  Add in the floppy factor and the danger of paper cuts and I started thinking how maybe instead of gun control we needed periodical control. 
 
I was doing my part, though.  So long, airbrushed goddesses, would-be actresses and future MTV veejays or talking heads, introducing Spice Girls videos and shilling for Clearasil. Oh yeah, and those informative articles that taught little Amy Komori the best sunglasses to wear in the Caribbean, how to sneak back into her ex-girlfriend's life, win bar bets and make her girl happy in the sack.

Together, Mrs. Komori and I dragged it all out to the garbage can.  Now I was running clean and light again.  Mrs. Komori put her arm around me, and we went back towards the house. I didn't look back, but I guess it was for the best. Those magazines really had lots of information useful to men.  Except how to grow your dick and nads back when life suddenly demands you become a Japanese girl-child.
 
“Did you check under her bed, Mom?” Emily asked, on her way to her Bronco II with her keys in one hand, a North Face backpack in the other.
 
“Pretty much, yeah.”
 
“No, I mean, like thoroughly.”  She had the Bronco II's door open, and started to slide into the driver's seat.
 
“Why?”
 
“’Cause Honey Bunny here probably has like half a dozen unregistered firearms hidden under there.  She and her boyfriend have been knocking over liquor stores all summer.  Isn’t that right—“
 
“I don’t really…”
 
“—Honey Bunny?”  And then Emily slammed her door and drove away laughing before I could say anything in return.
 
Anyways, that was how I racked up my third nickname that summer and my old name fell out of use in favor of my newly-legalized girl handle.  I was starting to be a magnet for nicknames.  Maki, Ayumi and Honey Bunny.  Mrs. Komori called me Amy all the time, and Emily, good as her word, called me Honey Bunny almost exclusively, made me redden with anger—when we were alone-- or embarrassment—around other people.  But not as often as I might have liked, because she was still running around doing older girl stuff, hanging with Darla, Beth the shrinking violet, Hanna the rich bi-chick hippie with herpes and the rest.  If they were the cast of a sitcom, it might have been a little like everyone’s favorite Thursday night laugh-fest “Friends,” but I had no way of knowing because I made it a point never to watch “Friends” because it sucked shit through a straw from a donkey’s ass as far as I was concerned, and because Emily’s life was blacked out in my viewing area.
 
The person she spent the most time with, though, was Toby.  Toby.  Before-Martin Toby.  Still-has-his-dick Toby.
 
I hated, hated, hated Toby.  I was dealing fine with not being Emily’s boyfriend anymore, but I couldn’t stand that she’d gone back with that fucking asshole instead of finding someone new at least.  And I knew he was an asshole, because she was always calling him “That Fucking Asshole” right up until the moment his name became Toby again.
 
God, and I had to meet him face to face, too!  The first time Emily brought him by the house, she introduced me as Honey Bunny and Toby gave me a wan smile and promptly lost interest.  As for me, I gave him his own secret nickname:  Hair Boy.  Now that I’d finally seen him up close, I couldn’t help but notice how he was covered with dark black hair, all up and down his arms.  His apparent dedication to a life of Sasquatch impersonation made me sick for some reason; I couldn’t remember things like that having bothered me before.

Hair Boy even ate supper with us almost every night. I don't know if he knew I used to be a guy or not.  I don't know if it mattered; it’s not as if he spent any of his time on me or trying to win me over as a favor to his girlfriend. I just know what little enjoyment I got out of remembering the time Emily and I left him standing by the curb with a stupid look on his face didn't balance out the fact I knew he, of all people, was doing to her all the things I used to do.
 
It was obvious.  They didn’t try all that hard to hide it, even from me.  I can't tell you how many times I'd come bouncing into the den and catch Toby pushing his tongue down Emily's throat. Way too often.  I pictured his tongue as hairy, too.  Like a gross, fat, pink leech furred with some kind of ice age mutation.  I watched with expectation when Emily and I were together alone while Hair Boy was in the kitchen fixing us all Dr. Peppers, but she never coughed up a hairball or anything, so maybe I was wrong about that. 
 
Some nights, Emily called and told her mom she was sleeping over at a friend's house and would be home in the morning. Yeah, right, a friend.
 
Yeah, right, sleeping.
 
And then, just a day or two before school started, something unexpected happened. Emily came home early.
 
I was sitting on the couch in some old sweats and a t-shirt, looking as butch as possible, for a preteen with silly, bobbed girly-bangs haircut and 5 earrings.  I glanced at Emily, looked away, because I expected her to pretty much walk on through and ignore me. But by the set of her lips, I could tell at once it was over with Hair Boy.
  
Emily flopped down beside me and slouched down with her knees together, her feet apart. Kind of a collapsed rockabilly pose. I chewed my lip, pretended to watch TV and didn't say anything. I could feel her near me, feel her weight pushing down on the couch cushion. She hadn't stayed in the same room alone with me for five consecutive minutes since even before I got arrested. Finally, Emily couldn't stand the silence anymore.

"I fucking hate all guys," she growled. Her dark eyes teared up—it was obvious the way the glow from the TV glinted in them, even viewed from the side and slightly below, my angle-- but she was too pissed to let it flow.

"What happened?" I asked, and turned down the TV.

What happened was, Toby flaked in a way that went beyond your normal level of boyfriend-girlfriend flakery.  Not returning a call was normal.  So was bailing on a planned date to get shitfaced with friends when the togetherness of young love turned all smothering.  Or forgetting a one-month anniversary because, honestly, you just aren’t that sentimental about such things.  But this was flakery to the extreme…
 
And it actually affected little ol’ me.
 
Emily told me the specific events of that night, and the rest I knew from casually eavesdropping on her half of many of a phone conversation leading up to it.  And the tale went a little like this:
 
They were supposed to go see the Enemies (in fact, by the time Emily told me this narrative of romantic woe, the Enemies were no doubt packing up their gear after their set, or backstage smoking pot or snorting lines or something).  There was some controversy because Darla wanted to go and Emily really wanted some boyfriend-girlfriend time rather than some kind of sick-o triad thing.  Emily pulled rank; relationship over friendship.  Darla threw some kind a childish fit about never getting any girl time with her best friend and pissed off Emily.  For his part, Toby tried to stay out of it by playing it all nonchalantly.  After a day or so, Darla had caved and everything was cool again between the three of them.
 
The night of, Emily drove herself downtown and joined the big crowd standing in line outside the Lava Lamp.  When Toby didn’t show, Emily found herself slipping from worried to pissed.  Finally, she was pissed enough to go stalk the guy; after all, she couldn’t even get into the show because he had the tickets.  She drove by Toby’s apartment, and the lights were out.  The shades were up and when she looked in, nose against the window glass and her hands as a shield against the parking lot security light, the living room was completely empty…
 
For some reason, that detail was like a cold fingertip delicately stroking my spine.  I broke out in goosebumps and didn’t even know why.
 
“You okay?”  Emily asked.  That’s how obvious it was; Emily had noticed it through the veil of her own self-concern.
 
“Yeah…” I said.
 
“Because your eyes went super-wide and you looked kinda like you wanted to hurl for a second there.”
 
“I just… I was just thinking of the last time I went to the Lava Lamp when those guys were… hitting on me.”
 
“Wow.  You’re like a total homophobe.”
 
“They thought I was a girl.  Jeez, you were there and everything.”
 
“No, I was just thinking what a homophobe you’ve always been.  It didn’t have anything to do with that time at the Lava Lamp.  Totally unrelated thought.”
 
“Finish your story!”
 
So Emily did.  Those bare walls, the dents in the carpet where furniture once stood in a pattern she had practically memorized morphed Emily’s scorned anger into girlfriendish concern, so she went to a pay phone and called Toby’s parents.  Where is he?  What’s happening?  Is he okay?  I’m so worried about him.  All his stuff is gone.  Toby’s folks didn’t really know.  He’d been acting strange for the last couple of days, looking kind of haggard and worried.  Then he suddenly told them he and some buddies were moving to Portland, Oregon, of all places.  They were just surprised it had been that same day.
 
Now Emily didn’t know what to feel.  Worried, scared, hurt, a thread of anger running through it all, like the river in that Brad Pitt movie about trout fishing.  You know, “12 Monkeys.”  Deeply confused, troubled.  Two boyfriends in one year, one turned into a tiny girl-thing and the other…  Who knew?
 
That last question was why I was now riding a queasy, uneasy feeling of impending... 
 
What?  Impending what?  I didn’t dare allow my verbal forebrain to voice what my lizard-brain was burbling about in my hypothalamus or something, where whatever atavistic, fear-sensing part of our brain acts as some kind of evolutionary third eye or sixth sense.  Emily apparently had no such secret suspicions, or really, just some mundane ones.  She was just a jilted lover, like in a song.  All hurt and confusion, raw and new like a wound.  But for me, the whole world outside our little Komori house had darkened just a bit, as if a frightened octopus jetted its ink into an deepwater ocean of a night sky, stirring the black, cooling it by degrees despite the residual heat and humidity of the day.
 
I shivered a little and in response, without knowing why I was shaking, my wounded Emily put her arms around me and pulled me close.  She squeezed me tightly, those long arms against my chest and tummy, and she gently rocked us both, her chin buried in my hair. I may as well have been a big, warm pillow, but it made me feel a little soft and secure.

“Honey Bunny?"

"Yeah?"  At the moment, I didn’t care what she called me; I just wanted to feel her warmth all around me.

"I'm still sorry for slapping you that time. I didn't-"

I stopped her. "It's casual.”

We watched TV with the lights out, big sister and little sister.

Chapter Two:
See Emily Paint
 
For me, school was just a couple of days away.  Finally, this whole horrible summer would end and I would start a horrible fall to work on Mrs. Komori’s Just Being Program and earn back my skating privileges and independence.  The latter filled me with happy anticipation, but the thought of having my scrawny body and damaged psyche tossed back into the volatile sea of hormones and social anxiety we call eighth grade terrified me almost beyond reason.
 
And this was coming from a person who practically witnessed her Johnson turn into a Virginia.
 
“It’s not that bad,” Emily told me.  “It’s really not bad at all.”
 
She was painting.  With a few weeks left before her first year of college and a hole in her life formerly occupied by Toby (we weren’t allowed to talk about him yet), Emily turned to art, which thrilled me.  It had been so long since she had done anything more than a sketch or a napkin doodle.  She started sweating her ass off in the Venus-like atmosphere of our garage making incredible paintings while I watched perched like a bird on a tall, round kitchen stool. I loved to see her face turn red and her lower lip push out from creative exertion, her arms moving, the tip of the black paint brush stretching out from her fingers nothing more than a colorful smear. She got all shiny, her face and arms gleaming with perspiration. Her shirt stuck to her, so I could tell whether or not she wore a patterned bra underneath.
 
Or nothing at all, which was the case today because she’d been home all morning and hadn’t even showered yet.
 
“It’s pretty bad,” I groused, not feeling it because I was so enthralled in Emily’s creative dance.  Even her feet seemed artistic as they shuffled.  I kind of wanted to be her.
 
“I lied.  It’s exactly that bad.  No, it’s worse.  I wouldn’t do junior high again for all the… many… valuable things in that place where things of value are kept.”
 
“The bank.”
 
“I was thinking more like a museum.  Anyways, good luck at school, dude.  Are you ready?”
 
“If by ‘ready’ you mean I have like pens and pencils and notebooks, yeah.”
 
“Clothes?”
 
“Been all set with those.”  Actually, despite having bought all those girly-girl school outfits and dresses for me during my Princess Phase (as I called it—strictly to myself for fear of what Emily would say in response), Mrs. Komori graciously and patiently allowed me to change my mind once more.  Now I had some things I felt more comfortable about wearing.  A few pairs of sensible jeans, for example, and slacks.  The slacks were from the pre-teen girl’s department, but the jeans were boy’s jeans because I really didn’t want to wear the flares that were so popular.  And while I didn’t have any dresses I loved as much as I did that sundress—which I was actually wearing at the moment (and barefoot)—I found I wasn’t completely opposed to the wearing them.  They didn’t particularly interest me, but I didn’t hate them, and I supposed if I again happened to fall in love with one, I could probably talk Mrs. Komori into buying it.
 
Delacroix Junior High, my school, had a dress code but it wasn’t super strict.  Mrs. Komori and I read it the night before our final back-to-school shopping trip, just to be on the safe side before shelling out more plastic.  The rules mostly dealt with skirt length for girls and prohibited certain hair colors and styles—I couldn’t get a Mohawk, for instance, although I kind of wanted one just to see how I’d look with it now that I was a girl and had so much black hair on my head—plus facial piercings other than in the ears.  The school also outlawed any t-shirt with alcohol or drug-related imagery and, of course, profanity or obscenities of any kind.
 
Anyways, Mrs. Komori and I decided as long as I dressed neatly, I could get away with quite a lot of unisex mixing-and-matching.  In fact, since the code didn’t specifically mention anything about it, I further assumed boys were free to wear dresses if they wanted, too.
 
“If you mean am I mentally ready,” I said, “I’m not so sure about that.”
 
“Good luck,” Emily said and put down her plastic palette.  “Some people dream of going back and starting over knowing what they know now.  But I think that’s stupid.  I’d fucking hate that.  Being all small and whatever.  Maybe if I could go back at my same age and size so I could kick everyone’s ass--”
 
“I’m doing it.  I’m doing it tiny, too.  I never wanted to but here we are.”
 
“Yeah.  Well, I didn’t mean you, Honey Bunny.”
 
She stepped back from the canvas and walked around in front of it, studying it, planning.  The sunlight outside the garage haloed her body, glinting on her collarbones and the outside edges of her long, slender arms.

She made me really miss my guy parts at times like that.  When she decided the painting was finished and even one more brushstroke would ruin it, Emily smiled at me, her eyes glittering like black glass, droplets of sweat along her nose and above her mouth glinting.  She tore a long sheet of clear plastic wrap from a roll and carefully covered the palette with it, preserving the paint in case she needed it the next day.  After that, took me by the hand, helped me off the stool (not that I needed it) and led me into the kitchen.  She fixed us both bowls of Ben & Jerry's chocolate ice cream for lunch and sat at the dining table and talked and laughed while we spooned up the frosty deliciousness and fought off brain freeze.

“Maybe school won’t be so bad,” Emily said, a drop of chocolate ice cream on the tip of her nose.  I decided not to tell her.  “You’ll probably have a lot of the same teachers I did, and some of them were cool.  Not really.  But not all of them sucked, I guess.  And your classes will be super-easy and you should just breeze right through them.”
 
“Yeah, you said that one time before.”
 
“No, I didn’t.  You’re not only a card cheat and a scoundrel, but also a liar, Honey Bunny, and possibly a cattle rustler and horse thief.  But maybe you’ll make some friends, too.  Try, anyways.”
 
That’s what I was afraid of.  I ate my ice cream and thought about trying to make friends.  My attempts at re-socializing myself that summer hadn’t gone very well to say the least, and I had no idea how to relate to anyone other than Emily and Mrs. Komori now.  And I still wasn’t anyone.  No longer Martin, not quite Amy.  Maybe I really was Honey Bunny after all.  I told myself to “just be,” that part of the reason for returning to school was to help me become again.  Positive self-help mantras have a way of losing their power in the face of all-encompassing terror.
 
While I figuratively messed my undies mulling that over, the phone rang and it was for Emily, a call from Darla.
 
Darla.  Lots of curly red hair and freckles, a giant mouth with big, glossy white teeth. Very curvy, womanly body.  She had what even Emily called “birthin’ hips.”  By comparison, the proportions of my girl body weren’t all that different than they had been when I was a guy; I barely had any hips at all.  Lots of people thought Darla was gorgeous in a pre-Raphaelite sort of way.  But I never had.  Especially now.
 
Maybe it was Darla's whiny, possessive and completely helpless personality that made me find her unattractive. She was the total opposite of Emily, who usually exuded this crazy, brash confidence, but they shared the same capacity for extreme silliness.  Only with Darla, there was this childishness, this helplessness.  Like Toby before her, she usually ignored me the few times she came over, although she knew full well I’d once been Emily’s boyfriend and her own rival for Emily’s loving attention.  But I couldn’t help but notice after she left there’d be boxes of crackers laying on our coffee table and crumbs on the sofa, or bowls of half-eaten cereal in the sink.
 
Anyways, with me doing my house arrest thing and being so much younger and essentially out of the picture for good and Toby mysteriously decamped for places unknown, Darla was calling almost constantly.  Shows, parties, hanging out, plans for fall classes, maybe getting an apartment together their sophomore year.
 
Emily hung up the phone.  “Darla’s coming over to look at my new painting.  I think she kinda wants it for her bedroom.”
 
“Kinda wants you for her bedroom, you mean,” I muttered.  Not that I seriously thought that.
 
When Darla showed up, though, she looked off, noticeably more haggard than before the whole Toby Disappearance Weekend.  Dark, almost green rings under her eyes.  And she looked a little drawn, her cheeks hollow.  I couldn’t be sure.  Fluorescent lights tended to lighten shadows, so I could have been mistaken.  Easily, even.
 
“What’s up, Darla?” I said, just trying to act friendly around her so Emily wouldn’t feel weird about having her over.  “You’re looking really pretty today.”

Wrong move.  Darla’s freckles flared and she gave me this bizarre sort of look, like when you shine a flashlight in a cat's eyes. "I'm not trying to lose weight," she said in a huff.  “I mean, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
 
I raised my eyebrows and looked away, suddenly terrified by something in her look and tone that she was going to pull a knife out of her bag and come at me across the kitchen, with some sort of savage, high-pitched squealing that wasn’t quite human.  I saw Emily give her a look and then the moment passed and they were bopping out to the garage.  I went back to my room and hid under the bed until the fear went away.  I felt really dumb, though.  What was I afraid of?  And how exactly would being underneath my bed protect me from it?  Darla was just a needy, insecure person whose parents had fucked up raising her and who had absorbed a lot of stupid ideas from movies and TV shows.
 
You know, like me.
 
I crawled out from under the bed feeling very young and silly.  I knelt on the floor, put my chin on the mattress and stretched out my slim, brown arms; even on my best days, aspects of my body seemed alien to me.  How could I ever lift even a tissue with arms like these, much less tote around ten tons of school books all day?  Who is going to like me?  Who is going to hate me?  Why is that girl here?  Why couldn’t Emily have someone else for a best friend?  No, everything was cool.  But I didn’t feel completely normal—or what passed for it these uncertain days—until after Emily and Darla left together and Mrs. Komori came home from work.
 
Feeling skittish, I crept into the kitchen where she was bumping around, putting away some groceries she’d picked up on the way home.  I stood there blinking and looking at her, not knowing what to say.
 
“Amy,” Mrs. Komori said.  “You look like someone walked over your grave.”
 
“Maybe someone did.”
 
Mrs. Komori peered at me, no doubt looking for the return of Crazy Amy.  I smiled to reassure her, a fake smile I was working on for school.
 
“Worried about school?”
 
“Always.”  Among other things, increasingly.
 
“Don’t sweat it.  You’ll be fine.  A little younger than some of the other kids, but you’ll make up for it with your higher level of maturity.  And grades.”
 
Maturity was probably wishful thinking at that point, but this was our plan.  While Mrs. Komori probably could have made up a paper life for me all the way up to age 18 or beyond, that would have required my staying under wraps for the most part until then.  I mean, there was no way on earth I could fake being that age the way I currently looked; in fact, sometimes I was concerned I wouldn’t even pass  for twelve.  So until my body matured or the sex-change process somehow reversed itself—and we weren’t so sure it wouldn’t one day—I had to have something to do. 
 
Mrs. Komori also wanted me out and around people in a semi-controlled environment.  School was the best option.  With my intelligence and learning, the academic part would be a snap.  The social aspects would allow me to form a new psyche or personality or identity to replace the one I’d lost.  I’d get a truly intense education in what it meant to be a girl growing up in America as a bonus, along with a document trail that Mrs. Komori didn’t have to fake.  Real records we could then use to get me into college one day, or might help me to have an actual life when I grew up… again.
 
I thought about recent events and wondered if I’d have a chance to.  I’m totally petrified, I admitted to myself.  I am so, so scared.  Not just about school.  And not just for myself.