I only just realized I hadn't uploaded everything I wrote for Bee. I thought I had and had moved on to the next chapter (I'm writing it on docs) sorry bout that y'all.

Enjoy.

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About halfway between the kitchen and the living room there were two doors, each with a small box outside. Molly picked up the box beside the left door and Frank picked up the right one. They opened the boxes and displayed the contents to the rest of us. Three keys were in each box, the loop part of each strung through a cord.

"So now we choose rooms." Luis commented, stating the obvious.

"Let's do this strategically." I said, then listened to the silence for a moment before realizing they expected me to add more. "Strategy isn't my thing. At all. Taylor?" I looked at them hopefully and they scoffed.

"There's plenty of strategy involved in this, but most of it would require us to know each other considerably better, so right now we can do it randomly." Taylor answered, like it was the most obvious thing ever, which I guess, if I thought about it, it kinda was. "Me, McConell, Newman. Samuels, Murray, Colombo."

"Wait what?" Ally looked at Taylor, visibly upset, Frank and Luis displaying the exact same look.

"If you've got any complaints we can deal with them later but right now take your keys and get in the rooms." Taylor said. I felt like there was some plan or another to the way the rooms were split, and I'm sure the others thought it too because they didn't complain.

Taylor unlocked the door on the left and we walked into the room, looking for a light switch. There was none. Tom had told me about this, there should be a lamp beside everyone's bedside which we could replace the batteries of (if they time to run out of batteries) with the box of batteries that was tucked under the bed.

I walked over to my bed (the one in the middle, which I knew was the one Tom had, therefore I wanted) and searched for the lamp. My hands landed upon it after less than a minute of searching and I turned it on. The lamp was reasonably bright, not as dim as I'd expected it to be. Taylor and Molly did the same thing, and the room was more or less completely illuminated. We sat on the beds and looked at each other. Molly seemed really friendly, I felt like she would be the last person to try to kill me (or anyone, for that matter), but I was a little worried about sharing a room with Taylor because of the whole scary Sherlock thing.

Molly stretched out across her bed and turned her head so she was facing the room, curly hair getting in her face. I looked over at Taylor, who was inspecting me like some crime scene clue that was getting in the way of a cut-and-dry case.

"You don't trust me." They said finally, the comment clearly aimed at me. "You think I'm going to turn against everyone and you're scared it'll be a Moriarty type of thing."

"Moriarty?"

"Evil version of Sherlock"

"Ah." I looked at them for a moment. "Are you equally good at reading humans as you are at deciphering their plans?"

"Actually, understanding people isn't something I'm good at in any way shape or form. Figuring out a person's intentions and strategy can shed light on who they are but just looking at a person and figuring out their emotions... nope." Their honesty surprised me, I wouldn't have expected them to admit to that. I wouldn't have pegged them as the type of person to share their incapabilities. "But I've seen that look enough times and, taking the situation into account, it wasn't too hard to figure out what you're worried about."

I saw Molly smile from the corner of my eye and Taylor evidently noticed too because their hard facade slipped enough for a smile to creep across their features, before vanishing when the door creaked open.

"How'd y'all turn your lights on?" Luis asked, standing in the doorway.

"WE FIGURED IT OUT! LEAVE THEM ALONE, LUIS!" Ally shouted across the hall.

"It seems like you no longer need our help." Molly smiled, but there was a trace of something in her face which I couldn't piece together, considering I was about as good at reading people as Taylor.

"It seems like I don't." He nodded. Southern accents are a wonder to me, it's like a whole other American language within the preexisting American language.

Taylor stood up and escorted Luis out the door, closing it and locking it behind him. Molly and Taylor shared a look that I couldn't interpret. Had they already formed an alliance? How?

They sat back on their bed and leaned their head so far back they were staring at the ceiling like it was asking them riddles of increasing difficulty while they were still trying to answer the previous ones.

"So, Bee, how are you holding up?" Molly asked after we'd spent probably a full minute silently watching Taylor's facial expressions as they swirled across their features like churning waves.

"So far so good, you?"

"I'm terrified, but we've gotten ourselves some time, right?"

"Yeah, seven days."

"Till the 18th of August." Molly smiled at me and I noticed the way her eyes crinkled happily, her features clearly made for being joyous. "See anyone cute?"

"Molly! We're here to kill each other!" I reached over and punched her arm gently, laughing at her comment.

"I'm sorry!" Molly chuckled, shifting herself so she was sitting on my bed beside me. "But like...?"

"Well, since you asked..." I smirked. "Ally's like... wow." I mimed fanning my face. "And honestly, Taylor kinda gave me butch lesbian vibes at the start."

"Oh my god, I know." Molly looked over her shoulder at Taylor, who was now glaring fiercely at the ceiling. "It's fine, they're not listening to us."

"What's up with Luis? You seem to not like him."

"Did you see the way he looked at Taylor when they said they were agender? That's implicit transphobia. There's a possibility he's trying to get rid of it but I'm taking no chances."

"You're trans?"

"Oh yeah. Came out in sophomore year." Molly grabbed her bag from the foot of her bed and took something out from inside. The pastel stripes identified it as a trans pin.
I reached for my bag and, after a moment of looking through my randomly placed pins and patches, I displayed the lesbian patch Tom had gotten me when I came out. "Just last year, on my birthday."

"Who got it for you?"

"Who said anything about someone getting it for me?"

"Oh please, the way you hold it tells me there's a story behind this patch and it's improbable there'd be such a story if you got it yourself, even if was your first gay accessory."

"My brother got it." I looked at the pink and red stripes, considering that I may never see Tom again. "I came out and about thirty minutes later he said he had to go do something. I was persuaded he needed to get away from me and my gayness, it was terrifying until he came back later with a wrapped box., asking if he could add it to his present for me. There was this patch, a flag that's hung on my wall and tons of other great stuff. I didn't care that my parents were still looking aghast and shocked even an hour or two afterwards cause Tom had gone out his way to be the best brother in the world."

"That's sweet." Molly studied me for a moment then, out of the blue wrapped me in a warm hug. "Bee, it's ok."

"W-what?"

"You'll see him again." Molly stroked my hair softly, her words comforting despite my knowledge that she had no way to be so sure.
I wanted to say thank you, but the words caught in my throat and I wrapped my arms around her tightly. Watching my brother deal with the trauma of Chiron, hearing only the worst about it, everyone being mortified the second I got the letter, all these things had led me to the conclusion that Chiron was a place of cold hearted killers and crazed desperate children. I would never expect to be having a heart-felt moment with an almost complete stranger, have her comfort me about something I'd never even told her.

When I sat up, I got the impression Taylor's eyes shifted back to the ceiling quickly, but the fact that their expression held no signs of having witnessed or even heard Molly and I's exchange convinced me that it was just an impression.

"So." I sat back, still considerably closer to her than I had been prior to the hug. "Why'd you choose Molly? If you're ok with me asking."

"My mom always told me 'if you were born a girl I would've called you Millie'. I was born a boy and she called me William instead, sadly. I didn't really like Millie, it reminded me too much of Thoroughly Modern Millie and I was in a school production of that musical that completely ruined the name for me, but the name Molly just sounded perfect to me, so when I came out that's the name I chose and stuck with."

"That's cool." I looked over at Taylor. "Do you think Taylor's their birth name?"

"Does it really matter?"

I looked at Molly, fearing I'd done something wrong, and found a flare of defiance in her features. "No, I just find it really cool to see how people can find a name that they like and that fits who they are. It might be a cis thing, I can't imagine not being called Bee."

"It might be a cis thing, but I don't know enough trans people to have the statistics. I like to imagine having a group of trans people and sharing stories." Molly shrugged and changed the topic. "Did you leave any friends behind?"

"Oh yeah," I smiled, thinking about my friends. "Connor and Bea are my two best friends in the world."

"Bea and Bee?"

"Well we both have the same name, Beatrice, so it's purely luck we chose different nicknames."

"I'm sure they miss you a lot." Molly took my hand and I could have sworn she was telepathic: I'd worried that they might not miss me too much. I was the newest in the group and if I spent an undetermined, maybe permanent, time away from them I was worried I would be easily replaced.

"I wish I knew for sure if I'm gonna break their hearts or not." I sighed and Molly rested her head on my shoulder, still holding my hands clasped in hers. I snuggled into her embrace, welcoming her friendly touch.

I awoke what felt like hours later and all the lights were off. Molly and I were lying side by side in my bed and somehow we both fit comfortably. I would've awoken her but she seemed so peaceful and, honestly, I was grateful for the comfort of someone beside me. So I shut my eyes again and drifted off into sleep, safe to do so peacefully for the next seven days.

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I'm curious: those of you who care, who do think's gonna die first and who do think's gonna win?