(AN: Yes, I know the last chapter was in Grace's POV as well, bear with me cause this just makes it more...angsty. Yes, this is angst, don't hate me.)

Grace's POV

"I'm praying I passed my math exam. If only I was allowed to use a calculator." I said. Mia Fernandez laughed and said, "You are notoriously bad at math. And English. And science. And school."

"Yes, I know, don't expose me!" I laughed. It was sort of a bittersweet day today. The four of us that were staying in dorm rooms had to pack up our stuff and get ready to go back to our home countries for the summer. Lars Sua, who was staying with a host family, was already packed up.

"Remember when we all went through some sort of culture shock coming here?" Sunny Kobayashi said. "Now we're gonna have to adjust again to another country. Another time zone. Another way of life."

"The fact that four out of the five of us come from religious, possibly homophobic families." Lars said quietly from the corner. Almost too quietly.

"Lars? Are you okay?" I asked. Lars shook their head and said, "I don't want to go home."

"I don't think any of us do." Evie Schubert said quietly.

"No, you guys...don't understand. Going home means I'll have to give up who I am..." Lars said, tears lining her eyes. He stood up and grabbed a pair of scissors, tying their shoulder length brown hair up in a ponytail.

It was only then I realized what Lars was doing. She was cutting off their hair. His beautiful hair that they've been growing out for the better part of eight months.

"Lars, don't!" I screamed without thinking, almost about to cry myself. Lars looked painfully back at me and said, "I have to. Just because I'm out to my parents doesn't mean they'll let me be who I am. Who I'm meant to be."

"Lars..."

"I have to." Lars said. It genuinely hurt to see my best friend in so much pain. Lars is tough, they rarely cry or complain. So seeing him almost about to sob broke my heart into a million pieces.

Especially when I realized that when they go home, I couldn't help her.

I'd be almost 10,000 miles away from him, countries, oceans away. At least here at school, they had me to help him deal with Kai Hudson and his idiot homophobic friend group. And when they go to Samoa, she'd have no one.

And that hurt me more than you'd ever imagine.

Lars was frozen, shaking in front of the mirror, moments away from cutting their ponytail off. Lars closed their eyes and whispered, "Do it." to himself.

Snip.

Lars' ponytail fell onto the ground, the bright pink hair elastic still attached to it. Lars looked in the mirror, their hair a short poof of curly hair.

There was a beat of dead silence before Lars fell on the ground and started sobbing their eyes out. She threw her glasses across the floor and kept sobbing.

I motioned for the rest of my friends to back out of the room, then I knelt down next to Lars and hugged the life out of him, kissing their forehead in a completely platonic way.

"I can't believe I just did that, Grace...but I had to...Ma would've killed me otherwise..." Lars said, their voice choked back with tears. "At least I won't be called L-Lucas as much as I did...if my mom didn't forget my name...my pronouns are a different story. It's just gonna be he/him, he/him, he/him all the time and I can't tell her otherwise...she knows I'm her only c-child...she knows that if she kicks me out she'll lose her one son...but what about when my sister is born, Grace? What about when I tell her about Tyler? When my sister is born, which will probably be soon, she'll have more of an e-excuse...she'll have another child. She won't be completely alone if she abandons her son."

I sat up and Lars did the same. I made my way over to my backpack and Lars said, "Where are you g-going?"

"I have something for you." I said, smiling. I dug in my bag for Lars' present, which I had bought forever ago. "Here."

"It's a one-way ticket to London." Lars whispered. "Grace...I can't accept this, it must've cost a fortune."

"Lars...I can't live with the possibility of you getting kicked out this summer. I can't live with the possibility of you not having a home and just roaming the streets. At least if you use this...you'll have somewhere to go. Somewhere to be. Someone to be with. A family." I said.

"Grace, Samoa's been my home since the day I was born. I'm proud to be a Polynesian, and I'm proud to be a member of the LGBTQ+ community, the transgender community. I just wish I could be as proud of my sexuality and gender as I am about my culture." Lars said. "I just wish I didn't have to hide who I really am. People know, rumors spread, everyone probably knows. I'm just scared of people being transphobic towards me, I'll get bullied out of the only community I've ever known."

"But you have us now." I said. "You have me, and Sunny, and Mia, and Evie, and Harley, and Tyler! You have this school to look forward to in the fall! I promise I'll FaceTime you every weekend, we all will!"

Lars smiled and then stood up. "Sunny?" she asked.

"Yeah?" Sunny said, poking her head in the room.

"You'll probably want this back." Lars said, handing Sunny one of her skirts. Sunny let Lars keep one of her skirts after they borrowed it so much, Lars loves skirts. "Grace, you can have all my skirts and 'feminine' shirts. You can have everything that's gonna be stripped away from me when I get on that airplane in a few days."

"You'll always have us." Evie smiled.

"Yeah, and we love you. So much." Sunny said.

"Majority Minority forever."