*

It was 9 PM and it had been a long day for me as usual. I had worked at the barn in the morning before school and then had a few tests at school. I had ridden when I got back to the barn at 3, but I only got half my homework done, so I still had to finish it.

After dinner for me and Darko, I collapsed onto the couch and cracked open my textbook.

"Ugh, Finally!" Frankie grumbled. "I'm finally done this stupid paper!" he told me with relief, taking his glasses off.

"Is it due tomorrow?" I asked him.

"Well, technically yeah, it's due at midnight." He laughed.

"Oh, you upload it?" I asked, not really caring.

"Yeah." He pushed himself away from the table after closing his laptop and then wandered upstairs, leaving me alone with Darko, whose warm head was resting seemingly uncomfortably on my knee. Darko was fast asleep and he made cute little doggy sounds when he exhaled. I was barely coherent enough to finish my homework and I found that I stayed up so late that I had gotten too tired to even want to move to go to bed. I heaved myself up, picked up Darko, and carried him with me as I went shuffling up to bed.

I woke up the next morning to find Darko sleeping next to me on the bed and Christie's weird laugh coming from across the hall. I don't know what it is about that laugh, but it made me cringe to hear it. It was overly high-pitched and nuts. I got up from bed quietly, looking at my alarm clock to see that it was 6. As I crept to the door, it was obvious that she was in Frankie's room. I stared in horror as Darko streaked across the hall towards Christie's laugh.

"Darko, no!" I shouted as he threw his body weight into Frankie's door, knocking it open and exposing me to a sight that I will never forget. I froze in the hallway as they both looked over at me in shock. Christie was straddling Frankie and she grabbed the sheets to cover her naked body. It all happened in a matter of milliseconds but that didn't mean I hadn't still seen what I had seen. I saw her bare side, her midriff, her hips, her thighs, her boobs. Seeing her on top of my true love, with his hands on her hips and his bare beautiful body under hers... After the long milliseconds of standing there, I walked off to the bathroom, holding back tears and thinking wildly of how I had to act normal so she wouldn't know that I was hurt. After finding nothing exciting in Frankie's room, Darko came cantering back and I heard him sit his solid little butt against the bathroom door with a little doggy yelp to tell me he was there.

"Wren?" I heard Christie's voice making my crying eyes go wide. I had to swallow a few times before I could say anything because my throat would be too spastic and would give away my delicate state. "Wren, are you okay? I'm sorry you had to see that." She called through the door in a gentle voice. I watched myself in the mirror, looking bitterly at my painful expression and analyzing my puffy red eyes and my lips in the most hideous frown. "I can walk Darko with you this morning." She said, trying to cheer me up. She must've looked at his cute puppy face and decided that was something I wanted. I still didn't know what to say and I wasn't sure if I could answer in an even enough voice. To my relief, she left me alone to try to pull myself together in the bathroom, but I knew she was going back to Frankie and it almost made it worse for me.

"I'm sorry, Wren." Christie murmured to me looking shameful as I came downstairs after cleaning myself up. Darko was by my side as I arrived at the bottom step.

"It's fine. I'm sorry. I was just surprised." I muttered with my eyebrows pushed down as I went to get coffee.

She didn't say anything about it after that until we got home that night.

She had a brief scuffle with Frankie in the other room before she took a shot of some colorless liquor and turned her sights on me. I raised an eyebrow as she came over, like she was about to kill me or something.

"We need...to...talk." She insisted darkly. I swallowed, still sitting at the kitchen table with my half empty dinner plate. I frowned.

"Okayyy..." I agreed, hesitantly.

"Sooo, you remember when I told you that Wolf could only have foals if he was kept intact..." She asked, seeming to wait for something.

"Christie... I know...what sex is. "I croaked, making her face drop. She sighed in relief.

"Oh, thank god." Christie seemed to collapse in her chair.

"How stupid do you think I am?!" I asked in irritation. "And I've seen Knocked Up, so you don't have to explain birth control either..." I told her, hearing Loic laugh after he came in and heard us.

"Loic! Get out, or do you want to explain menstruation!" she yelled, making his expression turn to one of fright before he jogged away back to his room.

"I don't envy either of you." Sabrina commented after she passed Loic in the hallway from the downstairs bathroom. "It's not fun to talk about it and it's even worse first learning about it."

"Menstruation..." I murmured, pursing my lips.

"Have you heard of your period?" she asked. I shook my head in response and sat forward to give her my full attention.

"Well, you have what's called a uterus..." she frowned and grabbed the pad of paper and pen from the middle of the table.

"That holds the fetus." I nodded, with a serious expression.

"Exactly." She smiled briefly as she sketched.

I was in a cloud of hate when Christie finished explaining all of female anatomy and what happens during the menstrual cycle in the most clinical terms.

*

"Wren," Gretchen said in her naturally low voice. "Can I talk to you when you're done?"

"Yeah, sure." I answered, quietly as I finished brushing Aragorn. Aragorn had his soft grey head tilted down because he had fallen asleep. I unhooked him from the crossties and hooked on his lead rope to walk him to his stall. His eyes flickered open only to stop halfway, just enough to see where he was going.

"Come on, Aragorn." I goaded him as I stepped out of his way and looked back telling him to follow me with my body language. He obliged sluggishly and I smiled when he sighed. Horses were so funny the way they sighed like people. I knew exactly what he was feeling. I was exhausted.

After I put Aragorn away in one of the stalls between the boarder side and the lesson side of the barn, I fed him his hay and grain. I looked around to see that almost everybody was finishing up and started to look for Gretchen. Christie had closed the double doors that led out to the rings and paddocks and one of the ones that led to the parking lot. I stepped out of the only open door and saw that it had gotten really dark out. Gretchen was sitting on one of the rocks that were lined up on the grass in front of each parking space of the gravel parking lot that sat in front of the barn and I took a seat on the rock next to her.

"What's up?" I asked her twisting on my rock to face her. She looked up at me with something odd in her greenish hazel eyes.

"I just...I don't know." She chickened out.

"Tell me." I prodded her, as Hayden came walking out to join us.

"Nevermind, I'll tell you tomorrow." She sighed, looking past me at Hayden.

"Okay!" I confirmed, holding my hand out for her to shake. She shook it with her unwavering grasp that I was so used to and I shook back with finality. We had always done things this way, being best friends since we were five years old.

*

The next morning, after we were finished doing the morning routine at the barn, I convinced Gretchen's foster mom, Janice, to take me home with them so we could have a little bit of time to talk. Gretchen led me up the stairs of her foster parents tall, old, beaten-up townhouse. The wood stairs had been painted and there were tons of scratches from years of wear and tear. Unlike the pristine glossy banisters at the estate, the banisters here looked rickety and crooked. She led me up to her loft which was where she slept. Unlike her foster brothers who mostly had to share their rooms with each other, she had her own space. It was open to the hallway that led to their rooms, but it was high up so there was some privacy, just not as much as I was used to.

Gretchen sat on her bed with a look of concentration like she was already ready to tell me whatever it was she wanted to talk about earlier. I sat close next to her on the mattress and box spring that was on the floor of the loft.

"Don't laugh, okay?" she asked in a low voice with her eyebrows pressed down.

"Okay." I agreed. Her hazel green and brown eyes looked at me nervously before refocusing on her hands clasped together tightly in her lap.

"I'm a boy." She announced. "On the inside." She amended with a deep frown.

"You look like a boy on the outside too." I shrugged. She didn't seem happy with my nonchalant response.

"Wren" she said turning to me with tears in her eyes. "I really want to be a boy on the outside too." She whispered, grasping my shoulders. I nodded with my eyebrows furrowed. She couldn't possibly change her body to be a boy's body. You didn't get to choose. I couldn't understand how there could be a disconnect. Why would God put a boy in a girl's body? Was she really a he? What was the difference between a he or a she anyway? How could a soul have a 'sex'? Was I really a 'she'? Either way, I could tell it hurt deep. She yearned for a male body.

"Gretchen, I'm sorry." I said softly, giving her a hug that she returned with sobs shaking her ribcage.

"I hate my name." she growled. I let her go.

"Then we'll change it." I said resolutely. She still had so much pain on her face, but my statement seemed to make her think.

"Jan and Hugh are never going to just change what they call me..." She grumbled, referring to her foster parents.

"They'll have to. You should only be called what you want to be called. Don't answer to anything else." I insisted darkly.

"What should my name be, though?"

"Gr... Gret? Greg? Grei?" I babbled with my finger tapping my lips. "How about Grei?" She looked deep in thought and the pain on her face was replaced with contemplation as she swallowed her tears.

"Grei." She murmured. "I guess that's okay."

"You can think about it. We'll make everybody call you by whatever you want." I insisted, running my hand over her shoulder with a comforting smile.

"Thanks, Wren." She murmured.

"Hey! I know what would make you feel better." I said hopping to kneel on the bed behind her. "We should cut your hair shorter!" I told her, running my hands through her messy, jaw-length dark brown hair. I spent a moment pulling at it as I tried to decide where I would cut if I were to give her a haircut. All I could picture was Frankie's hair, which was a similar slightly darker brown.

"You're going to cut my hair?! Jan will kill us!" Grei squeaked, making me laugh.

"Calm down, I'm not holding scissors. I was just thinking about what would look good." I told her.

"We could look up a haircut and maybe I could ask?"

"We shaved our horses... I'm sure I could figure out how to shave some of your hair..." I insisted, making her look frightened that I was going to take out clippers at any moment.

We looked through haircuts on the desk-top in the study room together for a few hours and then Jan came to find us.

"Hey, do you two want some lunch?" she asked genially, taking a peek at what we were looking at.

"Yeah!" I exclaimed, standing up from where Grei and I had been sharing a chair.

"What about you, Gretchen?" she asked, making pain flash across Grei's face.

"Actually, Gretchen's name is Grei, now." I told her stubbornly, making Grei hold her breath instead of turning to look at Jan. Jan just laughed.

"Well, alright. We can give that a try." She smiled making me grin back and hug Grei's shoulders in support.

I was able to convince Grei's foster mom that Grei needed a cool new haircut to go with her cool new name. Grei was in a better state of mind when I left around 4 pm after spending the whole day hanging out with her.

"I have to head home." I said, kissing Grei's cheek. She pulled me into a tight hug.

"Thanks, Wren." She whispered close to my ear.

"No problem, Grei." I said deliberately. "I'm excited to see your new hair! Make sure you get the one with bangs." I laughed, with a wave.

"Do you want a ride home?" Jan asked, peeking out to see that there wasn't a driver to pick me up. She grabbed the keys to her mini-van out of the clay bowl in the hallway.

"That's okay. I don't think it's a very long walk. I know the street pretty well." I told her as I stepped out onto the street with my backpack.

*

"Hey, Wren, come here." Grei said. We had been working on our homework at the barn and Grei had moved to use the computer in Christie's office while I sat at the table staring at my half-written book report. I was glad of the excuse to stop doing my work and I got up and trotted over to see what she had found on the computer. "It has a name." she said in awe. I searched the page that was about being 'trans-gender'.

"Wow, so it's common then." I assumed.

"I just thought I was gay or something..." she told me.

"I thought you liked girls..." I muttered.

"I do. That's what I mean."

"Oh." I laughed lightly. She scrolled and there was a section titled 'Pronouns' "Hey, what's that?" I asked, pointing back up to make her stop at the top of the section. We read about how you could just decide to refer to someone as a he or she or even a they. "Do you want me to call you a 'he'?" I asked carefully.

"I don't know. It feels like lying..." Grei murmured.

"It says here that it might make you feel better, though." Then she scrolled to another section about Hormones and we both looked at each other when we saw you could stop your period with hormones and if she took Testosterone she'd go through puberty more like a boy.

"Wow, that's crazy!" I said when we finished reading the section and there were a few pictures.

"Maybe I want to do that." She breathed. "Jan would never let me. How could I get hormones? Through the doctor?" she asked sounding hopeless.

"It says you should start before puberty. So, you have to tell Jan soon, before you get your period." I said in worry for her.

"I don't want to be super hairy..." Grei said as she scrolled to a picture of a really hairy chest that used to be a female's and then they transitioned.

"Well, Frankie's not that hairy..." I insisted. "and he has testosterone. You only have to take the amount you want that makes you look the way you want." I said. "It says your doctor will work with you to determine what's the best for you."

"Wren, this is what I want..." he said.

"Are you sure?" I asked, looking into his adamant hazel eyes and smiling in response. He held out his hand and when I shook, he just smiled back. Then he hugged me in relief.