She sighs. "Would it even have helped if I'd dragged you out to the car and not spoken to him?"

"It... might have helped if he hadn't seen you do it and had just continued to assume you were a boy and I was a girl, which I'm sure he did at first."

"But unfortunately Renée thought this would make a nice surprise... ugh. She ought to have known better even if she didn't have details. I don't even know how she got ahold of him without going through me."

"Well, I have a very unusual name? Shouldn't be hard to find, I suppose, maybe she asked your dad for help, since he's police and stuff." Pause. "He is fine, right? That was just a story your mom made up?"

"That was a story I made up and had Alex feed to Renée."

"Story you made up, then. Good. Okay."

"Yeah. He's fine." Squeeze.

Sigh. "Okay, let's—look at possibilities. What can he do, to make my life bad? He can pull me out of school, he can threaten to do so if I don't come home for holidays or something, he can threaten to do so if I don't act verifiably submissive and am female all the time... How hard would it be for me to get rid of him, to have him not be my parent, is the fact that I don't want him to be my parent enough?"

"I have no idea. Renée might have a better idea but she works with kindergarteners."

"It should be strictly easier for a sixteen-year-old to get rid of their parents than a kindergartener, no?"

"Well, it should, except that it's a lot harder to paint a kindergartener as a wayward troublemaker who needs a firm hand."

"...ugh."

Squeeze.

"We should ask your parents about it, then, I guess. And maybe look it up online, or something."

"Charlie works in another state, his expertise is only vaguely applicable here."

"Yeah," he sighs.

"Can you live with it if he wants you home and girl-shaped and perpetually subby for the holidays, if you can go to school?"

"...probably. I think. I—I could do it, for long stretches of time. It just, eventually I'd slip, some days I'm just really not a girl, it'd build up, and I'd do something he didn't approve of." Shiver.

"What if I tell you to? What if every time you're about to go to his house I remind you that you are to protect what is mine while I can't."

Pause. "That—y—m—I think it—yeah. It might—it might work." Snuggle.

Snuggle. "This relies on him being willing to send you back to a school that has me in it at all, of course."

"Yeah." Sigh. "I honestly don't know what he'll do, he's never been challenged like that."

"I was trying to tone it down until it actually came down to who you were leaving with."

"It's not anything you did then, really. It's just, doing at least part of what he's been trying and failing to do for years in, what, a month and a half."

"My secret is not being an abusive shit."