Chapter 1: The HazeThe silence inside the 2009 Toyota Corol was hermetic, a pressurized seal holding back the drowning weight of the Georgia night. Outside, the world was a screaming wall of insect noise and oppressive humidity, the kind of July air that didn’t just sit on your skin but tried to crawl inside your lungs. Inside, the air conditioning hummed a low, dying rattle, smelling faintly of old fast food wrappers and the specific, sterile anxiety of a long drive that had finally run out of road.

  The air inside the car was stale, recycled through the vents for the st five hours, carrying the scent of Skye’s THC vapes and the spicy, lingering ghost of the burritos they got at Wawa before they left Florida. Though, Dar May LeMonte wishes they had enough time to go to the Marietta dinner, to have some spanikopita she loved in her youth. But as they were here, she doubted they would have time for some nostalgic food. As her stomach anxiously rumbled, the floorboard beneath Dar’s feet was a graveyard of the trip: crumpled receipts, empty coffee cups, and the tossed-aside yers of her own anxiety.

  She had started the drive in a sundress, trying to be brave, but by the time they hit the sprawling, concrete nightmare of the Atnta bypass, she had retreated. First came the leggings, pulled on in a contorted struggle in the passenger seat while Skye cursed at a weaving semi-truck. Then the socks, thick, striped trans-colored programming socks that usually signaled a long coding session but now served as comfort bnkets for her ankles. Finally, the oversized bck cardigan, buttoned all the way to her chin. She was swaddled. A thirty-four-year-old woman dressed like she was hiding from a draft in a library, not some cndestine mission. But she needed comfort now, more than ever.

  She looked at the dashboard clock: 11:42 PM.

  The digital numbers flickered, a known electrical gremlin of the 2009 Corol that Dar had affectionately named "The Roach" because it refused to die. But tonight, The Roach felt fragile. It was a piece of rusted junk sitting in the manicured, irrigation-sprinkled perfection of East Cobb. This was a 30068, zip code where police cruisers patrolled for ‘suspicious vehicles’ (poor people’s cars), and a vehicle with faded bumper stickers that read Fix Your Heart or Die and Binaries are for Robots in the trans fg colors was practically a neon sign screaming Intruder. Queer Intruders. Lesbos on the loose. Fags for the hanging.

  Dar sat in the passenger seat, her knees pulled up to her chest, her arms wrapped around her shins. She was trying to make herself small. It was a reflex, as involuntary as breathing, to condense, to hide the soft parts of herself from the dangers circling in the dark.

  Through the bug-spttered windshield, the building loomed. In the moonlight, the Dogwood Society didn't just loom; it judged.

  It was a bastardization of architectural styles, a Frankenstein’s monster of Southern arrogance. It had the imposing red brick facade of a colonial pntation house, but the sharp, aggressive angles of a church that didn't believe in forgiveness. The main hall stretched out long and narrow, intersected by the ballroom to form that distinct, severe T-shape. From up here, it looked less like a cross and more like a hammer, poised to strike the earth.

  Kudzu, the only thing in the South more persistent than racism, had begun to cim the edges of the property. Vines thick as a man’s wrist curled around the white pilrs of the portico, choking the grandeur. It looked abandoned, but Dar knew better. The rot wasn't structural; it was spiritual. The windows were dark, staring back at her like hollowed-out eyes.

  She knew exactly how far those windows were from the floor. She knew the smell of the floor wax used in that foyer, a lemon-chemical sting that burned the back of your throat. She knew the acoustic dampening of the heavy velvet curtains that lined the ballroom, designed to muffle the sound of awkward teenage shuffling and absorb the quiet desperation of boys who wanted to be anywhere else.

  It sat set back from the road, insuted by a buffer of magnolias and pines, a fortress of politeness designed to keep the "riff-raff" out .A southern manor that seemed to scream that its history was built upon pain, as all these great gothic estates were.

  We are the riff-raff now, Dar thought, a hysterical bubble of ughter rising in her throat. The heirs to the kingdom, sitting in the bushes like a possum and a raccoon ."I can't believe we're actually here," Dar whispered. Her voice sounded thin, scraped raw by the five-hour drive from Jacksonville.

  Next to her, Skye killed the engine. The sudden silence was deafening, instantly filled by the ticking of the cooling metal. Skye leaned back in the driver's seat, stretching her legs, her combat boots thumping against the pedals. She looked over at Dar, her eyes dark and lined with the sharp, precise eyeliner that Dar always admired but could never quite replicate. A futch guardian angel with an undercut and a military brat’s disdain for locked doors.

  "We’re here, Muffin," Skye said, her voice a low rumble. "East Cobb, or East Snobb as you said it. The belly of the beast."

  Dar shuddered. She looked out at the parking lot. It was empty, save for the encroaching kudzu that was slowly devouring the light posts. This was where the parents used to park, rows and rows of luxury sedans, Volvos, and BMWs, gleaming like polished beetles. Now, there was just their beat-up Corol, a grey smudge in the darkness, leaking oil onto the cracked asphalt.

  "We shouldn't have come," Dar said, the words spilling out fast, tripping over each other. "This was stupid. It’s just a building. It’s just wood and bricks, Skye. It doesn’t care. They don’t care. My parents don’t care." She pressed her forehead against her knees, feeling the familiar tightening in her chest, the sensation of her ribs turning into a cage. "We should just turn around. We can be back in Florida by sunrise. We can go to the Waffle House in Valdosta. The one with the good waitress."

  The panic didn't hit her all at once; it crept in like cold water seeping through the floorboards. It started in her hands. She looked down at her fingers, slender, manicured, painted a soft, shimmery pink. But as she stared, the image seemed to flicker. For a terrifying second, she didn't see her hands. She saw his hands. Larger. Rougher. Knuckles cracking as he made a fist.

  She squeezed her eyes shut, but the darkness was worse. In the dark, the memory of the suit was tactile. She could feel the ghost of the starch on her neck, the phantom constriction of a Windsor knot pulling tight against her thankfully barely visible Adam’s apple, a noose made of silk.

  Stand up straight, Mr. LeMonte. Shoulders back. Chest out. Occupy space.

  The voice in her head was indistinguishable from her own, a programmed subroutine that kicked in whenever she smelled pine needles and humidity. Her body tried to obey. Her spine stiffened, trying to force her into the posture of a gentleman. She felt her soft, estrogen-softened skin crawling, as if the testosterone she had spent years purging was trying to leach back into her blood from the very atmosphere of this pce.

  "I'm shrinking," she gasped, the words barely audible. "Skye, I'm... I'm disappearing. It’s like the past is eating me."

  She pressed her forehead against her knees, trying to physically hold herself together, to keep the Dar-shape from dissolving into the rigid, square block of the Boy they had built in this room.

  She felt a hand on her thigh, a gentle grip producing a grounding wire. Skye’s palm was warm, firm, and unmoving. "Babe," Skye said. "Look at me."

  Dar didn’t want to look. Looking meant acknowledging the reality of where she was. Looking meant seeing the ghost of the boy she used to be standing by the front doors in an ill-fitting navy bzer. But she couldn't deny Skye. She turned her head, her cheek resting on her knee, looking at her girlfriend through the curtain of her wavy, golden-brown hair.

  "We didn't drive three hundred miles on I-75, dodging Georgia Highway Patrol and dealing with your eggy farts just to look at the parking lot," Skye said gentle but firm. "You told me you needed this. You told me the nightmares were getting worse."

  "They are," Dar admitted, a tear leaking out.

  "And you told me about the money," Skye added.

  The money. Dar closed her eyes. That was the real ghost, wasn’t it? The building was just the stage; the money was the script.

  "Tell me again," Skye said softly. She moved her hand from Dar’s thigh to her hand, intercing their fingers. Skye’s hands were rougher, stronger, the nails kept short. "Tell me why we’re here. Tell me why you hate this pce. Don't let it sit in your head where it can rot. Spit it out."

  Dar took a shaky breath. She looked back at the building. The shadows stretched across the brick facade like bck fingers.

  "The Trust," Dar said. The word tasted like copper. "The LeMonte Family Trust. Rail system money from Pennsylvania. Old, dirty, coal-dust money that my Great-Grandfather scrubbed clean when he moved south."

  She sat up slightly, the anger beginning to spark in the wet wood of her anxiety. "He hated women, Skye. He didn't just dislike them; he didn't believe they were capable of agency. He wrote it into the byws of the trust in 1948. ‘Access to the principal and interest shall be reserved for the male heirs of the body.’"

  Dar ughed, a bitter, jagged sound. "Male heirs of the body. Biological boys, even back then they were obsessed with it. He wanted to make sure the LeMonte name stayed on the checkbooks. My parents... they were public school teachers. They made decent money, but not mansion money. Not 'three-story house with two driveways' money.” She let out a long, heavy sigh. “Took me too long to piece together how we afforded everything. That it was the Trust. That was the blood money dripping down the IV line."

  She gestured helplessly at the dashboard, at the faded pstic and the check-engine light that had been on since ‘18. "I’m their executor, Skye. That’s the joke. I’m smart enough to manage the estate, to handle the wyers and the taxes, but because I transitioned... because I chose this..." She gestured to her body, to the softness she had fought so hard to cultivate, the B-cup breasts hidden under the cardigan, the smooth skin. "...I am disinherited. By default. The moment I change my legal marker, the bank accounts lock. Granted this stupid transmedicalist state won’t even do it as long as I still have my stupid fucking dick."

  "And your brother?" Skye asked, knowing the answer, but knowing Dar needed to say it, to not hold it all in as she’s inclined to do.

  "He controls the coffers until he dies," Dar spat. "And then it goes to my nephew. A toddler. That baby has more financial power than I ever will, just because of what’s between his legs. I walked away from millions, Skye. Millions. To be... me."

  "You may be broke," Skye said, "but you’re hot."

  Dar let out a wet snort of ughter, wiping her eyes with the sleeve of her cardigan. "Babe, I’m a low-level UX programmer driving a car that’s older than some of my coworkers, fighting with Blue Cross Blue Shield about bottom surgery coverage while my brother buys a second boat. I chose myself over their strings."

  She looked back at the T-shaped building. "But they didn't just want a male heir, Skye. They didn't just want a boy. They wanted a product. They wanted a 'Shining Shield.' That’s what my mother called it. She said, 'Dar'—well, she didn't call me Dar—she said, 'You have to be a shield for the family. Strong. Stoic. Impenetrable.'" Though all she remembers is the amount of times that shield was beaten up in sports, how they thought to beat the weakness out of her with any means necessary.

  "I didn’t fight it…I should have tried to…" Dar whispered, rocking slightly. "I didn’t know any better. I used to think this stuff made me better, now all I can see it for is the harm it’s caused me. “

  Dar looked up, her eyes wet as she pointed a trembling finger at the double doors of the building. "That pce. That is where they built the shield, that’s where my mask was put on me, that I still feel where it was stuck.. Fifth grade to eighth grade. Every season. Winter formal. Spring fling. The Dogwood Bloom Ball. They sent me there to learn how to be a 'gentleman.' How to stand. How to hold my face so it showed no emotion. How to dominate a room with 'polite conversation.' It was a factory, Skye. A factory for turning soft, confusing children into cishet male hate bots."

  The memory washed over her, the smell of mothballs, the pinch of the clip-on tie, the instructor’s voice barking, ‘Chin up, gentlemen! Eyes forward! You are the masters of your destiny!’ Her mind fuzzy trying to even go back to that moment in her past, her current self fighting a conscious connection; yet frustrated that she has been unable to shed them.

  "I was so good at it," Dar whispered, the horror creeping back in. "That’s the worst part. I was good at it. I learned to hide in my manners. I learned that if I opened doors and pulled out chairs and spoke in that deep, resonant performative voice, nobody would look closely enough to see that I was dying. I built a cage out of 'Yes, ma'am' and 'No, sir' and I locked myself inside it."

  She looked down at her hands, slender and shaking. "I’m not here to burn down a building, Skye. I’m here to burn the pce that taught me that my kindness was a weakness unless it was weaponized."

  Skye squeezed her hand tight. "There she is. There’s my girl. There’s the fire." She reached into the backseat and grabbed two backpacks. They were heavy, clinking softly—gss bottles wrapped in towels. The cheap vodka. The rags. The accelerant for the exorcism.

  "Are you ready?" Skye asked, calm and firm.

  Dar looked at the building one st time. It stood silent, arrogant, assuming it was safe. It assumed the little boy it had trained was still out there, being a good shield, protecting the family legacy. It had no idea that Dar May LeMonte was parked in the bushes.

  "I’m terrified," Dar said honestly.

  "Good," Skye said. "Fear keeps you sharp. But you aren't shrinking tonight, Dar. We didn’t drive all the way from Florida to pussy out now." Skye opened her door. The interior light didn’t come on, Skye had pulled the fuse back in Jacksonville so they wouldn't be spotted. She slipped out into the night.

  Dar sat there for one second longer. She reached down to her feet. The programming socks were bunched around her ankles, soft and ridiculous. She grabbed her boots from the floorboard—heavy, bck Doc Martens, scuffed at the toes, ced with purple ribbons she’d bought at a Hot Topic at the Avenues Mall in Jacksonville.

  Putting them on was a ritual.

  Left foot. She shoved her heel down, the leather stiff and unyielding. It felt like armor, but the good kind. The kind you chose.

  Right foot. She tightened the ces, pulling them until they bit into her instep. She wasn't slipping into the delicate, patent-leather dress shoes of a debutante, nor the hard-soled oxfords of a gentleman. She was putting on combat boots. She took a breath, inhaling the stale air of the Corol one st time. The Roach was safe, but she didn’t need safe right now. Click.

  She pushed the door open. The humidity hit her like a wet towel spped across the face. It was instant, drowning, heavy. It smelled of wet red cy and pine sap. But then…

  Crunch.

  She ground the heel of her boot into the gravel. She twisted it, feeling the stones shift under her weight. She stood up, unfolding her frame, rising out of the crouch. Her knees popped, a sound of age, of reality. She wasn't eleven like the first time she was here. She was thirty-four. She was a woman who paid her own bills, coded her own future, and drove her own shitty car; well, sat in the passenger seat while her girlfriend drove their shitty car. She adjusted her cardigan, pulling it tighter, but then she stopped, breathed, and undid the top button to breathe a little more.

  The night air swirled around her. The crickets were screaming, a deafening chorus of millions. Dar May LeMonte stood in the shadow of the Dogwood Society, the Heir who refused the title. Despite the entire cotillion affair, she had emerged as herself in the end.

  Skye was already at the trunk, pulling out a crowbar. She looked back, her silhouette cut sharp against the moonlight. She grinned, a fsh of white teeth in the dark.

  "Time to get you to that ball, Cinderel," Skye whispered.

  Dar didn't smile, but she didn't shrink. She took a step forward, her boots crunching on the gravel, walking toward the past to kill it.

  "I'm leading this time," Dar whispered to herself.

  She closed the car door. The sound echoed like a gunshot across the empty lot.