Aunt Rose Change Me Into Girl (Again) - Part 3 Season Two

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The high from the cafeteria confrontation didn’t so much fade as it curdled. By the time the L train rattled into the Wicker Park station, the fiery clarity had been replaced by a cold, sinking dread. The adrenaline that had made my voice steady and my gaze firm had abandoned me, leaving behind a hollow, trembling shell. I had won a battle, but the war felt more confusing and hopeless than ever.

Walking into the loft was like crossing a border into a sanctuary. The air, scented with sandalwood and drying lavender, was a balm. The silence was welcoming, not isolating. Aunt Rose was watering her succulents on the balcony, a picture of timeless calm.

She turned as I closed the door, her eyes missing nothing. She took in my slumped shoulders, the pale cast of my skin, the way I clutched the strap of my backpack like a lifeline.

“You have the look of a soldier returned from a pyrrhic victory,” she said, her voice soft as she set down her watering can.

I didn’t even have to ask what that meant. The feeling was etched into my bones. “I don’t know what I did,” I whispered, my voice cracking. The real one, the one I’d used against Brad. It sounded small and lost now. “I just… I had to say I was a ‘he.’ I had to claim that name. It felt like I was building my own prison wall higher.”

I dropped my backpack and sank onto the large floor cushion, burying my face in my hands. The weight of the performance, of the entire day, crashed down on me. I didn’t cry; I was too exhausted for tears. I just felt a profound, soul-deep weariness.

Aunt Rose moved to the kitchen and began preparing a tonic without a word. The quiet clink of glass, the gentle hiss of the kettle, were soothing rhythms. She brought over a steaming mug. It smelled of chamomile, valerian root, and something earthy—ashwagandha, probably.

“You drew a boundary,” she said, sitting opposite me. “In a hostile territory, you used the language of the occupiers to mark a line in the sand and say, ‘You shall not cross.’ It is a strategic, necessary act. It does not mean you have sworn allegiance to them.”

“It feels like it does,” I mumbled, wrapping my hands around the warm mug. “It feels like I betrayed her. I fought for him. For Rome.”

“You fought for your right to exist in that space without being harassed,” she corrected gently. “The persona you used is a tool, Reene. A disguise. You used the disguise to protect the person inside. The strength you summoned to do that? That was all you. That fire belongs to Reene, not to the costume she was wearing.”

I wanted to believe her. But the costume felt less like fabric and more like a second skin I was painfully molting, only to have to stitch it back on every morning.

The next day, the dread was a physical presence, a leaden weight in my stomach as I reassembled the disguise. The oxford cloth shirt felt stiffer, the jeans more constricting. Pulling my hair into that tight, unforgiving ponytail was an act of self-violence. Each tug was a reminder of the self I was locking away.

Walking into the Sustainable Food Systems lecture was like stepping onto a stage where the audience had been pre-briefed. The usual low hum of conversation didn’t just die down as I entered; it fractured into a patchwork of silence and intensified whispers. Eyes flicked toward me, then away, quick and furtive.

Brad, Mark, and Jason were already in their usual row. As I passed, they didn’t look at me. They didn’t say a word. But their silence was a roaring, aggressive thing. It was a wall they had built, and I was on the other side, in a cold, isolated wasteland.

I slid into a seat a few rows away, my heart pounding a frantic rhythm against my ribs. This was worse. The teasing had been a hot, sharp pain. This was a cold, chronic ache. The ignorance was a form of negation. I wasn't even worth their mockery anymore; I was beneath it.

Chloe came in a few minutes later, her eyes scanning the room until they found me. She gave me a small, sympathetic smile and came to sit beside me.

“You okay?” she whispered as the professor began setting up.

I just nodded, not trusting my voice. What could I say? No, I’m not okay. The silence is louder than their insults, and every second in this body feels like a lie.

The group project meeting that afternoon was a masterclass in passive aggression. We met in the library again, and Brad, as the self-appointed leader, spread his notes out with an air of exaggerated importance.

“Alright, so I’ve finalized the vendor list,” he announced, not looking at me.

“Finalized?” Chloe asked, her brow furrowed. “We were supposed to do that together. And what about Rome’s list? He compiled all the local organic farms.”

Brad shrugged, a dismissive little gesture. “Yeah, I saw it. It was… thorough. But I’ve got a cousin who works for a major produce distributor. We can get everything we need through him, cheaper.”

My list, the one I’d spent hours meticulously researching, was being brushed aside not because it was bad, but because it was mine.

“The whole point was to source locally and sustainably,” I said, my voice carefully neutral, the Rome-voice feeling like gravel in my throat. “A major distributor defeats the purpose.”

Brad finally looked at me, but his gaze slid over my shoulder, not meeting my eyes. “It’s about practicality, Lopez. My guy is practical.”

The word hung in the air. Practical. The opposite of whatever I was.

As we divided the remaining tasks for the presentation, they employed a new tactic. It wasn't teasing; it was erasure.

“Chloe, you’ll handle the intro slide,” Brad said.

“Mark, you take the financials.”

“Jason, you do the conclusion.”

He looked down at his notes. “I’ll cover the vendor rationale.”

I waited. I had drafted the entire proposal, written the bulk of the content. I was the one who understood the sustainable angle inside and out.

Brad looked up, a parody of surprise on his face. “Oh. Lopez. You can… uh… you can be the timekeeper. Make sure we don’t run over.”

Timekeeper. A job for a child. A non-job. Heat flooded my face. Chloe looked mortified.

“Brad, that’s ridiculous. Rome should present the core concept. It’s his idea,” she said, her voice firm.

“We’re a team,” Brad said, his tone final. “This is the division of labor. Everyone’s happy.”

I wasn’t happy. I was being systematically dismantled, my contributions minimized into nothingness. This was the new torment. It was a thousand tiny cuts, each one saying, You don’t belong here. You are not one of us. You are less.

The digital harassment started a few days later. I was lying on my bed in the loft, scrolling mindlessly through my phone, trying to decompress, when a new follower notification popped up on Instagram.

The username was chi_campus_confessions. The profile picture was a pixelated, generic meme. A cold knot tightened in my stomach. I clicked on it.

The account was new, with only three posts. The first was a meme of a confused-looking cartoon character with the caption: “When you can’t tell if it’s a he, a she, or a they/theory.” The second was a screenshot from a movie scene of someone in drag, with the text: “My college roommate.” The third was a more pointed, ugly post: “Some people are just attention-seeking freaks. If you have to announce what you are, you’re probably just confused.”

My blood ran cold. It wasn’t explicitly about me. But it was. The timing, the content—it was a targeted campaign of vague-posting. I showed it to Aunt Rose.

Her lips tightened into a thin line, the closest I’d ever seen her to anger. “The cowardice of the anonymous troll,” she said, her voice like ice. “They lack the courage for a direct confrontation, so they lob grenades from the shadows. Do not engage. Block it. They feed on reaction.”

I blocked the account. But the damage was done. The harassment wasn’t confined to the classroom anymore; it had seeped into my sanctuary, my phone, a place I used to talk to Leo and lose myself in beautiful, affirming content. Now it felt contaminated.

The strain of the performance began to manifest physically. I started having trouble sleeping, my mind racing with the day’s microaggressions. I’d lie awake, replaying Brad’s dismissive tone, the sting of being made timekeeper, the vile words from the anonymous account. In the mornings, dark circles bloomed under my eyes. My appetite, once joyfully tuned to Aunt Rose’s healthy meals, dwindled. I picked at my food, my stomach in a constant state of low-grade nausea.

Getting dressed for campus became a daily ritual of self-betrayal. One morning, standing in front of my closet, I felt a wave of such profound despair that I sank to the floor, the stiff, hated jeans in a heap beside me. I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t.

Aunt Rose found me there. She didn’t say a word. She simply knelt, gathered me into her arms, and held me while I finally, silently, cried—harsh, dry sobs that felt like they were tearing something loose inside my chest.

“The spirit cannot thrive when the body is perpetually at war,” she murmured into my hair. “You are carrying a weight no one should have to bear.”

That night, I video-called Leo. I needed to see a face that knew me, the real me. His face filled the screen, warm and concerned.

“Hey, you,” he said, his smile fading as he took in my appearance. “Whoa. Reene, you look… tired.”

“I am,” I said, my voice raw. I told him everything. The silent treatment, the digital troll, the way Brad had reduced me to a timekeeper. I told him about the crushing weight of the disguise, how every moment in those clothes felt like a lie that was slowly suffocating me.

“I’m not happy, Leo,” I confessed, a fresh tear escaping. “I thought standing up would make it better, but it’s just… different. And worse in a way. I feel so alone there. So invisible, even when they’re all looking at me.”

Leo listened, his expression growing darker with every word. When I finished, he was quiet for a long moment, his jaw clenched.

“I want to find Brad and that stupid anonymous account and just…” He trailed off, shaking his head. “But that wouldn’t help, would it?”

“No,” I whispered.

“Then what can I do?” he asked, his voice full of a desperate love. “Tell me what to do.”

“This helps,” I said. “Just seeing you. Just knowing you see me.”

He managed a small smile. “Always.” He was quiet for another moment. “You know… you don’t have to be completely defenseless in there. The real you, I mean. What if you had a secret?”

“A secret?”

“Yeah. Something small. Something only you know about. A tiny piece of Reene you can carry with you into the battle. A… a reminder that the costume isn’t you.”

The idea was like a tiny, flickering candle in the overwhelming darkness. A secret.

The next morning, as I prepared for the torture of getting dressed, I thought about Leo’s words. I looked at the uniform of misery laid out on my bed. Then I walked to my dresser and opened the small wooden box where I kept my few precious things—the jade roller, the tortoiseshell hair clip, a delicate silver chain with a single moonstone Leo had given me for my last birthday.

I picked up the chain. It was fine, almost fragile. I unclasped it. Then, I put on the stiff, white t-shirt I wore under my button-down. I fastened the chain around my neck. The moonstone settled cool and smooth against my sternum, a hidden secret. I then buttoned the oxford shirt over it, hiding the necklace completely.

No one would see it. But I would feel it. A small, cool weight against my skin, a tangible reminder of the person I was beneath the fabric. A piece of Reene, going to war.

It didn’t make the jeans less rough or Brad’s silence less loud. But as I walked to the L train, my fingers brushed against the spot on my chest where the moonstone lay. A tiny, defiant spark ignited in the hollow of my chest. It wasn’t much. It wasn’t freedom. But it was a start. It was my secret. And for now, in the bleak landscape of this unbearable performance, that secret felt like a revolution all its own. The war was far from over, but I had just planted a flag for myself, deep behind enemy lines.

The secret of the moonstone necklace became a tiny, vital anchor. In the middle of a lecture, when Brad’s whispered comments to Jason felt like physical blows, I would press my thumb against the hidden gem through my shirt. Its cool, smooth solidity was a message: I am here. You are real. This is the costume. It didn’t stop the pain, but it gave me a focal point to endure it.

But anchors can only hold so much weight before the chain itself begins to strain.

The digital harassment escalated. chi_campus_confessions began posting more specific, more venomous content. It was never a direct name, always a veiled reference that our entire class understood. A post about "the freak in Food Systems who needs to pick a lane." A meme about "mental illness being confused for identity." Each one was a small, poisonous dart, and the anonymity made it feel inescapable. I blocked the account, but a friend would show Chloe, who would, with a pained expression, show me. The specter of it was always there.

The group project hurtled toward its conclusion—a fifteen-minute presentation worth a significant portion of our grade. The tension within our group was a taut wire. Brad, Mark, and Jason had coalesced into an impenetrable bloc, communicating in grunts and inside jokes that excluded Chloe and me. They had taken my meticulously researched proposal and stripped it of its soul, replacing local, artisanal vendors with Brad’s cousin’s wholesale distributor. The project was no longer about sustainability; it was about convenience and, I suspected, asserting dominance.

Chloe fought valiantly. “The thesis is weakened if we don’t prioritize local sourcing,” she argued during our final meeting in a noisy study room.

“The thesis is to get an A, Bennett,” Brad retorted, not looking up from his phone. “My way is cheaper, faster, and gets the A. End of story.”

“It’s intellectually dishonest!” she shot back.

“It’s practical,” Mark chimed in, using their favorite new word to dismiss anything that required nuance or thought.

I sat silent, my role as ‘timekeeper’ rendering me a ghost at the table. My hidden moonstone felt cold against my skin. I was watching my passion project, the one thing I had genuinely contributed, be gutted and turned into something cynical and bland. The injustice was a hot, sour taste in my mouth.

The day of the presentation arrived, a grey, drizzly Thursday that perfectly matched my internal weather. My anxiety was a live wire, crackling under my skin. I’d barely slept, and my hands trembled as I tried to force down a few bites of Aunt Rose’s chia pudding.

“Breathe, my love,” she said, placing a steadying hand on my shoulder. “Remember the mountain. No matter how fierce the storm, the mountain remains, grounded and unshaken. You are the mountain. Their words are just weather.”

I nodded, trying to embody the metaphor, but I felt more like a sapling in a hurricane.

In the lecture hall, the atmosphere was charged. The other groups were setting up, chatting nervously. Our group stood in a fractured huddle near the front. Brad was practicing his opening lines under his breath, oozing a cocky confidence. Chloe was fiddling with the presentation clicker, her face tight with stress. Jason and Mark were snickering at something on Mark’s phone.

The professor, Dr. Evans, called our group up. “Whenever you’re ready, team.”

We took our positions behind the podium. Brad launched into the introduction, his voice booming with a false, salesman-like heartiness. He completely misrepresented the project’s core premise, framing it as a “cost-effective approach to perceived sustainability.” I saw Dr. Evans’s eyebrow twitch slightly.

Chloe was up next, delivering the data I had compiled with a strained smile, trying valiantly to steer it back toward the ethical framework. Then it was Brad again, explaining the vendor “rationale,” which was essentially a plug for his cousin’s business.

Then came the moment I had been dreading. Brad, finishing his section, turned slightly. “And now, to ensure we keep things on track, Rome will be our timekeeper and will signal when we have two minutes remaining.”

He said it with a smirk. It was a public proclamation of my diminished status. A few snickers rippled through the room, primarily from his friends. My face burned. I felt a hundred eyes on me, seeing not a presenter, not a contributor, but a glorified stopwatch.

I stood there, frozen, the small, digital timer in my hand feeling like a branding iron. I looked at Dr. Evans, who was watching the exchange with a neutral, academic curiosity. I looked at Chloe, whose eyes were pleading with me to say something.

And in that suspended second of humiliation, something inside me broke. Not in a shattering way, but in a clean, decisive snap. The anchor chain had held, but the storm had finally become too much. The weight of the disguise, the microaggressions, the anonymous bile, the theft of my work—it all coalesced into a single, clear thought: No more.

I didn’t look at the timer. I didn’t give a two-minute warning. I took a small step forward, toward the podium. My heart was a wild bird beating against my ribs, but my voice, when it came out, was not the strained, neutral Rome-voice. It was Reene’s voice. Clear. Quiet, but carrying to the back of the room.

“Actually,” I said, my gaze fixed on Dr. Evans, “the original proposal, which formed the basis of this project, placed a primary emphasis on creating direct partnerships with local farmers to shorten the supply chain, reduce carbon footprint, and strengthen the community economy.”

The room went utterly silent. Brad’s smirk vanished, replaced by stunned fury.

I continued, my words gaining strength. “The shift to a wholesale distributor, while perhaps more ‘practical’ in a narrow financial sense, fundamentally undermines the environmental and social pillars of sustainable food systems that this class is built upon.” I glanced at the slides behind me, at the corporate logo of Brad’s cousin’s company. “The data on the final slide, for instance, comparing food miles, is from the original local vendor list. It doesn’t accurately reflect the current proposal.”

I had just publicly eviscerated my own group’s work. I had exposed the lie.

The silence in the room was deafening. I could feel Brad’s rage radiating from beside me. Dr. Evans leaned forward, her expression no longer neutral, but intensely interested.

“Is that so, Mr. Lopez?” she asked. “Would you care to elaborate on the discrepancies?”

And I did. For two minutes that felt like a lifetime, I spoke. I talked about food miles, about soil health, about the economic multiplier effect of local spending. I used my real voice, my hands moving expressively, my passion for the subject finally, fully unleashed. I wasn’t Rome, the timid, confused boy. I was Reene, the knowledgeable, articulate student who had done the work and refused to let it be corrupted.

When I finished, there was another beat of profound silence. Then, Dr. Evans nodded slowly. “A compelling critique from within your own team. Thank you for that clarity, Rome.” She turned her gaze to Brad, whose face was purple with humiliation. “It seems there are some significant ethical questions your group needs to reconcile in your final report.”

The presentation was over. We shuffled back to our seats in a state of shock. The second I sat down, a wave of nausea and adrenaline so violent hit me that I thought I might be sick. My entire body trembled. I had done it. I had broken the performance. I had chosen a nuclear option, and I had no idea what the fallout would be.

The rest of the class was a blur. The moment the lecture ended, I bolted. I didn’t wait for Chloe. I didn’t look at Brad. I just needed to get out.

I burst out of the building and into the damp, grey afternoon, gulping in the cold air like a drowning person. My phone buzzed incessantly in my pocket—probably Chloe, maybe Leo. I couldn’t look. I started walking, no destination in mind, just moving.

I found myself by the lakefront, the same place Leo had taken me. The water was choppy and steel-grey, reflecting the tumultuous sky. I sat on a cold bench, the damp seeping through my jeans, and finally let the tears come. They weren't quiet tears of despair like before. They were hot, messy, frantic sobs of release and sheer, unadulterated terror.

I had just potentially blown up my grade, made permanent enemies, and drawn more attention to myself than ever before.