“I don’t know. This is the first one I’ve been around for.” Margie looped an arm around the porch post and swung out and back. “It’s only gonna take us five minutes, max, to get to the barn and back.”

“I say we do it.” Blake stepped down onto the ground.

“Yep. Me too. I’ll get the light.”

Margie led the way to the driveway with the flashlight, holding Blake’s hand. “There’s a tree down just there. We can skirt around it.”

“What about power lines?” Blake hopped to avoid a huge puddle and almost managed it. On the landing, water soaked into his right tennis shoe. He tried not to think about what might be in the water.

“The lines are buried out here, so we should be okay.”

“Great.” Blake eased off his grip on Margie’s fingers, but didn’t let go. It was really dark.

The chicken food was just inside the tack room in a big aluminum can. Margie played the light around until they spotted an empty feed bucket. Blake filled it with a couple of inches of chicken feed. “You think we should look for the kittens?”

“I want to,” Margie said, “but if we go toward the back and anything comes down, we might as well hope it buries us for good.”

Blake sighed. “Yeah, you’re right. I guess this is as much as we can do right now.”

“Wait—listen.”

Blake tensed. Shadows filled the barn, and not being able to see beyond the small cone of light made everything extra spooky. “What?”

A sound like an animal being eaten alive came from somewhere close by. Blake jumped and dropped the feed pail. “What is that?”

Margie laughed. “Rooster.”

“Where?”

“He’s probably hiding nearby.”

“How do we catch him?”

Margie handed Blake the feed pail and looped her arm through his. “We don’t. Come on.”

They picked their way quickly but cautiously back to the porch, and Margie propped the door open with a chair and set the flashlight on top. “Can you find another dish for the food and feed those guys?”

Blake found one on the drain board, filled it from the pail, and placed it in the box with the chicks. They chirped and pecked at it, and he knew they’d made the right decision. “They’re good.”

“Okay.” Margie turned out the rest of the lights in the kitchen and plopped down on the floor with her back against one of the cabinets.

Moving carefully in the near dark from the little bit of illumination from the flashlight, Blake straddled a wooden kitchen chair and folded his arms on the back. He rested his chin on his arms. “What are we doing?”

“Look,” Margie said excitedly.

Rooster landed in the doorway, swiveled his head back and forth a few times, and hopped into the kitchen. He fluttered his wings and pooped.

Blake winced. “Oh boy. Something tells me he’s probably not supposed to be in here.”

“Crap.” Margie laughed. “But there are extenuating circumstances, right?”

“Are you sure you don’t want to be a lawyer?”

“Family of doctors, remember?” Margie said. “Besides, I’m not interested in verbal arguments. I like doing things.”

Rooster one-legged it over to the box of chicks. Blake got ready to jump. Weren’t male animals—birds, whatever—supposed to be dangerous around babies? “He won’t hurt them, will he?”

“I wouldn’t ordinarily put the babies in with the big ones, but Rooster’s not your ordinary chicken. Let’s see what he does.”

Margie sounded calm, but Blake wasn’t so sure. Rooster peered over the box, trumpeted a few more earsplitting screeches, and fluffed up his feathers. A few more screeches and he hunkered down beside the box and appeared to go to sleep.

“All good,” Margie said. “Anyhow, I’ve been thinking I might be a vet.”

“Yeah,” Blake said, “I can see that. It’s still medicine, but you’d be outside more, and animals are so cool.”

“More cool than people sometimes.” Margie moved the flashlight and set it upright between them, enclosing them in a circle of light beyond which the night ruled. “Wait till you’ve spent some more time with some of the bigger animals.”

“I’d like that.” Blake had never thought about learning about animals, but then why would he. He grew up in the city and did what city kids did. He didn’t know anything about farms or animals, and the idea of finding out hadn’t interested him. Until now. The only other time he’d ever felt quite so happy inside had been when he’d escaped into a fantasy world between the pages of a book. Spending more time with Margie would be cool. She was smart and logical, but adventurous too. She was just fun to be around. “You said the other day I could go to the 4-H thing with you. I could still do that, right?”

“Sure. You live here now. I’ll take you with me when we go to the convent to look after the kids.”

“Whoa, back up a minute. Convent kids?”

Margie smirked. “The nuns over at St. Mary’s raise goats, and it’s kidding season. At least the second round of kids for this year. 4-Hers volunteer looking after the babies—feeding them and holding them and stuff. Makes them friendly and calm. Some of us show them at the county fairs. They’re way cute, and it’s really fun.”

“Okay, sure. If you think it will be all right.”

“Trust me, everybody likes volunteers.”

Blake worried he’d stand out. The new kid. The different kid. The weird one. “I’m not gonna know anything.”

“You will before long.” Margie nudged his foot. “I’ll teach you.”

“Thanks.” He sat in silence for a few minutes, listening to the chicks scrabble about and then slowly quiet. The night grew heavy with silence, like the air was growing thicker. “Weird, without any noise—nice.”

“You miss the city?”

“Not so much. I mean, I miss having everything I want being really convenient—restaurants and shops and movie theaters and things like that. But I don’t miss how crowded and dirty it is. You don’t really notice it when you live there, until you get out here and there’s no garbage on the sidewalks.”

“No sidewalks.”

Blake laughed. “Yeah, that too.”

“I guess it’s hard leaving your friends and school and everything, though.”

Blake’s heart jumped. He really liked Margie, and he didn’t want to screw up being friends, but he hadn’t really had anyone to talk to except his mom for a while. The support group was okay, but it was different talking to the group. They understood where he was coming from, which was super, but they weren’t there when he went to school every day. They weren’t part of his everyday life like Margie might be, weren’t maybe going to be friends like she was. He hoped. Margie was different, special. He wasn’t sure how far he could go. What was safe to say. “I miss a couple of them, yeah.”

Margie tilted her head, watching him like she was waiting for more.

“You know, some of the kids I went to school with, my friends, they had a hard time with the trans thing.” There, he’d said it out loud. Trans. He’d owned it. Now he just had to wait to see what happened. Again. A sick feeling rolled through his stomach. Maybe he’d just screwed up.

“Why?” Margie asked.

The big hand squeezing Blake’s chest let go. Hopeful, he said, “I keep trying to figure out why, exactly, so, you know, maybe I can explain better. My best friends were these three girls and a guy I’d gone to school with forever. When I told them, one of the girls weirded out even though she tried to pretend she was cool with it. Allie said she felt like she’d been sharing secrets with a guy all along, and she never would have said some things if she’d known. And how now she couldn’t be herself with me.”

“Wow,” Margie said thoughtfully. “It seems kind of backward, don’t you think? Because you were sharing secrets with them too, probably.”

“Yeah. But you know, not the big one.”

“True. I can see how it might be hard when your really close friends have to think of you differently—like if one of my sisters said she was really a guy. But they’d still be them, right? I mean, you’re still the same person. It’s on the other people to see the real you.”

Blake sat down on the floor next to Margie and wrapped his arms around his bent knees. The sick feeling was gone, and a flame of excitement kindled in his middle. Maybe this would be all right. “I guess when you find out the person’s different than you thought, you don’t know quite how to act. Because we expect guys to be a certain way and girls a certain way.”

“I think we ought to just take people as they are, girls or guys or whatever, as they put themselves out there, you know?” She laughed. “I guess you must. Since that’s what you’re doing. Being the way you know you are.”

“I’m kind of glad we moved up here.” Blake hadn’t told his mom, but in a way, it was a relief to be in a new place and maybe have a new start. “I do miss my friends, but I feel like here, I can just be me and no one will be comparing me to the me they think I should be.”

“Are you gonna tell the school…the teachers, I mean?”

“Yeah, I think so. When I’m eighteen, I can legally change my sex—you know, on forms and stuff like that, but I don’t want to wait to be treated like…like me.”

“Yeah, that makes sense.” Margie pursed her lips “So, what about…the other. You know.”

Blake let out a breath. He knew. “I haven’t talked to my mom yet, but I’m ready. I just started the shots a couple of months ago, but I’m ready for the surgery. For the top, anyway.”

“You should get my sister to do it,” Margie said with conviction. “She’s the best.”

“You don’t think it’s too out there? A lot of trans guys don’t ever have surgery.”

“Do you think it is?”

“No. It feels…not right this way.”

“Well then, you should do it. You know who you are, right? You know what feels right for you. I think you should do whatever feels right for you.”