“Mason, wait up!” I called out to him as I worked my way across the rocks. One foot in front of the other, avoiding cracks, and most importantly, avoiding the edge of the cliff we were practically pressed up against. I did my best to avoid looking down and glancing at the thick foliage below; it just wasn’t healthy.

“I think we’re about there, dude!” Mason said. He was an expert at skipping across the rocks. I can’t imagine how he did it, he hadn’t been sober since the first day of high school. “Come on! You can do this crap in ‘Dark Pantheon’, just raise your agility!”

He said ‘raise your ability’ in a sing songy voice and raised his arms as if he were lifting something. I didn’t bother reminding him that ‘Dark Pantheon’ wasn’t real. We were out here searching for a Geocache – a hidden object searchable only through geographical coordinates. Someone at Woodcrest kept a website detailing the latitude and longitude of all caches on or near the campus, and Mason was particularly insistent on finding this one. I had no idea why.

We’d been walking for hours; or at least I thought it had been hours. I’d barely had time to come home and get a shower that night before collapsing into my bed like butter melting into a dish. Mason had woken me at six AM and dragged me off to the park, where we now searched for this hidden cache.

“Hey, odd question,” Mason said as he skipped from rock to rock and I followed, flailing my arms and practically tripping over pebbles. “Where were you yesterday?”

“Yesterday?” I said as innocently as possible. “I was…uh…prancing around in a dress at the GAT house serving drinks for their pledge initiation.”

“Funny,” Mason snorted. “Well, wherever you REALLY were, we had a raid last night, we were a man down because of you.”
Yeah, a man down in more ways than he realized.

“Yeah sorry about that,” I said simply. We walked on in silence for a bit until we came to a ledge. Mason checked his phone.

“We’re right on top of it,” He announced. I looked down.

“What? I don’t see anything.”

“Yep, the GPS puts it below us,” He said proudly. “So we either dig…which we can’t, because this is solid rock, or there’s a cave somewhere.

“Are you serious? We can’t go into a cave, what if we get lost?”

“We’ll call for help!” Mason pointed to his phone.

“Underground?!”

“Hey, I pay for a good signal, so should you.”

“It doesn’t matter!” I shouted as Mason walked to the cliff edge and looked down. “It’s UNDERGROUND!”

“Yes, well, cave’s right here, in the cliff face,” Mason pulled his backpack off, set it down, and produced a nylon rope. “We’ll tie it off to that rock there, alright?”

I barely argued with him before we found ourselves suspended from the rope and climbing into the cave opening. It wasn’t very big, just about the size of a door. I swung in after him and we stood in the landing, staring down into a dark abyss. The rays of sunlight behind me illuminated the immediate interior, but I knew that if we walked too much further, I wouldn’t be able to see my own hand in front of my face. Mason switched on his flashlight. Of course he had a flashlight.

“WHY is there a cave here?” I asked stupidly. Mason turned to look at me.

“Why is there a cave anywhere?”

“Good point.”

“Now pull up your big girl panties and let’s go.”

I knew it was just a figure of speech, but I flinched a little bit when he said panties.

In my pocket, I heard my phone buzz.

“You hear that?” Mason said as he started walking. “You’ve got plenty of signal down here!”

“Yeah, but for how long?”

“You’ve got so much signal you could make a cake with it!”

“That literally makes no sense.”

As we walked into the darkness, I pulled my phone out to check the text. It was from Tiffany.

Kelly – We want you to practice acting more feminine. Be quieter when you’re out in public, take up less space when you stand, things like that. Also, remember what I told you about keeping your legs together when you squat? Do that all the time. When you stand, sit, whatever. Make yourself small.

I looked at the text indifferently and jokingly replied:

What’s next? Wearing a dress in public?

I put the phone back in my pocket and continued to follow Mason.

“Oh look at this!” He said, pointing his flashlight at a set of chalk markings on the wall. “Someone’s been down here already!”
“Great, so we’ll find their bodies,” I was only half joking.

We walked on for a bit longer, at some point we had to duck under a low hanging wall and crawl through a brief tunnel before emerging into an open area. It was an underground lake of sorts; I could hear running water. Stalactites hung from the roof of the cavern, taking my anxiety to new and improve heights.

“Would you look at that,” Mason said. “Isn’t nature a beaut?”

“We’re going to die down here,” I stated conclusively. “This is how I die.”

“Cheer up,” He said. “At least there won’t be an open casket; you’re too ugly for that.”

Just before I could quip back, I felt the ground shudder beneath my feet and a massive banging sound could be heard behind us. I jerked and looked around, trying to pinpoint the source of the sound. What was that? Was the cavern collapsing? We were about to die?

“What the hell was that, Mason?!” I shouted. My voice echoed throughout the cavern.

“Probably just the cave collapsing behind us,” He shrugged. He was stoic as ever, standing tall before the cavern; he hadn’t even turned around.

“Aren’t you freaking concerned about that?!” I demanded “We’re going to die down here!”

“Todd, my friend,” He said, placing his hand on my shoulder. “You have to learn to stop escalating every single situation. Try to think of the positives.”

“We’re stuck in a freaking cave, underground!” I quieted my voice when I realized I was actually screaming. “There’s no way out!”

“And that’s unfortunate,” He said reassuringly. “But think of it this way: we have air to breathe, obviously, no broken bones, and we’re still alive! Plus, we still have that cache to find.”

“You’re still worried about the stupid cache?!” I exclaimed. “We have to find a way out!”

Mason shook his head and took his hand down.

“Okay, look, Todd,” He said. “Do you remember when we were kids, and we got lost in the woods?”

I allowed myself to smirk a bit.

“How could I forget? They called the police and the fire department out after us.”

“Yeah, they did, and they thought we drowned, remember all that?”

“Yeah, I do. They were sending scuba divers into the pond in my dad’s backyard to look for our bodies.”

“Yeah, and who got us home?”

“You did,” I remembered I’d been freaking out, and Mason had kept a cool head the entire time. When I’d finally calmed down and followed him, he’d gotten us home, easily. That entire ordeal probably could have been a few hours shorter if I hadn’t spent so much time freaking out.

“And I’ll get us home this time,” He said reassuringly. “You just have to calm down, okay?”

“Okay,” I said, trying to slow my breathing. I don’t know what I would have done without Mason. Sure he was a slob, but like he said, he always managed to get us home somehow. I wondered if he’d still be my friend if he knew I was trans. If the GAT sisters kept it up, he would find out sooner or later and the thought terrified me. Mason and I had been friends since the first grade. Well, sort of, he’d tried to borrow my pencil and I’d kicked him in the shin. I guess I was kind of an ass. Maybe I was still kind of an ass.

Mason sighed and sat down on the ground just next to the raised ledge that ran around the perimeter of the lake.

“Have a seat,” He said to me.

“I really don’t think this is the time,” I said as I looked around the cavern, trying to find another entrance, or exit, or whatever.

“Or have a stand,” He shrugged. “Either way, we need to talk.”

I begrudgingly sat down on the ledge, leaving a good distance between us.

“You’ve been acting weird lately, really, really weird.”

What did he define as weird?

“I don’t know what you mean,” I said defensively. “I’m just acting like myself.”

“Look, I try to mind my own business, but there’s something eating away at you and as your best friend, it’s my business to find out what your business is. Is there anything I can do to help? Anything at all?”

I wanted to audibly sigh, but for this, I couldn’t really let him know that there was ANYTHING wrong. I sat in silence, he simply stared off in another direction as I tried to come to terms with my situation. You know, breaking into the GAT house wasn’t spontaneous. It wasn’t just something I’d pulled out of my ass last night, though I kind of wish it had been. Wouldn’t it be nice if I were one of those college guys that got his rocks off breaking into sororities and sniffing panties? Yeah, it would. It had all started when I was a kid, I think. I remembered sitting with my mom in that orange car, the one she always bragged about buying for $200. God how long ago was this? Right, six years old. It was a really crappy car, actually. Another thing she’d bragged about was using a pencil to…to something. Something about the car not starting and using a pencil to hold it together. What on Earth had she been talking about? What did this have to do with anything?

I remembered looking at her as we sat there with the cold morning pushing against the barely heated interior. I’d looked at her and said “Mommy, am I a boy or a girl?” What a stupid question, really. I think she’d hesitated a moment before saying: “You’re my beautiful little boy.”

Of course, she’d said that, what else would she say? It didn’t feel right though. Something was way off about it. I’d never felt like a man, period. I guess my dad and I had done male type…things. We’d gone fishing, we’d worked in his garage after school, so many things that I’d never even wanted to do, and now I felt bad that those times had gone by so fast. Had I really put enough effort into a relationship with my parents? Was it really something I needed to worry about while I was stuck underground with Mason? I think part of my being distracted had to do with the fact that I still felt guilt over my parents. I hadn’t told them yet, but you know what? I’d have to tell them someday, wouldn’t I? I knew who they were, what they were like, and I knew that as soon as I told them, our relationship would never be the same. They might even disown me. It wasn’t that I was afraid, it was just the guilt that was creeping up inside me, occupying every square inch of my being. They had raised me, and I was going to betray them like this. You know what? To be perfectly honest, it was going to happen anyway, someday, at some point, but Aleah and the others, well, they might have sped things along a little. I had been so afraid in the moment, but what they’d done to me, no what they’d done for me, it had made me feel so alive. For the first time in my life, I was a woman. I was treated as a woman, and no one at that party thought any different. I was beginning to realize that for the first time in my life I had felt complete. Kind of like when I played my character, Audri in Dark Pantheon. Yeah, that was it, I’d been Audri. Audrey. In real life. I wanted that again. I wanted it so badly. It was a burning desire that washed over my very soul and made my skin crawl. I was addicted – addicted to being myself, and it wasn’t going to go away.

I felt Mason staring at me now; I’d been so lost in thought and he must have noticed. The space between us wasn’t nearly far enough; I thought about scooting over some more.

“I guess…” I finally said aloud, my voice rudely interrupting the ‘drip drip drip’ of water emanating from the cavern ceiling. “I guess I’m just worried about school starting, you know? I’m just…well there’s that math class coming up and you know I’m not good at math.”

Mason stared at me hard for a moment.

“That’s not it,” He said finally.

“That’s it,” I said, trying to sound as convincing as humanly possible. He didn’t believe me. I didn’t blame him; why would he.

“You know, if you won’t talk to me, you should talk to Chastity,” He said, finally standing up from the ledge. “You need to talk to someone.”

I cringed a bit at the mention of my girlfriend. She’d been away for the summer, back home. I’d stayed at school; I really didn’t want to go back to my parents. Maybe I should have, because then my stupid little secret could stay buried, but now it was like someone had thrown an antacid tablet into a bottle of soda and closed the lid. It was bursting at the seams, screaming to get out. That was my reality. A secret that was going to destroy me whether it came out, or not. God, what was wrong with me?

“Now,” Mason said as he stood and clapped his hands. “Let’s see if we can find that cache. You know school starts next week and there’s something in here we can definitely use to entertain ourselves until then.”

We walked the perimeter of the cave, using Mason’s phone to periodically check the coordinates.

“Here we go,” He said, jumping off a small ledge near the lake and peering beneath. “Yup, it’s in this little cubby.”

He reached his arm beneath the ledge and pulled out a small, beaten metal box. Setting it on the ledge, he opened it up and pulled out an envelope. He opened it and peered inside.

“What is it?” I asked curiously, almost forgetting our predicament.

“Two codes for the new ‘Dark Pantheon’ expansion,” He said proudly.

“Are you…are you serious?” I gasped. I’d been seeing promotions for the expansion for a long time now, but I was dreading spending the $50 on it. Okay, yeah, I had enough money from my savings, but I was sort of picky about it. More so than Mason.”

“About as serious as I can get,” He said. “Now let’s find a way out of here. Think about this, if we can see, that means there’s light, and if there’s light, there’s a way out.”

I looked up, he was right, there was light coming from the cavern ceiling. Why hadn’t I noticed that?

“But…how do we get up there?”

“We climb,” Mason pointed to the wall at the far end of the cavern. “ I can see an opening up there, it’s pretty small, but if I’m right, it comes out in that little patch of woods near the park entrance.”

“So, we’re going to come out near the entrance,” I said. “How does that even make sense?”

“Means it’s a secret entrance to the cavern,” Mason shrugged. “People come down here to er…do stuff. I happen to know that the big boulder by the entrance is just sitting on top of a hole, you can open it right up and jump down here. Come on, let’s go push it open.”

“So that’s why you weren’t worried,” I said, annoyed.

”I was a little,” He admitted. “We could have been in the wrong cave.”

“Mason, how many caves are on campus?”

“Well, all of them.”

We climbed the rock wall, Mason more sure of himself than I was, but I somehow found myself at the top and crouched on the cramped ledge before he did. I noticed my hands were bruised and sore – I wondered how I was even going to play Dark Pantheon at this point.

“Come on, give it a push!” Mason said insistently. I reached upward, through the man-sized entrance and found my hands against stone. It was a rounded rock, one that felt out of place for where we were. It was rough, while the rest of the stone around us was smooth. I pushed hard, but I couldn’t get it to budge at first. I tried again, this time putting my back into it, and it began to roll – a little. Finally, I felt it roll. Just barely. Just enough for it to roll onto its side and daylight streamed into the cavern. I covered my eyes as the sun beat down onto my face. I emerged from the cave, my clothes were muddy, and I noticed that my hands were scraped raw from the climbing and pushing the stupid rock out of the way.

“Holy crap, I did it,” I said as I stood up in the daylight. I looked around from left, to right, and saw that we were in fact near the entrance to the park. Then, to my absolute horror, I saw Tiffany and Aleah standing next to the trail entrance, dressed in hiking gear.

Aleah stared at me, mouth agape, Tiffany looked unimpressed. She removed her phone from her pocket, typed something in, and I immediately heard my phone buzz. I looked at her, and she refused to stop staring at me. I finally took my phone from my pocket and saw her response to my earlier message: Yes.

I looked up again and they were already making their way down the trail.

“Hey!” Mason said from below me. “You want to move out of the way and let a guy up? I don’t want to die down here!”