A/N and Warnings: This is obviously Alternate Universe, and the school system is Canadian because that's where I live and that's the school system I am most comfortable writing about. Homophobia and transphobia abound in this first chapter. And just for your information, some of the ignorant comments made in this story are based on first hand experience, some on second hand stories, and other I've read about. This story is about a transgendered person. If you do not wish to read about this issue, please kindly leave now. This story is rated T for vulgar language.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything to do with the Legend of Zelda franchise, this story is a work of fiction created by a fan.


Sitting with head down, trying not to make eye contact, I avoided answering the question. I didn't want my old name said aloud any more, but try as I might, the teachers still inevitably slipped – especially my crabby old math teacher. My pen scratched against paper, leaving indents but without leaving inky trails behind having been out of ink for at least a half an hour. Face hot with a burning desire not to be called on, I visibly flinched when Mr. Steinfeld said my old name. Again.

"Zelda," he all but hissed, wrinkled fingers clutching the whiteboard marker like it was going to flee his grasp at any moment, "Could you tell the class what the answer to number five is?" Waving that stupid marker like it was a conductors wand, he gestured as he spoke. It had never annoyed me more than in that moment.

I swallowed loudly, frustration boiling up and over the surface. "Sheik," I muttered, hands clenched so tightly in my lap that my ragged fingernails split the skin of my palms. My breath was ragged, adrenaline pushing me forward, keeping me from collapsing in a miserable heap of worthlessness in front of every one.

"Sorry? You'll have to speak louder." Mr. Steinfeld's voice was grating on my nerves, making the hair on my arms stand at attention.

Standing so abruptly my chair wedged itself between the backs of my knees and the desk behind me, nearly knocking that over too, I stood for a moment, breathing heavily. The world was spinning, and everything I was hearing was reduced to a dull roar as blood pounded in my ears. "Sheik." No hesitation, no mumbling, just a strong voice. I was sick of this. I got enough of this from the students. I didn't need it from him, too! "My name is Sheik." I said it slowly, enunciating very precisely how to say my name.

Glaring back at me, Mr. Steinfeld silently dared me to say anything else, to push him further. I knew then that he got my point, but he didn't much care. He was never going to relent.

Yanking my chair out from under the lip of the desk behind me, I sat down so hard I heard the plastic crack under me. "And the answer," I added, knowing the bell was going to ring any second now, "Is forty-eight and six."

His face paled and I expected those feeble-looking fingers to break the whiteboard marker in two. That's when the tell-tale high-pitched tone echoed through the halls, signalling the end of class. Kids quickly got up, not wanting to stay and get caught in the crossfire between Mr. Steinfeld and I.

"Homework is due tomorrow," he growled, just before the first fleeing teenager made it to the door, his eyes never leaving my face. "And you. You have a lunch date with the principal."

Sweeping my notes into my bag, I shrugged – if he wanted to punish me for standing up for myself, so be it. I was done with all this bull. Not waiting for anything else he was going to say, I left one hell for another.

Walking self-consciously, I hunched my back and tried to make myself as inconspicuous as possible in the crowd, hoping to any higher power that may have been such a douche as to create a world as hate-filled as this one that I would just get to my next class unharmed for once. There was only one more class before lunch anyway, so if I could just make it through that, I'd be free to eat lunch in the safety of the principal's office. However, the powers-that-be dictated that I wasn't going to make it to class in one piece that day.

Passing a nook in the wall as I was jostled and jolted in the busy, narrow halls, I caught out of the corner of my eye the one person I didn't want to see. I'd dated a kid the year before, when I still wasn't sure about myself, when I was experimenting with a new name and coming to terms with the fact that I wasn't the perfect little princess my parents had always wanted. Since the beginning of school this year, he'd gone out of his way to make my life a living hell, always saying homophobic, transphobic, and downright intolerant bullshit every time we saw each other. Always outing me when I didn't want to be outed, especially in the halls between classes.

I just wanted to be normal, to fit in – like any other teenager yearned for. I wanted to be accepted, to belong, but Fredrick was going to see to it that I was never going to have that.

Our eyes met and I groaned, slumping and working extra hard to wriggle my way through the crowd. Flinching as the first insult flew, piercing the babble like lightning, I tried to ignore that goddamned name my parents had given me. Why couldn't they have gone with a more neutral name? Like ... Jesse. I would have been fine with Jesse. Or even Sam. Something other than Zelda.

Again, my old name, louder and more insistent – he was following me. Great. The third time he called that name, this time just about stepping on my heels he was so close, I stopped and spun, hoping to smack him with my elbow or shoulder or another equally hard and painful appendage. No such luck.

"Finally she listens! What, you're such a stupid dyke that you don't even know your own name now?" He was about my height, broad-shouldered and nothing but muscle – scratch that, the brain is a muscle, right? When I didn't bother giving him any kind of reaction, he mock-pouted, getting in my face, touching my shoulder as he cooed, "Aw, little baby girl gonna cry?"

Shrugging of his hand, I crossed my arms, using the two or three centimetres I had over him to loom as I straightened my posture – and hating the way my chest seemed to fucking inflate as I did so. "You wish," I retorted, sarcasm dripping from my words"I bet that'd make you feel like a real man, huh?" Not my wittiest reply, nor the smartest, but it got him to shut up for a moment, gaping like a fish out of water.

Turning on my heel and forcing myself back into the crowd, I left him there. I heard him start after me, but he didn't follow. Instead, he yelled over the crowd at me, "If I ever see you again, I'll fucking kill you, you stupid whore!"

If this was how the day started, the rest of it was going to be easy.

Right?


Wrong.

The next period was Social Studies, and while the teacher didn't call on me, people were still whispering about me when we got to work on our group assignments. And I knew because they were being passive-aggressive little assholes and not bothering to keep their voices down. I tried my best to ignore them, but every so often I caught snippets of them talking about 'Zelda being a fucking lesbo' or 'She's such a dyke' ... And while I probably would have brushed it off any other time, today it just made me want to hit something. Or someone. In that pretty little face of theirs.

Finally, unable to concentrate on what the hell my own group was doing, I apologized to them and approached the teacher. She was my only female teacher this semester – and also the nicest, as far as respecting me went. I quietly told her that the girls behind me were being insulting and asked if I could make a quick announcement. Sure, I was nervous, but these guys needed to hear it from me, not second hand – and sure, I'd had the teachers explain to my classmates what I was doing and they were told to respect me at the beginning of the school year, but it hadn't had an effect so far. It was time to do something myself about it.

Mrs. White got the class's attention while I stood at the front of the chaos, tables having been pulled together to do group work, feeling like a total dork and very, very nervous about having all the attention on me. But I kept telling myself that this had to be done. The whispering and the rude remarks had to stop. Not just for me, but for any other kid who was going through anything even as remotely difficult as me.

"Uh," I began, twisting my hands in front of me. My over-sized sweater suddenly felt like it was swallowing me. "Hi. I, uh, know you guys ... Some of you, I mean, kind of, well ... Knew me last year as Zelda." I almost winced, having to say that name myself, but plugged on. "And, uhm ... I'm not really old enough yet, but, uh, I wanted to, you know, uh, change it. So, Yeah. I know the teacher said it, you know, a couple months ago -" God, had it really been that long? "- but I would, um, really appreciate it if you, well ... If you could just ... Stop using that name." My voice was getting stronger now. Seeing the rolling eyes and the snickering behind hands was making me feel confrontational again. "When I do change my, uh, name, it's going to be Sheik, so, well ... Use that one. Not ... The other one."

There was a snort from one of the girls in the corner. One of the ones who'd been calling me a lesbian. Shoving my hands in my pockets, I spoke almost directly to her next, knowing that if I did that, I could ignore the rest of the class and get on with it. "Also, I just wanted to say that I'm not a lesbian. I'm not just really butch, and I don't like girls. So, you know, grow the fuck up."

Mrs. White stood up then, frowning. As awesome as she was, she still didn't like swearing, and it had just slipped out. But I pressed on, turning my gaze to another in that girl's group. "Another thing that you got wrong is that for me to be a lesbian, I'd have to be a girl. So you know what you should be calling me? I mean, if you want to be, uh ... Less than politically correct, I guess, is a faggot. Because guess what? I'm gay! G, A, Y. A guy who likes to suck cock." This one elicited a reaction, people turning to one another, eyes wide, eyebrows shooting up and disappearing into hair. Shock, mostly.

Not standing for any more of this, Mrs. White snapped, "That's enough! Sit down, Sheik. Everyone, back to work!" For a moment, I thought that she was silencing me, and I met her eyes with a furious look. The one she gave me in return was far from what I'd expected – she was fighting a smile, and gave me a little nod. "Sheik," she said, guiding me back towards my desk – where my group was looking at me with flabbergasted faces – "Maybe we can talk over lunch?"

"Sure!" I started to say, but then I remembered about my detention. "Er, wait. Mr. Steinfeld gave me detention at lunch with the principal." As I plopped down in my seat, Mrs. White sighed.

"I guess I'll just have to phone the principal and tell her you'll be late." With a wink, she returned to her own desk, and for a few seconds, I stared at her. Mrs. White really was a good person, at least.

When I turned back to my group, the looks they gave me told me that we weren't going to get much work done. One girl, Tina, leaned forward and sort of whispered to me, without waiting for me to even ask about getting back to our project, "So, like, do you have a ... Penis?" Tina had never been my favourite in the group. She was always saying insensitive things and calling me a 'she' when she thought I wasn't listening.

Cale, short for Caleb, smacked his head on the desk, stifling laughter as he doubled over. And the quiet kid who always tried to pipe up and failed when the three of us got really into discussing our ideas and I still couldn't remember his name, just blushed when I looked at him. Tina wasn't serious, was she? But she pressed on, repeating her question and whispering even quieter, glancing around the room as if afraid others might hear what she was asking – but that was already too late.

"What?" I said, incredulous. "No," I whispered back, frowning and wanting to add, I wish. "I haven't even started doing any of that!"

Finished with his giggling, Cale tuned in and asked, "Started doing any of what? Is there, like, an instruction manual or something you have to follow?"

This time, I wanted to push his head back down into the table until he bled. Were all these kids so stupid?

"No!" I repeated, a little louder than I'd intended. "No, it's not like that. I mean ... Well, there's some things I have to do in a certain order, but, no. There's no instruction manual. I have to, like, get ... things taken away ... And there's hormones ..." The blank stares I was getting from Caleb and Tina told me that I wasn't going to get through to them any time soon. But the interested glimmer I saw in the quiet kid's face had me hopeful. Maybe not all the kids in this school were buffoons.

Right when I opened my mouth to insist we get back on track, something small, pointy, and lightweight jabbed me in the neck. Someone had thrown a not at me. The note had been folded in a way as the resemble a very tiny envelope, and either the letter Z or a very spiky and backwards S had been scrawled on it. As I struggled to open it without tearing it in two, I glimpsed the hot-pink ink inside, frowning. Only one person in the class had a hot-pink pen, and she'd gotten in trouble for using it on assignments so often that I would have had to have slept through every Social Studies class to not know who wrote the note.

Once it was open, I glanced over it, having to tilt the paper to see it properly. It read:

ur such a lozer & fake ur not a boy u have boobs ur a girl

Crumpling the note in anger, I tried to just ignore the gaggle of giggling girls in the corner. Normally, I wasn't all that aware of when I was a victim of bullying, since it had been subtle stuff my whole life, being raised and forced into socializing with girls who liked to be emotional bullies. Spreading lies behind someone's back, stealing friends and boyfriends, stealing notes from an open bag, hiding things, destroying self-esteem – the underhanded kind of stuff.

I wasn't used to being laughed at while I was still in the room. I couldn't handle this. The longer I was out, the worse it got. Even though it had only been since September that I'd come out, it felt hopeless. For a few weeks, I'd been contemplating asking my parents to move – but I still felt like somehow, it would be letting these idiots win.


Slamming the door, I flung my backpack on the ground in rage. My things toppled out, but I didn't care. My mother poked her head around the corner as I kicked my notebook into the wall before yanking my shoes off.

"Honey?" she ventured, drying her hands.

"What?" I snapped, scooping up the spilled contents of my backpack to take to my room so she wouldn't bitch at me for that too. Not meeting her eyes, I grit my teeth, relishing the way they felt close to breaking.

"I got a call today."

Great. I braced for the talk I felt coming. "I know."

"Maybe you should go put your stuff away first. Meet me in the living room?" She looked anxious, concerned, but she wouldn't touch me. She hadn't touched me since I'd told her, and I hadn't gotten a hug from my own mother since August, when I insisted they call me Sheik and asked if I could go to school as a boy in the new semester.

"Whatever," I muttered, stomping down the hall to dump my armful of school stuff on my floor. Discarding my jacket as an afterthought, I tried not to stomp my way back to the living room.

My father was siting with my mother, his hand touching her knee. That's when I knew that shit was probably going to hit the fan – he never did that unless he was upset. And he did look pretty upset.

Crossing my knees and arms as I sat on the loveseat opposite my parents, I waited. I wasn't going to start the conversation, not this time. Finally, my mother broke the silence, trying to smile and be optimistic.

"So, how was your day?" Her hands were twisted around the towel she'd brought with her. Always absentminded, she did that often, taking this from other places and just holding them until she noticed that her toothbrush didn't belong in the kitchen or a saucepan on the porch.

"Awful," I grunted. When my father raised his eyebrows, I sighed and slumped forward. "Mr. Steinfeld gave me detention, but you probably already know that." Damn them for making me start this! They always did that, suckering me into continuing a conversation.

"We do," said my father. His tone clearly said that he wasn't impressed.

Well, I wasn't impressed either – at this intervention-esque setting and at the conversation in the first place, so what if I got in trouble? What kid doesn't?

"You got into a fight with a teacher today?" My mother's voice squeaked, horrified at even the thought of her precious little princess getting into fisticuffs.

"No. I corrected him. He was the one to make a big deal of it." I made sure that they knew what I meant, placing emphasis on correction. This happened on a regular basis, they should expect by now that I was getting defensive about personal pronouns and my name.

My parents shared a look, my mother shaking her head a little bit. Then my father spoke again. "You can't just keep pushing people like this." He tried to make eye contact but I quickly stared down at his collared shirt and the pretty buttons on it. "They can't just change because you want them too! It takes some ... Time, getting used to the idea."

I had to take deep breaths from screaming at them. We'd been through this a million times before. There was nothing to get used to! If it helped, they should just forget Zelda ever even existed! I was Sheik, I had always been Sheik, and I would always be Sheik! But I kept my mouth shut this time. It always ended up with my parents crying and me crying and none of us budging on our opinions, just frustrated and angry at each other. And crying. I hated the crying.

He started on his usual rant of how people can't just switch from thinking of a person as a girl to thinking of them as a boy, that it was hard for people – not just me. Always blaming me for this, as if I chose to be this way. As if I was choosing to go through all this shit just for fun!

Finally, I interrupted him. "I want to transfer." It was the first thing that came to mind that might shut him up. And shut him up it did.

"What?" asked my mother. "Transfer? But you just started ..."

I swallowed, steeling my resolve. "I need a fresh start. I'm ... Being bullied." That's when I told them all about my day. They didn't believe me about Fredrick's death threat – or the ones he'd made before – but they did believe me about those stupid girls in my class. After I showed them the note I'd shoved in my pocket. I told them about my lunch date with the principal, how she'd blatantly told me that what I was doing was wrong, and about how in P.E. I had been barred from entering the washrooms to change – again – and forced to go into the girls' change room. Everything just spilled out.

And at the end of it all, despite their hesitation, they did agree that maybe a fresh start was what I needed.

And so, less than a week later, I was starting anew at Nayru Secondary School.