I woke up on that very strange morning just the same as I would every other morning, except something was different, I just couldn’t place my finger on it. I went through the motions of a typical Saturday morning, getting up, eating breakfast, taking my meds, taking a quick shower, and by then it was almost 8. It was typical for me to wake up home alone on Saturday mornings because my dad went on work trips a lot and my mom usually went with him. I checked the fridge for a note from them. But there wasn’t one. I checked my dresser top. No note. I even checked the table in case they wrote one and forgot to put it out. There was no note. I just chalked it up to they forgot to write a note, which happens more frequently than you think. I hopped on my phone and played games for a while, and that was when I really started to notice that something was off. There was almost no noise outside. No animals, no cars, no chattering of small children at the community playground. Just quiet. A shudder went through me, as I realized something was very wrong.

I texted my best friend, who always answered right away, no matter what time of day or night. She didn’t even open it. I sat staring at my phone, anxiety building up for 10 minutes, and still not even opened. I thought maybe she had fallen asleep, so I tried calling her. Straight to voicemail. I was really starting to freak out now. Why was nobody here. Why was there no sounds or noises? All these questions were running through my head. Then it dawned on me that I can do whatever I want. A smile crept its way onto my face. I had no clue how long this would last but I decided to make the most of it. I went to my parents' bedroom to check for their wallets and sure enough they were there. I grabbed their credit cards and since I was old enough to drive on my own now, I grabbed the car keys and drove to the mall to shop. And no, I'm not a basic white girl, I'm an emo trans boy, so you better believe we’re going to Hot Topic and Spencer’s.

On the way to the mall, I called my other best friend, who was trans like me. He picked up right away. He noticed something was off to and was also on the way to the mall because he knew that’s where I would be. Of course he didn’t know that I would be like him today, but if he had to guess one person it would be me. I guess that makes no sense, but I think you know what I mean. Anyway. We met up just outside of Spencer’s, which was wide open with nobody there. We went straight for the pride flags and took all of them. We also looked in the back room for more. We found tons of pride stuff, so we took that too. We raided the pretzel place too before we went to Hot Topic to raid them. Then behind us we heard footsteps. And the more we thought about it we realized we were being followed the whole time. The man grabbed us by the arms, and we started to scream. He just shushed us and said that he had a deal for us. A chill ran up my spine. What did this guy want with us?