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Danny had heard it so many times. Surely she should be used to it by now, but she wasn't. Every time, it hurt more and more.
"Thanks for saving me ghost boy!"
"Actually," she stopped mid-air, returning to the guy she'd just saved, one of her classmates from school. She'd been so afraid to tell anyone but... no one knew who she was as a ghost. She was half-dead already, so what could it hurt to finally be herself. "I'm a girl, not a boy."
He tilted his head and looked her up and down and Danny squirmed under his gaze. "Uh... sorry but... you don't look—"
"I'm trans," she interrupted, not wanting to hear the rest of that sentence. "I was still in the closet when... but, I figured there's no point in that now. I'm already dead so what's there left to be afraid of? It's a bit late to change how I look, but I'm still a girl."
"Ohh! I gotcha," he said. "Sucks that you didn't get to be yourself until you were a ghost though. Thanks for saving me ghost girl!"
Upon hearing those words, Danny felt lighter than air. She'd wanted to hear them ever since she started saving people as a ghost and now she finally had. She positively beamed at her classmate, puffing up her chest proudly, then flew off as usual, flying high on the euphoria.
Word spread through the school first, and Danny was nervous, but much to her surprise, her classmates all seemed to be totally cool with the ghost boy actually being a ghost girl.
"Danny? Did something happen, dude?" Tucker asked her. "You've been all smiley lately."
"Yeah, it's freaking me out," Sam agreed. "You're supposed to be the friend that matches my sullen aura."
"It's nothing," she said. "Hey, did you hear about the ghost girl?"
"Yeah, it's been all over school," Tucker said. "Kinda of a surprise, but I guess I can get behind it. Apparently she only got to come out after she died. Sad, huh?"
"Good for her, though," Sam said. "Everyone should get to be their authentic self."
"Yeah," Danny agreed with a soft smile. "Hey, guys—" she was cut off by the bell warning them to get to class.
"What?" Sam asked.
"Nothing, I'll tell you later, when we don't have a class to get to."
"Okay," she agreed. "Good 'cause Ms. Odell is super strict about tardiness. I gotta go."
With as well as things had gone among the student body in general, Danny had gotten too optimistic. On her way to math class, she overheard someone else talking about the ghost girl.
"He can't be a girl looking like that," someone was saying. "I don't care what he says, I'll never be able to see him as a girl."
Her heart sank into her stomach, and she rushed past to get to her classroom as fast as possible, holding back tears. It wasn't like she could help the way she looked in her ghost form. She looked the way she had when she'd died still in the closet. She'd always heard from trans people in interviews and online "Don't die wondering." She wished she could have heeded that advice.
It was too late for that now, though. All Danny could do was try her best to be true to herself. That very night, she looked up voice training videos to practice raising her register and sounding more feminine. Even if she couldn't change her ghost form's physical appearance, she could at least do that much.
She wasn't going to let a handful of bigots bring her down. Not when she was finally allowing herself to be happy. But... maybe she wasn't ready to come out to Sam and Tucker yet after all.
As she grew to be more and more open about it, and words spread beyond the town's teenage population, it became increasingly clear that it wasn't just a handful of bigots.
Danny had always known, on an intellectual level, that Amity Park was pretty conservative. There was pretty much always a republican mayor, and they weren't exactly known for their progressive policies.
Seeing the reaction of those conservatives when the town hero was revealed to be transgender though? That was infinitely worse than anything Danny could have expected.
They organized whole protests. Hoisted signs laden with slurs and hate speech. Shouted things like "We can't let degenerates like the ghost boy poison the minds of our children!" and "I won't have my children saved at the hands of a pervert!"
None of these protesters deigned to acknowledge that Danny was still a child herself.
And even though Danny made a point to avoid the protests when she went out on patrol, it was made difficult by the fact that they were all over the news as well. Not to mention all anyone was talking about was their opinions on the trans ghost kid, as if their opinions could change anything.
Danny almost wished they could. She wished she could just be the hero the town wanted, but she couldn't change who she was. Never in her life, even during her darkest nights, stewing in repression and self-hatred, had Danny wished so much to just be a normal boy. But she'd tried that. For fourteen years she'd tried that. Heck, at school, when she was human, she was still trying.
She just couldn't do it. It wasn't her.
For weeks, Danny spent every day with her face buried in her pillow trying as hard as she could not to let the jeers get to her, only leaving her room for school, and when her ghost sense went—because even if they hated her, she wasn't about to let people get hurt when she had the power to protect them.
During the third week of the protests, Danny went to school as usual, her shoulders slumped and feet dragging. She felt a bit like a zombie. Dead inside, but still walking around.
At least Sam was pleased that Danny had her sullenness back.
She was trudging through the hallways toward her first period class when she heard something that made her whip her head around in surprise.
"Mr. Baxter, why are you and the rest of the football team wearing skirts?"
When she turned, that was indeed what she saw. Dash was wearing a flared denim skirt, leaving his hairy legs exposed for the world to see, and the rest of the football team trailed behind him. A parade of pleats, bright colors, and bare legs. Kwan's skirt even had a floral print.
"We're protesting in support of the ghost girl!" Dash declared. "We're gonna be wearing skirts to school every day until our stupid parents stop their stupid complaining. The ghost girl has saved all of our lives, and she's still doing it, even though a bunch of people are being total dicks. The least we can do is give her the respect she rightly deserves."
The rest of the football team shouted enthusiastic affirmations.
"The girl's saved, like, three games from ghosts so far this year," Dale pointed out. "Without her, we never would have made it to state. So, like, we owe her!"
"There isn't a problem is there?" Kwan asked innocently. "Cause I checked the school dress code, and this is completely within the rules. You can't punish us if we're not breaking any rules right."
"No, there's no problem," Mr. Lancer confirmed through gritted teeth. "As long as you all get to class on time. I will, however, be fact-checking your dress code claim, Mr. Kwan."
"Fact-check all you like, sir," Kwan said, walking past Mr. Lancer with a grin.
Danny stared at the parade of cross-dressing football players as they proudly strode through the hallways to class.
Everyone saw them. They made a point to be seen as much as possible. They even went out of their way to encourage other male students to wear skirts alongside them in support of the ghost girl. The following day, all the cheerleaders showed up dressed as masculinely as their closets allowed. Paulina went all-out with a full three piece suit and tie.
On the third day, Tucker and Sam cross-dressed at school too, much to Danny's surprise.
"Even you Sam?" she asked, looking at the way Sam had strategically styled her hair with a beanie to make it look like she had an undercut and fringe. "I thought you were morally opposed to following trends."
"True, but I love a good protest, and since this trend started as a protest, I've decided to let it slide," she explained. "Plus, I'm pretty sure the ghost girl has saved my life, like ninety-five times at this point, so this is definitely a protest I can get behind."
"I feel the same way," Tucker agreed, stuffing his hands in the pocket of his sunflower yellow dress. "Plus, I just like following trends. You would not believe how hard it was to find a dress with pockets, though. My mom didn't have any so I actually had to go dress-shopping yesterday just so I'd have a place to put my PDA."
"You know, you could have just worn a jacket for pockets," Danny pointed out.
"Or really committed to the cause and carried a purse," added Sam.
"No way!" Tucker refuted. "Now I'm protesting for a whole 'nother thing. Women deserve pockets! End pocket inequality now!" he chanted.
Danny laughed, but Sam joined in for a couple more before the other two broke down in laughter as well.
The next day, Danny borrowed a skirt from Jazz. It was terrifying, imagining going to school in a skirt, but also thrilling, and kind of a dream come true. The skirt was Jazz's favorite shade of teal, and didn't match any of Danny's shirts, but when she looked at herself in the mirror, she was so happy with what she saw that she didn't even care.
Then, her parents stopped her on the way out the door.
"Stop right there, Danny!" his mother shouted.
Danny swallowed hard and turned, trying to stay casual. "Is something wrong?" she asked.
"No child of mine is going to support a ghost!"
"What?"
"That ghost girl is a menace!" her mom continued.
"Wait... but you actually recognize her as a girl?"
"Of course she's a girl," her mom replied with an exasperated sigh. "But more importantly, she's a ghost! And no son of mine is going to join a protest in support of a ghost!"
"Well, the protest is more about trans rights than about the ghost girl," Danny argued. "The ghost girl was just what started it, but really we're fighting for people to be respected for who they really are. That's why I'm doing it, anyway. I don't really care one way or another about the ghost girl."
She held her breath as she waited for her mother to consider the argument.
"Well... that is a good cause," she said. "Alright, I'll allow it, as long as you haven't turned into some hippy-dippy ghost rights activist."
"Oh, don't worry, that's definitely not it," Danny assured. "I gotta get to school."
She all but sprinted down the sidewalk. She felt on top of the world having convinced her mom to let her go out like this. And even more than that, she'd learned that her mom had only been anti-ghost-girl because she was anti-ghost, and that she was actually supportive of trans rights.
Danny had always been afraid to tell her parents because she had no idea how they would react since the topic never came up. Now that the topic was impossible to avoid, though, she couldn't be happier with this discovery. Maybe coming out as her human self wasn't completely out of reach after all.
As soon as she walked into school, Danny froze. Maybe she wasn't ready for this after all.
"Hey, nice skirt, Fenton," complimented Dale from the football team as he walked past.
Suddenly Danny could breathe again. Nobody thought she was weird or out of place. She was getting compliments even. With a smile, she started to walk again.
"Lookin' good Fen-tina," commented Dash as she walked past his locker.
"That style really compliments your figure," said a girl from Danny's history class that she'd never even spoken to before.
This... was absolutely fantastic.
"Finally jumped on the bandwagon, eh, Danny?" Tucker said when she walked into their first period class. He was wearing the yellow dress again, but Danny wasn't sure if it was the same one, or if Tucker had bought multiple of the same. Knowing Tucker, it could be either. "If this goes on much longer, we should trying doing like a matchy thing."
Danny laughed. "I still can't believe my mom let me out like this," she said. "She stopped me in the doorway and told me to change because she wouldn't let me protest in support of a ghost, but when I told her it was more about trans rights than the ghost, she changed her mind."
"Wow, that's like the opposite of my parents," Tucker said. "They didn't care about trans people until the ghost girl came out, and now their all for it. They say they owe her since their son probably would have been killed by ghosts if she hadn't saved me."
"Meanwhile, my parents are right in the middle of the anti-ghost-girl protests," Sam said as she walked into the classroom dressed to the nines in full on guy-goth attire. It was maybe less effective than some of the other cross-dressing, since goth fashion tended to be androgynous, but it definitely worked for her. "They just can't control what I do or how I dress. They think that this 'youthful rebellion' will die out soon when we all lose interest."
Unfortunately for Sam's parents, the youthful rebellion decidedly did not die out when they all lost interest. It went on for over a month, and while some people did stop doing it every day, others doubled down. The football team got matching Casper High red wrap skirts, tied them over their football uniforms, and wore them during their games.
The cheerleaders arranged shopping days for any guys who were interested where they helped find skirts and dresses that suited each guy's figure and skin-tone. A couple of guys volunteered to do the same thing for any girls who wanted help getting guy clothes, but that was less popular, since they guys didn't really know how to shop anyway. They meant well though.
Another month passed, and just when it seemed like neither side was ever going to back down, the adults blinked first. It was announced on the news that the anti-ghost-girl protests were ending, and the concerned parents had decided it wasn't really that big a deal, and they didn't know what their silly kids were getting all worked up about.
The next day, at school, Star, vice-captain of the cheerleading squad, showed up with a cropped short haircut, still dressed like a boy, and declared that he'd realized over the last couple of months that he felt much happier dressed like a guy, and after reflection, came to the conclusion that he was a trans guy, and that he wanted to be called Orion now.
That week, a grand total of nine students came out at trans or non-binary. Evidently the school-wide cross-dressing event had led to quite a bit of self -discovery. Even some students who confirmed that they were still quite cis, didn't fully stop. Kwan still wore a skirt to school at least once a week.
"No, I'm definitely a dude," he would say whenever someone brought it up. "I just think they make me look pretty, and they're really comfortable."
And he wasn't the only one. Even though the protest was over, basically everyone in school now had clothes in their closet that were the "wrong" gender, and they had gotten really accepting of gender non-conformity.
That weekend, Danny decided that it was time. She got her parents and sister together in the living room to tell them first.
"Mom, Dad, Jazz... I'm trans," she told them.
"Let me guess, the protests at school the last couple months brought you to this conclusion?" Jazz said.
"Actually, I've known for a long time before that, but I'm less afraid of consequences now," she admitted. "If football players can casually wear skirts, and one of the most popular cheerleaders can come out as trans, then I can't use fear of not being accepted as an excuse anymore. I'm a girl, and I want to live like one."
Her mom stood up from the couch and wrapped her in a hug. "We love you, sweetie," she said. "No matter what, we'll always accept you and support you. Just let us know if there's anything you need our help with, and we'll be there."
"That's right, Danny!" her dad agreed enthusiastically. "Oops." Her parents pulled away to look at her properly. "You probably don't want to be called Danny, anymore, right? Did you have something else in mind?"
"I'm still thinking about it," Danny admitted. "To be honest I never really expected to get this far. You can keep calling me Danny for now, but I'll let you know when I decide on something else. Um... if you could call me your daughter, though, instead of your son, though?"
"Of course we will, Danny!" her dad shouted. "This is my beautiful daughter, Danny! Would you like to meet my two lovely daughters, Jazz and Danny! I'm so proud of my daughter, Danny for being brave enough to be herself!"
Danny laughed at her father's overenthusiasm, but she couldn't hide the fact that she was smiling so big her face hurt. That Sunday, her mom and sister took her shopping. She'd gotten through the whole two months of protesting with her sister's hand-me-downs and clothes she hadn't worn in ages, but her mother insisted that she was her own woman now and she needed clothes that felt like her.
Danny had to admit it was nice. She'd been shopping before, but in the past, all she'd wanted was to get the least objectionable clothes she could find and get out as fast as possible. It was nice to take her time to actually look at all the cute clothes she was allowed to wear now. And although she did get self-conscious sometimes, her mom and Jazz were super encouraging, and they would instantly come to her defense if anyone seemed like they were gonna say something.
It was honestly a little over the top, but Danny loved it.
First it was clothes, then shoes, then lastly, Jazz dragged her into a Claire's for cheap starter jewelry, nail polish, hair accessories, and, of course, to get her ears pierced. Even though Jazz assured her that it was just an idea and she didn't have to go through with it, Danny instantly said she wanted to. She'd wanted to for ages, but been too afraid to ask.
Danny came home wearing a cute red dress with a white cardigan, red sneakers with ruffled socks, a pair of strawberry hair clips holding back her bangs, and shiny new diamond earrings. She also learned words like "cardigan", when, before, she'd had no idea what the different types of sweaters were called.
She went with something a little closer to her old style at school on Monday—A red blouse and a pair of jeans, although she kept the strawberry hair clips.
"Cute top," Sam said as soon as she walked in the door. "Cross-dressing protest got you too, huh?"
"I've known I was a girl since fourth grade," Danny said, getting to use the voice training she'd done around her friend for the first time. "Cross-dressing protest just made me feel safe enough to come out. It's still Danny by the way. I'll let you know when I decide on a new name."
"Alright, cool," she said. "I guess I can tell my mom I actually do have a female friend like she's been telling me to get for years. She's gonna have a conniption."
"Danny, is that you?" Tucker asked when he came up and saw who Sam was talking to. "Cross-dressing protest got you too, huh?"
Danny turned to see Tucker wearing his yellow dress again.
"I tried to go back to normal, but Kwan's right, this is just too comfortable to give up," Tucker explained. "What about you?"
Danny had to explain herself about a hundred times that day, and every time he classmates were totally accepting and had nothing but good things to say about her coming out.
As time passed, and she grew out her hair and started hormones, she discovered that her ghost form really could change after all. She had died wondering, but thanks to the support of her classmates, and her family, she didn't have to keep wondering.
She could go to school and be acknowledged for who she was. She could fly through the sky with the wind in her hair and feel unmitigated joy the likes of which she had never imagined. Every day she woke up happy to be alive and to be a girl and to be loved for who she was, and every night she went to sleep wishing everyone would get to feel this level of happiness sometime in their life.