Just 90 miles north of Dallas is a small south Oklahoma school district with only a few hundred students.

One of them is 12-year-old Maddie. Although she was assigned male at birth, Maddie is transgender and has been living as a girl for two years. But last week, for the first time, her mother says she mistakenly used the girls restroom at her new middle school.

Little did she know that within a few days, her gender identity would become nationwide news and her mother would go on television to defend her. Just her second week into seventh grade, Maddie has faced death threats from adults many times her age; classes were canceled over security concerns.

"You know we have open hunting seasons on them kind. Aint no bag limit in them either," one person posted online, according to the local Fox affiliate, KXII-TV (Channel 12). Another said, "If he wants to be female make him a female.

"A good sharp knife will do the job real quick."

The adults took to a private Facebook group for parents at Achille Independent School District to write their threats, spurred by an angry post from a mother who found out about Maddie's bathroom use. There, behind the relative safety of a social media account, they urged their children to beat their classmate and lobbed crude names at her.

"Lil half baked maggot," they called her, and "thing."

They accused the 12-year-old of peeking over the bathroom stall during her elementary school days. The incident spurred her to begin using the staff restroom, according to KXII News, but Maddie was not otherwise disciplined. When she started middle school school on a new campus last week, her mother said she got confused.

"She hadn't been told where the staff bathroom was," Brandy Rose told the station. "Before she was able to be told, she had to pee, so she used the girls bathroom one single time."

Rick Beene, who heads the small district in Bryan County, said there haven't been any problems with the girl in two years and added that some of the adults making threats online weren't even Achille parents. He told KXII News, "Achille school believes that everybody should receive a free and safe education."

Still, the district dismissed classes Monday and Tuesday for safety reasons, and Maddie's mother filed a protective order against one of the parents who made online threats. No arrests have been made, according to local media, which also reported that the FBI was investigating the threat as possible hate speech.

Just an hour and a half south in Denton, Amber Briggle wishes she could "just scoop them up."

Briggle, whose 10-year-old son Max is transgender, is part of a group of North Texas transgender children and their parents that grew exponentially after 2017's bathroom bill debate. Maddie's story began as a rumor they shared last week, Briggle said, before it became national news.

Over the years, Briggle said she's filed police reports and had people mail hateful things to her home and work. As her son's gender identity became the subject of political debates, she became an activist, attending legislative and court hearings and even sitting down to dinner with Attorney General Ken Paxton, who sued the Obama administration to block trans-inclusive school policies.

Yet Briggle's never dealt with the kind of "heartbreaking" situation Maddie and Brandy Rose are in now: "I just want them to know that they're not alone and it's super scary. But there's a lot more support out there than there are bullies."

Like Texas, the Oklahoma Legislature has tried — and failed — to pass a bill requiring transgender students to use the restrooms that match their sex at birth. The so-called bathroom bill frightened the transgender community in Texas. But it's also galvanized them, leading to an upswing in LGBTQ political engagement as well as the highest number of trans candidates in the state's history.

Both Texas efforts failed due in large part to opposition from big business. But it's unclear whether Lone Star State lawmakers will revive the issue when they meet next in January. Earlier this summer, delegates to the Texas Republican Party Convention listed restricting bathroom use based on sex as one of its top five priorities.