So far Kyle has found it difficult to keep a deal he made with his mother: That if he wears girls’ clothes for a month that she would buy him a moped (a motor scooter). Somehow he has become Demi, a full-time cross-dresser with a gay boyfriend and a lesbian lover. Everyone believes that Demi’s a transsexual, including her mother. Only Kyle knows he’s taking sex hormones, and only Kyle knows that he’d still rather be a boy. Soon after getting her moped, Demi loses it as a consequence of riding it through the school dressed as Pocahontas. This ride wins back the respect and friendship of the black shirts, while making her a candidate member of a school gang. Part 13 ended with Demi’s fearful of becoming a gang bitch, about to go to New York with Steve, and agreeing that they both should leave town for The Amazonian School, which Demi doesn’t realize is for girls only.

Anything for a Moped? - Part 14 by: Dawn De Winter
Chapter Eighteen: Do Coffee Beans Grow in Ireland?

"Young lady, you’re inappropriately dressed! I expected you to be wearing a skirt or, better yet, a dress."

Elvira was furious. She might have slapped Demi, had Steve not been watching. They were at the airport waiting for the plane that would take them to Chicago, and from thence to New York.

Steve was puzzled by his mother’s show of temper. He preferred his boyfriend in tight jeans, even girls’ jeans. While Steve found Kyle’s crotch to be unnervingly feminine, his rear, so pleasingly plump, was well nigh perfect. In tight jeans, Kyle’s buttocks looked so incredibly inviting.

Why then did Elvira insist on skirts and dresses? Steve didn’t have the answer, but then he had never been able to comprehend why his mother was so eager for Kyle to become as much like a girl as possible. Steve guessed it was because she didn’t like ‘sissies’. She was always putting them down, and so it was possible she didn’t want Kyle to be one.

"Maybe," Steve thought, "that’s why she hopes that Kyle really is Demi, a transsexual. I hope she’s wrong. I don’t want him to be a girl. This weekend I’m going to get Kyle back. There will be no gangs to use as an excuse for dressing like a girl. He says he’ll burn his bra the moment he’s free of the Jets. Well, we’ll see, won’t we?"

"Mrs. Lancer," said Demi, her countenance downcast. "I packed two dresses. I’ll change into one of them when we get to New York. Steve knows why I won’t wear a dress in Des Moines. I’ve got an image to uphold."

"What image, young lady? As a slob? You really should get rid of that scarf. Have you no clothes sense? A blue and white scarf does not complement a pink jersey. And those jeans look like they have been sprayed onto you."

"Oh mom, leave Demi alone. She won’t be wearing the scarf in New York. It’s an Iowa thing."

"Well, I sincerely hope so. When we get to the hotel in New York, Demi, the first thing we’re going to do is take a look at your outfits. I do want you to look your best tonight, and if necessary we’ll buy you some clothes — at my expense — so that you can look like you actually belong in New York."

And to Steve, Elvira said, "This is an important night for the two of you, and I want your girlfriend to look … awesome."

Steve blushed. Demi muttered something under her breath. She wished Elvira would stop putting ideas into Steve’s head. But Elvira had a one-track mind, even though they were flying on an airplane: Not an hour went by without her hinting that Demi should doll herself up in order to seduce Steve.

Elvira was giving Demi a green light to have sex with her son. Indeed, she was virtually insisting on their coupling. But Elvira lacked finesse. The more she talked about sex, the more embarrassed the two teens became about it. Steve found himself having to whisper to Demi that, "I don’t know what my mother is talking about. I have no intention of making a pass at you tonight. You have my word on it."

Demi hadn’t sought this pledge. She had, in fact, been looking forward to necking with Steve. She had even decided, sort of, to allow him to steal another base, although she was determined to protect home plate. There was no way she was going to have intercourse with Steve or any other boy, for she didn’t think Kyle could cope with being both a bisexual transsexual. Yet Demi knew that she didn’t want any cloth to be in the way the next time she touched Steve ‘there’.

Would she allow him to take off her bra and panties? Maybe. She wasn’t yet sure how much she’d let Steve see. But she did know how much she’d let him do — and it would not include allowing him "to use her like a girl." Whatever Jo might fear or the school assume, Demi was no slut. Indeed, she reacted to Elvira’s not-so-subtle efforts to put sex on the teens’ weekend agenda by resolving to keep her legs crossed and her back to the wall to the entire time she was in New York.

Demi blamed Steve for his mother’s sexual innuendos. By the time the three of them had reached LaGuardia airport in New York, Demi had become as frigid as a cold front in November. She even refused to hold Steve’s hand as they waited for their baggage. On the way to their hotel near Times Square, both teens hugged the car doors. A moped could have driven through the gap they had left in the back seat.

At the hotel, Demi complained that Elvira had not kept her promise about room accommodations. She had been promised, she said, her own room. Not only did she not have her own room, she didn’t even have own bed. The room she shared with Steve had just one bed — a queen-sized bed in the shape of a heart beneath a towering, curtained canopy.

While Demi was muttering about the ‘trap’ that Elvira had set, Steve was ranting about her ‘bad taste.’ The femininity of the room appalled him. Never before in his life had he ever spent more than minute in a room with so much brocaded silk, satin and lace, and with so many variants of pink, his least favorite color. Even the sheets were, to his disgust, made of pink satin. He’d asked his mother for flannel sheets, and as macho a décor as possible to get his boyfriend Kyle up for hot, raunchy, gay sex.

When he finally stopped venting, Steve had time to reflect, "It’s going to be extra hard to get Kyle to lose Demi in this crappy room. Cripes, all that pink is such a turn-off that I’m going to have trouble getting hard myself!"

Both teens were upset. They could not have started this tryst farther apart in spirit. And the situation only worsened when Elvira barged into their room without knocking in order to inspect "Demi’s trousseau." As Demi laid her clothes out on the dress, she heard moans from Steve and sighs from Elvira. Nothing in her suitcase was ‘masculine’ enough for Steve, nor ‘pretty’ enough for his mother. The two dresses, Elvira said, were a dreary blue unworthy of a fashion-conscious city like New York.

"Demi, we’re now in the Big Apple. We can’t have you dress as though you’re going apple-picking in Iowa. My, my, we do have our work cut out for us."

Steve spoke up: "Mom, I agree. Demi brought the wrong clothes. She should have packed some clothes for Kyle, because he’s the one I want to attend the game with me tonight."

He then spoke directly to his boyfriend: "I realize, Kyle, that you didn’t have any choice when you were in Des Moines. You had to be Demi and you had to dress like a girl. But we’re in New York now. So let’s go and buy a denim shirt for you, as well as some Levi 501 jeans, some kick-ass boots, a black Stetson, and — if you insist on wearing underwear — a jock strap. What do you say, mom? I bet there’s a western gear store near here. New York’s got everything."

"Steve, you really don’t understand Demi, do you? Demi, it’s time to tell my son the unvarnished truth. As you know, you’ve told quite a few whoppers to people that you definitely don’t want repeated to anyone, least of all to your mother. Isn’t that right, child? It’s time for you to tell Steve that you love being a girl, and it’s definitely time for Steve to realize that he not only can love girls, but that he actually is in love with one at this very moment. So, Demi make all of us proud. Make your own mother proud. Tell Steve that you were profoundly unhappy as a boy, and that you’re ecstatic being a girl."

The threats were obvious enough to Demi. Unless she denied all desire for Kyle’s return, Mrs. Lancer would expose her most damaging lies to her mother, the school, and Jo’s grandmother. To be sure, Demi wasn’t sure how much fallout there would be if Steve’s mother tried to ‘nuke’ her, as she was beginning to forget which lies she’d told, and to whom.

But there was one lie that haunted her, a lie she did not want revealed to her mother — and that was the story she’d told about being beaten by Barb on account of her cross-dressing.

It was the one lie that made Demi ashamed. It was the one lie that would make Barb ashamed of her child. It was the one lie that would make Barb James ashamed to see her liberal friends. It was the one lie that might bring about the worst shame of all — the loss of the moped forever. It was the one lie that could only be covered up with a dress.

It was a lie with many progeny. As Demi watched it give birth to yet another whopper — this time a lie about her sexual identity — she reflected that the new lie at least had the virtue of protecting her virtue. Steve was less likely to jump Demi’s bones than Kyle’s, and Demi knew that Kyle was still too weak, despite the steroids he’d been gobbling, to fend off an overly amorous Steve. All things considered, the best defense for Kyle was another lie about Demi.

"It’s tr…true," Demi haltingly started. "I would rather be Demi than Kyle. I like wearing girls’ clothes. I’m not wearing them because of the gangs, whatever they might claim. I’ve even been looking forward to … wearing dresses in New York. It’s been bugging me that Iowa’s so full of slobs that I can’t wear them to school."

She looked at Elvira for approval, and mostly got it. From Steve, she got a look of total bewilderment. Elvira wanted her to say more: "Demi dear, don’t be shy. Now’s not the time to be shy. I want you to tell my son what sex you truly are, as well as something about your plans for your body in future."

"I’m … a … girl," Demi said quietly, so quietly that Steve had to strain to hear her. "So I want to have a girl’s body."

Elvira was pleased, but her lips were mouthing the word "more," and so Demi took the final plunge: "I want a total sex change," she said. Elvira beamed. Demi had finally given her the cue she’d been waiting for since they first alighted the airplane.

Elvira whipped out a pink envelope. "It’s a card, Demi. Do open it. I’m sure you and Steve are dying to know what it says." Demi ripped into it: A greeting card, its cover sported a photograph of a shirtless, muscular and barefooted youth in faded blue jeans being sprinkled with ‘pixie dust’ by a cartoon fairy with flapping gossamer wings and a sheer, linen tunic-like dress that revealed every curve of her body. One word arced, multi-hued, like a rainbow around the boy’s head — "Poof!"

Inside could be seen the legend, "Congratulations On Your Sex Change," surrounding a doctored photograph of the same boy, beautifully made-up and coiffed, with a voluptuous female body scantily clad by the same fairy tunic. The fairy still hovered above the youth’s head, but was clearly shocked at having been transformed into a limp-wristed, male dandy in a white ruffled shirt, red Mary Jane shoes, and a plum-colored velvet suit, with knee britches and white tights, with white ribbons at the knee.

Demi was a bit shocked by the insensitivity of the card. Didn’t Mrs. Lancer know that she had a gay son? Did she think him a ‘poof’? But far more shocking was the message Elvira had penned: "Steve and I want you to accept these two checks as tokens of our affection for you. They’re to pay for the operations to give you a woman’s body. Steve and I can’t wait to see the new, improved Demi."

Most shocking of all were the sums on the two checks. Demi was amazed to see that her new body would cost her more than a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. As she knew there was no point in asking for the bike instead of for the promised breast implants and vagina, she didn’t quite know what to say. Nor did Steve, who had no idea before now that his mother intended to spend a small fortune on remaking Demi.

Elvira was the first to speak after the opening of the card: "Steve, you didn’t get an opportunity to sign the card, and I know you want to. Here, you can sign it now. You’re definitely as thrilled as I am that our family has been able to find the money to ensure that your girlfriend will become a real girl in a matter of months. Isn’t that wonderful?"

Steve looked over to Demi for a cue. He couldn’t read her face. It was blank. He couldn’t tell whether she was speechless with joy or stunned into silence. As he didn’t want to ruin the moment for his mother and Demi, he lightly kissed his girlfriend on the lips, bade her "congratulations, I guess," and then signed the card. He had tears in his eyes.

Demi could not decipher the meaning of the tears. She could not tell whether they bespoke joy or sorrow. Whichever, she felt estranged from Steve. He had always been Kyle’s main defender, the one person determined to keep the boy in Demi alive. With his signature, Steve had embraced Demi and betrayed Kyle.

There was so much money involved that Demi assumed that the two Lancers must have discussed and agreed upon her future. Later that day Steve heatedly denied having any advance knowledge of either the card or the checks, but Demi found his denials unconvincing. He must have known!

Kyle was furious over his friend’s betrayal, and Steve immediately realized that something had changed in their relationship, possibly forever. In Demi, mixed emotions raged. The possibility of a sex change had definitely aroused her, and to Kyle’s horror, the two checks — especially the larger one for reconstructing his sex organs — were causing his penis to strain against the gaff’s confinement.

"Jeez, I’m getting turned on by the thought of having my dick cut off! What’s happening to me?" Kyle wailed inside, the question reverberating like an echo deep inside the well of his being.

Kyle’s hand shook, but it did not drop the checks. He was terrified of being lost forever. Demi was almost as frightened by the choices that Elvira had handed her. She felt like a fetus being pulled by a doctor’s forceps through the birth canal. Was she really willing to enter the world crying like a newborn baby? Maybe.

"No, definitely no," objected Kyle to himself. "It’s all been a gag. I’m supposed to return to normal, any day now. I don’t want to be Demi forever!"

"And why not?" a voice cooed from deep inside. "Demi’s beautiful. Everyone loves Demi. Even Steve prefers Demi."

"Demi, are you going to thank us?" Elvira loudly asked. "I bet Steve wouldn’t mind being told with a kiss and a hug how much you love his present."

Steve didn’t look like he was seeking a kiss, but Demi took the plunge. Or her tongue did. She amazed herself by soul-kissing Steve right in front of his mother. So passionate was her kiss that Steve quite lost himself in it.

As their mouths locked and their bodies embraced, Elvira took their picture. She had a photo for virtually every moment of their trip so far, including one of Demi’s shocked look when she opened her card. But this was the photo that had the most lasting effect on Barb when she received it in the mail from Elvira with the caption, "Demi thanks Steve for his present of a sex change."

When Demi reluctantly admitted that the photo had indeed been taken almost immediately after she’d received her gift, Barb concluded yet again that Demi’s actions spoke louder than Kyle’s words. He claimed to be "revolted by the idea of a sex change," but Demi appeared to be enraptured by the very same "idea," as Steve confirmed when Barb quizzed him about the photograph and kiss.

Demi and Kyle also gave Barb mixed signals when she’d asked whether they should keep Elvira’s checks. While Kyle urged his mother to tear them up, Demi prevailed on Barb to deposit the checks "for safekeeping."

It had taken some persuasion from Demi, for Barb had not wanted to become "beholden" to a woman she detested. But Demi had argued that Mrs. Lancer’s vileness was all the more reason to keep her money. In time, Steve’s mom might even forget that she’d given Demi the money, or might not care whether it bought a Harley-Davidson instead of a sex change.

"Or it could pay off the mortgage," Demi hastened to add when she saw from her mother’s exasperated look that her "trial balloon" hadn’t flown. Indeed, it had crashed and burned, like a Harley hitting the great gender divide.

Whatever uses the money might have in Demi’s imagination, it had only one legitimate use, so far as her mother was concerned — to make her daughter whole. Barb had banked the money because she realized that she could never afford to pay for Demi’s sex change out of the wages of a legal secretary.

Elvira’s money had a powerful purchase on Barb’s imagination: Without it, Demi could be no more than a boy in fake breasts. Barb had, as a result, always assumed that Kyle would eventually reassert himself, with Demi becoming a minor player in his life. Though Barb was now determined to keep her daughter around as much as possible, she believed that her child would want to be male most of the time, in accord with his body.

Thanks to Elvira’s money, that body could change in a matter of months. Demi had become a full-time viability. Is that what Barb wanted — for her son to disappear entirely? The answer at a conscious level was definitely ‘no’, as Barb repeated to herself, "The best possible outcome is for Demi and Kyle to have joint custody of my child."

Yet her subconscious told another story: Demi seized hold of Barb’s dreams and fantasies from the moment they deposited Elvira’s checks. After a couple of weeks of vivid, memorable dreams about her daughter Demi, Barb awoke one morning with the sudden realization that she couldn’t remember the last time that her son had appeared in her dreams. Indeed, he had disappeared even from her dream womb. In that morning’s reverie, the doctor had said, "The ultrasound shows that you’re going to have a girl. She’s in perfect shape. What do you plan on calling her?"

"Demi," she heard herself say just as she awakened. Barb had been talking in her sleep.

So Elvira’s checks mattered a lot to Barb, as did Demi’s reported joy at receiving them. But Demi hadn’t taken them very seriously as long as she was in New York. For one thing, she expected the checks to bounce higher than a basketball, certainly higher than the breast implants that they would never buy.

"Mrs. Lancer’s just trying to impress Steve," she’d concluded. "No one is going to spend that many eggs on a kid, who’s not even her own. I bet she doesn’t even have her money in that bank." Demi was wrong, of course, but her skepticism was understandable, for she had no idea of the costs Elvira Lancer was willing to bear to keep her son from following in the "tragic footsteps of his father."

Elvira would have been willing to pay for three boys to have sex changes had she been guaranteed that these would help to return her son to the path of the straight and narrow. As it was, she was prepared to splurge on the sexual transformation of the one boy she knew her son loved most.

Elvira hoped that her son would gradually learn to love women as the love of his life turned into one. At first she had felt twinges of guilt about manipulating Kyle, but these had disappeared the moment she’d heard that Kyle was still dressing as Demi despite having earned his moped.

On the plane Elvira had said to herself, "In New York, Steve and Demi will finally become aware of their true natures — that she is a transsexual and that he loves Demi because of, and not in spite of her intrinsic femininity. If all goes to plan, they’ll still be dating when it’s time for Demi to give up her newfound virginity. Once Steve has plucked a girl’s cherry, he’ll lose all interest in all other ‘fruits.’ He’ll then be the perfect son, just as I knew he was destined to be."

As there wasn’t time for Demi to change her sex before she went to bed with Steve that evening, Elvira hoped to make ‘the girl’ look more feminine through the right combination of body adornments. To get Steve out of the way, so that she and Demi could go shopping, Elvira dropped him off at a Times Square cinema to see a first-run movie called "Aliens Get the Munchies on Independence Day."

Demi had been as eager as Steve to see the movie because it was rumored to have a "totally awesome" climax in which an incoming meteor fortuitously destroyed the alien mother ship before it could finish transforming the people of Los Angeles into narcissi, the primary food of the aliens’ flower-loving, vegan gods. Neither teen knew what happened after the meteor demolished the alien spacecraft, and the suspense was killing them. They had to know whether the Earth survived, or whether, as rumored, it had to be repopulated from another planet by people with tiny bodies and big heads — like Bart Simpson.

It definitely was going to be a super movie, and so Demi was furious and uncommunicative for a full half-hour after being told by Mrs. Lancer that the movie was "suitable for boys only as it was too violent for a girl to watch."

Steve, at first miffed at being left to his own devices, spent an extraordinary two-and-a-half-hours at the theater. Though he kept to himself, he could not help but notice that there were a lot of gays in New York. In fact, there were so many that he vowed to return to the Big Apple as soon as he’d "grown up."

Elvira would have been devastated to learn how much her shopping trip with Demi had backfired. As they bought one expensive item after another to make Demi look more feminine, Steve was for the price of a movie ticket getting constant reminders of how much he loved to look at the masculine. True, the ticket was incredibly overpriced by Des Moines standards, but it was still a lot cheaper than the Vagi-Gaff that Steve’s mother insisted on buying for Demi.

They had found the Vagi-Gaff at "Transformations," a second-story walk-up on Seventh Avenue in Greenwich Village. Elvira had located it in the Yellow Pages as a shop catering to "New York’s Cross-Dressing, Transsexual, and Transgendered Community." She hoped to find there some help in making Demi look more feminine regardless of what she was wearing — even nothing at all.

Demi had no inkling they were going to a shop for T* girls until they had actually passed through its door. Possibly Elvira would have told her had Demi actually asked instead of sulked, but probably not, judging from the way that Elvira was carefully blocking Demi’s escape route to the door. Elvira wasn’t sure how Demi would react to finding herself surrounded by "her own kind" for the first time in her life, but she wanted to ensure that she didn’t flee the store.

Demi took a while to realize that most of the ‘women’ in the store were as male as Kyle. In fact, she hadn’t noticed the women at first, because two teenaged males had caught her attention instead. She was surprised to see them. Most teenaged boys would rather die than be seen shopping in a women’s wear store, even if they were buying something for their mother or girlfriend. So she watched them closely enough to see that they were measuring everything against their own body — whether it was a pair of panties, a bra, or a slip. Could two boys be openly defying the American dress code? Yep, to Demi’s gaping amazement one of the boys carried a dress with him into a changing room.

She was awaiting his return when Elvira nudged her: "Demi, I do declare you’ve become quite the daydreamer. Young lady, it’s impolite not to acknowledge a saleslady when she addresses you."

"Saleslady? Yes, there she is right in front of me. Jeez, she’s got to be about almost seven feet tall. She must play pro basketball. Or she could."

"Demi, my name is Roberta, and like you, I’m not a genetic girl. However, I’ve had both of the operations that you’ve got planned, honey, and I promise you that you’ll never regret your decision to get yourself a clitoris and vagina. I do envy you, honey, as my only regret is that I didn’t have the right body to get the most fun out of my teenage years."

"Huh?" Demi thought. "She knows I’m not a girl? She knows about the operation? How? Jeez, that boy is back from the change room, and he’s actually wearing a dress in front of everyone! Look at the way he’s admiring himself in the mirrors — just like a girl!"

"Demi, do listen to Roberta. She wants to know your size for the Vagi-Gaff."

"Don’t worry, Elvira. I’m used to dealing with first-timers," Marilyn whispered. "They’re all like Demi. They’re so excited at finally being among friends that they become literally speechless. See the way Demi is staring at that boy trying on his dress. I’m sure she’s wishing that she could be twirling her own blue dress in front of all those mirrors. I bet she’s never primped in front of a store mirror. Much too shy, I imagine."

To Demi, Roberta said more loudly and plainly, "Honey, you’re such a tiny little thing I can’t imagine you’ll need anything larger than a ‘small’. Now, you be a dear and go over to the change room and strip off everything from your belly button on downward, and when you’re nice and naked, give me a holler and I’ll come over and give you a fitting."

"Huh? Naked?" That word got Demi’s attention, and for the first time she forgot about the boy in the dress and started listening very closely to the giant in the dress. "Roberta, was that her name? Does she really expect me to go into a room and take off all my clothes? What gives?"

"Don’t just stand there, Demi. You can’t be fitted for a new gaff if you don’t strip off whatever you’re wearing right now. I’m sure Roberta has seen a boy in panties before, haven’t you?"

"Well, we all are boys in panties, aren’t we?" Roberta laughed.

"I hope you’re not including me in that ‘all’," Elvira said testily. "I assure you that I look exactly as Mother Nature intended."

"Alas, Mother isn’t perfect," Roberta said under her breath. Out loud she said to Demi, "Now do run along, honey, and strip off your panties and gaff so that we can fit you with the Vagi-Gaff. I predict that you’ll love it so much that you’ll never take if off until your final operation. You know, honey, you’ve got quite a generous aunt in Elvira. There aren’t too many women who’d buy their nephews a $200 gaff. She must love you a lot."

"Elvira, my aunt? Elvira love me? Wow, lady, do you have things wrong." That’s what Kyle thought, but he was too polite to actually say it.

Curiosity seized Demi. A $200 gaff? What could it possibly look like? She had to see it on herself. Demi then surprised herself by stripping off her dress (with some help from Roberta with the zipper and hooks), her white nylon slip, her white nylon bra and panties, and her favorite gaff. As she undressed, an erection loomed, but she beat it back just before Roberta swept back into the changing room.

Roberta was holding something flesh-toned, something that looked … a lot like a vagina! Demi then realized where the Vagi-Gaff got its name.

Roberta showed Demi how to tuck her genitals away. "See," she said, "You’ll won’t have to take the Vagi-Gaff off to relieve yourself, so long as you pee sitting down like a proper lady."

"Demi, honey, put your finger on your clitoris. Notice how it massages the base of your penis when you stroke it? You like that, don’t you? You can touch yourself directly if you put your finger through the labia. Isn’t it wonderful, Demi? You’ve finally got a vagina, but not as good, of course, as you’re eventually going to have. The vagina goes clear through to your rear, so that — how can I put this delicately? — you can have sexual intercourse. One reason the Vagi-Gaff is the most expensive and the best artificial vagina available is the quality of its sheath. It will feel, Honey, just like the real thing to the boys you … entertain. And you’ll get some pleasure too."

Demi had put on the Vagi-Gaff as nonchalantly as she would have any other item of girl’s underwear at this point in her evolution. But, as she looked at herself for the first time in the changing-room mirror, she became anything but indifferent. Her whole body tensed as she saw herself standing stark naked in front of the mirror (or so she appeared) and looking exactly like a girl! It was a disturbing, alluring vision.

Kyle scoffed: "This isn’t real. It’s the poor light in the change room. Or it’s a trick done with mirrors. Jeez, I once looked like I weighed a hundred tons when I looked at myself in a funhouse mirror. It must be the mirror that makes me look so much like a girl. It’s an optical delusion."

But Demi knew better. Once again, her actions spoke more eloquently than Kyle’s words. Even as he claimed that there was no way that he could ever look both naked and feminine, Demi marveled at her new body. So self-absorbed that she forgot Roberta’s presence, she turned around to see, as best she could, how her vagina looked from the rear. Then she touched her toes, looking backward through her legs, once again at her vagina in the mirror.

As she turned to get a good view of herself from the front, Demi’s right hand searched out her ‘clitoris,’ and for the first time in her life, Demi began masturbating like a girl. She stopped when a chuckle reminded her she was not alone.

Demi could have died of embarrassment until Roberta reassured her, "Don’t worry, honey, when I first saw myself in a vagina gaff — and it wasn’t half as realistic-looking as yours — I too immediately wanted to play with myself. But you don’t want to get your Vagi-Gaff sticky before you’ve even worn it home, so I recommend a bit of self-restraint."

"Honey, let me show you how to use makeup to make it impossible for any but the most knowing eye to tell where your original body stops and your new body starts."

The make-up worked such wonders that Demi refused to be seen by Elvira without first putting on her bra and panties. "I won’t let Steve’s mother see me naked," she explained. Roberta didn’t even try to argue that Demi was hardly naked if her real nipples and genitals were covered in silicon, plastic and rubber, for she understood what Demi meant: Naked for her now meant standing before someone with either her breasts or female genitalia in full view. The boy’s body underneath was, like her internal organs and her bones, the stuff of x-rays, and in theory not really nudity at all.

Kyle, of course, had his own, more traditional definition of nudity, but as long as Demi wore her Vagi-Gaff — that is, most of the time — she would consider herself naked until she had covered it. Even then, most of her panties contoured around and so displayed, rather than hid her female organs.

Certainly, that was the case of the nylon panties (and bra) she was wearing when Elvira took the snapshots that appeared to prove that Demi wasn’t a boy who tucked; rather, she was a girl with a vagina. Demi ended up with her own copy of the photograph.

Kyle found it the most erotic picture of a girl he’d ever seen. However, Kyle didn’t have much opportunity to masturbate over it. With Demi wearing the Vagi-Gaff to bed almost every night, she usually did the masturbating for the both of them. She tried to keep her hand movements and sexual fantasies as realistically feminine as possible.

Though the Vagi-Gaff was an instant hit with Demi, she refused at first to wear it out of the store. She was pretty sure that Steve wouldn’t like it. Indeed, she expected him to hate it. Ever since that kiss to thank Steve for the two checks, she had realized that she wanted to be naked with him, and she figured that Steve would want his bedmate to look as much like a boy as possible. He might even insist on Demi’s taking off her breast forms.

Steve was definitely not going to consider a vagina either normal or desirable in a boy. So Demi didn’t want to wear the Vagi-Gaff while in New York, even though she already knew she’d be wearing it a lot in Des Moines.

It took hard cash to overcome Demi’s resistance. Elvira had learned from her on the plane that Jo desperately needed money to get back in her grandmother’s good books, and so she offered Demi seventy-five dollars if she’d wear the Vagi-Gaff every minute she was in New York.

It was too good an offer to refuse, as Demi decided that Jo’s happiness was more important to her than a romp with Steve. Yes, he’d be frustrated to discover the Vagi-Gaff — if she let his hands explore that far. He’d probably not want to have sexual intercourse with Demi if she were wearing the Vagi-Gaff, which was fine with Kyle.

Though Kyle had enjoyed ‘fooling around’ with Steve, he still didn’t want to "go all the way," for he wanted to preserve his self-image as a "lover of women," even if his entire experience with women was ‘lesbian sex’ with Jo. Thus the decision was made: If Steve were going to get laid that weekend, he’d have to get over the fact that his boyfriend had a vagina.

And wore a dress. It too came from Transformations, as there was insufficient time to go to another store before Steve’s movie let out. It proved exceptionally difficult to choose a dress, for Demi showed little enthusiasm for any of them, and Elvira had no idea how a New York teen should dress.

Yet it was important to Elvira for Demi to look ‘hip,’ as Steve might lose interest in his ‘hick’ girlfriend if she looked out of place in sophisticated New York. To seduce Steve, Demi would have to look as "groovy as possible," Elvira decided.

Unsure of her own taste, and fearful of Demi’s looking too "Ioway" at the game, Elvira asked Roberta to pick a stylish dress for Demi. Roberta replied, "Honey, in New York, style is very personal, but I think I know the right style for Demi. The Ozark look is all the rage in New York right now."

"That’s what I’m wearing right now; it’s called a Joplin dress, and we brought it in from one of the most fashionable stores in Hollywood. Don’t you just love the blue denim, the deep plunge at the neck, and the pearl buttons in two parallel rows up from my hem to my décolletage? And I do love the way this dress shows off my legs."

"Denim, huh?" Demi came to life when she realized there was a possibility that Elvira might buy her a legless pair of blue jeans. Steve might even like her in a dress that almost looked like coveralls. But Demi didn’t like the pearl buttons or the neckline that would have Demi showing cleavage for the first time.

Demi wasn’t sure she was ready to have guys staring at her breasts, especially as she wasn’t sure she had mastered (in one lesson) the art of hiding the seams where they met her chest. Demi also considered the dress to be much too short: Roberta was showing off as much leg as an ostrich.

While intrigued by the Ozark look, Elvira wanted a choice, and so Roberta pulled out an "Ellie May" dress, which she also declared to be another "high fashion import from Hollywood." Made from red and white gingham, it had spaghetti straps, white lace trim at v-neck, a white lettuce hem, and an empire waist that accentuated the bust line, without exposing it. It was modest, yet immodest.

Elvira decided that the Ellie May dress was the big city look she was seeking for Demi, and she insisted on seeing it modeled. So Demi found herself taking a dress into the fitting room — just like the boys she’d just been watching. She felt very awkward about it, for she realized that her true sex was as obvious to everyone in a store for the transgendered as was that of the two boys who’d been trying on dresses. Demi felt like a sissy.

As dresses went, Demi considered the gingham dress "all right, I guess." She’d have preferred the denim, especially as it had an extra inch on the leg. The Ellie May dress was a true mini, not much longer than a cheerleader’s skirt. Any girl wearing it would have to move very carefully indeed, if she didn’t want to give a "free show" to the men around her.

Elvira loved the dress. It had the sophisticated, cosmopolitan feel she was looking for, and she liked the fact that there would be next to nothing in the way of fabric to impede Steve’s ascent of the mound of Venus.

To go with the dress, Roberta proposed — and Elvira chose — red leather thigh boots (with a three-inch heel) and a "sassy necklace." How was it sassy? Because that’s what the alternating red, blue and silver letters spelled out. The outfit bought, Elvira and Demi bade Roberta a fond farewell. Her own last words were, "Send me a post card, Demi honey, when you get back to Iowa. I’ll be dying to hear how your big night with Steve came out."

Demi’s purchases they took back to the hotel before meeting Steve who was waiting in front of the movie theater. He was in a surprisingly good mood — but surprising if one didn’t realize how many boys and men he’d caught giving him the eye as he waited for Demi and his mother. A couple of boys close to his own age had even flashed him big smiles; he knew they would have stopped to talk if they hadn’t been with their mothers or friends.

The only two boys in Des Moines who’d ever looked him that way were Brad and Vicky, and she didn’t really count. Steve didn’t know what to make of Brad. If the high school quarterback really wanted to sex it up with Steve, why didn’t he just ask? Didn’t Brad realize that it was as difficult for boys as it was for girls to ask the school’s star athlete for a date? He’d have to take the initiative.

Demi was a hard one to figure. She must like him, because she’d twice stripped down to her underwear to pet with him. And she’d blush furiously whenever he caught her sneaking a peak at him. She’d also told Steve that he had "the most excellent body" of any boy at Hoover High. So Demi was definitely sexually attracted to Steve, despite Kyle’s denials.

She’d also said that she wanted Steve to be her "friend for life." Yet he wasn’t sure whether that meant as Demi’s platonic, gay friend or as her lover. Steve was also unsure of his own feelings: He knew that Kyle was "the love of his life," but Demi? She might be only a one-night stand, for Steve wasn’t sure that he actually wanted to have intercourse with "a girl."

Des Moines seemed such a complicated place in comparison to New York City, for Steve had in ten minutes received more looks of unabashed approval and lust than he’d received in an Iowa year. It was no wonder that he was in such a good mood when he saw Demi and his mother, that he didn’t object — or not too loudly — when Elvira insisted on their going to the Disney store.

Elvira had learned, to her horror, that Demi had not redone Kyle’s room in a more feminine style. To Steve’s horror, his mother now bought a complete bed set — sheets, pillowcases, bedspread and bed skirt — featuring Pocahontas and some of the cuddlier creatures of the forest, and Demi actually seemed pleased to get it, as well as a Pocahontas rag doll to go on top of the pillows. She even kissed Steve’s mother in gratitude.

When Steve asked Demi why she wanted "that sissy kid stuff," he actually liked her answer, or at least part of it. Though he wasn’t keen on her explanation that she’d grown up pretending to be Pocahontas, he did think it worth a kiss on her lips when she said, "I mainly wanted the Pocahontas bed clothes to remind myself of my ride through Hoover High. That was the day I stood up to the gangs and showed them that I was a …"

She paused. She was struggling to find the right last words.

"Real man," said Steve, supplying them.

"Yeh, something like that." replied Demi, who hadn’t known what to say. "Real man" didn’t sound right. But what was then? She giggled as the words "one hell of a tough broad" came to mind. She refused to explain the giggle to Steve, nor any of the others that came along for the rest of the day as she came up with new endings to her sentence, all of which assumed that it had been a female who had been declaring independence from the gangs.

To make amends for his "sissy" comment, Steve bought Demi a doll, this time of Mulan. His mother provided the money for it, but both teens appreciated the symbolism of Steve’s giving a doll to Demi. Elvira beamed with happiness. She rewarded them both with a visit to a huge video arcade, where she paid for them to play a virtual reality game, her only condition being that Demi play a female character.

Both Steve and Demi thought it hilarious that Drac the Impaler was getting beaten up so badly in their first virtual bout by Space Kitty, who was only half his size, that he finally had to pull out his gun and shoot her ‘dead’ in order to win.

Too clever to be shot a second time, Space Kitty seduced Drac in the second game (who would have thought that a video arcade for kids would have such a salacious game?) and shot him with his own gun, while his trousers were down, again to uproarious laughter.

The two teens had never been closer, the ‘inevitable’ between Demi and Steve ever more likely. And they remained in an excellent mood during an evening meal of burgers, fries, Mountain Dew, and chocolate cake which room service brought to them, while Elvira fasted in her own room. Steve’s mood, however, soured when he learned that Demi was going to the game in a gingham dress.

It was not that he disapproved of the dress. It looked really stylish, on some other girl. But he’d definitely hoped to go to the game with Kyle, and failing that, with the Demi who dressed as much like a boy as possible. Steve wanted her in jeans, sneakers, and a unisex top. Instead, she wore a dress, a sassy necklace, and the sort of boots that Jane Fonda or Nancy Sinatra would have worn in the early days of Hollywood — you know, back in the days when people watched films outdoors and popcorn came with real butter.

"Why do you let my mother treat you like a Barbie doll?" Steve complained when Demi explained, somewhat disingenuously, that she had to wear the dress to the game because "your mom spent so money on it, and she wants me to look sharp tonight."

Ironically, Steve became less hostile to the dress when he noticed that it didn’t always cover Demi’s panties. Rather than tell her that she was occasionally showing off her underwear, he decided "to enjoy the view." Besides, he figured he’d be able to persuade Demi to give up dresses entirely if he told her after the game that her gingham mini-dress had done little to preserve either her dignity or her modesty.

Even Elvira was impressed by Madison Square Garden. The two teens approached with wide-eyed, slack-jawed awe. Devotees of the basketball cult, they knew they were about to enter the holy of holies. Inside, their awe became even more intense: Demi later admitted that she almost wet her panties with excitement when the usher escorted the three of them to a second row seat from where she could see, just feet away, both the Knicks and the Celtics. Steve never admitted that he had an erection most of the evening, even when Demi quizzed him about his standing so rarely to give an ovation.

The noise in Madison Square Garden was delightfully deafening. "These New Yorkers sure know how to party," Demi exclaimed to Steve. He was intent on holding her hand, but rarely got a chance to do it, as Demi leapt from her seat in excitement whenever the Knicks sank a basket. She was so engrossed in the game that she didn’t notice that her gingham mini-dress quite often didn’t move with her own alacrity.

In fact, it frequently ended up clinging to her waist, exposing her lace-trimmed, beribboned, pink satin panties to the seventeen thousand males assembled in the Garden. Did all seventeen thousand see Demi’s panties? No, of course not. No more than twenty percent of the males — tops — at the game actually noticed her panties; and only three of them were crude enough to tell her they approved of "her taste in lingerie."

However, there were several million males who got to see Demi’s panties on television, as a cable network boosted its ratings by focusing its camera on the ‘dancing doll’ in the second row, not once, not twice, but five times. Thanks to freeze-frame technology, there were thousands of American adolescents who believed they had for the first time seen a girl’s ‘snatch’ — obscured by her panties, admittedly, but still visible to the discerning teenage eye.

To her intense embarrassment, the most ‘joyful’ images of Demi had found a home on the Internet even before the end of the post-game show. Thanks to the miracle of mass media, the ‘she-must-have-gone-to-New-York-to-get-a-sex-change" photos reached Hoover High well before Demi did (as she was, with Barb’s permission, playing hooky on the Monday so that she could spend two full days in New York).

Though Vice Principal Cudmore tore them up whenever he found them gracing a student locker or bulletin board, Demi’s ‘pink-panty photos" stayed up long enough for most of Hoover High to see. Overall, they harmed her reputation, especially with the teachers and girls of the school, who thought her shameless.

Indeed, there was only one group on campus with which her stock soared — and that was the Jets. Convinced that she’d somehow turned herself into a ‘genuine girl’ when they weren’t looking, they voted her an associate membership in the Jets.

While she didn’t yet have the privileges and duties — mostly duties — of a full member, Demi’s first appearance on live television brought her a step closer to being the gang’s bitch. The Jets also made it clear that they would never again take ‘no’ as an answer if, as Markko put it, "we should ask you to wear a dress or skirt when we authorize you to hang out with us after school."

Were Demi fifteen or sixteen, she’d already have qualified for full gang membership. However, a third of the Jets still thought her too young "to mess with." Yet even they were beginning to see Demi in a different, more lurid light after she’d repeatedly flashed her panties on national television.

At the game itself, neither Steve nor Elvira were among those who were watching the ‘Jill-in-the-box with the pink panties." Indeed, Steve had largely tuned her out, in part because Demi wouldn’t sit still and let him hold her hand, and in part because the sight of his father playing basketball was "awesome to the max."

It was the first time he’d attended one of his father’s games since the divorce. His eyes were on his father, even when he trailed the play. Even staring as much as he did, Steve missed a lot of his father’s moves, because tears kept welling up in his eyes, clouding his vision.

As for Elvira, she had her eyes dead set on her son. She watched every emotion as it flickered on his face or shone in his eyes. She didn’t like what she saw: Steve’s admiration and love for his father.

"How can Steve look at Mike that way?" Elvira wondered. "Sure, it’s his father, the big shot basketball player. But how can any boy admire a queer, a man who cheated on his wife with … another man? Why isn’t Steve ashamed to have such a man for a father?"

A little later in the game, Elvira pondered: "I hope I haven’t made a mistake letting Steve see his father. I’ve managed to keep them apart for more than a year now. And now I’ve had to agree to Steve’s spending most of Sunday with Mike. Have I made a big mistake?"

Possibly she had. Yet she decided that the gamble was worth taking, since an NBA game had been the only lure powerful enough to entice Demi into spending an entire weekend with her son, including two nights in the same bed.

What would the two teens experience there? Elvira was beginning to wonder, for the auguries were inauspicious: Neither Steve nor Demi was paying much attention to the other at the game. Manifestly, they both loved basketball; but did they also love each other? To her own surprise, Elvira was less sure of the answer than she had been in Des Moines. Perhaps she’d picked the wrong town in New York State for her son’s honeymoon with Demi.

Even more unnerving was Steve’s rant when he couldn’t see his father in the Knicks’ locker room after their winning game. Sure, his name was on the approved list, as was Kyle’s. And had Kyle attended the game dressed as a boy, they would have had no problem getting into the locker room and hanging out with the half-dressed Knicks — a dream that Kyle and Steve had long cherished.

But Kyle was dressed as Demi, and there was no way that the security guards were going to let a teenaged girl into the Knicks’ inner sanctum. As Elvira wouldn’t hear of Steve’s leaving Demi behind while he "went off gallivanting with the Knicks," Steve whined: "Why don’t I ever get to do what I want to do? Demi, why can’t you be Kyle? I had a lot more fun with Kyle. Only a boob would wear boobs to a b-game."

Steve glared at Demi. Demi glared back. She was just as upset as Steve that they didn’t get into the dressing room. But why did he blame her? He should blame his mother for forcing her to wear a dress!

Their date was not going well. As it was dangerous to return directly to the hotel (there being too much risk that Steve would end up sleeping on two chairs in Elvira’s room), Elvira played for time. She wanted to give both kids time to simmer down, and for Steve to remember that he’d come to New York with sex as well as basketball on his mind.

So Elvira herded them into a half-empty café mid-way between the Garden and their hotel. Once they’d found a private corner, and she’d maneuvered Steve and Demi onto a shared bench, she asked them whether they’d like to sample some of the exotic coffees on the menu.

"I’m not allowed to drink coffee, Mrs. Lancer," Demi hesitantly replied. "My mom says I’m not allowed to do drugs as long as I’m living at home."

"You’ve never had coffee?" Elvira asked with genuine astonishment.

Demi nodded.

"Why on earth, dear, does your mother think coffee is a drug?"

"Because it has loads of caffeine and that’s a drug. My mom says caffeine is a lot like cocaine and speed."

"What about Coke and Pepsi? They’ve got caffeine. I bet you drink them."

"Nope. I only drink the caffeine-free, sugarless stuff. Sugar’s a drug too, you know."

"Well, I never! Your mother does have some strange notions. Well, I have no desire for you to defy your mother’s wishes, and so we’ll order you a decaffeinated coffee. That’s coffee without the caffeine. Is that okay?"

With a smile on her face, Demi agreed. She’d never had a decaf coffee either, and she was eager to find out what a coffee tasted like. She hoped it would be better than the cigaret that Rob had persuaded her to smoke about six months ago. It had made her barf. She sure hoped coffee didn’t affect her the same way.

"We need a coffee to loosen these kids up, or they’ll still be virgins in the morning," Elvira had told herself, before she ordered a Colombian coffee for herself and two Irish coffees for Steve and Demi. The waiter had given her a supercilious look when she placed the order, but since he was a New Yorker who minded his own business, he duly returned with three coffees — one with caffeine, and two with a shot of Irish whiskey.

Steve and Demi eagerly slurped up the whipped cream, and then started guzzling the coffee. Steve pronounced the coffee the best he’d ever had, while Demi marveled that a drink that looked like watery mud could warm her body in so many different ways.

Elvira, the gracious host, quickly ordered Demi a second coffee, this time from Mexico (including the shot of Kahlua), but switched Steve to a high-caffeine, alcohol-free blend of East African coffees on the pretext that she didn’t have enough money for them all to drink Irish coffee at New York City prices, and that Demi was, as their guest, entitled to nothing but the best her first time out sampling coffee.

As Elvira sipped and the youngsters guzzled their coffees, they talked ever more excitedly and loudly about the game they’d just seen and the drinks they were imbibing. Demi was fascinated that coffee came from so many different places — from Latin America, Africa, and Arabia — but what impressed her most, once she heard that coffee beans generally grew at high altitude in the tropics, was that Ireland was able to grow them as well.

"It must be awesomely difficult to grow the beans for an Irish coffee," she said. "I’ve heard that it’s such a cold, rainy place that even its potatoes once rotted and turned green. Jeez, they can’t even keep the rot out of their beer. I saw some Irish beer on St. Patrick’s Day and it was a yucky green color."

Neither Lancer contradicted her. What was the point? Demi wasn’t really listening any longer.

So impressed was Demi with the courage and tenacity of Ireland’s coffee growers that she demanded and received a second Irish coffee so that she could toast the pluck and guts of the Irish in growing brown coffee beans on the Emerald Isle.

By the time, Demi had finished her long-winded toast to the Irish, complete with a slurred voice, false sentiment, and a fake brogue, Elvira sincerely regretted having bought her more than one coffee. Since Demi had downed her three coffees like Gatorade after a workout, no one — least of all Demi — was aware she was getting drunk, until she was stinking, incoherently drunk.

The evening was not working out quite as Elvira hoped. True, the first coffee had helped Steve and Demi to relax once again with each other. Indeed, before they had guzzled its last drop, Steve had an arm around Demi’s shoulder and a hand on her leg playing with the inside hem of her mini-dress.

During their second coffee, Steve deliberately embarrassed his mother by soul-kissing Demi, who enthusiastically responded, even though she was no longer able to deliberate about much of anything. The second coffee had also given Steve a chance to verify that Demi was wearing satin panties. His fingertips had found something unexpected, which they were eager to explore during the third round of coffees.

But Steve had to back away from her instead, for fear of accidentally having his eye poked out by Demi as she thrashed about, one moment demonstrating the "awesome dunk" of Mike Lancer’s that had tied the game at half-time, the next moment (while still seated) an Irish jig, and the next moment, how hard Juan Valdez would have to push to get a balky burro to climb a Colombian mountain.

"Children, I think it’s well past your bedtime," Elvira announced, just after she had failed to stop Demi from licking up the last drop of her spiked coffee. As Demi’s legs were failing her, Steve had to help her to stand up and to stagger to the exit. Meanwhile, Elvira was leaving a ‘generous’ tip to blind the café’s staff to Demi’s indisposition.

Mother and son finally got Demi to her bed. As Elvira didn’t want Steve to see the Vagi-Gaff until he was sexually aroused and game for anything, she told her son, "It’s not proper for you to undress Demi for bed. Why don’t you go into the bathroom and get ready for your big night. Be sure to use the mouthwash and it’s always advisable for a boy your age to apply an underarm deodorant before he embraces a lady."

Steve hurried off to hide the effect of his mother’s words. It was exciting to think that his mother was actually encouraging him to have sex with a boy. He had always wondered whether she truly accepted his homosexuality. As he thought of his mother’s preparing Kyle for bed, he wondered no longer: "My mom’s really cool. She actually wants Kyle and me to get it on."

It was Demi, not Kyle, whom Elvira was preparing for bed. And Demi wasn’t proving very cooperative. She was far more interested in jabbering about the glories of Ireland and its coffee than she was in getting undressed. To be sure, she was willing enough to roll over on command, one way, then the other, so that Elvira could strip her of her dress.

Yet she was much too limp to raise her arms over her head, which made it a challenge to remove her slip and bra. Her panties she kept on, as she instinctively grabbed them whenever Elvira tugged on them. As the room was chilly, Demi actually kissed Elvira to thank her for the welcome warmth from the red negligee so sheer that it highlighted rather than hid her breasts.

Seductively dressed, invitingly waiting atop the pink satin sheets of the heart-shaped bed, Demi was as ready as she’d ever be for a night of sexual passion with her first, and so far, only boyfriend. Elvira gave Steve a green light: "She’s waiting for you, sweetheart. Demi told me that she wants this to be your night — whatever you want is all right with her."

As Steve kissed his mother goodnight, she whispered in his ear, "Don’t forget — Demi wants you to be as manly as possible. You’re the only one who needs a condom tonight, understood?" Her last words as she left the room shared by Steve and Demi were these — "Demi is such a sexy girl. She’s the kind of girl who makes boys glad that there are two, very different sexes. Vive la différence!"

After removing the condoms from his wallet, and carefully setting them down on the night table, Steve quickly stripped down to his boxers. He lay down on the satin sheets beside Demi. Aroused by the warmth of her body, he kissed her chastely on her lips.

The fog cleared long enough for Demi to realize that someone was kissing her. Generously, she tried to return the kiss…

The next morning when Demi awoke she was naked and lying spread-eagled on her stomach. She was also alone. There was no sign of Steve. As her head was pounding and she was deliriously thirsty, Demi stumbled to the washroom, where she verified that she was still wearing her breast forms and Vagi-Gaff .

Had Steve seen her in them? Had he even slept with her? She couldn’t remember whether she had seen him since the café. He wasn’t the one, she recalled, who’d undressed her. It had been some woman. A chambermaid? Elvira? Demi wasn’t sure, but she was certain that Steve hadn’t been the one to remove her clothes.

Had the woman removed all Demi’s clothes? No, Demi didn’t think that had happened. She could swear she had gone to bed in the red negligee that now lay in a heap on the floor beside her bed. What had happened? Had someone taken it off her? Had Steve stripped off her panties when she wasn’t looking?

Had she and Steve had sex? Had she — and Demi trembled at the thought -- lost her virginity to him the night before? Is that why she had awakened on her stomach? Is that why she was now so wobbly on her feet?

She shuddered at the possibility that she had, by not heeding her mother’s warnings about drugs, become so high on coffee that she’d put up no defense when Steve came cherry picking.

And where was Steve anyhow? Was he all right? She hoped that he was safe and sound. But was he? He wasn’t the type to "love ‘em and leave ‘em," was he? Where the heck was Steve?

There were so many questions, and so few answers. Demi only knew one thing for certain: She was swearing off coffee.

Continued in chapter nineteen: "Did Demi Have Sex in New York?"