Princess For Hire
Book 2: The Second Semester
By Melanie E.

Beck's return to Kingston Academy has brought more to his plate than he expected. Can he handle the next turn of events? Or will he make a decision he'll come to regret?

(Beginning of Part 2)

Part 2: The Princess's Adviser

-4-

Waking up and not knowing where you are is never a pleasant experience.

It is even less so when you wake up to find yourself being crushed under someone else.

"Urrmph! Gerroff!" I pushed up with all my might, and finally managed to roll what turned out to be Amanda off of me and back onto her own pallet, about a foot away from mine.

I looked around the dark room, the digital clock on the mantle of the fireplace proclaiming it to be eight o'clock. Didn't I have something I needed to do today? Oh, yeah.

"Psssst. Sarah. Hey," I said, poking her in the back a few times for emphasis.

"Hnnh? What?" She asked, rolling over and rubbing her eyes sleepily.

"It's eight, we've got that meeting with Mr. Uchiha in two hours."

She nodded. "N'kay." With a mighty yawn she sat up and looked around the room. As the memories of the night before came back to her, she began to smile. "My first real slumber party. Probably my last, too. Oh, well."

"We can try and do this again some time."

She nodded. "I think I'd like that."

Now fully awake, we both carefully made our way through the tangle of bodies filling the floor and up to our own rooms to get ready for the day. I debated over whether to go as Becky or as Beck, not sure what capacity Mr. Uchiha was wanting to talk to us in. In the end, I settled on a pair of my regular boy's jeans with a turtleneck sweater in plain black, knowing that even though they were both from the boy's department nobody would be able to tell anyhow, a fact which irked me even as it played to my advantage for the moment.

Sarah was still not ready yet when I had finished dressing, so I made the walk to the school room where we would be meeting alone, using the time to think about things.

Christmas break had been full of fun and laughter, more so than any Christmas I could remember since before my mom and dad had split up. Seeing Sarah's family again had been great too, Mamma Graham welcoming me just as warmly as the first time, and giving my dad and his partner the same treatment. The fact that my dad was gay didn't seem to matter to her, or the rest of the family, in the least, and I had been able to tell that he'd had a hard time not breaking up at the warm welcome too.

The entire break, I had been Daniel, what, twice? On second thought, no, it had been once -- the day we had driven down to see my mom.

That meeting hadn't gone as well as the time at Sarah's. We had agreed she would drive half-way to meet us for dinner one night at a restaurant we all liked, so I had spent a good two hours making sure to remove all traces of Becky I could. It was a harder task than I had imagined, since that included using a different soap and shampoo than I had grown accustomed to so I wouldn't smell the same, and even carefully picking off the bits of nail polish around the base of my nails where the acetone wouldn't completely reach.

She had been waiting at the table when we arrived, standing up to give me a hug and my dad a cool nod of acknowledgement, but as the meal went on she began to look at me more and more strangely.

"Something's different about you," she finally said, after some few minutes of uncomfortable silence had passed. "There's something you're not telling me."

I had shrugged, but remained silent, not knowing what to say, or what specifically she might be thinking of from the myriad things I knew I wasn't telling her. Most of the rest of the meal passed in quiet contemplation.

When we all said our goodbyes, she hugged me again, but this time there was something more distant about it. She hadn't said a single word to my dad the entire meal, and after our uncomfortable pause little to me either. Watching her go, I had felt a pang of loss I hadn't expected, somehow knowing that things were different between us now, in a way I couldn't describe.

It was on our way home that Dad said the five little words that brought what had happened into focus. "You moved like a girl."

At first, I had no idea what he was talking about. Then it hit me. Spending so much time with Sarah, and as Becky, had I really started moving femininely? I must have. Now her reaction to me made more sense, even if it didn't hurt any less. All the monitoring of my appearance had been for nothing in the long run.

A burst of chill wind snapped me back to the present, the sparse trees of the quad doing little to hamper the rushing winter air.

I had been watching the way I acted since then, trying to tell the difference between how I behaved now and how I had before the Princess program began. At first I had noticed nothing, but now I was finally starting to see how much I had really changed. My walk was slightly different. I used my hands more when I talked. I was freer with my vocal range, something I was surprised not to have noticed before.

The next question, the one I still had not gained the nerve to tackle yet, was more important than what changes had occurred. Was I different because of the Princess Program, or just because I was less self conscious now than I used to be? That question alone made me laugh, as if anything asking it was an incredibly self-conscious thing to do. Yet the truth was, since joining the Princess Program I had stopped worrying near as much about how my actions and behavior affected what others thought of me. Until my meeting with my mom, so much of my actual behavior had become little more than background noise to the people and events going on around me, and my feelings.

The question from the night before was all that much more important to me because of all this. I thought of myself as a guy. But really, did I? Before the Princess Program -- no, before Christmas break, that would have been a definite "yes." Now, though, I was less sure. I thought of myself as many things; a student at Kingston Academy, a Princess, Andrew's boyfriend-slash-girlfriend, though that last one was still too new to really comprehend. Where did being a "guy" fit into any of that? Sure, Kingston was ostensibly a boys-only school, but Sarah blew that rule out of the water, and most of the student body would say I did as well despite my objections. Before the break that had made me angry, but now that I was coming to grips with why they felt that way I was starting to see their point.

"Grrgh, too much to think about this early in the morning," I muttered to myself as I pushed through the doors into the main building. Mr. Uchiha's office was close, giving me a perfect reason to put everything else on the back burner. For now, I needed to focus on the meeting at hand, and what it might be about.

-5-

"Good morning girls."

"Good morning, Mr. Uchiha," Sarah said while I simply smiled and nodded at our school's headmaster. A new shelf to the side of his desk showed me that he had managed to acquire more volumes of manga since the last time I had been in his office. When he caught where my eyes had wandered, he gave me a pleased grin.

"I might have some you would be interested in. You can take a look after our meeting if you would like, Beck. It is okay if I call you that, yes?"

"Yessir," I said. There was just something about the school's headmaster that made it impossible not to like him. "I would like that."

"Good. Now, to get under way with the reason I have called the two of you in here," he said in an official tone, pushing his glasses back up on his nose. From underneath his desk he produced a thin manila file folder. "I have come to understand that you two are considered the best Princesses in the school."

"Really?" I blurted, instantly regretting it.

Mr. Uchiha simply chuckled. "Because of this, you happen to be uniquely qualified for a project I am most excited to be allowed to do this semester." Sliding the folder across the desk to us, he flipped it open to reveal a series of documents and incomplete pamphlets.

"What are these, sir?" Sarah asked, picking up one part of the packet while I started skimming another.

"Those are mock-ups of a potential future introduction packet for the school, for which we would like the two of you to serve as models." Both Sarah and I stopped what we were doing to look at him incredulously. "Now, now. You're not the only ones who will be asked! However, you are potentially the two most important."

I took another look at the papers in my hands as the implications of what he was saying sank in. "You mean they're going to start advertising the Princess program?"

His grin grew even wider as he nodded enthusiastically. "Even though the program has another two years before we will be listing it as an official part of our school's teaching methods, it has garnered a great deal of praise from both students and those alumni who have been following it. As such, starting next year we will be offering a limited-release pamphlet including details on the Princess Program to judge how its inclusion affects the attitudes of potential students."

"And you want us to be your page five girls," Sarah said, with a giggle of her own.

"In a sense, yes."

"Absolutely! This will be so much fun!"

I didn't share Sarah's excitement. "I don't know. What will we have to do?"

Mr. Uchiha took another stack of papers from his desk and handed them to us. "The details are in here. For the most part, though, all that will be required is a few days of modeling for photographs, for which you will be paid the agency's normal modelling fee in addition to your normal Princess pay."

My eyebrows went up at that. Getting paid twice for dressing once sounded great, but there had to be a catch. "What's the catch?"

His eyes lit up as he answered. "Ever observant, aren't we? The catch is that as of yet I don't know what days the photographer will be in. As a result, I cannot guarantee that you won't have to perform a few extra days worth of Princess duties if they aren't available on the days that are already required."

I was sure that he was expecting me to protest, given my past history, but instead I simply shrugged. "I do it one day a week regardless, so it's not that big a deal."

"So you'll do it?" Sarah pleaded. When I nodded, she squealed and grabbed me in a hug. "Yes! This is gonna be so fun!"

"Very good, then. As with the Princess program, your parents will have to agree as well, but I doubt that should be a problem for either of you."

"No sir!"

"No sir," I echoed when Sarah finally released me.

As we left his office, Sarah started bouncing up and down. "This is gonna be so fun! Thanks for doing this with me Becky!"

I nodded, off in my own world. "Yeah, sure."

Sarah stopped her bouncing and looked at me worriedly. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah," I said, quietly, "I was just hoping it would be something about figuring out the problem with Professor Swift, not a job posing for a camera."

"Oh," she said, lowering her head. "I see. That is something we need to think about, isn't it. Do you think the others have come up with anything?"

"On Christmas break?" I scoffed. "No way!"

She laughed. "True."

Still, it was something to think about. More than anything else this semester, I was determined to figure Professor Swift out.

-6-

"So what was your meeting with the head about?"

"Oh, nothing," I said, staring into my bowl of soup.

"Nothing? Hah!" Jules said, glaring at me. "The head of the school doesn't call you in to meet him over nothing. Come on, spill."

I looked at the guys around me, unsure of what to do. Sarah was next to me, and seemed eager to share, though.

Finally, she couldn't stand it any more. "Ugh! He wants us to model for some school pamphlets. What?" She said when she saw the look I was giving her. "He didn't say we couldn't tell them!"

Jules grinned. "So what does that mean? You're both gonna be dressing up for photo shoots for the next few months?"

I nodded solemnly, while Sarah did the same with much more energy. "Pretty much, yeah."

"Cool!"

"Huh?"

I looked up, surprised by Jules's reaction. If anything I had expected him to tease us, or at least me. Instead, he thought it was...

"Cool?"

"Yeah!" He said, looking excited. "This means the Alumni like the program, right?"

"Umm, yeah?"

"Great!"

I looked around nervously, seeing that the few other students who were at the school already were looking at our table with curiosity. "Uh, Jules, could you keep it down a bit?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah, sorry," he said, much more quietly. "Don't you see why this is a good thing?"

I nodded. "Yeah, it means the program is succeeding."

He shook his head. "No! It means that until I graduate, I'm in for easy money!"

I cast my glance at the other Princesses, most of whom were nodding along with Jules's words.

"Yeah, I guess you're right."

"Come on, don't act so down about it, you're the one who'll have it the easiest!"

The meal ended soon after that, the rest of the Princess table wanting to stay and talk about what it would mean for them that the program was on the short track to being approved. I, on the other hand, just wanted some time to think.

"Hey, can I walk with you?"

I looked over my shoulder to see Sarah standing behind me, a smile on her face.

"Sure, let's go."

When we were finally out of earshot of everyone else she began to talk. "You're nervous about the pictures?"

I paused for a moment before answering. "A bit."

She hugged me. "You know you're my best friend, right?"

I laughed. "Yeah."

"Then take this for what it is. I think this could be a good opportunity for you to have fun being a girl a bit more."

I stopped cold. "Why?"

She looked at me seriously. "Beck... you don't think I see how hard this is on you, but I do."

"Sarah..."

"Really. I still remember what it was like, being... a guy. Or trying to act like one. I know that it hurts, being forced to be someone you're not. Please, just listen," she said, when I went to speak again. "You want to know why I push you so much on the girl thing?"

I gave in. "Why?"

She hugged herself tightly for warmth as we stood in the cold outdoor air, not looking at me. "Because I don't see that in you. Yeah, there are things you don't like about it, but I see you getting more frustrated trying to fit in when you're dressed as a guy then as a girl. I heard your dad talking to his boyfriend about the meeting with your mom."

I had a chill pass through me, but not from the night air.

"Beck, I'm not saying you're supposed to be a girl or anything. I've pushed you too far in the past a few times, and I'm sorry for that. What I'm trying to say is... give it a shot this semester?"

"Give what a shot?"

She shrugged. "I dunno what I mean exactly. Being a girl? Being yourself?"

I scratched my head as we began to walk again, the windows of the dorm hall glowing brightly in the distance. "I always try to be myself."

She laughed. "Really? Alright then, let me rephrase that. Be yourself, but try not to worry about being a guy so much."

"So I should be a girl instead?"

She huffed. "Now is that what I said?"

"Well, kinda?"

She sighed. "You know what? I'm not really sure what I'm trying to say either."

We both smiled at each other after that, which soon turned into us laughing, which is what we found ourselves doing the rest of the way up to our rooms.

After she was gone, I quickly descended back into my funk. I was really getting tired of this emotional mumbo jumbo and all the bouncing back and forth. Surely there was a way to get everyone off my case about the girl thing?

Like lightning, it hit me. I wanted everyone to leave me alone about being a girl. I wanted time to make my own decisions without having to deal with the frustration of their mixed reactions.

The answer was so simple it was painful. Sure, it might cause a stir for a while, but it's not like anyone could really object, and in the long run it would make things a ton easier, not to mention less frustrating to me.

But could I go through with it?

Did I want to?

Those were my thoughts the rest of that evening, as the beginnings of a plan began to congeal in my mind.

(End of Part 2)

NOTES:

Alright, so things pick up a bit here, and Beck has made a surprise decision! What is it? Do you know? You probably have an idea... but is it the right one?

So, Terrynaut's comments on the last part got me thinking, and gave me an idea that meant a bit of a rewrite on some things I had already written, and the urge to get this out as soon as possible. I hope everyone enjoys what's to come!